Scott Sigler - The Rookie

Before either he or Choto could take a swing, however, Virak stepped between them.

“Back off, Choto!” Virak said, catching the bigger Quyth Warrior in mid-step. Choto’s one eye peeked around Virak’s shoulder. It was a scene identical to one Quentin had witnessed Humans perform more times than he could remember — one being holding another one back to prevent a fight.

“Human rookie said my world looks like feces!” Choto said. He tried to swing a pedipalp over the top, the Quyth Warrior equivalent of the Human “swim technique” used to get past an offensive lineman, but Virak effortlessly matched the move.

“He did not mean it,” Virak said. “Quentin, tell him you did not mean it.”

Choto pushed again, and Virak had to take a step back to keep his balance. Suddenly two Ki lineman, Kill-O-Yowet and Sho-Do-Thikit, grabbed Choto and held him tight. Choto’s pedipalps quivered violently, and his eye flooded a deep black.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin said quickly, stepping around Virak to place a hand on Choto’s chest. “I did not mean to offend.”

The words and the touch seemed to stop Choto cold.

“You called my home feces. ”

“A figure of speech on my world,” Quentin said quickly. “I was not actually calling your world feces. I apologize if I offended you.”

Choto’s eye quickly fade from deep black to crystal-clear. His body relaxed, and the Ki linemen cautiously released their holds.

“Apology accepted,” Choto said.

“So why does this shaft look so different from The Deuce,” Quentin asked.

“Orbital Station One is older than The Deuce,” Choto said. “About fifty Human years older. The crystal growth technology was not as developed.”

“It looks like it grows great.”

“Yes, but too fast,” Choto said. “That was fine when The Ace was small, a population of about two hundred million beings. But the larger the crystalline matrix grew, the more silicate organisms there were, and growth rates increased exponentially. Engineers cut it away when it grows into populated areas, but it grows unchecked through the non-living areas. It is a problem we’ve been trying to fix for over a century.”

The shuttle dropped through the entrance shaft and into a brightly lit underground city.

“High One,” Quentin murmured. He now understood why larger ships weren’t allowed in the shaft.

If the entrance shaft had resembled overgrown underbrush, the city was a full-out wilderness. Sprawling blue-tinted crystals reached out from every part of the domed ceiling, curving up and over so that the city seemed to exist within a living-but-artificial jungle canopy.

“We have over a million beings employed just to remove overgrowth,” Choto said. “It is our biggest tax burden.”

The shuttle slowed considerably and angled for a large gap in the arching crystalline canopy. As it slid past, the crystal growths seemed so close that Quentin unconsciously gripped a bulkhead to steady himself.

The ship slipped past the upper canopy and into an open space between the canopy and the city buildings. A ship off to the left had dozens of long legs and clung to a crystalline growth like an insect clinging to a plant stem. At the base of the ship, a long, multi-jointed arm held a concentrated beam of white-hot energy. The beam moved back and forth across the blue crystalline growth, until suddenly the growth snapped free trailing thick globs of molten crystal. Growth and ship together plunged downward, but only for a second before the ship’s engine caught and it hovered, newly-cut prize still clutched in insectile legs. The ship flew up, carefully threading its way through the crystalline canopy.

“They will send that off into deep space,” Choto said. “There is no use for it.”

“Why don’t the city engineers just replace this growth with the more successful variety from The Deuce?”

“It has been attempted. The original growth is much more aggressive than the new. New growth has been introduced several times — it is either choked out, overgrown, or actually converted into original growth.”

“Couldn’t you just come up with a virus or something?”

“The planet is now some sixty percent original growth,” Choto said. “Any virus might spread to the core and destroy the structural integrity. We would be killing our own planet.”

“So you can’t kill it, you can’t replace it, and you can’t stop it,” Quentin said.

Choto’s pedipalps quivered. He seemed oddly proud of the growth. “Much like the Quyth themselves.”

The shuttle banked to the right. Here Quentin could discern no “downtown,” because all of the huge buildings reached up into the crystalline canopy. Three centuries had given the buildings plenty of time to grow to towering heights. Like The Deuce, thick tendrils connected the city’s buildings. Unlike The Deuce, however, wherever the shuttle flew, Quentin could see hundreds of the insect-like ships cutting away at unwanted growths. Thousands of small curls spiraled out from every possible place — the start of new growths that also would eventually need thinning.

“How many beings live here, in this city?”

“This is the city of Madderch, with fifty million residents in the city proper, which you see before you, and another hundred million in the underlying tunnels. It is the biggest city on The Ace, because it is the only one that supports life for non-Quyth. All other cities were completely irradiated when the Creterakians attacked.

Quentin shook his head in amazement. Such numbers. Fifty million in what he saw before him, in a space only a few miles across. The same amount of space in New Mecca housed only ten million, and he had thought that impossibly overpopulated.

Another bank to the right ended the conversation as Beefeater Gin Stadium, home of the Orbiting Death, came into view. It was a round stadium, set deep in the ground. The first two decks were actually below the city’s surface level. The next two decks towered high above, both sets connected by steeply sloped seats. Long, thick, curved buttresses arced out from four equidistant spots around the curved stadium, reaching up to support the upper decks. The playing field looked impossibly tiny and distant, a testament to the stadium’s size. He’d seen several colors of playing surface, but this was the most unusual yet — jet-black. So black that the white lines and numbers popped out in contrast, so sharp he could read them from the shuttle. The fact that the translucent blue stadium sat deep in the ground had caused some witty Human of years gone by to dub the stadium “The Ace Hole.” The name had stuck.

Where all other parts of the city seemed to be fighting a losing battle against the slow-but-wild growth of crystal, the stadium seemed to be a perfect, shimmering, symmetrical jewel. Quentin saw several dozen insectile ships working away on the stadium, carving away even the smallest budding protuberance.

The shuttle banked over the stadium, then actually flew inside a hole in one of the huge buttresses. Once the ship set down, Quentin stepped out into a massive crystal room as elegant as an imperial palace. A short hallway, decorated with holoframes and memorabilia of the Orbiting Death, led the team to the visitor’s central locker room.

As the races filed into their respective dressing rooms, Quentin stopped to look at the back wall, painted metal-flake red with a ten-foot high flat black circle.

“What the hell does that mean, anyway,” Quentin asked Choto.

“That is the Quyth symbol for death,” Choto said. “The circle. No beginning, no ending — a fighting death for one Quyth means life for many others.

Quentin nodded to himself as Choto walked to the Quyth Warrior locker room. The Orbiting Death wanted to die fighting? No problem, because Quentin Barnes aimed to please.