Scott Sigler: The Rookie

Quentin’s stomach quivered. A chill filtered through his body. The anti-orbital batteries marked the edge of the spaceport — he’d soon be on the shuttle, and after that, the ship that would carry him to the Combine.

Quentin clasped his hands together to stop their shaking, but he couldn’t hide his fear from Stedmar.

“Pre-flight jitters, kid?”

Quentin looked out the window, and nodded. On the tarmac, a shuttle shot straight up, probably headed for the same ship he’d soon be on himself.

“I’ll never get that,” Stedmar said. “You go out on the field and those animals are trying to rip your head off, doesn’t bother you at all, but you act like an old lady when it comes to simple space travel.”

Quentin shrugged and kept looking out the window. Tier Two meant more flying, a lot more flying than his four or five yearly trips with the Raiders. He didn’t have a choice.

The car slowed to a stop. One of Stedmar’s body guards opened Quentin’s door. Stedmar handed Quentin a mini-messageboard. “Your passport is in there. So is the Krakens’ playbook. You need your thumbprint to access either file, but don’t get careless with it — thumbprints can be faked, and plenty of people would love to get their hands on a GFL passport. Just mind your manners, Quentin, you’ve got no experience dealing with these other races, and sometimes they can find just about anything offensive. Watch more, talk less.”

Quentin took the messageboard and slid out of the car. He leaned in to look at Stedmar. “As soon as they put a football in my hands, everything will be just fine, Mr. Osborne.”

Stedmar smiled and nodded, an expression on his face that seemed both proud and slightly condescending. “Tear ‘em up, kid.”

Quentin turned and walked through the doors. He didn’t bother looking back — there was nothing he wanted to see on this planet, and nothing he ever planned on seeing again.

The GFL’s three-tier system is often a source of confusion to neophyte fans. While most understand the concept of “Tier Three” as feeder teams, or what the Old Earth NFL used to call “minor leagues,” the interaction between Tier Two and Tier One is a little more complicated.

Currently there are 280 registered Tier Three teams spread throughout the galaxy. These are official Galactic Football League franchises, registered with the Creterakian Empire, and controlled by the Empire Bureau of Species Interaction (EBSI). In truth, the EBSI does little to control Tier Three other than to provide the same rules of play that govern the Upper Tiers, and to provide licensed referees from the Referees Guild.

There are twenty-four Tier Three conferences. Most Tier Three conferences operate on a single planet. Some, like the Purist Nation Football League, feature inter-planetary play. Conferences have around ten teams, and on average play a nine game season, plus any conference playoffs or tournaments. The season culminates in the 32-team Tier Three Tournament. Each conference champ is invited, as are eight at-large teams (note: due to religious preferences, the PNFL does not participate in the tournament). In this grueling tournament, a team plays every three days until a champion is crowned. The tournament is affectionately known as “The Two Weeks of Hell.”

Tier Three is a individual entity, separate from the other two Tiers. Tier Two and Tier One, commonly called the “Upper Tiers,” are actually two divisions of the same league. If Tier Three is considered “minor leagues,” the seventy-six Upper Tier teams constitute the “major leagues” of professional football.

Most fan attention, naturally, focuses on the twenty-two Tier One teams. Tier One teams are evenly divided into the Planet Division and the Solar Division. The top three teams from each division make the six-team Tier One playoff. The two teams with the best record have a bye, while the remaining four teams compete in the opening round. The winners of the opening-round games play the top teams, and the winners of those games meet in the GFL Championship.

But where there are winners, there are always losers, and that’s where Tier Two comes into play. While the top Tier One teams compete for fortune and glory, the worst two teams are dropped from Tier One, and must compete in Tier Two the following season.

There are six Tier Two conferences: the Human, the Tower, the Ki, the Harrah, the Sklorno and the Quyth Irradiated. The winners of each conference compete in the Tier Two Playoffs. The two teams that make it to the final game move up to Tier One the following year to replace the two demoted Tier One teams. This is the goal of every Tier Two team at the beginning of the season, and is such a dramatic accomplishment that the actual Tier Two Championship game is almost an afterthought. The Tier Two Championship is more like a scrimmage, as neither team wants to incur injuries.

Why don’t the teams want to risk injuries? Because the Tier One season begins two weeks after the Tier Two Championship game. Tier Two teams have only a brief respite from battle before they are thrust into the meat grinder that is Tier One.

This system successfully produces intense play all year long, particularly among the Tier One teams near the bottom of the standings. To drop into Tier Two costs a team untold billions in revenue from network coverage and merchandising.

HE WAITED for it.

Waited for the punch-out.

His pulse raced in a way it never did on the football field — a panicky way. He felt anxious, tried to control his breathing.

This is your fourteenth flight, everything went fine before.

The ship started to vibrate, just a little. A thin sheen of sweat covered his hands, which clutched tightly to his playbook messageboard. They were about to drop out of punch space and back into what people once called “reality.”

This is the most statistically safe method of travel in the galaxy.

Statistics didn’t stop newscasts, however, especially newscasts of passenger ships forever lost in punch space, or the horrific remains of a ship that met some stray piece of debris during the punch-out back to relativistic speeds. They called it the “reality wave,” the feeling that washed over the ship when it dropped out of punch space and back into regular time.

You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine, you’ll be –

His breath seized up and he squeezed his eyes shut as the shudder hit. That sickening feeling of splitting , or spreading. He knew everything blurred , himself included. He’d seen that blurring the first time he’d flown — seeing it once was enough.

Oh High One oh High One oh no oh no…

And then it was over. He forced himself to relax, forced open his tightly clenched teeth. He opened his eyes. The observation deck was still there. Quentin slowly let out a long-held breath. Everyone else on the deck looked relaxed. Everyone else always did. He liked to tell himself that they were just oblivious to the danger, rather than tell himself to stop being such a pansy.

Four seasons in the PNFL had taken him to every major city in the Purist Nation. He’d seen all four planets, Mason, Solomon, Allah and Stewart, as well as most of the colonies. Space travel was nothing new to Quentin, but this time it was different.

This was his first trip alone, without the familiarity of his teammates. But on this flight he certainly didn’t suffer for lack of attention. On a ship full of Purist Nation businessmen, the league’s MVP never went wanting for a drink or a dinner or some fat old fool looking to shake his hand.