Scott Sigler - The Rookie

“How did they put a river in there?”

“Comet harvesters,” Virak said. “Same as the asteroid harvesters. Water is very important for life. Females breed in water. On Ionath and Whitok, we have special water-filled facilities for breeding, but here we can do it naturally, right out in the open like it is done on Quyth.”

The buildings had looked squat from the shaft mouth, but as the shuttle descended, Quentin saw that was just an illusion. The towering, organic-looking hexagonal structures reached to heights of two hundred stories and more. The shuttle banked to the left and followed the line of the river. Buildings seemed to link together, their green crystalline structure branching out like neurons to connect to all their neighbors, several times at several heights. The number of buildings, their densely packed proximity, their height — Quentin’s head spun with one obvious question.

“How many beings live on The Deuce?”

“The last census put us somewhere around 742 million. It’s not as open as Ionath City, but it’s not nearly as crowded as the homeworld.”

All in a space less than half the size of the Earth’s moon. The Quyth homeworld was only slightly larger than Earth — and populated with 72 billion Quyth. The race seemed to have mastered dense-population living.

The shuttle dropped to a hundred feet above the water as the river banked sharply to the right. Around that bend lay Demolition Stadium. A smaller affair than its counterparts on Ionath and Whitok, it had purple seats 500 rows high running parallel to each sideline. Demolition Stadium looked kind of like a freeze-frame sculpture of a thick book being closed. Both end zones were open, free of the towering bleachers which rose at such a steep angle Quentin wondered how anyone could climb the steps. The field surface was a pale, milky white, with yard markers written in a deep blue.

“The surface is Tiralik,” Virak said. “Very springy and giving. Soft surface cuts down injuries, but stains jerseys badly.”

A multi-shaded purple building dominated one end zone, while a platform of some kind dominated the other. The shuttle set down on the purple building.

Virak turned to Quentin and grabbed one arm with a pedipalp. Quentin managed to not wince at the painful grab — he knew the full strength of a Quyth Warrior, and this grab was not meant to hurt.

“You watch yourself,” Virak said. “Orbital Stations are a lot older than Ionath City. Races have mingled here for centuries. This is one of the few places in the galaxy that there are no Creterakian soldiers, so a lot of criminal elements come and go, or just come and stay.”

“So why don’t your people do something about it?”

“For a long time it was difficult to trade with other systems. No one wanted to bother with the Quyth. Smugglers brought in many goods, and they needed a place to hide out. And when the war came, they fought and died right along with us. For that, we leave them be as long as they don’t make too much trouble.”

Quentin noted the phrase too much trouble , as opposed to as long as they don’t make any trouble. As he disembarked onto the roof of the purple building, he wondered what kind of activities might fall under the threshold of too much trouble.

“Just be careful,” Virak said as the races moved to their separate locker rooms. “And you’d do best to keep to yourself.”

THE DEUCE HAD no haven for Purist Nation ex-patriots, so Rick Warburg decided to stay in the Demolition Building. Quentin had no intention of staying in. He opted for dinner with Yassoud and John Tweedy. The city’s bizarre architecture drew him out into the streets. Ionath City was orderly and new, a highly regimented place built with careful planning and meticulous attention to detail. The Deuce, on the other hand, felt far more organic. Not just streets but entire levels had sprung up over the centuries, many without any official sanction or knowledge. Caverns and tunnels, both rough and smoothly engineered, ran through the artificial planetoid like a giant termite colony.

Like Ionath City and Port Whitok, the football stadium lay in a bustling downtown area packed with many species, noise, grav cars and multiple forms of entertainment. It surprised him to see so many representatives of the different races. Some of the Human families, he’d been told, had lived on The Deuce for eight or more generations, two centuries of life, and considered themselves citizens of the Quyth Concordia with no association whatsoever to the Human systems.

Quentin thought of his own lineage — his ancestors had come over on the first flotilla, some 240 years ago. A great-great-great-great grandfather, supposedly, had come from someplace on Earth called “Dallas.” Quentin only remembered that tidbit because one of the original football teams had played there. He, and his parents, and his parents’ parents before him, thought of themselves as citizens of the Purist Nation, as separate from Earth as the Human citizens of The Deuce were to any Human government. Still, it was hard to think of Humans proudly boasting their citizenship to a nation of radioactivity-proof aliens.

Buildings towered above, some reaching a mile into the air. The green crystalline mass that made up the buildings’ frameworks looked bubbly, almost alive, with the soft ripples and curves of a large icicle. Massive arcs of that same green crystal reached from building to building, across narrow spans, across streets, some across entire blocks. Some arcs reached from a building to another arc, and a few even ran from one arc to another, forming a stringy, organic latticework.

“Bet you never saw anything like this back on the farm, eh Quentin?” Yassoud said as the trio headed to the first building with a holographic football/beer bottle sign.

“You can say that again,” Quentin said. “Virak told me to watch my back in this place. I hear it’s dangerous.”

“Relax, backwater,” Tweedy said with a grin. “We’re football players. Nobody is gonna mess with us. We can beat the tar out of them and no one can send us to jail. GFL immunity is great, I tell ya. Let’s just enjoy the place and tie one on tonight.”

“Oh yep,” Yassoud said. “Let us delve into the seedy underbelly of this strange and alien city.”

As if pulled by some unseen magnetism, Yassoud and Tweedy suddenly turned as one and walked towards a door marked with a familiar glowing sign of a football on top of a Miller logo. Quentin paused before entering. The bar was so packed part of the crowd stood on the street, mag-glasses in hand. Where Ionath City and Port Whitok had “species-specific” areas, this bar seemed to have everything: Humans, Creterakian civilians, female Sklorno, more than a few Ki, Harrah, and, of course, dozens of Quyth Workers, Warriors and Leaders.

The crowd parted for the three men as they walked into the bar, mostly because the ever-scowling Tweedy led the way, head tilted down, eyes peering out from his thick eyebrows. KRAKENS RULE THE UNIVERSE scrolled across his forehead. The bar’s counter was a black, onyx-like surface set at just two feet off the ground, the perfect height for Quyth Workers to sit and relax. Quentin, Tweedy and Yassoud sat at three seats, which seemed to magically open before them as three normal-sized Humans got up and left upon their approach.

“Bartender!” Yassoud screamed as he sat. A wide, white-toothed smile nearly split his face in two. “ Bartender! Three Millers!”

A Quyth Worker waddled over. A shriveled stub on his left cheek remained of what had once matched the yellow-and-orange furred pedipalp on his right. He reached under the bar and quickly served up three mag-cans of Miller. Yassoud, still smiling, ceremoniously opened all three cans, passing one to Quentin and one to John Tweedy.