The Rider (eBook)

Scott Sigler, Paul E Cooley (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Empty Set Entertainment (Verlag)
9781939366511 (ISBN)

Infos

Armored little people riding armored dinosaurs in a full-contact bloodsport? Welcome to Dinolition, the biggest show in the galaxy. Star rider Poughkeepsie Pete and his T-Rex mount 'Old Bess' are fixtures of a league struggling to reach profitability and gain intergalactic recognition, to be thought of as something other than circus-freak sideshows. But to get that credibility (and the massive payday that comes with it) Pete has to manage a league commissioner with a God complex, deal with a devious team owner, navigate a web of organized crime trying to fix matches, and dodge religious zealots set on killing him and the dinos alike - all while grooming the next generation of riders that will carry the sport into a new age of glory. In Dinolition, authors Paul E. Cooley and #1 New York Times bestseller Scott Sigler give 'ride till ya die' a whole new meaning.

Textauszug

The fur-covered Nightmare Beast came straight at him: four massive legs supporting a seven-tonne body mostly covered in battered blue composite armor decorated with scratched and gouged advertising logos. Its rider, a tiny Quyth leader dressed in matching blue armor and carrying a long lance, was screaming at the creature. The beast’s hooked, armor-covered pedipalps were almost as big as the legs. Those pedipalps reached forward, twitched, ready to grab prey and drag it to the vertical maw of jagged, black teeth.

Beneath his black and crimson helmet, Poughkeepsie Pete smiled. Most people said Nightmare Beasts looked kind of like spiders or crabs. To Pete, the thing looked like a giant tick.

Ticks ... nasty somethings born to be squished.

This was the moment the stadium crowd had waited for, that he had waited for — one heavyweight squaring off against another in a battle that might leave one of them dead. That might prove true, but if so, it wouldn’t be Pete’s mount left broken and bleeding on Smithwicks Arena’s packed dirt.

Kill one of mine, will you? Let’s see how you bleed.

“Bess, rush.”

Pete’s thighs pressed in against the leather saddle. He felt the power generated by the 6,500 kilos of muscle and bone beneath him. Ol’ Bess quickened her pace. The T-Rex — the only one of her kind in the sport of Dinolition — leaned into her sprint and roared. Pete’s fingers tightened on the war hammer in his left hand.

The nightmare beast closed in for a head-on collision, its single eye looking out through the thick bars of a protective visor. Pete unhooked his armored left boot from the saddle’s stirrup.

In that moment before contact, Pete knew the crowd ate up the spectacle: an alien creature bedecked in sparkling blue armor collision-coursing toward a thirteen-meter-long beast covered in glistening red composite plate.

Scant meters before the crushing impact, Bess effortlessly shifted right so the two monsters would pass side by side. The little Quyth Leader reacted well, swinging his lance to drive the point into Pete’s red-armored chest.

Pete swung his left foot back and over Bess’s body, coming out of the saddle, letting the right stirrup carry all of his weight — the lance tip hissed through empty air where Pete had just been. Right hand on the saddle horn, Pete wrist-whipped his war hammer in a short circle, bringing it down on his opponent’s lance, snapping the long weapon in two a good meter from the tip.

Pete’s strike against the lance was more distraction than disarmament, keeping the Leader from recognizing Bess’s simultaneous move. The T-Rex drove her wide, armored head down hard against the Nightmare Beast’s rear left leg — plates of blue armor bent and spun free to expose the black and green carapace beneath; black liquid sprayed out in a cloud as the leg snapped.

Screeching with pain, the Nightmare Beast turned sharply, spinning in place like a disc anchored by three still-functioning legs. The creature thrust its blocky head forward and bit at Bess’s neck. Jaws that opened side-to-side rather than up-and-down snapped together. Most of the jagged, black teeth scratched harmlessly against Bess’s sparkling red armor — doing little more than scraping a gouge in the logos for Junkie Gin and Madek’s Hover-Repair — but two teeth drove through a seam in that armor and dug into the soft flesh beneath.

Crimson blood flew. Bess reared back, the six-tonne T-Rex roaring in pain. Pete timed the momentum of her lurch, right hand on saddle horn and right boot locked in the stirrup. The one-meter tall, armor-clad man waited until Bess regained control before he kicked his left leg back over the saddle and clicked it home.

“Bess, bite!”

Pete’s mount lunged down with all the power in her massive frame, but this time instead of using her head as a battering ram, she opened wide her jagged maw and clamped her jaws tight on the beast’s already damaged leg. At the same time, Pete — his boots locked in the armored stirrups — stood tall in the saddle and put all his weight into a swing at the Nightmare Beast’s head.

The spidery thing shivered at the shock of two simultaneous wounds: twenty-centimeter teeth crunching through the Beast’s armor, exoskeleton, and into the flesh beyond, and Pete’s war hammer smashing against the creature’s left pedipalp. The alien monster screeched in a high-pitched wail and bucked backwards.

Jaws dripping with blood, Bess pressed in with a roar so loud it made Pete wince. She opened wide and bit again, this time into the Beast’s flank, her teeth armor-piercing daggers that punched through blue plate.

Blood sprayed from the wound, sheeting the Ford Punch-Drives logo painted on Bess’s red helmet, even splashing across Pete’s visor, helmet and chest. The spectators would love that, he knew, seeing their favorite rider drenched in the hot blood of his enemy.

The Beast stumbled backwards on unsteady legs, trying to escape the T-Rex’s savage attack. Pete saw that the Quyth Leader rider had slid to the side and was fighting to stay in his saddle, middle and pedipalp arms grabbing at stirrups, pommel, the saddle itself, the Beast’s armor: anything to keep balance.

Pete waved the war hammer in a circle above his head, playing to the deafening crowd.

“Bess, butt!”

The big, beautiful T-Rex swung her armored head, smashing it into the Nightmare Beast’s rider. The Leader sailed from his saddle. His armor instantly contracted, compacting the rider into a tight, protective, armored ball that crashed into the rock-hard dirt, a pretty bit of blue sculpture thrown to the ground like a discarded mag-can.

 Pete looked to the Stomper’s end of the pitch some twenty meters away. No enemy riders between him and the Stomper’s dugout, between him and the blue and steel-grey flag that hung above it, swaying slightly in the afternoon breeze. The rest of the Stompers riders must be attacking the Ridgeback’s flag.

“Bess, sprint!”

Pete leaned forward in the saddle at the exact moment Bess lurched toward the enemy flag. One powerful thrust, then another, speed building, smooth strides clearing three meters, then four, then almost five as she hit top speed.

They closed in on the Stomper’s flag. Pete waited to hear the trumpets announcing his own flag had been taken and the game was over, anxiety building that he was so close to victory and might have it snatched away at the last second.

That sound did not come.

Bess slowed, the jarring deceleration punishing Pete as it always did. She skidded the last five meters — Bess loved to skid — and Pete stood in the saddle. He heard the crowd roaring. Bess raised higher. Pete grabbed the Stompers flag pole and yanked it free of the stadium wall.

He whipped the flag left and right, the fabric rat-tat-tatting against the air.

Trumpets blared through the stadium’s speakerfilm, bahhh-bah-bah-bah-bomp — the sound that marked victor or defeat — followed by the announcer’s voice echoing over the joyous screams of the Ridgeback faithful.

“Game over! Roughland Ridgebacks win round three, Capture the Flag. The Ridgebacks win the match, two games to one!”

Bess craned her armored, blood-splattered head to the left, peered back at Pete with one large, green eye. He saw the long gouge in her helmet that crossed over the open eye hole — had that strike dug any deeper, his beloved mount might have lost that eye forever.

Pete nodded to her. He smiled wide, reached an armored glove out to lightly pat her armored nose.

“Good girl, Bessie. Now give these rubes something to write home about.”

The T-Rex stood fully upright and lifted her head to the sky. Her victory roar rattled Pete’s teeth. Before the sound died away, the 30,000-sentient crowd’s own call joined hers, filled the stadium with the rabid glee of the bloodthirsty bunch who had paid good money for this spectacle.

A decent crowd, Pete noted, but not a sellout. A little over three-quarters full: Not good enough.

What more of a show can we give them? We’ve got to make it better.

Pete nudged Bess’s side. The T-Rex head-dipped into a theatrical bow, relatively small arms tucked up tight against her massive chest. Pete unhooked his boots from the stirrups, then hopped up to stand on the saddle. Bess did a slow, shuffling circle. The crowd roared louder.

Not for the first time, the words of team owner Salton the Grimy words echoed in Pete’s mind: Sentients don’t just want a fight ... they want pageantry.

Pageantry. So comical. Animals engineered for bloodsport, riders trained to fight and prepared to die, all for the sake of entertaining those who wouldn’t know danger if it tore open the roof of their safe little houses, reached in and bit them in half.

Still, this was Pete’s job — he loved it so, no matter how much the principles of it offended him — and he would do it well. If the crowd wanted to see him primp and posture like an egomaniacal actor desperate for recognition, then that’s what they would get.

When Bess finished the clumsy circle, Pete sat back in the saddle. Bess leaned into her normal, mostly horizontal posture — head out front, heavy tail parallel to the ground — and stomped toward the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 26.11.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781939366511 / 9781939366511