The Champion (2 page)

The multi-headed monster quieted, a cluster of carnivorous worms sitting still for a moment before they would once again stretch their heads up looking for prey.

“Kinizzle, Creterakian Information Service,” the winged reporter said. “Quentin, do you think the Krakens will be able to repeat next year?”

Quentin stared. He shook his head in disbelief. He started to answer, to let his rage do the talking, but he controlled that natural reaction.

“We’ve been champions all of four hours. Could you at least wait until we shower before asking us about next season?”

The multi-headed monster laughed. They thought he was joking, that he was being charming. Let them think that.

Quentin! Quentin!

Messal pointed to a black-skinned Human. The man nodded his thanks at Messal, then addressed Quentin.

“Jonathan Sandoval, Net Colony News Syndicate,” the reporter said. “During the game you banged up your hand just a little bit, did you?”

The multi-headed monster laughed again, this time uncomfortably.

Sandoval always flashed a charming grin, but Quentin saw through it. The reporter grinned like that when he thought he’d asked a particularly clever question. Sandoval stood out because he was so tall — at seven feet, he was the only reporter who could look Quentin in the eye. The only reporter that didn’t fly, anyway. Tall, but skinny: Quentin wondered if that bony frame carried even two hundred pounds. With Yolanda Davenport on his back, Sandoval still wouldn’t weigh as much as Quentin.

Quentin held up his hand, showing the bandaged stump that was all that remained of his pinkie. In the fourth quarter, the finger had snagged in a facemask, been broken so badly that Quentin could barely see through the pain, let alone play football. To stay in the game, Quentin had ordered Doc Patah to amputate the mangled digit.

“What,
this
?” he said, waving the hand slightly and forcing a smile. “Just a scratch. Rub some dirt on it and get back in there. That’s what we always said in the Purist Nation.”

The multi-headed monster laughed louder, more at ease when Quentin played along with Sandoval’s horribly inappropriate joke.

Sandoval’s grin widened. He clearly enjoyed being in the spotlight, if only for a moment.

“I’m sure you’ll get more questions on that,” he said. “It’s one for the storybooks. But
my
readers—” he said the words as if only the most discerning sentients in all the galaxy were smart enough to listen to him and not to some other, lesser reporter “—will want to know about your decision to play Rebecca Montagne as your backup when you injured your hand. Yitzhak Goldman was listed as second on the depth chart, but you sent him off the field. Was Montagne getting reps in practice, or was it a spur-of-the-moment decision?”

If one question could pull Quentin’s thoughts away from his missing sister, even for a second, that was the one. Playing Rebecca had been the right call, had been just as critical to the win as Quentin sacrificing his pinkie, but the decision gutted Yitzhak. Zak had worked his whole life for a moment like that, for a chance to play in the Galaxy Bowl; Quentin had ripped that moment away. He had actually overruled Coach Hokor, forcing Yitzhak to leave the field as the largest broadcast audience in history had watched. Yitzhak hadn’t just been overlooked, he’d been humiliated.

“Becca has ample QB experience from her days in Green Bay, on Earth,” Quentin said, searching for the words to make it less embarrassing for Yitzhak. “We always kept her in mind as a secret weapon, for trick plays, that sort of thing. Tonight she’d been on the field for every offensive play. She knew the flow of the game, she had a feel for Jupiter’s defense. Those are things you can’t know from watching on the sidelines. Zak would have done great if he’d had a series to get acclimated, but there wasn’t time for that.”

The subject of Yitzhak had finally come up, and Quentin’s uncomfortable response was like blood in the water. The reporters smelled drama, and drama was what they lived for — the multi-headed monster switched targets.

Gredok! Gredok! Gredok!

Messal pointed to a black-striped blue Leekee, the species that resembled a streamlined cross between a fish and a pig.

“Kelp Bringer,
Leekee Galaxy Times
,” the reporter said. “Gredok, now that Montagne is clearly the go-to choice for a backup quarterback, will you release Goldman? And if so, what are you going to do about your fullback position?”

Quentin leaned back, looked behind Messal at the owner of the Ionath Krakens. Gredok’s single softball-sized eye was clear, as always, because the Quyth Leader remained calm no matter what lies he was spinning, no matter whose life he was destroying. Gredok’s sleek black fur and expensive jewelry gleamed in the spotlights.

Was it you, Gredok? Did you try to kidnap my sister so you could control me? Giving me a fake father wasn’t enough?

Gredok stared at the reporters until the multi-headed monster’s babble faded to a mumble, then to only a few whispers.

“The Ionath Krakens just won the Galaxy Bowl,” Gredok said finally. “One would think that even vile subcreatures known as
reporters
would let the players enjoy a few moments of satisfaction before you start hunting for your next source of controversy.”

“That’s not a denial,” the Leekee said. “So, you
are
cutting Yitzhak?”

This time, Gredok waited until the entire room felt his stare, until there wasn’t even a whisper to be heard.

“Kelp Bringer, I would like you to
think
,” the Leader said. “Think about the potential impact of continuing to ask a question that I already brushed aside ... which I did rather politely, I might add, considering the reputation that has been erroneously assigned to me by those who are envious of my success as a businessman. And by
impact
, of course, I mean how people will view your credibility as a reporter — I wouldn’t want anything to happen to your stellar career.”

Even in a press conference, Gredok couldn’t avoid a threat or two. That was his nature: he succeeded by bullying, by making threats, and — when need be — following up on those threats.

The reporters said nothing.

Messal broke the awkward moment.

“Mister Moloronik,” he said, pointing a pedipalp at a bleach-white Human wearing a cheap blue suit. “You had a question for Gredok, I believe?”

Moloronik stared out, blankly. He looked to his left, then to his right — for once, no one was screaming to ask the next question. The reporter slowly stood, trembling slightly.

“Uh, thank you, Messal. Harold Moloronik from ... hoo, is it hot in here?” He pulled at the collar of his shirt, wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. “Yes, Mister Gredok ... I mean ... Mister Splithead ... uh, it’s no secret that you have intense rivalries with several GFL franchise owners, such as Gloria Ogawa of the Wabash Wolfpack and Kirani Kollok of the To Pirates, but your most recent rivalry with the league’s newest owner has been front and center as of late. Can you comment on how it feels to beat the OS1 Orbiting Death in the semi-finals, then winning the title game and leaving owner Anna Villani to wonder what might have been?”

All heads turned back to Gredok.

“An excellent question, Harold,” the owner said.

The room seemed to sigh in unified relief. Moloronik eased himself back down onto his chair.

“It feels good to be the champion,” Gredok said. “It felt good the
first
time I won a tide, and it was just as satisfying tonight. Yes, I have won
two
championships — Villani has won nothing. While I admire her efforts to build a quality organization, it will be years before she experiences this sensation. Many years. Perhaps not even in my lifetime.”

The reporters laughed. Quyth Leaders often lived for three centuries or more, while Human life expectancy was, at most, a hundred and fifty years. Quentin understood the well-worded insult: Villani would die of old age before the Orbiting Death won a championship.

Unless she cheats ... unless she does whatever it takes to win her own title, because all the owners are gangsters who do whatever they want regardless of who gets hurt...

Could it have been Villani who had tried to kidnap Jeanine, who had forced Fred’s dive into the Portath Cloud? If Villani had Quentin’s sister, she could make him throw games next season, especially if the Krakens and Death again met in the playoffs. That was a solid motive.

And then there was Kollok and Ogawa. Kollok, who had wanted to make Quentin the To Pirates’ franchise quarterback, an offer Quentin had spurned in order to stay with Ionath. Kollok was a gangster, just like Gredok ... did Kollok want payback for that slight? Or Ogawa, with her bitter rivalry against Gredok — rumor was she’d assassinated Bobby Adrojnik, the last Kraken QB to win a GFL title. Kidnapping Quentin’s sister was nothing compared to that.

But what if it wasn’t another owner at all ... what if it was the Creterakian Empire? Could the ruling government think that the “Church of Quentin Barnes” was becoming too popular? How many followers did the CoQB now have — something like forty
million
Sklorno? Did the bats want leverage over Quentin?

So many enemies. All he wanted to do was play football, build a team, practice hard; to earn victories with blood, sweat and tears. He wanted to win ballgames, win titles and be the best there ever was. Off the field, he didn’t hurt anyone, didn’t give a damn what anyone else did. But these people, with their hatreds and fears and agendas, with their plots and scheming and power plays, their petty rivalries and manipulations, they wanted to drag Jeanine into it.

His
sister
.

So which one of them was it? Who tried to take Jeanine, and why? And even if Quentin did get her back, would she
ever
be safe when criminals ran the league?

“Elder Barnes?”

The multi-headed monster seemed to materialize out of thin air; Quentin had become lost in his thoughts.

“Elder Barnes?”

Quentin looked up and to his right. Messal the Efficient staring down at him, big eye swirling with threads of green and saturated blue, a combination that revealed concern for another.

“Elder Barnes, Yolanda Davenport of Galaxy Sports Magazine has a question.”

Quentin again looked out through the crysteel glass. He saw her, the purple skin and white hair of the beautiful, ruthless reporter Yolanda Davenport. She had arranged a discreet meeting with Fred and Jeanine, for which Quentin still owed Yolanda an exclusive interview. If Jeanine was dead, or if she was never found again, Quentin had Yolanda to thank for that final meeting with his sister.

But... that also meant Yolanda had known where Jeanine was.

That made Yolanda a suspect.

He had to face the truth: other than his teammates, the sentients he’d just fought and bled with, won a championship with,
everyone
was a suspect. Quentin couldn’t afford to trust anyone else.

“Sorry, I drifted off,” Quentin said.

“That’s understandable,” Yolanda said, gracious as always. “Quentin, how does it feel be the first Purist Nation quarterback to lead a team to a title? Many experts said that could never happen, because people from the Nation were too racist to lead mixed-species teams. Some sentients even claimed Nationalites were genetically inferior from an intelligence standpoint. Yet here you are, the champion of the galaxy. How does it feel to break that barrier and represent your people?”

Leave it to Yolanda to ask a question that drove out all other thoughts. He hailed from the Purist Nation, yes, but were Nationalites
his people
anymore? He’d spent the last four years in Ionath City.
That
was home; he wanted nothing to do with the Purist Nation.

And yet ... that wasn’t entirely true. He wanted nothing to do with the religion, with the theocracy that had kept his system mired in the Stone Age, with the businessmen and ruling families that treated the poor like slaves. The poor ...
those
were his people. He’d gotten out and never looked back. Now that he had more money than he knew what to do with, maybe someday he could do something to help those people.

He’d found a way out. Sure, that was because of football, and not everyone in the Nation was so big they were sometimes mistaken for HeavyG. If it hadn’t been for sports, he would still be in the mines. He knew that. And yet, he
had
made it out. The media had claimed he could never lead a team to a title, that he wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t cultured enough, relied on his legs too much instead of his arm, that he could win with athleticism alone in Tier Three but in Tier One, he would quickly wash out.

He’d proven them wrong. He’d proven them
all
wrong. Maybe he couldn’t do anything to help people in the Nation, at least not right now, but he knew those people looked up to him. He’d once been a kid watching pirated GFL broadcasts, idolizing the stars — in particular, one Donald Pine. There were kids doing the same thing right now, Nationalite kids, idolizing one of their own. For those kids, Quentin could show that their fate wasn’t sealed, that someone like them could make it.

“It feels ... it feels like anything is possible,” he said. “The Purist Nation people — not the rich rulers, not the priests and the mullahs, but the
people
— work harder and endure more oppression than any sentients in the galaxy. I’m proof that if Nationalites are given a chance, they can excel, they can dominate. Those who think my people
can’t?
They’re dead wrong.”

A slow smile broke over Yolanda’s face, one that made Quentin nervous and he didn’t know why.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

With Yolanda’s question answered, thoughts of Jeanine returned. Quentin wanted out of the press conference, and he wanted out now. He’d done his part, answering questions asked by sentients who didn’t know what it was like to take a helmet in the throat, to play through a broken bone, to want to win so badly you’d cut off a finger just to stay in the game. Those reporters knew nothing about football, about the brutal reality of competing at the highest level — Quentin didn’t have the patience to put up with their ignorance for one moment longer.