Hover Car Racer (28 page)

RACE 50

LAP: 51 OF 51

RACERS LEFT ON TRACK: 4

It would go down in Race School history as one of the most bizarre photo-finish photos ever.

It depicted the Bug, frozen in mid-air,
diving
over the Start-Finish Line, the
Argonaut
‘s steering wheel held in front of him in his outstretched hands - while the
Devil’s Chariot
hovered, also frozen, in the background of the photo, its body blurred with speed…and its nose a bare ten centimetres
short of
the Line.

Thanks to the Bug’s little legs, Team
Argonaut
had beaten Barnaby Becker by less than a foot.

Afterwards, Henry Chaser would ask if he could have a copy of the photo and the School gave him one.

It now hangs in the Chaser family living room.

Pandemonium reigned in the pits after the consequences of Race 50 became apparent.

Jason leapt out of the
Argonaut
and threw his fists into the air. Sally caught him, also jumping for joy.

They knew the score.

The results of Race 50 had changed the Race School Championship Ladder dramatically.

It now looked like this:

DRIVER NO. CAR POINTS

1. XONORA, X 1 Speed Razor 313

2. KRISHNA, V 31 Calcutta-IV 305

3. PIPER, A 16 Pied Piper 285

4. CHASER, J 55 Argonaut 284

5. BECKER, B 09 Devil’s Chariot 283

6. WASHINGTON, I 42 Black Bullet 283

7. WONG, H 888 Little Tokyo 278

8. SCHUMACHER, K 25 Blue Lightning 275

Suddenly the Top 4 looked very different.

Barnaby and Isaiah Washington had both dropped out of it completely, replaced by Ariel - who with her 10-point win had leapt up from 6th to 3rd - and Jason, who had gone from 5th to 4th with his 8 points for coming third.

Along with Xavier and Krishna, Jason and Ariel were going to New York.

Almost as pleasing to Jason was the result that Barnaby Becker and Isaiah Washington wouldn’t be going anywhere.

But then something else happened - ripping Jason from his thoughts.

Dido ran into the pits.

She spotted Jason, smiled with joy, and hurried over to the
Argonaut
.

* * *

Dido threw her arms around Jason…

…but Jason didn’t hug her back.

She noticed his lack of response immediately, and drew away. ‘What’s wrong, Jason? You did it. You made the Top 4. You won your ticket to the New York Challenger Race.’

At first, Jason didn’t speak. Truth be told, he actually didn’t know what to say. He’d never had someone so brazenly betray his trust before.

For a long moment, he just looked at Dido - scanned her eyes, her face, searching for something…anything. Something he could trust, something he could believe in.

But he found nothing there.

Both the Bug and Sally saw at once that something was very wrong - but they kept their distance.

‘Jason? Are you okay?’ Dido asked.

‘I have something to tell you,’ Jason said, ‘something very personal…’

‘Yes,’ Dido said gently.

‘…so I hope when you relay it to Xavier and Barnaby, you tell it to them word-for-word.’

The blood drained from Dido’s face.

The Bug spun in disbelief. Sally McDuff turned, too.

Dido stammered, ‘Jason…I…what are you say - ‘

‘I know what you did, Dido,’ Jason said. ‘You were feeding them everything I told you. About my fears. About my strategies, like overtaking Barnaby on hairpins. Stuff I never told anyone else. You were probably also updating them about my health. I’m also now wondering about some of those late nights we had before important races - like in Italy. I’m wondering if you were
keeping
me out late.’

Dido fell silent.

By now Sally was staring daggers at her. The Bug’s mouth was just gaping open in shock.

Jason went on: ‘Even that time in the coffee shop, when Barnaby hit on you and you blew him off, I bet that was a set-up, too.’

As if in reply, Dido bowed her head.

‘So when you see them next time,’ Jason said, ‘tell them this from me…
Jason Chaser is back. Back to full strength
. Which means the next time we’re all on the same track, they’re going
down
. As for you, Dido, please leave. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.’

Dido clutched her face, then turned and ran away.

Steely-eyed, Jason could only watch her go.

In the immediate aftermath of Race 50, questions were asked about the catastrophic power failure that had occurred during the final pit stop on Lap 48.

Race Director Calder led the investigations…

…and quickly made some sensational findings. Ariel’s Mech Chief had been right: on Lap 48, Ariel’s pit machine had indeed been hit by a super-powerful computer virus.

But only that morning, Ariel - tipped off by Jason before the race - had installed a new firewall on her system and it had repelled the sinister virus. Unfortunately, the virus then searched for a new host and it found it in the School’s power grid.

And so, like a constricting python, the virus wrapped itself around the School’s power system…and brought down the entire grid!

The source computer for the virus was soon found: Wernold Smythe’s computer in the Parts and Equipment Department.

Smythe was confronted and he broke down in seconds, implicating no less than the Principal of the School, JeanPierre LeClerq, in a plot to damage Ariel Piper’s chances at the Race School, a plot that went all the way back to her depleted mags in Race 1. And why?

Because she was a girl.

LeClerq protested his innocence, but the look on his face said it all. He’d done it, all right.

The School’s Board held an emergency meeting that night and suspended LeClerq pending further investigations. In the meantime, Race Director Calder - a man of impeccable integrity - would be Acting Principal in his place.

Ariel and Jason just watched the drama unfold from afar.

‘Thanks for the tip-off this morning,’ Ariel said as they watched LeClerq skulk away from the Race School, get into his car and drive off in a huff.

‘Anytime,’ Jason said. ‘Anytime.’

The following evening, the School held its annual end-of-year Presentation Dinner.

It was a formal affair, with parents, friends and some sponsors in attendance, and it was hosted by Acting Principal Calder.

Jason sat at a table with Team
Argonaut
, plus his parents and - for the first time that year - Sally’s entire family, including her parents and all eight of her (very proud) rev-head brothers, newly arrived from Scotland.

As he sat down, Jason noticed Dido over at Xavier Xonora’s table, sitting alongside Xavier.

‘I asked around,’ Sally whispered to Jason, seeing him looking at Dido. ‘She’s Xavier’s cousin. But she’s not royalty. Her mum is the Queen of Monesi’s sister; lives in Italy.’

‘We met in Italy,’ Jason said. ‘Just before the Italian Run. I thought it was luck, coincidence, fate. But it wasn’t. It was a set-up, a big set-up, and I fell for it.’

Sally tousled his hair. ‘Jason, if it makes you feel any better, if Xavier had sent a gorgeous young Italian studmuffin to seduce me for our race secrets, I woulda told him everything, too.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, sure,’ she said, ‘but not before I
snogged the living daylights
out of the young stallion!’

She roared with laughter, clapped Jason on the back. ‘Now, shut up, eat, and enjoy yourself, you big superstar.’

After the main course had been served, the usual prizes were handed out.

It was virtually a clean sweep for the
Speed Razor
.

First-placed driver on the Championship Ladder: Xavier. For that he took home a huge trophy.

The Race School Medal for the year’s best driver also went to Xavier.

The teachers’ choice of Best Mech Chief was Xavier’s crew chief, Oliver Koch - although his victory was narrow: he only beat Sally McDuff by two votes.

Jason didn’t win a single prize. But then he didn’t actually mind that.

He’d had an incredible year at Race School, but for him, Race School wasn’t about winning prizes, it was about scoring a contract with a pro team - and he’d had one run with a pro team in Italy this year, and that had happened only because he’d been at Race School.

And if he - just maybe - won the New York Challenger Race, he might race again in a pro event: for the winner of the Challenger got an automatic ‘exemption invitation’ to participate in the Masters.

That said, there was one prize handed out that evening which Jason felt he had played some part in.

For one prize eluded Xavier’s table - the prize for Teacher of the Year. It was a peculiar omission, as many would have credited Xavier’s winning efforts to Zoroastro’s superior instruction.

But then, not a few officials at the Race School still recalled Barnaby Becker’s disgraceful acts during the Sponsors’ Tournament - and they secretly thought Zoroastro had played a part in that.

Which was why the prize for Teacher of the Year went to Scott Syracuse.

Last of all, and rather fittingly, the night ended with the four racers who would represent the Race School at the New York Challenger Race - Xavier, Krishna, Ariel and Jason - called to the stage to receive a standing ovation from their family and friends.

A week later, Jason found himself sitting once again on a grassy headland, watching the sun rising over the ocean. With him were Sally and the Bug, also gazing at the dawn.

Suddenly -
vroom!
- a police hovercopter roared by overhead, invading the view.

It flew away to the left, out toward the spectacular skyline of New York City.

Jason eyed the dense collection of towering skyscrapers, swooping suspension bridges and countless lights of Manhattan Island.

And his eyes narrowed.

NEW YORK CITY, USA

New York City, glorious in the Fall.

Rust-coloured leaves littered Central Park. The Chrysler Building glittered like a diamond. The Brooklyn Bridge floated high on its new hover-pylons. And the Twin Pillars of Light - the pair of light-shafts that rose from the spot where the Twin Towers had once stood - soared into the sky.

And with the Fall, came the race teams.

Because in the Fall, for one week, the largest city in America was transformed into a series of the most incredible street circuits in racing.

Fifth Avenue became Race HQ, with the Start-Finish Line set up outside the main entrance to the Empire State Building. Super-steep multi-levelled hover stands lined the broad thoroughfare.

The pits were situated in Sixth Avenue, parallel to Fifth - racers reached them by branching off Fifth Avenue at the New York Public Library and running southward behind the Empire State Building.

Filling the air above the avenues and streets of New York City was a phenomenon peculiar to Masters Week:
confetti snow
.

It filled the concrete canyons of the city - a beautiful slow-falling rain of white paper. In celebration of their racing carnival, New Yorkers hurled tiny pieces of shredded paper out of their windows, creating a constant - and stunning - mist of white confetti that floated down into their streets. The roads themselves had to be cleaned each evening, since by the end of a given day they would be three inches deep in the stuff.

Today was Monday - it was a general preparation day. Tuesday would see the running of the Challenger Race - widely regarded as a showpiece for the world’s upand-coming drivers. Wednesday was Parade Day - when all of the 16 racers who had qualified for the Masters would travel down Fifth Avenue before the adoring crowds.

Then on Thursday, it would all start, one race per day over four sensational days, with the number of racers reduced by four every day. It was kind of like a Last Man Drop-Off,
but over the whole series of races
- after each race, the last four-placed racers on the leaderboard were eliminated - until only four racers took part in the fourth and final race.

On Thursday,
Race 1: The Liberty Supersprint
- a tight lap-race through the streets of New York, with a short section of track that whipped out and around the Statue of Liberty. It was here that the racers had to negotiate the sharpest turn in the racing world, a 9-G hairpin corner known as Liberty’s Elbow. It was not unknown for racers to knock themselves out on this notorious bend.

Friday,
Race 2: The Manhattan Gate Race
- 250 gates set amid the labyrinthine grid of New York streets.

Saturday,
Race 3: The Pursuit
- a collective pursuit race in which the drivers raced in circuits around Manhattan Island. Its main feature: bridge-mounted ion waterfalls - glorious but deadly curtains of ionised particles that fell from each of Manhattan’s many bridges; the waterfalls nullified
all
magnetic power in any hover car that strayed through them. The final turn of every lap of this race was Liberty’s Elbow; the Finish Line: the Brooklyn Bridge.

And then, on Sunday, came the final race of the series,
Race 4: The Quest
. The longest race of the Masters, it took racers away from Manhattan Island, up the rural highways of New York State and through the great underground water-caverns to Niagara Falls on the Canadian border. There, each racer had to grab their ‘trophy’ - an item they had sent there earlier in the morning - and then bring it back to New York City. The first racer across the line with their trophy won.

Jason loved it. Every year, he would sit at home and with his dad beside him, watch every minute of the Masters Series on TV over the course of the whole week.

He’d always dreamed of coming to New York to watch the Masters in person, but it was a long way and tickets were terribly expensive and his family had never been able to afford it. The closest he’d come to seeing it was staying with his cousins in New Jersey and watching some of the races from a distance.

But now, now he was here, in New York (albeit staying with those same cousins in New Jersey), racing in the Challenger Race - with an outside chance of participating in the Masters.

Hell, he thought, even if he bombed out of the Challenger, he’d hang around for the Masters festival just for the chance to watch it up close.

This, for Jason, was
fantastic
. This was a dream come true.