So while Freddie's been doing even more
work on the Van I've been having some work of my own done. I'm now sporting a
new set of Betaware-grade Muscle Toners, which are making me even faster and
more agile then before. Turns out that you can improve on perfection after all.
In other news, we've heard nothing more
form the Ares Johnson, but I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing. He's up
to something, but there's still no clue as to what or why. I don't like it at
all.
In the meantime, my personal life has
taken an entirely predictable turn, albeit not through a way that I fully
expected. Me and Freddie were invited to another race, admittedly through
Alfonso talking to David the Mechanic talking to Freddie talking to me. He was
all for the idea because racing’s his thing and personally I suspect he wanted
to show off just what he could do in a Bulldog anyway. (Seriously, that Van's
two tons of turbo-charged, armour-plated, candy-coated, corp crushing killing
machine). Me I entered for the thrill of it and, of course, to watch Freddie's
back. Although if I did beat Alfonso it would be awesome.
We were going to do our standard racer
setup; Freddie in his Van with Neon in the back to do Matrix overwatch and provide
backup. Freddie's also given her control over the chameleon coating on his van
which I think is a disaster waiting to happen. He's going to come back to it
one day and find it covered in neon pink smiley faces or something, I swear. He
was also running with his Rotordrones on standby, just in case. Given what
happened in the last race, that's entirely fair.
 |
| Abandoned carpark. We seem to see a lot of these |
The pre-race party on top of an old
carpark in the Barrens gave us a chance to meet our competitors, who were a
real mixed bag. First up was Offroad, who was really happy to see us after his
rescue a couple of weeks back. He was driving his huge-arse Ford Percheron
pickup which struck me as an odd choice, given that it was big, slow, steered like
a dead whale and not at all suited for street racing.
Next up made a bit more sense; Bat the
Ancient biker who I'd saved in past and was getting pretty chummy with,
especially after she arranged Buzz Bomb's demise. She was there with a brand
spanking new Yamaha Kaburaya, a racing bike that's almost as cool as mine.
However, she was in a bad mood because of one of the other bikers, an Ork with
a chunky cyberarm called Wasteland who we both suspected was a ganger going in
undercover. Added to that he was riding a brand new combat bike that Freddie
had last seen in Dave's garage, but Dave had no idea how it had gotten there.
 |
| Last year's hypercar is still a hypercar |
Having steered around Alfonso and his
brand new second hand Saab Dynamit, I was rather intrigued by the next entrant.
It was some not to talkative guy called Kristoff who had a Decker with him who
didn't look immediately like runner material. More interesting was his car; on
the surface it looked like a hunk of junk like that Americar we trashed when we
rescued Offroad. However, hidden under all the junk was a brand-frakking-new
BMW i8 interceptor. You know, top of the line CorpSec gear and all. Definitely
a bit of a mystery there
The final entrant took things from bizarre
to downright ludicrous, being a Troll wearing a tweed suit, wire-rimmed glasses
and a driving cap. Apparently he was some big-name English racer called
Governor who'd been invited over by Alfonso's promoter. What was even more intriguing
was that such a big name was driving a piece of crap Echo Motors Metwurst
Metaway, a car that while, yes it's Troll adapted is otherwise utterly awful.
He claimed that it was a loaner because he wasn't able to get his regular car
over from England or something.
 |
| Not a Dutch sausage, but it drives like one |
It was then that we were presented with
the route for the race. Much of it was freeways and then straight into the
heart of downtown, racing through the Corp Zones before a mad dash into an
industrial district for the finale. Possibly the most daring part of it (or so
it seemed) was going past Knight Errant HQ, something that I thought was a
pretty cool way of sticking it to the corps. In order to prtect our identities
and allow us to stream the race to those watching via the matrix, the promoter
had all our cars fitted with spoof RFID chips and data taps so we could drive
around without all being immediately flagged as criminals.
And then we were off. The initial run
out of the carpark was a bit of a squeeze, but once we were on the highway
things began to really get good. From the outset a few things became obvious.
The first was that Governor’s Metaway was seriously tuned, given that it was
quickly at the front of the pack and almost impossible to dislodge from it. The
second was that Offroad was way out of his depth and barely able to keep up
with the pack, even in last plae. The third is that Wasteland was out to kill
me and Bat. Fun times.
We hit Downtown and things began to
reall get nasty. First up, Kirstoff tried to sideswipe me and came this close
to crushing my bike into the pavement. Freddie replied by smashing into him at
speed and sending his car skidding out of control and effectively knocking him
out of the race. He wasn't completely trashed (mores’ the pity) but at least
was no longer liable to try and plow anyone else under.
 |
| Not a racing truck at all. Sorry. |
And then the cops showed up which kind
of ruined the day. A couple of KE patrol cars dropped into formation, lights
blaring and spamming us with AROs telling us to stop what we were doing and
pull over now. As much as I wanted to send back some raised middle finger AROs
of my own, I instead concentrated on the driving and not pissing them off so things
got worse then they already were. Unfortunately, not everyone was following the
same logic as Wasteland blasted one of the cars with the Grenade Launcher he
had built into his cyberarm (Seriously, a grenade launcher arm at a bike race?
What kind of idiot does that?) and decided to go after Bat and Offroad next.
Which is when things got really bad as
the remaining cop cars dropped out of formation rather abruptly. We thought
that they were calling for backup or something bigger, but instead Neon reported
a huge pile of Noise suddenly clogging up the Matrix. That's when the new
pursuers arrived, being a squad of Malakim Rotordrones that were armed with
assault rifles. Yes, as in the ones that are exclusive property of GOD. It
turns out that the "data taps" on our rides had in fact just done a
drive-by Hack on the KE headquarters, and now GOD wanted to know who was
responsible. So we were in a whole world of trouble.
Freddie popped out his Rotordrones, sending
them off in two squads of two. The first went after Wasteland, quickly shooting
his bike to bits and leaving him as road rash. I have no idea what happened to
him after that (nor do I care) but I'm willing to bet that KE sent him to prison
sans grenade launcher arm. Meanwhile the other two began playing areal ballet
with the Malakims, while Neon did her best to shut down our data feeds and thus
reduce the level of GOD heat we were building up. (Oh, and on a check, it
turned out that Alfonso's car wasn't a part of the hack. Funny that)
Bat and Offroad, who were now the back
of the pack, opted to drop out of the race at that point rather than risk
drawing further heat. Me and the Rotordrones managed to swat the Malakims (I
never want to be on the reserving end of an Ares Alpha again), leaving us free
to make one last mad dash to the finish. At this point, Alfonso had taken the
lead of the pack while the rest of us were busy truing not to die. Again, funny
that.
Unfortunately, there was one last little
obstacle to deal with, in the form of an Avenging Angel drone swooping down on
the three of us to take us out for our hack. GOD are persistent, if nothing
else. Some desperate last-minute maneuvering and a lot of my sheer awesomeness
meant that I was able to bring it down before it got a chance to unload,
allowing the race to come to something that resembled a conclusion. Alfonso
came first, with Governor a distant second and Freddie just a hair behind him
in third. And I actually crossed the line, so yay for that I guess?
Of course, once we were over the line is
when things began to come together. For starters, I managed to have the long
awaited and massively overdue talk with Alfonso. And by that I mean i violently
kneed him in the junk, leaving him doubled over in pain and unable to talk. We
then deiced to have words with his promoter who spilled the beans after some
gentle persuasion, not the least of which was not wanting to end up like his
big star.
He admitted that first of all, he'd been
'fixing' the races. Not by sabotaging the cars, but by staking the field. This
was why the raced we'd been in had featured people who were out to kill us. Bat
and Buzzbomb in the first, and then Wasteland in this one who it turned out was
a Rusted Stiletto and thus had a serious hate-on for us (and Bat, but that was
more of an 'Ancients' thing then anything personal). It was also why he'd been entering
people who had no chance of winning like Offroad (sorry, OR, but this was so
not your thing) or, well Buzzbomb.
The second thing was why this race had
suddenly escalated so badly. The whole thing was set up by Kirstoff, who it turned
out was some Euro runner who had been hired to steal data from KE. The data
coming from our cars (except Alfonso's, of course) was going to his decker in
his car. So we'd all take the fall and he'd get away scott free. Of course,
given that he was knocked out so early, it's debatable how much (if any) data
he actually got, but we still got all the heat.
After all these revelations, combined
with the fact that he'd nearly gotten her killed twice, Bat offered to 'deal
with' the promoter. We let her. I can't wait to hear how this one turned out.
 |
| I know I say it a lot, but this outcome was probably inevitable |
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