Scott Sigler - The Rookie

“He’s up early for a Human, isn’t he?” Gredok asked.

“Just him and Ibrahim.”

Gredok looked at the monitor that showed Ibrahim, sitting alone at a table with four heaping trays of food spread out before him.

“Females be saved,” Gredok said with disgust. “Do these high-G Humans ever stop eating? I swear his salary is nothing compared to his food bill.”

“If you could locate a 525-pound Quyth Warrior who can bench-press a thousand pounds, I’d be happy to trade for him.”

Gredok watched Quentin run the same play. This time, he threw ahead of Scarborough for an incompletion.

“Does Barnes do this a lot?”

“He doesn’t socialize with the other players,” Hokor said. “He spends most of his time in the VR room, repeatedly running plays.”

Gredok said nothing. Quentin lined up again, dropped back, and ran the same play. This time the ball sailed over the leaping defender and hit the holographic Scarborough in full stride.

“Nice pass,” Gredok said. “How long has he been at it?”

“Two hours.”

“How’s he doing?”

“Horrible,” Hokor said. “But he’s improving fast.”

“Horrible? I watched him in practice yesterday. He threw 75-yard strikes like they were nothing.”

Hokor turned to look at his Shamakath. “He has only been playing the game for four years, and in a very low-quality league. He’s never thrown to Sklorno receivers before, and he’s not used to passing being a three-dimensional game instead of two-dimensional. Throwing routes is one thing, but he’s not ready for the speed of real defensive backs.”

“He’d better get ready for it. I went through a lot of trouble to obtain him.”

“We had to get him now,” Hokor said. “One more season, and every team in the GFL would have been after him. I just don’t know how long he will take to develop.”

“Need I remind you that this is your third season?” Gredok said coldly. “I don’t care about development time, I care about winning. I want this team in Tier One next season. All the good trade routes require Tier One immunity. You know that.”

Hokor did know that. Trade routes was a nice way of saying smuggling routes. Hokor didn’t care for that part of the business at all, but that was the way the league worked.

“I’m sure that in two seasons, maybe three, Quentin will be the best player in the league.”

“You don’t have two seasons,” Gredok said. “You wanted Donald Pine, I got you Donald Pine. You wanted Choto the Bright, I got him for you. You found out one of my lieutenants had Tier Three experience, so Virak the Mean is playing football instead of acting as my bodyguard and enforcer. I spent a fortune on Mum-O-Killowe, I gave up my drug distribution in Egypt City for him because you said we had to have him. I upgraded this ship because you said it would help us win games… do you think that was cheap?”

“No, Shamakath. ” Hokor knew the ship’s retrofit had been horribly expensive, but he was a firm believer that if you wanted to play like a Tier One team, you had to practice like a Tier One team.

“I want Tier One and am willing to spend the money to get it,” Gredok said. “But the time for investing is over, the time for profit is near. You will win the Quyth Irradiated Conference, get us into the Tier Two tournament, and qualify us for Tier One next season or someone else will be around to watch Quentin Barnes turn into the best player in the league.”

Gredok stood and walked out of the control room. Hokor slowly turned back to the holotank, just in time to see Quentin throw another interception. His pedipalps quivered in frustration.

HE WAS GLAD it was late, because he could be alone in his room and no one would see his sweat, look at his wide eyes, or hear his ragged breathing. The Touchback was about to punch-out.

Just relax just relax everything is fine…

Quentin had often heard that if things were to go wrong with punch drive travel, it would happen either on the punch-in or the punch-out of the space/time hole. Punching out always made him think of that ages-old Purist folk-saying: “It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing.”

Don’t panic, breath, breath, it’s almost here…

He felt the shimmer come, felt , not saw , because he couldn’t bear to have his eyes open and see the reality wave lightly caress the ship and everything in it. And once again, nothing happened.

His held breath slipped out of his tense body, the tinge of horror clinging to his soul. He’d come to accept the fact that if he wanted his dream of glory and a GFL championship, he’d just have to ignore his fear of flying.

He felt the slight tug of the Touchback ’s main engines kicking in, maneuvering the ship into orbit. Quentin moved to his view port and looked out onto the glowing red sphere that was Ionath, planet of Ionath City, the home of the Ionath Krakens.

He’d learned all about Ionath in school. In 2558, During the Third Galactic War, the Sklorno navy saturation-bombed the planet, rendering it a radioactive wasteland completely devoid of all life. That bombing was proof , the Holy Men liked to say, of the Sklorno’s Satanic nature. It also proved that the Prawatt race, who had inhabited the planet, were also Satanic, and suffered the wrath of the High One for their evil ways. Quentin had been only nine when he noticed a pattern — just about everything bad that happened to other races or cultures was proof of Satanic tendencies. The only people who didn’t suffer Satanic-related incidents were, coincidentally, the people of the Purist Nation.

But despite the bombing (or perhaps despite Satan), Ionath had not remained devoid of life. In 2573, the Quyth shocked the galaxy by establishing a permanent colony on the planet. In the 110 Earth-years that followed, the colony grew to a population of 500 million Quyth. In addition, the Quyth introduced flora and fauna that not only ignored radiation, but often used it in place of sunlight to capture energy. In just over a century, the Quyth transformed Ionath from a lifeless orb into a flourishing, growing, vibrant planet. The Holy Men cited this as proof of the Quyth’s Satanic nature, for only a being from Hell could live on Hell itself.

While the Quyth flourished on Ionath, the radiation hadn’t just gone away, and other sentient races could not survive on the planet’s surface. The Quyth wanted commerce with other species, so Ionath — like the other irradiated planets of Whitok and Chik-chik — had several domed cities free of radiation. The domed areas acted as a downtown, a central hub of the non-protected areas. Ionath City boasted the largest rad-free dome on the planet. About 110,000 sentients lived inside the four-mile diameter dome, while another 4.1 million Quyth lived outside. The football stadium, of course, sat inside the dome.

Ionath Stadium was also known as “The Big Eye.” Quentin had dreamed of playing in such a place. Seating capacity: 185,000. An open-air stadium, but since it existed under the city dome the weather never changed — it was always 85 degrees Farenheit, the galaxy-accepted standard for multi-race environments. Eighty-five seemed hot to most Humans, a bit cool for Ki, borderline cold for Sklorno and Creterakians, and ideal for Quyth. In the past, when the Krakens were a running team, rumor had it that for critical games the temperature system of the Ionath City dome would often “malfunction,” dropping the temp to 75 degrees or below, a level more suited to Human running backs.