Scott Sigler - The Rookie

Quentin stared dumbly. “You mean they eat it live ?”

Yitzhak nodded.

“High One,” Quentin said. “They are demons.”

“Oh take your morality and vent it, Barnes,” Pine said. “They’re not demons , they’re different from Humans, that’s all. Meals are a major ritual for the Ki. It’s part of their culture, how they bond and crap like that.”

“But to eat a live animal? Only a mongrel race could do that!”

Yitzhak laughed. “Well then I guess Pine here is a mongrel.”

Pine smiled, but Quentin just stared, dumbfounded at the evil surrounding him. “You’ve broken bread with creatures that eat their food alive?”

Pine simply nodded.

Quentin felt his stomach churning at the thought, and suddenly found Pine’s blue skin more repulsive than ever. “What are you, blue-boy, some kind of Satanist?”

“And there it is,” Pine said with a knowing nod. “See, you are just like Warburg. Just another Purist racist. I’m a leader , Barnes. Ki don’t really accept you until you eat with them, until you fight and bleed with them. I do whatever it takes to make this team play as a whole. That’s something you’ll either figure out and succeed, or won’t figure out, and you’ll be gone.”

Quentin turned to Yitzhak. “And I suppose you’ve eaten living flesh, too?”

Yitzhak shuddered. “Couldn’t quite bring myself to do that, but I managed to sit through the whole thing, and drank some blood. You’ve got to see it to believe it — it’s worse than any horror holo you’ve ever seen.”

Quentin shook his head, then turned and walked away. Position meetings were over, and he didn’t have to spend any more time with these two barbarians. He spotted Warburg, sitting alone, a huge tray of food in front of him.

“Quentin,” Warburg called out. “Come let us break bread.”

Quentin walked up to the table and stared at the food. With all the activity he hadn’t eaten, and suddenly realized that he was famished.

“Where’s the chow?”

Warburg stuffed some potatoes into his mouth as he gestured to the back wall. A glass-enclosed counter ran the entire length, all fifty feet of it. Under the glass sat every kind of food Quentin could imagine. The counter was divided into sections, each about two feet in length. Above each section glowed a holographic symbol of a planet or system. Quentin didn’t recognize half the symbols, but the Purist Nation infinity symbol glowed a warm welcome. He grabbed a tray from an overhead shelf and started loading up: the mint mashed potatoes he’d seen Warburg eating, chicken breasts smothered in curry paste, pita bread and Mason gravy, the multi-colored broccoli that grew only on the planet Stewart, and a thick piece of chocolate cake.

Just to his right was the flag of the Planetary Union. The dishes that looked somewhat familiar, but were all things he’d never before tried. One of the dishes seemed to be some kind halved shell, with a raw, glisteny, grayish mass sitting inside. Raw food — typical blasphemy of non-Nation races. Quentin didn’t exactly say his twenty Praise High Ones each night, but that didn’t mean he was so sinful he’d eat raw food.

Just to his left was the glowing Five Star Circle of the Quyth Concordia. His lip wrinkled involuntarily in disgust at the brownish selections, many of which had more spindly legs than any insect he’d ever seen.

Quentin turned away from the strange foods and walked back to the table, rejoicing in the smells that drifted up from his plate.

“Did you see that disgusting garbage the Quyth eat?” Warburg asked as Quentin sat.

“Yes, what is that crap, bugs?”

Warburg shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care to know. High One knows it’s something unblessed and blasphemous. We’ll see what they eat when they’re burning in Hell.”

Quentin cut a big piece of chicken breast and bit into it — his eyes closed in pleasure at the taste.

“Food’s gotten pretty good since Gredok picked you up.” Warburg said with a smile.

“It wasn’t good before?”

Warburg shrugged. “It wasn’t bad. The cooks would try to make Nation dishes out of whatever Planetary Union or League of Planets crap they had laying around. Ever since they signed you, though, they’ve been bringing in the real deal from Nation freighters or whatever. Seems like Gredok and Hokor want to make you right at home.”

Quentin shoveled in some potatoes, marveling at the succulent taste. “I’m glad they feel that way. I haven’t had decent food since I got to the Combine.”

“I hope they start you right away,” Warburg said. “I can’t stand that shucking blue-boy Pine.”

Quentin nodded. “You know he told me he’s eaten raw flesh with the Ki?”

“What do you mean, eaten ? That’s past tense. He does it every week. Low One take him, look at him now.”

Warburg gestured to the far end of the hall. Most of the tables held members of only one race, either Human, Quyth or Sklorno. But Pine sat at a table of Quyth Warriors, laughing, smiling, and stuffing some limp, brown, multi-legged creature into his mouth.

“I hope he likes the heat, considering where the High One will place him on Judgment Day,” Warburg said. “I mean, it’s one thing to have to talk to these demons, that’s just the nature of the game, but to sit down with them, to eat with them, and eat their barbaric food. It’s unforgivable.”

Quentin nodded and turned back to his plate. The sight of Pine chewing that brown thing had killed his appetite, but he kept eating anyway. Tomorrow was the first practice, and he’d need all of his strength if he was going to win the starting QB slot.

AS INSTRUCTED, his room lights flickered on at 6 a.m., one hour before the position meeting. His room filled with the loud sounds of the band Trench Warfare. He stretched as he listened to the seductive but strong vocals of Trench’s lead singer, Somalia Midori. Their music was banned back on Micovi, but Quentin had managed to get his hands on every song they had ever recorded. As a kid, he didn’t know it was even possible to circumvent the laws of the Holy Men. The more games he won, however, the easier it became to obtain contraband items like erotic pictures, recorded GFL broadcasts, or out-of-system books and music.

When he’d entered his sparse room for the first time the night before, he’d asked the computer if it could play any Trench Warfare for his wake-up call. The shocking answer — the computer had access to not only every Trench album, but most of the band’s live performances from the last five years. He could watch holo or just listen to audio. He’d had time for one holo before going to bed, and had watched in amazement at the four musicians performing on stage to a jumping, gyrating crowd of Humans. He’d been shocked to see that Somalia bore the blue skin of a Satirli 6 native. He thought she was beautiful, but just for a second, then asked the computer for sound only.

Discovering an endless library of music had been a surprise pleasure, but nothing compared to the well-nigh religious experience that came when he asked the computer if there were any archived GFL games.

[WHAT TEAM AND WHAT YEAR?] The computer had asked.

“How far back do the games go?”

[TO THE BEGINNING]

“What, the very first GFL games?”

[TO THE BEGINNING OF FOOTBALL]

“What do you mean, to the beginning of football ? What’s the oldest game you’ve got?”

[FORDHAM COLLEGE, EARTH, VERSUS WAYNESBURG COLLEGE, EARTH, 1939]

“But, but that’s seven-hundred years ago!”