I caromed over the ramp as Fyr, whooping with glee as my Ride went airborne. I aimed Wobble across my chest and fired a Sun Shot at the gunner on Grilnos’ wheels, and his brains went flying in the other direction before his multi-gun got within six inches of my undercarriage.

Joy hit the ground, bounced on some very wuvvly, wuvvly shocks, thank you future tech, there’s a good girl, and my car’s tail swiped hard into Joclol’s side at just the right angle to tip him over for Crumper.

Crumper’s dozer blade took Joclol in the side and sent him spinning and flying. The crash as he came down and volatile petrol went up in a gorgeous fireblow was all part of the show.

Joy’s tires bit and slewed as my tremblesense rumbled through the floor, picking out the greatest traction and the least, and Joy leapt ahead like a frightened bunny, inches ahead of the hungry pack behind.

Heavy slugs whined loudly off the gunshield behind me, and I ignored them with the serenity of time to downshift and get away from the losers behind me. Crumbed duracrete whined in protest as Joy roared in happy release, and we were off and away while they tried to punch through four inches of tempered durasteel with variable anti-grav for weight offset. Hissing beams of light strobed past as the occasional laser tried some hard light alternatives to slugs, and whipped and wanged off Joy’s armor and laenwork glass.

Deathmatches were dangerous but immensely rewarding in Karma, and hey, I had to get these extra selves of mine up there, so taking some risks was immensely rewarding. From initial bang-up collision fests, no-holds-barred barrio racing, and some wild scree-lot shoot-outs, I’d been making Fyr a living legend among the killer racing set, and enjoying the hell out of it as I did so.

I didn’t have a second rider, as I didn’t need the weight, and if I needed something done, Joy, Fyr’s psicrystal and Ride ‘AI’, was perfectly capable of handling the shooting. Without a Sun Strike powering them, 95% of all shots here were just cosmetic damage, which was mostly the point.

There were thousands of gangers and civs up in the stands, cheering on their favorites over this two-mile course, replete with ramps, breaks, forks, kill spots, dead ends, and a dozen death traps you could ram people into, or if you were stupid, drive into yourselves. Slaughter Alley, the long straightaway, had four of them all by itself, and half the fun was maneuvering not to hit them as everyone tried to occupy a constantly changing safe lane and force you into a death lane.

Crumper slid around the turn right behind me, hungry for some killing, the exhaust vents on his truck spewing fire as he roared forwards, dozer blade coming for me... and I fishtailed and pretended to have lost traction, my ride Skating for a second above the ground, and let him run up on me and lift while my front wheels screamed for traction.

I let down my heavyfoot, grabbed on with 100% friction, and pulled away, yawing as I did so, and he pursued, trying to keep me up on his dozer and failing as I whipped ahead, going into no friction and spinning out into a 360 across the lane as he followed, smelling a kill.

Whoop, there I went, spinning across the Hedge trigger in the pavement with all four wheels... but moving at an angle, not straight on. He didn’t quite see it as he missed it and was coming over parallel as the reinforced adamant-tipped steel bars sprang up from the track.

He kind of squeaked as the spikes punched right through his steel plow, smashed into his engine, and he took the full impact. As they did, the engines underground went on high torque, revolving the bars down, and crunched the front of his put-down truck down, exposing his underbelly to the pack behind.

A trio of tracer fire and lasers mauled the underside of his truck, and he could only scream there in the shock gel impact cushion as his ride blew apart around him, his dozing days all done.

Joy straightened out smoothly as I spun the wheel, purring in satisfaction and leading the way once again. The boys behind me unloaded to show me how much they enjoyed chasing my tail, the durasteel pinged a happy drumbeat, and Joy poured it on to get to the corner first and into position.

Chiller came around the corner first, and found me parked right there flat against the wall, impossible to hit unless you knew I was there and you whipped in high and outside. That side armor blew apart as I opened up with a short buzzsaw of tracers, the first two rounds glowing with Sun Shots and blasting out the laen of his windows. I could see the diodes of his eyes, cold and blue, looking right at me as he tried to turn, and couldn’t get his shattered window out of the way as Wobble’s discharge took him full in the face.

His hands spasmed, I unleashed two more salvoes into the sides of those coming around the corner, and as their glass shattered, I pulled the trigger twice more.

Out-of-control killwheels slid and slewed and lost friction, spinning and ejecting their dead drivers, and sometimes screaming living co-riders, and took out two other cars from the pack who couldn’t avoid crashing into them or being crashed into as they went around me.

Drum-Drum, the heavy workhorse at the back of the pack in a tri-axle rumbler, grumbled past me, wincing as I mauled his wheels and blew out his rear axle’s left tire, which was gonna tank his drive speed even more. He fought for control among the scattered burning cars, even as Joy rammed backwards into gear, spun like a ballerina as lightfoot Skated her around, her axles slammed from forwards to back with a scream of delight, and we were on the hunt again.

I was simultaneously plugged into the vid feeds so that nobody could pull a trick like that on me and driving like a mad bitch, loving the rush and the purring power of Joy crazy to just run. I reached over to touch Joy from where she was plugged into the dash, and recharged her Focus for her next shot. Joy screamed as we revved to catch up with the limping Drum-Drum.

Only a Driver could use lightfoot with their ride. The ability to switch between heavyfoot and lightfoot, near absolute friction and none at all, was a deadly thing in auto duels. I didn’t slide if I didn’t want to, slid like grease if I wanted to, or anything and everything in between. The way Joy could drift, brake, and accelerate just had the crowds and the other drivers agog, and since active psi-use was forbidden here, they just couldn’t understand it.

Monk on wheels, that was Fyr! Her Wheelman Talent made all this extremely intoxicating.

The road was split by steel beams here, flicking past with roars of wind as I pulled up alongside Drum-Drum, who looked over in fear. He was definitely a clean-up driver... if you faltered, he had the tools to take you out of the race, and the mass to grind up anyone alongside of him. Me managing to take out one of his wheels was a miserable thing for him, as he was falling even further behind the pack now.

I aimed Wobble, timing the girders casually, and pam-pam, blew apart the key welds of the plate guarding his rear axle on the right side. The armor there crumped, and then Joy spit a short volley from the multigun stubber on the rear hood and ripped off the rest of it.

He tried to brake and shake me, but he was in my Tremble and I could see him slam his foot, matched him precisely, and blew out his other rear tire.

Already listing, his front end began to rise as the weight of his tailshield began to drag at him, heading towards the ground and starting to spark and drag him down. He cursed as he punched the release and let it drop behind him, another driving hazard to be negotiated, and his front end crashed down again.

Of course, this left him vulnerable from the rear, which he realized just as his speed picked up, the girders were gone, and I pulled in behind him. The multigun up front elevated and angled down, and tracer fire rippled underneath and bounced up into his undercarriage, sending hot rounds into his engine and fuel lines.

He swerved madly to the left as his truck ignited, and then threw the door open and jumped for it. His body turned towards me as I shook my head, he bounced off my windshield with a solid crack, and was thrown behind me as his rumbler exploded in a soliloquy for him.

The main pack was a quarter-mile ahead of me, but I wasn’t worried, as they were maneuvering and shooting, and I had open range ahead of me. Joy roared in glee as I spun around turns at speeds that should have sent me into the walls, tires gripping the ground impossibly well, and began to make up ground with frightening speed.

Whoop!

Saw the doors slide open on the vid ahead of me; no, no, they didn’t try to time it for effect, surely not. Slammed on the brakes so hard physics said Joy should have flipped head over tails as the Killer Whale came roaring out of its pit to join the fun. -20g’s is a thing that does that, but my wheels didn’t even leave the ground.

It was a long-hauler kitted out to kill, with six different weapon stands hauled behind the main rig; heavy guns, flamers, spike chains, wheelblades, and a multi-bladed prow in front of it.

Coms snapped up locally. It was an unwritten rule that the instant the Killer Whale was on the track, everybody stopped shooting one another and figured out a way to kill it.

It would have speared me right in the side if I hadn’t braked, or at the least run me right over, but my stopping so impossibly had thrown off the move, and the big truck thundered by right in front of me.

The shooters weren’t ready for me to be standing there, and didn’t track their gun shields fast enough as I broadsided their wheels for one whole second, blowing apart a half dozen of them as the truck rumbled past. I stuck Wobbler out my window, and tracked that flamer coming past me. I could see the panic in his eyes as he tried to spin his gunshield around, and a Sun Shot took him in the hip, blowing him away from his toy with a good chunk of meat missing from him.

I let the rolling ten-axle and its trailing long chains go past me. “Killer Whale on the track, boys. It took a shot at me and missed, about ten seconds behind you. It’ll probably take the first cheat loop to get in front of you.” As the rear guns raked me with a few shots, Joy peeled out at a good distance back from it, while I smirked at the shredded rubber flying off the tires on its right side.

There were multiple curses on the open line that I’d been missed, and I just laughed at them. “Now, now, boys, no hard feelings. You play nice, so will I.”

They cursed, but breaking that rule just meant you’d be fed into the Whale, which would happily shoot the shit out of you. It was a roving hazard, it played favorites, and the crowds loved it. It also tended to be a lot safer for the crew than driving a car, and they enjoyed shooting us.

Well, that was understandable.

Joy picked up speed as the death hauler veered right into the cheater route only it was allowed to access, allowing it to pick up speed and catch up to or get in front of the pack, where its guns and mass would be a huge hazard. The engine’s purr became a roar as I made up ground, every inch of the course plotted out in my head and my place in space known and tracked. I knew what was coming up, and where and how I wanted to hit it.

The Slopes were coming up, the section of the track with multiple ramps. Hit ‘em wrong or slow, and you weren’t going to be riding away from the impact. Too high, the chutes could tear off your hood. Too short, the pits would eat you alive. Left or right, blades would catch you and sheer apart your armor, set you spinning and into the pits.

Use ‘em, and you could do all sorts of stuff.

I passed the debris of a couple other cars, but the track owners were nice and contractually obligated to get wrecks off the track within one lap, ‘cause it slowed things down.

The Killer Whale surged out, announcing its presence with a wall of cutting flame that got Bim-Bam right in the side. Cloying naptha blazed over his car, taking his sight and starting to eat through everything, particularly his tires. Autocannon rounds bounced off his armor and drove him sideways, where he hit one of the Slopes badly, went up on his side in a flaming spiral, and came down into a spiked pit, exploding into more pretty petrol flames.

They put additives into them so they were more colorful, after all.

I glanced down into the pit as it crunched up the remains of Bim-Bam and his car, while the half-dozen remaining survivors jockeyed for position, trying to stay away from the guns taking shots at them. Going up beside it was a good way to get driven into a wall, or taken out by the wheel razors and all that mass. In front was sort of the safest, if you could pull away from it... but then it just took a chute and got away from you, and back in front.

“Make a hole, boys!” I announced, picking up speed with a rumble, and despite themselves, they split up to allow me room on my long acceleration. I swept on by them, lightly avoided the shells being spit my way, and blew up a Slope, still accelerating, and then went right up on the wall, gripping longer than gravity should have allowed as the chute veered, and was vented out diagonally instead of straight.

+++++++++++++++++++++

Fun Fact: I wrote this chapter after watching clips from Jason Statham's Death Race! I was envisioning a kind of Mad Max and Death Race vibe going through. Alas, they are going up against a Wheelman Rantha who is a Monk on Wheels...