Chapter Ten: Under Mountain, Over River
The sun had just sunk beneath the peaks of the Tuwan Mountains and darkness was descending upon the pirate world of Simileon. The stars were coming out and the two moons, Ratar and Mogen, were in the waning stage, shedding only slivers of light upon the world.
Jacen took a deep breath of the incredibly thin air, which smelled partly of evergreen trees and mostly of the cold, chilly scent of snow. Jacen was one of the few people in the galaxy that grew as close to nature as to be able to smell snow. Like everything else, it had a distinctive tone and a particular trait that made it memorable. In this case, it was the freezing quality it had and the way it was making Jacen's feet feel like blocks of ice. Jacen was finding it very difficult to breathe at this height above sea level. His ears and the tip of his nose were going numb as well. Still, he had trudged outside through the knee deep blanket of icy crystals to take a breath of fresh air, because he was certain after finding out the requirements of the next race that this glimpse of the stars would certainly be his last.
Laboriously, Jacen worked his way back to the entrance of the racecourse, the top of the highest, largest mountain in the Tuwan range, dubbed the Hellmaker by all who dared to scale it's heights. Its rocky sides were coated with sheets of black ice and frosted with snow packs that would cause an avalanche at the slightest pressure, or tiniest breeze. Trees grew thickly about a fifth of the way up, but after that, there wasn't soil or air rich enough to sustain them. The craggy, jagged edges of the mountain were like teeth, wanting to swallow any that defied them.
Jacen didn't have to worry about these external features. His race was a winding, twisting, death-skirting trail through the inside of the mountain and then a well-timed exit through a side tunnel down a mountain glacier turned river. The track was only partially lit by the lights of the race vehicle, so Jacen would be almost completely surrounded by blackness. What worried Jacen the most about this endeavor was claustrophobia he experienced whenever he stepped inside the mountain. He felt like the whole place could come down on him at any minute.
He swiftly made his way to where the racing vehicles were kept and found the one assigned to him. Nearly a thousand people clustered in the hollowed out bowl in the stands on either side of the starting line. Jacen couldn't see Tenel Ka or Kanortine anywhere, but Romany was, as usual, strategically placed in a tech booth along the sidelines. The bright, gaudy colours of Ryn fashion were evident even from where Jacen stood.
The racing vehicle was called a Striker, and despite Jacen's misgivings about the race, he had to admit the beauty of the design. The craft was sleek and bullet-shaped, black, with metal runners on the side to slide against the ice. There were some moderately powerful thrusters on the back that would boost the craft faster if needed. All in all, it was a very deftly assembled machine.
Jacen donned a helmet and zipped his jacket up further, chilly in the cold air, his breath visible in white puffs of fog in front of him. He opened the glass canopy and jumped into the seat then strapped himself in and started up the striker. The display panel that gave him graphical information about his surroundings and the racecourse was directly in front of him, but behind the roughly rectangular handle with a two-handed grip that Jacen would need to steer with. There were some other buttons that could be used for control of the striker and for morphing the vehicle when it hit the water part of the race.
Jacen straightened up and reached for the steering handle when the comlink inside his helmet informed him that there were thirty seconds before the race began. Jacen swallowed nervously and looked ahead of him. The track was wide at first but then it narrowed down so closely that only one, or maybe two cars could fit at one time.
Why was the beginning always the most important part of the race?
Jacen used his Jedi calming routine as the computer-automated voice started counting down from twenty and Romany's voice carried to his ears.
"Our last seven contestants have never met a more lethal or difficult challenge! The striker race is the pinnacle in contests of speed, skill and quick reaction time! The average time a contestant has to react to a turn in the race is 0.6 seconds! The odds would make a Corellian tremble!"
Probably not, Jacen thought, Maybe sweat a little, but never tremble.
He gripped the steering handle harder as the five-second countdown began.
Five…
Jacen figured there was a high chance he would die soon.
Four…
What would his parents say if he perished out here on the edge of the galaxy?
Three…
What would his sister say?
Two…
What would Tenel Ka say?
One.
In an instant that left no room for thought, Jacen's doomsday clock hit midnight and he pushed the handle forward. Despite all his efforts, three other strikers entered the narrow track ahead of him. Jacen grimaced and pressed more speed from his vehicle, knowing that he must find some way of passing the vehicles before the water part, for after that there wouldn't be enough time to pass three other racers.
The tunnel which Jacen raced the contraption through was very dimly lit by orange glow rods strapped by thin metal pieces to the rock roof and by the two measly lights on the front of the striker. His display screen allowed him to see the infared shapes of the vehicle that was directly in front of him, but other than that, Jacen was almost going by instinct.
That, however, was saying a lot. If a racer only had 0.6 seconds to react to a turn, then there must be a turn every second, because all that Jacen was doing was swerving and wrenching the steering handle back and forth in a desperate struggle to prevent a very untimely and messy death. His heart dropped into his stomach as the tunnel sloped unexpectedly down a steep, almost cliff-like hill.
Another rock face loomed in front of him and he jerked the steering to the right. No sooner had he accomplished this than another appeared straight in front of him. A millisecond after that there was another curve so sharp Jacen felt it must have been a U-turn in the same part of the tunnel.
Despite all these deadly obstacles, Jacen could see the distance between his vehicle and the next shortening with each passing moment. The walls were tight, but Jacen knew that he just had to make it past.
It was time to play dirty.
He started by ramming the vehicle just a tiny bit on the right-back end. Then he backed off and gave a more powerful bump on the left side. Jacen repeated then repeated the two moves in quick succession, back and forth, till the vehicle in front of him was utterly disoriented and pinging back and forth between the two side walls. Now came the money shot.
Jacen pushed the thrusters on the back to full power then slid his striker neatly to the left side of the one in front and pushed his way obtrusively into the tight squeeze between the craft and the stony surface. His striker was balancing all its weight on its left side and began to slide smoothly past. Jacen was concentrating fully on edging in front, when a screeching, nails-on-chalkboard sound nearly made him jump out of his skin. The transparisteel canopy of the striker had scrapped against the side of the wall, and a jagged crack now marred the clear surface.
Uh oh, Jacen predicted.
He was forced to ignore the problem and continue slipping past his foe. A quick glance at his view screen told him he would have to complete this soon, because directly ahead of him the tunnel narrowed so greatly that one striker would scrape the sides.
Closer, closer, the walls seemed to pinch together.
Jacen didn't know how much longer he could last.
Closer, closer, Jacen wasn't even breathing now.
Closer… closer…
And with a gasp, Jacen nosed in front and took third place, just as the walls thickened and an ungodly jarring noise could be heard and turbulence shook the seat.
Jacen took a moment to turn and check if the other racer had made it, and found his adversary had indeed survived.
"Har har matey," Jacen murmured in amusement to himself before returning his full attention to the next task he had to accomplish. And just in time, because the tunnel resumed its demented, roller coaster-like course with a steep drop, an S-turn, and then a sudden climb.
Jacen caught up with his next opponent in no time. Feeling rather confident in himself, Jacen decided a new trick was in order. Focusing his calm, reaching inside himself and around him, Jacen allowed the Force to flow through him with its powerful, soothing touch.
He took a deep breath and then lifted his striker up into the air, and turned on the thrusters at the same time, intent on going over top of the vehicle in front of him.
It worked quite well, except for one detail. A great deal of the striker's speed came from the glide of the runners against the ice. When Jacen lifted his striker into the air, the vehicle encountered wind resistance, loss of balance, and no longer experience the smooth, slippery cold of the ice. As a result, when Jacen thought the moment was right to turn off the thrusters and set the craft down again, Jacen had lost some ground, and the back end of his craft landed on the nose of the opposing craft behind him.
He cursed as he heard the loud metallic noise of the two vehicles colliding, and promptly turned on the thrusters again. It boosted his striker off of the other and back onto the solid ice, but it also caused his opponent to lose visuals for a moment. In that moment, it careened to the right and smashed into a fiery ball of red and orange against the side of the tunnel.
Jacen felt guilt wash over him, but he didn't have time to be preoccupied with those mistakes as the course grew even more twisted and crazy before him. He bit his lip and concentrated on what had to be done.
With the next striker he was more cautious and wary, not wanting to be the cause of death for another person, opponent or otherwise. This time, instead of levitating himself, Jacen drew deeply on the Force and lifted the other racer's striker far enough into the air that he could squeeze through underneath. Jacen pushed the thrusters and shuttled forward, zipping smoothly underneath the other craft then setting it down gently behind him. The same factors that had slowed him down, combined with the astonishment of suddenly, inexplicably being lifted into thin air, gave him a nice lead on the striker. Now he was in first place. If only he could keep it that way till the end of the race.
He looked with some degree of panic rising at the display screen. Through out the track there were slight detours, off roads that with dead-ends to confuse the racers and make the contest more interesting. The most dangerous of these forked roads was the situation near the end of the mountain course that would either send the racer in the right direction to the water course, or send them down a long and twisting path to the volcanic depths of Hellmaker.
There was a beacon of starlight at the end of the dark tunnel, and Jacen strove towards it, not because the water race would be any easier, but because at least he would be out of the dank, suffocating corridors of the mountain.
With a splash of clear blue water, Jacen's craft dove deep into the mountain river, a river that had years ago been a frozen glacier, but had been artificially melted to create a racecourse. Jacen looked at the control panels to turn on the controls that would retracted the ice runners and activate the water engine. Those operations were carried out immediately without a hitch, but when Jacen suddenly felt water dripping down his neck, other details were brought swiftly to mind.
The crack in the transparisteel was leaking water in a steady trickle, and it Jacen didn't do something quickly, the water would get to the electronics and fry something.
"Bantha fodder!" Jacen stated with disgust. How could he ever finish the last bit of the race with a damaged ship? There wouldn't be any swoop hopping this time around.
It seemed there was only one thing he could do, and that was to rise to the surface of the river. This presented a whole new degree of difficulty, for the water is usually much calmer beneath the surface, and it was, after all, a mountain river, full of rapids and fast currents and gushing torrents that would carry his vehicle away without a thought.
But there really wasn't' a choice, was there?
Jacen took a deep breath before pointing the nose to the surface and rocketing towards it, knowing that any other choice would end only in tragedy. Not that this one seemed much better. The moment he broke the barrier between water and sky, he found his craft being pulled along in a decidedly vicious current towards a group of sharp rocks that pointed wickedly above the water. He wrenched the steering handle hard to the left to avoid the deadly spires, then severely to the right as the river turned into a natural chute created by the rough, gray granite of the sides.
Jacen just barely kept his control as the craft nearly went tumbling end over end at a series of rapids, and percariously held on for the last few zigzagging turns. His vehicle whizzed through the final stretch and past the finish line, where some spectators sat under the starlit sky in anticipation. Jacen brought the craft to a halt, then exited towards a landspeeder where he saw some of Kanortine's pirates waiting for him.
He knew he should have felt excited, positively thrilled about the remarkable race he'd just went through. Yet for some reason, Jacen only felt worried. Four races were finished and only two were left to go, but somehow these contests just got harder and scarier. So whatever joy he may have felt was canceled out by the foreboding that settled over him as he braced himself for the final day of King Kanortine's races.