THE ALL-PRO (25 page)

The seventy-five-headed monster fell uncomfortably still, waited for the small but powerful black-furred sentient to continue. He milked the moment, staring each one down in turn.

“Quentin Barnes is the Ionath Krakens’
starting
quarterback,” Gredok said. “We stand behind him one hundred percent. We believe in him. We will defend him against all accusations. He will start against the Isis Ice Storm. Because you members of the media seem so challenged by things like basic comprehension, I will repeat it again —
Quentin Barnes is the quarterback of the Ionath Krakens
.”

Quentin stared at the Quyth Leader. From the first words of that article, Quentin had wondered if Gredok would finally lose all patience. Not only was Gredok keeping his cool, he was
defending
Quentin. Gredok’s anger was fake, calculated, but his support of his young quarterback?

Totally genuine.

Gredok turned to face Quentin. “Barnes, I will handle this. You may leave.”

A tug at his wrist. Quentin looked at Messal, who was gesturing for Quentin to follow. Quentin stood and walked behind Gredok, to the door that led back to the locker room. Before he left, he heard Gredok again address the media.

“I will take more questions,” he said. “Ask what you will, but I strongly suggest you address me with
respect
. Now, who is next?”

Quentin dropped back five steps, planted his left foot. The crashing pads and angry grunts of his teammates echoed through an empty Ionath Stadium, filling the football temple with a hollow noise. This was the last time they would practice full-contact. In just two days, on Sunday, January 27, this place would fill with the insane roar of 185,000 fans.

He knew who he wanted to target but properly scanned through his receivers anyway: In the span of a second-and-a-half, he saw Milford on an out pattern — covered; Hawick on a post — just a step open, but he knew Hawick’s capabilities and didn’t need to test them; Halawa — covered, but she would read the defense and change her pattern to a short hook, but he didn’t throw that timing pattern.

His fourth choice was the one he really needed to test.

Tara the Freak.

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 and 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.

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.