The Champion (5 page)

Finally, when there was but a handful of sentients left, Messal came for him and pulled him aside.

He quietly handed Quentin an access card and gave him instructions: exit the locker room into the main player-entry corridor, turn right at the hall between the home and visitor’s locker rooms, look for a blue service elevator, use the access card to take the elevator straight down to the loading dock, find a ground truck where everyone else was waiting to depart.

“Time is of the essence, Elder Barnes,” Messal said quietly. “The ship leaving Hittoni will not wait — if the ground truck is late, the ship leaves without you.”

“I’m going,” Quentin said. “Just a few more minutes.” He returned to the waiting fans and rushed through the final autographs and thumbprints. These sentients had waited for hours, and a few had probably spent some — if not all — of their savings on outrageously priced Galaxy Bowl tickets and hotel rooms for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He wanted to make sure they all got that extra bit of satisfaction.

Messal shifted from foot to foot as he always did when timelines were in danger of slipping, a motion that Quentin always thought of as
the pee-pee dance
.

“Elder Barnes, we are only thirty-four seconds ahead of schedule. Time to
go
.”

After the final autograph — a T-shirt labeled “Ionath Krakens: Galaxy Bowl XXVII Champions” — Quentin pulled his suit coat from his locker, slipped it on, then walked across the empty locker room as Messal guided the last stragglers out another door.

Quentin exited into the main corridor. He walked toward the visitor’s locker room. Before and after the game, this place had been an insane hive of buzzing activity. Now it was quiet as a tomb. He saw one Human worker hurry past, going in the other direction — a small man, wearing a stadium staff jacket, little different in size and demeanor than the random Quyth Worker who would have probably been doing a similar random job back in Ionath Stadium. The same work had to be done everywhere you went: the only difference was the species that did it.

Up on the right, Quentin saw the hallway that separated the home and visitor’s locker rooms. He was just about to turn down it and head for the elevator when a door to the visitor’s locker room opened up.

Out stepped Don Pine.

He wore a tailored suit, the dark purple complementing his blue skin. He looked every bit like the elite Tier One quarterback that he was. He saw Quentin and smiled.

“Imagine meeting you here,” Don said. “The Galaxy Bowl MVP stayed late to sign some final autographs?”

Quentin nodded, already conscious of the delay this was causing. “You got it. And you?”

The locker room door opened again. Three Human kids ran out, all wearing gold, silver and copper Jupiter Jacks jackets. A man came out behind them.

“Thanks again, Mister Pine,” the man said. “You have no idea what this means to them.”

Don gave an easy wave. “My pleasure.”

The man nodded one last
thank you
, then chased after the screaming kids. Quentin watched the four of them run down the hall. He noticed that two of the kids ran awkwardly, like they barely had enough strength in their legs to support the out-of-control joy that came with meeting a hero.

Quentin nodded after them. “Those kids okay?”

Don sighed. “Not really. Meeting me was kind of their last wish.”

“Last... they’re
dying
?”

Don nodded.

Quentin felt a hammer of loss for the kids. So happy, so
young
, but whatever ailed them was beyond even the staggering abilities of modern science.

“That’s really good of you, Don.”

The blue-skinned quarterback smiled ruefully, then shrugged. “I got a bit of karma to make up for. Doing what I can while I’m still in the game.” He offered his left hand to Quentin. “Kid, what you did out there tonight, people are going to remember that forever.”

Quentin looked at Pine’s hand. The
left
, because Pine remembered that Quentin had sacrificed his right pinkie to stay in the game. Quentin shook.

“Thanks,” he said. “It means a lot coming from you, old man. But don’t think this squares it between us.”

Don laughed. “Ah, the rage of youth. Tell you what, kid — spend the next week looking at your MVP trophy. Then the week after that staring at the ring that will be on your finger.
Then
tell me how important all that other stuff is.”

All that other stuff
. The galaxy had blamed Quentin for throwing games that
Pine
had thrown, and the man called it
all that other stuff
? Sentients had thought Quentin a cheater, that he threw games. They’d thrown garbage at him. Yes, that
other stuff
was still important.

And yet ... without Pine’s help, would Quentin have even made it through the first season? Without the need to save Pine from his gambling debts, would Quentin have overcome his own racism to unify the team, or become the leader that he now was? Sentients washed out of the GFL all the time. Without Pine — both the good and the bad — Quentin might very well have wound up just another forgotten player.

He would never know.

What Quentin did know was that Pine had had a chance to come clean, and Pine had passed on that. He’d hung Quentin out to dry. Pine could say all the nice things he liked, make all the kind gestures he liked — Quentin didn’t have to punch the man on sight, but being pleasant in public wasn’t the same as forgiveness.

For what Pine had done, Quentin would
never
forgive the man. “Don, I gotta go,” he said. “You had a great game, too. And thanks for presenting the MVP trophy. That was really classy.”

Don nodded. “Needed to be done. Take care of yourself, Quentin. He looked over Quentin’s shoulder. “Great game, Virak.”

“Thank you,” said the growling voice a few feet behind Quentin.

Quentin’s stomach sank.

Oh, crap
.

Don walked off down the hall. Quentin turned to face Virak the Mean, the Krakens Quyth Warrior outside linebacker and Gredok’s main bodyguard. The single baseball-sized eye stared out, the cornea clear.

“Barnes, Gredok sent me to make sure you made it safely to the
Touchback
.”

Time was ticking away.

“Thanks, Virak, but I’ll make my own way back.”

“Incorrect,” the linebacker said. “You are coming with me.
Now
”

Quentin’s anger bubbled up, percolated, hovered just below an all-out boil. The Warrior had picked the wrong time to be a badass.

“What are you going to do, Virak? Beat me up and take me back by force?”

Virak’s eye swirled with yellow-orange, betraying his excitement.

“I would enjoy that very much,” he said.

The linebacker stepped closer. Quentin caught himself before he took an automatic step back — he couldn’t show any weakness. He stared down at the shorter sentient, trying to be as intimidating as he could. Quentin was over a half-foot taller, although the two sentients weighed about the same.

The color on Virak’s cornea swirled faster. He didn’t seem all that intimidated.

“I have not forgotten about your disrespect at Torba the Hungry’s,” he said. “Choto isn’t here to help you this time. Neither is John Tweedy.”

Virak must have been lurking around this whole time. Quentin hadn’t seen him. The Warrior probably didn’t know about Quentin’s sister and the plan to get off Hittoni, but right now that didn’t matter — Quentin had to get to that truck.

“You really want to fight me, Virak? Won’t Gredok be mad if you bust up his star quarterback?”

Virak’s eye-swirls shifted from orange to black.

“You have the entire off-season to recover,” he said. “I might be punished, but it will be worth it.”

Quentin had spent all of his childhood and most of his teenage years in the mines of Micovi. There, if you didn’t know how to fight, you went hungry because other miners took your food. If you wanted to live, you learned how to fight. More importantly, Quentin had learned
when
to fight, learned the difference between a man who knew how to
look
dangerous and one who could actually hurt you.

Virak was the latter.

Quentin knew he wasn’t going to talk his way out of this one. His violent childhood had taught him something else: the guy who punches first usually wins.

He stepped forward and brought his knee up fast for a quick strike to Virak’s sternum. Virak twisted sharply to the right: Quentin’s knee slid harmlessly across Virak’s chest, momentum carrying Quentin into Virak’s already swinging left pedipalp. The chitin-covered fist slammed into Quentin’s cheek, knocking him sideways so hard his head smashed into the corridor wall.

Quentin had taken harder punches, but not many. He pushed off the wall and lunged at Virak. The Warrior hadn’t expected Quentin to react that quickly, to
move
that quickly, and went down hard under Quentin’s weight. The two sentients hit the floor and skidded across the polished surface.

Quentin straddled Virak, reared back to rain down blows, but felt Virak’s powerful middle arms tangle in his suit coat and yank hard to the right. Cloth ripped but didn’t come free: Quentin’s mouth and nose slammed into the wall. His vision blurred. He hesitated for a second, only a second, and suddenly he was flat on his face, 360 pounds on his back, strong pedipalp arms locking under his throat.

“I used to be a professional fighter,” Virak growled as he slowly squeezed tighter, cutting off Quentin’s air, cutting off the blood to his brain. “Did you know that? I fought Korak the Cutter.”

Quentin tried to lurch to the side, but he was already weakening, and Virak blocked the move — the Warrior had him.

“I made it through the first round,” Virak said. “Not many sentients can say they made it a round with Korak the Cutter.”

Quentin’s eyes opened and shut, opened and shut. He couldn’t breathe. Virak was going to kill him.

“You need a lesson,” the Warrior said. “You need to learn that Gredok the Splithead is your
shamakath
, and I am the fist that punishes anyone stupid enough to—”

Quentin heard a sharp, short sizzling sound, a
crack
, felt a sting of electricity, and then the pressure on his neck eased away. Another
crack
. The weight fell off his back a second before he heard Virak flop limply against the hallway’s hard floor.

The big Warrior didn’t move.

Quentin pushed himself to his butt, leaned his back against the wall. He took in big, ragged breaths, trying to get his wind back.

There stood Messal the Efficient, uniform as neat and tidy as ever. He held a black device in his right pedipalp hand.

“I told you we were on a schedule,” he said, bouncing from foot to foot. “Get up, Quentin. Hurry to the loading dock before the truck leaves.”

Quentin nodded, which made his throat hurt. He tasted blood in his mouth. He had to lean against the wall to stand up. He pointed down at the prone, unmoving Virak.

“What about him?”

“I will say I found him here, unconscious,” Messal said. “Before that, I must find someone I can bribe to alter security footage of this incident so that I am not seen attacking Gredok’s favorite bodyguard, and I must do both of those things in the five minutes before Virak wakes up. Every second you stand here makes it less probable I will succeed.
Go
.”

Quentin nodded, turned and ran down the hall, looking for the blue service elevator. He felt warmth trickling down his face; a quick touch came back bloody. Great.

He reached the elevator. The access card let him in. The trip down finally gave him a few seconds to gather himself. He looked at his expensive tailored coat: torn, spotted with blood — ruined. His upper lip had split. His cheek streamed blood. And that stinging in his mouth, it felt like ...

Oh no, not again
.

He felt a small bit of hardness under his tongue, deep on the right side. He slid a finger in there, felt it, pulled it out.

A front tooth. The stinging in his mouth and the tip of his tongue told him it was the right one.

“Why is it
always
that tooth?”

The elevator stopped. As the doors opened, he slid the tooth into his pocket.

Not ten feet from the elevator sat a ground truck, back door rolled up, his teammates waiting inside. John, Ju, Becca, Kimberlin, Choto, Crazy George, Tara the Freak, Denver, Milford, Doc Patah and the long, frightening form of Mum-O-Killowe. They looked at him, instantly worried. Ju held a box full of hot dogs. John had half of a hot dog in each hand, the other halves obviously in his overstuffed mouth. Mum-O let out a rumbling growl. Choto’s eye flooded black, but Becca was the first out of the truck and by Quentin’s side.

“Q, what happened?”

“Just a little post-game hug from Virak,” Quentin said. “We need to get going, fast.”

Choto guided Quentin to the truck.

“It is my fault,” the Warrior said. “I should never leave you unguarded.”

John’s face wrinkled with rage. He chewed fast, trying to process his giant bites of hot dog.

“Ahm unna ooop heh aaa,” John said.

“John’s mad,” Ju said. “He said he’s going to whip Virak’s ass.”

“Thanks for the translation,” Quentin said. He climbed in. “Let’s worry about that later — if we fall any further behind schedule, I think we have more to fear from Messal than Virak.”

Becca climbed in after him, a white tissue in her hand as if it had appeared out of nowhere.

“Messal,” she said. “Why would we worry about him?”

Quentin winced as she dabbed at the cut on his cheek. “You don’t want to know. Seal up the truck and let’s get out of here.”

Choto got in. Ju pulled the truck door down. Quentin heard the latch lock. Seconds later, the truck started rolling.

QUENTIN AND HIS TEAMMATES ENDURED
the uncomfortable ride to the Hittoni Intergalactic Spaceport. Early morning traffic made for frequent stops and starts, jostling the big bodies around in the smelly, dirty truck, sliding them against each other on the narrow bench seats. Mum-O didn’t bother with a seat: instead, the twelve-foot-long sentient lay on the floor, curled into a dense, muscly spiral. Eight hours since the game had ended, yet Quentin heard occasional yells and hollers from die-hard revelers who were still celebrating the Galaxy Bowl.