The Starter (38 page)

He wiped his palms against his jersey, then settled in beneath center.

“
Greeeennn
, ten-eighteen!” he called out, audibling to a QB naked boot right. The Krakens knew their assignments and turned to face their foes. “Green, ten-eigh
teeeen!
”

Cairns was too smart to get drawn in by a naked boot, she’d see it coming, and that was exactly the plan.

Just before the snap, he stared at her again, his nostrils flaring, the rage in his chest bubbling up all wicked and lovely. She wanted to play in his world?
Well if you want blood, you got it
.

“Hut-hut!”

The ball smacked into his hands. He opened to the left, putting the ball on Yassoud’s belly and riding him into the line. Quentin pulled the ball free and spun on his right heel, away from the line, coming all the way around before he started sprinting to the right. A pink-clad Ki lineman reached for him, but only for a moment before the black-jerseyed Aka-Na-Tak upended the defender and crushed him to the ground.

Quentin tucked the ball into his right arm and ran, felt the air rush across his sweat-slicked face, felt it burning the torn skin of his neck, each step a surging rush of glory and life and immortality. Huntertown, the Warlords left cornerback, saw the run and instantly crashed toward Quentin. Quentin adjusted his pace — Huntertown wasn’t paying attention to the outside edge of the field, to Halawa, who was in at right wide receiver.

One thing most Sklorno receivers were not good at was blocking. Too many collisions took its toll, affecting a Sklorno’s ability to catch the ball if not injuring her outright. So while they
would
block, they usually just got in a defender’s way, forcing that defender to change direction. Sklorno receivers normally didn’t hit with everything they had.

Halawa, apparently, was not most receivers.

In a fraction of a second, Quentin’s chess-master mind calculated direction and velocity — he ran straight down the line, not changing his path, letting Huntertown come in fast. Just before she reached him, Halawa reached her. The oversized Sklorno receiver blindsided the cornerback, knocking her pink-spotted pink helmet clean off and sending her flying like a rag doll.

BLINK

The world downshifted to a speed where he was King, where he saw everything, heard everything, felt everything, smelled everything, tasted everything.

Halawa’s hit not only left Quentin free to turn up the sidelines, it energized him. It was a burst of pure kinship, soul-binding with another species that played the game the way
he
played the game.

He ran down the sidelines. With Huntertown out of the way, Cairns was the only Warlord player in position to catch him.

If you want blood...

On the snap, Cairns had dropped back into coverage, and now streaked in with the blazing speed that only the Sklorno possessed.

“
Get out of bounds!
” Coach Hokor shouted in his headset. “
Slide!
”

No, not this time.

He tucked the ball tightly into his right arm.

The pink-and-black-and-white blur of Cairns shot in. Quentin reared his head back like a mountain ram, then screamed a primal scream as he brought it forward with all his strength, timing it to smash his enemy at the moment of impact. The hit
rattled
him. Still in his slow-motion mode, he felt the wiggle of his liver, the vibration of his stomach, the quiver of his kidneys. He heard something
snap
near his left shoulder, suffered a sword-stab of pain driving down into his lung.

He lost all sense of reality, of time and space and distance, but his feet kept moving, little hard-working creatures that had brains of their own. Quentin looked up into the stands as he ran. His watery eyes saw a blurry wash of orange and black — banners, flags, sentients — all melding together into one giant black monster with orange eyes that demanded sacrifice,
blood
sacrifice, and the monster must must
must
be appeased for the monster is High One himself.

He looked forward, saw the long, flat, black mouth of the monster, the High One, opening wide to
accept
him, to take him
home
. Quentin felt love and war-lust rage through his chest, bouncing off his wounds both internal and external, making the pain a distant thing, a thing to be felt by the weak and the damned.

He also sensed demons coming for him, things that would stop him from diving into the monster’s welcoming maw. Not today, demons. His smart-feet moved faster, faster, pushing him across the blue Iomatt as if he were in a gravcar. He felt the heat of the demons, so close now. His feet launched him forward so that he
was
floating, he
was
flying, flying headlong into the monster’s maw, into
freedom
.

BLINK

The sound of a whistle called him back, and brought with it searing agony.

“Unnghhh!” was a semblance of the noise that came out of his mouth. He couldn’t move his left arm, his
throwing
arm. He tried to get up, but could not. His right arm still worked. He let go of the ball and blindly grabbed at a handful of Iomatt. He lifted his hand to his face and looked at the plants.

Painted black.

The black of the end zone.

He had scored.

Faces swarmed over him, the faces of his teammates, worried and excited and reverent.

He reached his right hand to his left shoulder, gently feeling for a second or two before realizing his shoulder pad wasn’t there. The hit had cracked his indestructible armor, ripped it free. It felt like someone had driven a screwdriver down his neck and into his lung.

Quentin knew he was out for the game.

“Bring it home, boys and girls,” he said, realizing that even
talking
hurt, and not really caring about the pain. “Bring it home! Protect our house!”

Medsled wires wrapped him and lifted him. Now he truly
was
floating. He didn’t move a single iota when the sled carried him to the tunnel and back to the locker room.

• • •

BROKEN COLLARBONES
hurt.

A brace under Quentin’s chin isolated his head and kept it above the rejuvenation tank’s pink gel. Even through high-anxiety concerns about his ability to heal, to play next week, he couldn’t help but be fascinated by the process.

It was his first visit to the stadium’s white-walled hospital. He’d seen the training room, sure. That room was just off the communal locker room. It had training tables, limb-sized rejuve tanks, surgical facilities for grafts and casts, the usual stuff. That was where he’d done his physical therapy and healing sessions after Yalla the Biter had torn his hand. The training room worked for small things like that. His new injury, apparently, required something bigger.

The hospital looked large enough to handle three or four critical patients at once. His tank alone was larger than his quarters on the
Touchback
, larger than all three rooms combined. Other than his head, his entire body was submerged. Doc Patah was actually
inside
the tank, gently undulating wings carrying him through the fluid. Quentin couldn’t see below the neck brace. Holotank monitors on the wall let him watch Doc Patah’s seemingly slow-motion flaps.

“Quentin,” Doc Patah said. “Are you sure you want to watch this?”

Quentin started to nod before he remembered — for the hundredth time — that he couldn’t move his head at all.

“I’m sure,” he said. “I know your voice is coming through the speakers in the walls and all, but how the heck can you talk to me from in there, anyway? You’re swimming in pink pudding.”

“Harrah vocal inflections are made inside our chest cavity. The microphone inside transmits to my speakerfilm. I just routed the signal to the room’s sound system. I’m going to touch a nerve cluster to make sure the pain blockers are working. Tell me if you feel anything. On a count of three, ready? Three, two,
one
.”

Quentin watched the monitors. Doc Patah had opened up the skin from his shoulder to his neck. Through a pink haze, Quentin could see the jutting end of the broken bone.

Patah’s right mouth flap held a small metal probe. He poked it around the bone, trying different spots. “Do you feel anything?”

“Nothing,” Quentin said. “Kind of weird.”

“The nerve blockers are working. Excellent. The break isn’t that bad. This will only take about an hour... glue the bone, graft on brace strips that will dissolve on their own in a few days, fuse you back up, then the cast.”

“How long am I out?”

“Three days,” Patah said. “You’re young.”

“So I can play next week?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“But I
can
play?”

Patah said nothing as he used clamps to pull the bone ends closer. “Yes, you can play.”

Even though Quentin couldn’t feel his body, he sensed the stress draining out of it. He
had
to play next week — the Krakens were traveling to the Ki system to play the undefeated To Pirates. The shucking
Pirates
, his childhood team. He’d risked public floggings to get pirated broadcasts of their games. Legendary quarterback Frank Zimmer. Quentin would be playing
against
Zimmer, on the
same field
as Zimmer.

Quentin couldn’t stop his smile. At least his face muscles still worked. He’d delivered on his promise to win at least one of the first three games, and
without
trading Scarborough and Denver. Aka-Na-Tak was back, finally providing decent pass-blocking that would get better in a real hurry. Quentin had held out for his friends, and it had paid off.

He looked to the holotank again, watching Doc use some kind of small machine to fuse the broken bone together. Back in the Purist Nation, a broken collarbone would have put him out for weeks. Here on the Touchback, in Tier One? Three or four days. Amazing.

“Hey,” Quentin said. “This the worst injury you’ve ever fixed?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Doc Patah said. “I used to be a ring doctor in the Intergalactic Fighting Association. I’ve repaired worse between rounds of a fight.”

“Worse than
this?
” Quentin said, remembering the screaming fire that seemed to pour down his shoulder and into his lungs after the adrenaline had worn off. “You’ve repaired
worse
than this
between rounds?
Guys couldn’t go out and fight if they had broken bones, could they?”

“I’ve seen sentients use their own broken bones as weapons, Quentin. I respect the toughness of you footballers, but there are athletes that make you look about as tough as a flyling.”

Quentin started to shake his head, but couldn’t — a hundred and one. He remembered the title fight between Chiyal North and Korak the Cutter. Chiyal
had
used a broken leg bone to stab Korak in the side. Such toughness, amazing.

“IFA, huh? You ever work for anyone I heard of?”

On the screen, he saw Doc Patah stop moving. The winged Harrah just floated there, perfectly still in the pink fluid.

“No,” the Harrah said finally. “If you don’t mind, Quentin, I’d like to stop talking with you and focus on your surgery. Shall I turn on the game highlights for you?”

“Sure,” Quentin said. “That would be great. Can I watch from when I went out?”

The holotank’s monitor’s image changed from his own surgery to a replay of the game broadcast. He saw himself being carted off the field. The announcers were talking about Quentin’s touchdown run and how it changed the game’s momentum.

“Hey!” Quentin said. “Chick McGee and Masara are commentating? I love those guys.”

“Quentin,
please
. I asked for silence.”

Quentin relaxed and watched the rest of the game. The Krakens defense stopped the Warlords and forced them to punt. Relaxation turned to anxiety as Don Pine came in at quarterback. Quentin watched silently as Pine threw a third-quarter touchdown to Scarborough, then added an 85-yard, fourth-quarter strike to Denver.

The old man could still play.

Doc Patah said three days. Three days where Don Pine would be getting all the first-string snaps in practice.

Quentin promised himself he would be back on the field in two.

• • •

“
STAY BEHIND ME, QUENTIN
,” said Choto the Bright. “The club will be crowded, someone might bump your arm.”

Gredok had allowed the Krakens players back into the city, but still insisted his quarterback have a bodyguard wherever he went, even to one of the safest places in the city — Gredok’s own club, the Bootleg Arms.

Quentin carefully adjusted the strap on his arm sling. One more day with this thing on, then he could start working out. Quentin followed Choto into the club. They were no more than a step inside the door when a familiar Quyth Worker voice rang out.

“Elder Barnes and Choto the Bright!” said Tikad the Groveling. “Welcome, welcome,
welcome!
We are so happy to have you here. Can we get you dinner? Drinks? Controlled substances? Human women? Females of other species?”

Quentin shook his head. “Not today, Tikad. The team leaves for Ki Imperial space tonight, it’s no time to drink. I came here to talk to Yassoud Murphy. Where is he?”

Tikad’s eye turned a little green. “Oh, Mister Murphy isn’t here, Elder Barnes, he—”

Quentin’s hand shot out to grab Tikad, but no sooner had it reached the Worker than Quentin stopped himself. No. He wasn’t on Micovi anymore, he didn’t have to let his temper drive everything to a solution of violence.

Tikad flinched when Quentin reached, but Quentin just patted him on his pedipalp shoulder.

“I know he’s here,” Quentin said. “Just save us both the breath of arguing about it and take me to him, okay?”

Tikad seemed to think about it for a moment, then the green faded from his eye. “Of course, Elder Barnes. Right this way.”