The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1)

THE

BLOOD

RACER

Matthew Winchester

Copyright © 2015   Matthew Winchester

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and registered trademark owners of all branded names referenced without TM, SM, or ® symbols due to formatting constraints, and is not claiming ownership of or collaboration with said trademark brands. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover Design: Matthew Winchester

Printed in the United States of America

For my Captain

              “Kick the tires!” I shouted to my ship.
              With a grunt, I stomped hard on the brass valve by my left foot, activating the hydrogen thrusters on the underside of the hull. In an instant, I felt my entire body lurch backward as the
Cloud Kicker
immediately picked up speed. I held fast to the metal bracings that were keeping me attached to my ship. I wouldn’t be foolish enough to pilot from the outside without first belting myself to the
Kicker’s
frame.
              Feeling more brash than usual, I cranked the stick to the left and sent the
Kicker
into a tight-spiraled barrel roll, gleefully whooping at the top of my lungs as I spun. I got in two-and-a-half good rotations before I pulled back on the stick, sending my ship into an upside down, backwards nosedive. The shift in gravity made my stomach feel like it had slid up into my chest, and the thrilling sensation of freefall drew another wild scream from my lips.
              Below me, the Veil was rushing up fast. I saw it coming and knew that I should pull up, but I held my yoke steady, flying straight at it with an insane smile on my face. I was picking up speed now. In just a few seconds my entire craft and I would slip beneath the Veil and the toxic fumes would kill me in seconds. Closer…closer…
             
Pull up!
My brain shrieked at me.
Pull up or die!
             
Finally, at the last possible moment, I wrenched the stick back as hard as I could, stomping the thruster valve to close it and slapping the switch to my left that fired the VTOL turbines on both ends of my ship. The turbines were usually reserved for when I was docking, to level out the
Kicker
and allow it to hover for a few seconds while it was lowered onto a cradle. At the moment, however, I needed all the upward thrust I could get.
              The centrifugal force from pulling out of the dive was enormous. Having known it was coming, I braced my legs and tried to absorb it with my knees and ankles. Still, it felt like a thousand pounds were suddenly pressing down on me. If it hadn’t been for the belts keeping me in place, I would have been slammed against the roof of the
Cloud Kicker
. With a grunt of effort, feeling the muscles burning in my arms and shoulders, I evened out the ship and adjusted the old brass goggles over my eyes, the ones that used to belong to my father. As ancient as they were, they still made it possible for me to fly from outside, which I loved. Inside the cockpit was safer and easier to manage, but being outside in the air, being in the sun, held a thrill and a joy that I couldn’t seem to find anywhere else.
              Once I was sure the
Kicker
was stable, I took my hands off the yoke and leaned back against my restraints, allowing them to hold me in a relaxed position as I spread my arms wide. The wind rushed around me. I closed my eyes, feeling it flowing coolly across my pale, exposed flesh, slipping underneath my leather helmet, and ruffling every finite hair on my body. This was my freedom.
              Despite the inherent dangers of the Veil, I decided to stay just a few dozen feet above it. The air was always quite a bit warmer at this altitude, which made piloting from outside much more enjoyable. It was also better for spotting birds, which was something my mother had been fond of. The scoters and the grey jays were her favorite. I couldn’t deny my affinity for them, either. Regardless of the small danger that they posed to airships, birds were some of the only living creatures that could be regularly seen. When she was alive, my mother would say that those birds rarely used to fly up over ten thousand feet. When I was young, I would wonder why. The sky was so wonderful up here, after all. Once I was a little older, I understood that the Veil, the blanket of poisonous gas that now covered the planet, was the thing that brought them up. Even though they, just like any other animal, were immune to the deadly fog, I knew that they still yearned to see the sun. They longed for those moments when they felt normal, when they felt free.
              I could relate.
              Above me, a few other airships were coming and going on business, which meant I was almost home. The crazy maneuvers and aerial acrobatics would have to be put on hold until tomorrow. Today was almost over. I had one last delivery to make and then I was off for the rest of the afternoon, which was good news to me.
              The package was coming from Rainier and going to my hometown of Adams, which was a bit unusual. The wealthy people of Rainier were usually the ones receiving the goods and supplies from my town. The few occasions that they sent something to Adams usually meant it was something important. The fact that the box had been addressed to Mayor Westward himself was even more intriguing. I was curious, of course, but I couldn’t open the package. The one thing I had going for me back home was my reputation. Always reliable, always trustworthy, always gets the job done, that’s me: Elana Silver. Whether delivering packages or ferrying people, I always get the job done. The narrow benches on the sides of my cargo hold weren’t the most comfortable, but they were good enough. While many of the citizens in Adams had trouble finding work, I at least had the
Kicker
. Thanks to Old Man Nichols, I could make enough money to support my brother and sister. Thanks to him, I had a job. Might as well be the best at it. There were a few other folks in town that would also charter their ships, but none of them were as fast as the
Cloud Kicker
. I had spent countless hours tinkering with my engines and thrusters to make sure of it. That, in addition to my stellar reputation, almost always landed me the clients.
              Most of the business was done through Nichols, anyway. On occasion, there’d still be someone who couldn’t trust a seventeen-year-old girl as their pilot, but people trusted Nichols. Just about everybody in town was fond of him. Plus, his prices were unbeatable. If someone needed to ship a package or hitch a ride to Rainier, he always chartered through me. It’s been that way for nearly three years, now, since the last race, and people have accepted it as normal. Fine by me. As long as I had the
Kicker
– and kept it in working condition – I’d be able to put food on the table.
              In front of me, Mt. Adams loomed dark against the pale blue sky. I always loved the way it seemed like a great island in the air, framed in wisps of cloud, jutting up from the reaches of the dark grey Veil. On that mountain top was everything I held dear in the world. Suddenly, staring up at it, I couldn’t wait to be there.
              Quickly, my fingers went through the familiar routine of unhooking the yoke from the roof. I pulled the stick off of the metal rig that attached it to the flaps and rudder, binding it to the same bracings that held me in place. Crouching down as low as I could, I spun the lever to my roof hatch and yanked it open, holding it just wide enough so that I could get back into the cabin. As I lowered myself down the hatch ladder, I loosened the metal bracings and folded them down into their resting place in front of the hatch, waiting until I was halfway inside before detaching my belt harness. I gave the metal bracings one final tug to make sure they were locked in place and then pulled the hatch cover closed, spinning the lever three good times to be positive it sealed.
              Now that I was inside and out of the wind, I lifted the old goggles from my eyes, pushing them up to rest on the front of my helmet. The cabin was surprisingly warm. I had a habit of forgetting how cool the air usually was outside. Rubbing my numb cheeks, I leapt up the metal-grate steps to the raggedy pilot’s chair and sat down, spinning around so I could stare out the crystal clear windscreen.
            The
Cloud Kicker
had a unique design compared to most airships I’d ever seen.  The cockpit was at the front of the cargo bay and slightly elevated, so my chair sat between the belly and the flattened roof. “Front and center,” my father used to say. The craft had been mostly his own design, so I trusted he knew what he was doing. The nose was narrow, so there was only about a three-foot wide column of double-paned silica glass behind the console in front of me. It slanted inward and extended down to curve under with the shape of the hull, so I could actually see out the bottom of the cockpit. The sides of the nose were also made of clear glass, but they were flat and pressed in close to my chair. I had grown used the claustrophobic feeling long ago, and the field of vision they provided was well worth it. I had over 180 degrees of horizontal perspective without even swiveling my chair.
              As I settled in to the worn padding on the seat, I fastened the safety harness over my shoulders and glanced up at the mirror above my head, which was angled so that I could see the entire cabin behind me. It came in handy for checking cargo or passengers without having to get up. I saw that my delivery was still firmly in place, so I tightened my grip on the control column and stomped my left foot on the hydro valve, firing up my thrusters once more. 
              At once, I felt my body slam back against the seat. I never got tired of that, of feeling the planet spin underneath me. I liked knowing that I was speeding around the edge of the world, like it could barely contain me. The speed was addicting too. After only a minute, I wanted more. I needed to go even faster. The only way I could do that, however, was to fire my Leap Engine, the two-hundred-plus-year-old relic that my father had dug out of an ancient scrapyard. It was some sort of hydrogen-powered fusion engine, according to Nichols, and the few times I opened it up to tinker with it, I could hardly make heads or tails of the tech. All I knew for sure was that it could turn the
Kicker
into a bullet…on the rare occasions when it functioned, anyway. I was nearly home and I knew I could refill my tanks before tomorrow’s first run, so I didn’t mind burning some extra fuel.
              “All right,” I said, flipping the switch to engage the Leap’s hydrogen tank. “You gonna work for me today?”
              I chanced a glance into my mirror, smiling at the large hump in the back end of the cargo bay floor. On the instrument panel in front of me, I lifted the small glass case that kept the Leap’s trigger from inadvertently getting pushed.
              “Let’s kick the tires,” I said with a grin. With a surge of adrenaline, I slapped the button to fire the Leap Engine and braced myself.
              Nothing happened.
              Frowning, I gave the button another smack, but still nothing. With a groan, I tried priming its hydro tank, making sure it was getting fuel. It was functioning fine, though, which meant that the engine itself was the problem. Again.
              Cursing loudly, I let the thrusters burn themselves out as I drew nearer and nearer to Adams. By the time I was pulling up to docks, I was back to an acceptable speed. I didn’t want any reprimands from the mayor again, especially not if I was about to go see him. Scowling at the disappointing end to my trip, I reached above me and retrieved the coiled rubber radio wire and connected it to the jack in the left side of my helmet. Immediately, I could hear transmission chatter through the headphones that were built into my leather ear flaps. A microphone was sewn into the chinstrap, and I gave it a cursory tap to ensure it was working. It would have been good sense to stay jacked in to the radio as often as possible, in case I were to have some sort of emergency in mid-flight, but I liked the quiet of the sky too much.
              “Hailing the Gap,” I said as evenly as I could. “Hailing the Gap, this is the
Cloud Kicker
, over.”
              I waited a few seconds, my ears searching the static for a response. After a moment, my earphones crackled with a familiar voice. “
Cloud Kicker
, this is Adams Control. Have you five by five. Go ahead.”
              I smiled. “I am on final. Requesting permission to dock in cradle number eleven.”
              The phones crackled again. “Copy that. It’s clear, Elana. You know I always keep it open for you.”
              I grinned even wider. “I know, Jack. And I do appreciate it.”
              Jack Dodson gave a low, smooth laugh over the radio. “I know, I know. I believe I still have a few items on my wish list, though,” he said.
              I chuckled and powered down my main engine, switching over to the VTOL turbines as I approached the dock. “I remember,” I told him, feigning annoyance. “I’ll get them for you soon, I promise.”
              “I’ll hold you to it, child,” Jack said jovially. “Extending eleven now.”
              “Why, thank you, Jack.”
              Behind me, the two large tubes that housed the VTOL turbines roared loudly as they sucked in air from above and vented it out the bottom of the hull, allowing me to hover in the air as the large, metallic cradle arm extended out towards me. The giant mechanical “cradles” were simply extendable platforms, used so that pilots could have more space to land a ship before it was retracted back to the docks to sit in a neat row with the other ships. In truth, I could have easily managed to land without the cradle extending, but that was just the way things worked. As it extended, two of the dock workers rode out on the cradle to moor the ship and tether the hull securely in place.
             I knew I still owed Jack a pot of writing ink and a transistor for his radio at home. Also, any paper I could give him would go a long way in ensuring that I’d always have my favorite docking area available to me.
              As the cradle drew nearer, I let go of my primary yoke and took hold of a smaller, wooden joystick in the center of the control panel. This particular stick made it possible for me to alter to angle of the VTOL vents, allowing slight changes in direction, which was indispensable for making precise landings. On the left side of my pilot’s chair, I bent down and quickly unwound the crank that controlled my landing gear. More advanced ships had complex electrical systems and didn’t have to manually raise and lower their skids, but the