The Champion

by Scott Sigler

  And to top it off, a white-furred Quyth Worker dressed in a white GFL administrator uniform, standing next to a purple-skinned Human woman with short white hair. It was seeing those last two that let Quentin know he was screwed.

  “Yolanda Davenport,” he said. “And Whykor...the Aware, is it?”

  The Worker bowed.

  “Exceptional recall abilities, Mister Barnes,” Whykor said. “And may I say your season thus far has been spectacular. Why, statistically speaking, you are on pace to—”

  “Later,” Quentin said. “Whatever this is about, I want to get down to business.”

  It had to be Sandoval. Froese wouldn’t have escorted Yolanda here, using the GFL’s flagship to do so, and come to Quentin’s room himself unless she had a big, big story brewing — something that could embarrass the league. Sandoval, obviously ... only that didn’t explain why Leiba held a stun-stick, especially when the power-armored Sklorno looked like they could wipe out all the Krakens in a matter of minutes.

  Quentin owed Yolanda big-time for setting up that meeting with his sister, but if this was about Sandoval, he had to deny everything. Even dead, Sandoval had the power to turn Quentin into Public Enemy Number One. Quentin hated himself for it, but he needed to go on the offensive.

  “Can’t wait to hear what this is about, Yolanda,” he said. “The last story you did on me turned out so well.”

  Froese pointed his stubby finger at Quentin’s couch.

  “Sit,” the commissioner said. “I’ll do the talking.”

  “Shouldn’t Gredok be here for this?”

  “I don’t want him here,” Froese said. “That’s why I came when I did, because I know he’s not on the ship. Now sit.”

  Quentin sat.

  Gredok wasn’t making the trip to D’Oni, but the Touchback was still in orbit over Ionath; Froese could have easily requested Gredok’s presence. Even more worrying was the absence of Hokor, who was on the ship. Froese and Yolanda wanted Quentin isolated, without allies.

  The commissioner stared. For such a tiny sentient, he had power in his eyes: the power of total authority and absolute conviction in what he did.

  “We know,” he said.

  Froese waited, as did the others. Quentin looked at each of them in turn, wondering if maybe this time he was the one who didn’t get the joke.

  “Good for you,” Quentin said. “You know ... what, exactly?”

  Froese stood. He wasn’t much taller standing than he was sitting.

  “You want to play games, Barnes?”

  Quentin shrugged. “That is how I make my living, Commish.”

  Froese’s dead-eye glare continued. Quentin took the moment of silence to read the man: a bit of a flush to the dark complexion; eyes dilated more than the other times Quentin had talked to him; left thumb making small, almost imperceptible circles on the left pointer finger. Those signs indicated that Froese was doing his best to hide fear.

  Fear? Of what ... of Quentin? Why would the commissioner be afraid of him? If Froese had found out about Sandoval’s blackmail, that would make him angry, not afraid ... at least not afraid of Quentin.

  “Look, Commish, I honestly don’t know why you’re here. What I do know is that you came into my quarters without being invited. I don’t know where you grew up, but on Micovi that’s called breaking and entering. I also know you’re holding up our trip to D’Oni. Whatever you know about me can’t be that shocking, because all I do is play football.”

  And make deals with blackmailing agents of the CMR, and be the focal point of a church of millions, and integrate new species into the league, and stop wars ... you’ve been a busy boy, Quentin Barnes.

  Froese’s hard glare wavered. He seemed unsure. He glanced at Yolanda.

  Ah ... so this was her doing after all. Now Quentin would find out what was happening.

  She let out a slow breath of air. Her purple skin looked darker in the cheeks. Her eyes were wide, her nostrils flared ... she, too, was afraid.

  What the hell was going on?

  “I’ve been working on a story,” she said.

  “Well, you are a reporter,” Quentin said. “I imagine you’re always working on a story.”

  She shook her head. “Not like this. This is the big one. If it was anyone else, I would have already written and filed the story, but I was wrong about you once.”

  He crossed his arms. “That’s a rather kind way of putting it.”

  She’d accused him of tanking games in her exposé on how the Krakens — Quentin included — had abused the GFL’s diplomatic immunity to help a known killer — Julius Tweedy — escape justice. She’d been wrong across the board. Yolanda had made up for that mistake a few times over, sure, but the weeks following that story had been among the most difficult in Quentin’s life.

  “I won’t make that same mistake again,” she said. “That’s why I’m here now, before I file the story. Right now only the people in this room know.”

  “The people in this room, minus one,” Quentin said. “Can we stop with all this crap and get to the point?”

  Leiba the Gorgeous stood up. The two power-armored Sklorno shifted in place a little, widened their stances as if they were getting ready for action.

  Yolanda nodded. Her nostrils flared even wider. She’d been afraid earlier ... now she was terrified.

  “All right, let’s do this,” she said. “Quentin Barnes, how long have you been a leader in the Zoroastrian Guild?”

  He stared at her, waiting for her to say something like just kidding, now on to the REAL question. She didn’t. All she did was stare back at him.

  Froese and Leiba waited for his answer.

  The two white-armored Sklorno stood stock still.

  Quentin heard a slight hum droning from Leiba’s stun-stick.

  He suddenly realized something he’d missed: Froese usually traveled with a flock of white-suited, entropic-rifle-carrying Creterakians. They were as much a part of his intimidating entourage as the power-armored Sklorno.

  Quentin understood why the bats had been left behind. The ZG’s terrorist attacks had killed hundreds of thousands of Creterakians. Sure, the bats didn’t see death the same way Humans and Quyth did, but kill off a hundred thousand of any species and the survivors are going to be a little bit pissed. If Yolanda had leveled her accusation at Quentin in the presence of armed Creterakians, he might have already been dissolving from entropic rifle fire.

  Quentin gave his head a shake. He had to get control of himself, stop whatever tells he might be giving off that would reveal his emotional state. But if he was giving off tells, that was okay, wasn’t it? Because he wasn’t a part of that murderous group.

  “I’ve never been in the Guild, Yolanda,” he said. “This is even more ludicrous than when you accused me of tanking games.”

  She nodded slightly, as if she had been expecting something along those lines.

  “Like I said, Quentin, that’s why I’m here.”

  Could this season get any stranger?

  “I can’t wait to hear your reasons,” he said. “Because whatever went down, I was probably busy robbing a liquor store that day.”

  No one laughed. It was a strange sensation: he felt like he was in trouble, a lot of trouble, yet he had done nothing wrong.

  Yolanda started to speak, then stopped and activated her palm-up display. Quentin saw her reading her notes, saw her nodding slightly: she obviously had the information memorized, yet wanted to check it again before she spoke, just to be sure.

  “I have evidence of communication going to and from known Guild cells,” Yolanda said. “These communications occurred when the Touchback was in orbit around a planet for an away game.”

  She was serious. She actually thought someone in the Krakens franchise was involved with those butchers?

  “That could be anything,” Quentin said. “The Guild is probably communicating all over the place. And aren’t you supposed to be a sports reporter?”

  “
I’m a reporter, first and foremost,” she said. “I cover sports, and since this story involves a pro football team, I’m on it.”

  “You’re making blind accusations because of a couple of messages?”

  “Not a couple,” she said. “Twelve of them, over four seasons’ worth, beginning with your second year as a Kraken, which was your first year in Tier One. My source uncovered hundreds of coded messages, from multiple cities and on multiple planets. Twelve of the messages in question came from the same device. All twelve of those messages occurred when the Touchback was in orbit at that particular city. The correlation is too strong to be chance.”

  Quentin couldn’t believe what he was hearing. If Yolanda and Whykor’s information was accurate, someone in the Krakens organization was a member of the Guild — a group that murdered civilians, that sought to overthrow Creterakian rule, that had just caused the Bord uprising.

  “You’re making a big accusation here,” Quentin said. “Really big. Who is your source for this?”

  Yolanda shook her head. “My source remains confidential.”

  “Of course it does,” Quentin said, not bothering to hide his disgust. “You can just waltz in here and spout off accusations all you like, and you don’t have to prove anything, is that it?”

  Yolanda’s expression hardened. Some of the fear melted way. He had just challenged her, and she was responding with aggression — the same way he would if someone challenged him on the football field.

  “The primary source doesn’t matter, Barnes, because that source provided only the first two intercepted messages,” she said. “Since then, I’ve discovered the other ten messages myself, through other means. My proof is solid, and if you really want to see it, just keep flapping your gums and it will be there for you and the entire galaxy to see when I publish my story.”

  “Take it easy,” Froese barked. “We’re here to get his side of it, not to threaten him that you’re going to run the story no matter what he says.”

  Yolanda calmed herself. She nodded.

  Froese turned to Quentin. “Whykor independently verified her information, using our own sources in Planetary Union Intelligence and the Non-Creterakian Intelligence Agency. There is zero question, Barnes — messages sent to and from this ship reached Zoroastrian Guild cells.”

  “What if it’s someone who isn’t with the organization anymore?” Quentin asked. “It could have been Don Pine for all we know.”

  Froese looked at Whykor. The white-furred Worker stepped forward.

  “The dates of known communications point to someone who is currently on the roster now, Mister Barnes,” Whykor said. “The first encrypted message correlates to Week Seven of the 2683 season, when the Krakens visited the Lu Juggernauts. Another was received last season, when Ionath visited Buddha City Station — Mister Pine had been traded to the Jupiter Jacks before then and was not on the Touchback at the time. The most recent incident occurred this season, the day after Ionath’s Week Four game at Yall. A message was intercepted at planet Ol in the Ki Rebel Establishment, the same day the Touchback was in orbit there.”

  Quentin remembered the trip. Ol — home of the Brigands — was the first punch-point en route from Yall to Neptune.

  “That message was partially decrypted,” Froese said. “We haven’t got it all, but there were definitely phrases in that message that mention an uprising and an attack on downtown. Any guess as to what city was mentioned?”

  Quentin’s anger faded away. This couldn’t be happening.

  “Bord,” he said. “It was a message about an attack on Bord.”

  Froese nodded. “Three weeks before the uprising that damaged Freedom Stadium and killed thousands of sentients all over that planet.”

  “So decrypt the rest of the messages,” Quentin said. “Wouldn’t that let you see who it is?”

  “We’re trying,” Froese said. “I have top sentients working on that, but the encryption is beyond military grade. We’ve been able to get bits and pieces only.”

  Yolanda was a reporter. She got paid for page views, so she might be prone to sensationalizing things if she smelled a great story. But Froese? He had nothing to gain from making this up, everything to gain from ignoring it or claiming Yolanda’s information was wrong.

  “Say you’re right,” Quentin said. “Say these messages are coming from the Touchback. You don’t know it’s a player, right? It could be a member of the crew, someone from the administrative area?”

  Froese shook his head. “I told you we decrypted parts of some messages. Three of the messages involved information about meeting planetside, to deliver or receive material, like data cubes. Players have diplomatic immunity — the crew does not. Players, like you, Barnes, can’t be searched when you arrive at a planet, but if any crewmember goes down they are searched and their belongings are recorded. That means we can check customs records — for two of those meetings, no crewmember left the Touchback at all, and for one, the crewmember had nothing on her when she went planetside. That means if the messages came from the Touchback, they came from a player, your coach, or your owner.”

  “If,” Quentin said. “If-if-if. You don’t know for sure, do you? It could be some other ship that just happened to be at those planets.” He thought of Sandoval, following the team from game to game. “It could be a fan traveling to all of our games, could be someone using us for cover—” he glanced at Yolanda, suddenly hoping she’d take a hint “—it could be a reporter assigned to the Krakens, couldn’t it?”

  Froese smoothed his tie. “That’s why Whykor is here, Barnes. He knows the electronic signature of the device in question. We know messages were received on planets where the Touchback was in orbit. If Whykor can verify that those messages were sent from the Touchback, that proves someone in the Krakens organization is part of the ZG.”

  “He’ll find it,” Yolanda said. “It might take him a day or two, even a few weeks, but he will find it.”

  Something about the tone of her voice told him she couldn’t run the story without that verification. But if she got it tomorrow — or anytime before the playoffs, for that matter — it would destroy the Krakens’ season.

  Don’t forget that sentients might have died because of this, Quentin, or that more might die if more messages are sent — maybe you should think about that in addition to football?

  They wouldn’t show Quentin the proof. But he’d met with the commissioner, and he trusted the man’s intentions. This wasn’t a witch-hunt, this wasn’t a payoff — this was real.

  “All I can tell you is it’s not me,” Quentin said. “So what now, Froese? You going to have your buddies over there in the powered armor drag me to your ship to never be heard from again?”

  Froese walked closer. Quentin struggled to control a swirling rage, but he realized he wasn’t angry at Froese anymore, or even at Yolanda — someone on the Krakens was in league with terrorists, someone had used the organization to commit mass murder.

  “Barnes, I’m going to ask you one more time,” Froese said. “Do you have any connection with the Guild?”

  Quentin crossed his arms and stared down. “No.”

  Froese turned to Yolanda. “We’re going with Plan B.”

  “Whaf?” She pointed at Quentin. “That’s it? You’re just going to take his word for it? If he’s one of them, he can lie as easily as taking a breath. At least give him a lie detector test or something.”

  “Not necessary,” Froese said. “And there’s no time — the Krakens have to get to New Whitok for this week’s game. And besides ... I believe him.”

  Quentin felt justified, even more so because of the indignant outrage written all over Yolanda’s face.

  “You’re worried about a game,” she said. “Unless you get some kind of proof he’s not involved, then you can’t give him a free pass, you hear me? I’ll run the story as-is, Froese. You can’t just decide that he’s innocent! There’s a terrorist on this ship, and—”

  “I can decide
anything I like!”

  Froese’s scream even made Quentin flinch. It stopped Yolanda cold.

  The commissioner then spoke softly, which in its own way was even more frightening than the scream.

  “Perhaps you don’t understand who I am,” he said to Yolanda. “I am the commissioner of the Galactic Football League. My authority is given to me by the Creterakian Emperor. If someone is a threat to the league, I can make them—” he snapped his fingers “—go away.”

  Yolanda’s face changed color, from a purple of flushed anger to a paler shade, almost blue. So visible was the change it reminded Quentin of a Quyth cornea.

  Froese saw it, too.

  “Good, you get it,” he said. “This news could do too much damage to the league — you’re not going to run anything until we find out who it is, so the public gets their bad guy and there aren’t any lingering questions. And besides, Yolanda, tell me honestly ... do you really think Barnes could be behind this?”

  Still a little shell-shocked from Froese’s implied threat, she looked at Quentin, held his gaze for a moment, then sighed.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t. You’re right ... Plan B.”

  He wasn’t the primary suspect anymore, but something told him he didn’t get to just walk away.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “I’m part of Plan B?”

  “Yolanda will stay on board to do a story on you,” Froese said. “An all-access feature on the Galaxy Bowl MVP and how he goes about his daily life. That gives her a reason to be around you all the time. And that means she can keep digging. Whykor?”

  “Yes, Commissioner?”

  “You stay on board as Yolanda’s assistant. You’ve done that in the past, so it shouldn’t raise too much suspicion. That gives you nine days — four days there, game day, and four days back — to find what you need.”

  Whykor’s fur fluffed. “But, Commissioner, it could take longer than—”

  Froese wheeled on him. “Nine days. This trip is the longest time we can justify you being on board without Gredok getting suspicious. You get the info by then, end of story.”

  Quentin noticed that the color had returned to Yolanda’s face, and then some. She wasn’t looking directly at anyone. She seemed ... embarrassed? Then it clicked.