Revealing Chapter One! Flight of the 500
I’m so incredibly excited to reveal the first few pages of Flight of the 500.
I first conceptualized this story when attending the Indianapolis 500 in 2019. My family has attended the race every year within conceivable memory (supposedly, one of my ancestors was at the first race in 1911). I thought, “Why not create a racing novel . . . but in space?” And thus, Flight of the 500 was born.
Naturally, I set it in the same universe as the Chronicles of Theren. The characters in Flight of the 500 will dive into the future stories within the Chronicles of Theren, and for those of you who have read First of Their Kind and Their Greatest Game, you should see the connections and allusions pretty quickly!
But at its heart, Flight of the 500 is its own adventure. It’s an adventure. A race for finding new life—for finding love—for finding who you are. Raith is one of my favorite characters I’ve ever written, and I’m excited for readers to finally meet him.
Without further words from me, please dive into the first chapter of Flight of the 500.
Chapter 1
“You’re cleared.”
A red light on the side of the door blinked green, and the gritty metal slid to the left, revealing an equally grungy lobby. Through the newly-revealed threshold, Raith stepped, returning to freedom. Twenty years. Long enough.
To the right, a metal footlocker popped open, but it was empty. He hadn’t arrived with any personal belongings. He was a synthetic intelligence; his personal belongings were mostly digital. What he most looked forward to—there it was. With every step, Virtual networks sprung to life, inundating his consciousness with data streams. Augmented bubbles of information splattered his vision. It had been way too long. No more would his connection to the exterior world depend on a bloody screen on the wall. The lack of Virtual had been mind-numbing.
Without a second thought, Raith ignored the empty storage bin, traversed the empty lobby, and pushed open the next set of steel double-doors. The quiet of prison gave way to the rustle and bustle of Dagestan. Twenty years he’d been cooped up inside a high-security interplanetary penitentiary, and everything looked the same. Rusty buildings. Golden-orange clouds. The planet was the ICH’s dumpster. They left their forgotten souls here, alongside the least savory buildings ever constructed by humanity. Not to mention the literal trash heap covering half the planet. He couldn’t imagine the original charter included such environmental degradation, but he didn’t really know the political preferences of twenty-second century Russians.
Regardless, it was the perfect place for a prison. The inside of Raith’s jail cell had been nicer than the scene before him. But he wouldn’t be here long. Just needed to find a way off-planet, meet up with Hector and the others. The moment he received access to Virtual and AR, he’d started sending messages to all his prior contacts. Once he knew where his people were, he would hitch a ride on a Jump-capable ship and return to civilization.
For now, finding somewhere comfortable to lay low took priority.
Raith walked down the grey street, black and brown towers blending in with the ugly sky above. Nondescript autonomous vehicles rolled by, taking their passengers to unknown destinations. Somehow, regular citizens managed to live on this cesspool of a planet. Moreover, where people lived, it was always possible to find a bar. Synthetics couldn’t drink, but at a bar, he could sit alone.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find one. A few hundred meters down the street from the prison, Raith discovered the Rusty Convict, aptly named, as if it expected ex-felons to walk right in following release. Pushing open the door, Raith observed a dimly-lit, bluish establishment—only three or four patrons sitting in a booth. A dozen or so AR-assisted view screens hung above a cabinet filled with cheap liquor. Perfect.
Finding a corner booth, Raith pulled up a few private screens in the air. As promised, his accounts weren’t frozen anymore. They confiscated most of his assets following conviction, but interest over the years provided enough to get off-world and establish himself somewhere for a few months. Plenty of time to find work.
An AR ad from one of the bar’s main feeds attempted to override his filters—a priority advertisement of some sort. He noticed the headline—a new race taking place in the Outer Reaches. Very fast, very dangerous. Five hundred light-years. Raith swiped away the ad, finding the idea ridiculous, especially because after twenty years of prison, ad agencies hadn’t adjusted how they targeted him.
“You going to pay for anything?”
Raith looked up. A gentle-faced woman, bulky in the shoulders, stared down at him. He replied, “Excuse me?”
“Don’t mind having an SI here, you know, but you still gotta pay for something, and I don’t have any liquor certified for your platinum throat.”
He ignored the subtle discrimination hidden behind her words. “Oh, sure. I’ll transfer you a few credits for the booth.”
“Perfect.” She walked away, satisfied.
He exited the spreadsheets, instead pulling up his outbound messages. A few had already made it through the Quantum Connection bottlenecks, though he doubted responses would arrive for at least a few hours. Most of his contacts—except for maybe Hector—had probably forgotten today was release day. The surprise on their faces when they realized he was back, ready to hop back in the business? Priceless. Wished he could see it.
To his chagrin, messages began to populate his inbox. Subconscious processes sorted out nonsensical, irrelevant letters and prioritized important information from key contacts. Within moments, a flurry of messages from three years ago reached the top of his queue. Hector. Nessa. Trevor. All dead in a crash.
Fantastic. Just what he needed.
His friends—dead. Shouldn’t the news hit harder? Maybe. Not like they ever visited him while in prison. Still, he’d told them to go their own way. For their own good, to keep them out of the crosshairs of investigators. He hoped they found happiness. It would have been nice to see them, though, one last time.
“Hey, can you turn screen four up?” shouted a voice from one of the other booths, interrupting his moment of melancholy. “I’ve got three hundred credits on Eduardo Gueirez!”
Raith looked up at the mention of Gueirez, though he didn’t recognize the first name. Tuning out his augmented feeds, he cycled the bar’s fourth screen into his perception, centering on the start of the Solar Sprint. A map of the classic racecourse showed its loops through the gravitational wells of the moons and gas giants of humanity’s home—and the reason he was stuck on Dagestan. Raith slammed a hand on the table. “Actually, can you turn the damn channel off?”
Other than the feeds, the bar silenced, turning still as dark space. Three thugs—for lack of a better term—stood from their booth, starting toward Raith.
“What the blazes do you want, you tinny?” said the palest one, a chipped tooth standing out beneath his giant lips.
“You bet money on a Gueirez in the Solar Sprint?” Raith said. “I don’t want to listen to you cry the whole afternoon as he inevitably crashes into Ganymede on the first lap.”
The three men stared at Raith, their faces scrunched in confusion. Then, the second, a particularly dark-skinned man with a golden earring, said, “Wait a second chaps. I recognize this one. This—ha! No way. Friends, we’ve got a real-life celebrity in our midst. Why don’t you reveal yourself to us, tinny?”
Raith raised his left hand, the metallic fingers forming a twisted knot. “Go off yourself, I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“You better show us some respect you ex-con synth scum,” said Tooth-Chip. “We know—”
Though still seated, Raith jabbed his right hand forward, cracking the man’s nose. His friends tried to keep him standing, but before they could counterattack, Raith raised his hands in submission. “I’m out, don’t worry about it, barkeep. I transferred the funds. Sorry about the mess.” The men were too stunned to respond, and he walked back into the streets, glad to leave the den behind.
His emotions had fired too quickly there. It had been twenty years, and at the first sight of a race, that happened? He was better than that. More likely . . . it was the news his crew died. Right. The news triggered the response. To hear, while he was locked up, they all died in an accident? If he’d been flying, he would have kept them alive. No question.
“You know, punching a man in the face on the first day outside isn’t the best way to restart your life.” From the shadows of a dingy alley, a woman in a black jacket and dark denim pants appeared. “You really should be more careful.”
“Do I know you?” said Raith.
“Nope.”
“Then stay away.”
“But you’ll want to know me.”
“You don’t know a thing about me.”
“Raith, an MI-14 SI, constructed in 2156 C.E., seven-time winner of the Emerald Championship Circuit, five-time winner of the Solar Sprint, and ten-time Interstellar Galactic Racing Champion.”
Raith kept walking, but he allowed the woman to keep pace with his normally elongated stride. “Anyone can recite those facts through a simple AR query.”
“I also know twenty years ago you were indicted for fraud and embezzlement and shipped to this backwater world to be forgotten by humanity.”
“You flatter me. And you missed a few crimes.”
“Oh! And that you’ve been shadow-banned from racing from every official circuit for the rest of your life.”
“You make me like you even more.”
“Well, I do have a way to let you race.”
Raith stopped, facing the woman. “Who’d you say you were again?”
“I’ve not said.”
“What gives you the right—the audacity—to show up here, telling me you’re going to give me a way to race again, when you know full well what will probably happen if I even try to join a race?”
The woman placed her hands on her hips, obviously not amused. “Look. I’ve been waiting here for the past week expecting your sentence to end and your paperwork to pass through the system. You’re the perfect person for our project, and we think you’ll agree.”
“All right, so tell me.” Raith resumed his jaunt down the street. He had nowhere to go, but right now, he preferred to escape this woman.
“Meet me in the Aego Industries waste yard on the south side of the city tonight, 1600 standard time.”
“Fat chance.”
“Oh, you know full well you’ll be there.”
Raith continued down the street for a few seconds before he realized she’d stopped following him. Looking over his shoulder, he found no one. Presumably, she’d slipped back into the alleys.
“Seriously, fat chance I’ll be there,” he said into the musky air. “Me? Race again? Right.”
You’ve completed Chapter One of Flight of the 500. If you want to be one of the first to pre-order or buy it upon release, be certain to join my Reader’s Group! Just download your free copy of Before Inferno, and you’ll be set!
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