Road to Abaddon

by Vincent Heeringa

  Behind Jonah was empty space and a single goalie. It was up to him to stop the rushing attacker. The boy, tall but deft, carried the ball in one hand and rushed at Jonah with a ferocious glare. Jonah stood his ground, counting down the steps to the dummy sidestep and prepared to cut left. Sure enough, within two paces the boy jigged right, expecting Jonah to swallow the feint and be wrong-footed. But Jonah only moved his head, tricking the boy, who then straightened and ran into Jonah’s waiting tackle.

  Standing low and ready, Jonah thrust his shoulder into the boy’s chest, throwing him backwards and dislodging the ball from his hand. Winded and shocked, the attacker was flattened and Jonah snatched the ball and sprinted unopposed down the Condor flank lobbing a pass to a Scorpio centre who sank a five-pointer, just as the full-time whistle blew.

  Scorpio Squad went nuts, rushing onto the field to mob Jonah and the scorer. It was Scorpio’s first win and a narrow one at that. Everyone could see that Jonah’s reading of the game made the difference and, as much as it annoyed Grace, it was the last time he started as reserve.

  In the days that followed, rushball took over the lives of Scorpio Squad. Sure, there was fitness in the morning, followed by classroom and weapons training before lunch. But nothing could quell the excitement of the afternoon contest. Scorpio had three more games that week and won them all. Jonah felt Grace’s ice melt a little as he proved himself a reliable wing-attack. He even scored a couple of baskets, one from outside the circle. But he chose more often to pass, so others could take the glory. “All in good time,” he assured Hugo, who wondered why Jonah was such a reluctant hero.

  In the fifth game, Scorpio came up against Panther and Viper, who shared the lead of the table. It was inevitable that they’d meet Viper Squad. They didn’t need the win to remain contenders, but victory in the early rounds meant bragging rights, something that Jonah desperately wanted over Viper captain, Tyrone Grainger.

  Rain had been falling all morning, so that by game time the fields were steaming and the turf squelched underfoot. Hugo and Grace had gone down early to meet with the Panther’s negotiator. If there was any dirty deal with Viper then Hugo would squeeze it out of the Panther boys – he’d sit on them if he had to.

  Jonah pretended to practice with a small bunch of players, doing his best to stay within ear-shot of Hugo and eager to hear just what the Panthers were planning. He didn’t notice that Tyrone Grainger and the Viper thugs had joined the practice, kicking and passing the balls among the other players.

  As Jonah strained to hear or lip-read the negotiators Tyrone had turned the practice to a game of tackle, with the players trialling different moves and discussing the merits of the ankle tackle compared to the crash.

  Occasionally a ball would be thrown Jonah’s way and he absent-mindedly tossed it back. His attention was on the negotiations.

  So he was unprepared when he caught a pass and then was flattened by a rushing Tyrone Grainger. The big boy hit him hard in the chest, breaking a rib with a loud crack, and banging his face with his forehead. For a moment, Jonah was knocked out, stars swimming in his eyes and prickles forming at the back of his head. He woke to find Tyrone’s sweaty face inches from his own.

  “And that is how we deal with rats,” hissed Tyrone.

  Then he leapt up and shouted: “Feng it! Sorry Salvatore. Are you okay? I thought you were part of the practice. Medic!”

  Jonah lay winded on the ground, amazed at Tyrone’s unprovoked attack. His first instinct was to get up and punch his snide face but the pain in his ribs was sharp and his cheek was swelling. Tyrone smiled as he saw the grimace on Jonah’s face. “Oh no,” he said in mock sympathy. “It looks like you’re injured. You better wait for the nurses, eh?”

  By now a group was forming. They all knew what happened but no one said a word. Then Hugo burst through, shoving the Viper players aside.

  “Jonah! Jonah! Let me through. Are you okay? What happened?” he asked.

  Jonah tried to speak but it hurt to breathe. “Tyrone ... tackle,” he said.

  “What a surprise,” replied Hugo, who stood up and confronted the smirking boy. “Is this your idea of a practice, you meat-head?”

  Tyrone stuck his chest out and glared at Hugo. “I can’t help it if your famous friend is too weak to take a tackle. We’re not playing tiddlywinks here, fattie.”

  Hugo shoved his face into Tyrone’s. “No, we’re not playing games. We’re playing for keeps. And only a few of us will make it out of here as soldiers. The rest, as wannabes. You better remember who you’re making enemies with.”

  “I know exactly who my enemies are,” snarled Tyrone, closing in on Hugo’s face. “Question is, does he?”

  Hugo shoved Tyrone away but the bully just laughed and sauntered off with a group of smirking Vipers.

  Before long, Jonah floated off the field on a medibot and out in the back of an ambupod. As the doors closed, Jonah saw Tyrone in a circle of players replaying the tackle and laughing. Hugo and the Scorpio squad looked on with dismay.

  An hour later, in a cool medical room, Jonah sat on a plastic-coated bed and held an ice pack against his swollen cheek. His chest was already wrapped in bandages and his arm hung in a sling. Holorays revealed two broken ribs, a fractured wrist and one heck of a swollen cheekbone.

  One thought nagged at him, though. Not the unprovoked hit or the laughter of the Viper team – that was easy to understand: just bullying, plain and simple. No, it was Tyrone’s whispered insult that played over in his head. That’s how we deal with rats. It was said with pure bile, and whispered for no one else to hear.

  “Huge-oh?”

  “S’up?” said Hugo, who sat on a bed opposite.

  “Did you hear what Tyrone said to me?”

  “Was it something like ‘Give me a hug’?”

  “Ha, ha.” Jonah laughed, then grimaced with pain. “No, he whispered something to me. When we were on the ground. He said, ‘That’s how we deal with rats’. I don’t get it. I know he’s got it in for me, being from a famous family and all. I get that. But a ‘rat’. That’s a new one.”

  Hugo coughed.

  “What?” asked Jonah.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yes, you did. You just coughed. You never cough. Not like that, anyways.”

  “Yes I do.” Hugo coughed again. “There you go. Another cough.”

  “That was different. You know something but you’re not telling. You’re a terrible liar.”

  “You barely know me. How would you know?”

  “Shut up. I can see straight through you.”

  “There’s a lot to see through.”

  “Don’t change the subject. Come on! You know why he called me a rat. I deserve to know.”

  Hugo looked uncomfortable and then cleared his throat as if to speak, but a nurse walked in with everything needed to stitch Jonah’s face. The moment was gone. A needle with anesthetic slid into Jonah’s cheek and he soon had five stitches across his mug. The mark of a rat, he thought and wondered what it all meant.

  That evening in the mess, Viper’s henchmen gathered around Tyrone’s table, casting knowing smiles at Jonah. The anesthetic had worn off now and the stitches ached, as if Tyrone had succeeded in getting under his skin.

  He’d barely noticed that Grace was standing in front of him, carrying her tray of food. “You wouldn’t think they’d actually lost the game,” she said.

  “Um, what? Sorry?” Jonah said, surprised that she spoke to him.

  “Didn’t you know? We won. Whipped their sorry arses. Thirty-two, twenty-seven, eighteen. Now look at them. The only thing they can talk about is how they smashed you up. Pathetic,” she said and walked away.

  A smile crept across his lips. Victory. On two counts. It felt sweet. It lifted him out of his introspection.

  “There you go, champ,” laughed Hugo, reaching over and forking one of Jonah’s pork-flavoured buns. “Taking one for the team. What a hero!”

  “Sh
e talked to me,” marvelled Jonah.

  But Hugo wasn’t listening. Not when there was pork bun to devour.

  Chapter 7 - A revelation

  Broken ribs take weeks to heal and rushball is no way to speed up the recovery. So a very frustrated Jonah watched the next games from the stands. To bide the time, he examined Grace’s strategy and it soon became apparent that, though Grace was a strong captain, she was no strategist. Uncompromising and fit, she used discipline to keep Scorpio Squad in the game. But as the competition wore on, Scorpio was being outdone. First, they lost to Condors, through set moves and clever passing. Then they lost to Dragons, who used substitutes to confuse Scorpio’s defence. But it was the loss to Viper in their next meeting that really hurt. Tricked into an alliance with the Hawks, Grace discovered too late that they’d been double-crossed. Hawks had already been bought and allowed the Viper attackers to use their space uncontested. The result – 37 Viper, 25 Hawks and 21 Scorpio – was the worst loss yet.

  The win meant Viper was the first team to qualify for a quarter final spot – and they rubbed it in with the insufferable gloating of Tyrone and his mob.

  After watching Grace trudge off the field to the jeers of Viper fans, Jonah limped over and offered her a cool, dry towel.

  “Thanks,” she muttered. “I supposed you wished you were out there to save the day.”

  Jonah lifted his broken arm. “I’m no good to anybody.”

  “Yeah, well maybe you should be. You’ve got an elevated position up there in the stands. What can you see from your sofa that I can’t?”

  “You really want to know?” asked Jonah.

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t mean to.”

  “Oooookay,” he ventured. “Well, since you asked. You’re not using your flanks well enough. You’re bunched in the centre-pitch, scrapping for territory. But when you lose possession they get it wide and exploit your wings.”

  Grace narrowed her eyes. “Go on, Einstein.”

  “Sometimes you get tricked and double-crossed, but mostly that’s not it. Hugo’s plenty smart enough. You’re not passing wide enough.”

  Grace scraped the mud with her foot. She seemed to be listening.

  “And what do you suggest? We already have a formation that everyone’s learned. You want to change the field?”

  “No, the formation’s not the issue. The key is using it better.”

  And he explained what he’d observed, recalling each fatal interception and misplaced pass. Without notes he was able to replay the games in exhaustive detail, describing the players’ strengths and weakness and even calculating their distance traveled per game. He was just warming up when Grace put up both hands in mock defeat.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “Feng it, if I knew you’d written the Uberpedia on rushball I might have asked your opinion earlier. So cut to the chase: what shall we do?”

  Jonah’s stomach gave a little leap. He had her confidence. Broken arm or not, he was back in the team. Jonah’s advice was succinct, “Let me run the practices; you run the games.”

  Grace pulled a funny face, like a grimace, though he picked up the hint of a smile.

  “Very well, professor. Have it your way. But I’m still captain. You’re just a brain with a broken limb.”

  Jonah laughed and the two stood in silence for a moment.

  “You know,” he said, “Hugo told me about your parents.”

  “What of it?” Her tone was testy again.

  “Well my dad was killed by Landers too ...”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Grace cut him off. “Who doesn’t know about the great Petreus Salvatore. What about it? Want to start an orphans’ support group?”

  “No”, he retorted, annoyed at her sarcasm. “I want to find his killers and give them what they deserve. Why do you think I’m here? You’re not the only one who wants to blast those mutant freaks to hell and back. You need to lighten up a bit. We’re on the same side here, Grace.”

  Grace glared at him.

  “You don’t give the orders here, Salvatore. And you don’t get to tell me who or what I should be,” she snarled and she threw her gloves into her helmet.

  “I just meant that together we’re stronger. I’ve got the brains and you ...” Jonah began but Grace was already stalking off, back to the barracks.

  Jonah boiled. It was bad enough to be bullied by Tyrone. “You’re a stuck-up cow, you know that Grace King!” he shouted after her.

  Without turning, Grace showed him her middle finger, a gesture that meant nothing to Jonah until he looked it up later in the holohistories.

  Later that night Jonah sat in a quiet corner of the Scorpio common room working on an assignment for aerial trigonometry and sipping his Mets. If he was to make it all the way to Flight School, like GK and Petreus before him, then mastering the complexity of three-dimensional space was essential. Most kids hated AT. Jonah revelled in it.

  He was so absorbed in the hologram that floated above his lapdeck, that he didn’t notice Hugo and Grace standing beside him.

  “Ahem,” said Hugo. “May we interrupt the genius at work?”

  “No, shove off, I’m busy,” said Jonah without looking up. He was done trying to talk to Grace.

  “Feng it, let’s go. He’s nerding out,” Grace said and started to leave.

  “Oi! Captain King, sit!” growled Hugo and to Jonah’s surprise Grace flopped into the beanbag next to him.

  “Now,” continued Hugo. “I hear our little friendship’s less than friendly. This won’t do, will it?”

  Grace shrugged her shoulders and Jonah kept playing his hologram.

  “Hey, Salvatorus, stop fiddling, I’m talking to you!” and Hugo flopped the holoscreen down with a slam. “As I was saying, your little tiff on the field was noticed by a lot of people. It won’t be long before Grainger and his mob will use it to their advantage. We’ve got the other squads nipping at our heels and I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s a planet full of mutants yet to deal with. The last thing we need is to fight each other. So as Scorpio’s chief negotiator I’m instructing you to kiss and make up.”

  Jonah blushed at the thought of kissing Grace and folded his arms. Grace stared out the window.

  “This is not a request. It’s an instruction!” said Hugo.

  Jonah shifted in his seat.

  “Here, this is how it works,” said Hugo and he grabbed both their hands and forced them into a handshake.

  “Okay, whatever!” said Grace pulling her hand back. “I’m sorry. There!”

  “Sorry who? Sorry what? This time with feeling,” chided Hugo.

  “Sorry, Jonah for flipping the bird. Is that enough?”

  “It’s a start,” replied Hugo. “Jonah?”

  Jonah sighed. “Sure, yes. And I’m sorry that I called you a cow. Even though you are.”

  “Jonah,” said Hugo. “That’s not how it works.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry,” Jonah said and he bowed.

  “That’s better,” said Hugo.

  Grace stood up and was about to leave but Hugo stopped her.

  “Wait, there’s more.”

  They both looked at him, blankly.

  “You two have more in common than you think. Grace, I want you to show him.”

  “What are you talking about? No way!” said Grace.

  “Yes way. Show him!”

  “Show me what?” Jonah was interested now and sat up a little.

  “I’m not showing him,” growled Grace. “It’s none of his business.”

  “It’s more his business than it is mine. But you showed me. Show him!”

  Grace sighed but she didn’t leave. Instead she reached down to her left ankle and rolled up her track pants to reveal a mechanical leg, almost identical to Jonah’s. A large metal ball was where her knee should have been and shafts of titanium and tiny circuits made up her calf. She wiggled her toes and wheels and rods whirred in her shin.

  “You’re a crip, like me!” e
xclaimed Jonah.

  “Shut up!” hissed Grace. “Keep your voice down, no one knows.”

  “Normally she wears the plastoskin,” explained Hugo, “Only the Commander and Clunes know about it. I thought you’d want to know, seeing as you’re like ...” Hugo trailed.

  “A crip too?” Jonah laughed. "But how did you get into the Academy?”

  “Same way everyone did: talent. Or at least that’s how I did. How did you get in?” Grace asked. There was a hint of sarcasm. Jonah ignored it and marvelled at Grace’s mechanical limb. He’d never met another teenage crip and reached out to touch the glistening metal.

  “Stop it,” Grace said and folded her trouser down.

  “So all this time you’ve been disabled?”

  “No. I’m a perfectly functioning human being,” she replied.

  “But how did it happen? I mean, were you born this way?”

  “Hell no!”

  “You see,” said Hugo, “that’s why you two need to know about each. Gracie here lost her whole family and her leg in the same way as you did. A mutant attack on the city.”

  “Really? I thought it was just your parents!”

  “That’s what she likes to tell people – doesn’t like the publicity,” Hugo said. “I think you two have got to compare notes. You share some history.”

  Hugo edged away leaving Jonah and Grace alone. It was awkward.

  “Sorry about your mum and dad,” said Jonah.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I was sorry too.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  Grace paused, reluctant to speak. When she did, it was so soft Jonah had to lean in to hear.

  “A Lander raid. One night we were out – Mum, Dad and my sister, Rose. We were walking on the Edge when they attacked. How they got through is still a mystery. Most likely a series of stupid mistakes by some lazy gits behind holoscreens. The Landers would sometimes make it through the perimeter barge and climb the walls. They’d usually get electrified by the security beams or shot down by the drones. But this group of scumbags made it all the way to the upper deck.