Velocity by Chris Wooding

Author:Chris Wooding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2017-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

Mud sprayed across the Interceptor’s windshield as the racer ahead of them slewed through a puddle. Cassica swung the wheel, trying to take her opponent on the inside, but the trail was too narrow and she had to brake to avoid a collision. Her wipers smeared the mud away, showing them a view of the back end of Kasey Rall’s armored Scout, brake lights glaring like a warning. It was a sight they were rapidly getting sick of.

Down the dirt paths of the Crookback Bayou they skidded and slipped, engines growling in the sweaty gloom. Gnarled trees leaned in, reaching for them: old things, bent and warped in unnatural ways, twisted and blistered by strange chemicals in the water. Moss hung from their branches in spidery curtains. The warm haze in the air softened edges, swallowed sound.

The race was an hour old, and the pack had split and split again, dividing itself among the trails and tracks. The maps showed only one route through the swamp, an old road long overgrown; but it was looping and indirect, and dangerously obvious. The swamp folk didn’t like strangers, and the road was prime target for an ambush. Most racers went off road, where the land was crazed with logging trails and routes known only to the locals. The trails there were tight and hard to find, and there were many dead ends and rivers that needed crossing, but for the lucky ones it would make for a quicker journey. Cassica and Shiara had gone that way and had been making good progress until they caught up with Ralls and got stuck behind him.

“You got anything?” Cassica asked. A hovercam swooped overhead, tracking them; miniature cameras in their helmets provided point-of-view footage for the viewers.

“Nothin’ new,” said Shiara, but she checked again anyway.

A small screen bolted to the dash fed Shiara live broadcast footage, crackly and unsteady but clear enough to learn from. It was their only source of information about the race.

Right now it was showing a map of the swamp. Most of it was green and unknown, with only a few major waterways and the road marked on it. Scattered blinking dots, representing the racers, were making their way in from the bottom. Shiara made a note of their location on her own map.

A table ranked them according to distance from the finish line. It was measured as the crow flies, so it meant little when the routes were so winding. Still, Shiara was pleased to see they were seventh. She found Sammis in fifteenth and Kyren in twentieth, but the table was shuffling about minute by minute. Next time she saw it, she expected it to be very different.

The screen switched to show footage from the road, where several racers had fallen victim to an ambush. Cassica and Shiara had been wise to take the back routes with the others. The road had been blockaded with old cars, and now the racers were frantically maneuvering to escape as ragged, frightening

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.