The Champion

by Scott Sigler

  Quentin couldn’t breathe. His pain forgotten, he watched the combatants complete one circle, then pick up speed as they rotated around a second time.

  Ju screamed nonsense so loud his face turned red and spit flew from his mouth to dangle from his chin. Maybe it was supposed to be encouragement, maybe advice, Quentin couldn’t tell.

  The fighters circled a third time, and then it was on.

  The Portath rolled down the slope, protrusions forming and shrinking back, flashing colors rippling across its skin. John continued to side-step along the rim — he wanted his opponent to come to him.

  The Gouger obliged.

  It rolled up the bowl, angling to cut off John’s circling path. The Gouger’s knife shot out, a long chameleon tongue extending and extending, blade streaking toward John’s face. John brought his own blade up fast. The two weapons clanged; the Gouger’s strike shot past John’s head, knocked slightly high from the Human’s block.

  Ju shook a fist in defiance, but the Gouger’s pseudopod snapped back as fast as it had shot out. John sensed the attack and tucked into a forward roll just before the blade took his head off. The Gouger smoothly slid clear as John tumbled past.

  John came up on his feet at the bottom of the bowl, legs bent, feet planted on either side of the drain.

  In the pause that followed, Quentin saw that the Gouger’s attack hadn’t missed completely.

  Blood oozed down John’s left cheek, spilling from a deep cut running from ear to eye. He wiped at it, blood smearing down his cheek, coating his palm and fingers. He flicked his hand, splattering red droplets that instantly soaked into the yellow-flecked red stone.

  The Gouger stayed high on the bowl’s slope, waiting for John to make the next move.

  Jeanine took a step forward and leaned over the edge. She didn’t look nervous anymore, or afraid — she looked pissed.

  “Jonathan! If you’re going to save me, then quit messing around and do it already!”

  He glanced at her, nodded.

  “Yes ma’am. Just watch this.”

  He pointed at the Gouger, curled his finger inward.

  “You, ugly ... come get some.”

  The Gouger rolled down the slope, flashing a horrid, bright neon blue.

  John spread his arms. One moment he looked normal, the next, his skin blazed, every inch of him raging with colored light. Rings of Krakens orange started at his neck and coursed down his body, alternating with rings of pitch black. His right arm glowed yellow, pulsed with thumping spots of blue-rimmed purple. His left arm strobe-flashed between emerald green and a sickly pink.

  The Gouger slowed, stopped, then seemed to stumble away from John. The bright neon blue faded, replaced by sputtering spots of color that matched the lightshow coming off John’s animated skin. The Portath seemed suddenly confused, almost drunk.

  “How brilliant,” Doc said. “The Portath talk with color — John’s display must be overwhelming it. It would be like you trying to fight while someone screams gibberish in your ear. Come on, Uncle Johnny!”

  John bellowed and rushed forward, eyes, teeth and hair the only source of constant color on his body.

  The Gouger jabbed out with the blade, trying the same move that had cut John earlier. John ducked under the sickle point and slashed upward — the Portath’s blade spun away, as did a flaccid, severed tentacle that trailed streams of yellow fluid.

  John lowered his shoulder and slammed into the Portath. Impact waves coursed through the creature’s skin. Thick yellow fluid jetted from the freshly cut stump. The Gouger rolled backward, stumbling on protrusions that wobbled with weakness, just as Quentin’s legs had wobbled after John’s sucker-punch.

  John planted on his left foot and snap-kicked with his right. His shoe plunged into the Portath, so deep Quentin thought the alien might burst open.

  The Gouger’s skin rapid-pulsed a sickly green. It slumped, boneless body slapping against the pit’s slope like gelatin dropped from a table.

  John leapt high. He came down hard, driving both feet into his enemy, gushing another splurt of yellow from the waving stump. The Gouger’s skin lost all color, leaving it a flat pale yellow dotted with eyespots of blue.

  Ju leaned forward to scream again, then his foot slipped on the edge. His arms whirled madly as he tried to keep his balance — Becca grabbed him around the waist before he fell, pulled him back even as he kept shouting.

  “Come on, big brother, finish him!”

  John raised his double-sickle blade into the air. There was hate in his eyes, hate and hunger.

  “Jonathan, no!”

  Jeanine’s scream stopped John cold. He glanced at her, as did Quentin. Tears wetted Jeanine’s cheeks — she met John’s gaze, and she shook her head.

  John looked down at his fallen foe. The Portath quivered, twitched, tried to move. It was a pathetic mockery of the massive, frightening thing that had rolled into the pit just minutes before.

  John knelt. He pressed the flat of one curved blade against the Gouger’s fading flesh. The Portath fell still. Quentin imagined that every one of the blue eyespots focused on John’s knife.

  “Normally, I’d kill you,” John said. “But Jeanine said no. Maybe you don’t speak English, booger-bag, but something tells me you know exactly what color I need to see.”

  A shiver vibrated across the Portath’s body. Then, starting in spots that spread, expanded, met and merged, the Gouger’s skin turned black.

  “The Gouger surrenders,” Hulsey called out. “John Tweedy is the champion.”

  25

  Free to Go

  THE HYPATIA’S MEDBAY was little more than a closet that held a holotank, an upright rejuve tank (there wasn’t enough room for a proper horizontal one) and some other basic equipment. Just enough to do first aid, really — but in the control of Doc Patah, it was sufficient for the minor surgery required to fix Quentin’s jaw.

  Doc finished applying nanostrips to the two-inch incision below Quentin’s cheek.

  “You will have no scarring, young Quentin, but considering my skill, that really goes without saying.”

  Quentin laughed and immediately regretted it. His head was killing him. His jaw still hurt as well, but that was a distant echo of what he’d felt when John had broken it.

  The Hypatia had left the Portath Cloud behind. While Quentin saw little difference inside the yacht — the engineers either didn’t care about the interior or hadn’t yet made any changes — the outside had changed completely. She now looked like a lethal war machine, not a rich man’s flying bauble.

  Smooth armor coated her hull. Perhaps the armor was similar to the platinum-iridium compound that made up the Portath ships, but the Hypatia’s blue sheen told Quentin that it was something different, something better.

  Her impulse engines had been replaced. Fred said the Hypatia could now maneuver like a small fighter — the only real barrier being the physical limitation of G-forces on anyone aboard — and could accelerate five times faster than before. All that from new engines that took up half the volume of the originals.

  That resulting empty space had been converted to a cargo area. Small, but enough space for three or four GFL-sized individuals to fit snugly. Portath engineers had also shielded the compartment against most scanners. If need be, the Hypatia could operate efficiently as a smuggling ship.

  The cannons, though, had been removed on Quentin’s orders. He didn’t know the law, but he was pretty sure having ship-killing weapons onboard would not make him popular with system police or customs officials. The empty cannon mounts remained; he hoped there would never be a need to fill them.

  Doc Patah pressed his mouth-flaps against the outside of Quentin’s jaw.

  “Open wide,” he said.

  Quentin did.

  “Excellent,” Patah said. “Now close, squeeze gently.”

  Quentin did that as well.

  Patah let go.

  “The fracture is fused,” he said. “I inserted bone-growth
nanocytes at the break, which will continue to improve the area. It will be stronger than your original bone. You will never have a break there again, I assure you. That is the good news. The bad news is that John’s punch gave you another concussion.”

  Quentin sighed. He’d suspected as much. “How long will my brain feel like mush?”

  “A few days. Possibly more. Each successive concussion, in effect, builds on the damage of the one before it, and you’ve had several.”

  The Harrah stopped working and fell still. He floated in place, only the tips of his wings undulating slightly.

  “Quentin, you are still young for your species, but you have played four seasons of Upper Tier ball. You have had injuries. The hits you’ve taken ... not all of the effects will go away. Some pain you will carry for the rest of your life. Are you truly aware of that?”

  Between the regular season and the playoffs, Quentin had pretty much been in constant pain for the last four months. He even had a few bruises left over from the Galaxy Bowl. Would those various scrapes and boo-boos still be there after a few weeks of off-season rest? Probably, but some of his pains felt different, like they were going to be with him for a long time.

  Maybe he wasn’t healing as fast as he used to. Maybe he wasn’t a kid anymore. Or, maybe, his body just couldn’t keep up with the constant punishment.

  Don Pine had talked about it from time to time, how his body wore down as he put more seasons behind him. Sometimes Don would wince for no reason. Sometimes he would have to sit out for a few practice snaps, when some old injury flared up. That was the price of being a GFL quarterback — Don Pine was willing to pay that price, and so was Quentin Barnes.

  “It’s the life I’ve chosen, Doc. I understand.”

  The Harrah made a hmmmm noise, insinuating that Quentin didn’t really understand at all.

  “Pain I can handle, Doc. What I’m worried about is if this concussion affects my ability to play. Is this one bad?”

  “A concussion is never good,” Patah said. “I will need to take a closer look when we return to Ionath. You Humans are susceptible to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition associated with repeated head traumas. For all the injuries we see in football, CTE ends more careers than anything else.”

  Ends careers. The phrase put a coppery taste of fear at the back of Quentin’s mouth. All his life he had hungered for one thing: to be a quarterback. He didn’t know how to do anything else, didn’t want to do anything else. To stay on the field, he’d sewn up his arm with Kevlar thread and a knitting needle made to repair jerseys. He’d cut off his own finger. He’d played through broken ribs, leg injuries, arm injuries, and he knew that more damage awaited him as the seasons rolled on. But to think it would be a basic element of football — hits to the head — that might take him off the field for good?

  The concept terrified him.

  And one of those big hits hadn’t come while playing football: it had come from his best friend.

  “Why did John have to hit me so hard?”

  “Hmmmmm,” Doc Patah said.

  “I want to kill him.”

  “It is because he hit you in the head so hard that you have the option of killing him. If you had fought for your sister, Quentin, instead of John, I suspect you would be dead.”

  Quentin huffed. “I could have beaten the Gouger.”

  “Hardly,” Doc Patah said. “Do you have a full-body tattoo that you could use to confuse your Portath opponent?”

  “I’m fast. I could have won without that trick.”

  “I’ve tested the reaction time of every player on the team. I assure you, John Tweedy is your equal in speed. And what you call a trick, young Quentin, I call strategy. I have noticed that sentients — yourself included — tend to think that John is all fury and no intellect. You are obviously wrong. His idea was brilliant. It saved your life, and it freed Jeanine and Fred.”

  Possibly, but had it trimmed a year or two off Quentin’s career?

  “Whatever, Doc. John could have just punched me in the stomach.”

  “You exhaust me, young Quentin. I imagine it’s a good thing John is with Bumberpuff, then. Has Rosalind departed yet?”

  “Not yet,” Quentin said. “They’re finishing up their prep now, should be leaving any minute.”

  Ju, Fred, Doc Patah and Becca had come with Quentin on the Hypatia. George, John, Kimberlin and Jeanine had instead gone with Bumberpuff and Rosalind to deliver the data to Petra. Quentin wasn’t crazy about being separated from his sister almost as soon as he’d found her, but she wanted to see Prawatt space, and Quentin had had his fill of traveling.

  Doc Patah reached into his pack and withdrew a vial of pills. “Simple painkillers. Take two, call me in the morning.”

  Quentin took the vial. “Thanks, Doc.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Quentin walked into the salon, where Becca and Ju sat next to each other on a couch.

  “Hey,” Ju said. “Did Doc wire your mouth shut? Do you want me to do sign language for you?”

  “No, I can talk.”

  “Oh,” Ju said. “That’s too bad.” His laugh was a snort.

  Becca shoved Ju’s shoulder. “Hey, be nice!”

  Ju’s chest shook with laughter.

  Becca stood. The corner of her mouth twisted up in that small smile Quentin loved so much.

  “Clean bill of health, Q?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing that will stop me from playing football. Does anything else really matter?”

  She sighed. “Lots of things, Q. Lots of things.”

  He took in her dark eyes, her darker hair, the shape of her face. They’d faced danger in the Cloud, but that was over. They were safe. Six days remained before they reached Ionath. Plenty of time to tell her how he felt, and with only three other sentients aboard, he could finally get her alone.

  “After we talk to Bumberpuff, I need to talk to you,” he said. “Privately.”

  Her smile faded. “About football?”

  He shook his head. “About one of the other things that really matters.”

  Her eyes widened a little. She started to say something, but stopped when Fred entered the parlor.

  “Q, you look fine,” Fred said. “Doc patch you all up?”

  Quentin nodded.

  “Excellent. I know you want to get to Ionath fast and check on Messal, so I plotted the fastest course. I doubt we’ll be stopped, but if we are, you, Becca, Ju and Doc hide in the storage area. That way no one recognizes your famous faces. We’ll have you back at Ionath, then you can make up whatever story you want for Gredok.”

  Quentin would figure out that story on the way. It wouldn’t take much, just an excuse why he bailed from the goodwill mission to Prawatt space. The important thing was to get back to Messal before Gredok discovered the Worker’s lies.

  “Thank you, Fred.”

  Fred smiled, bowed with a flourish. “No, thank you. It’s the least I can do for my rescuing heroes. And speaking of heroes, the rest of them want to say goodbye — Rosalind just hailed us.”

  Fred activated the room’s holotank. The image flared to life, showing Bumberpuff, Kimberlin, George, John and Jeanine standing on Rosalind’s bridge. Everyone looked bright-eyed and ready to depart. Even John, who wore a nanocyte patch on the side of his face, held there by a blood-spotted white bandage wrapped around his forehead.

  Jeanine waved excitedly.

  “Hey, brother!”

  “Hey,” Quentin said, so happy to hear her say that word, so sad she wasn’t with him on the Hypatia. “Ready for your big adventure?”

  “Totally. Look at us — two dirt-poor kids from Micovi, and we’ll both have seen the Portath Cloud and Prawatt space. Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

  Quentin nodded, wondered if he looked as tired as he felt.

  “I’m sure. You’ll see amazing things. Hey, Rosalind, are you listening?”

  “I am,” the ship said. As always, th
ere was nothing specific to look at, but the sound of her voice was now familiar and comforting.

  “I don’t know if I’ll see you again,” Quentin said. “I want to say thank you and goodbye.”

  “Oh, such a nice young man,” Rosalind said. “Maybe someday we’ll have that chat about religion. I don’t mind if you have more important things to do than talk to me.”

  Quentin smiled. Her passive-aggressive complaints didn’t bother him anymore. Maybe that was because she’d helped him so much, or maybe it was because he wouldn’t be spending the next few months with her.

  “You know, Rosalind, George has some very interesting religious beliefs. If you were to make sure he takes his medicine every day, I bet the two of you could have a nice, long kibitz.”

  George’s face lit up. He always wanted to talk about his “old ones,” and no one ever wanted to listen.

  “How interesting,” Rosalind said. “I’ll definitely take care of George for you.”

  “Take care of all of them,” Quentin said. He looked at Kimberlin. “They’re my family.”

  Kimberlin smiled, gave Quentin a single, knowing nod.

  “And all of you, keep my sister safe,” Quentin said. “She seems to have a knack for finding trouble.”

  Jeanine blew him a kiss. “Don’t worry, baby brother. If trouble does come up, I’ve got my champion—” she gave John a playful elbow in the ribs “—here to take care of me.”

  Something scrolled across John’s forehead, but Quentin couldn’t read it due to the bandage wrapped around his head.

  “I got it covered, Q,” John said. He put his hand on Jeanine’s shoulder. “I’m pretty sure everything is going to work fine. Juuuuuust fine.”

  Jeanine reached up and squeezed John’s hand.

  John smiled wide. There was something off about that smile ...

  “Time to go,” Fred said. “We’re punching out in sixty seconds. John, take care of my girl Jeanine. Jeanine, take care of my boy John. And Rosalind, safe travels.”