Hooverville: 500-word Flash Fiction

Beautiful, Beautiful Lights (Sci-Fi)

At the 500 kilometre mark, half-way between here and there, we huddled in clusters on our earthbound hover cruisers, too excited and jittery to speak.

We were tuned in to the Towers. Cosmic static interpunctuated the voices of pilots, managers and technicians. We strained to pick out ones we recognised through the babble, wanting to soak up every nuance, feel as if we were there, as if we were one of them.

But we were mere spectators, our eyes glowing greedily in the darkness of the desert. We could only imagine the long, cylindrical bodies of the hover racers floating in formation around the Start Tower, some 70 metres over our heads. How their cone noses and steering fins would be sniffing forward and back, dancing towards the moment when they'd be let loose.

Then we'd see them as they ripped over us, burning streaks of molten light across the starry dome of the sky.

We were dying to see those lights. Those beautiful, beautiful lights.

The countdown started. We held our breath and shivered.

The pilots bragged and teased each other like siblings. The tower corrected and issued final instructions, admonishing to caution.

We heard the warning addressed to us. The Towers took no responsibility for spectators along the trajectory. We were there at our own risk and responsible for our own possible wounded.

We radioed in that we understood.

Two minutes to launch.

We clasped each other's hands and turned our faces East, cheering when we saw the distant green glow of the start signal and eleven glowing pinpricks of afterburners ignite. We breathed exclusively for the moment when they'd be over us, closest to us.

Without warning, a fireball, yellow and blue, as bright as an imploding star, zig-zagged in all directions as one of the racers exploded, sending parts of itself to Earth like glowing confetti. We gasped, and cried out.

Then they were over us, ten streaks of pure radiance. That beautiful, beautiful light! 

We screamed and flung ourselves up in the air to be near them, to reach out a hand and touch pure speed.

A second explosion, perhaps some eighty kilometres past us. A racer etched its death onto our eyes as a negative explosion in black against a white sky.

We took shelter under our cruisers from raining hell-hot debris and looked towards the Finish Tower, looming almost beyond the horizon, counting the illuminations as each of the nine remaining racers crossed the finish line.

Then we lay low on the sand, waiting, panting, not daring to speak before the Tower announced the winner.

The stench of burning rocket fuel and fried circuits from the explosion reached us on the night wind, making us gag and cover our noses. 

The radio crackled: Blue Bird was named the winner.

We crawled out and danced in the light of the falling cinders.