The Starter

  John rolled his eyes. “Oh man, that’s corny. You practice that one?”

  Quentin laughed. “Actually, yeah. Working on corny phrases and some pre-game chants to get everyone pumped up. Want to hear them?”

  “Not now,” John said. “Leave me be for a while to think about how you out-work me and everyone else who has ever played the game.”

  Quentin watched the shuttle settle onto the landing bay deck, watched the bay doors slide shut.

  [PRESSURE EQUALIZED] a computer voice called out moments later. [LANDING BAY NOW SAFE TO ENTER]

  The waiting area doors hissed open. Quentin, John, and most of the team filtered into the landing bay.

  “The rookies are almost all offensive players,” John said. “We get just one DB this time. Hey, I wonder if we got another quarterback? We could use a real quarterback, not the backwater pansy we got now.”

  “John, you bore me,” Quentin said.

  Yassoud walked up to join them. He’d replaced his orange beard string with a gold one that gleamed under the landing bay’s lights.

  “Boys,” Yassoud said, “I hear we got a running back in that shuttle somewhere.”

  John smiled. “Probably our new starter. You’ll be lucky if we even keep you around for punt returns.”

  “Shuck you, Tweedy,” Yassoud said.

  The shuttle’s side door lowered.

  Hokor and Gredok were the first to exit. Shizzle flew out and flapped around the landing bay, but he wasn’t the only flier. A Harrah eased out in that species’ half-flying, half-floating style. He wore an orange and black backpack that looked just like the one Doc had worn on the sidelines. This Harrah was bigger, though, and his skin looked... tauter, almost artificial.

  “Must be the new doc,” John said.

  “Looks... weird,” Quentin said. “Something wrong with him?”

  “Him or her,” John said. “I can never tell the difference with the flappies. Looks like it has had a ton of cosmetic surgery, and not very good surgery at that.”

  Gredok stood and stared at the gathered team, who quickly fell silent and waited.

  “My growing network of scouts discovered these highly talented players,” he said. “Make these rookies feel like a part of our little family. And this,” Gredok gestured up to the floating Harrah, “is Doc Patah. He is our new team physician. I’m sure that all of you will be getting one-on-one time with him soon enough.”

  With that, Gredok walked through the much larger football players that parted to let him by. Doc Patah flew along behind him. Watching the Harrah, Quentin felt a stab of sadness at the death of the Krakens former physician. Quentin hadn’t even known the Harrah’s real name, just called him Doc like everyone else on the team. That wasn’t right. The team doctor was a lifeline to victory, keeping players healthy, patching them up so they could continue to produce. Quentin made a mental note that he would get to know this Doc Patah, treat him like the invaluable part of the team that he was.

  The first rookies out were two long-limbed Sklorno wearing orange Krakens jerseys, numbers 31 and 13. Again, Quentin thought about how much had changed in his life. Three months ago at the Combine he’d met Denver and Milford — the first Sklorno he’d ever seen in person. Their translucent, flexible chitin skin and fluttering muscles had been so disturbing up-close. Now? Nothing he hadn’t seen a thousand times. Well, that wasn’tquite true — he’d seen Sklorno a thousand times, sure, but never any as big as these two.

  Wahiawa and Halawa. He already had their stats memorized. Both stood nine feet, six inches tall. Both weighed 325 pounds. Because of their size and speed, they had been placed in developmental football leagues at just eighteen months old. When they were full grown at six years of age, they joined the Chachanna Football Collective, one of the Sklorno Dynasty’s Tier Three leagues. After two years there, the eight-year-old Awa sisters were now Krakens.

  “Man,” Yassoud said. “They look like clones.”

  “Twins,” Quentin said.

  “I thought Sklorno babies ate each other?”

  “Most of the time, they do. These two shared an eye-stalk at one point, so they were like the same sentient or something.”

  “Wimps,” John said. “It’s much cooler when they eat each other. I wish I’d eaten my brother when we were kids.” I HATE JU scrolled across his face.

  Quentin laughed to himself as he recalled John’s brother, the All-Tier-2 running back for the Orbiting Death. The Krakens had fought a pitched battle against the Death just a few weeks earlier. “The Mad Ju,” as the press called him, had put three Krakens linebackers out of the game, including John.

  “Hey,” Yassoud said. “They each only have three eyestalks instead of four. You see that?”

  Quentin nodded. “Yeah, they had to cut that eyestalk off to separate them, so they each only have three.”

  He just hoped three eyestalks would let Halawa see his passes, because he was excited to have such a big receiving target. Nine-foot-six. Taller than any veteran Krakens receiver. Even her legs looked larger than others of her species: giant, folded leaping machines. He’d be able to throw the ball up high to her in the corner of the end zone. She’d jump on those big legs, reach up with the two long tentacles that stuck out of her chest. Very few defensive backs — if any — could go high enough to stop her from coming down with the ball.

  Tweedy started laughing. “Oh no, man, you have to be kidding me. That is Mitchell Fayed’s replacement?”

  The mention of the dead running back drew Quentin’s attention. Coming down the shuttle ramp he saw what had to be a mistake. As big as the Awa Sisters were for Sklorno, this guy was little for a Human. He wore a jersey with the number 21.

  “Wow,” Quentin said. “He’s small”

  “Damn near a midget,” Tweedy said. “Oh man, we are sooooo desperate.”

  “A midget?” Quentin said. “What is that?”

  Yassoud and Tweedy looked at him.

  “What?” Quentin said. “What are you looking at?”

  John shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Never mind, Q. I forget that the Purist Nation isn’t big on people with congenital defects.”

  “We don’t have any congenital defects in the Purist Nation.”

  John and Yassoud both started laughing. Quentin didn’t get the joke. Quentin sighed, and looked over the new rookie running back. Number 21, Dan Campbell. At 6-foot-2, 230 pounds, he wasn’t small by normal Human standards, but in this landing bay the only Human smaller than him was Arioch Morningstar, the Krakens kicker.

  “Hey, ’Soud,” John said. “You might as well hang up the cleats right now, chief.”

  Yassoud shook his head. “I’ve got ten grand says the midget doesn’t make it out of training camp.”

  “I’ll take that bet,” Quentin said. He’d memorized Campbell’s stats as well. A Combine 40-yard-dash of 3.6 seconds, fairly fast for a Human, but nothing really special. Campbell’s acceleration and agility numbers, however, were nearly off the charts. Maybe he wasn’t the fastest guy in the league, but when he got the ball he would hit his top speed almost instantly.

  “You’re on,” Yassoud said. He and Quentin shook hands, and the bet was official.

  Next out of the shuttle came a Ki, bigger than most of his kind, but nothing out of the ordinary for an offensive lineman.

  “Shun-On-Won,” Quentin said. “Played Tier Three in the KRAFL.” Quentin pronounced the word kra-full, an acronym for the Ki Rebel Alliance Football League.

  John crossed his arms over his chest. “Sure doesn’t look like much.”

  And according to Shun-On’s scores at the Combine, the Ki rookie wasn’t much. He charted firmly in the middle in every category — nothing that bad, nothing that great.

  “That’s the best we could do?” Yassoud said. “If this Shun-On-Won doesn’t work out, then I don’t have a right guard to block for me. I don’t think Aka-Na-Tak is going to make it.”

  “He’ll be back,” Quentin said. “Aka
-Na will be back.”

  If only Quentin felt as confident as he sounded. Aka-Na-Tak still hadn’t recovered from injuries sustained in the game against the Texas Earthlings. The lineman was out another two to three weeks.

  “This is crap,” Yassoud said. “How am I going to run the ball with no line?”

  And then number 38, the final rookie, walked down the ramp.

  Quentin looked at her, already feeling animosity. But that was silly — she was here for a reason and that reason didn’t conflict with Quentin’s goals. Rebecca Montagne, also known as Becca the Wrecka. Six-foot-six, three hundred and thirty pounds of muscle. She wore her long, black hair tied back in a tight ponytail. Big, solid, athletic, and yet still clearly feminine — a strange combination.

  “Awwww yeah,” John said. “‘Bout time we got some ladies in here that don’t spend all their time worshiping Quentin and drooling all over the place.”

  “Ew,” Yassoud said. “Tweedy, you serious? That chick is a HeavyG girl. Her butt is bigger than yours.”

  “Exactly,” Tweedy said. “Uncle Johnny likes ’em healthy. Quentin, what’s her name?”

  “Rebecca Montagne. Fullback. Played Tier Three in the NFL on Earth, for the Green Bay Packers.”

  “Wait a minute,” Yassoud said. “Rebecca... why do I know that name? I know, she’s got a cool nickname... what is it? Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”

  “Becca the Wrecka,” Quentin said.

  Yassoud snapped his fingers and smiled. “That’s it!”

  “Wrecka?” John said, his eyes even more alive at the possibility this HeavyG woman was somehow known for violence. “Why do they call her that, Q?”

  “Because of the way she hits when she runs the ball.”

  John looked to the ceiling, raised his hands as if in prayer. “Quentin, you’ve got to thank your High One for delivering an angel like this to me. She hurts people while running the ball? That is all kinds of mean, I like it. The Packers run the fullback a lot?”

  Quentin shrugged, but Yassoud snapped his fingers again. “Wait, now I remember why I heard of her,” Yassoud said. “The Packers were trying some bush-league stuff in the NFL, running the option offense. Where the quarterback carries the ball.”

  John looked from Quentin to Yassoud, then back to Quentin again. A smile crept across his face. Quentin saw the smile, felt his own face getting hotter, redder. There was no reason for him to get this angry. Becca was there to play fullback, to block for Yassoud or whoever played running back. Worse, John Tweedy always knew when Quentin was upset, and never missed a chance to exploit it.

  “Oh man,” John said. “Quentin, was Becca the Wrecka a quarterback?”

  Quentin gritted his teeth and nodded.

  Tweedy stared blankly at Quentin for a few seconds, then threw his head back and laughed. YOU’RE KILLING ME, WHITEY flashed across his face.

  Quentin nodded angrily. “She’s here to be a fullback, John, so just keep on laughing.”

  John did, even harder. His hands dropped to his knees, as if he could barely stand. “Hooo,” he said, trying to suck in a breath, “you better hope that she... that she knows her role and doesn’t come after your spot.”

  “She’s a fullback, John. Tom Pareless is retiring after this season, and we needed a fullback to replace him. You take the best athlete available for the position, and Hokor thinks she can start next year as our fullback.”

  Quentin knew that, Hokor knew that, and Rebecca Montagne had better know that. Whatever position she wound up playing, if she played at all, Quentin would make sure she didn’t entertain any ideas of playing quarterback.

  That was his position, and if Don Pine couldn’t take it from him, then no one else should even try.

  • • •

  JUST AS HE’D PROGRAMMED the night before, the lights in his small bedroom flicked on at 5:30 in the morning. Quentin Barnes sat up. He’d already been awake for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but he’d forced himself to stay in bed. Soon his body would adapt to the new schedule. It was time to make everything obey his will... his body, his drive, his team, even time itself.

  Everything would align.

  He would make it so.

  Because he had a championship to win.

  The smart-paper walls of his apartment were white when he awoke. As he walked out of the bedroom to the living room, every wall faded into a sequence of still pictures that slowly painted a chronological history of the game. Quentin bent, stretching his hamstrings, his calves, his groin, feeling delicious pain in his muscle fibers as black-and-white, two-dimensional images showed faces like Tittle, Unitas, Baugh, Layne, Thorpe, Pollard, Nagurski. He stretched his arms as the two-dimensional images changed to full-color, with faces like Campbell, Butkus, Landry, Brown, Staubach, Bradshaw, Rice, Tatum, Montana, Lewis. The images then changed to three-dimensional holograms, faces like Adrojnik, Cuh-En-Shaka, Jacksonville, Tarat the Smasher, Smith, Pikor the Unquestioned, Zimmer, Pine.

  All of them, the faces of champions.

  Quentin finished his stretching routine, then started it all over again, forcing himself to go farther each time, to feel more pain, to hear everything his body had to say. You listened to pain, but you didn’t obey it. Pain was a servant, a reminder that you were one of the few sentients lucky enough to be alive at this moment, at this time in history.

  The holo-tank flicked on at 6:00 a.m., exactly when he finished his second round of stretching. Before moving on to his next task, he waited just long enough to see what game the computer randomly selected.

  Super Bowl LXXIX, the Grand Rapids Lions versus the Mexico City Conquistadors back in the ancient times when there was the NFL and nothing else, when there was only one planet playing football, centuries before the Lions moved to Thomas 3. He’d never watched this game. The recorded crowd filled his room with a roar as he moved to the weight bench.

  The rig consisted of a padded bench and a horizontal bar above it. The bar was steel, with soft, black handles on either end. Right at the middle of that bar, another bar connected, making a “T,” the T-post leading into a vertical slot in the wall. The wall had other attachments sticking out of it, individual handles that could be pulled or pushed, giving Quentin any number of weightlifting options. He would use all of the attachments for a full-body workout. His favorite — by far — was the tried and true bench-press.

  He lay back on the bench, then reached up to grab the padded handles, his hands shoulder-width apart. In the space between his hands, the bar showed a readout in red letters: 400 lbs. He looked up at the ceiling, where the smart-paper showed the silver and blue Lions rushing out of the tunnel, preparing for the biggest game of their lives. Every player he saw up there was long-since dead, the game having taken place more than six centuries earlier. Dead, but not forgotten — every player was forever notched in the glory of history, every player was eternal.

  “Give me music,” Quentin said. The room computer faded out the game noise. The first song on his playlist faded in. His favorite band, Trench Warfare, the long, melodic guitar intro to their hit Combat Bats. He would watch the game and listen to the music. He couldn’t work out and watch Trench Warfare — the band’s lead singer, Somalia Midori, was far too distracting for that.

  Quentin lowered the bar to his chest, then pressed. The four hundred pounds went up smooth and easy. He lowered the bar and repeated, watching the ceiling as the players took to the field. He hit ten reps before his muscles started to burn.

  Another half hour of weights, then it was time to hit the virtual practice field for twenty minutes before the 7:00 a.m. position meeting.

  • • •

  QUENTIN’S PRACTICE CLEATS pressed into the corridor’s carpet. He approached the Kriegs-Ballok VR practice room, and through the door saw Hawick — his top receiver — streaking across a sapphire-blue surface marked with blazing white yard lines. Sapphire blue and white: the home field colors of the Isis Ice Storm.

  She was running an inside-slan
t route, one that would take her at a shallow angle from near the sidelines to the middle of the field. Running with her was Stockbridge, the Krakens left cornerback.

  The wide door framed the scene — Quentin saw a ball rip through the air. His eyes had only a fraction of a second to comprehend that the ball looked a little too real to be a holographic projection, then Stockbridge stepped in front of Hawick and caught it.

  An interception.

  Quentin stepped through the door and looked left, in the direction of the pass, expecting to see Don Pine or possibly Yitzhak.

  But he saw neither.

  Instead, he saw Rebecca Montagne. She froze as if she’d been caught doing something wrong.

  “Rookie,” Quentin said, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  She stared at him with wide eyes. “Uh... I’m, just, you know, uh... throwing the ball.”

  “Montagne, you are a fullback. Fullbacks do not throw the ball.”

  Her shocked stare vanished as her eyes narrowed. Quentin saw aggression there, attitude.

  “I’m a quarterback,” she said. “I’m playing fullback because the offer was on the table and I wanted to get into Tier One.”

  “And you are in Tier One as a fullback. If you were a Tier One quarterback, someone would have picked you up for that. But they didn’t. So stop wasting my receivers’ time.”

  Hawick and Stockbridge walked up, their walk faster than most Humans’ run.

  “But Quentin Barnes,” Hawick said. “Rebecca Montagne was not wasting our time, she was here early so we—”

  “Shut up,” Quentin said. Hawick and Stockbridge visibly winced, as if he’d raised a whip to beat them down, a whip they’d felt land hundreds of times before.

  “Hey,” Rebecca said. “Be mad at me if you want, but you don’t have to be a jerk to them.”

  Quentin turned on her. “What was that, rookie? Are you telling me what to do?”

  Her eyes grew wide again. Quentin was a good six inches taller. He towered over her.

  “Well, rookie? Are you? Are you telling me what to do?”