THE RIDER (Galactic Football League Novellas Book 4) Read online

  Pete held up the war hammer. “I should make you eat this.”

  The Leader tensed, warily eyed the war hammer. “With a weapon in your hand, you certainly like to talk. Don’t you, pigmy?”

  Pete smiled. “Oh, look at you, you know lots of our words, including ones you think are insults. Here’s another one for you to remember — the word isouch.”

  Pete whipped his helmet forward. It struck Yopat in his blue breastplate. The Leader tumbled backward onto the pitch. Pete dropped his hammer and jumped on top of the furry sentient. The other two Leaders moved to join the melee, but Clark and Ian caught them before they had a chance.

  The crowd roared to life once again. Pete rained down blows on Yopat’s cracked torso armor. The Stompers’ second-in-command screamed with pain and anger, but Pete barely heard. His armored fists splintered what was left of Yopat’s blue chest-plate.

  Strong arms grabbed Pete from behind and lifted him a half-meter off the ground. Pete stared down at the pair of thick, chitin-covered Quyth Warrior arms wrapped around his chest.

  Leaders were Pete’s size: Warriors were not. The one holding Pete had to be over two meters tall, and — judging by the muscles rippling beneath the enameled and engraved chitin — was probably 110 kilos if it was a gram.

  Dangling in the air, Pete stared down at his foe and snarled.

  “Next time, Yopat, your bodyguard won’t save you.”

  Yopat glared upward from the pitch.

  The world rotated. The Quyth Warrior held Pete before him and marched to the Ridgebacks’ dugout with agonizing slowness, Pete’s boots dangling uselessly. Pete didn’t struggle. If the Warrior wanted, it could break Pete’s small body into pieces. The crowd was cheering Pete’s name, but he barely noticed — it was times like this that he hated being small.

  Twice during the match, Yopat had driven his lance-tip at Bess’s eyes. That was against the rules, since eyes were the most vulnerable part of any mount, especially Dinos. It wasn’t just bad form, it was bad for business: lose the big mounts fans wanted to watch, and that meant fewer butts in the stands. Flesh could be repaired quickly — eyes could not.

  The Warrior dropped Pete to the ground, then roughly turned him around. Pete looked up into the Warrior’s baseball sized eye. The Warrior’s thick eyelids — layered with plates of protective chitin — narrowed, and the cornea swirled with dense curls of black like runs of ink spilled onto curved glass.

  Judging by the density of enamels and engravings on this Warrior’s hairless carapace, he had served in the military, spent time in prison, or probably both. His pedipalps were as big as Pete’s arms, and his middle arms thicker than Pete’s legs.

  The Warrior pointed a pedipalp finger in Pete’s face.

  “Next time, Human, I’ll kill you.”

  A low, bass growl vibrated through both of their bodies. Pete didn’t need to turn to see what it was, as the Warrior’s cornea reflected the image of Bess’s big head leaning in close. The Warrior’s eye changed from black to pink — the color of fear.

  “Bring friends,” Pete said. “Bring lots of friends.”

  The Warrior’s pedipalps twitched. “We shall see,” it said, then turned and walked quickly past the approaching Ridgeback riders.

  Ian offered the war hammer to Pete. “Wow, Cap — you beat the hell out of that little orange-furred bastard.”

  Pete nodded and took the hammer. “Next time, we’ll see how Yopat does without protection.”

  Clark put a hand on Pete’s shoulder. “Come on, Captain. It’s time for post-match interviews.”

  Pete groaned and looked up at Bess. The T-Rex stared at him, her mouth partially open. He smiled: just the sight of her filled him with pride and love.

  “Did you have a fun match, girl?”

  The huge animal dropped its head and gently brushed her snout against his shoulder. Pete managed to stay upright, but he stumbled sideways, laughing.

  “Okay, take it easy. Let’s get you to the stables.”

  Clark and Tony went to their mounts, climbed atop them and headed for the out-gate. Bess followed.

  Ian, the youngest of the Ridgebacks team, stared after them, his eyes glazed with the loss he tried so hard to conceal.

  There would be time to yell at him later. For now, the kid’s heart was ripped into pieces.

  “Ian,” Pete said. “I’m sorry about Tumult.”

  “Did my best, boss.”

  You don’t even know what your best is yet, you arrogant pup. When you do, you’ll be a legend.

  “Come on, Ian. Let’s head in. Bess, stable.”

  The two short men followed the large T-Rex out of the stadium, Pete’s war hammer twirling in his hands.

  • • •

  The locker room smelled of sweat, dinosaur dander, and the blood of mounts and riders alike. Pete’s armor lay piled on the floor. He peeled off his Ridgebacks undershirt and flung it into the hamper. The other riders had already showered and headed back to the stables to check in on their mounts.

  Pete was almost always late to check on the animals and supervise the load-out. The media — the few reporters that actually covered Dinolition, anyway — demanded interviews immediately after a match. Commissioner Rachel Guestford had made it a standing rule that team captains gave interviews while still wearing their armor.

  As a sport, Dinolition was still very new. New, and barely making enough money to stay afloat. While things looked like they were picking up, Dinolition was still a marginal sport; the sentients involved had to do anything possible to get attention. Beyond the obvious spectacle of the mounts, the pre-match showmanship and the crap Salton the Grimy called “pageantry” were part of the sport’s draw — and so was showing up at press conferences in cracked armor still covered in blood.

  Pete walked into the shower. Although the stall had originally been used to fill water troughs and bottles for the Roughland cricket team, Pete had had it converted to a real shower. Nanites cleaned a body just fine but didn’t satisfy in the way hot water did. Throughout his career in the Galactic Circus and his stint in the backwater kill pits, nanites hadn’t been available. Once upon a time, Pete had dreamed of taking a nanite shower, just like the rich folk, just like the tech-spoiled people in the League of Planets. Now that he had the cash to afford them (not that it took much money for the basics, he’d just been that poor back then), he was already set in his ways.

  Hot water jetted from one of the walls, sprayed against his tired muscles. He turned in a slow circle. These faucets had been meant to fill water bottles: what was stomach high for the average man was head-height for Pete’s one-meter frame.

  He scrubbed his skin, spending extra time on the white and purple scars that covered his chest and back. He worked at his scalp, making sure he got all the filth out of his long hair. It felt good. It felt like closure on the day’s battle.

  The press conference had been a debacle, of course. The very first question from Orlon the Questioner had set the tone. As if Pete shouldn’t have expected a Quyth Leader reporter to be biased toward those scumbag Stompers riders.

  “After the match, what happened out there on the pitch when you were supposed to be exchanging sportsmanlike appreciation of each others performances?” Orlon had asked.

  Pete had stared at the blue-and-black-furred journalist. “Nothing more than a display of inter-species solidarity.”

  The reporters had laughed, but Pete hadn’t smiled. Guestford travelled constantly, always using her looks and caché as a former movie star to promote the sport anywhere she could. This week, unfortunately, she’d been in attendance at Smithchwicks as the on-pitch announcer, which meant Pete wouldn’t have to wait that long to get his ass chewed out.

  A Human reporter — a normal-sized Human, that was — stood for a question.

  “Old Bess took some serious damage today,” the reporter said. “Will she be ready for her next match?”

  A smile finally crept across Pete’s face. “Bess i
s tough. She’s the toughest creature in the league. What you see as major damage is nothing more than scratches to her. She’ll be more than ready.”

  A hand shot up from the back of the room. Pete nodded to the smartly dressed HeavyG woman.

  “Lonny Branderschweis-Smith-Parker, Rodina Times. What about Tumult? The death of a mount is a critical loss to any franchise. Did Ian Bahas make a mistake?”

  Pete felt his cheeks flush, but managed to tramp down any other sign of his simmering anger. At least, he thought he did, but he was so damn angry.

  “Ian is a great rider, one of the best in the league,” Pete said. “Accidents happen. While fortune may favor the brave and skilled, it sometimes goes against you. The Stompers played a good match today and Tumult was unlucky. I don’t think I would have played it any other way.”

  Pete felt like a puppet with a hand of both Guestford and Salton inside of him at the same time, controlling his responses, their constant training in how to handle the media dictating what Pete would say before he even knew to say it.

  “I see,” Lonny said. “Will Tumult be missed?”

  Pete sighed. The inevitable question. The league had Sklorno teams, Quyth teams, Human teams, and soon might even have Ki teams — if there were any members of that species small enough to be riders, which Pete doubted — but Humans seemed to be the only ones that bonded with their animals. The press took every opportunity to play up that angle: emotional tragedy is always a good story.

  “Tumult was a great fighter, a great mount,” Pete said. “I’ll miss her. I know Ian is heart-broken over the loss.”

  A Sklorno female stood and chirped a question over Lonny’s follow-up. “Do you have another achillobator with Tumult’s skills?”

  Pete gritted his teeth. “No comment.”

  Lonny shouted another question without waiting for permission.

  “The Stompers were in fourth place coming into this match, one game ahead of you. Your win gives both teams the same record, but with your significant lead in points differential, your team is in clear control of the final championship tournament slot. Considering today’s post-match altercation, if you do make the tournament, would it bring you great joy that this win knocked the Stompers out of the tournament?”

  Pete wanted to scream yes, along with several expletives to properly illustrate the point, but he did not. He had to admit it — Yopat was right. Two matches remained in the regular season. If the Ridgebacks took both, they were in the tournament for sure, but the next match was against the undefeated Chachana Resurrected. As team captain, Pete needed to make it clear to his squad that the Stompers match was already history, make sure their focus was on the Resurrected and nothing else.

  “Sometimes emotions get the better of us out on the pitch, sure,” he said. “But we’re all professionals. We would never target anyone, because without great mounts — and great riders — this sport would collapse. The Stompers are a solid organization. There’s no bad blood on our end.”

  Orlon the Questioner raised his pedipalp again.

  Pete nodded to the Quyth Leader.

  “There are rumors,” Orlon said, “of financial difficulties for the Ridgebacks. Care to comment?”

  Pete blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Is Salton the Grimy interested in selling the team?”

  Those words stuck in Pete’s head for the rest of the press conference, had still been in there when he’d taken off his armor, and now, sitting in front of the water jets, they were still echoing in his thoughts.

  The hot water felt so nice. Pete had already used up his share. But hey, being the team captain had its privileges.

  “Sell the team,” he said aloud. “Over my dead body.”

  He bent over and touched his palms to the shower floor, trying to stretch out a knot in his back. The water cascaded over his skin. His spine popped and a jolt of pain surged through it. He gritted his teeth.

  The damage he’d taken in the Galactic Circus, the kill pits, and in dozens of Dinolition matches was starting to show. His back hurt almost all the time. His spinal cord had been pinched more than once. Another serious hit and he could wind up paralyzed — for good, this time. Medical science could only do so much to keep a battered body going; retirement was inevitable.

  “But not yet,” he said quietly. “Not this season.”

  He stood up and tapped the wall. The water shut off. He wrung out his long hair, then tied it in a loose tail. He tapped the wall again and warm air from all sides blasted against his skin. He raised his arms, letting the currents dry him. After a moment, he tapped the wall again and the dryers shut off. Pete untied his hair and stepped out of the shower cubicle.

  The stone floor chilled his bare feet. Roughland was hardly known for its amenities. Located in the middle of the massive, seemingly endless mountain desert known as “The Wastes,” Roughland wasn’t the kind of high-tech city for which the League of Planets was known. Settled by sentients fleeing the elitist, body-mod culture of League scientists, most Roughland buildings were constructed from “indigenous materials.” More often than not, that was a fancy word for “rocks.” The Roughland Chamber of Commerce liked to say the city was “a return to simpler times.” Based on the cracks in the ceiling, Pete wondered if that was a good thing.

  He walked to his locker and dressed in a pair of hemp pants and a Ridgebacks tee. Bess’s visage was emblazoned in black on a field of red. He stared into the locker at the black and orange Ionath Krakens jersey hanging from the hooks. Children’s size, which fit him perfectly. With a sigh, Pete slipped into it, put on his boots with the two-inch heels — when you’re going to hang out with a GFL player, every little bit of height counted, especially when you are so little to begin with — and left the locker room.

  Outside the stadium, the sun had left and so, too, had the crowds. Smithwicks Arena was some distance away from the city itself, having been built as part of a grand complex that was to include housing, office buildings, shops, and a tunnel spur to the main tubeway. The stadium had gone up; nothing else had. The huge construct stood alone, towering above the rocky landscape.

  The stadium drew crowds for cricket games, the occasional concert and Ridgeback matches, and little else. The nearest tubeway spur entrance was twenty kilometers away, requiring people to either use their own vehicles or wheelbus from the spur to the stadium.

  All that isolation did provide one benefit: Ranch Ridgeback was within walking distance. With no population nearby, there was little reason to keep the dinos at some faraway location.

  A brown-fatigued stadium security guard nodded as Pete passed.

  “Good match,” the guard said. “Sorry about Tumult.”

  Pete nodded and kept walking.

  Tumult. Next to Bess, the speedster had been his favorite. He’d trained her since she left the incubator. She had been astonishingly fast, obedient, and loyal. She’d protected her rider with maternal ferocity. The ranch wouldn’t be the same without her.

  Ranch Ridgeback was just south of Smithicks Arena. The Ridgebacks and the Rodina Colonials, the local cricket team, shared the stadium. Although the Ridgebacks were a far greater draw, the Colonials had been the facility’s original occupant, and the city elite made it clear which franchise was more important — a millennia-old sport that traced its roots back to ancient Earth held priority over one that hadn’t even hit its tenth anniversary. Pete wondered if the Chamber of Commerce shared that view.

  When visitors came to Roughland, it was to watch the Ridgebacks. Not just visitors from Rodina, but from off-planet. Sentients spent enormous amounts of money and untold time in space just to see Dinolition matches. After a Ridgebacks contest, the city was always full of wealthy sentients — drinking, eating, purchasing knick-knacks and generally shoving giant fistfuls of much-needed cash in to the city’s economy. As for the Colonials, no one came from off-planet to see them, and not very many of the locals did, either.

  Dinolition was growing, no questio
n. At this pace, soon the Ridgeback’s home matches would sell out every seat of Smithwicks Arena. Soon, but would it be soon enough?

  Pete trudged through the litter left by the spectators. Empty mag-cans of Roughland Stout crunched under his feet. The janitorial staff hadn’t started their rounds yet — they usually waited for the teams to load out before they began their routine. By midnight, the arena would look as though no sentient had ever been there.

  A breeze blew from the south, carrying the smell of excrement — both dino and bovine. Pete smiled. The girls were eating and resting.

  Ranch Ridgeback’s stables were made of bluewood, harvested from the planet’s northern hemisphere. Red veins streaked through the huge blue pillars. The structure was more than tall enough to accommodate Bess’s full height. Blue timbers framed heavy black bars and grates — one could never forget, ever, that most of the mounts came from ancient predators. Sometimes, things went wrong, and the last thing the sport needed was several tonnes of carnivore running loose in the mountains.

  Pete stepped through the sentient-access gate and into the entryway. Nothing to see in this area by hallways, offices and equipment rooms, but Pete could hear the snort and lowing of beefalo from the nearby livestock area. The sound was a familiar counterpoint to the smacking of jaws and the occasional snuffle from the dinos.

  Some of the mounts were omnivorous, but not Ol’ Bess. She liked meat — live meat most of all, and she preferred to pick her own meal. After a match, Bess would be let out of her individual pen and into the hunting space, where the beefalo herd waited. Sometimes she killed her prey there and then carried it back to her pen, sometimes she only wounded it, preferring to finish the job in the comfort of her own space.

  Pete entered the armory. Clark was applying a composite sealant to a crack in his red armor’s left thigh. He had the suit mounted on a repair rig: helmet on top, then the wide, curved shoulder plates, the sleeve armor, the articulated gauntlets that covered Clark from fingertips to elbow, the cuirass, which protected his chest and the ribs, then the tasset lame, the interlinked bands that covered the waist and crotch (the important stuff, as Clarke described it), finally the thigh, knee and lower leg armor, then the boots. All made of a crysteel variant for low weight and high strength, all pieces capable of “turtling” together to create a hermetical seal that would not only protect a rider against falls from significant height, but also kept them alive inside a mount’s digestive system.