The Rookie

by Scott Sigler

  The Ionath Krakens (7-2) completed their improbable comeback, winning their sixth-straight game 38-13 over the Quyth Survivors (3-6). With the win the Krakens locked up the Quyth Irradiated Conference title and earned a trip to the Tier Two playoffs.

  The Glory Warpigs (7-2) finished up an excellent season with a 25-13 win over the Bigg Diggers (3-6).

  The Whitok Pioneers (6-3) look ready for next year, as quarterback Condor Adrienne threw for five TDs in a 52-27 thrashing of the Sheb Stalkers (4-5).

  Also in action last week, the Woo Wallcrawlers (4-5) upset the Grontak Hydras (4-5) by a score of 17-14, and Orbiting Death (6-3) pounded on the Sky Demolition (1-8), 37-10.

  DEATHS:

  Mitchell “The Machine” Fayed, killed on a clean hit by Tobinabee, free safety for the Quyth Survivors.

  WEEK #9 PLAYERS OF THE WEEK:

  Offense: Ju Tweedy, running back, Orbiting Death. 205 yards on 32 carries, 3 TDs.

  Defense: Bray-O-Haka, tackle, Woo Wallcrawlers. Four sacks, seven tackles.

  PLAYOFFS ROUND #1

  SEEDING FOR THE TIER TWO TOURNAMENT

  From the Ionath City Gazette

  Earthlings face Krakens in Tier Two semifinals

  By Kigin the Witty

  EARTH (Associated Press) — In a game that really wasn’t as close as the score indicates, the Texas Earthlings defeated the Aril Archers 21-17 to advance to the Tier Two semi-finals. The Earthlings face the Ionath Krakens, champions of the Quyth Irradiated conference.

  The Earthlings’ defense led the way, allowing only 10 points. The Archers managed one defensive score to keep it close, a 22-yard interception return for a touchdown by Minneapolis.

  Earthlings’ linebacker Alonzo Castro was named the game’s MVP. Castro, a rookie from the Sigurd Norsemen of the PNFL, had eight solo tackles along with an interception and a critical quarterback sack, his fifth of the season.

  “Castro’s speed has taken our defense to a new level,” said Earthlings coach Pata the Calculating. “Teams have to watch out for him, and that helps keep double-teams off of Chok-Oh-Thilit.”

  Chok-Oh-Thilit, the Earthlings’ All-Pro defensive tackle, finished the day with two sacks and five tackles.

  “He (Chok-Oh-Thilit) was basically un-blockable,” said Archers’ coach David Djadin. “We couldn’t do anything with him. He injured three linemen — I’m glad the season is over, because we couldn’t even field an offensive line right now. He’s the hardest hitter in the game.”

  Offensively, the Earthlings moved the ball with efficiency and didn’t give up a single turnover. Quarterback Case Johanson went 21-of-34 for 225 yards and a 12-yard touchdown pass to running back Peter Lowachee. The Earthlings utilized a ball-control offense, chewing up the clock by relying on running back Pookie Chang. Chang racked up 122 yards on 27 carries, including touchdown runs of 3- and 7-yards.

  • • •

  QUENTIN HAD never been to Earth.

  In fact, most citizens of the Purist Nation had never been there. Earth, after all, was the capital of the Planetary Union, the historical enemy of the Purist Nation. Earth was also the cradle of Satan, the birth place of evil, the home of the Human betrayers and the Brother-Killers. Centuries ago, the powerful people of Earth had cast out the Faithful, sending Stewart and his followers on a perilous journey across the Void. Only the hand of the High One himself had saved the chosen people, delivered them to a green place from which the Purist Nation flourished.

  At least that was the story.

  Quentin couldn’t help but believe some of it. That story, after all, had been drummed into his head since before he could speak. Yet that didn’t dull his excitement as the Touchback prepared to drop out of the punch space near Earth orbit. Earth. The beginning of Humanity. Regardless of the Purist Nation’s current politics, Earth was where it had all begun.

  Not for just the species, like Quentin could give a crap about that.

  Earth was the birthplace of football.

  Quentin could barely contain his excitement. What would he see first? The legendary Kraft Cheese Stadium? The 200-year-old Ford Orbital Stadium, site of five Galaxy Bowls, site of all the Earth Football League Championships from 2482 until the end of the league in 2566? The Professional Football Hall Of Fame, in some place called Canton? Perhaps one of the many universities where they still played collegiate football, a historic if quaint anachronism. Some had even called college football “Tier Four” football, a place for people to play when they weren’t good enough to cut it on a Tier Three team. Rumor was the entire Krakens squad would be guests at one of the most historical games in the sport, eight hundred years of tradition marked by a game with a team called “Michigan” versus a team called “Ohio State.”

  His excitement ran at such a high level he almost forgot to be afraid of punch-out. Almost. The Touchback shuddered as they slipped back into reality. Viewscreens changed from pitch-black to a stunning view of a cloud-speckled blue world.

  Earth.

  A dozen orbital stations, the biggest only a twentieth the size of The Ace or Emperor Two, floated in Earth’s near-space. Two of those stations had long, thin tubes running down towards the surface of Earth, stretching out so far that the silvery tendrils faded away into nothing. Quentin wondered if they were some kind of communications assembly.

  It was the most highly populated Human planet at eighteen billion beings, although a good five billion of those were of the Whitok and Dolphin species that lived in the planet’s vast oceans. The Whitokians living there, of course, were the original catalyst that resulted in Mason Stewart and his followers leaving Earth on their long pilgrimage to the Promised Land. That anti-alien bias had permeated every aspect of Purist life. Quentin now knew this, and knew that he could never go back to living in such a place, not when he fought on the field with his alien teammates day-in and day-out. He had no place to call home. Maybe someday, after he retired, he’d come and live on Earth.

  The Touchback veered towards one of the orbital stations with the long tendril. As it drew close, Quentin saw that the tendril was far from thin — it was a massively thick tube that stretched down and down and down. Like other orbital stations, this one had many long piers that jutted out from a central radius. Each pier reached out for miles, dotted with ships of all makes and colors. The Touchback gently approached a pier, and shuddered lightly as mechanical arms reached out to lash the bus to an anchoring port.

  [TEAM DISEMBARK] the computer voice said. [ALL PLAYERS DISEMBARK]

  “Aren’t we taking the shuttle down?” Quentin asked Yitzhak as the team walked out.

  “Shuttle? Not on Earth, buddy. No shuttle traffic allowed. Everyone takes the tube to get to and from the surface.”

  A recorded voice droned over hidden loudspeakers.

  [WELCOME TO HUDSON BAY STATION. PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP ON THE MOVING SIDEWALK. NO WEAPONS OF ANY KIND ARE ALLOWED ON HUDSON BAY STATION. WELCOME TO HUDSON BAY STATION ...]

  Just outside the hatch, a long, two-band moving sidewalk ran off into the distance, towards the station’s central spine. The band on the outside moved at a decent clip, while the central band seemed to move twice as fast. Just past the moving sidewalk was a large, clear tube. Inside the tube were two more tubes, side-by-side, each filled with water. Bubbles and bits of flotsam showed the nearest tube flowed towards the station’s core, while the one on the other side flowed out to the end of the pier. Inside the tube, Quentin saw Whitokians, Dolphins and Leekee swimming along like fish in a packed aquarium.

  The team filtered onto the walkway, which briskly moved them along the pier. Quentin watched Yitzhak casually step onto the first band. As he moved away, he carefully stepped on to the central band. He shot down the pier moving at least twenty miles an hour. Quentin followed suit. He stepped on the first band and almost lost his balance at the sudden shift in momentum. He steadied himself, then stepped onto the second band to experience another surge of acceleration. He jogged down the central strip until he cau
ght up with Yitzhak.

  “Why don’t they use shuttles?”

  Yitzhak laughed. “Because they don’t want to get blown up, that’s why. Anything that gets below the 80,000 feet boundary is instantly attacked and destroyed by a flight of Creterakian fighters.”

  “Destroyed? But why?”

  Yitzhak looked at Quentin for a moment, a quizzical look on his face. “Are you serious?”

  Quentin felt a little stupid, but he nodded.

  “Because of the suicide attacks,” Yitzhak said. “Purist Nation terrorists. They attack any chance they get, blow themselves up as long as they can inflict heavy casualties.”

  Quentin felt defensive anger swarm to the front of his thoughts. “What makes you think they’re from the Purist Nation.”

  Yitzhak put a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. “Don’t get mad at me, Q. There’s a dozen terrorist groups on Earth, and after an attack, they contact the media and actually claim responsibility. Their goal is supposedly to drive all aliens off the planet. The Purist Repatriation Assembly is the worst. Two years ago the PRA managed to nuke a Whitok city in the Atlantic, killed three million Whitok, Dolphins and Humans. That was just the initial blast. That area of the Atlantic has been utterly devastated. They’re still working on the radiological cleanup. Some people wanted to bring in a big team of Quyth engineers, who are the experts on cleaning up radiation, but there’s too much suspicion that the Quyth will squat on that spot the way they did on Ionath and Whitok.”

  Virak overheard the conversation and walked over. “Those fears are stupid. Why would we want to start a colony on a planet that does not live in freedom?”

  Yitzhak shrugged. “That’s Earth citizens for you. You know how suspicious they are. But hey, if you’d lived through 280 years of terrorism, your people would be suspicious, too.”

  The walkway zipped along the pier, passing a regular progression of dock-locks. Most locks were closed, but some were open, and Quentin saw just about every species represented. The fast-moving sidewalks seemed to control congestion on the pier, but it was still a very busy place indeed.

  “I hope there’s no construction this time,” Yitzhak said. “I’d really like to get down to the surface sometime in the near future.”

  “There’s always construction,” Virak said.

  The walkway entered a large, noisy, domed open space. Ornate lights lined the ceiling, and voices in all languages repeatedly echoed through the cavernous space.

  [THE RED ZONE IS FOR LOADING AND UNLOADING OF PASSENGERS ONLY, PLEASE DO NOT LOITER IN THE RED ZONE.]

  [NO WEAPONS ARE ALLOWED ON HUDSON BAY STATION. IF YOU ARE CARRYING A WEAPON OF ANY KIND, PLEASE REPORT TO THE NEAREST CONSTABLE AND TURN IT IN. CARRYING A WEAPON ON HUDSON BAY STATION IS A CAPITOL OFFENSE.]

  The team moved towards a huge line of beings. Waist-high silver stands dotted the length of the line, a red velvety rope hanging between each of the stands.

  Off in the distance, the line emptied into a cavernous, hexagonal central area. A massive circle, at least two hundred feet in diameter, dotted each of the hexagon’s sides. Three of the circles were nothing but a large blank space surrounded by a wide ring of deck. A huge platform sat in the center of the fourth circle. Concentric rings of seats filled the platform. Different colors denoted different sections, like slices of pizza, and each color had a different type of seat to accommodate either Ki, Sklorno, Quyth, Leekee or Human. Beings steadily exited the line and moved onto the platform, taking their respective seats. Once the seats filled (some species sat in seats that didn’t quite fit them right, but they didn’t seem to mind much), the platform simply dropped out of sight.

  The last two platforms were blocked off by rings of orange and white barrels with small, flashing orange lights on top. Tools and equipment littered the area, although Quentin saw no workers. A sign read; “Your tax dollars at work! Upgrades to the Armstrong Elevator — faster drop-engines, to be complete in September 2684.”

  “Construction,” Yitzhak said. “I swear, they’re never finished with this place.”

  “Two platforms are down?” Virak moaned. “We’re going to be here forever.”

  Quentin waited patiently. While the line did move slowly, it didn’t bother him as much as is seemed to bother some of his teammates. Apparently, they’d never spent four or five hours standing in line while the Starvation Trucks dispensed food to an entire city of hungry people.

  Finally the Krakens players reached the end of the line. Platform #3 rose up like some giant Leviathan, noiselessly filling the giant, empty circle that matched its circumference. They wandered onto the platform along with other passengers. Quentin found a seat next to Yitzhak, sat down and waited.

  “You ever been on the chute before?” Yitzhak asked.

  Quentin shook his head.

  “Hope you don’t get motion sick,” Yitzhak said. “And if you do, don’t puke on me.”

  [PLEASE FASTEN YOUR SEAT RESTRAINTS. THE PLATFORM WILL DESCEND IN TEN SECONDS.]

  Quentin watched Yitzhak fasten a seatbelt around his waist, and followed suit. He silently counted to ten, and then the bottom dropped out of his world.

  The huge platform simply fell. His hands flew to the arm rests, fingers digging into the worn plastic. Falling. Falling. All around the platform, metal walls slid by at a sickening speed. Then suddenly the walls were gone, and he was looking at nothing but blue sky and clouds. His stomach roiled and he felt dizzy. Yitzhak’s warning echoed in his thoughts, and he wondered if, indeed, he might puke. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth against an onset of nausea.

  After five minutes, just when he thought he couldn’t handle it any more, the seat seemed to push against his butt and the floor seemed to press against his feet. They were decelerating. Quentin tried to calm his breathing for the next two minutes as the platform steadily pushed against him. Finally, it slowed to an almost imperceptible speed, and stopped with a slight, shaking jar.

  [WELCOME TO HUDSON BAY SURFACE STATION,] the computer voice echoed. [WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR STAY.]

  Quentin followed along as the passengers disembarked. The ground station looked like an exact copy of the orbital station, with the exception that the walls were clear and offered a breathtaking view of Hudson Bay and the surrounding complex. Waves crashed into clear walls, sending up clouds of droplets that sparkled in the sunlight before misting back down. He’d never seen so much water before, yet the footing was as rock-solid as dry land.

  To the east sprawled the Hudson Bay Airport, a flat rectangle two miles across and three miles long. The airport, elevated about a hundred feet above the water level, rested on two-dozen thick black pylons that ran below the surface. Each pylon, he was told, connected to a sub-surface pontoon some three hundred feet below the surface. Dynamic positioning systems controlled the depth and position of each pontoon, ensuring fixed positioning even in the worst storms. He watched a triangular passenger plane land, escorted in by a flight of boxy-looking Creterakian fighters.

  To the north sat Quentin’s destiny: Hudson Bay Stadium. Unlike the airport, the bottom levels of the stadium dome actually rested below the water, with the playing field sitting some 150 feet beneath the surface. A compartmentalized triple-walled hull kept the Hudson Bay waters in check, and rumor had it the stadium housed over a thousand water pumps to control leaks ranging from a tiny pin-hole to the kind of gaping wound caused by a terrorist attack.

  The massive lower bowl also rested below the surface, the top seats just peeking out above the water line. The second and third decks rested within a gleaming, crystal-clear dome that rose hundreds of feet into the air.

  To the south sat the floating wonder of Hudson Bay City. Centuries ago, the city was built to house Human and Whitok workers harvesting untold amounts of oil and natural gas from deep below the surface. The high-tech boom town saw many decades of prosperous growth, until the natural resources started to run out about the same time demand for those resources dropped due to new tech
nologies. City officials then used the platform’s isolation as a trump card to win a contract for the Earth’s second orbital elevator, the first having been built over the English Channel.

  With the orbital elevator in place, Hudson Bay City blossomed. As one of two main hubs for interstellar commerce, Hudson Bay’s economy transformed from drilling to shipping. City officials also lured tourist dollars by building the largest football stadium on Earth. The city’s former isolation turned out to be its strongest asset — set in the middle of Hudson Bay, the stadium was easily defended from the airborne terrorist attacks that plagued many other Earth facilities.

  Messal the Efficient scurried about, his helpers gathering the Krakens players.

  “We are taking the tram to the stadium,” Messal said, loud enough to be heard by forty-four Krakens and other team staff. “Please follow me.”

  The mass of players moved towards the underwater tram that would take them to the stadium, the area around them clear of other beings. Quentin noticed black-uniformed Human police all around the platform, each one armed, each one staring at the crowds of travelers with a look that promised severe trouble if anyone approached the football players. Fleeting shadows slashed across the floor — Creterakian soldiers flying through the complex, scouting for trouble.

  Quentin smiled. Hudson Bay City had trouble, alright — trouble in the form of the Ionath Krakens. Trouble for the Texas Earthlings.

  • • •

  ONE LAST PRACTICE. One last practice before the biggest game of the year.

  Quentin flowed through the plays as if he’d been created just for this one game, as if he’d been meticulously engineered to be a perfect quarterbacking machine. Lines of energy seemed to radiate from all his receivers, he saw them all in perfect clarity, delivering the ball in tight, rope-like spirals that arrived dead-center in passing windows no larger than ten inches across.

  He had to be perfect. Yassoud had the potential to be a great running back, but he was at least two seasons away from that level. Even then, it was doubtful he’d match Mitchell Fayed’s powerful, punishing style. The defense wasn’t going to consider Yassoud a major threat — most of the defensive pressure would come via blitzing and extra defensive backs, probably both at the same time. The Earthlings would make the Krakens win the game on the ground.