Free The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) by Matthew Winchester

raised an eyebrow. “To Rainier?”
              “Yeah,” he said, still smiling excitedly. “I wanna go. Toby said he’d try and cover my area, and I was hoping I could ride with you.”
              I nervously scratched the back of my elbow. After the morning I’d had, I was sort of looking forward to some alone time. Also, it wasn’t very often that Rigel asked for a ride anywhere. Any business he ever needed to attend to could be done here in Adams, and just about every time I was going somewhere, it was during his work hours. This time, though, he had actually gone out of his way to get out of work just to come on my delivery run.
              “Why?” I asked him. “What do you want to do in Rainier?”
              He shrugged. “I just want to go. If you don’t want me to ride with you, that’s okay. I can find someone else.”
              “No, no,” I said quickly, hoping I hadn’t hurt his feelings. Despite my wish to be alone, I was going to have to bite the bullet. “Yes, you can come with me. But I’m not going to be there for very long. I only have one delivery.”
              Rigel smiled with relief. “Then I’ll be quick.”
              He grabbed Toby and the two of them made for the cradle, getting the hooks and cables off of my landing gear as I climbed into the hatch and tucked the package into one of the cargo straps on the wall of the hold. I continued to the cockpit and quickly ran through my preflight checklist, making sure my gauges were all working and that all my instruments weren’t making any odd noises. After ensuring my flaps were in good order, I started up my turbines and waited for Rigel to climb inside. When he finally did, he pulled the hatch door shut and gave me a thumbs-up in my mirror.
              The traffic around the docks was much heavier than usual. I never, ever had to wait to leave or to land, but today I was delayed several minutes because the control tower didn’t want to have a collision in the air.
              “I don’t remember it ever being this bad,” I said to Rigel as we finally got underway.
              He had come to sit on the steps behind me and lean into the cockpit to talk. “I don’t either. Maybe that’s because we didn’t have to deal with it on the last race. You weren’t flying yet. I was still hosing down the docks and carrying luggage like a cabin boy, but I do remember it was pretty busy.”
              “Hm,” I responded. He was right, I suppose. I hadn’t taken up flying until after my mother had passed. It wasn’t until then that I had finished what my father had started when he began building the Cloud Kicker . Luckily, there wasn’t much that had to be done. Some wiring, some riveting, a little bit of welding, and it had been pretty well completed. I had made my own mods over time, like the hydro thrusters and the solar cells, and now it was the best ship in the Dominion. In my eyes, of course. I would always be indebted to Old Man Nichols, though. He had paid money, every month for those three years, to make sure the Kicker was allowed to rest on cradle eleven.
              “Don’t worry,” Rigel said to me, patting me gently on the forearm. “Few more days, and it’ll be over for another three years.”
              “Not a moment too soon,” I said.
              Behind me, I heard Rigel sigh. “Can I say something without you getting mad?”
              “Doubtful,” I said. This was sure to be an interesting conversation.
              “I honestly don’t think you hate the race as much as you say you do,” Rigel said blankly.
              I turned in my seat so that I could look down at him. “Are you kidding me?” I said, feeling my