The Light-Field by Traci Harding Read Free Book Online Page B

unleash, as it continues to accelerate from the time of ignition.’
    â€˜What?’ Mr Hunzo was somewhere between insulted and horrified to be told this by a pilot who looked like he was barely out of school!
    â€˜If am wrong then nobody gets hurt,’ Starman granted, although he knew he wasn’t wrong. ‘But if I’m right, I die … so please humour me, and re-test the output of the turbine at full velocity for half an hour and you’ll see that it is too powerful for this fuselage.’
    Mr Hunzo was speechless. Zeven assumed they had not tested the turbine for that duration yet, or he would have got an argument.
    â€˜Now these are more like it!’ Zeven spotted a couple of all-terrain hover-bikes in the same hangar and took the opportunity to change the subject. He hurried over and jumped on one, and Mythric followed. ‘May I?’ Zeven asked for Hunzo’s permission and their tour guide emerged from his thoughtful daze to nod.
    â€˜You just —’
    Before Hunzo could explain the ignition procedure, Zeven had started his bike; the motor was near silent as the bike floated up to hover in the air at about knee height.
    Mythric, having watched Zeven start his vehicle, followed suit and proceeded to pursue Zeven around the hangar bay.
    As the bike’s air jets were churning up so much dust in the hangar, Hunzo opened the hangar door to release the pair of them; Mythric and Zeven did not hesitate to grab the opportunity to go for a joyride.
    They sped along a wide tunnel designed to launch aircraft, which was smoothly paved and brightly lit. Sunlight was streaming into the tunnel up ahead and, as they approached the opening into the canyonproper, it became apparent that the tarmac was ending and there was no ramp down to the canyon floor! Despite this, Starman continued to speed up.
    â€˜Are you fucking insane ?’ yelled Mythric, as he hit the brakes and watched as Starman went shooting off the ledge high above the canyon floor.
    Starman cut the power to his vehicle and it dropped like a stone as he remained firmly seated upon it. At the halfway point of his death plummet, Starman restarted the engine and the ignition boost broke his fall, whereupon the bike went shooting off through the canyon for a way, before gliding around to come to a stop. When Zeven spied Mythric still up on the runway, he yelled, ‘Well, come on!’
    â€˜I’m supposed to be saving your life, not getting killed with you,’ Mythric shouted back.
    â€˜It’s an all-terrain bike,’ Zeven reasoned. ‘Just make sure you have a good run up so that you clear the cliff face.’ Mythric appeared undecided and Zeven was annoyed — he really wanted to speak with his new partner alone, and in the middle of a deserted desert canyon seemed the perfect place. ‘Don’t be so gutless!’
    Mythric disappeared from the edge of the runway above, and after some time, when Zeven still found himself alone in the stifling heat of the canyon floor, he felt disappointed. Taren sent me a dud … there’s no way this partnership is going to work. The pilot had resigned himself to taking a ride on his own, just to get some air flowing past his body, when the sound of Mythric’s elated shout drew Zeven’s attention backward, in time to witness his new partner hurtling through the air on his vehicle.
    â€˜What was I thinking?’ The sight made Zeven smile broadly. ‘Taren is never wrong.’
    Mythric hit the ignition and safely came to hover; he seemed surprised to be alive. He recovered quickly and came to a stop alongside Zeven. ‘There is gutless , and there is cautious — I am the latter,’ he advised and accelerated into the canyon maze.
    Zeven took off in hot pursuit. ‘Don’t kid yourself, old man, you’re as crazy as me!’ he yelled as he passed Mythric.
    â€˜You’d better hope I am, if you plan on pulling many