THE RIDER (Galactic Football League Novellas Book 4)

  Pete had wanted to punch Ian in the nose. At that moment he wanted to do a lot more to Tony.

  “You think I get paid too much?”

  Tony nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Listen, you little punk, if it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t even be a league. I get paid because I’m the best. I get paid because I worked for nothing for two years, I handled dangerous mounts before we even had this ranch. I get paid because I stayed up every night with young dinos who were in constant pain while we figured out what they could and couldn’t eat. You know why I get paid? Because people come to see me.”

  “People come to see Bess,” Tony said. “You? Me? We’re just another kind of circus sideshow, man.”

  “Sideshow? You don’t even know what a sideshow is, Tony. A chunk of my money goes to the rescue program to help people like us who are in trouble, to help people like you when you were a damn strung-out drug dealer. My big, obnoxious salary and endorsement money helped get you out of there.”

  Tony banged an armored fist on his armored chest. “And nobody asked me if I wanted to go!”

  Pete stared, dumbfounded. He hadn’t expected to hear that. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, exactly — but not that.

  “When I found out about you, you had two bullet holes in your body,” Pete said. “You were an addict. People were trying to kill you.”

  Tony gestured to Bess, who was looking down lovingly at the two riders.

  “Yeah, and my life is so much safer now,” he said. “I got thousands of people cheering me on, but back then I had money.”

  “You’ll get money,” Pete said. “It’s coming, Tony. The whole league will be bathing in the stuff.”

  “Yeah? When, exactly, is that going to happen?”

  Pete shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “I figured,” Tony said. “It’s easy for you, Pete. You’ve got money now. I saw that interview with Yolanda Davenport. You’ve got a piece of the damn league. When you retire, you’ll be set for life. Know what I’ll be? What Dar and Jared and Stikz will be? We’ll be broken. By the time the money arrives we won’t be able to ride anymore because of all the damage we’re taking. And do you think the league’s going to cover our medical expenses when we’re done?”

  Pete nodded vigorously. “Yes, the league will. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Tony laughed. “Then you don’t read contracts very well. Maybe someday the league will be this paradise you think it is, but for now, every rider but you is just armored meat. When I was dealing I was in danger, but at least I got paid for it.”

  Pete wondered if Tony was getting paid for it again. He thought of bringing up the limo, but decided not to. Tony was mad, yelling, his body shaking with fury, but Pete saw something different in Tony’s eyes. Tony was a rider. That filled the kid with pride, gave him something he’d never had before. If he was going to walk away from the sport, he’d leave a chunk of his heart and soul behind.

  That would be tragic, no doubt, but the other reason Pete got paid more than anyone else was because he had to make the hard decisions.

  “I’m benching you,” Pete said. “Dar starts against the Resurrected.”

  Tony glared. He shook his head in disgust, then turned and headed to the main building.

  Pete watched him go. The three little compys ran into the open paddock, sprinted across the torn grass. Bess snorted and lifted her head. She loved to play with the compys — probably because they were the only animals on the Ranch that she couldn’t catch — but they didn’t come to her. They bunched around Tony, squawking and hopping.

  Tony kicked Melly. She squealed in surprise more than pain. She stared at him for a moment, then ran toward the killey pen. Her two sisters followed.

  Pete walked to Tony’s discarded helmet and picked it up. There was a little smear of dino dung on the forehead. Pete wiped it off.

  “Bess, pen,” he said.

  The mountain of an animal made a gurgling sound as she loped toward her pen.

  When Salton had first approached Pete about Dinolition, Pete had seen more than a fresh challenge and a paycheck. He’d seen a way to get Clark out of the sideshow, a way to bring dwarfs together and give them decent jobs for good money. He’d seen a way to give a kid like Dar a shot at a real future, a way for a bookworm like Jared to find out that he, too, could be a competitor, that being small didn’t mean he couldn’t learn to protect himself. It had been a way to take a kid like Tony off the streets and give him something other than a life of dealing poison.

  Tony ...

  If he was in the drug trade again, Pete had to get rid of him. The league didn’t need that kind of press, not right now. If Guestford found out Tony was getting back in the trade, she’d demand he be let go. If Salton found out Tony could smear the Ridgeback’s name, the Leader wouldn’t just fire Tony, he’d probably have the kid killed.

  The league gave people a shot at something greater, and that meant the league came first — but that didn’t mean the people in the league didn’t come a very close second.

  Pete had to find out if Tony was back in the trade again. If he wasn’t, he’d have to make sure the kid kept his nose clean. And if he was in the trade?

  Then Pete would have to find a way to get him out of it.

  • • •

  For almost every minute of every day, Smithwicks Arena loomed like an ancient ruin, abandoned and isolated, towering up from the landscape like it was the only building that really mattered to some long-lost culture. Silent, solitary, the breeze whistling through walkways, perhaps the occasional hiss of windblown sand sliding across concrete and pavement.

  But not on match-day.

  A dozen trumpeters marched down Champions’ Road, red and black banners hanging from long brass instruments, clothes done in those same colors and in the style of ancient heralds. That bit of ceremony belonged to Guestford, something she had implemented just this year. Songs blaring, the trumpeters passed by fans lined up ten-deep on either side. Those fans wore street clothes, but many bore the red and black announcing their loyalty to the Ridgebacks. And, Pete saw, more than a few wore the green and blue of the Resurrected — Sklorno females, mostly, but bolstered by Human, HeavyG and even Quyth. The Resurrected were a new team, sure, but everyone loves a winner.

  Twenty meters behind the trumpeters marched Bess, and in the saddle behind her head, Poughkeepsie Pete, long lance pointed high in the air, a crimson banner snapping smartly from the tip. Their freshly polished armor gleamed in the afternoon sun, deep crimson seemingly eating up the light until it glowed on its own, streamers of brightness flashing off the glossy black. Pete knew what a spectacle they were, and at times like this he truly understood the benefit of pageantry. He and Bess were a spectacular vision, a walking myth, the kind of thing that these people would remember all their lives.

  Behind Bess came the other armored members of the Ridgebacks: Critter Clark on the gallimimus Missy, Ian Bahas riding the achillobator Bucky, and bringing up the rear, Dar on the xiongguanlong Yar.

  Pete had to admit this bit of pomp and circumstance was quite enjoyable. The team, fully armored, marched from Ranch Ridgeback to the stadium. Fans packed the last two hundred meters of that march, shouting encouragement to their favorite mounts and riders, eager to see the beasts much closer than they could from behind the stadium’s protective crysteel barriers. So close they could hear the dinos snort, see snot gleaming on their noses, feel the light thump of each step. And, if those fans were lucky, maybe one of the dinos would look right at them. Or a rider would nod in their direction, or — be still hammering hearts — point a lance tip their way.

  This march seemed no different than the others had. Almost no different. Hundreds of red-and-black-clad fans wore arm bands honoring Tumult. Others were calling out for Tony and Dusty, upset that their favorite rider or mount — or both — clearly wasn’t in the lineup for that day’s contest.

  And there was something else different as
well, so subtly different that at first Pete hadn’t noticed.

  “Critter, you read?”

  “Ayuh, Cap, I’m here,” Pete heard in his helmet’s sound system.

  “Come on up here.”

  Pete kept Bess’s pace constant. He suddenly felt anxious — a hundred meters to go before the safety of the stadium ... so many people, so close.

  Clark’s lithe mount strode up next to Bess. Pete saw the faces of Human and HeavyG children light up, saw them pointing, laughing, clapping. Quyth pupae, too, Warriors and Workers and Leaders alike, their single eyes shining with amazement and reverence.

  “What’s up, Cap? Couldn’t make it another minute without my comforting presence?”

  Clark’s mount stood just over a meter at the hip, far smaller than Bess, whose hip topped four meters. Were it not for the headsets, Clark would have had to shout up to be heard.

  “Something like that,” Pete said. “Wondering if I’m crazy. Look out past the trumpeters and tell me what you see?”

  Clark did as he was asked. Pete wondered if it might take Clark a bit of time to recognize it, but the seasoned veteran responded almost immediately.

  “Where the hell is the security?” Clark asked. “I only see two Warriors out there. Where are the other four?”

  “No idea,” Pete said.

  He glanced up, saw a circling flock of ten Creterakians. For perhaps the first time in Pete’s life, he felt grateful to see the bats and their little entropic rifles, because the march usually had six Warriors, armed with pistols, flanking the mounts.

  “Team, listen up,” Pete said. “We don’t have as many babysitters today. Remember that you’re riding a super-predator and things can go wrong, fast. You stay in control, understand?”

  “Understood,” Ian said immediately. “Head’s on a swivel, Cap.”

  No sign of arrogance in the kid’s voice, no mocking — Ian sounded like a professional.

  “Uh, Cap, what’s going on?” Dar, on the other hand, sounded nothing of the sort. She sounded scared.

  “Nothing, yet,” Pete said. “Tell me you’re in control of your mount, Dar.”

  “I ... I’m in control, Cap. For sure.”

  Pete looked down at Clark, who was looking up at him. Pete tilted his head back toward Dar. Clark nodded, turned Missy around and ran to the rear of the column. Clark would ride with Dar, make sure she handled herself and her mount if anything went wrong.

  Fifty yards to the stadium ...

  Up ahead, Pete saw the fans were edging into the road itself, from both sides, like a throat preparing to swallow, less pushed in by the people behind them and more creeping forward because there was no one to tell them otherwise. He saw the two Quyth guards, one on either side, screaming at the fans, waving both pedipalps and middle arms, but there were too many fans to keep them all in check.

  Pete slid the lance into its holster. From the other side of the saddle, he drew his war hammer — if he had to get down there himself and clear a safe path for Bess, that’s what he’d do.

  Not ten meters down the road, on the right, a Human woman dressed in black broke free from the crowd and rushed at the Warrior on that side. She tried to hit the Warrior, who caught her wrist easily, but in that same instant Pete saw that she wasn’t the real attacker — she was just a distraction. A Human man wearing a black jacket shot out of the crowd, slipping past while the Warrior’s back was turned. The man took three steps and hurled something at Bess, something spinning and wet, something flinging red drops into the air.

  Bess rose up, the simple act both pulling her head away and taking it far out of the man’s range. The thrown object (meat, Pete saw, sunlight glinting off of blood and raw flesh) splatted against the Champions’ Road’s concrete.

  “Abomination,” the man screamed. He reached into his jacket, came out with another handful of raw meat.

  Pete heard and felt Bess growl — she recognized the man was a threat, and tensed to deal with him.

  “Bess, still!”

  It was a horrible thing to know, but Pete only had to control her for a few seconds, because that man was as good as dead. The man reared back his right arm for a second awkward throw, but before his arm came forward a blur of movement whizzed toward him — two beams of white static shot out. One hit him in the stomach, the other in the left arm.

  The man screamed. It was a short, strangled sound, quickly cut off as his diaphragm evaporated. The meat fell in a wet lump at his feet. He raised his left arm, eyes wide and horrified, staring at the sizzling static that moved both up and down his arm. The limp arm suddenly dropped to the pavement, free of any connection to his body, the severed stump still sizzling and vanishing like a sparkler burning down to a stubby end. The entropic charge must have reached his spine, because the man folded backward like a cracked book. The back of his head hit the back of his calves a second before his remains fell into a still-crackling, still-dissolving pile.

  Pete became aware of the crowd’s screams, how they were moving away from the Champions’ Road, some turning and sprinting.

  The Creterakians circled low and wide, their shadows falling on the fans, increasing the panic.

  Threat neutralized, but it wasn’t over, not until Pete locked down the team and their mounts.

  “Team, sound off,” he said. “Everyone in control?”

  “A-okay here,” Clark said.

  “In control,” Ian said.

  “What the hell is going on?” Dar said. “Yar’s getting antsy, Cap.”

  She wasn’t in total control, but she wasn’t screaming that she’d lost control, either, and Pete would take that for what it was worth. With the crowd cleared, he needed to get his team into the stadium — there was no telling if the man and the woman had more help out there.

  “Team, single file, fast trot, let’s get indoors,” he said. “Don’t stop for anything or anyone. Follow me.”

  Pete’s gloved hand patted Bess’s armored neck. He patted hard, to make sure she knew he was still there.”

  “Bess, advance.”

  She did as she was told, her long stride carrying her down the road, past the smoking black mark on the concrete that moments earlier had been a man.

  In seconds, the team was safely inside the stadium.

  • • •

  The starting riders waited in the locker room, as ordered by the local police. Stikz, Jared and Doc Baiman were with the mounts in the dugout, keeping the animals calm.

  The local Creterakian militia had been activated. The ten circling bats who had torched the meat-slinger had turned into a flock of at least a hundred. Fifteen of them guarded each group of mounts, promising instant death to anyone who came near. The rest of the bats circled the stadium or monitored the local bomb squad that was working its way through the arena.

  “It’s been an hour,” Ian said. “I’m bored. If they’re going to cancel the match, they should cancel it already.”

  Clark shook his head. “No way they’ll cancel it for one idiot dumb enough to attack a dinosaur.”

  “But that man died,” Dar said. “Is the match really that important?”

  Pete felt bad for Dar. Her first match after two long years of hard work, and some jackass terrorist had spoiled it. As a newbie, she had enough problems to deal with before any of this had gone down. If the match did happen, Pete would have to keep an even closer eye on her — in Dinolition, lack of focus carried a powerful price.

  Her comments were yet another indicator of her age. She’d grown up hard, bouncing from foster home to orphanage to foster home and back, but she’d also grown up sheltered. In Roughland, like many places on the outskirts of civilization, sentients died every day. Not in such a spectacular fashion, sure, but death was a constant.

  The locker room door opened. Pete saw one of the Warrior guards who had been on the Champions’ Road step aside, letting in Rachel Guestford, Salton the Grimy, Salton’s HeavyG goon Miller, and Lieutenant Marchand, a Human cop Pete had me
t a few times over the years whenever the local police investigated a threat to the Ridgebacks organization.

  Guestford wore a blue dress with matching five-inch heels, something inbetween formal gown and woman-on-the-town. Silver bracelets and a silver necklace with a diamond as big as Pete’s eye complemented the ensemble. As usual, she looked like a million credits, so hot she almost distracted Pete’s thoughts from the situation at hand. Almost.

  Salton was just as decked out, wearing a designer outfit Pete had never seen and carrying so much jewelry on his tiny frame that Pete was surprised Miller didn’t have to carry him.

  “The match is on,” Guestford said. “Stadium security is finishing their sweep and the fans are being let in.”

  Dar let out a shocked huff. “But that man died! We’re just going to play the games?”

  Pete, Guestford and Salton all looked her way. Dar’s eyes flicked from one to the next, her armored shoulders lowering as she did, until she couldn’t look at any of them. She stared at her feet.

  “I want answers,” Pete said to Guestford. “We’ll play, but I need to know my mounts and riders are safe.”

  “They aren’t your mounts,” Salton said. “And if you’re told it’s safe, then it’s—”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Pete snapped. “But since you opened your mouth, mind telling me why there were only two guards protecting the march? All this time I thought you were just cheap, but maybe you’ve just mismanaged this franchise so badly that we’re broke and you can’t afford security.”

  The Leader’s fur fluffed up fully, instantly.

  “How dare you! Management of team finances is not your concern! This attack could have happened at any time.”

  “But it didn’t happen at any time,” Pete said. “It happened today, when we only had two guards. Why did we only have two guards, Salton?”

  The Leader’s eye swirled with black. “Paying for six guards seemed like an unnecessary expense. We’ve never had a problem before.”

  Pete nodded. “And we’ll never know if the reason we didn’t have a problem before was because before you paid for adequate security.”