The Starter Read online

  “Look at you all,” Kotop said. “The conquering heroes return.”

  Quentin expected Kotop’s usual lecture on morals, but this time he sounded different.

  John took a step forward and stood with rigid, mock attention. “Mister Kotop Leader Shamakath sir! May I ask what is on your mind, Mister Kotop Leader Shamakath sir? You seem very... happy.”

  “I’m always happy,” Kotop said.

  The Krakens players laughed.

  John stepped back into line.

  The two white-uniformed workers pushed their grav-sled out of the shuttle. “No explosives, no weapons,” one of them said to Kotop.

  “Excellent,” Kotop said. “I expected nothing less of such fine representatives of Ionath.”

  The players looked at each other, confused.

  “Kotop, my tip-top,” John said. “Aren’t you going to tell us we are delinquents that will someday wind up dead or in jail as soon as football is finished with us?”

  “Not tonight,” Kotop said. He brought his hands out from behind his back. They were holding a little black baseball hat, which he pulled onto his head. The hat showed the Krakens logo on the bill. Across the brim it read: IONATH KRAKENS: 2682 TIER TWO CHAMPIONS.

  “Tonight?” Kotop said, “Tonight, I am just a fan, like every being in this city. Congratulations, sentients, and welcome home.”

  The team laughed and whooped at the unexpected support. They walked across the roof to ride elevators down to their respective quarters, or to cars and taxis. Quentin, however, walked to the roof’s far side. He stood there, breathing slowly, staring out at an entire city lit up in orange lights, a city alive with the moving, silent images of his teammates, his friends. Some of the towering buildings showed action clips of Quentin, jersey torn and splattered with blood, fighting for victory against the Sky Demolition, the Whitok Pioneers, the Texas Earthlings.

  He looked everywhere, trying to take it all in, trying to capture everything and forever burn it into his brain.

  Not that long ago, he’d been an orphan. A low-wage miner, on an unknown colony, in a backwater system.

  Now? Now his image covered towering skyscrapers. Now, he was a hero.

  He would never, ever, forget this moment.

  From The Ionath City Gazette

  * * *

  GFL Schedule Announced, Krakens Face Stiff Competition

  by TOYAT THE INQUISITIVE

  NEW YORK CITY, EARTH, PLANETARY UNION — GFL officials today announced the schedule for the 2683 season. Following their successful season and first-place finish in the T2 Tournament, the Ionath Krakens earned promotion to Tier One.

  The GFL has two divisions, the Planet Division and the Solar Division. Ionath was placed in the Planet Division, replacing the relegated Free Birds who finished the 2682 Tier One season with a record of 1-11.

  Each division has eleven teams. The Krakens play each Planet Division team once, and also have two cross-divisional games against teams from the Solar Division. Every team gets one bye-week, resulting in a 12-game, 13-week schedule.

  2683 KRAKENS SCHEDULE

  Relegation-bound?

  The Krakens’ primary objective this season is to win more games than at least one other Planet Division team. The team with the most losses is relegated to Tier Two, to be replaced by one of the teams that reach the championship game of the T2 Tournament.

  For reference, keep in mind that the Free Birds won the Tier Two tournament in 2681 to earn promotion, then proceeded to lose eleven games in the 2682 Tier One season and were sent right back down again. In the past ten Tier One campaigns, six of the teams that won promotion were relegated the following season.

  The Magic Number?

  The Free Birds were by far the worst team in Tier One. This season, analysts mostly agree that the teams in danger of relegation are the Coranadillana Cloud Killers, the Mars Planets, and the Krakens. Ionath likely has to win at least three games to avoid relegation.

  Guaranteed Losses?

  Ionath faces almost certain defeat against the Planet Division’s dominant franchises, including the Yall Criminals, the To Pirates, and the newly renamed Wabash Wolfpack, who went 9-3 last season as the Wabash Wall. As for the Krakens’ two cross-divisional games, one is against perennial Solar Division relegation contenders Shorah Warlords. Sadly, the other is against the 2682 GFL Champion Jupiter Jacks.

  Playoff Math

  While the odds of the Krakens making the T1 playoffs are just a bit lower than those of every star in the galaxy simultaneously going supernova, reassembling into a bartender, and making this writer a Junkie Gin Blaster with a twist of lime, this column wouldn’t be complete without providing the actual playoff math. It’s simple — the four Planet Division teams with the best record go to the single-elimination Galaxy Bowl tournament. In the case of equal records, the tiebreaker is head-to-head results. In 2682, the four Planet Division playoff qualifiers finished with records of 11-1, 10-2, 9-3, and 8-4. As I mentioned earlier, before the Krakens land eight wins this year, every sentient in the galaxy would die in the burning gases of their suns expanding at nearly the speed of light, leaving this writer to drink his life away as the last living creature (except, of course, for the reassembled bartender). Scientific translation? The Krakens are not going to make the playoffs.

  * * *

  THE CROWD PARTED before the two huge Humans. Quentin and John Tweedy walked down the street, afternoon light playing down through the arcing city dome high overhead. They were trying — and failing — to blend in. They wore nondescript clothes: jeans, sweatshirts with hoods up, sunglasses. Tweedy also wore a strap that circled from his left shoulder to his right hip. It had nine mag-can-sized pouches. Eight carried cans of beer, while one held a pint of Junkie Gin. The strap was the fashion accessory he never seemed to be without, the thing he lovingly called his “beerdoleer.”

  Other than the beerdoleer, John wore nothing that called attention to his status as a football star. But at 6-foot-6, 310 pounds, there was only one Human on the entire street bigger than he was — and that Human was Quentin. With 380 solid pounds gracing his 7-foot frame, Quentin towered over everyone.

  They walked through Ionath City’s middle northwest quadrant, the busy nightclub district. It should have come as no surprise that any John Tweedy contact would be in this area, as this area seemed to be the only place he went.

  Quentin pointed to one of the towering buildings, where someone was hanging one end of an orange-and-black Krakens banner from a fifteenth-story window, the other end reaching across a narrow gap to a neighboring building.

  “They’re going all out for this parade,” Quentin said. “That why you brought me this way?”

  “Sort of,” John said. “Our guy’s office is on Fifth Ring Road anyway, but thought you’d like to see the whole city ramping up for the parade.”

  Quentin nodded. He was happy to see the preparations — banners and flags of orange and black, crowd barriers being put up, general spit and polish on all areas for the parade that would kick off in a few hours. Some fans were already camped out behind the barriers, staking their places for the festivities. If this was how they celebrated promotion into Tier One, Quentin could only imagine what they would do for a Galaxy Bowl victory.

  The nightclub district ran along Fifth Ring Road. Fifth Ring was at the mid-point of the dome’s convex arc, the inner point where the mostly red, hexagonal buildings started getting smaller, going from the forty-story affairs at the city center to one-story flats at the dome’s edge. In the nightclub district, bars and restaurants packed the first two floors of almost every building. Fake exteriors done in hundreds of styles, colorful lights temporarily drowned out by the afternoon sun, holo-signs and other decorations calling out to potential patrons. Smooth, red crysteel started at the third floor and rose twenty to thirty stories above.

  Fifth Ring looked like the other ring roads: the wide dip of the mag-lev train track in the middle, supporting public transit cars t
hat circled the city. On either side of the track, two lanes of road for cabs, trucks, and private cars. Outside lanes always carried clockwise traffic, inside lanes always ran counterclockwise.

  Pedestrian traffic tended to match this clockwise/counterclockwise pattern. John and Quentin were on the outside sidewalk, circling north. They walked among a diverse crowd made up mostly of Quyth Workers, but also peppered with plenty of Ki, Human, and HeavyG sentients. It was only noon and the area was already bustling — by the time the sun went down, the nightclub district would be so packed it could take ten minutes to exit one bar, go down the street a few buildings, and enter the next one. Despite the sweatshirt hoods, Quentin saw occasional smiles of recognition. He tried to ignore them and just keep walking.

  “It’s jumping,” Quentin said. “Seems busy for this early in the afternoon.”

  “Big sports day,” John said. “All kinds of stuff going down. Big hover-essedari race out in the wastes, so sentients are packing the bars to watch live coverage. Sklorno soccer championship league tourney is in the final four. That was last night, but it’s just broadcasting now. Oh, and in a few hours the Dinolition Derby signal reaches us from the League of Planets. I’ve got some big bucks on Lil’ Pete Poughkeepsie’s team.”

  “Dinolition?”

  John stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “You haven’t seen Dinolition?”

  Quentin shook his head. “Haven’t even heard of it.”

  AND YOU BELIEVE IN A HIGHER BEING? scrolled across John’s face. “Oh, man, Q, you’re in for a treat. You think things are rough in the GFL? Try being a dwarf in turtle armor riding a seven-ton T-rex into a death match.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Hell no,” John said. “Dead serious. So yeah, a lot going on makes today a major sporgy.

  “Sporgy?”

  “An orgy of sports,” John said. “Sports orgy. Sporgy. And look, man, I want to help you find your parents and all, but I got games to watch so can we just get moving?”

  John looked annoyed. He shook his head, then started walking again. Quentin walked with him, not bothering to say that John had been the one to stop in the first place.

  “So,” Quentin said, “this guy is good?”

  “The best. Want a beer?”

  Quentin shook his head. He wanted to be totally sober for this. It felt good to finally take a step toward finding his parents. And yet, the fear lingered — what if he found out they were both dead? Then he was alone, no family at all. His teammates, sure, but no real family.

  Tweedy drained his beer and tossed the mag-can over his shoulder. It hit a passing Quyth Warrior in the head.

  “Hey, Human,” the Quyth Warrior said. “You pick that up.”

  Tweedy stopped, smiled, and turned around. Quentin sighed. They were trying to keep a low profile, lest any of Gredok’s gang see them, maybe figure out what Quentin was up to.

  Quentin turned as well. The offended Quyth Warrior was normal for his species, which was to say he was much smaller than John Tweedy. Quentin had grown so used to being around Virak the Mean, Choto the Bright, and his other Quyth Warrior teammates that he’d forgotten how big they were relative to their species, just like he was big for his.

  The Warrior wore grey pants that covered his folded-up lower legs. He wore no shirt, exposing his pale orange torso and big lower arms. A few enamels decorated his carapace, but nothing like the full-body art of Virak and Choto. The pedipalp arms on either side of the Warrior’s head twitched. Quentin thought he saw a tinge of pink flicker through the Warrior’s single, baseball-sized eye.

  “You talkin’ to me?” John said, his smile growing even wider, his face scrolling the bright words FREE TRIPS TO DEATHVILLE, GET YOUR TICKET PUNCHED HERE.

  The crowd started to part, giving John, Quentin and the Quyth Warrior plenty of room.

  “John,” Quentin said. “Now’s not the time.”

  John shrugged. “Not up to me. Up to Mister Happy Public Helper, here.” John pointed to the empty mag-can. “What do you say, Mister Happy Public Helper? You want to do something about that trash on the ground?”

  The Quyth Warrior looked at John, then at Quentin, then back. The pink color faded, replaced by swirling yellow.

  “John Tweedy?” the Warrior said. “Oh, I am a huge fan. Can I have your autograph?”

  The Warrior reached into one of his pants pockets. Quentin flinched, took a half step back to run, but the Warrior pulled out a message board that he offered to John.

  John sighed, then took the board and signed it.

  “And you,” the Warrior said to Quentin. “Are you Barnes? Really?”

  Quentin nodded. John passed over the messageboard, which Quentin quietly signed and handed back to the Warrior.

  “Oh thank you! Such an honor! And good luck this season. Go Krakens!”

  The Warrior put the messageboard back in his pocket, picked up the mag-can, then continued down the sidewalk.

  “John,” Quentin said. “I thought we were supposed to keep a low profile.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m so damn pretty,” John said. “It sucks, though — sentients recognize me too fast. Almost impossible to get into a decent brawl these days. I even get recognized when I go to Orbital Station One to see my brother Ju. Now that we’re in Tier One, it’s going to be even worse.”

  Quentin thought back to the mines of Micovi, where a similar, minor altercation could quickly escalate into a lethal fight. “John, why would you want to start something like that? What if that Warrior had a weapon?”

  “Hard to get a weapon inside the dome, Q. The Quyth aren’t big on their citizens and workers getting shot or stabbed every ten minutes. Most conflicts end as a straight-up fight. And when it comes to a straight-up fight? I’m kind of good.”

  “I noticed,” Quentin said, thinking back to the fight at the Bootleg Arms bar. He and several other Krakens had tried to pay off Don Pine’s gambling debt to Mopuk the Sneaky. Mopuk, living up to his name, had refused to take the money — a game-tanking GFL quarterback was far more valuable than the millions Don owed. Mopuk’s bodyguards tried to attack Quentin, but the bodyguards ran afoul of Virak, Choto, several Ki linemen and John Tweedy. John used his bare hands to kill two Quyth Warrior toughs, one by punching through the single eye to the brain behind, one by snapping its thick neck.

  When it came to a brawl, John Tweedy was one bad man.

  “I’ve studied how to fight,” Tweedy said. “So many different styles. That’s how I spend the off-season, at least when we have an off-season. I even did some pro fighting, did you know that?”

  Quentin shook his head. “I had no idea. How did you do?”

  “Real good, but you can’t succeed in that sport without mods. If I certified as a pro fighter, which you have to do in order to get mods, then no football.”

  “So why did you choose football?”

  “I’m a better football player than a fighter,” John said. “I make a load of money in football, but I’d be lucky to earn a living in the octagon. I can’t even beat up my brother, Ju. He had a few pro fights, even sparred again Chiyal North.”

  “The Heretic?” Quentin said. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Nope. Ju is the baddest man I know, and Chiyal whooped him.”

  “Chiyal is a hero where I come from,” Quentin said. “We don’t exactly have a lot of intergalactic sports stars coming out of the Purist Nation. Last night’s fight... such a tragedy.”

  John nodded sadly. “A real shame he died right there in the Octagon against Korak the Cutter, but what a bout! I mean, my man Chiyal used his own shinbone to stab Korak. That’s why the Heretic is the champ — whatever it takes to win.”

  “Was the champ,” Quentin said. “Dead men don’t hold titles.”

  John shrugged. “Korak died first, so Chiyal won the bout. He died the champ. Hey man, if I had to die to win a Galaxy Bowl? I’d do it in a heartbeat. A championship is immortality, Q. Immortality.”r />
  Quentin shook his head and started to argue, but stopped when he realized that he felt the same way. Quentin had long ago decided he would do anything needed to win a GFL Tier One title. Anything. Was he so different, then, from Chiyal “The Heretic” North, who had died winning the undisputed heavyweight title?

  John stopped walking and looked up at a twenty-story red building on his left. “This is it, Q, we’re here.” He turned to look at Quentin. John stared with wide, crazy eyes. His eyes always looked like that, except for when he was on the football field, when they were wider and crazier, which was bad, or when they crinkled in time with one of his psycho smiles, which was far, far worse.

  “Don’t you embarrass me in there,” John said. “None of your hayseed hick-osity. This is a serious guy I’m introducing you to here. A serious guy.”

  “What makes you think I’ll embarrass you?”

  John shook his head, the words DUMB SPELLED BACKWARD IS BMUD scrolling across his face. He opened the door and walked in. Quentin followed.

  Maybe they were past the edge of the nightclub district, because this place looked like some kind of an office building. Quentin looked around, suddenly realized something odd — aside from a couple of nightclubs, he hadn’t seen the inside of anything in Ionath City other than the Krakens building.

  Outside, all the buildings were varying shades of red. This lobby? All white. In the middle of the lobby, a Quyth Worker sat behind a circular desk. A couple of scarred Ki wearing green uniforms stood on either side. They looked out of shape, perhaps, but also had that aura of ex-soldiers or former cops. Whatever their past, now they worked office-building security.

  John strode to the reception desk like he owned the place. The Ki on either side didn’t have to turn their heads to watch him, what with their 360-degree vision and all, but you could tell they were instantly paying close attention to the two massive Humans.