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 an accident in a Quad Derby match, Molly Pop, star of the 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, which leads to a bomb threatening the Cocoon and Althen. Cocoon authorities reach an agreement with Molly. If she and her team manage to prevent the bomb from exploding, she will be reinstated.
EPISODE XVII - Last race
Fifteen Ravine Skulls in a circle were cheered by the crowd on the start line at the entrance to the Rail. On the Track, the draw placed them in front of the Wicked Demons and behind the Hells Pit. Broody delivers some strategic approaches: run faster than the Wicked, exceed the Hells Pit pack, use their pack as a shield to avoid breakage, hold the line as much as possible. She then turns to Molly and hands her her helmet.
- This time, I will be with the pack. It is your fight above all. Do not drag too much on the Gutter, we join you as soon as we went around the Tube.
Molly Pop exchanges her striped helmet for the starry one. It weighs heavier; the weight of a lifetime of racing, added to that of several thousand innocent people.
A shadow passes over the group. Trevor Rigbal stands before them. The Ravine Skulls move away, impressed by the man's stature. The savage depth of his eye, the powerful relief of his beard, the erosion of his face, organic and robotic crossing, in no way hide the phlegmatic and bored power of Rigbal. He gauges them one by one, lingers on Brood B. Queen, stops on Molly Pop, holding his helmet in hand. A grin sprouts on his lips.
- Fresh meat, he whispers, disillusioned. What you are.
Then he disappears into the crowd.
- Get out, coward Broody. Your zombies don't like fast food.
With her arm, she orders the pack to jump into the Rail. Molly Pop, the jammer helmet on her head, takes position on the line, her heart pounding, ready to sprint in the race. To his left, a man holds a raised white pennant, exactly as at the start of the Haut-Cocon Track. Passing the index finger, it dries the front brake and the first two wheels of each quad, then fixes the black hole at the entrance to the Rail.
Molly Pop is focusing on the race to come. She forgets the clamor of the Free World, the rounds of flaming propellers, the arid wind which rushes into the alleys of the Zone. She forgets the immeasurable oppression of the Cocoon above the heads. The seconds change into minutes, and the minutes get longer, until the breath and the tension of the body transform into unbearable heat. The referee takes down his pennant. Molly Pop throws herself forward.
She swallows the Rail as one swallows a shot of Bluediver. In the Tube, she hears the roars of the Wicked who run through her. Crossing her legs, she decamps on the Gutter. Far ahead, the jammers of the Hells Pit jammer hit the concrete. Molly Pop doesn't even think of catching her. Her target is behind her. She wants to end it before the bomb.
Ubie Stevna is getting closer. With each stride, she whips the air with her extended arms of cyber prostheses, the fine articulated blades which serve as her hands. With each stride, the zombie crosses more distance than an ordinary runner. Attentive to her pace, Molly Pop slows down her run and draws her cleaver. Only a few meters left and she will have her revenge.
Molly Pop wipes the first hit. Stevna tries to grab her arm between her sharp fingers. His deformed jaw crunches the void, eager for victory, the canines implanted like contaminated syringes.
Molly Pop strikes back. Crouching squatting on his quads in Stevna's legs. Squeezer hit in the calves. The jammer howls and loses speed. A bullet shoots in their ears. The shooters target them.
Molly Pop accelerates. Stevna the race. Biotonic legs against decerebrate dope. V-rus abruptly senses, turns nerves on edge, transforms the mind of the jammer, destroys it, reconstructs it around a single idea: to win.
Molly Pop stretches out. Straight file. The mechanics of his legs heats his knees. She feels the superhuman effort she is making rumble in her. The Gutter runs at full speed. Resets his taseur. Look at Stevna, behind her. Brake. Hit.
A pack of Hells Pit arrives on the Gutter. Four girls masked by their black shutters block the road of the two jammers. Their asses, pressed against each other, line up. Stevna utters a cry of rage and throws herself forward, forgetting Molly Pop.
Molly Pop points. Take the tangent. Slides under a blocker. Takes a badass ass. Swivels on his quads. Open, dodge, sprint. Pass the pack.
Looking back. Two Hells Pit fall to the ground, dried by bullets. Stevna comes out of the pack in turn and sprints. In his pupils: rage, Molly Pop and, deep down, victory.
Molly Pop tase. Uppercut. Crunches. Hammer. Stevna gets up. Taseur. Molly Pop tase. In the legs, in the ribs, in the neck. Stevna drools, roars, loses control, rolls to the side, gets up, crashes again, driven by speed.
Molly Pop avoids the hole in the Gutter at the last moment. Ubie Stevna is not so lucky. It slides to the void and disappears into the fiery air. His fall is short.
Molly Pop accuses the blow. His mind is balanced on the scales of justice; a vague feeling of unsatisfied accomplishment fills the first cup, the second being filled with the feeling of being suddenly useless, emptied and immoral at the same time. It was only that: to wish for the death of a hated being who, in the end, did not even have any more life for himself. His breath is cut by nauseating hiccups. She barely notices the Hells Pit wheels spinning a few yards from her. Molly Pop swallows her hatred until Brood B. Queen and the Ravine Skulls join her, swollen nose and open lips.
- The Wicked, says Broody. On our heels. Where is this bomb?
They throw themselves on the stairs at the bottom of the container and end up under the Tube. At the bottom of the steps, a cavity no larger than a room. An opening drilled in the concrete overlooks the abyss which, at a sharp point, surrounds the Cocoon. The place is empty; the enormous bomb, mounted on a rail which will guide it towards the precipice, rests in the center.
- And now ?
- Now everyone is dying.
Rigbal's voice echoes on the stairs behind them. The man goes down the last steps and forces the girls to back up into the little cave. He holds in his hand a detonator of which he threatens to trigger the button.
- Because you see, I have no time to lose. You neutralized my jammer, boxed all my blockers, disappeared from the Track. Did you perhaps think that I wouldn't suspect anything, that I wouldn't notice your roundabout around the bomb? You are a bunch of fifteen bitches. The world ends tonight, definitely, and your miserable existence with it.
- And you, poor idiot, what were you thinking when you came to bury yourself with these fifteen bitches?
Broody screams and the pack jumps on Rigbal, fists and quads ahead. They pluck his beard, smash his facial implant, crush his ribs and fart his knees. The Wicked boss uses his last strength to press the detonator.
The brakes that held the bomb in place are released, and the carriage begins to move. Molly Pop and Black Sarah jump forward to stop him, but the machine, too heavy, leads them to the edge of the cliff. The jammer rolls over, falls on the rail and wedges her legs under the wheels of the cart.
The bomb derails, then stops on the edge of the abyss.
To be continued…
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