The Champion

  “Last... they’re dying?”

  Don nodded.

  Quentin felt a hammer of loss for the kids. So happy, so young, but whatever ailed them was beyond even the staggering abilities of modern science.

  “That’s really good of you, Don.”

  The blue-skinned quarterback smiled ruefully, then shrugged. “I got a bit of karma to make up for. Doing what I can while I’m still in the game.” He offered his left hand to Quentin. “Kid, what you did out there tonight, people are going to remember that forever.”

  Quentin looked at Pine’s hand. The left, because Pine remembered that Quentin had sacrificed his right pinkie to stay in the game. Quentin shook.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It means a lot coming from you, old man. But don’t think this squares it between us.”

  Don laughed. “Ah, the rage of youth. Tell you what, kid — spend the next week looking at your MVP trophy. Then the week after that staring at the ring that will be on your finger. Then tell me how important all that other stuff is.”

  All that other stuff. The galaxy had blamed Quentin for throwing games that Pine had thrown, and the man called it all that other stuff? Sentients had thought Quentin a cheater, that he threw games. They’d thrown garbage at him. Yes, that other stuff was still important.

  And yet ... without Pine’s help, would Quentin have even made it through the first season? Without the need to save Pine from his gambling debts, would Quentin have overcome his own racism to unify the team, or become the leader that he now was? Sentients washed out of the GFL all the time. Without Pine — both the good and the bad — Quentin might very well have wound up just another forgotten player.

  He would never know.

  What Quentin did know was that Pine had had a chance to come clean, and Pine had passed on that. He’d hung Quentin out to dry. Pine could say all the nice things he liked, make all the kind gestures he liked — Quentin didn’t have to punch the man on sight, but being pleasant in public wasn’t the same as forgiveness.

  For what Pine had done, Quentin would never forgive the man. “Don, I gotta go,” he said. “You had a great game, too. And thanks for presenting the MVP trophy. That was really classy.”

  Don nodded. “Needed to be done. Take care of yourself, Quentin. He looked over Quentin’s shoulder. “Great game, Virak.”

  “Thank you,” said the growling voice a few feet behind Quentin.

  Quentin’s stomach sank.

  Oh, crap.

  Don walked off down the hall. Quentin turned to face Virak the Mean, the Krakens Quyth Warrior outside linebacker and Gredok’s main bodyguard. The single baseball-sized eye stared out, the cornea clear.

  “Barnes, Gredok sent me to make sure you made it safely to the Touchback.”

  Time was ticking away.

  “Thanks, Virak, but I’ll make my own way back.”

  “Incorrect,” the linebacker said. “You are coming with me. Now”

  Quentin’s anger bubbled up, percolated, hovered just below an all-out boil. The Warrior had picked the wrong time to be a badass.

  “What are you going to do, Virak? Beat me up and take me back by force?”

  Virak’s eye swirled with yellow-orange, betraying his excitement.

  “I would enjoy that very much,” he said.

  The linebacker stepped closer. Quentin caught himself before he took an automatic step back — he couldn’t show any weakness. He stared down at the shorter sentient, trying to be as intimidating as he could. Quentin was over a half-foot taller, although the two sentients weighed about the same.

  The color on Virak’s cornea swirled faster. He didn’t seem all that intimidated.

  “I have not forgotten about your disrespect at Torba the Hungry’s,” he said. “Choto isn’t here to help you this time. Neither is John Tweedy.”

  Virak must have been lurking around this whole time. Quentin hadn’t seen him. The Warrior probably didn’t know about Quentin’s sister and the plan to get off Hittoni, but right now that didn’t matter — Quentin had to get to that truck.

  “You really want to fight me, Virak? Won’t Gredok be mad if you bust up his star quarterback?”

  Virak’s eye-swirls shifted from orange to black.

  “You have the entire off-season to recover,” he said. “I might be punished, but it will be worth it.”

  Quentin had spent all of his childhood and most of his teenage years in the mines of Micovi. There, if you didn’t know how to fight, you went hungry because other miners took your food. If you wanted to live, you learned how to fight. More importantly, Quentin had learned when to fight, learned the difference between a man who knew how to look dangerous and one who could actually hurt you.

  Virak was the latter.

  Quentin knew he wasn’t going to talk his way out of this one. His violent childhood had taught him something else: the guy who punches first usually wins.

  He stepped forward and brought his knee up fast for a quick strike to Virak’s sternum. Virak twisted sharply to the right: Quentin’s knee slid harmlessly across Virak’s chest, momentum carrying Quentin into Virak’s already swinging left pedipalp. The chitin-covered fist slammed into Quentin’s cheek, knocking him sideways so hard his head smashed into the corridor wall.

  Quentin had taken harder punches, but not many. He pushed off the wall and lunged at Virak. The Warrior hadn’t expected Quentin to react that quickly, to move that quickly, and went down hard under Quentin’s weight. The two sentients hit the floor and skidded across the polished surface.

  Quentin straddled Virak, reared back to rain down blows, but felt Virak’s powerful middle arms tangle in his suit coat and yank hard to the right. Cloth ripped but didn’t come free: Quentin’s mouth and nose slammed into the wall. His vision blurred. He hesitated for a second, only a second, and suddenly he was flat on his face, 360 pounds on his back, strong pedipalp arms locking under his throat.

  “I used to be a professional fighter,” Virak growled as he slowly squeezed tighter, cutting off Quentin’s air, cutting off the blood to his brain. “Did you know that? I fought Korak the Cutter.”

  Quentin tried to lurch to the side, but he was already weakening, and Virak blocked the move — the Warrior had him.

  “I made it through the first round,” Virak said. “Not many sentients can say they made it a round with Korak the Cutter.”

  Quentin’s eyes opened and shut, opened and shut. He couldn’t breathe. Virak was going to kill him.

  “You need a lesson,” the Warrior said. “You need to learn that Gredok the Splithead is your shamakath, and I am the fist that punishes anyone stupid enough to—”

  Quentin heard a sharp, short sizzling sound, a crack, felt a sting of electricity, and then the pressure on his neck eased away. Another crack. The weight fell off his back a second before he heard Virak flop limply against the hallway’s hard floor.

  The big Warrior didn’t move.

  Quentin pushed himself to his butt, leaned his back against the wall. He took in big, ragged breaths, trying to get his wind back.

  There stood Messal the Efficient, uniform as neat and tidy as ever. He held a black device in his right pedipalp hand.

  “I told you we were on a schedule,” he said, bouncing from foot to foot. “Get up, Quentin. Hurry to the loading dock before the truck leaves.”

  Quentin nodded, which made his throat hurt. He tasted blood in his mouth. He had to lean against the wall to stand up. He pointed down at the prone, unmoving Virak.

  “What about him?”

  “I will say I found him here, unconscious,” Messal said. “Before that, I must find someone I can bribe to alter security footage of this incident so that I am not seen attacking Gredok’s favorite bodyguard, and I must do both of those things in the five minutes before Virak wakes up. Every second you stand here makes it less probable I will succeed. Go.”

  Quentin nodded, turned and ran down the hall, looking for the blue service elevator. He felt warmth trick
ling down his face; a quick touch came back bloody. Great.

  He reached the elevator. The access card let him in. The trip down finally gave him a few seconds to gather himself. He looked at his expensive tailored coat: torn, spotted with blood — ruined. His upper lip had split. His cheek streamed blood. And that stinging in his mouth, it felt like ...

  Oh no, not again.

  He felt a small bit of hardness under his tongue, deep on the right side. He slid a finger in there, felt it, pulled it out.

  A front tooth. The stinging in his mouth and the tip of his tongue told him it was the right one.

  “Why is it always that tooth?”

  The elevator stopped. As the doors opened, he slid the tooth into his pocket.

  Not ten feet from the elevator sat a ground truck, back door rolled up, his teammates waiting inside. John, Ju, Becca, Kimberlin, Choto, Crazy George, Tara the Freak, Denver, Milford, Doc Patah and the long, frightening form of Mum-O-Killowe. They looked at him, instantly worried. Ju held a box full of hot dogs. John had half of a hot dog in each hand, the other halves obviously in his overstuffed mouth. Mum-O let out a rumbling growl. Choto’s eye flooded black, but Becca was the first out of the truck and by Quentin’s side.

  “Q, what happened?”

  “Just a little post-game hug from Virak,” Quentin said. “We need to get going, fast.”

  Choto guided Quentin to the truck.

  “It is my fault,” the Warrior said. “I should never leave you unguarded.”

  John’s face wrinkled with rage. He chewed fast, trying to process his giant bites of hot dog.

  “Ahm unna ooop heh aaa,” John said.

  “John’s mad,” Ju said. “He said he’s going to whip Virak’s ass.”

  “Thanks for the translation,” Quentin said. He climbed in. “Let’s worry about that later — if we fall any further behind schedule, I think we have more to fear from Messal than Virak.”

  Becca climbed in after him, a white tissue in her hand as if it had appeared out of nowhere.

  “Messal,” she said. “Why would we worry about him?”

  Quentin winced as she dabbed at the cut on his cheek. “You don’t want to know. Seal up the truck and let’s get out of here.”

  Choto got in. Ju pulled the truck door down. Quentin heard the latch lock. Seconds later, the truck started rolling.

  QUENTIN AND HIS TEAMMATES ENDURED the uncomfortable ride to the Hittoni Intergalactic Spaceport. Early morning traffic made for frequent stops and starts, jostling the big bodies around in the smelly, dirty truck, sliding them against each other on the narrow bench seats. Mum-O didn’t bother with a seat: instead, the twelve-foot-long sentient lay on the floor, curled into a dense, muscly spiral. Eight hours since the game had ended, yet Quentin heard occasional yells and hollers from die-hard revelers who were still celebrating the Galaxy Bowl.

  He could only imagine how crazy the city of Hittoni must have been right after the game. The teammates in the truck had missed all of that, because they’d been there for him, watching the holo from Fred and Jeanine, then consoling him, then plotting with him, then sneaking out of the city before Gredok found out what was going on. His friends were joining him on a long journey that could put all their lives at risk.

  Quentin had to say something.

  “I, uh ... I really appreciate this. What you’re doing for me, for my sister ... I can’t thank you enough.”

  Simple nods or grunts of acknowledgement were all the answer he got. Except for the two Sklorno onboard, of course.

  “Adventure!” Milford said.

  Denver hopped up and down, her amazing balance making her impervious to the truck’s random turns.

  “Love-love-love,” she said. “Godling-sibling and Quentin and love and love-love!”

  Maybe the two receivers didn’t really understand the danger involved, but everyone else did. Quentin saw Becca looking at him. He met her gaze. She smiled.

  “Don’t worry, Quentin,” she said. “We’ll find Jeanine.”

  The others looked down at the floor. They didn’t share Becca’s high hopes. They all thought Fred and Jeanine were dead, and yet they were coming along anyway.

  He would have done the same for any of them, done it without a thought, but they were doing it for him. He couldn’t process it. It made him blush, made him feel embarrassed.

  Quentin caught himself as the truck suddenly angled up sharply, then leveled out, then stopped. He heard new noises from outside the truck’s thin walls — the heavy hydraulic whine of blast doors shutting. The truck’s rear door rolled up. There stood Manny Sayed and a thick Human wearing grunge-spotted coveralls. Beyond them was the dinged and dented loading bay of what looked to be a cargo ship. Just behind Manny lay a pile of stuffed black canvas duffle bags.

  “Welcome aboard the Burly Brown” Manny said. He tilted his head toward the crewmember. “This is ... wait, what happened to your tooth?”

  Quentin had tuned out the stinging sensation.

  “Lost it in the game.”

  “I saw you after the game,” Manny said. “You still had it then.”

  Quentin shrugged. “I slipped in the locker room. You were saying?”

  Manny patted the crewmember on the back. “This is Captain Nilson. He’s agreed to take you where you’re going.”

  Nilson nodded. “Mister Barnes, happy to have you aboard. We’re not a passenger ship, so I need to know you’ll make sure you and yours understand who is in charge here.”

  “And that would be you?”

  Nilson nodded again. “The one and only. I’m responsible for our regular cargo and the safety of my crew. I call the shots, understood?”

  “Sure,” Quentin said. “We’ll behave.”

  Nilson leaned close to Manny and whispered something.

  Manny nodded. “That’s fine.”

  Without another word, Nilson walked off.

  Quentin started to climb out of the truck, but Manny held up a hand.

  “Not all of you can come,” he said. “This ship is under Purist Nation registry. Since it will be going through the Purist Nation to get to your rendezvous point, it could be stopped and boarded by system police at any time. I tried to arrange an interspecies ship but could not on such short notice.”

  Quentin realized there were only six duffel bags in that pile. He felt saddened and partially relieved at the same time; at least some of his friends would live to see the next season.

  “Bummer,” John said. He hopped out of the truck.

  “Mega-bummer,” Ju said, and did the same.

  Choto started to get out, but Quentin stopped him.

  “It’s a Purist ship, Choto,” Quentin said. “That means only Human crew.”

  Manny pointed to Kimberlin. “The HeavyG, he can come. I’ve already arranged transportation to the Touchback for the rest them.”

  Choto’s clear cornea instantly swirled with black. “There is room on this ship for me.” He glared at Manny. “There is room for me to come along and protect Quentin.”

  The Warrior wasn’t asking a question, he was issuing an order. Issuing a threat, more accurately. Choto was already so much bigger and taller than Manny; from the back of the truck, the linebacker looked like a god of war that might step down and kill Manny with one chitinous foot.

  Quentin put a hand on the Warrior’s middle arm.

  “Choto, take it easy. It’s not up to Manny.”

  “It is,” Choto said. “I promise you, Quentin, this ship can smuggle sentients as well as cargo. If we are stopped and searched by Purist Nation system police, there is a place to put me so I won’t be found. Correct me if I am wrong, Elder Sayed.”

  The fat man was starting to sweat.

  “Well, we might have room for one sub ... I mean, one non-Human.” He looked at Quentin, his eyes pleading. “But only one, I give you my word.”

  “I thought so,” Choto said.

  Quentin looked down at Manny, looked hard, judged him, decide
d the businessman was telling the truth — there was room for one non-Human only.

  “Choto, you have to stay,” Quentin said. He pointed to Doc Patah. “Doc, get out. You’re coming with us.”

  The Harrah fluttered from the truck. Choto’s swirled with purple. That color could mean confusion or anguish — in this instance, it probably meant both.

  “Quentin, I must come,” Choto said. “This mission is dangerous. You need me there with you.”

  Not that long ago, it seemed, Gredok had ordered a reluctant Choto to act as Quentin’s bodyguard. The Warrior’s loyalties had gradually shifted until he declared Quentin as his shamakath, his leader — not Gredok. John, Ju and the others were coming on this trip because of love and loyalty, sure, but for Choto, protecting his shamakath was in his DNA, was the focal point of a Warrior’s reason for being.

  The hard call. Deciding who to cut from the squad, sending Yitzhak off the field in favor of Becca ... sometimes the needs of the situation won out over loyalty, over raw emotion. Quentin would never get used to making calls like this — but it had to be done.

  “Choto, we’re going after my sister and Fred,” he said. “If they’re injured, having Doc along could be the difference between life and death. Not just for them, but for the rest of us as well.”

  The swirls on Choto’s cornea expanded, quickened, flooding his eye a deep purple. He was devastated.

  Doc Patah fluttered back, a brave gesture considering Choto’s agitated state.

  “There is also the issue of Quentin’s finger,” the Harrah said. “That ridiculous missing tooth I can fix easily, but I need to monitor his finger and prep it for replacement — although not while on this filthy ship, I assure you — or it could mean long-term complications for his nervous system. If Quentin is to play quarterback next season, Choto, I need to get at his hand as soon as possible. Waiting for him to return could be too late.”

  The fight seemed to drain out of Choto. His body sagged.

  “I understand,” he said.

  The Warrior shuffled to the back of the truck, pushed past Milford and Denver, sat heavily next to Tara the Freak. The misshapen Tara hadn’t even stood up, but he seemed agitated. Mum-O still lay on the floor; as far as Quentin could tell, the Ki hadn’t moved a muscle.