Charley
Antlers
Shu
Marik
Shoopuf
LimeTime966
Archazen
Cyrania
ClocktowerEchos
TrippyNightmare
“ Why did you lose?”
“ You got lucky.”
“ Luck is the eternal lie the modern man makes for his failings. I want to know the truth.”
“ My car failed.”
“ Wrong. You failed. That’s why I won. I won because I had the will. I won because I knew that I was meat, not a machine. I won because I realised that the car doesn’t make the racer. It’s merely a tool and the tool is nothing without its master. You are responsible for your legend. Make of that what you will.”
“ Is that supposed to scare or comfort me?”
The Car Czar paused, his back to me, dropping that god awful stinking myco-cig onto the floor and squishing it as if it was a goddamn bug. The fumes trailed out of his mouth as if he was breathing fire. He looked at me with contempt, smoke puffing out of his nostrils.
“ They’re both the same thing, Demon. You just don’t see it yet.”
“ Just drive, driver!”
Keah never thought he needed an invitation. He pressed down on the throttle and drove wildly through the dank tunnels of the warehouse. His three tires screeched like a bat out of a hell everytime he oversteered, swerving into right angled turns that left swirling clouds of dust for the Heralds to bite on. The engine roared, the raw power oozing into his gloved hands through the hyperalloy frame. The speed was climbing higher and higher, Keah trying to wrestle every bit that the Jury Rigg could muster.
As much as he tried to deny it, the thrill of the chase - no, race - was getting to Keah. His heart beated to the same rhythm of distant gunfire, his veins popping from the adrenaline, his hands welded to the wheels, foot glued to the pedal, face forward, the dizzying turns -
His ears suddenly caught the hint of a sharp whistle passing by. A flash of bright orange light transforms his entire world into morning for a moment before his car lurches violently from the explosion. They really wanted Petrukov dead, didn’t they? He shifting the car to neutral to prevent his car from tumbling over. The Jury Rigg skates on the concrete, before Keah hit the ignition to flare the wheels up to full rotation again. Keah internally berated himself for becoming lost in the chaos, that inextricable lure of danger that he’d sought to escape long ago.
Focusing on getting Petrukov out of here was the priority.
Thankfully, the entrance of the warehouse was in sight. The decrepit chain linked gate was sent flying as his tires hit the sodden mud. It was lightly drizzling, puddles of stale gray water coalescing around him. He turned the wheel to the left towards I-403, the main highway that linked the South City to the outlying Reclaim Zone. The road was mostly empty, save for the few auto-trucks that trailed by past him at a mammoth’s speed, carrying a mountain of cargo that was in length of hundreds of meters. The odd driver or so gave him passing glances of curiosity but didn’t decide to act further on it. Bullet holes were a common facet of life in the Reclaim Zone and nobody was going to give him second looks for looking as though he’d arrived from a war zone.
It was only after 15 minutes of endless driving that he’d finally relax. The Heralds weren’t following them anymore. Hopefully. Mil-spec vehicles couldn’t hope to reach the speeds of luxury sport vehicles such as the Jury Rigg. Now, he was confronted with a new question. Where to go from here?
His helmet pinged with a new alert. A message.
> Pirate_Party: We need a sitrep now.
“ Deal went south.” He looked up at the rear view mirror to check Petrukov’s shaken face. “ VIP is uninjured. Everyone else is - “ The Bannerlord’s face flashed for a moment. “ - unaccounted for. “
Keah was grateful for the few seconds of peaceful silence he afforded with his reply. He didn’t relish whoever the operator was on the other side of the private com channel. Keeping his eye on the road and on Petrukov’s safety was helping him process the recent betrayal of the heralds. Petrukov’s lieutenants and lackeys, meanwhile, were most likely scrambling like headless chickens. Keah could only imagine the looks of terror on their faces. The future of their movement now was resting on his shoulders, a vagrant haole, and Perukov’s sycophantic bodyguard.
Maybe the Ark would finally accept him……
No, that was just a dream. They were determined to have him stay on his self-imposed path, no matter how many times he tried to convince them.
A new message pinged onto his helmet feed, scrolling upwards across his viewport as he turned onto the right lane onto a bypass that bridged over a river of tar black water, gutters and sewage tunnels pouring out the refuse of the factories and corps that fueled the Reclaim Zone.
> Pirate_Party: Understood. Get the VIP to the party safehouse now. Sending you coordinates.
A series of numbers unfolded onto the screen. The in-built GPS in his iconoclast charted a maze of possible paths to the location marked by the coordinates. 8.5 kilometers away, deep in the Reclaim Zone.
“ All right, change of plans, Petrukov. We’re - “
A dull thump on the Jury’s Rigg roof interrupted him. Keah barely had seconds to react as a mono-blade sprouted down from his headliner. He just barely moves his left arm fast enough for the tip to only graze him painlessly. It’s why every decent law abiding assassin owns them. A second late and it would have separated his forearm from his upper arm. It sunk back up like a shark’s fin. The blade came down again, this time slashing through the side window on his right and spraying glass all over him.
Keah pressed on the brakes, jolting the Jury Rigg to a complete stop, and sending the assailant flying headfirst, rolling onto the syncrete. The mono-blade katana snapped in half as it clattered to the ground. The Herald was clutching his head, leg askew on one side, favoring his left foot. Keah didn’t give him time to recover as a half-ton of industrial-grade steel collided with the Herald’s body. He tumbled over the roof and landed on the ground with a bone snapping crunch, cybernetic hands twitching with nervous feedback.
Sparks then flew off the Jury Rigg as a fusillade of bullets buried themselves in his rear windshield in a diagonal line. Keah’s iconoclast adjusted, connecting with the cams hidden in the Jury Rigg’s rear lights. In the rainy horizon, there were 3 tiny figures zooming towards him at breakneck speeds. He could hear a high pitched electronic whine that made his skin prickle with goosebumps.
Hypercycles.
“ Shit.”
Fucking bozosoku scum. He ducked as one sped by in a blur, his submachine gun spattered a hail of bullets that left a trenched line of impacted glass from left to right. The motion radar in his helmet blinked, signalling a dot coming in fast from the right. With one hand gripping the wheel and his metal one on the gear shift, Keah turned the wheel up, shifting to the right lane in one fluid movement to collide with his pursuer head-on. The motorcycle came apart, wheel dislodged from the frame, whilst the driver tucked their body inwards to cushion themselves as they hit the road hard and rolling.
It went like that for a while. Him trying to sacrifice pieces of his machine to smash their bodies into the roving auto-tracks or turn them into roadkill. It was like trying to swat flies. They veered out at the last moment or simply tailed behind him, outmaneuvering his relatively bulky vehicle. They continued to follow him as he entered a bypass that sailed over a black river, sewage and detritus floating in the froth. Their headlights glimmered in the water, the moon shining over the chrome contours of the Reclaim Zone.
Unfortunately, traffic was heavy. The lanes were filled up to the brim with commuting midnight workers who were traversing back into the Reclaim Zone. The roads were tightening around him whilst it was easy for the Heralds to weave in and out with their miniscule hypercycles. Sweat beaded down his head as he watched the one on his right pull out a long tubular device from his back. A series of prongs snapped out from underneath the tube, connecting with the motorcycle. The Herald continued unfolding it until it looked to Keah what was a reasonable approximation of a gun. That was, if a gun was 99% composed of its barrel and the 1% was devoted to everything else. The moment the Herald pointed it at him, Keah immediately turned left, ducking his car down an underpass into a tunnel.
Keah always hated how eerily silent electromagnetic weapons were. Ballistic weapons were loud and predictable. He remembered footage from the 2035 riots where peacekeepers were given usage of prototype EMs to disperse crowds. Heads disappeared in clouds of blood, crowds were carved into mincemeat and limbs were blown off in perfect condition, all without making as much sound as a pin. Apparently, technology had advanced in the last 30 years as Keah’s ears rang, the very air itself seemed to shriek behind him. In a blink of an eye, a long furrow had been dug into the asphalt, molten red at the edge. Keah could see the exit as he passed under the end of the bypass into an underground tunnel, the size of a manhole.
Unfortunately, that didn’t get rid of his pursuers. In a moment, they were trailing behind him again. The one with the large rifle flipped open the breach, chucking out a large soda can-sized shell that clattered on the road, before shoving inside a new one and clicking it close. Keah hurriedly hit the accelerator and hid behind a nearby auto-truck. There was the same sound of the air being split asunder once more. The auto-truck’s front hood exploded, the chassis nearly split in half, as it careened over and grinded to a near halt, toppling onto its side.
Keah punched the wheel in frustration. He was fish in a barrel and he’d used up all available cover. The tunnel was hugging him from all sides and the Herald was taking his leisurely time reloading his hideous armament. All he could do was keep driving -
Wait.
They were expecting him to keep driving.
Keah drove in visible view in front of the two Heralds. He made sure he was aligned perfectly with them in a straight line. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he was about to do.
For the first time in his life, Keah slammed on the brakes in the middle of a race. The Jury Rigg stopped dead in its tracks in the center of the road. The Heralds were understandably confused. Was he trying to ram into them? The hyper cyclists simply swerved to the left and right of Keah’s car, dodging him by mere inches at their top speeds.
Unfortunately, for them, he’d opened the passenger doors at the last second.
The Jury Rigg’s doors were ripped off their hinges like wings on a fly as both Heralds collided into them. They were sent flying off their bikes, bodies smashing onto the road, and then, lying motionless, either knocked out or unconscious. One had smashed face first into the window, his body trapped underneath the door, whilst the helmet of another had come clean off, revealing a head, inlaid with circuitry, sitting on a growing pool.
“ We’re safe. ” He breathed out towards the pair in his back, the pirate queen and her sycophantic bodyguard. The engine vibrated reassuringly in his rigid fingers. “ We’re safe.”
He then pressed on the accelerator and drove away, leaving the two corpses to slowly cool off.
The Jury Rigg was coughing and wheezing by the time he made it to the safehouse. He shut off the engine, silent for a moment. He looked at both Johnny and Petrukov, his helmeted face expressionless aside from the long grooved crack that he’d sustained from the chase. He sighed and nodded towards the abandoned building, windows glued up with paper and plank wood whilst a large holo-sign was built in front of the sliding door entrance which read “NO TRESPASSERS. ZONE HAS BEEN CHOSEN FOR INFRASTRUCTURAL REDEVELOPMENT.”
“ They’re in there.” He rasped out. He looked down at both of his hands, his left organic one still whilst his metal one was shaking. He seized control, breathing deeply, before continuing. “ I now need some time alone to perform repairs. Leave me be.”
“ You got lucky.”
“ Luck is the eternal lie the modern man makes for his failings. I want to know the truth.”
“ My car failed.”
“ Wrong. You failed. That’s why I won. I won because I had the will. I won because I knew that I was meat, not a machine. I won because I realised that the car doesn’t make the racer. It’s merely a tool and the tool is nothing without its master. You are responsible for your legend. Make of that what you will.”
“ Is that supposed to scare or comfort me?”
The Car Czar paused, his back to me, dropping that god awful stinking myco-cig onto the floor and squishing it as if it was a goddamn bug. The fumes trailed out of his mouth as if he was breathing fire. He looked at me with contempt, smoke puffing out of his nostrils.
“ They’re both the same thing, Demon. You just don’t see it yet.”
“ Just drive, driver!”
Keah never thought he needed an invitation. He pressed down on the throttle and drove wildly through the dank tunnels of the warehouse. His three tires screeched like a bat out of a hell everytime he oversteered, swerving into right angled turns that left swirling clouds of dust for the Heralds to bite on. The engine roared, the raw power oozing into his gloved hands through the hyperalloy frame. The speed was climbing higher and higher, Keah trying to wrestle every bit that the Jury Rigg could muster.
As much as he tried to deny it, the thrill of the chase - no, race - was getting to Keah. His heart beated to the same rhythm of distant gunfire, his veins popping from the adrenaline, his hands welded to the wheels, foot glued to the pedal, face forward, the dizzying turns -
His ears suddenly caught the hint of a sharp whistle passing by. A flash of bright orange light transforms his entire world into morning for a moment before his car lurches violently from the explosion. They really wanted Petrukov dead, didn’t they? He shifting the car to neutral to prevent his car from tumbling over. The Jury Rigg skates on the concrete, before Keah hit the ignition to flare the wheels up to full rotation again. Keah internally berated himself for becoming lost in the chaos, that inextricable lure of danger that he’d sought to escape long ago.
Focusing on getting Petrukov out of here was the priority.
Thankfully, the entrance of the warehouse was in sight. The decrepit chain linked gate was sent flying as his tires hit the sodden mud. It was lightly drizzling, puddles of stale gray water coalescing around him. He turned the wheel to the left towards I-403, the main highway that linked the South City to the outlying Reclaim Zone. The road was mostly empty, save for the few auto-trucks that trailed by past him at a mammoth’s speed, carrying a mountain of cargo that was in length of hundreds of meters. The odd driver or so gave him passing glances of curiosity but didn’t decide to act further on it. Bullet holes were a common facet of life in the Reclaim Zone and nobody was going to give him second looks for looking as though he’d arrived from a war zone.
It was only after 15 minutes of endless driving that he’d finally relax. The Heralds weren’t following them anymore. Hopefully. Mil-spec vehicles couldn’t hope to reach the speeds of luxury sport vehicles such as the Jury Rigg. Now, he was confronted with a new question. Where to go from here?
His helmet pinged with a new alert. A message.
> Pirate_Party: We need a sitrep now.
“ Deal went south.” He looked up at the rear view mirror to check Petrukov’s shaken face. “ VIP is uninjured. Everyone else is - “ The Bannerlord’s face flashed for a moment. “ - unaccounted for. “
Keah was grateful for the few seconds of peaceful silence he afforded with his reply. He didn’t relish whoever the operator was on the other side of the private com channel. Keeping his eye on the road and on Petrukov’s safety was helping him process the recent betrayal of the heralds. Petrukov’s lieutenants and lackeys, meanwhile, were most likely scrambling like headless chickens. Keah could only imagine the looks of terror on their faces. The future of their movement now was resting on his shoulders, a vagrant haole, and Perukov’s sycophantic bodyguard.
Maybe the Ark would finally accept him……
No, that was just a dream. They were determined to have him stay on his self-imposed path, no matter how many times he tried to convince them.
A new message pinged onto his helmet feed, scrolling upwards across his viewport as he turned onto the right lane onto a bypass that bridged over a river of tar black water, gutters and sewage tunnels pouring out the refuse of the factories and corps that fueled the Reclaim Zone.
> Pirate_Party: Understood. Get the VIP to the party safehouse now. Sending you coordinates.
A series of numbers unfolded onto the screen. The in-built GPS in his iconoclast charted a maze of possible paths to the location marked by the coordinates. 8.5 kilometers away, deep in the Reclaim Zone.
“ All right, change of plans, Petrukov. We’re - “
A dull thump on the Jury’s Rigg roof interrupted him. Keah barely had seconds to react as a mono-blade sprouted down from his headliner. He just barely moves his left arm fast enough for the tip to only graze him painlessly. It’s why every decent law abiding assassin owns them. A second late and it would have separated his forearm from his upper arm. It sunk back up like a shark’s fin. The blade came down again, this time slashing through the side window on his right and spraying glass all over him.
Keah pressed on the brakes, jolting the Jury Rigg to a complete stop, and sending the assailant flying headfirst, rolling onto the syncrete. The mono-blade katana snapped in half as it clattered to the ground. The Herald was clutching his head, leg askew on one side, favoring his left foot. Keah didn’t give him time to recover as a half-ton of industrial-grade steel collided with the Herald’s body. He tumbled over the roof and landed on the ground with a bone snapping crunch, cybernetic hands twitching with nervous feedback.
Sparks then flew off the Jury Rigg as a fusillade of bullets buried themselves in his rear windshield in a diagonal line. Keah’s iconoclast adjusted, connecting with the cams hidden in the Jury Rigg’s rear lights. In the rainy horizon, there were 3 tiny figures zooming towards him at breakneck speeds. He could hear a high pitched electronic whine that made his skin prickle with goosebumps.
Hypercycles.
“ Shit.”
Fucking bozosoku scum. He ducked as one sped by in a blur, his submachine gun spattered a hail of bullets that left a trenched line of impacted glass from left to right. The motion radar in his helmet blinked, signalling a dot coming in fast from the right. With one hand gripping the wheel and his metal one on the gear shift, Keah turned the wheel up, shifting to the right lane in one fluid movement to collide with his pursuer head-on. The motorcycle came apart, wheel dislodged from the frame, whilst the driver tucked their body inwards to cushion themselves as they hit the road hard and rolling.
It went like that for a while. Him trying to sacrifice pieces of his machine to smash their bodies into the roving auto-tracks or turn them into roadkill. It was like trying to swat flies. They veered out at the last moment or simply tailed behind him, outmaneuvering his relatively bulky vehicle. They continued to follow him as he entered a bypass that sailed over a black river, sewage and detritus floating in the froth. Their headlights glimmered in the water, the moon shining over the chrome contours of the Reclaim Zone.
Unfortunately, traffic was heavy. The lanes were filled up to the brim with commuting midnight workers who were traversing back into the Reclaim Zone. The roads were tightening around him whilst it was easy for the Heralds to weave in and out with their miniscule hypercycles. Sweat beaded down his head as he watched the one on his right pull out a long tubular device from his back. A series of prongs snapped out from underneath the tube, connecting with the motorcycle. The Herald continued unfolding it until it looked to Keah what was a reasonable approximation of a gun. That was, if a gun was 99% composed of its barrel and the 1% was devoted to everything else. The moment the Herald pointed it at him, Keah immediately turned left, ducking his car down an underpass into a tunnel.
Keah always hated how eerily silent electromagnetic weapons were. Ballistic weapons were loud and predictable. He remembered footage from the 2035 riots where peacekeepers were given usage of prototype EMs to disperse crowds. Heads disappeared in clouds of blood, crowds were carved into mincemeat and limbs were blown off in perfect condition, all without making as much sound as a pin. Apparently, technology had advanced in the last 30 years as Keah’s ears rang, the very air itself seemed to shriek behind him. In a blink of an eye, a long furrow had been dug into the asphalt, molten red at the edge. Keah could see the exit as he passed under the end of the bypass into an underground tunnel, the size of a manhole.
Unfortunately, that didn’t get rid of his pursuers. In a moment, they were trailing behind him again. The one with the large rifle flipped open the breach, chucking out a large soda can-sized shell that clattered on the road, before shoving inside a new one and clicking it close. Keah hurriedly hit the accelerator and hid behind a nearby auto-truck. There was the same sound of the air being split asunder once more. The auto-truck’s front hood exploded, the chassis nearly split in half, as it careened over and grinded to a near halt, toppling onto its side.
Keah punched the wheel in frustration. He was fish in a barrel and he’d used up all available cover. The tunnel was hugging him from all sides and the Herald was taking his leisurely time reloading his hideous armament. All he could do was keep driving -
Wait.
They were expecting him to keep driving.
Keah drove in visible view in front of the two Heralds. He made sure he was aligned perfectly with them in a straight line. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he was about to do.
For the first time in his life, Keah slammed on the brakes in the middle of a race. The Jury Rigg stopped dead in its tracks in the center of the road. The Heralds were understandably confused. Was he trying to ram into them? The hyper cyclists simply swerved to the left and right of Keah’s car, dodging him by mere inches at their top speeds.
Unfortunately, for them, he’d opened the passenger doors at the last second.
The Jury Rigg’s doors were ripped off their hinges like wings on a fly as both Heralds collided into them. They were sent flying off their bikes, bodies smashing onto the road, and then, lying motionless, either knocked out or unconscious. One had smashed face first into the window, his body trapped underneath the door, whilst the helmet of another had come clean off, revealing a head, inlaid with circuitry, sitting on a growing pool.
“ We’re safe. ” He breathed out towards the pair in his back, the pirate queen and her sycophantic bodyguard. The engine vibrated reassuringly in his rigid fingers. “ We’re safe.”
He then pressed on the accelerator and drove away, leaving the two corpses to slowly cool off.
The Jury Rigg was coughing and wheezing by the time he made it to the safehouse. He shut off the engine, silent for a moment. He looked at both Johnny and Petrukov, his helmeted face expressionless aside from the long grooved crack that he’d sustained from the chase. He sighed and nodded towards the abandoned building, windows glued up with paper and plank wood whilst a large holo-sign was built in front of the sliding door entrance which read “NO TRESPASSERS. ZONE HAS BEEN CHOSEN FOR INFRASTRUCTURAL REDEVELOPMENT.”
“ They’re in there.” He rasped out. He looked down at both of his hands, his left organic one still whilst his metal one was shaking. He seized control, breathing deeply, before continuing. “ I now need some time alone to perform repairs. Leave me be.”
