Scott Sigler: The Rookie

Gredok nodded. He was always amazed by Stedmar’s fascination with fecal euphemisms. “And that’s why you signed him?”

“Partially. So this kid won the bet, obviously, the big guy hands him a wad of bills, and the kid starts doing this dance, really rubbing it in, you know? Well, the big guy, he just loses it. He throws a big sucker-punch that knocks the kid on his butt. The kid pops up like nothing happened, except he’s not laughing now, he’s pissed.”

Gredok nodded again. Urine was also a key element of Stedmar’s stories.

“So the big guy comes after this kid, and this kid lays into him. I mean he took this big guy apart. Three straight jabs and then a big left hook, and the guy goes down. But the kid isn’t finished. He jumps on the guy and starts blasting him with big haymaker lefts, over and over again. There’s blood all over the dirt, in a couple of seconds the guy’s face looks like hamburger. The workers are laughing and having a grand time, but you know what I’m thinking to myself, Shamakath ?”

“No.”

“I’m thinking, ‘What if that kid hurts his hands?’ Swear to High One, that’s what I’m thinking. So I send my Sammy and Dean and Frankie over there to pull the kid off. But he’s like a wildcat — doesn’t know who my boys are or what they want, so he lays Sammy out with that same left hook.”

Stedmar turned to look at one of his bodyguards, a thick Human with a nose that looked as if it had been broken a dozen times.

“You remember that punch, Sammy?”

“Yeah, boss,” Sammy said, laughing. “And he weighed about two hundred pounds less back then.”

“I didn’t want the kid hurt, but you can’t expect the boys to take that, you know? But the more they hit him, the madder he gets, and he just won’t stay down. Finally, Sammy gets up and he whips out a stun stick and puts the kid out. They drag him over to me. I ask the kid if he knows who I am. You know what he says to me?”

“No,” Gredok said, patiently waiting for the end of the story. Humans always took so long to get to the point.

“Through a split lip he says to me, ‘You’re the new owner of the Raiders.’ Not ‘You’re Stedmar Osborne, notorious gangster,’ or ‘You’re that guy that shakes down the mine owners’ or anything like that. Just ‘The owner of the Raiders.’ That was it for me, I knew the kid lived and breathed football. So I ask him, ‘How old are you?’ And he tells me ‘Fifteen.’ Fifteen . You know what I almost did?”

“Crapped yourself?” Gredok said.

“Yah! I almost crapped myself! I paid off the kid’s family debt. That’s why, technically, I don’t have to pay him at all, I sort of own him. And just to let you know, a million a year is probably more than his entire family saw going back three generations, if not four or five. He thinks he’s rich. So I signed the kid and put him on the team. He’d never played organized ball before, and the next year, at sixteen years old , he’s the backup quarterback.”

At this, Hokor looked away from the field and listened attentively. Gredok knew why — this quarterback already had four years of professional experience, albeit in the lowly PNFL.

“At seventeen he started for me,” Stedmar said. “We went 5–4 that year, he won his last three games. The next year, this eighteen-year-old kid wins it all for me, 9–0, and two more wins in the playoffs to give me my first championship. This year, we’re 9–0 again, we’ll obviously win today, and that’s 21 games in a row for him. Next week the championship game should be a cakewalk.”

“All because you were driving by and happened to see him throw a rock.”

Stedmar laughed, he obviously relished telling this story. “Yah! Crazy, isn’t it?”

“You still haven’t told me Kollok’s offer.”

“Kollok will hand me fifteen million,” Stedmar said, that same self-confident smile on his lips. “Plus smuggling rights for any pyuli he wants to unload in Purist Nation space.”

Gredok nodded, sensing Stedmar’s body heat increase just a bit. He was lying about the fifteen million, but not about the Kigrown narcotic pyuli, of which some Humans just couldn’t get enough — a year’s worth of rights to that stuff was worth far more than fifteen million. But Micovi belonged to Gredok. Most of it, anyway. Was this Kollok’s first move to cut into Gredok’s territory? Was Stedmar to be trusted?

“You should never take a deal with another syndicate without consulting me,” Gredok said, the anger building within him.

Stedmar ran his left hand over his head, brushing his hair back — while he had no antennae, the motion perfectly mimicked the Quyth sign of fealty. Gredok felt his anger subside a little, an involuntary, instinctive reaction to the gesture. His lieutenant was very good at this game. Gredok would never again underestimate Stedmar Osborne.

“But I have not taken the deal, Shamakath , nor would I ever do so without your blessing.”

“I will give you ten million for Barnes’ contract,” Gredok said. “Plus, I’ll give you Muhammad Jorgensen’s territory on Allah.”

Stedmar’s face wrinkled. “I suspect you were going to give me Muhammad’s territory anyway. He’s getting run over by the Giovanni syndicate — they want to expand their Purist Nation territory in a bad way.”

Gredok nodded again. Stedmar was correct. And yet, the offer had been placed on the table — to change it now was a sign of weakness, and any Shamakath could not admit weakness in front of his vassals. Stedmar had made his first mistake — instead of simply trying to add options, he insinuated that Gredok’s offer was no good.

“I have offered you a deal,” Gredok said quietly, his antennae pinning down flat against the back of his head, like a dog’s ears just before an attack. “You will now accept.”

Stedmar’s eyes widened slightly when he saw the antennae go back, and his temperature spiked almost a full degree. He quickly glanced at Gredok’s two bodyguards, who showed no sign of emotion.

Where Quyth Leaders were small and sleight, Quyth Warriors were so much larger they looked like a different species altogether. They shared the same body style of two legs, two arms with three-pincer hands and two pedipalps on either side of the vertical mouth. But while a Leader’s pedipalps were two feet long and slender, a Warrior’s were usually about three feet long, thick with muscle and heavily armored. Warriors did not have silky fur. Instead, thick chitin covered their bodies. The last difference was perhaps the most pronounced — a Leader’s softball-sized eye glowed like window to the soul’s emotions, while the Warrior’s cold eye was smaller, like a baseball, surrounded by a heavy ridge of chitin and hooded by a thick, tough, leathery eyelid.

Crazy red and orange designs — the marks of Quyth commandos — decorated the bodyguards’ upper carapaces. Warriors wore pants, usually grey and devoid of color, but rarely wore anything that would cover their enameled markings. Stedmar’s bodyguards, four densely muscled 400-pound Humans, tensed up, ready for action.

“ Shamakath , please understand,” Stedmar said calmly. “With all due respect, Kollok’s deal is better. It’s bad business not to take it.”

“You will take my offer, Stedmar,” Gredok said. “And you will take it now.”

“Perhaps we could add some money to the offer — ”

“The offer is tendered. There will be no changes.”

Stedmar’s eyes narrowed. He looked down at the diminutive Quyth Leader. “ Shamakath , I respectfully invoke my right to decline Kollok’s offer, and therefore am not obligated to take your offer. Barnes will play for me next season.”