The Champion (52 page)

He heard whistles blowing. Hokor had called a timeout, Ionath’s last.

“I killed him! I killed the godling! I am now famous!”

Quentin recognized the Sklorno’s voice: D’Oni strong safety Lubbock. He recognized it because he’d also heard it back in the first half, when she had blitzed and damn near taken his head off.

“Not ... dead,” Quentin said. “But nice ... hit.”

“Joy and happiness and also sad and I will do better next time, great and powerful Quentinbarnes!”

He heard big Sklorno feet pound the turf as Lubbock dashed away.

A hand on his helmet, the voice of a Quyth Warrior: Kopor the Climber.

“Are you injured?”

“I’m fine,” Quentin said, although he knew he wasn’t. He craned his head to glance up at the play clock — D’Oni 21, Ionath 17, ball on D’Oni’s thirty, fourth down, seven to go, thirty-two seconds left in the game. The Krakens needed a touchdown, or they would lose to the winless Coelacanths.

Quentin started to push himself up, but his right arm said
no, thank you
, and instead of just working, it decided to fire a bolt of pain through his shoulder and into his back.

“A little help here,” he said.

Two sets of hands grabbed him, lifted him gently but quickly. Ju had joined Kopor. Ju looked pissed. Kopor’s eye swirled with both mauve, showing sadness and disappointment, and dark-green, a color associated with embarrassment.

“I am sorry,” Kopor said. “I missed my block.”

Ju reached out a big hand and pushed Kopor in the chest. “Missed? You scrub, you didn’t even
see
that safety blitz! Do your damn job!”

Kopor’s heavy middle arms shoved back. He had fifty pounds on Ju and easily knocked the taller sentient stumbling over the white-lined plum field. Ju instantly regained his balance, raised a fist and rushed back in even as Kopor came forward to meet him. Quentin stepped between them and got crunched, the blow
zapping
his shoulder again, making him cry out in pain.

Linemen swarmed in. Kimberlin pulled Kopor back. Sho-Do-Thikit wrapped his four arms around Ju, whose face showed instant and deep remorse.

“Q! I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

Quentin grabbed Ju’s facemask — grabbed it with his
left
hand — and used it to
yank
the running back right out of Sho-Do’s arms.

“Get in the damn huddle, Tweedy!”

Quentin’s heads-up display activated. Coach Hokor’s black-striped yellow fur was matted to his face, and his little hat was soaked through from the rain.

“
Barnes!
I didn’t call a timeout so you could play grab-ass for sixty seconds. Get over here, and bring that worthless fullback with you!”

The rest of the Krakens moved to the huddle. Kopor started to do the same, but Quentin stopped him.

“Kopor, you’re out.”

Quentin wasn’t sure if the fullback heard the words over the crowd’s deafening roar, but he obviously understood Quentin’s intent. Kopor’s eye flooded a heavy red-orange: the color of shame.

They jogged to the sidelines where Hokor was waiting. Quentin scanned for Nancy Wolf, Kopor’s rookie backup. As he looked, he saw Becca: orange jersey wet but spotless, helmet in hand, her eyes asking the question:
Am I coming in to replace you at quarterback?
She was obviously worried about him, but she couldn’t fully hide her eagerness — if he was too hurt to continue, she was ready to come in and lead the team.

Not today, not while I can still walk
.

Kopor strode past Hokor, shouldered through his teammates and headed to the bench.

Quentin saw Nancy Wolf and waved her onto the field. She nodded, blue eyes set with grim determination, then pulled on her helmet as she ran to the huddle.

Hokor circled a pedipalp hand inward, telling Quentin to kneel. Quentin did.

“Barnes, you look hurt.”

“I’m fine, Coach.”

“
Fine
as in you are my All-Pro quarterback who can run any play I call, or
fine
as in you’re so stubborn you’re not coming out no matter how badly you are injured?”

Quentin shrugged. “Just give me the ball, Coach.”

Hokor’s body gave a quick involuntary shake that sent water flying from his fur. “Suggestions?”

“They kicked my ass on a safety blitz, and I think they’ll try the same thing again. I say roll-right, flood all patterns right, have Nancy block the back side then fall down immediately, then when the defense comes after me, she gets up and sprints for the left corner.”

“A trick play,” Hokor said. “Did you make that up just now?”

Quentin nodded.

Hokor looked at Quentin’s right shoulder pad. Quentin realized the shoulder was hanging down: he forced it up to level, ignoring the pain.

“Just a scratch, Coach.”

“Of course,” Hokor said. “Barnes, run the play that you called.”

Quentin stood and jogged to the huddle. He called the play, happy that Nancy kept a poker face and didn’t show excitement that the game would be in her hands.

The Krakens broke the huddle and came up to the line. Quentin looked out at the defense. Their uniforms were a crazy iridescent fabric that caught the stadium lights and reflected them back in a dozen subtle colors that shifted with each player’s every move. Numbers, letters and the two parallel helmet stripes were steel blue with black piping. On each shoulder, running from the back to under the chest numbers, as well as down each leg’s armor, was a stylized white fish.

They called this stadium the Slaughterhouse. From the outside, it seemed to float in a reddish ocean like a plum jewel ringed in shimmering platinum. Sentients packed the stands, most dressed in iridescent clothes that matched their on-field heroes. There were a few Sklorno, Ki and Quyth, but most of the spectators were the dominant races of the Whitok Kingdom: Humans, Amphibs, Dolphins and — of course — Whitokians. Part of the local tradition was “the swim,” when the amphibious races partied all day before swimming out to the facility and entering the stadium through dozens of concrete ramps that extended into the water. Non-amphibious fans had to either take a boat or cross the footbridge that reached a mile out to the shore.

The noise level made the place rattle. The winless Coelacanths were just thirty-two seconds from upsetting the defending Galaxy Bowl champions. These fans knew that a win — a
single win
— might make the difference between staying in Tier One and being relegated at season’s end. And if the Coelacanths could beat the Krakens, they could play with anyone; one more defensive stop would probably make this place explode.

But Quentin would not allow them to have that one stop. Not today.

He slid his hands under Bud-O-Shwek. His right shoulder screamed in complaint, and his head felt full of rusted iron bolts. Something was wrong in both places —
very
wrong — but he ignored his body’s warnings.

“Blue, thirty-three,” he called out, shouting to be heard over the Slaughterhouse crowd. “Blue,
thirty-threeeee
. Hut
-hut
!”

The wet ball slapped into his hands. Quentin stepped back and ran right. He saw Nancy Wolf move left to block the Coelacanths Ki defensive end: the defensive end smashed her to the ground, then chased after Quentin.

Running right, Quentin looked downfield, scanning targets: Denver, covered on a flag-right; Milford, covered on a 15-yard out; George Starcher, covered on a hook. Defenders pursued Quentin from behind or angled toward the sidelines, trying to keep him from getting outside. He kept his eyes fixed on his three receivers — watching them try to find open space and watching the defensive backs react — never looking all the way to the left where Nancy would, hopefully, be sneaking up the far sideline.

Five yards from running out of bounds, Quentin planted his feet and turned. All the way on the other sideline and thirty yards downfield, the rookie fullback was all alone.

At this angle, it was a 61-yard pass to reach her (his brain flashed one of Kimberlin’s geometry lessons:
a-squared plus b-squared equals c-squared
 ...
she was fifty-three yards to his left, thirty yards downfield
 ...)

The pressure closed in on Quentin; he gunned the ball. The defenders slowed before hitting him, as they didn’t want a roughing-the-passer penalty to give the Krakens an automatic first down. They only bumped into him instead of laying him out — even those small contacts sent spears of agony through his right side.

Quentin had guessed wrong about the strong safety: Lubbock hadn’t blitzed. She was back in coverage, deep in the middle of the field, but she hadn’t noticed Nancy sneaking up the sidelines. The Sklorno saw the pass and sprinted for the corner, where Nancy stood just past the goal line. Lubbock’s uniform and armor shimmered in the stadium lights, an iridescent flash moving through the rain at impossible speed ... she
leapt
 ... but was too late: the ball passed a good five feet over her outstretched tentacles to fall into Nancy’s waiting arms.

Touchdown, Krakens.

Ionath 23, D’Oni 21, twenty-two seconds left in the game.

Quentin jogged to the sidelines, unable to keep his right shoulder up any longer, waving his left arm for Doc Patah. Patah shot out onto the field to be by Quentin’s side: the Harrah’s presence sent a clear signal that the Krakens QB didn’t need helmet slaps or — especially — shoulder-pad thumps of congratulations.

Patah led Quentin toward one of the medbays. On the way there, Quentin saw Kopor the Climber on the bench, alone, the Quyth Warrior awash in misery.

THE REJUVE TANK
had never felt so good. Thanks to Doc Patah’s nerve blocks, Quentin didn’t really feel anything at all, but that
absence
of pain counted as a genuine slice of heaven.

“I have an admission,” Yolanda said.

Quentin opened one eye. “You’re secretly a Krakens fan?”

She laughed. “You wish.”

After the game, Doc Patah had brought Quentin down to D’Oni stadium’s medical facility. Most of Doc’s initial work — cutting away the jersey and slicing off the armor, the painkillers and nerve blocks, the initial exam — was little more than a blur. Quentin had woken up in the tank, Yolanda sitting in a nearby chair.

“So, what’s your admission?”

She gestured to the training room, the holotanks and the medical equipment.

“I’ve never really seen the damage after a game,” Yolanda said. “I’ve reported on injuries dozens of times, of course, and on players trying to recover from a bad one, because that’s always of interest. But... I’ve never been there from the time a player comes off the sidelines to the time the team doc goes to work.”

Normally, Yolanda talked in a sharp no-nonsense tone. She wasn’t rude, exactly, but certainly didn’t make any effort to come across as “nice.” Now her voice sounded softer, perhaps even more ...
respectful
.

“This is the other part of the game,” Quentin said. “You know the flash and glory, and you know the dark side of things, but you’ve never seen the results of all that on-field carnage.”

She nodded. “Hearing someone talk about it or seeing the player after the fact is one thing. Doc Patah opened you up, showed me the breaks in your bone. He also pointed out all the other injuries you’ve suffered, wounds not even the Ionath beat reporters have written about. You ...” she searched for the words “your
body
, Quentin, it’s just so ...”

“Mangled?” he finished for her.

She nodded again.

“That’s the life we have chosen,” Quentin said. “We’re
meat
, Yolanda. Sure, we get money and fame, at least some of us do, but we’re meat and that field is a meat grinder. We get used until we can’t be used anymore, then we get tossed away.”

She shook her head. “All for money. It’s a lot of money, sure, I get that, but even if I had the size and the athletic ability, I don’t know if I’d do it.”

No, she wouldn’t; he could sense that about her. Few people understood the
need
to play, the internal fire that made you love a sport and would shatter your heart when that sport was eventually taken away.

“We don’t do it for the money. The players at my level would take the same risk and play just as hard if they didn’t get paid anything at all. I’d bet everything I have on that. The money is awesome, yeah, but we don’t do it for the money — we do it because we can’t
not
do it. We do it until they won’t let us do it anymore.”

“And then what? What will you do when your body finally gives out and you can’t perform?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. A life without football was unimaginable.

“I’ll become a comedian, of course,” he said. “I’m very funny.”

Doc Patah fluttered over. “Ah, young Quentin, you are awake. I was hoping our regular post-game meetings were a thing of the past.”

“Me too, Doc. Not like I want to be here.”

“Miss Davenport, I am afraid I must ask you to leave,” Doc said. “I need privacy with my patient.”

She stood. “No problem, Doctor. Thank you for showing me so many interesting things.”

Yolanda walked out of the room. Quentin watched her go, then turned all his attention to the sentient responsible for keeping him on the field.

“So, Doc, how is my shoulder?”

“You will be fine,” Doc said. “Your clavicle cracked in two places. The injuries were all bone and muscle related. D’Oni’s facilities are not quite up to my standards, so I programmed nanomeds to stabilize your injuries until I can get you to the
Touchback
, where I will operate.”

Operate
: the word that made any football player’s stomach flutter.

“How long will I be out?”

“You won’t miss any games,” Doc said. “The operation will take about an hour. I will isolate the arm for a few days after that. You should be able to practice by the time we return to Ionath.”

Quentin breathed a long sigh of relief. Losing five days of practice would be almost unrecoverable except for the fact that the Krakens had a bye in Week 8 — lucky indeed. He would still get a full week’s prep for the Pirates in Week 9.