The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) (33 page)

            In the center of the room, there was a large, elongated table that was emitting a soft glow from its surface. I couldn’t see what was displayed on it, but there was a man dressed in a felt-collared leather bomber jacket that was leaning on the edge of it, peering down at the surface. He wasn’t old, but he definitely wasn’t young. His salt and pepper hair was clear evidence of his age, as were the deep lines on his face. I guessed that he was forty five, but there was a heaviness to his eyes, as if he’d been through a lot in those years. As Darby and I approached him, he stood straight and gave a warm smile.
              “Thank you for bringing her, Darby,” he said. His voice was cordial, but it oozed authority, and I once again felt like a child talking to a parent. I also noticed that his tone was relatively soft, but it cut perfectly through the muttered conversations and machinery buzz. The man turned his body so that it faced me directly, and I noted his solid, stocky build. I also spotted several medals pinned to the chest of his jacket, as well as a chain that was surely attached to a pocket watch.
              “You must be Miss Silver,” he said, offering me his hand. It wasn’t quite as big as Reinhart’s, but his powerful grip still made me feel like a toddler when shaking it. “Captain Benjamin Bragginton.”
              “Pleased to meet you, Captain,” I replied, giving him a slight nod. His presence was intimidating, but I didn’t want to appear weak. Steeling myself, I looked up into his pale blue eyes. He was smiling politely, wrinkling the corners of his mouth a bit. His jaw was quite square, and covered in a layer of greyish stubble. He looked like he would have been very attractive in his younger years.
              He made a powerful first impression.
              “Are you all right?” he asked me, raising one slightly scarred eyebrow in concern.
              I shook my head, trying to appear nonchalant. If I spoke again, I was afraid it would come out in a squeak.
              He smiled again, but I had the feeling it was only to try and make me feel more at ease. There was too much going on behind his eyes for it to be authentic.
              “Thank you for…letting me land here,” I said after a moment, trying to force away the awkward silence.
              The captain nodded. “I’m sure you’ve heard how cautious we are of outsiders. But for you, I had to make an exception.”
              I felt a bit flattered at this comment, but mostly confused. “Why is that?” I asked him.
              He glanced sideways at me, his lips playing with a smirk. “You know…just about everyone who meets me addresses me as ‘sir’.”
              The awe that I felt for him before was now joined by a sudden indignant flare. “Well, I’m
not
everyone else.”
              He let out a chuckle and then motioned to the elongated table in the center of the room. “No, certainly not. That’s exactly why you’re an exception. Come have a look at this, Miss Silver.”
              I paused for a moment, but eventually stepped over to the table with him. As I did, I immediately discovered why it had been glowing. The surface of the table was smooth glass, but underneath, there was a large, green grid design backlit underneath the glass. Over it, there were dozens and dozens of small electronic lights, shining white against the dark green background. The white dots were mostly centered on four hubs, but there were a handful that were out by themselves, and they were all moving. It looked like four colonies of glowing insects had taken hold of the table.
              “What is this?” I asked.
              “Transponder signals,” the captain answered immediately. “Archons have tables like this, too. It’s how the Dominion keeps track of every ship that it can. That’s how they follow the racers in between cities.”
              I nodded slowly. Now I understood. The table was like a digital map of all of the Dominion territory. The four hubs were cities: Adams, Rainier, New Eden, and Shiloh, and all of the tiny dots were individual ships.
              “But you don’t have any signals,” I realized, staring over the map.
              The captain shook his head. “No, we don’t. You need one to enter the race-”
              “But I turned mine off long before we got here,” Darby said from behind me. I had almost forgotten she was there.
              “Good to know,” the captain said. “The mechanics will have it removed when it’s time, as well.” He stood straight and clasped his hands together behind his back, giving his thickly built body a very straight posture.
              “As the Dominion refuses to recognize Ravencog as a city, we refuse to recognize their rule over us,” he said, his gaze turning hard.
              “Can you do that?” I asked in amazement. “Can you just…opt out like that?”
              He turned to me with a stiff smile. “Not exactly, no. Why do you think we don’t give off signals?”
              “Because…you don’t want to be found,” I concluded.
              The captain nodded. “We keep ourselves small and localized. We do business quietly, and we stay off the radar. We’re small enough that the Archons disregard us. They don’t deem us a threat, and for that, I’m grateful.”
              I peered over at him, noticing that his face look almost devious, like a card player who was holding a great hand. Did he believe that they really
did
pose a threat to the Dominion?
              As I pondered this, I glanced down at the table once more, staring at all the dots that represented different ships, and I couldn’t help the curiosity that came over me.
              “Do you know which ones are the racers?” I asked.
              He looked at me knowingly, and then double-tapped a portion of the table. Instantly, the screen zoomed in, and a small group of dots became larger. He did it again, and they became the entire focus of the grid.
              “Touch one of them,” he told me.
              I couldn’t help but do it. The technology of the screen was new and fascinating to me, even though the table itself had the wear and patina of something that was very old. I touched one of the dots, and a small square popped up beside it, listing the ship’s tail number and its name. It was the
Amber Sphinx.
              “Grace,” I whispered, feeling anger surging within me.
              Ahead of her by a few clicks was another dot, and I tapped it gently. The text box appeared beside it, and I sighed with immense relief. It was the
Alpha Red.
It was Rigel. I felt a terrible weight evaporate from my heart. He was alive, he was still racing, and he had somehow even got ahead of Grace. Ahead of him, I presumed, was Audra. One click of her transponder light confirmed it. Somehow, she had gained the lead once again. There was something wrong, though. Someone was missing. As I looked over the length of the table, I didn’t see any other dots in the area.
              “John Deseo is missing,” I said. “His ship is called
Jacob’s Prayer.
Have you seen it?”
              The captain nodded, but his solemn look was very telling. “When the
Mistress
overtook it, it went offline.” He said this bluntly, simply, with no hint of flowery sugar-coating. “She must have taken him down.”
              I sighed heavily and leaned my weight against the table. I knew this hand to be true. If Audra came upon him, and then he suddenly went dark, that meant that John was dead. I blinked in disbelief. It didn’t hit me particularly hard, other than the fact that I had just spoken to him earlier in the day and now he was gone. I had dealt with death too many times to be affected very much. Part of me was surprised that Audra would kill a fellow Shiloh resident, but the rest of me knew she would kill whoever she needed to. She had no value for the lives of others. She had made this abundantly clear.
              “What a waste,” I breathed. John was a decent fellow. He hadn’t deserved to die, least of all for the stupid race.
              “It’s nothing more than a propaganda machine,” the captain said, his voice mirroring the bitterness that I felt inside. “Every few years, they march out the banners and the fanfare, and give people a reason to cheer for themselves. They put such effort into making sure that people are as rabid for the race as they can be, so that they will welcome the tragedy and the thrill of it just to feel alive.” He folded his arms across his chest and gazed down at the table screen. “The race is nothing more than a way for the Archons to flex their power, to keep the masses blinded and entertained.”
              I stared at the man with wide eyes. This was exactly how I felt about the race. It was incredibly satisfying to hear it coming from someone else, especially someone in a position of power, like the captain of a city.
              “But we’re not blind, are we, Silver?” he asked, looking over at me with a pointed gaze. “You know this truth as well as I do, don’t you?”
              “I do,” I answered immediately.
              He nodded, giving a small satisfied smile. “Excellent.” Adjusting one of the pins on his jacket, he stepped close to me and put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt my skin breaking out in goosebumps. “I’m very pleased to hear that,” he said.
              I didn’t meet his eyes, however. I was focused on the pin that he had been fidgeting with. It was fastened above his left breast pocket, and I could see the Dominion logo on it. Underneath it, stamped in the metal - which also looked quite old - was the word “Helios”.
              I stared at it, my mouth slightly agape. There was no doubt that he had done it intentionally. He had wanted me to see it. As I tilted my head to look up at him, he seemed almost amused by my reaction. After just a second, he stepped past me, and I wondered if anyone in the room had even noticed the tiny interaction.
              “You’re more than welcome to stay in Ravencog for the night,” the captain said, looking over a small screen readout from one of the machines behind me. “The racers will be completing a challenge for their next clue. It will take them most of the night, as well, so you won’t be very far behind in the morning.”
              “You know what their next challenge is?” I asked skeptically. After the Helios pin, I was scrutinizing his every move, his every facial expression. He must have anticipated this, because he would no longer meet my gaze.
              “Of course,” he said. “When you’re as well-informed as we are, you hear plenty of things.”
              Now I was downright suspicious. That was exactly the same thing that Sparks had said to me in Shiloh when he told me he’d known that would be the halfway point of the race. Maybe it was something he had picked up from the captain, or maybe it was something else. I had no idea what, though.
              Before I could give it any real thought, the door that I had come through suddenly burst open with a loud metallic squeal, startling everyone in the room. Through the hatch, a man stumbled past the guard, his narrow chest heaving with each breath. He had white hair, which didn’t make much sense, because he was probably no older than thirty, but his clothes were in considerably better shape than most of the other Ravencog citizens I’d seen. I wondered if he was under the employ of the captain.
              “Cap’n!” the man shrieked, his bloodshot eyes searching the room. “There’s an outsider here! They’ve let an outsider dock in the hangar! We need to-”
              His sentence died in mid-air as his gaze fell upon me. He stood there, frozen in place, staring at me like I was some sort of monster.
              “Thank you, Edmund,” the captain said, sounding almost bored. “But as you can see, I am already aware of the situation.”
              Edmund, whoever he was, straightened himself and smoothed down his blindingly white hair. “Didn’t know we were taking in strays,” he said, his face turning into a scowl. “You know what you’re doing by bringing her here?”
              “Do I have to have you escorted from the bridge again?” the captain asked.
              Beside me, Darby grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the exit. I followed without question. Whatever argument the two were about to have, I didn’t want to be around. The captain obviously was fine with me being here, but I didn’t know exactly what Edmund’s problem was. As we stepped around him, he pointed at me angrily.
              “Don’t let her go!” he shouted to no one. “You’re risking us all by having her here!”
              Gerard had already pulled the door shut behind us, so I couldn’t hear the captain’s reply, but I hoped it was in my defense. Gerard handed me my revolver and gave me a nod, and Darby led me back through the winding passageways until we were in the hangar once again.
              “Don’t worry about Edmund Albright,” she said. “He has it in mind to be captain one day, so he likes to butt in and try to control every situation he can.”
              “Sounds like a real charmer,” I said, rubbing my eyes with the backs of my hands. “So I guess I’m here for the night.”
              Darby nodded as we made our way across the maze of catwalks toward my ship. “Yeah. I would invite you to my apartment, but I really think it would be safer for you to stay with your ship. Edmund has a bad habit of riling people up, and I wouldn’t want anyone barging in to throw you out.”
              “Fair enough,” I said, grimacing at the sight of my missing roof harness. As we made our way down a staircase, one that was more like a ladder, we emerged onto the platform that the
Cloud Kicker