Every day at 5 p.m., find a new episode of Mortal Derby X on 20 Minutes , Rocambole's soap opera, the app for reading differently. This series of SF projects us into a post-collapse world, the king sport of which is Quad Derby, a confrontation halfway between Roller derby and Rollerball. Its author, Michael Roch, is not an unknown. He has already published science fiction novels and hosts the YouTube book brigade.
Summary of previous episodes: During a Quad Derby match accident, Molly Pop, star of this sport, is violently kicked off the track by another competitor. She wakes up in the hospital with prosthetics in place of the legs and hatred deep in the heart. What is not tolerated in the Cocoon, the only protector of the human species since the Great Collapse of 2030 ... Molly is condemned to exile. Barely out of the Cocoon, she falls on Tob who makes him discover Althen, the largest city in the Free World and enlists him in his team to participate in the Mortal Derby X. The first leg is a failure but Molly noticed a staircase on the course.
EPISODE XIII - Little secrets
The kid returns at night with not very good news. Under the Track, he encountered more people than he would have thought.
The container appeared empty until Tob spotted the hologram that concealed the interior. It was defective, the slightest shock put it out of service. Behind, the staircase descended into the rock, first pierced by drills, then widened with dynamite. Below, in an area under the Gutter, where Kinky Doll had fallen, there, in the center of a tangle of electric wires connecting incandescent turbines, generators and propellers, sat a bomb the size of a man.
- How do you know it was a bomb? Have you ever seen one?
Molly stares at Tob with apprehension, then questions Broody with her gaze, leaning further on a ramp. The pack listens attentively to the boy's story.
- I'm not stupid. A bomb is a bomb, especially when it's marked on it.
- What kind of bad guy likes to write “Attention bomb” on his own bomb?
- The kind of zigzag that signs "Kisses kisses". They will push it into the Cocoon reactors to burn energy resources.
"And Althen's," said Molly.
- Althen will survive, says Broody. As it always has. Nothing is less certain for the Requisitors.
- I don't want to make you pass for more known than you are, the girlfriends - I mean: the little genius, here, it's mézigue - but a bomb in an open-air nuclear reactor, that is not likely to do in delicacy. For everyone. And for miles.
- Who the fuck was there?
- I'm not bluffing if I tell you that between the ratigeurs, the only zigues I have crossed are blockers from the Wicked. Rigbal fiddles with the strings of it all. And with the hatred he lugged around for the Cocoon, it stinks of suicide bombing with a full nose, like the ratigeurs with each confinement.
- The Wicked, did they see you?
- Nope.
- Rigbal must be stopped then, maintains Molly.
- We and our little workers? Yes. Of course.
- Or notify the Requisitors. Let them send their shooters to prevent this.
- Except that no one, for ages, has entered the Cocoon.
- You get their broadcasts, you should be able to send them a message, right?
- Easy to say.
- Tob, Broody slice, you're going to stick to it right away. It's folded, Rigbal will launch his bomb during the Derby final. Tomorrow.
To be continued…
Discover the next episode on our site on May 10 at 5 p.m. or on the Rocambole app for iOS or Android.
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