“Six miles,” I updated.
Phox’s arms went solid, his hands shaking some as he gave it a little more speed. His hands moved in rapid, jerking motions on the sticks, whipping us left, right, up, and down with the flow of the path ahead.
My pulse thumped wildly, growing faster with each passing second. Inside my boots, my toes tingled as I curled them in and out. “Four miles.”
Almost there. We were going to make it!
Then I saw it.
My heart stopped.
Seeping through the dangling stalactites, a distant gleam made the salt crystals sparkle and glitter like Christmas decorations. Light—that was daylight! We’d made it!
Or … maybe not.
I couldn’t speak. Thankfully, I didn’t need to. Phox could see it, too.
The low, horizontal opening before us looked more like the mouth of a geode than a cave entrance, with massive salt crystals as big around as tree trunks dripping from the ceiling and jutting up from the floor like glassy fangs. They … They were completely blocking the way out. H-How? How could we get through?
“Oh, hell no. Not today.” Phox growled, a crazed look of fury smoldering in his eyes. “I’m coming through, you bastard.”
It took me a second to realize he was talking to the cave. “P-Phox?” I whimpered, slightly concerned that he’d finally lost it.
“Brinna, get in the back,” he commanded suddenly.
I shot him a wide-eyed, gaping look of horror.
“Don’t argue with me, woman! Go! Now!” He snarled, bearing his teeth savagely as he dialed up all throttles to maximum. We roared forward, blitzing toward the narrow gap barred by those translucent crystals like a bullet.
I floundered, unbuckling my harness and diving for the back of the ship. At the same time, Phox bailed out of his seat and hit the deck between our seats, covering his head with his hands as our runner craft hit the crystalline bars head on.
SMAAAAASH!
Crystals shattered. Dust and chunks of salt flew in every direction. Blinding sunlight flashed in my eyes. I screamed and covered my head as the scraping, screeching chaos of metal against rock boomed in my ears.
Our ship punched through the barrier, sailing skyward like someone launching a motorcycle off a ramp. And for a few seconds, I was weightless, hanging in the air and scrambling to find something to grip.
Our nose tipped down. Without Phox at the throttles, we lost all forward motion and plummeted back to the ground. We hit the dirt at a skid, sliding and grinding to a halt until, at last, everything was still. I lay, shivering and shaking, waiting for something else to happen. Maybe another runner craft would smash into us. Maybe we’d blow up. I wasn’t ruling anything out.
I startled, jerking away as something moved at my feet. Phox. He pushed himself up with a grunt and met my gaze. Little by little, a broad, maniacal smirk spread over his features. He laughed, doubling over and flopping onto his back to put his hands on his face as he cackled and wheezed.
Great. He’d finally lost it.
“Phox?” I rasped as I crawled over to him. Had he hit his head again and short-circuited his brain or something?
He was still snickering between panting breaths.
I was going to ask if he was all right. But before I could get a word out, he tipped his head back so that he could look at me upside down, still snickering and snorting. “I am … the best freaking pilot … ever!”
I couldn’t help it. A smile broke over my lips and I let out a choking laugh. “You do realize we just crashed again, right?”
“Yeah, but we lived.”
Propped up on my elbows, I reached out and grabbed his nose to give it a playful yank. “Oh, is that all it takes? Maybe next time I should drive.”
“Not on your life, human.” He chuckled as he batted my hand away. “Now get up. We’ve got a race to finish.”
33
DEATH VALLEY
Other than a now completely smashed-to-bejesus-and-back nose and a cracked windshield, our runner craft had come out of the mess in decent condition. It ran, anyway, and all the life support systems still worked. Chalk that up as a win for team trasher.
Phox wasted no time deploying the solar catchers to recharge our power cells while he climbed all around the engines and underbelly of the craft, checking it over for critical damage. Inside, I ran through a series of system checks he’d shown me to make sure none of the ship’s internal computers had been damaged. So far, it all looked good. We’d gotten lucky—again.
The maps showed that the storm was now several dozen miles to the south of us and moving away, which was an enormous relief. We’d passed through the other side of it in the caverns and actually made up some ground. Ahead, the next checkpoint was less than an hour’s flight away. After that … it was the home stretch.
The last run for the finish line.
My stomach stirred and flipped, spinning like mad as though I were being flung around on a carnival ride as I came to terms with the fact that we might actually be about to finish the Renegade Run. We wouldn’t win, of course. I mean, god only knew how many other ships were ahead of us now. Sienne might still be in the race, too, if she wasn’t still caught in the storm.
Just the thought that we might actually cross that finish line put an elated flutter in my chest. My fingertips tingled as I spun the holographic image of Thermax, trying to guess where it might be ahead of us on the landscape. Thanks to the stolen software off our little spec-cam stalker, the blipping signals of a dozen more runner crafts blinked not far in the distance. A battle? They were clustered around the next checkpoint, so that seemed the most likely. Maybe there was a way we could get past them without getting caught in
