Three or four ships popped up on radar. The fourth blinked in and out, as if enticing us to come closer. I snorted. Wasn't falling for that trick again. The last time I'd encountered something out of the ordinary we'd been blessed with the opportunity to see two crispy bodies. I wasn't about to suffer the indignity, because next time instead of the ship playing decoy I might end up as someone else's afternoon snack. Plan A seemed to work. Guided by radar we made our way around the tag-team of vessels who were probably waiting to ambush us. With our shields up, we were invisible to their radars unless they chose to ask Control. Passing those four ships took us straight from twentieth to sixteenth, bypassing a helluva lot of trouble and time consuming battles.
"Learnt from last time then?" Bex said scathingly. I attempted to ignore his comment. Bit back the snarky reply that had surfaced and came up with a logical, well thought out response.
"Can you try getting rid of some of this condensation?" I asked of him. Asked, but didn't expect the waspish reply.
"What d'you think I'm doing?" Bex snapped. "When I'm not baby-sitting you, making sure you're not puking your guts out and generally keeping you out of hot water, I'm damn well trying to get a visual."
O-kay. Someone needed a chill-pill. In times of high stress, racers and navigators must keep their cool. We were pushing past the speed of sound. Safe in a world with its own atmosphere, when faster than light speed might not be appropriate. I kept the damn ship going in the right direction, didn't I? I controlled the weapons, the shields, and everything else. Bex was supposed to navigate, but ended up having the rest of the controls that I managed to forget. Flying wasn't that easy, y'know.
"Ah, the cameras are operational," I played Captain Obvious for a bit and managed to swerve a mountain at the last minute. Good thing too. Looking like roasted chicken splattered across a mountainside along Diamede's wouldn't pay off any debt I'd ever heard of, nor would it skyrocket our names to stardom. When the condensation cleared, a bright, glaring Jump Gate made its grand entrance. Time for the rollercoaster ride from hell.
The Jump Gate had spat us out into an ocean. Quite literally. Out here there were those same rocky outcrops. Except the rocky outcrops here weren't entirely stationary. The gas bubbles were a dead giveaway that something wasn't quite right. As we flew over the seascape, up fast became anyone's guess right down next to the Abominable Snow Man. Speaking of Abominable Snow Men, it appeared that the underwater seascape had whiskers. Long, electric whiskers that lit up even the depths. I swallowed.
"I don't think this was in the travel itinerary," Bex hazarded one of the best guesses I'd heard from him since we'd become friends. "Because if it was, there would be a helluva lot more tourists here to see..."
Bex was cut short by a thunderous noise. It sounded like an explosion. And suddenly we were looking at two unblinking golden eyes. Eyes that could've belonged to any goat or sheep back on our home-world. Here though they were plastered onto the face of a giant sized sea slug.
"Shit," I blurted. "We're screwed."
There were so many ways I would have preferred to die. Being buried alive had rocketed into my top ten, while burnt alive shot to first place. Sea slug? Right down at the bottom, because it didn't look like I could avoid it. I slammed the Beast into reverse and attempted to zap from the speed of zero to sound in exactly point one of a second. Didn't end up happening that way. Instead I ran into what turned out to be very helpful protestors, whose lights were on at full boom and distracted the slug enough for us to make a getaway. A bit of an anti-climatic end to that battle, but I wasn't taking any chances by playing rescuer.
"I thought I was supposed to be the pessimist?" Bex said as we placed our vessel on cruise control. The seascape still had that same, rocky outcrop that we'd seen before. It occurred to me then that one slug might not be a problem. Outrunning and outgunning several would really test the Beast. I scoured the sea floor, my eyes fixed for any sort of movement. My hands shook. "Damn that was close."
"Duh, one more minute and we would've been –" The hovercraft dropped out of cruise speed so fast that I swore the engines had started to fail. I frantically checked the controls and mirrors. Nothing squealed, whirred or protested that it wasn't working. Radar showed a vessel behind us, but we couldn't see it. Suddenly it dawned on me what the vast array of brown had been. More goddamn slugs.
"Elliot, its a ..."
"I know!" I shouted down the earpiece. "I fucking well know, Bex. Screw this. We're going to try distracting it. Throw out the best light you can, see if it'll play fetch."
Bex turned our lights onto full blast. It pierced through the darkness like a knife through butter. This would have been an improvement if the ship hadn't decided to be involved in what would've been described as an earthquake on land, but here could only have been described as several massive jolts.
"I thought we lost them?" Bex whined. "Elliot, do something!"
"I just did!" I exclaimed, near tears.
"Control!" Bex wailed into the earpiece. "We're under attack. What do we do?"
"From what?" Sam's voice rippled through the earpiece, barely controlling his laughter. Great, just great. We were going to die by sea slug, and he's laughing? I was going to slap him silly if we got out of this alive.
That's when our craft went spinning towards the nearest rock. I leapt at the ship's controls, pressing every button I could to get the vessel steady enough to fly. Several lights were now shining in the direction of the slug, confusing it. It gave me enough time to check my radar and notice that not one, but at least fifty, ships were surrounding the creature.
I was gobsmacked. What were they all doing here? They could have just left me as bait for the slug and escaped themselves. Instead they're all around us, and we're surrounded.
"All right there, Armstrong and Moss?" The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. Bex had more luck than me.
"Yeah Trellis, thanks." Trellis. Didn't Trellis fly the Quasar alongside Macmillan? They were top racers, among the best in the galaxy. Having won several Sectionals and made it through to the Finals several times, they were among the most envied players in the world. An all male team had rallied this many people to our side? Why? When Gage had mentioned we'd made ourselves suspects I'd assumed...
"Why?" I blurted. "Would you have missed me that much?"
Laughter burst through the frequency. "Like hell, Moss. I'm just saying that we're not losing another racer because of some dumb shit animal rights activists, when they were the ones to wake the monsters in the first place. Now let's get going, before we change our minds."
We kept pace with the crew of the Quasar throughout the race, jumping from world to world at top speed. When we crossed the finish line we were miles ahead of those that'd saved our lives, but close enough to the end for a photo finish. With a soaking wet craft and our lives very much in tact, we dashed across the finish line in what the Officials called a rare, "photo finish." Shared first with racers who were ten times better than us and had the gull of twenty men. And I owed them a thank you.
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