Raynor returned his attention to the road, but his mind was adrift. Upper school graduation was looming, and he had been thinking more and more about his future. He had spent his entire life on the farm, and even though their land wasn’t the best, it was going to be his someday—provided his parents weren’t forced to sell it to pay their increasingly high taxes.

Raynor figured that if he worked hard to help his family pull through, and the Confederacy won the wars, things would improve and he’d be able to focus on his own goals for a while, whatever they turned out to be. This gas shortage certainly wasn’t helping matters—his family’s fuel allotment wasn’t enough for their machines to yield a profitable harvest, so the outlook was grim.

The hollow coughs of a hundred truck ignitions firing in quick succession broke both the silence and Raynor’s train of thought. He turned the key, the engine started, and he put the tanker in gear. Then, having allowed the rig to roll forward for a hundred feet or so, it was time to stop again. He turned the engine off to conserve fuel and waited.

“Real funny,” Omer said, as he finished the puzzle. “I think I’ll hack your fone and delete that file.”

Raynor laughed. “I’d better make a backup then. You never know when a little blackmail might come in handy.”

“Hey, Jim, you still here?” a voice rang out over the speaker mounted above Raynor’s head.

Jim reached for the mic. “Hey, Frank. Yeah, I got a while to go yet.”

Frank Carver was Jim’s teammate on Centerville’s demolition team, a high-octane sport played in the less refined parts of the Koprulu sector that was much like the demolition derbies their ancestors had participated in. Vehicles were built and raced with the dual purpose of winning and destroying opponents’ vehicles. Since the wars started, the game had petered out due to a shortage of fuel and other materials.