01-17-2013, 02:38 AM
It's the stopping
It's been a little slow in work over the last few weeks. Normal for the business. Does it show?
Not quite an experiment. He called it a Griffon.
What did he think was going to happen?
Ultimately, there's only one way it can end.
I've got.... ideas.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
It's been a little slow in work over the last few weeks. Normal for the business. Does it show?
Not quite an experiment. He called it a Griffon.
What did he think was going to happen?
Ultimately, there's only one way it can end.
Quote:The turbine wound down, 1500kw of turbine power moaning as it finally bled away to nothing. It was contained in a low-slung stealth-grey body that’d started as salvaged Countach-replica kit car, placed over reinforced heavy steel spaceframe that’d keep driver safe at any speed short of 300, placed on top of an all-wheel drive system hooked up to four fat near-slick tyres. An eight-speed torque-converter driven automatic gearbox adapted from something Peterbuilt completed the connection between powerplant and road.
A rear wing like a barn-door matched to a front front splitter wider than a doorstep and sharp as a blade crushed it into the road. Engine exhausts blew hot gas through the rear diffuser, pulling air along the undertray, sucking the car onto the road.
Hydropneumatic suspension - stolen from a truck - made bumps utterly irrelevant. It slowly hunkered down as the system pressure bled away.
It was known simply as the ‘Griffon’. It was, in the opinion of its owner, two tons of dead fucking kerosene-burning cool.
The magnesium wheels had been scavenged from a wreck, the timed-out engine borrowed from a helicopter, and most of the ancillaries from scrapyards and breakers across Fenspace.
Mackie Jaguar doubted there was a single new part in it. Not that it mattered. It was a waveless wonder. Pure, unwarped engineering. Reliable. Dependable. Quirkless. Built over 3 months, it was his key into entry into the prestigious Nekomi Motor Club
Sitting in the driver’s seat - a standard bucket seat - he checked a few last systems on his laptop, before adjusting some of the stability manager settings The cockpit instruments bathed him in cool turquoise hues, and few vibrant reds and yellows jumping out to draw attention.
Most of the cockpit instruments were behind repurposed laptop screens, with a few others being formed from LED matrices. Some of the switchgear and steering wheel came from an Opel, while the gear stick was actually a Blackbird throttle. The rest was made using an old tablet screen, with the majority of controls being at the touch of a finger.
it kept his sister from stealing it.
He disconnected the cable from a socket hidden behind a cupholder. The dashboard lights flickered a moment. Some of the LED elements began to glow dimly, illuminating parts of numbers, the service light and a parking brake light.
He blinked, then slapped the top of the dashboard.
Nothing happened.
“Huh... funny that,” he mumbled to himself, before shutting the car down.
Everything went dark inside, except for a courtesy light in the roof. He popped the scissor door open before clambering out over the outer frame rail, taking one last appreciating look at his handiwork, before slamming the door down.
It rattled, rather than clunked.
The distant moans of engines echoed through the tunnels beyond.
Day 1 of Motorcon was done
Day 2, he’d show the Motor club what he could do
--------
“I’ve given the Dorsai, the medical, then guests priority access, but it’s still...... it’s still like spinning plates keeping it up.” Anika sighed, slumping over the terminal. “We get 3.5 megabytes, on a good day. Even with the Wagon giving us another 150 kilobytes, it’s just falling over. The intranet... there’s only so much that can be pushed through the powerlines.” Her hair spilled across the keyboard as she gazed despairingly up. “Can has break now?”
Ford yawned.... tried to answer... then yawned again. “You don’t need sleep.” she said with a groggy croak. She’d been awake for three days and change... and looked it. Running a convention had aged her visibly, adding at least a decade to her eyes.
Anika groaned loudly,
“Anyway. The Beeb-crew need some bandwidth to send some video back to mundania. What can you give them?”
“A jump drive and a mail drone,” Anika answered. “Best option. Especially if it’s gigabytes.”
“Great.”
A black portable communicator the size of a brick was strapped to her belt. She unhooked it and clicked open
“Yo guys. There’s no spare capacity.. you might be better just mailing it back. Tech says it’ll be faster anyway if it’s over a gigabyte.”
“Got that. Where can we get one of those then?”
A dry, english voice was clearly audible. He sounded just as tired as Ford did.
“We’ve a few spare up here.”
“Righto. There in five.”
Ford blew out a long sigh, clipping it back onto her belt. “This sucks.”
Having a film crew around was a curse, not a blessing. Publicity was one thing, but thus far all they’d done was get in the way.
She unzipped her leather jacket, allowing her body to breath. Black leather trousers creaked as she stretched, momentarily revealing a shoulder holster containing an overrated Czech pistol. Embroidered on the back was the logo for ‘Gunsmith Cats’
“So you’re actually going to go out wearing that?”
Anika might as well have asked her what she was wearing to her execution.
“Rally Vincent, yeah. At least I talked them out of the skirt. Seriously?”
Anika managed to giggled. “Your own fault.”
“Ugh....Don’t remind me.”
The projecting sideburns bounced distractingly in her peripheral vision, and she just knew some dipshit would ask for a photograph with her gun pointed at the camera. But the car demanded it.... and the committee had outvoted her. It was good for the convention for the showrunner to appear in cosplay of a character associated with cars. Who she happened to look like. And technically sound like, because the America dub VA’s were from the wrong region.
“It’ll be fun,” Anika assured her. “I’ve done it and it was so exciting having my picture taken.”
Ford couldn’t help but be reminded of the dentist telling her that it wouldn’t hurt a bit.’ She just closed her eyes and tried not to think about it. “Remind me to shoot the rest of the committee before they can elect me next year...”
The door squeaked as it opened, metal footsteps entering a moment later. Jet slipped the pack off her shoulder onto the desk just inside. It came to rest, leaning against an open pack of muffins.
“So what’s it like out there?” Ford asked.
“Crowded,” was the one word answer. “I saw Shinji on the way up.” A sly grin spread across her face. “You want to know who he’s here with? “
Ford raised an eyebrow. “He’s here with someone?”
“Yuu Inagawa....”
“The girl on Ultima who fetched our supplies? Big glasses?”
Jet confirmed it with a single nod.
“I didn’t think she’d be interested in this sort of thing.”
“Exactly!”
Ford blinked. “Oh.....“
“Oh that’s so sweet!” Anika beamed with asaccharine squeal. She was on her feet within seconds, wide eyes pleading for more information.
“I saw her earlier sketching,” said Jet. “But wouldn’t have realised if I hadn’t seen them both go into his apartment together.”
Ford chuckled in her throat. “Well that explains why he took that job out there.”
Anika’s shoulders slumped. “And I’m stuck here working.”
Ford smiled at her. It wasn’t a kind smile. “Welcome to the exciting world of convention staffing.”
Anika’s gaze turned to Jet, the big cyber being her only remaining hope of salvation. Her eyes were pleading in a way that was unique to her.
The stoney expression on Jet’s face said it all. Ford’s the chair, not me.
Anika slunk back to her workstation, throwing sullen gazes at both women in the hopes that somehow, it’d make them feel bad knowing exactly how terrible they were being to her.
Jet demonstrated her immunity to it by opening a cabinet beside the main console, before rifling through a haphazard stack of papers.
“You didn’t get a look at the entry sheet yet, did you Ford?” she asked, filling the silence.
“Do I look like I’ve had time?”
“Point. I’d say pretty much everyone we’d expected, and then some, is out there. There’s even some tachikoma down there playing around the T-72.” Jet paused. “I want a T-72”
“Maybe for Christmas.” Ford waved it off. A model kit.
The radio hissed an interruption. “Ford, Ford... It’s us again..”
“Shit.”
Anika giggled, before smothering it with her hand.
She unhooked the comm from her belt. Push to talk was handy when you didn't want people to know how little you wanted to hear from them. "Yeah, what is it?"
“We’ll be filming in...." A pause, followed the the sound of papers rustling as a map was checked "...Tunnel B-4. We’ll need it kept clear for the next half hour. Is that alright with you?”
“No problem. I’ll let the Traffic cops know about it.”
“Thanks... we’ll try wrap up quick.”
She covered the eyes with the palm of her hand, for a moment hoping that by blocking out the light, the world would go away.
“Well, Jeph did try to warn us,” said Anika, shattering the illusion.
An electronic chirp from her communicator danced on the remains. A short text message popped up onscreen. She glanced at it and scowled.
“Dorsai. I’ve gotta get this down in Conops... again.”
“I’ve got to go get the Highway Star for the panel anyway.” Jet said. A light beamed out from the cabinet, enveloping her for a half-second before she reached in and grabbed the micro-projector “Then there’s the Sonoda thing.... ”
Ford shuddered.
“Oh, and people asking me to pose with their motoroids, with my helmet on.”
Ford offered her a rueful grin. “Try that puppet then. Then you can get harassed like the rest of us.”
“Hah!” Jet slipped the projector into the backpack, before clasping it shut and slinging it over her shoulder. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Later Jet.”
Ford took a deep breath as the control room door locked behind her partner. It was tough... but mid-morning on day two and things hadn’t fallen to pieces yet. Murphy might just stay away for the weekend.
An alarm started to chirp on Anika’s console, annunciator lights flickering red across the
“What?”
She didn’t really want
“Ah....ahhhh.” Anika’s expression seemed to just melt into despairing sorrow. “A whole subnet just went down.”
Ford slapped her hard on the back, making her best attempt at an encouraging smile. “Well, tech officer, I trust you can solve the problem.”
“Cake,” Anika murmured.
-----
The announcement went out by way of radio, through a network of strategic repeaters. It was the one guaranteed way to reach the vast majority of people out driving, especially when networking and instant messaging was spotty at best.
“...And we’ve an announcement from Ops. Tunnel B-4 is closed to traffic until further notice. B-4 Closed to traffic. Speed restrictions in-place, Tunnels A-1 and A-3 for accident clearup. Limits will be enforced. Break the limit, lose your pass.”
Mackie reasoned, a little unreasonably maybe, that he might’ve been the only person on Frigga who was immune. He lived there. He couldn’t be excluded.
He cruised along at a speed somewhere north of what was technically allowed, only slowing down to snatch glances at a few especially interesting vehicles. It wasn’t a dangerous speed, as such.... his Sister’d busted the limits in Kandor by more, regularly.
It helped that he knew how the system was set up. It made jamming trivial.
He rubber-necked at the wreck. An Opel estate had been practically impaled through the passenger door by short, upright Toyota 4 door while pulling out of a side junction . Nobody seemed to have been injured by stroke of luck. At least not enough to keep them from yelling at each other while waiting for the emergency teams.
Clear of the accident, he locked the cruise control in, and settled in for an effortless 20 kilometre loop. The Griffon rode like a magic carpet, isolated from all but the most serious of bumps by its suspension.
It was speeding... but not ludicrous speed. Not darting between lanes, or doing stupid shit. Just ‘making progress’. The speed limit was an arbitrary number, chosen far away. It was often perfectly safe to go much faster. All was well, cruising at 160. The engine wasn’t even straining.
With that thought, the instrument panel flickered. Mackie stared at it,
It went dark. He smacked it. Every single indicator lit up at once, giving him the full Apollo 13 show, before finally going dark for good.
“Ah...” he managed, before being interrupted by the deep whistle of the turbine spooling up. It kicked him hard in the back a moment later. The car rushed forward.
His first diagnosis was that the cruise control had malfunctioned, getting stuck at a spurious high value by the failed panel. No big deal. There was a disconnect switch on the brake pedal.
He tried the gearstick first. Nothing. It clicked into neutral fine, but the gearbox didn't answer the signal. He slammed it forward and back. Nothing answered.
Mackie stomped hard on the pedal with both feet anyway.
The engine strained hard. But he could feel himself slowing down. Not brick-wall fast, but enough. No need to panic. Just a routine accident. He could smell the heat, the acrid stink of cooking brakes as the car struggled to accelerate against.
He found himself wondering why the hell it wasn’t working as he felt the fear rise inside him. He knew he couldn’t get sick, but he sure felt like throwing up when the realisation hit.
It wasn’t cutting the engine, because it wasn’t the cruise control that was the problem. It was the throttle sensor. It couldn’t send the signal without power. The engine control system was fail-safed to go to full throttle if the sensor signal was lost. Full power was safer in an aircraft on takeoff than no power. In a car, in a tunnel, with traffic flickering by.... it was the worst possible malfunction and he knew it.
He knew what’d caused the instrument failure... he knew what’d caused the throttle sensor failure... he knew how to fix it if he wasn’t sitting inside it at speeds north of 320.
As problems with, it was nothing special. An earth strap bonding the console to the frame of the car had fallen loose. Just a simple electrical glitch.
The pedal started to soften under his foot, sinking deeper and deeper. His stomach followed. At least, that’s what it felt like.
The engine started to win its struggle, steadily breaking free of its bindings. The brakes gave up for good a moment later when his foot hit the floor.
Mackie swallowed his fear. One last gamble. He ripped the handbrake up, then gripped tight to the wheel. It bit deep and hard with a metallic howl, sending a hard jolt through the car’s frame. It gave up the ghost a half-second later, failing with a hollow clank that ricocheted around under the car before disappearing into the distance behind.
“Ah....” he managed, before returning his gaze to the tunnel ahead.
His mind stopped dead.
It branched. Left. Right.
Right was blocked. A glimpse of a barely seen vehicle registered in his mind. He didn’t even choose left. Instinct did.
The car jerked. The tyres chirped. And Mackie thanked whatever deity cared that he had an android’s reflexes.
The momentary feeling of relief dissolved as he realised he was still in a runaway car. And he was accelerating through 400kph with no sign of stopping.
The gearbox shifted itself up, and it found its second wind as it bulleted into the black of the tunnel. Mackie didn’t know the proverbial chickens had ever left, but he sure as hell knew they were all coming home to roost now.
----
A man, who had once charitably been described as having been bald until he hit puberty, was allowed the Ferrari he was driving to steadily fall behind the Range Rover he was following. He shuffled in the seat for a few seconds searching in vain for a comfortable driving position - the car having been bespoke-built for someone of slight shorter stature than himself.
It was a simple maneuver. Piece to camera introduction. Stomp. Noise. Verbal ejaculation. Nothing new under the sun. Or orbiting it now for that matter.
He relied on the camera crew hanging off the back of 4-wheel drive the watch for traffic - the camera equipment and lighting gear blocked his line of sight. Again, it was the usual arrangement.
The director gave him a thumbs up. All clear.
“Action!”
The driver took a deep breath. He was the connoisseur of cars.
“Naturally, I’ve chosen the Ferrari F70. The F70 is, quite simply, the ultimate Ferrari. It is the end of an era. The last of a breed. It is the last Ferrari made with pure, unwaved Italian flair and engineering. It is Revelations. It is an Evening Star. It is.... in one word....,”
And stomp!. Twelve Cylinders bellowed with the music spawned of dinousaurs and gigatons, augmented by the high cold whine of an electric motor. The supercar reared back onto its back wheels like a prancing horse before launching into a gallop.
“Amaz...”
He stopped slack-jawed. The crew in the Land Rover were waving frantically at him. He didn’t even wait to wonder why. He just put the foot into the brake pedal, hard. Four carbon-ceramic brake disks and a kinetic energy recovery system halved the Ferrari’s speed in one gut-squeezing second.
His mind registered that the light flooding the cabin, wasn’t from the camera stuck to the passenger door. The mirror blazed with a brilliant blue arc-light.
Car. It passed with a flash and shockwave that seemed to wash right through him.
“Jesus Christ!”
It was gone in an instantaneous flash of headlight, leaving only a red glow in the distance, a hollow roar and the burned-hair smell of cooking brakes hanging in the air behind it.
----
“I’ll tell you what the bloody problem is Miss Sierra... we’ve just had some moron in an intercontinental ballistic wavemissile come blasting past us like a bomb, nearly wiping us all out in the process.”
Ford bit her lip, hard. Exaggerating now. As demanding as a prima-donna. A pain the ass and then some. A party looking for an open airlock. The security staff from the Dorsai looked on with an expression best described as amused sympathy.
“You told us you’d keep the tunnel clear.”
“I’ll find who it was and burn their pass. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t.”
Click. An angry growl rose out of the back of her throat. Whoever the hell it was wasn’t just a danger to people, they were a danger to the collective reputation of each and every enthusiast present.
She sighed, rubbing the tiredness from her eyes. “Dangerous driver. Tunnel B4.”
The Dorsai leader.... a thin guy with sandy hair who wore a uniform that seemed to swallow him whole.... nodded once.
“Security team to the tunnel endpoints. Dangerous driver approaching at speed. Get him out, get his keys. Take him to a holding cell.”
His voice left no doubt that his ordered would be carried out. Well worth the extra money, compared to BSS.
The room was normally used for certain exercises at survival shot. It had monitors hooked up to a CCTV system, while one full wall was given over to an interactive map of Frigga itself. Coloured spots on the wall marked each and every attendee... tracked in the public areas by an RFID in their wristband. A safety feature, in case of an accident.
Each bank of monitor had a body in front of it. Scanning. Watching. Monitoring.
“Sir.” A grey-furred catgirl raised her hand “I just got a handle on that moron. It’s a Countach... I think. A red one.” There was a pause as she switched between monitors, checking and double-checking her timing. “But it has to be doing North of 500kph.”
“Waved,” the commander mumbled to himself. “Alright. Forward the details to the patrols. Get the tags. And get the medical teams to standby just in case this moron wrecks it.”
Ford felt something inside her snap. she knew exactly who that was. She felt herself seethe inside, a white hot anger the boiled up and burned her face red.
This was best dealt with through use of the cellphone in her pocket. The number was on speed-dial. It took a half-second to connect
It didn’t even get the chance ring once.
“Ford!” The voice on the other end of the line gasped.
Mackie sounded terrified. Caught in the act. Rabbit in headlights.
“Hey!” she barked into the headset. “I’m going to give you one minute to slow that thing the fuck down before I let Security take care of you.”
“But...” he stuttered.
“I don’t want to hear it.” She slammed the door hard. “If you don’t pull that thing up right goddamned now, I’ll have your pass, and I’ll make sure you’re somewhere far away if we ever get to run this con again.”
All eyes fell upon her.
“But...”
“No! I’m getting complaints because of you. You drive like a lunatic because you think your sister won’t stick the boot in. Well I got news for you, I Will, and I will make sure it sticks.”
“I can’t fucking stop!” he yelled.
Ford swallowed the next sentence, replacing it with a flat “What?”
“Its stuck at full throttle. I can’t slow down! No brakes!”
“Tell me you’re kidding me.”
It’s wasn’t even a funny joke.
“No I fucking amn’t!”
Everyone was staring at her, open mouthed. She sucked her bottom lip for a second, swallowing a thick heavy lump that’d crawled up the back of her throat. She just about managed to get her thoughts together.
“Runaway vehicle. Tunnel B4. Get the whole loop cleared of traffic. Get everyone to stop at the refuge areas and make sure they stay out of the road tunnels.... and find something or someone that can stop that thing. “
Just after midday, on day 2. It was all going to fall apart.
------
I've got.... ideas.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
