The Starter

  “Uh... yes ma’am.”

  “Good,” she said. “John tells me you got no family in Ionath City, so you put my son in your fancy yacht and you come visit me at Orbital Station One. Don’t bother saying no, because I’m already planning to make my tuna noodle casserole.”

  “Sweet,” John and Ju said in unison.

  “Uh, Missus Tweedy I—”

  “Can’t wait to see you in person,” she said. “Any friend of Jonathan’s is welcome in my home any time.”

  “Ma,” John said. “I gotta get going. I love you!”

  “Love you too, son. I’ll let you boys go now, I know you have all kinds of fancy things to do while your mother sits here alone in her apartment. But I don’t mind. And Julius! You stop seeing that no-good gangster girl! You’re going to get yourself shot and break your poor mother’s heart!”

  “Ma!” Ju said. “Do you mind not airing the family laundry in front of strangers?”

  “Quentin is family. Julius, you just keep it in your pants lest someone cut it off. Goodbye, boys! Remember that Mommy loves you!”

  Her face blinked out. Ju’s face expanded to fill up the holotank.

  “Ha-ha,” John said. “You got yelled at.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Ju said. “Quentin, I guess I’ll be seeing you after Week Five.”

  “Okay,” Quentin said, not having any idea of what else he could say.

  “Screw you, John,” Ju said, then the holotank blinked out.

  John started laughing.

  “You jerk,” Quentin said. “You timed that call, didn’t you?”

  WHO, ME? scrolled across John’s face. “Hey, you’re the one with the sweet ride. OS1 is just a short punch away, not even half a day. Once you’ve had my mom’s tuna noodle casserole, you’ll thank me.”

  “John, I’m not going.”

  “Gotta go,” John said. “Ma said you’re going, so you’re going. Don’t argue with Ma, Quentin. Besides, if I don’t get you out of here, you’ll spend your three days off studying, right? So you’re coming with.”

  Quentin closed his eyes and sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll take you.”

  “Sweet!” John said.

  Quentin walked to a frame on the wall that held a blue jersey with silver numbers. “Thomas 3 Lions? You played for them?”

  Tweedy pounded his chest three times. “Glory be to Thomas 3!”

  “Right,” Quentin said, now remembering that John hailed from Thomas 3 and was exceedingly proud of his home planet. “I don’t recognize the other teams.”

  “The green and gold is from Fionas University, Tier Four.”

  “University? You took classes in college?”

  “Wouldn’t exactly say I took classes,” John said. “But I did play for the team. Two years, then I got drafted by the black and yellow team, the Pittsburgh Steelers.”

  “No way,” Quentin said. “The Steelers? They’ve been around, like, for centuries.”

  “Over seven hundred years,” John said. “Old NFL team, like the Lions were, but the Steelers stayed on Earth when most of the other NFL teams moved to new planets.”

  “Cool,” Quentin said, impressed that his friend John was so steeped in tradition. “Hey, what is a steeler, anyway?”

  “It’s people who steal stuff.”

  “Really? I don’t think it’s spelled the same.”

  John crossed his arms and gave Quentin that head-shaking, you’re not that bright look.

  “Well, Quentin, maybe if they’re dumb enough to steal, they’re dumb enough to not spell so right.”

  Quentin just nodded, making a mental note to ask his room computer about the name later that night. “Is Pittsburgh a cool city?”

  John laughed. “There isn’t a cool city left on Earth, Quentin. Everything is just so... so old. Run-down. The Steelers were Tier Three, but it was still really fun to get paid to play football. We won a Super Bowl before I got picked up by the Lions and moved into Tier Two, right on my home planet.”

  “That must have been cool.”

  John nodded and smiled. BIG MAN ON CAMPUS = JOHN TWEEDY played across his forehead. “It was awesome. I went from a small town to Fionas U, then the Steelers, and then I came home as a T2 player for the biggest team on Thomas 3.”

  Quentin wondered what it might be like to go back and play for the Purist Nation’s only upper-tier team, the Buddha City Elite of the Planetary Union Conference in Tier 2. Would he be welcomed as a hero, or as a traitor to the religion? Well, hopefully he’d never have to find out. The only way he was going back to the Purist Nation was if the Elite made it into Tier One and the Krakens had an away game against them.

  “Come on,” John said. “Let me show you around the place.” The apartment wasn’t some sprawling mansion, but in the land-locked circle of Ionath City the amount of space John did have had to carry a high price tag. Everything in the three-bedroom place looked new. New, and expensive.

  In one room, John had old-fashioned workout equipment. Racks of circular, black, metal plates, different sizes marking different weights. Quentin hadn’t seen weights like that since he’d left Micovi. He saw a bench press with a gleaming, chromed bar, a squat rack, a curl bench, and other workout machines.

  “Nice,” he said. “The real thing, huh?”

  John nodded. “One of the first things I bought with football money. Antique set, something like four hundred years old. With all the biometric workout machines we get from Hokor, you really can’t find stuff like this anymore.”

  “You can where I come from,” Quentin said. “Back home, sets like you’ve got here are state of the art.”

  “You guys have discovered fire, right?”

  Quentin rolled his eyes and looked around the room. Only then did he realize that the walls, ceiling, and even the floor were action shots of John’s brother, Ju, dressed in the black uniform of the Orbiting Death.

  “Hey John? Miss your brother much?”

  “Whatever,” John said. “It’s motivation, so if we play each other again I can beat his ass.”

  Quentin said nothing, remembering how “The Mad Ju” had ripped the Krakens for 179 yards and four touchdowns. The Krakens had won 35-31, but any ass-kicking by the Tweedy family had come from Ju.

  “Why don’t you guys get along?”

  “Because Ju’s a selfish idiot. He only thinks about himself, doesn’t think about what his actions do to others. You know the Orbiting Death owner?”

  “Um... Sikka the Death, right?”

  “Yeah, a nasty gangster, man. Real nasty. He and Ju are good buddies. Wanna know how dumb Ju is?”

  Quentin nodded.

  “One of Sikka’s lieutenants is Anna Villani. Her girlfriend is Grace McDermot. Ju is seeing Grace on the side.”

  “Seeing? You mean, like dating?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it dating,” John said. “Ju thinks no one knows that, and even if they did, nobody will touch him because he’s buddy-buddy with Sikka the Death, and because he’s the biggest star on Orbital Station One.”

  “So, your brother is seeing the girlfriend of a powerful gangster in the organization that owns his team?”

  John nodded. “Yep.”

  “Sounds stupid.”

  “Beyond stupid,” John said. “You play with fire, you’re going to get the horns, Quentin. Remember I said that.”

  “How could I forget?”

  John stared at one of Ju’s pictures. In the picture, Ju had his big head and wide shoulders lowered, blue eyes peeking out from just under the flat-black helmet. It was an excellent shot, capturing what it must feel like to be a defensive back stepping up to tackle a walking tank like Ju.

  “Someday,” John said, “my little brother is going to get in trouble he can’t get out of, and you know what? His big brother John won’t be coming to bail him out this time.”

  “This time?” Quentin said. “There have been times before?”

  “Ju and trouble go together like a peas in a glo
ve. But that doesn’t matter. He’s on his own. Let’s get out of here, I can’t even stand his stupid face.”

  John finished the tour in the entertainment room, where a large holotank showed the hovering logo of a video game: madden 2684.

  “John, no way! The new version of Madden? That doesn’t come out for another week, how did you get it?”

  “Because people love Uncle Johnny. And guess who they have as quarterback for the Ionath Krakens?”

  “No... way.” Quentin sat in one of the room’s two big recliners. He slipped on the fingertip controllers that were sitting on the arm rest. John did the same in the other chair. Within seconds, both players selected teams. Quentin chose the Ionath Krakens, of course — and so did John.

  “Krakens versus Krakens?” Quentin said. “You don’t want another team?”

  “If they have you as the quarterback, who do you think they have as the inside linebacker?”

  Quentin smiled and nodded. “Ah, I see, and in the video game, there’s—”

  “No red jersey,” John said, finishing Quentin’s sentence. “Prepare to be knocked into the Stone Age, backwater.”

  “Bring it, Uncle Johnny.” Moments later, Quentin stared into the holotank at something he’d never dared believe he might actually see — a lifelike representation of himself. He’d played the various versions of Madden more times than he remembered, played as all the great quarterbacks — Zimmer, Adrojnik, even Don Pine, although he’d never tell Pine that. And now he was playing himself. It was a surreal experience.

  Quentin selected a play and watched his team line up. So realistic, just like watching a game on the holo. His offense wore orange visitor jerseys. John’s defense wore the home black. Quentin saw the video-game version of John Tweedy creep up behind the noseguard, just a little. Quentin’s fingers tapped open air, calling up an audible. He twitched his left thumb, snapping the ball. Sure enough, John’s holo-linebacker roared through the line on a blitz. Quentin’s holo-quarterback calmly threw to the holo-tightend — in this case, Rick Warburg — who caught the ball right where John’s holo-linebacker would have been.

  “Jerk,” John said. “You see everything. I should know better than to blitz against you.”

  “Yeah, you should. John, I have to say, your apartment is awesome.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s a place like this go for, if I can ask?”

  “Sure,” John said. “Cost me seven million.”

  Quentin paused the game. “Seven million? How can you afford that?”

  “That’s a season’s pay,” John said. “Not that weird.”

  “You make seven million in one season?”

  “Yeah,” John said. “Why, how much you making?”

  “One-point-two,” Quentin said quietly. “I thought it was a lot.”

  “Q, one-point-two million is league minimum.”

  “League... minimum? You mean, like as in... minimum?”

  John nodded. “Yeah, brother, sorry to be the one to tell you. What does your agent say?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Hoooo,” John said. “Well, that explains a lot.”

  “Minimum. Is that what Yitzhak makes?”

  “Oh, no way,” John said. “Yitzhak makes more than that for sure. Becca the Wrecka probably makes league minimum, though.”

  “She makes what I make,” Quentin said absently.

  “Should I ask her out?”

  “What?”

  “Like on a date,” John said. “Is that weird? To date someone on your own team?”

  “Yeah,” Quentin said quickly. “It’s weird, don’t do it.” Quentin sat back in the chair again. Becca made as much as he did? A backup fullback? And why did he care if John dated her? What business of that was his? And league minimum? One-point-two million had seemed like a fortune, and it was a fortune, but if other people were making so much more...

  It was all too much, too overwhelming. He didn’t want to think about anything but football. “Let’s just play the game, Uncle Johnny. I’m done talking for a little while.”

  John shrugged, then un-paused the game. They continued with the Krakens versus the Krakens until the game finished (Quentin won 28-10), then Quentin let Choto take him home. The entire way there, he thought about a conversation he needed to have with Gredok the Splithead.

  A conversation about money.

  It would wait until season’s end, but it would happen.

  • • •

  QUENTIN WALKED DOWN THE TUNNEL toward Ionath Stadium’s field. In Earth Standard Time, the system that everyone used to track all things football-related, it was Saturday. Today they’d have a walk-through practice — get a decent workout, but not push too hard, and no hitting. Tomorrow the Themala Dreadnaughts would come calling. The Krakens had to be rested and ready.

  He walked past a Human cop, one of the dozens guarding Ionath Stadium.

  “Hey, Mister Barnes,” the guard said. “Hey, do you mind signing this for me?”

  The guy looked left and right, then held out a messageboard. It seemed a little suspicious, but then again, if the guy had already got past Gredok’s guards and wanted Quentin dead, Quentin would be dead. Quentin took the messageboard, signed it, and handed it back.

  “There you go.”

  “Thanks, Mister Barnes!”

  Quentin nodded at him, then started to walk out of the tunnel.

  “Hold it, Quentin. I’ve got some questions for you.”

  Quentin stopped. Same guy, but his voice sounded different... familiar. Quentin turned and peered at the smaller man’s face. The eyebrows were different, and he had a mustache, but the shape of that face...

  “Frederico?”

  “Frederico Esteban Giuseppe Gonzaga,” he said. “And you actually figured out it was me? You should be a punch-drive scientist, you know that?”

  “Why did you have me sign that messageboard?”

  “Just messing with you,” he said. “And testing my disguise skills.”

  The words disguise and messageboard clicked together in Quentin’s thoughts, sparking a memory.

  “You were our driver on Isis.”

  “Wow, can’t put one past you,” Frederico said. “Oh, wait, I guess I did.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Sometimes John hires me to be his bodyguard.”

  “John Tweedy hires you to be his bodyguard?”

  “Don’t look so shocked, Quentin. There’s more to conflict situations than being big and fast. I can fly just about any ship known to man, and some that aren’t. Considering that you seem to be a magnet for trouble, you might keep my skills in mind.”

  John was the most dangerous sentient Quentin had met. If he hired Frederico as a bodyguard, what did that say about Frederico’s abilities?

  “How do you know how to fly ships?”

  “I used to be a navigator in the Navy.”

  “Which navy?”

  “None of your business,” Frederico said. “Look, I need to talk to you.”

  “So why didn’t you schedule it? Messal would have set it up, you don’t need this silly disguise.”

  “Oh, but I do,” Frederico said. “Let’s just say that Gredok is not my biggest fan.”

  “Look, Fred, I have to get out there for practice.”

  “Not until you tell me about your involvement with the Zoroastrian Guild.”

  “The who?”

  “You heard me.”

  Quentin shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re lying,” Frederico said. “A splinter cell was behind the parade bombing.”

  “A cell of what?”

  “What are you, deaf? The Zoroastrian Guild.”

  Quentin felt his temper rising. He’d have to watch his control — if he lost it and hit a normal size man like Frederico, a single punch could do major damage.

  “Look,” Quentin said. “I don’t know anything about this Zoro Guild, an
d... hey, wait a minute, don’t you work for me?”

  “Not if you’re involved with the ZG,” he said. “I’m not working for anyone associated with those psychos.”

  “Well since I am not involved with them, then I guess you’re still working for me. So how about you treat your client with a little respect.”

  The last syllable came out harsh and clipped. Quentin realized he was leaning forward a little, and that his eyes had narrowed into a scowl. He stood straight again, breathed deeply through his nose and forced himself to relax.

  Frederico seemed to consider Quentin’s words for a few seconds. “I have to know,” he said. “I needed to see your face for this, know if you’re telling the truth. I am not someone you want to cross, Quentin. Trust me on that.”

  “I have no idea who these Zoro dudes are.”

  “Are you telling me you have never even heard of the Zoroastrian Guild?”

  “No, I never...” Quentin’s voice trailed off as a memory popped into his thoughts. A memory of being restrained on an X-rack, a room full of Creterakians asking him rapid-fire questions.

  “The Combine,” Quentin said. “The bats asked me about it when they were giving me the shock treatment.”

  “And that’s it?” Frederico said. “That’s the only time you heard of them?”

  Quentin nodded.

  “You don’t watch the news much, do you?”

  “Sure I do,” Quentin said. “ESPN and Galactic Sports Net, I watch them all the time.”

  Frederico stared at Quentin. He stared hard. Quentin fought an urge to look away. Quentin had refused to back down from far bigger sentients, far meaner, but there was something in Frederico’s eyes that seemed... merciless. Frederico’s stare was akin to only one other sentient that Quentin knew: Gredok the Splithead.

  “Okay,” Frederico said. “I believe you.”

  “Damn right you do.” Quentin had meant the words to be tough, but for some strange reason this much smaller Human bothered him. Threw him off his game. Maybe even... intimidated him? Just a little?

  No, that couldn’t be it. It was because Frederico was gay. Had to be. Quentin was trying hard to adjust to his new environment, but the fact remained that he’d spent nineteen years being indoctrinated in hate. It had to be the gay thing, because no way he could be intimidated by a man that was a foot shorter and weighed half as much. No way.