If you had a good running game, which the Krakens did, you could draw linebackers forward with a play-action fake — pretend to hand the ball to Ju Tweedy and the linebackers would rush forward to stop the run. A play-action fake would leave room right behind them for a crossing pattern, where the receiver ran horizontally in the space where the linebackers had just been.
Tara ran left, a crossing pattern through the no-man’s land of bloodthirsty middle linebackers — Virak the Mean, John Tweedy, Choto the Bright. Quentin threw as hard as he could; his receivers had to be able to handle not only big hits, but also catch his rocket-hard passes. As soon as the ball left Quentin’s hands, he saw John Tweedy and Virak break on it. John was closest — in a split-second, John saw he couldn’t reach the ball in time, so instead he focused all his momentum on the receiver.
In one athletic move, Tara caught the pass with his pedipalp hands, pulled it in tight to his body and ducked his helmeted head just as John Tweedy smashed into him. The hit echoed through the stadium, a hammer-sound bouncing off of empty seats and across the open space. Catch-hit-fall, John and Tara dropped to the blue surface.
Still cradling the ball, Tara instantly bounced back to his feet. Quentin felt a rush in his chest, that sensation of I was so right about him —
— and then Virak the Mean closed in, full speed and buried his helmet in Tara’s back. Tara flew forward, head snapping, middle arms flailing behind him. He fell face-first.
A cheap shot, after the play, a hit so vicious it would have killed most sentients. The team stood there, stunned.
Virak took two steps closer and stood over Tara.
“Just quit, mutie. You’re not wanted here.”
Despite the lethal hit, Tara again jumped up. Quentin couldn’t help but feel another round of that fluttery sensation again — even with a cheap shot, Tara had held onto the ball. So tough.
The surreal, violent moment stretched on. Tara whipped the ball at Virak’s face, then dove at his legs, tackling him to the ground. Tara’s big, mutated pedipalps rained down a left-right-left before Shayat the Thick and Killik the Unworthy shot in, hitting Tara, driving him off of Virak.
“Worthless ronin!” Killik screamed. “No Leader wants you!”
Before Quentin could take a step toward the melee, Virak rolled to his feet. He started for Tara, but George Starcher hit him from behind, driving the Warrior to the blue turf.
Practice had turned into a street fight. Quentin rushed in. He reached for Killik but was driven aside by Choto the Bright. Quentin had a brief blur-vision of backup fullback Kopor the Climber tangling with Ju Tweedy, of Tara landing a hard right cross on Killik’s helmeted head, of Sklorno suddenly jumping up and down and chittering madly, of John Tweedy screaming woohoo! And diving into the fray.
Quentin hit the ground, Choto’s weight on top of him.
“Stay down,” Choto hissed. “Stay out of this.”
Quentin’s temper flared up. He pushed back, tried to rise, but Choto’s forearm pressing down on his windpipe quickly ended the struggle.
Hokor’s voice boomed through the stadium, amplified a thousand times over by the sound system. “Stop this grab-ass nonsense at once!”
“Two days before our first game and you act like hatchlings? All of you, to the locker rooms. Virak! Starcher! Fifty laps, together and if you fight again I’ll dock your pay! Tara, two hundred pedipalp pushups and then you run fifty laps as well.”
The pressure on Quentin’s throat eased off. Choto stood, pulled Quentin to his feet. Quentin’s temper still raged, but he held it back.
“Why’d you hit me?”
Choto’s eye swirled black. “I did not. Had I hit you, you would know it.”
Oh, how Quentin wanted to punch him right in his baseball-sized eye. “You better tell me,” he said quietly. “Why’d you put your hands on me?”
“It is my job to protect you,” Choto said. “Do not get involved with this. For all of the problems you have faced, you do not want to make Virak the Mean your enemy.”
“Shuck that. I’m not going to have fighting on my team.”
“Cultural ignorance,” Choto said. “I warn you, Quentin — there are two sentients I would not cross. Gredok the Splithead and Virak the Mean. If Tara cannot protect himself, then he is not worthy of anyone defending him.”
What a load of crap. Quentin turned his back on Choto and walked toward Tara, who was ripping off fast pushups. Most of the team had filtered off the field. Tara’s left pedipalp hand bled. His jersey had been torn off his right middle shoulder, a long rip showing the cracked chitin beneath. A lot of cracks. This sentient had led a hard life.
“Tara, are you okay?”
Tara finished his two hundred reps, then stood. Heavy lids narrowing, his black-swirling eye glared. “Leave me alone.”
“Hey, I just want to help.”
Tara reached down, picked up his helmet. “You’ve helped enough,” he said, then jogged to the edge of the field and began his fifty laps. Two years ago, Quentin had fought with Mum-O-Killowe. Hokor had made the two combatants run laps together; the fact that the coach now made Tara run separately from Virak spoke volumes — Hokor didn’t trust his own authority to keep the two from going at it again.
Tara would finish his laps, then wait, alone, until the other Warriors had left the locker room.
Quentin watched his newest receiver run laps until an elbow drove into his shoulder.
“Hey, Q!” Ah, the love-tap of John Tweedy. “That was some scrap! Good times! Did you get any shots in?”
John’s lip was cut, dribbling blood onto his practice jersey.
“John, what are we going to do? It’s only getting worse for Tara. I need to say something to the team and I need you to back my play.”
John laughed and shook his head. “No way. Don’t get in the middle of this Warrior stuff. Tara will either endure it and stick around, or he won’t and he’ll quit.”
“But he’s good, John!”
“Hell yes he is. That shot I put on him? If that had been you, you’d be in the hospital. If it had been Hawick, she’d be in a body bag. And then that cheap-shot Virak landed? Forget about it. Tara’s the real deal. You wanted to know if your new receiver could take the hits? I think you got your answer.”
John jogged toward the tunnel. Quentin stood there, thinking, wondering, hoping that his gamble might have paid off.
Hokor’s golf cart floated down to the field and landed next to Quentin.
“Barnes,” Hokor said, his voice now normal and not amplified by his cart’s speakerfilm or the stadium’s sound system. “What do you think of Tara’s readiness? Is my rookie receiver ready to play in our opener against the Ice Storm?”
Quentin laughed. “Your rookie receiver? Come on, Coach, don’t you mean the reject that you would never allow on your team?”
“I am not blind, Barnes. My eye sees quite well. Throwing to the Freak over the middle creates a serious strategic problem for our opposition. If linebackers have to stay home, Ju will get the extra two or three steps he needs to run them over. If Tara plays like this in an actual game, it makes us even more difficult to defend.”
“So what you’re really saying is, Gee, Quentin, you were right and I was wrong.”
“I said nothing of the kind, Barnes!” Hokor flew his golf cart off the field.
Quentin watched the coach go. Alone, the thoughts of practice, of the Warriors targeting Tara, they faded away. His off-the-field problems once again crowded his thoughts, darkened his mood. With a football in his hands, he could tune out anything. Practice was over — that let things come rushing back.
The galaxy thought he was a villain.
Yolanda’s article had been only the beginning. Sports shows, reporters, bloggers, fan sites — he was the talk of the universe. Quentin was the big story, pushing the former top story — the Prawatt/Sklorno crisis — to second place. The galaxy simmered near the brink of war for the first time in four decades an
d more people were concerned about a football player.
Last year, Gredok had sequestered Quentin to protect him from terrorists. This season, he was sequestered again — to keep him safe from reporters. Gredok forbade him from talking to the media or even leaving the Krakens building and stadium complex.
Quentin carried his helmet in his left hand. He tossed the football up and down in his right as he walked to the tunnel. Fifty yards away, Tara the Freak sat in the orange end zone. Tara was a great addition to the team. But there was more to football than skill. A player had to excel during a game and had to mesh with his teammates. Coach Hokor had seen enough that he would call plays for Tara that coming Sunday. The Freak would get his chance. John Tweedy now accepted Tara, a respect earned through toughness. But John and Coach Hokor were not the entire team.
Different species, different cultures, but they were all football players. If Tara could succeed in an actual game, maybe the Warriors would back off and accept him as part of the team.
Quentin didn’t know if that would work, but it was the next step. The team would accept Tara the Freak. Quentin would tolerate nothing less.
JANUARY 26, 2684
One final step marked the end of preseason. Four weeks of preparation had led to this, to the posting of the final team roster.
The GFL allowed fifty-three players per franchise. Teams could bring in as many players as they liked in the four weeks of preseason, but come kickoff for the opening game, the franchise had to reach that magic number.
Of those fifty-three, only forty-five were named “active” and could dress for games. These players proudly wore their team colors on Sunday. They could accurately say, “I am a professional football player.” The eight players who were on the roster but couldn’t dress for games were declared “inactive.”
Inactives, also known as “practice squad” players, practiced every day, went through the same conditioning as everyone else, but didn’t get the glory of a Sunday afternoon. Practice squad players often took on the role of opposition defenders, trying to give the starters the most accurate preparation for upcoming games. Being a practice-squad player carried mixed emotions — you were getting paid to play football, but you weren’t quite good enough to dress for games. An injury to someone higher up on the depth chart could move you up in an instant. Being inactive wasn’t the role these players wanted, but it was still a damn sight better than, say, working in a mine for twelve hours a day.
For young players, being named to the practice squad was often a good thing. It meant you had made the team, that you had time to develop your skills and — someday — maybe make the active roster. For older players, however, being named to the practice squad was often the last step before your career ended. If you were a seasoned veteran, your speed, reaction time and other physical capabilities were already in decline. All things being equal, any team would choose a younger player for that practice-squad slot. Younger players would get better, while the older players would only get worse.
Position depth charts were posted throughout the preseason. As the regular season drew near, some players moved up and some players moved down. You always knew if you were a starter, a first backup, a second backup, et cetera. What you did not know, however, was if Coach Hokor would decide you weren’t needed in the 45-player game-day roster. For the third-and fourth-string players, anxiety over that pending decision grew and grew, building in intensity, right up until the team walked off the field for the final day of preseason practice.
The Krakens gathered in the central locker room. Coach Hokor walked to the holoboard.
“Final depth charts and active squad,” he announced to the team. “If your name isn’t on the board, come to my office immediately.”
Hokor tapped the screen. The names flashed up and that was that. No apologies, no thanks for trying. The GFL was an unforgiving business — you were either good enough to play or you weren’t.
Quentin watched the players rather than the board. The starters, like John and Ju, didn’t even bother to look. Their positions were assured. Like the Tweedy brothers, half of the team simply filtered into their species-specific locker rooms.
The remaining players moved forward.
There were unabashed sighs of relief, body language cues showing that the players had found their name on the active roster. These reactions came first because those names were near the top of their positions.
Next came the response of those who were still on the team but hadn’t made the active roster. Some of these players showed excitement — they had thought themselves gone but now had a second chance to prove their abilities. For others, the news came as a shock. Even if they had felt it coming, there was always an element of denial, that feeling of it can’t happen to me.
Wan-A-Tagol was the first. He’d been a second-string left defensive end behind Aleksandar Michnik. The thought had been that Wan-A would develop and become the starter when Aleksandar’s skills faded due to age. Only Aleksandar’s abilities hadn’t faded. If anything, Aleksandar had only gotten better. Then the Krakens had picked up rookie Rich Palmer and the free agent Cliff Frost. Both of them were better than Wan-A and apparently Hokor didn’t see the need to dress the team’s fifth-best defensive end.
Wan-A’s career had just been dealt a setback. He was now on the practice squad. Wan-A was twenty-six — damn near a baby by Ki standards. He could bounce back, but it would depend on how hard he worked.
For Mezquitic, however, all the hard work in the world couldn’t change her downward slide.
Last season, the Sklorno defensive back had already begun to shown signs of slowing. Her vertical leap had dropped a half-inch coming into last year then another half-inch coming into this season. Too many hits had taken their toll.
Quentin watched her, knew when she saw her name listed on the practice squad. He knew that moment because she started to shake. Her eyestalks sagged, drooping like wet spaghetti. Her raspers unrolled, dragged on the floor. She dropped to the ground and quivered.
The other players simply stepped around her, looking to the board to find their own names. Quentin wanted to go to her, try to cheer her up, but he knew that would only make things worse. No one could help Mezquitic. She would deal with it and contribute to the team any way she could, or not deal with it and be cut altogether.
The last players to react were those who hadn’t made the team at all. They were last because they read the list of names over and over, the emotional side of their brain trying to see if the logical part had made a mistake, that their name was on the final roster but somehow they had just missed it.
They hadn’t missed it. They were just gone.
Tiburon didn’t find her name. Her career with the Krakens had come to a shattering, sudden end. Curiously, she seemed to handle it better than Mezquitic. Maybe Tiburon could catch on with another team, but at her age, it was unlikely. Twenty-three years old, a five-year veteran and the Sklorno’s time in the GFL was over.
She didn’t bother walking into the Sklorno locker room. Instead, she walked to the main exit, undoubtedly headed straight for Hokor’s office. There, she would get a ticket for the next transport to Sklorno space.
Quentin looked back to the board, saw Tom Pareless standing there, nodding his head slowly. Tom hadn’t made the roster. He smiled, nodded again, then sniffed. He wiped at his right eye.
Quentin walked up to the older man. “Tom? You good?”
Tom looked up, smiled. He started to talk, then closed his mouth. He swallowed.
“I knew it was coming,” he said finally. “My ankle never healed right. I was good enough to hold onto the starting spot for most of last season, but Becca is just plain better. I knew the writing was on the wall when Gredok brought her in last year. This just ... this just came on so fast, you know?”
Quentin nodded. A year ago at this time, Tom Pareless had been the starting fullback for the Ionath Krakens. Today? Cut from the team altogether, a discarded player. It coul
d — and did — happen just that fast.
“Sorry, man,” Quentin said. “I mean, I would have thought that you still had an edge on Kopor the Climber.”
Tom shook his head. “Naw, I’m not too proud to realize that Kopor is getting better. He’s only twenty-four, Q. He’s got his best years ahead of him. I’m thirty-seven years old.”
“You going to try and catch on with another team? You’re still better than ninety percent of the Tier Two fullbacks out there.”
Tom shook his head again. “I don’t think so. The way I’ve been moving, playing ... I might catch on for a season, but I also might mess myself up even more. After fifteen years, my body is beat up enough. I’m already going to have a lot of pain as I get older. So will you.”
Quentin nodded.
“I’m out, Q,” Tom said. “Fifteen years I played pro. You know how many sentients can say that? Not very many. Fifteen shucking years. Time to move on to something else.”
Quentin tried to think of another career, something to say that would give Tom least a little encouragement, but in the moment he couldn’t conceive of a job anyone would want to do after football. “Like what?”
Tom peeled off his shoulder armor and dropped it on the floor. He rolled out his neck, sniffed again, then smiled. “Maybe front office. All I know is football. Well, it’s time for me to go see Hokor.”
“Aren’t you going to shower first?”
“Hell no,” Tom said. “Just because this has to be done doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy on him. Let him smell my stink one last time.”
Tom offered his hand. Quentin shook it.
“This is the life we have chosen,” Tom said. “I put in fifteen years, I can still walk and I can eat things other than soup through a straw. I’m lucky.”
“Shuck that,” Quentin said. “You have those things because you were good. You were one of the best.”
Tom slapped Quentin on the shoulder, then walked out of the locker room.
Everyone filtered away from the board, leaving only two Ki standing there, staring. Per-Ah-Yet and Roth-O-Lorak. Per-Ah-Yet, a backup defensive tackle, was seventy-five years old. Old even for the Ki, who often played into their late sixties. Roth-O-Lorak, however, was only thirty. Roth-O, a backup center, just plain wasn’t good enough. If he kept playing, he might catch on in Tier Two or could likely wind up all the way down in Tier Three.