Post by gigamach on Sept 14, 2016 6:33:01 GMT
Marcus “Rip” Dundee:
The sea crashes against itself, breaking its own surface tension and creating a mist of salt-water that envelopes the surfer. The man smiles; His medium length hair is blond and bleached by the sun, whipping and wet as his body hurtles through the tube of collapsing liquid. He reaches his left hand out and skims the wall he is sliding against as it rises and curls above him. For a moment he can see a dolphin, pacing him, just beyond his reach, but it is gone in an instant as the man emerges from the ephemeral tunnel and the wave dies, approaching the shore. His heart races even as his velocity subsides, and he sinks into stillness. The ride always ends. There is always another ride.
The motor roars behind him, and he skips across the top of a small crest, momentarily flying before dropping just beyond the second placer. The air is not hitting him – He is hitting the air, slicing it as he and the lead boat cut a swath of water as they come around the last turn. The man smiles inside his helmet, as his boat seems to hold on to the inside turn by sheer force of his own will. Certainly no laws of physics can explain why it doesn’t fall apart as he accelerates, or slide into the leader’s boat destroying them both. The man looks over. The other driver is not smiling. His hands are clenched to the wheel. His eyes are wide with fear. The blond man winks one blue eye at the leader, then becomes the leader, pushing the motor to maximum. He crosses the finish line, cheers from the shore unheard above his own heartbeat in his ears. He takes his victory lap to stretch out the ride for a few more minutes. The ride always ends. There is always another ride.
Bullets whiz past the small experimental hovercraft. Some hit their mark, but bounce off harmlessly. It sounds like rocks to the man at the controls, but he knows better. He dodges a shoulder mounted rocket, and it explodes in the ocean behind him. The shore is 200 feet away, but his team-mate is 230 feet away, behind the gun emplacements the pirates have set up to defend their island. A small display shows the man exactly where his teammate is entrenched. He doesn’t have long. The man flips a switch, and three surface to surface missiles are launched. The pirate’s gun emplacements explode into sand and fire. The man smiles. He pushes his craft up onto the shore, through the debris and ruin. The pirates who were once closing in on his teammate spin to face him, and he squeezes the trigger on his front mounted machine guns. Hot lead is spit into the crowd, dropping some and dispersing the rest. The hovercraft swoops up to the hunkered down soldier, and the man opens the hatch.
“Get in, mate!” the man calls. “We haven’t got all day now!”
The frogman hiding behind cover leaps up and scrambles into the hovercraft. The pilot closes the hatch and turns back the way he came.
“Good to see you, Rip,” says Carlos “Gills” Perez. “These pirates sure are touchy about their treasure.”
“Yeah, well. They shouldn’ta taken it in the first place. Thraw it in the back and let’s getcha home.”
“I think I’ll just hold onto it so it doesn’t rattle around. Hate to coat the inside of your toy here with nuclear dirty-bomb, you know?”
The man called Rip doesn’t reply. He can only hear his own heart, and he continues to smile, even though he knows that “Mission Accomplished” means the ride is almost at an end.
But there is always another ride.