No Middle Ground

by Caleb Wachter

  There was a chorus of snickers in which Lu Bu even participated, having never heard this particular bit about smashball’s history before.

  “The other version—the real version—featured so little actual kicking that it’s something of a mystery to modern historians why it was even called ‘football’ in the first place,” Walter Joneson continued after the laughter had died down. “But that’s the one that persisted throughout the centuries, eventually giving birth to the greatest game ever devised by man: smashball. The rules for smashball are simple,” he said, gesturing to Corporal Gnuko, “first we have to divide our twenty two remaining Lancers into two teams of eleven, which just so happens to be the actual size of a smashball side. Gnuko, you pick first; we’ll go serpentine.”

  Gnuko nodded and gestured to the farthest Tracto-an—a hulking brute of a man named Atticus with the longest, most powerful arms Lu Bu had ever seen—“Team Gnuko takes Atticus first.”

  Lu Bu was actually offended that she had been passed over with the first pick. It was utterly inconceivable to her that anyone—not even Walter Joneson himself, given his relatively advanced age—would be more highly valued than she would for a smashball team.

  Joneson nodded and pointed the ball at Lu Bu, “Team Joneson takes Lu and Sherman.”

  Lu Bu stepped over to stand behind Walter Joneson and glared at Corporal Gnuko for daring to suggest she was in any way, shape, or form less desirable of a player than Atticus.

  “Gnuko takes Brasidas and Peleus,” the Corporal said without hesitation.

  “Joneson takes Thomas and Gagne,” the Sergeant added.

  “Gnuko takes Laertes and Hart,” Gnuko said, and Lu Bu realized this wasn’t just a game…there was some sort of lesson being taught here, and the Tracto-ans were clearly the target audience.

  The rest of the selections went off, and the two teams were assembled and squared off against each other as Walter Joneson moved to the middle of the group and turned the oblong ball, which tapered to a point on each end, over in his hands.

  “Now since the days of this sport’s infancy,” Walter Joneson explained as he stood between the two groups, “there have been minor adjustments to the rules—”

  “Sergeant,” Atticus interrupted in his deep, rumbling voice with obvious impatience, “you brought us here to play your game; we should begin.”

  Joneson slowly turned his head to face the man, and while holding the Tracto-an’s gaze, asked over his shoulder, “Lu, what’s the average length of a starting-caliber smashball player’s career?”

  “Four point three two seasons, Sergeant,” she replied snappily.

  “Four and a third years,” Joneson said before pressing various points on the practice ball, which Lu recognized as ‘setting’ the ball to recognize the two teams by their members’ biometrics. “That is a number which, despite massive improvements in medicine and kinesthesiology, has remained relatively constant throughout this sport’s history. The only significant thing that’s changed in all the centuries between Ancient Earth football and modern smashball,” he flipped the ball to Atticus, who caught it deftly, “is what you’re holding in your hands. All you’ve got to do is get that ball to the far end of the field to score.” He snickered before adding, “Shouldn’t be a problem, right?”

  With that, he turned and led his team back to a well-demarcated set of hash-marks which marked their team’s apparent starting point, and Lu Bu felt a familiar rush of endorphins as her body primed itself for her favorite game.

  “Huddle up,” he commanded as soon as they were out of immediate earshot of Team Gnuko. When the Lancers had entered the huddle, Joneson said, “You all know your positions, except you, Lu. We’re on defense,” he said, causing her to wrinkle her nose in derision. She despised defense, since it was so much less challenging than offense from a tactical standpoint. “So for this play, Lu, you’re the Leo; Gnuko will probably start out as their prime back before shifting to the line after showing those Tracto-ans the basics of the playbook. That uppity blighter thinks he can fill my shoes,” he said with a harsh chuckle. “Let’s see if he’s ready; we run a cover three shell with press-man coverage on the receivers and crash pressure at the line. You bring the prime back down, Lu—along with anyone that gets in your way,” Joneson said severely.

  “Understood, Sergeant,” she said, and she actually thought she did. This was an object lesson of some kind but she didn’t quite know what lesson was to be imparted, so she focused on doing her task to the best of her ability.

  Gnuko led his men to the line, and Joneson did likewise, with Lu Bu lining up behind her front four on the right side. Her job as the Leo was simple: get to the prime back and bring him down before he could execute a play. Of course, there were at least five men standing in her way—four of them Tracto-ans, who had all taken positions on the offensive line. Atticus was the left tackle, which seeing as Gnuko was right-handed, meant Atticus was the most likely to interdict her efforts to disrupt Corporal Gnuko.

  “Set,” Gnuko called, fixing his eyes on Lu Bu as she assumed a three point stance just outside the left tackle’s immediate zone. She had always gotten a better first step out of a three point stance, owing to her incredibly powerful lower half. “Hike!” Gnuko barked, and the center offensive lineman snapped the ball to him. Before it hit the prime back’s hands, Lu Bu had come off the line and ran straight at Atticus while blatantly lowering her shoulder at him.

  The larger man easily shucked the defensive lineman to the ground with one hand before squaring off on Lu Bu, and his quick work of the other man after just two steps was a testament to his raw, physical abilities.

  At the last step Lu Bu juked to the right, which was the obvious path to the prime back, who was still waiting for a play to develop downfield. Atticus bit on her juke, and she exploded on a cutback which she knew no ordinary human could execute without destroying their right knee. Atticus, to his credit, kept his balance and threw his long, impossibly thick arm out to corral her. But she used a simple swim move to clear his arm from her path. He was brutally strong, but she had leverage and momentum, so his body went to the ground—hard—as her momentum drug him well off-balance.

  A second later, she crashed into the Corporal and sent him to the ground while deftly making an attempt to punch the ball loose. But Gnuko was savvy, and he held onto the ball as he hit the grass, prompting Joneson to bark over the din of grunts and shouts, “Play’s dead!”

  Lu Bu stood and offered Gnuko her hand, which he accepted and the two teams quickly re-formed into their huddles. “Good work, line,” Joneson said as the huddle formed before nodding at Lu Bu, “nice juke-and-swim, Lu. That was a wicked cutback.”

  “Sergeant,” she acknowledged as the other men finally returned the huddle.

  “Alright, this will be a run, but we’re still in cover three,” Joneson said as though it was obvious, which to Lu Bu it was. “Lu, you’re the deathbacker,” he said. “We wall the line off on this one; forget about getting to Gnuko,” he said as he took a quick glance before adding, “looks like he’s got Atticus as his smash back. If he gets into the secondary, the deathbacker lays him out—fast,” he added with a pointed look.

  Lu Bu started to begin the lesson they were teaching, and nodded with a savage grin, “Yes, Sergeant.”

  The teams re-formed at the line, and sure enough Atticus was lined up behind Gnuko as the smash back while the entire offensive unit had formed into a power-running formation. Lu Bu lined up behind the front seven, just a couple steps ahead of Corporal Thomas, the lastbacker.

  “Set…hike!” Gnuko called, and the lines crashed into each other with Joneson’s team doing their best to create a contiguous wall of bodies to plug the holes. Lu Bu didn’t even need to cheat a step on the play, waiting for Atticus to actually accept the ball before she began crashing toward the scrum to provide support.

  Atticus got a hole on the right side which was just large enough for his massive girth, and he took the ball
through that hole before being met by Walter Joneson. The Sergeant managed to get a hand on the larger man before being stiff-armed viciously into the ground by the larger, burlier man.

  Having brought Joneson down, Atticus lowered his shoulder and charged into Sherman. Being nearly twice the size of the smaller man, he easily went through him but her teammates had created the ideal angle for her to attack the ball carrier—and attack she did.

  She sprinted toward the gap and turned her body into a missile, with her right shoulder directed at Atticus’s midsection as her left arm punched out as hard as she could, aiming for the ball.

  When her shoulder hit him, it was like she had struck a brick wall and she actually felt something give in her upper chest. But her left hand got through just before he was able to react to her last-second strip attempt, and the ball went flying from his massive, vice-like hands.

  Normally Lu Bu would have been able to recover the ball after a forced fumble, but the Tracto-an’s massive body had absorbed every bit of her body’s kinetic energy and she was unable to beat the other players to the quickly-formed dog-pile.

  “Play’s dead,” Joneson called, and the men in the pile slowly began to withdraw until it became clear that Team Gnuko had recovered the ball.

  “Huddle up,” she heard Gnuko snap as Team Joneson did so without being prompted. Atticus cast a dark look in Lu Bu’s direction before finally re-joining his teammates.

  “All right,” Joneson said, his nose dripping blood as he shook his head at a proffered chem-stick which would have cauterized the wound. Lu Bu also despised those devices for the fiery, stinging sensation they caused to erupt inside her skull, but she had found herself requiring their use on more than one occasion during her own playing career. “It’s the Pits getting old,” Joneson said with resignation after wadding up some gauze and plugging his nostril with it, eliciting a chorus of chuckles from her teammates. “This one’s a pass play and if I’ve got my read on the Corporal, he’s going to line Atticus up in the slot as a crossing receiver. Thomas, you’re a wingbacker on this one and I want you to press Atticus—but don’t bring him down, just slow the play and harry him. I don’t care how far that brute gets downfield—I just want this play to last five seconds, clear?”

  “You got it, Sarge,” Thomas replied with a grin.

  “That makes you the lastbacker, Lu,” Joneson said. “Everyone else, blitz at the line to clear that oaf’s path; we know where the ball’s going, and Lu’s fast enough to contain the play if Gnuko doesn’t sling it to Atticus. When the play-clock’s at five seconds, Lu will teach that pasty caveman why this game’s called ‘smashball’.”

  The other Lancers snickered, and Lu Bu felt herself swell with pride at being given such a measure of trust. The lastbacker was, arguably, the most important position on the defensive side of the ball. It required not only top-notch physical tools like speed, balance, and power, but also a sound tactical mind to not only contain every play as it developed, but to create additional pressure when pressure was needed.

  Naturally, since it was so challenging, it was Lu Bu’s favored position on defense.

  The teams lined up and Gnuko made a silent count snap, sending both sides in motion. Just as Walter Joneson had predicted, it was a pass play with Atticus running a crossing route. Thomas, though almost comically overmatched by the seven foot tall Tracto-an, kept on the larger man’s hip throughout the play. Even after Atticus received the ball two seconds into the play and attempted to stiff-arm the smaller Thomas into the ground, the Corporal kept upright and maintained pressure by somehow effectively body-checking the larger man even while off-balance.

  Three seconds into the play, Lu Bu began to drive toward the ball-carrier. Atticus viciously backhanded Thomas in the chest and his raw power was too much for the smaller man, who went flying almost two meters before landing on his feet and backpedaling to a stop.

  Four seconds into the play, Lu Bu saw Atticus adjust his grip on the ball to compensate for its increased weight and she felt a sneer spread across her face. She remembered her first time receiving a proper ‘smash’ after the ball had become unbearably heavy, and she had every intention of making his memory of the experience just as vivid as hers.

  Just as the play reached five seconds, Atticus grabbed the ball with both hands and clutched it to his belly while lowering his shoulder into the onrushing Lu Bu. But she ignored his incoming torso and unleashed a vicious, right-handed uppercut at the ball with everything she had.

  The impacts of his shoulder to her chin, and her hand to the ball, were simultaneous and her vision blacked out as she felt her body topple backward onto the grass. But her ears were filled with the low-pitch thrum of the ball’s grav-amplifier activating and she knew she had done her job. She heard a groan, followed by a thump as a massive body hit the grass.

  Staggering to her feet as quickly as she was able—and before her vision had even returned—she shook the cobwebs from her mind in order to try and gain sight the massive Tracto-an.

  When she saw him, she felt a thrill of savage satisfaction at seeing him rolling on the ground and clutching his stomach—fully four meters from their point of impact.

  “Fourth down, coming up,” Joneson barked as he gestured for his team to huddle. It took two of Gnuko’s teammates to help the massive Atticus back to his feet, and when he finally regained his breath he shot Lu Bu an enraged look before bellowing wordlessly at the clouds and rejoining his own teammates.

  Lu Bu walked stiffly back to her team’s huddle, stretching her neck as she did so. That Atticus felt like he was carved out of stone and for the first time in her life, she wasn’t sure whose body would give out first—hers, or her opponents.

  “Take a knee and a breath, Lu,” Joneson said, and her teammates murmured their agreement. “That was a beautiful smash; sit this play out if you need to.”

  Lu Bu shook her head adamantly. “This one is fine,” she replied stiffly as her vision finally cleared.

  Joneson nodded approvingly. “All right, this play’s anyone’s guess but I’d wager Atticus’s after some payback after getting his bell rung. Gnuko and I made a gentleman’s agreement to go for it on all fourths, so we’re going to run our base, cover three, press-man defense. Lu, I want you at centerbacker for this one on a read-and-react; the rest of the front will close the gaps without shooting through.”

  The teams lined up against each other, and when Lu Bu made eye contact with Atticus, she returned his look of unadulterated hatred with a smirk as she fell back a few steps from the line.

  “Hike!” Gnuko quick-counted, and the move gave his offensive linemen just enough of a jump that they drove forward and outward, using brute strength to create a gap large enough for an armored Lancer to charge through.

  Atticus accepted the ball from Gnuko as he tore into the hole and cradled the ball while bearing down on Lu Bu with murder in his eyes as he cocked his free, right hand in preparation for a running, overhand right aimed at her helmeted skull.

  But Lu Bu had expected as much, and she backpedaled a pair of steps so as to upset the timing of his incoming blow. When he unexpectedly juked to the left, rather than continue barreling toward her, she allowed her reflexes to take over and leapt forward to slam into his body with her own as she clamped her arms to either side of his chest. She received his charge by planting her feet in the grass and bracing herself like never before.

  The Tracto-an’s bulk slammed into her and actually drove her backward across the grass a half meter, but she remained upright and somehow managed to keep her feet under herself until her cleats re-gained purchase in the sod moist. For a brief instant, the two of them stood in a virtual stalemate as he expended the last of his body’s forward momentum, at which point Lu Bu ducked and grabbed a double-leg takedown—which she then used to slam the massive man onto his back.

  “Play’s dead!” Joneson barked as Atticus threw the ball away and reached down to grab Lu Bu by the neck. Caught up in the mome
nt, Lu Bu spun to the side and threw a pair of sharp, devastating knees at the Tracto-an’s flank as he clamped his massive arms around her neck and began to squeeze.

  The scuffle was broken up almost immediately by the teams’ respective captains, and for a brief moment both teams looked as though they were about to come to blows.

  “Joneson has the ball,” Gnuko snapped in genuine frustration. “Huddle up, Gnuko!”

  Atticus leveled a finger at Lu Bu and then made a short, slashing gesture across his own throat. She tilted her head defiantly and bared her teeth in a vicious snarl at the taller Lancer and held his gaze until he finally turned his back and returned to his team’s huddle.

  When Lu Bu returned to her own huddle, she saw a knowing grin on her Sergeant’s face. “Nicely done, Lu; you’re under his skin now. Let’s take advantage and send this first play to the house. Three wide-outs, single-back formation; play’s a jet fly-sweep right to left with Lu on the rock.”

  This was Lu Bu’s signature play, and she suspected that Walter Joneson had been waiting to see it in action ever since receiving her ‘resume’ in the form of a game highlight from her latest—and, perhaps, last—season of smashball.

  “This one will score,” she said confidently, and without a single ounce of bravado. She had literally never failed to score any of the six times she had run this particular play, and saw no reason for that streak to be broken now.

  They lined up near mid-field and Lu was the wide-out to the right. Sergeant Joneson sent her in motion with a tap of his right foot, and she moved from right to left—noting that Atticus, lined up as Gnuko’s deathbacker, went in motion with her from the middle of the secondary.