Manzhouli fell hard, skidded, but didn’t get up. The game ground to a halt as a medsled slid out of the tunnel and moved toward the prone player. Quentin checked the roster — the player who delivered the hit was number 72, a defensive tackle’s number. Tim Crawford. Quentin watched the replay, saw that Crawford had dropped off the line into coverage and closed quickly.
“Coach, did you see that?”
“Of course,” Hokor said. “Crawford is on my list of players that we want. That Mathara quarterback is throwing too high, exposing his receivers to damage. Sklorno just aren’t durable enough. This is the title game, and this is the third receiver the Manglers have lost.
“That’s why I want Cheboygan, Coach. You see my point?”
Hokor’s pedipalps twitched, his three sets of antennae circled. “Barnes, most quarterbacks go for pure speed and catching ability.”
“I’m not most quarterbacks. I want a team that can take a punch in the mouth and keep on coming.”
The medsled hovered over Manzhouli, lowered thousands of nano-fiber filaments that wrapped around her, lifted her without adjusting her position. The sled slid off the field, taking her to the locker-room tunnel. Quentin watched the Mathara sidelines. He expected a Sklorno to run out and replace Manzhouli, but instead, a Quyth Warrior trotted onto the field.
A light-green uniformed Quyth Warrior the likes of which Quentin had never seen. Six foot three or so, probably three hundred sixty pounds, this Warrior’s legs and middle arms looked the same as those of any member of his caste. His pedipalps, however, were long — so long they could touch the ground while he was standing straight upright.
John started laughing and slapping his thigh. Half-chewed chili fries shot out of his mouth to land on the luxury box counter. “Lookit the ‘palps on that one! What a little mutie!” IXNAY ON THE DNA scrolled across his face.
Hokor made a noise Quentin had never heard, kind a halfspit, half-cough. “Disgusting,” the coach said. “That abomination shouldn’t be allowed to live, let alone allowed to play.”
Quentin called up his own palm-up display, scanning through the Manglers roster until he found the Warrior. He was the sixth receiver on the depth chart — Tara the Freak.
The Manglers broke the huddle and lined up. Quentin felt a buzzing inside his chest, the feeling that he was about to discover something before anyone else did. Tara lined up in the slot, about three yards to the right of the offensive line. A Sklorno wide receiver lined up outside of him, almost to the sidelines.
“Coach?” Quentin said. “What do you mean, abomination?”
“Just look at those pedipalps,” Hokor said. “Tara is imperfect. He is a mutant. He should be eliminated. Why his Shamakath allows him to live is beyond me.”
Quentin had never heard a Quyth Leader talk so hatefully about his own kind before.
The ball snapped, the Manglers quarterback dropped back. Cheboygan again sprinted downfield on a post pattern, her big body again drawing double coverage.
Instead of running, Tara turned sideways, tucked into a ball and rolled — the Quyth Warrior’s strange form of sprinting. At ten yards downfield, he popped out of the roll only long enough to change direction, tucking again before rolling left on a crossing pattern.
Tim Crawford, the Archangels defensive tackle that had knocked Manzhouli out of the game, again dropped back into short coverage. Tara popped out of the roll and looked back for the ball. Another poorly thrown pass, the ball again several feet too high. Tara’s mutant pedipalps reached up for the catch — the big blur of turquoise and white slammed into Tara’s exposed midsection, bending the Quyth Warrior in half.
The world-class collision drew an ohhhh from the crowd. Quentin watched the two players hit the ground. Watched, and saw that Tara had come down with the ball.
A hit like that, and he made the catch?
“Coach,” Quentin said.
“No,” Hokor said.
Tim Crawford was slow to stand. Tara, on the other hand, popped right up. A hit that might have killed a Sklorno, and Tara sprang up as if he’d done nothing more hurtful than trip over a shoelace onto a big feather pillow.
“Coach,” Quentin said.
“Absolutely not,” Hokor said.
“But Coach, he—”
“No! I will not have that ... that ... freak wearing a Krakens uniform, and that is final!”
Quentin looked at the diminutive Quyth Leader and tried not to laugh. Hokor’s black-striped yellow fur had puffed up, making him look all soft and fuzzy. Such a display might make Hokor look frightening to a Quyth Warrior, but to a Human, it just made him look cute.
“Whatever you say, Coach. Just take it easy, okay? You want one of John’s chili fries?”
John helpfully reached out a fry covered in glistening, wet-brown chili and melted cheese.
Hokor looked at it, then shivered. “Humans. The things you will eat.”
Hokor’s fur slowly lowered back to its normal, silky-flat state. Quentin didn’t need to rock the boat at the moment, but he’d seen something that he couldn’t un-see. The Krakens needed toughness, durability — if that’s what a mutant freak provided, then that’s what the Krakens would sign.
3
SEPTEMBER 2683
WITH THE TIER THREE TOURNAMENT COMPLETE, Quentin, John and Hokor returned to Ionath on Quentin’s yacht, the Hypatia. Before leaving Wilson 6, however, Quentin had caught another Trench Warfare concert with John. After the concert, Quentin had said goodbye to Somalia. Her last kiss had been amazing. The way she pressed her body up against his, the things she had whispered in his ear.
It had been a long cruise home. Plenty of time to review holos of the various prospects they’d targeted. John had his heart set on landing a defensive end named Rich Palmer, who played for the Venus Vultures. Quentin hadn’t seen the man play. He’d been busy watching other games and focusing on offensive players.
Quentin wanted two players in particular. Getting his way would require some of that poker face that Frederico didn’t seem to think Quentin possessed.
Quentin did. And he would use it now. Sitting in Hokor’s office on the Touchback’s 18th deck, he talked with Hokor, Gredok the Splithead, Messal the Efficient and Don Pine. This was their final meeting before Gredok went out to try and sign new rookies, before he engaged in bidding wars, negotiations or any other nefarious tactics required to bolster the Krakens’ ranks. The Touchback was mostly empty — it was the off-season, and players were either down on the planet or off in their home systems. Aside from Q, just the sentients who would decide the future of the Ionath Krakens’ roster and a skeleton crew helping Captain Kate Cheevers maintain the ship.
Hokor sat behind his desk. His desktop showed several three-inch-high holographic players in a close-up of on-field action. Stats floated beside the players. Off to Hokor’s right, Gredok sat in a chair custom-made to his small dimensions. Messal the Efficient stood next to Gredok. Quentin and Don sat in chairs in front of Hokor’s desk.
“So, we can get her?” Quentin said. “We can get Cheboygan?”
He spoke to Gredok, but it was really a numbers-crunching question. Messal the Efficient worked a palm-up display, ripping through numbers faster than Quentin could track. Messal’s duties, it seemed, encompassed far more than keeping the Touchback neat and orderly.
Everyone waited for Messal’s answer. A Quyth Worker, Messal had the same back-folded legs, middle arms, single eye and pedipalp structure shared by Leaders and Warriors. Workers were taller than Leaders, with muscle-knotted pedipalp arms well suited to manual labor. Subservient in every way, Quyth Workers deferred to Leaders, Warriors, even members of other species.
Holotanks behind Hokor showed several players wearing a myriad of Tier Three colors. The Krakens had set their sights on eight candidates. They probably wouldn’t get them all, but Gredok would land at least half.
Messal looked up. “Table fluctuations indicate we will have the finances to sign our top prioriti
es — receiver Cheboygan, defensive back Gladwin, defensive tackle Tim Crawford and the half-breed defensive end Rich Palmer. Second priorities are defensive back Cooperstown, outside linebacker Cody Bowyer and linebacker Regat the Unobtrusive.”
Don nodded, satisfied. “If we get them all, that really bolsters our defense. We need depth at defensive back. Too bad about Standish getting pregnant.”
Don was right about that. The Krakens’ four starting defensive backs — strong safety Davenport, free safety Perth, cornerback Berea and cornerback Wahiawa, who had taken over the starting job from Stockbridge — were decent players, but the Sklorno backing them up weren’t nearly as talented.
“Are you guys sure Standish is gone?” Quentin said. “I mean, so she got knocked up, so what?”
“Her body will permanently change,” Don said. “By the time she’s recovered from dropping that egg sac, she’ll be a step slower than you. If a Sklorno gets pregnant, her career is over.”
Last year, Standish had been the team’s backup right cornerback, assigned with the task of covering the opposition’s receivers. She saw little playing time, but when she’d been in the game she’d done her job well. Losing her hurt, but it was better than losing Wahiawa or Berea, the starting cornerbacks. The saying went that you were only as good as your bench — the Krakens had to grab rookies to fill that gap.
“Then I hope we get Gladwin and Cooperstown,” Quentin said. “Defense has enough problems as it is.”
“We’ll get them,” Hokor said. “Then we are all in agreement?” He asked that out of courtesy. The final decisions were his. Only Gredok, the team owner, could overrule him. Gredok had to keep a running balance between personnel needs versus team finances.
Finances — that was where Quentin would make his play.
“There’s one more,” Quentin said. “I want Tara the Freak from the Mathara Manglers.”
Coach Hokor’s black-striped fur fluffed up. “I told you, Barnes, absolutely not.”
Quentin leaned forward in his chair, rested his elbows on Hokor’s desk. “Why not, Coach? Because he looks funny?”
Hokor slammed his pedipalp fists down on his desk. “He does not just look funny, Barnes! He is malformed!”
“You don’t seem to have anything against Rich Palmer. He’s half-Human, half-HeavyG.”
“He’s your kind,” Hokor said. “No one cares how ugly you all are. We Quyth do care about failed genetic lines. He is called Tara the Freak for a reason!”
Quentin leaned back, threw his hands up in frustration. “Oh, no! Oh, High One, he is malformed! What’s going to happen? His long pedipalp arms are suddenly going to pop off his head, grab a hatchet and chase us around like some horror-holo?”
Quentin felt a hand on his right shoulder.
“Q,” Don said. “There’s more to it than that.”
It was all Quentin could to not to slap Don’s hand away. “The guy can catch the ball,” Quentin said. “He can run routes over the middle. He can take hits. When he’s in the game, linebackers will have to cover him, have to watch for him, and that opens up other areas of the field. What more to it is there?”
“Much more,” Gredok said.
Whenever the Quyth Leader spoke, those around him listened carefully. Gredok’s black fur looked impeccably groomed — silky, shiny, smooth. He wore an outfit of spun silver, burnished so it wasn’t reflective enough to compete with the red and blue jewels that formed patterns of a solar system across his chest. Dozens of bracelets hung from both sets of wrists. As usual, Gredok’s attire screamed money and prestige.
“Barnes,” Gredok said, “you’ve been studying with Kimberlin, have you not?”
Quentin nodded.
“And have you learned about the Quyth culture?”
“A little. Lately I’ve been focused on physics, some galactic history, that kind of thing.”
“Well, then allow me to edify you,” Gredok said. His voice rang with calm control, the voice of a sentient who got what he wanted without yelling, without showing emotion. “Hokor told me of your interest in this player. I had my scouts look into him. It is amazing that Tara was not killed when he came out of the egg sac.”
“What? Kill him when he’s a baby?” Such barbarism, and yet everyone called Quentin’s home system of the Purist Nation primitive.
“The malformed are usually killed by their Leader,” Gredok said. “I myself killed two of my brothers once we had hatched and I saw that they were imperfect.”
Gredok, a killer from the time he could walk. Quentin shouldn’t have been surprised, but such cut-throat behavior shocked him regardless.
“Why would you kill your own family?”
“It is related to breeding, Barnes. A prospective female will examine not only the Leader with which she might have progeny, but also that Leader’s Worker and Warrior sac-mates. This gives her better knowledge of the Leader’s larger genetic makeup, and what their offspring may turn out to be. If she sees imperfections in the genetic stock, she will simply choose another Leader with which to breed.”
“You killed your own brothers,” Quentin said. Quentin would have given anything to have his brother back, anything to find his sister, and Gredok had killed two of his own? Sometimes it was hard to accept other cultures as equals — evil was evil, no matter how you tried to justify it.
“I did,” Gredok said. “And I am not alone. That is why you don’t see many mutations in the Quyth culture. Tara is the only survivor of his brood. Some viral contamination in his egg sac, it seems. He’s been an outcast all his life.”
Hokor waved his hands across a three-inch holo of Cheboygan. She vanished. He tapped a few icons, replacing her with a holo of Tara the Freak. Tara’s long pedipalp arms drew everyone’s attention.
“Tara is the only Quyth Warrior on the Manglers’ roster,” Hokor said. “That is why he can play in Mathara. We have four Warrior players.”
“So Tara would be our fifth,” Quentin said. “So what?”
Gredok’s left-middle pincer played with the bracelets on his right pedipalp. “You ask why an obvious prospect like Tara is available? Because Tier Two and Tier One teams know he is ... Pine, what is the word you use to describe a player whose team-unity disruption factor outweighs his or her on-field benefit?”
“Locker-room poison,” Pine said.
A touch of orange swirled across Gredok’s large cornea. Quentin knew that expression — Gredok found something humorous. “Yes,” the Leader said. “Poison. How appropriate.”
“So no one wants him,” Quentin said.
“Correct,” Hokor said. “No one wants the mutation.”
Quentin looked around the room. He’d based his strategy on this moment, knowing he’d have to make his play at the last second and convince Gredok just before the team owner headed out to battle for players.
“No one wants him,” Quentin said. “That means he’s affordable.”
Gredok said nothing, but his eye swirled with a touch of light red.
“Messal,” Quentin said, “what is Tara’s salary?”
“One hundred thousand,” Massal said. “We’d have to pay at least double that to the Manglers as a transfer fee.”
Quentin nodded. Time to play his hand. “So let me see if I get this right. We have a player who can help this team. A player who can take hits and is highly resistant to injury. A player who can catch spit in the wind. A player who we can have for a transfer fee of two hundred thousand, and sign him at the Tier One minimum salary, probably for a three-year contract. And we’re going let him go because he has long arms?”
Hokor banged on his desktop again. “You don’t understand! The other Warriors will not accept it!”
Quentin shrugged. “Huh. So our Warriors decide who plays for the Krakens and who does not? And here I would have thought their Shamakath made those decisions.”
The office fell silent. Hokor’s fur fell flat. He sat back down in his little chair. Don Pine looked away, but Quent
in stared right at Gredok, waiting for a response.
Quentin saw more threads of a light red flow across Gredok’s eye. Light red, the color of friendship, appreciation, or — in this context, Quentin guessed — respect.
“Barnes makes a good point,” Gredok said. “I will look further into this Tara the Freak. If I choose to sign him, the other Warriors will support the decision.”
Don shook his head. “No, they won’t. No disrespect, Gredok, but this is a mistake.”
Quentin turned on Don. “That’s exactly what you said about George Starcher. How did he turn out?”
Don leaned back. “George is fine, so far. But if you bothered to do any research before you made these emotional decisions, Q, you’d know George is always fine for the first season with a new team.”
“It’s different this time,” Quentin said. “He knows this is his last chance.”
Don shrugged. “I hope you’re right. And I hope you’re right about Tara, but I know you’re not.”
Quentin waved his hands in annoyance. Don Pine was one of the greats, but he was also old and jaded. So pessimistic!
Quentin turned to face the team owner. “Gredok, forget this looking into stuff — are you going to sign Tara the Freak, or not?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Quentin saw Hokor’s fur ruffle, saw the Coach’s eye swirl with threads of black and dark blue. There was no way around the disrespect of appealing to the team owner and overruling the head Coach. Don didn’t want Tara, Hokor didn’t want Tara, but that didn’t matter. Quentin would not allow prejudice or racism to determine who suited up in the Orange and the Black.
“Yes,” Gredok said. “We will sign Tara.”
Hokor stood up, fur fluffed out full length. “But Shamakath! You can’t—”
“I can’t?” Gredok let the word hang.
Hokor paused, then his fur fell halfway to flat. His eye flooded with the green of anxiety — he had overstepped his bounds. Hokor ran a pedipalp over his six antennae. “My apologies, Shamakath. Of course, the final decision is yours.”