Space Race (Space Race 1) by Nathan Hystad (book recommendations for young adults .TXT) 📕

I tapped the earpiece. “Testing. You hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” Holland replied from outside the Pod.

“Good.” I linked the Pod’s console to Holland’s PersaTab. It would give them views of the cockpit, as well as my vital signs.

A hovering platform lowered near the edge of the runway, and the teams began climbing aboard. “Time to get comfortable,” Jade said into my earpiece. Each squad had a station in the central region, directly amidst the track, where they could watch the competition and talk to their racers. The platform carried Jade, Luther, and Holland to the target, and it was instantly much quieter, five kilometers from the crowds.

“I hope this dome holds,” Luther said.

“Can you cut the chatter?” I asked. “Only Race-pertinent discussion on the earpiece, please.”

“Sorry, Hawk.” Luther had started calling me by my old nickname, and it no longer bothered me. Maybe using the moniker again would call up some of that childhood racing magic I’d always seemed to have surrounding me.

SeaTech’s station was isolated from the rest of the teams, giving them distance so no one had the advantage of spying on each other’s instructions. Barret was located to their right, with Orion, the fifth-placed team, to the left. Holland told me he couldn’t spot the Sage Industries booth, but we imagined Varn Wallish was giving his pilot the “You better win or else” speech right now. I found it ironic that he’d been hounding me about not racing the Pod, when he himself was delegating the role. He’d been good, but never as good as me.

The race clock would begin the moment the first ship entered the Ring at the end of the runway.

I didn’t want to be the first one through. That was my move. I wanted them to be complacent. I’d have ample opportunity to catch up, and a second wouldn’t make a difference in the grand scheme.

I cut the chat feed, ready to give myself a pep talk. It was what my grandfather would have done, and I didn’t want to break tradition. “The Race is thirty minutes, so play it smart. Don’t push yourself at the first five checkpoints, because that’s what they’ll be doing. Then when Sage or Luna, or whoever is in the lead, thinks they have it in the bag, crush them.” I clenched my fingers into a fist, and I was ready.

Projections of the Pods darted from the starting line, and the crowd went insane. The holograms disappeared as they passed through the Ring, and of course, the demonstration had SeaTech dead last.

“Use it to your advantage,” I whispered. The dash glowed gently, and I ran through the basic pre-race routine. Everything was in place.

The Ring ahead turned blue, and a giant countdown hologram sprang to life fifty yards from the Pods. We were hovering ten feet in the air, the Pod thrusters glowing with stored energy. I could hear their power through the cockpit speakers, and my heart sped up, beating far faster than the descending numbers. I hadn’t raced since I was a teenager, but despite that, I was ready for it. I was eager. Hungry.

“Ten, nine, eight…” The crowd joined in, screaming out in excitement.

“Three, two, one…” I said softly, and the Pods sped toward their target. The Ring turned orange again, and suddenly, the track was covered in Rings, each with a glowing number above it. My Pod shot forward, me staying in the middle of the pack.

“Arlo, the map’s being sent.” Luther set to work, plotting the order out, and within seconds, he had the route designed. It appeared on my dash, and I only risked a quick glance.

I would have gone for the most direct route in most cases, used to going full speed, based on unrealistic corporate delivery demands. For this race, that concept would work, but only if there weren’t eight other teams vying to finish in the fastest time.

The Rings glowed brightly as I stared beyond the initial target. It was almost dusk, as the sun had fallen beyond a ridge ten kilometers in the distance. The committee had chosen wisely to showcase the contrast of the ships against the night sky.

The first Ring flashed as the nose of the Lotus Pod entered, and the crowd went crazy. I could hear them through my earpiece, relaying from the team’s location.

Number eleven charged through the checkpoint in fourth. That was a prime position. I shifted the Pod, rushing below Orion in third. Surprisingly, Sage had fallen to sixth, and I grinned as I pictured Varn freaking out in his booth a short distance away.

The controls vibrated in my tight grip, and I looked up, seeing the tail end of Luna Corp right above me. “Remember, slow and steady.”

My Pod leveled out, coming to fly beside the opposition as we entered the second Ring. Lotus’ number three Pod tore ahead, thrusters blinking and maxing out the craft to insane speeds.

“Arlo, you need to push it,” Jade said. “Lotus is too far ahead.”

Those boosts couldn’t last forever, not with the size of the Cores allotted to the compact space. “I’ll be fine.”

Ring three was four hundred meters from the crater-filled surface. I glanced at the contest footage and thought the Pods looked like old-world spacecrafts, momentarily burning toward the atmosphere before we adjusted trajectories, each of us attempting to take on the checkpoint from a different angle.

I checked the radar, where Barret and Espace were lobbying for position. I used my reverse camera and saw their Pods strike one another briefly, Espace’s hull sparking at the impact.

Espace came out unscathed, dashing ahead of Barret, who seemed to be struggling now. I checked the streaming coverage and saw the contact in slow motion. It looked like a wing was damaged.

“That’s someone gone.” We only needed one more to lose their position to continue in the Race, but as Barret slowed, trying to avoid a spinout, the rest seemed to spread apart, taking it more cautiously. “I