Aviator - An Invader Zim story inspired by Redout.
Summary:
Zim becomes an unwilling racer pilot in the SRRL games that attract skilled aviators and ruthless speedsters from around the universe. He is a participant in the most lethal AG games on record where pilots don't make it past a day. Chained to the cockpit, made to serve his term, Zim begins to realize that he can't survive the speeds, let alone the competition.
Disclaimer:
I do not own the IZ characters or Redout. However this story and this idea is mine.
Warnings:
Character angst. Gore. Swearing.
Dib07: Hey all! Welcome to this random and experimental thing! If there is interest I would absolutely LOVE to do more! It's been in my head for ages, and I've been putting it off due to certain challenges I have wanted to avoid because of what this story will demand and I'm honestly not 100% confident with it. But I thought I'd take a swing at it, happy at least that I tried. Hence why it's short entry. So here it is, I hope you enjoy something a little different!
little side-note:
If you're new to my stories then I welcome you!
Please review, same as always, it might make new chapters appear faster!
Aviator
-On My Own-
x
'Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows what I must do
And I think my life on Earth is nearly through'
David Bowie - Space Oddity
x
The throttle was a special brand of heavy as he eased it right, the ship's angular bow tipping forty degrees, the stern lifting as the proximity sensors registered red barriers closing in. The velocity was a perpetual death-crushing hand on the windshield, the caustic heat from the engines turning the confined cockpit into a cooker. The track opened up, a nudge on the button and he was thrown back into his seat as the engines burst with pink that left long ruby tails. The horrific speeds ensured that even one nudge too much would have him crash into the barriers on either side, barriers that never gave the ship much room for comfort. An Asera was a second ahead, a distance of almost 0.8 kilometres when he was pushing the Efreet close to 1200 kilometres per hour. The pressure in and on his body climbed. He couldn't breathe, but that need was secondary.
Zim barely looked at the other racers, or the immediate track his ship was just about to touch on. His attention was fixed on the horizon, the next bend, the next swerve, straight or zenith. In seconds his ship would traverse it, his brain already having memorized the subsequent path to calculate the next obstacle to land a perfect or near perfect manoeuvre.
The adrenaline was deliberating. It exhausted him within minutes – his body finely tuned only to the ship, hoping his PAK could keep him functioning to the finish line.
The track cut upwards, his ship flashing up it, the bow hitting the bottom curve when he could not tilt it up in time. Despite the shields and impressive hull augmented by nano technology, one kiss on the speedway, barrier or fellow racer grinded the ship's infrastructure, throwing out colourful sparks and white-hot slithers of metal.
The coming summit blinded Zim to the next set of track where there might be a curve, or a drop on the other side he couldn't prepare for; or a break in the track that would force him to blindly jump.
The luckiest pilots died instantaneously in a great pulsing electrical ball of cataclysmic and colourful plasma fire. Being locked to the dash held little significance when one wrong turn, lunge or jump could mean the end. He probably wouldn't even see the flash of his finality.
The Sulha Efreet was mostly engine: one great turbo monstrosity on either side at the front of his cockpit; the connected engines twitching and turning to every micro adjustment and turn of his claws and tightened reflexes. There was no doubting the faultless synchronization relaying back to the ship of every muscle twinge, cognitive reaction and push. Mistakes were that much more magnified – and personified. Failing to understand the ship or the course for even two seconds too long placed you at the back in a blink – or worse.
Pressure sensors around his ship alerted him to the closing distances as his Efreet came close to tapping barriers. Bone-jarring connections to these barriers had to be made often to perfect that hairpin turn, boosting as soon as the bow swung towards the track.
The helmet offered minimal protection, his black and purple gelded suit thin and flimsy. If his suit had been any thicker, he would have melted.
The visor helped to shield his sensitive eyes, not just from the ensuring sparks as his Sulha bounced off the track, but from the resultant plasma tails of the racers streaking in front. He was often jostled him from the sides as they gained on him. Turning the next curve better than they could offered him a second to breathe before they pressed on him again, nicking his stern, trying to nudge him full-speed into a barrier.
The racers were aware that he wasn't a qualified SRRL pilot: that he was an outsider, a prisoner.
And they were not tethered to their ship like he was.
The magnetic strips along the tracks stopped most ships from flying off the track. With enough momentum and velocity, they were more than capable of jettisoning into good old space, and that would have been a nice escape. When the Sulha roared off the track to traverse a gap in the obstacle-hell of a trajectory, Zim grew aware of a purple shimmer that glistened across desert skies. Energy fields and barriers were common to keep racers on course, but he began to wonder if it was less of a navigational arena and more of a subtly placed prison.
Another drop, the track dropped straight down, steeper than the flight of a rollercoaster and he didn't see it in time, the stern hitting the ploxum metal beneath, the negative g-forces causing lights to spin in his eyes, his eyelids to drop down, with air being cut from his lungs. Pulling up on the throttle with all his strength alleviated that immediate pressure just enough to put breath back in his lungs, his eyes to clear, but the headache cut into him like glass impaling the back of his skull. There was no time to recover as the next bend came racing to meet him. The starboard side of Efreet struck the edge, the buckles of his seat doing little to keep him jolting in his harness.
Boosting gained back some time to make up for his error. Over or underpitching slowed him down, and pitching had to interact with the timing of his strafe around corners. If he was flying through the air and knew he was going to overshoot the landing, pointing the nose straight down or letting go of the accelerator made the ship drop like a stone, increasing his odds of passing this unkind and mortal realm.
The racers were a mixed bag of pilots who came from other planetary worlds, bringing with them their own unique skills and delightful choices of cruelty.
One of the racers was human.
Looking strange amongst the bright and colourful paraphernalia of alien tech and alien pilots, the human had looked at Zim as if he'd never seen an Irken before, much less something so small and dainty crookedly standing beside an Efreet.
The Efreet hadn't been his choice of AG racing ship. Its cockpit was cramped and claustrophobically small, so that only the nimblest of pilots could fit inside. That's what you got for a ship that was 80% engine with energy accumulators. Much less attention was given to the cockpit, its overall structure and the magnetic grip stabilisers. The pilot's weight was something of a blemish when the Efreet was designed purely with agility and speed in mind.
The fact that it suited his build did not mollify him whatsoever, and Zim would angrily look at the other classes of racing ships, enviously wishing he'd had the choice to die in something a little more reliable and less likely to break.
The Lunare ship was similar to the super cars on Earth. They were fast, and energy hungry, but had poor energy pools. Asera ships had something of a giant glass ball behind the cockpit that stored volatile energy to feed the one powerful engine. This ensured an almost limitless energy pool, and with the Asera's nose being long and tapered like a spear with tiny fins along its hull, it was something of a streamlined torpedo.
The Buran looked like your typical spaceship freighter, a heavier class that were known for their durability and hull strength; built to last and endure where most ships exploded after one too many bumps, but they weren't fast movers.
The Conqueror was another heavy class of ship, built like a tank with good all-round speed, but they were difficult to handle without experience, and suffered slow acceleration which almost always left them at the back of the scoreboard as well as being last at the start of almost every race.
The ESA was a beautiful spacecraft, and stood out to him almost immediately. He looked at it from the line-up when he had been first taken to the hangar, admiring its downward curves towards its slim and narrow nose, its engines hulking apertures that sloped into wings. The pilot, comparatively small to the ESA's bulk, had turned to look at him, his human face terribly out of place amongst the other interstellar racers.
The Sulha was the smallest of all, its size only comparable because of its enormous cylinder twin engines that were situated to the front and sides of the craft rather than the conventional positions of the stern. Its hull was paper thin; the glass cannon of all classes due to its fragility when it was unable to sustain many hits. And the handling was dreadful: they were built for speed and absolutely nothing else.
There's nothing to it. Were his original sentiments before the tempting concern of trying to escape just long enough to find a way of calling Dib for help started to plague him night and day.
The Voot's acceleration was nothing to the speed of the Sulha. The back of his skull pounded from being whacked around despite the durability of the harness. Sometimes he went in with a helmet, and sometimes he preferred not to when the squeezing claustrophobia became too intimate. Compared to his old ship, the Efreet handled like an ice cube on glass. It was overly sensitive to his control, easily oversteering when he applied a feather of pressure.
He had suffered two races, the second of which he had nearly died.
He barely remembered what had happened during the first race in Ghibli. The medics said that he blacked out during a g-force loop. His ship had lost speed and had fallen into the water below, scarcely avoiding a collision with the other racers. His ship floated in plasma-tinted waters until the rescue crew arrived, hauling him out.
The second incident was during the Kinshijaa race in the Sequoia region.
Another racer, the human named Kurtis who was piloting the ESA smashed into his stern, and the Sulha went barrel-rolling off the track at over 1000 kilometres per hour. The sand and thorns beyond the track were as hard as diamonds, and the ship smacked into the left engine first, almost blowing him up into one huge crimson and pink inferno on the instant.
I've gone past the barrier... were his lasting thoughts, and when he hit ground, Zim spun, clonking and smacking against the interior. He lost conscious, and when he woke, finding himself on a cot in medical, every bone in his body was broken, his PAK was dented on its left side, and his spooch had been perforated. He couldn't remember who or where he was for the better part of a month. The shattered ship was retrieved, and he wasn't all that happy when he discovered that the Sulha had been repaired and was ready long before he was.
Instead of striding towards Efreet's hull when the board had decided amongst themselves that he had recovered sufficiently after that month, he shrank back from the Sulha death machine, heart in his throat. One of the guardians had plonked a metal hand on his shoulder and bodily pushed him towards the open cockpit.
"I'm a soldier!" He tried to tell the guardians. "I have a mission! Get some other stinkin' racer!"
He hadn't been that worried, originally. He'd piloted ships all his life. They'd told him that he had to sponsor Irk knows how many races, and win. Then he could go. On the condition that he be chained to the cockpit.
Now he was willing to trade his PAK for a chance to escape.
But as he stopped to look at the seven other pilots, he realized two things: that they capitalized on brutality.
And their ruthlessness.
Dib07: If you've made it this far, thanks for reading and I hope you liked it!