by Scott Sigler
Hokor turned to face Pine. “Who is the second-string free safety for the Sheb Stalkers?”
“Fairmont,” Pine answered instantly.
“What are her stats?
“Last recorded time in the 40 was a 3.2. She’s seventeen years old, an eight-year veteran, tends to jump the short routes and give extra space on deep routes for passing situations. She comes in as nickel back, but doesn’t like to hit big tight ends head-on.”
“Yitzhak, what is the strategy when playing her?”
“Passing situations, send tight ends on deep outs or deep curls. She doesn’t pressure the tight end enough, usually allowing for a little extra time to make a well-placed throw. Shouldn’t go deep on her if avoidable, but put the ball up high if you must because her vertical leap of twelve feet usually can’t compete with our receivers.”
Hokor turned back to Quentin. “That is why these men have been around the league for so long.”
Quentin sneered. “With all due respect Coach, just because you guys memorize one player doesn’t mean anything. I may be young, but I wasn’t born yesterday. You guys set that up just to impress me.”
Hokor’s fur rippled, and his pedipalps were a vibrating blur. “Pick a player.”
“Huh?”
“Pick a player.”
Quentin felt a sinking feeling. “From what team?”
“Any team in the Quyth Irradiated Division.”
“Okay, how about this? The second-string weak-side linebacker for the Bigg Diggers.”
“Ripok the Stonecutter,” Pine and Yitzhak said simultaneously.
“Last recorded time of 3.9 in the 40,” Pine said.
“Five-year veteran, the last three with the Diggers,” Yitzhak added.
“Very disciplined,” Pine said. “Plays excellent zone, makes excellent reads, but poor lateral movement due to leg-replacement surgery in 2671.”
“Use quick tight end out patterns,” Yitzhak said. “Or, bring wide receivers on crossing patterns and throw when they are equal to Ripok, because he can’t break on the ball as fast as they can.”
Quentin just stared. He didn’t know that much information about his own linebackers for the Raiders, let alone for another team. And these guys had ripped off the info without a second thought.
“Now are you impressed?” Hokor asked.
Quentin nodded dumbly.
“By tomorrow,” Hokor said, “know every player on the rosters. We will work on stats and tendencies throughout this week. Let us commence with our position meeting. We are six days from the season opener against the Woo Wallcrawlers. It will take us four days to reach Ionath. We will practice on the Touchback until we reach Ionath, then shuttle down to the field facility for on-field practices.”
• • •
BY THE TIME the position meeting ended, Quentin felt thoroughly annoyed. He had several days of busy work lined up — rote memorization of defensive players and schemes in addition to his offensive studies. And the real annoyance was that none of it really mattered. When he took the field, that’s when all this garbage would fade away, once Hokor saw what he could do.
After the position meeting, Quentin followed Pine and Yitzhak onto the dining deck. He had an uneasy feeling he couldn’t quite explain. He’d never done ‘team functions’ with the Raiders, he’d always done his own thing. Here, he gathered, he was expected to dine with the team. The brightly lit room held over twenty tables, each surrounded by a variety of chairs designed for the different body types of Humans, Sklorno, Quyth Warrior and Quyth Leader. Unlike the corporate offices, there were none of the six-foot-long, table-like chairs made for Ki.
“We have to eat with the sub ... I mean, the other races?”
Pine stared at him. “What, you can play a game with them, but you can’t eat with them?”
“You have to have the different races to win the game,” Quentin said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to eat with them, for High One’s sake.”
“It’s a league rule,” Yitzhak said. “All species must use the same dining facilities. Remember the Creterakians’ whole point of this league is to create a sense of ambassadorship amongst the races.”
“Are the Ki an exception, then?” Quentin didn’t see any of the monstrous creatures in the dining hall.
Yitzhak shuddered before he answered. “Their eating habits are a little, er, messy compared to the other races. They eat alone.”
“What do you mean, messy?”
“They butcher their food at the table,” Pine answered. “They eat it raw.”
Quentin looked at both men. “You’re kidding me, right?”
They shook their heads.
“It’s horrific,” Yitzhak said. “They kill the animal right there on the table. The table is even designed to catch all the blood so they can drink that, too.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“That’s not the worst of it,” Yitzhak said. “That’s just the ones from the Ki Empire planets. The ones that come from the Ki Rebel Establishment planets, they don’t even bother to kill the animal before they start eating.”
Quentin stared dumbly. “You mean they eat it live?”
Yitzhak nodded.
“High One,” Quentin said. “They are demons.”
“Oh take your morality and vent it, Barnes,” Pine said. “They’re not demons, they’re different from Humans, that’s all. Meals are a major ritual for the Ki. It’s part of their culture, how they bond and crap like that.”
“But to eat a live animal? Only a mongrel race could do that!”
Yitzhak laughed. “Well then I guess Pine here is a mongrel.”
Pine smiled, but Quentin just stared, dumbfounded at the evil surrounding him. “You’ve broken bread with creatures that eat their food alive?”
Pine simply nodded.
Quentin felt his stomach churning at the thought, and suddenly found Pine’s blue skin more repulsive than ever. “What are you, blue-boy, some kind of Satanist?”
“And there it is,” Pine said with a knowing nod. “See, you are just like Warburg. Just another Purist racist. I’m a leader, Barnes. Ki don’t really accept you until you eat with them, until you fight and bleed with them. I do whatever it takes to make this team play as a whole. That’s something you’ll either figure out and succeed, or won’t figure out, and you’ll be gone.”
Quentin turned to Yitzhak. “And I suppose you’ve eaten living flesh, too?”
Yitzhak shuddered. “Couldn’t quite bring myself to do that, but I managed to sit through the whole thing, and drank some blood. You’ve got to see it to believe it — it’s worse than any horror holo you’ve ever seen.”
Quentin shook his head, then turned and walked away. Position meetings were over, and he didn’t have to spend any more time with these two barbarians. He spotted Warburg, sitting alone, a huge tray of food in front of him.
“Quentin,” Warburg called out. “Come let us break bread.”
Quentin walked up to the table and stared at the food. With all the activity he hadn’t eaten, and suddenly realized that he was famished.
“Where’s the chow?”
Warburg stuffed some potatoes into his mouth as he gestured to the back wall. A glass-enclosed counter ran the entire length, all fifty feet of it. Under the glass sat every kind of food Quentin could imagine. The counter was divided into sections, each about two feet in length. Above each section glowed a holographic symbol of a planet or system. Quentin didn’t recognize half the symbols, but the Purist Nation infinity symbol glowed a warm welcome. He grabbed a tray from an overhead shelf and started loading up: the mint mashed potatoes he’d seen Warburg eating, chicken breasts smothered in curry paste, pita bread and Mason gravy, the multi-colored broccoli that grew only on the planet Stewart, and a thick piece of chocolate cake.
Just to his right was the flag of the Planetary Union. The dishes that looked somewhat familiar, but were all things he’d never before tried. One of the dishes seemed to be s
ome kind halved shell, with a raw, glisteny, grayish mass sitting inside. Raw food — typical blasphemy of non-Nation races. Quentin didn’t exactly say his twenty Praise High Ones each night, but that didn’t mean he was so sinful he’d eat raw food.
Just to his left was the glowing Five Star Circle of the Quyth Concordia. His lip wrinkled involuntarily in disgust at the brownish selections, many of which had more spindly legs than any insect he’d ever seen.
Quentin turned away from the strange foods and walked back to the table, rejoicing in the smells that drifted up from his plate.
“Did you see that disgusting garbage the Quyth eat?” Warburg asked as Quentin sat.
“Yes, what is that crap, bugs?”
Warburg shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care to know. High One knows it’s something unblessed and blasphemous. We’ll see what they eat when they’re burning in Hell.”
Quentin cut a big piece of chicken breast and bit into it — his eyes closed in pleasure at the taste.
“Food’s gotten pretty good since Gredok picked you up.” Warburg said with a smile.
“It wasn’t good before?”
Warburg shrugged. “It wasn’t bad. The cooks would try to make Nation dishes out of whatever Planetary Union or League of Planets crap they had laying around. Ever since they signed you, though, they’ve been bringing in the real deal from Nation freighters or whatever. Seems like Gredok and Hokor want to make you right at home.”
Quentin shoveled in some potatoes, marveling at the succulent taste. “I’m glad they feel that way. I haven’t had decent food since I got to the Combine.”
“I hope they start you right away,” Warburg said. “I can’t stand that shucking blue-boy Pine.”
Quentin nodded. “You know he told me he’s eaten raw flesh with the Ki?”
“What do you mean, eaten? That’s past tense. He does it every week. Low One take him, look at him now.”
Warburg gestured to the far end of the hall. Most of the tables held members of only one race, either Human, Quyth or Sklorno. But Pine sat at a table of Quyth Warriors, laughing, smiling, and stuffing some limp, brown, multi-legged creature into his mouth.
“I hope he likes the heat, considering where the High One will place him on Judgment Day,” Warburg said. “I mean, it’s one thing to have to talk to these demons, that’s just the nature of the game, but to sit down with them, to eat with them, and eat their barbaric food. It’s unforgivable.”
Quentin nodded and turned back to his plate. The sight of Pine chewing that brown thing had killed his appetite, but he kept eating anyway. Tomorrow was the first practice, and he’d need all of his strength if he was going to win the starting QB slot.
5
PRACTICE
AS INSTRUCTED, his room lights flickered on at 6 a.m., one hour before the position meeting. His room filled with the loud sounds of the band Trench Warfare. He stretched as he listened to the seductive but strong vocals of Trench’s lead singer, Somalia Midori. Their music was banned back on Micovi, but Quentin had managed to get his hands on every song they had ever recorded. As a kid, he didn’t know it was even possible to circumvent the laws of the Holy Men. The more games he won, however, the easier it became to obtain contraband items like erotic pictures, recorded GFL broadcasts, or out-of-system books and music.
When he’d entered his sparse room for the first time the night before, he’d asked the computer if it could play any Trench Warfare for his wake-up call. The shocking answer — the computer had access to not only every Trench album, but most of the band’s live performances from the last five years. He could watch holo or just listen to audio. He’d had time for one holo before going to bed, and had watched in amazement at the four musicians performing on stage to a jumping, gyrating crowd of Humans. He’d been shocked to see that Somalia bore the blue skin of a Satirli 6 native. He thought she was beautiful, but just for a second, then asked the computer for sound only.
Discovering an endless library of music had been a surprise pleasure, but nothing compared to the well-nigh religious experience that came when he asked the computer if there were any archived GFL games.
[WHAT TEAM AND WHAT YEAR?] The computer had asked.
“How far back do the games go?”
[TO THE BEGINNING]
“What, the very first GFL games?”
[TO THE BEGINNING OF FOOTBALL]
“What do you mean, to the beginning of football? What’s the oldest game you’ve got?”
[FORDHAM COLLEGE, EARTH, VERSUS WAYNESBURG COLLEGE, EARTH, 1939]
“But, but that’s seven-hundred years ago!”
[SEVEN-HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO] the computer corrected. [WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE?]
“Yes!”
Quentin turned to the holotank. A picture flashed in the tank, but it looked very strange. He could make out football players, but they were tiny and far away, without color, and they were ... flat, like a printed picture.
“What’s wrong with it? It looks broken.”
[THIS WAS CALLED ‘TELEVISION,’ A TWO-DIMENSIONAL ELECTRONIC REPRESENTATION OF ACTUAL EVENTS.]
“Do you have more of these television broadcasts?”
[GALACTIC FREE ARCHIVE HAS EVERY GAME EVER BROADCAST VIA TELEVISION, RADIO, AND HOLOCAST]
Quentin watched a play, in which the quarterback took the snap, turned almost 360 degrees and followed a wall of blockers into a wall of defenders. His heart raced — to think he was watching the beginnings of his sport, a game played almost 750 years ago! He could watch any game ever recorded, all of the To Pirates games, even games from the archaic NFL.
One of those games played now in his holotank, between teams called the “Kansas City Chiefs” and the “Chicago Bears.” He’d instructed the computer to wake him with not only music, but also a random football broadcast at least 500 years old or older.
As the music’s heavy beat pounded through his small quarters, he dragged himself out of bed and started stretching. He had plans today — he’d show them all just what kind of a player he was.
He walked through the ship’s empty corridors, descended to field level, and entered the central locker room. A circular area, the central locker room was built around a holoboard. Four doors lined the circular room. A small icon hung on each door: a Human, a Ki, a Sklorno and a Quyth Warrior. A huge, realistic mural dominated the other side of the circular room. Quentin stared at the brightly colored, six-tentacled monster rising up from the depths in a spray of deep-red water. Rows of long, backwards-curved teeth lined a cavernous mouth. One large eye glowed an eerie green. He nodded to the picture.
He entered the Human door and found his own space.
Barnes, #10 it read above the locker.
Get used to that number, galaxy. You’re going to be hearing it a lot.
He opened the locker. The first thing he took out was his practice jersey. He stared at the number “10” on the chest. He felt the texture of the black Kevlar fabric. This was only a practice jersey, yet it was of a far higher quality than anything he’d worn in the PNFL.
He set the jersey flat on the ground.
He smiled as he pulled out a Kool Products body-control suit, designed to regulate his temperature on the field. Coolant fluid constantly circulated through microtubules in the suit’s thin, rubbery fabric. He slid into the suit, which automatically adjusted itself to conform perfectly to his body.
Next he pulled out his arm-and-shoulder armor. Rawlings Null-Contact™ inertia-dampening system. State of the art. Supposedly the armor could stop a bullet, absorbing the velocity into the hard shell instead of transmitting it to the wearer.
He slid them on. Like the Kool suit, the armor’s micro-sensor circuits automatically adjusted for a tailored fit. The armor was thinner on his left arm, his throwing arm, to allow maximum flexibility.
Next came the matching lower-torso armor, which would protect his ribs, stomach, kidneys and lower back. He wrapped it around his waist — the micro
-sensors contracted and expanded, locking it in precisely with the shoulder armor.
Groin and leg armor were more of the same. The knee joints were made of an interstellar-caliber alloy, designed to allow normal flexibility but locking out any possible hyperextension. He slid his feet into the armored boots, which locked in perfectly with the leg armor.
With all this protection, it seemed a wonder that any being got hurt at all. And yet they did get hurt — frequently, and badly. Football players were just too big, too strong, too fast and too violent. Quentin wondered what kind of injuries might occur were it not for this high-tech armor.
He moved around, feeling the armor move with him, a perfect fit that didn’t seem to hinder his range of motion. He pulled on the jersey, then grabbed his helmet. The shiny black Riddell helmet was lighter than anything he’d used before, but probably ten times stronger than what he’d worn on Micovi. A patch of bright orange decorated the front of the helmet, from temple to temple. Six white stripes stretched out from the orange patch, like the arms of a stylized sunrise. There were three white stripes on each side: one curving above the ear hole, one halfway up the curving side, and one higher up on each side of the helmet’s center. The stripes represented the six tentacles of the Quyth creature for which the Krakens were named.
A recessed button sat under the right ear-hole. Quentin pushed it: a holographic test pattern hovered just in front of the facemask. Once again, state of the art — he’d tried to talk Stedmar into springing for the in-helmet holo display, but Stedmar balked at the half-million credit price tag. The display would let a quarterback see the playbook, live statistics, and the coach in case coaches used hand signals, lip-reading or some other secretive play calling method. He pushed the button again and the test pattern disappeared.
Quentin headed for the sim-room, cleats clacking against the metal floor. The lights blinked on as he walked in. As he’d suspected, the place was empty. Everyone else was still sleeping.
“Ship,” Quentin called as he walked to the center of the room. “Do you have a sim for the Krakens’ practice field?”