The MVP

5





The Hangover


QUENTIN KNEW he had an enormous tolerance for physical pain. What he did not have, however, was an enormous tolerance for alcohol. In his PNFL days he’d loved his beer, but not for the taste or the buzz — beer offended his holier-than-thou teammates and the ever-so-pious members of the Church, and he enjoyed offending those people. He would make a single can last for hours; despite being seven feet tall and weighing almost four hundred pounds, he had discovered early on that two beers made him falling-down drunk, and three beers were a recipe for disaster.

In his second year with the Micovi Raiders, he’d earned the starting quarterback position — at just seventeen years old. To celebrate his first win, some of the other players had taken him out on the town. Five beers and a few hours of sleep later, he’d awoken to the first hangover of his life. An entire day of vomiting, his body aching like he’d been beaten up in the Octagon and a head that felt like it was filled with rotting roundbugs were enough to tell him that he would always be an amateur drinker — the professional ranks were not for him.

If he could go back in time, grab that hangover, put it in a magic amplifier where it grew to ten times its original strength, then cram it back into his head with a power-siphon, it would approximate how he felt now.

He tried to sit up, tried to lift a head so heavy it had to be made of granite. Around him, he heard the moans and groans of other Human and HeavyG players. His eyelids fluttered open to see dozens of blinking eyestalks only inches from his face.

“The Godling Quentinbarnes lives! He lives!”

The Sklorno had packed in around him, Milford front and center. Her raspers dangled on his chest, her drool wetted his orange jersey.

“Quentinbarnes, are you alive? Are you?”

It hurt to blink. Seriously, it hurt to even blink. “I think so,” he said.

He tried to push himself to a sitting position. He was on some kind of a metal grate. A matching metal grate was only a few feet above him. Sklorno tentacles grabbed him and pulled him up — he knew they were only trying to help, but they moved him so fast it seemed to slosh the blood around in his abused brain.

“Girls, give me some room, will ya?”

The Sklorno backed away. Quentin looked around. He was in the shuttle bay, but it looked so different. Racks of sentient-sized mesh shelves filled the room like a forest of stunted black trees. Three shelves to each rack, like the triple bunk beds he’d slept on in the miner’s dorms back on Micovi. He was on the bottom bunk. The black, gnarled material seemed to be the same stuff that made up the Prawatt arena and, probably, the Prawatt ships themselves.

He looked to the shuttle bay doors, which were open but only about eighteen inches. The strange material had filled that open space like a waterfall of black ice. Tendrils spread across the floor, black creepers that sprouted up to form the triple-decker bunk beds.

Milford leaned in again, shaking with concern. “Quentinbarnes, your arms!”

No wonder she was upset — a cluster of organic-looking black cables was sticking out the crook of his elbow. Not just sticking out: they were under his skin, snaking down his forearm and up into his shoulder.

He grabbed at them in a sudden panic, yanking hard to tear them from his body. As soon as he pulled, the black material disintegrated into puffs of dust and hard pebbles that scattered across his bunk and down to the deck below. What should have been an inch-wide hole in his arm instantly closed up, leaving only a few drops of blood to show that the cables had been there at all.

Quentin heard a voice from the bunk above him.

“Oh, man,” John Tweedy said. “They ain’t paying us enough for this.”

Up on the top bunk, Ju Tweedy’s tired face looked over to stare down at his brother. “Not enough to wake up to your face, John.”

John looked up at him. “What? Was that a joke?”

“Oh, how I wish it were,” Ju said.

John struggled to climb up to the top bunk, but Quentin grabbed the man’s wrist.

“Guys, knock it off,” Quentin said. “We need to figure out what’s going on.”

He slid out of the rack and felt the cold deck against his bare feet. He tried to stand, but his knees wobbled. Twelve tentacles grabbed him as Milford, Hawick, Wahiawa, Davenport, Cheboygan and Mezquitic all reached to support him at the same time.

“Leave me be,” he said, pushing their tentacles away. “I don’t need your help.”

The Sklorno backed away from him, bobbing and bowing in apology.

John slid out of the bed above and stood on Quentin’s left. He pushed his right index finger against the side of his nose, then blew, sending a glob of snot to the deck. He did the same on his left side.

“John,” Quentin said. “Can’t you see I’m barefoot?”

John looked down. “Do you want me to fetch your slippers for you?”

Ju slid off the top bunk, a fall of some ten feet down to the deck below. He landed lightly with an athletic grace that seemed somehow spooky for a man of his size and thickness.

All around the landing bay, Humans and HeavyG crawled out of the bunks that hadn’t existed the day before. Quentin saw Yassoud. ’Soud’s normally braided beard was a foot-long poof of coarse black hair. Rick Warburg was on his knees, vomiting on the deck. Off to the right, Michael Kimberlin tried to stand, but his legs gave out. He caught himself by putting his fists against the ground, making him looked like a sleepy, furless gorilla. Tara the Freak wobbled around on unsure legs. Virak the Mean started to roll out of his second-deck bunk, then seemed to give up, roll back in and go to sleep.

The whole team looked stinking drunk — except for the Sklorno, however, who were already fully recovered from whatever had happened. The ones that weren’t watching Quentin’s every move seemed to be playing some kind of racing game that used the tall bunk beds as hurdles.

Sklorno, Human, HeavyG, Quyth Warrior … there was one race missing.

“Hey,” Quentin said. “Where’s all the Ki?”

A hard elbow in his ribs. Quentin winced, already knowing that was John’s excited way of answering the question. The eldest Tweedy brother pointed toward the orange and black shuttle that ferried players to and from the league’s many stadiums.

Just past the shuttle, Quentin saw the Ki — all thirteen of them — held aloft by a black mesh net dangling some fifteen feet above the deck. A black cable ran from the net to the domed ceiling above. That cable branched into smaller cables that covered the Ki’s hexagonal mouths.

Another hard elbow in his ribs. “Q,” John said, “they dead?”

“Doubt it,” Quentin said. “We’re alive, aren’t we?

John thought, then nodded. “We are. Probably.” He crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Hard to be sure, though. We could be dead. No, we have to be alive because if this were the afterlife, we’d be on a football field for sure.”


Quentin smiled. If only that were true, he would have never strayed from the Purist faith.

John rubbed at his temples. “Man, I feel like we went on an all-night bender through every party sub on Isis. Did the Prawatt gas us?”

The Prawatt. Memories of the Game flooded back, as did memories of Stockbridge’s death. Quentin looked to the spot where Doc Patah had set up the triage area — nothing was there. No tables, equipment, no marks on the floor … just how long had they been out?

“Uncle Johnny, find Doc Patah,” Quentin said. “Wake him up — gently, understand? — and bring him here.”

John nodded and ran off.

Quentin turned to John’s brother. “Ju, go help Tara the Freak.” Quentin pointed to Tara, who was still stumbling a bit. “Make sure he’s okay, then have him climb up to that cable and see if can cut the Ki loose.”

Ju stood tall and snapped off a smart salute. “Private Ju Tweedy, reporting for duty and such.” He jogged over to Tara.

Quentin looked up to the ceiling. “Computer?”

There was no answer.

“Captain Cheevers, please come in?”

Again, no answer.

Milford and the other Sklorno were still close by, as if waiting for a command from their holy teammate.

“Milford, Hawick, Halawa, go to the bridge,” Quentin said. “If Captain Kate and the crew are still asleep, wake them up, have them get ship communications working right away. Milford, ask her if she has any information for me, then come right back. Hawick and Halawa, you stay there and be a runner for her until the computer is back online, in case she needs to send any messages.”

The two receivers didn’t answer. Instead, they turned and sprinted top-speed to the open interior airlock. They banked right in order to leap over one of the bunk beds, then angled through the door. Quentin hoped they understood what he was asking of them.

He turned to the other Sklorno. “Wahiawa, Davenport, Cheboygan, Mezquitic, you guys split up and go through the ship. Tell everyone to come to the shuttle bay. Go.”

The four of them sprinted for the interior airlock. On a football field, the top speed of a Sklorno was something to behold. In the smaller confines of a spaceship, they looked like they might splatter themselves into a wall at any second.

Quentin felt a presence on his left. He turned to look into the single, baseball-sized eye of Choto the Bright.

“Shamakath,” Choto said quietly. “Are you all right?”

The Quyth Warrior looked horrible. The normally clear cornea of that single eye swirled with a mixture of black, dark red and pink: the black of anger; the dark red of hatred, probably against the Prawatt who had done this and, therefore, put Quentin in danger; and the pink of fear for Quentin’s health. Last season, Choto had sworn his allegiance to Quentin as his shamakath, his one and only leader.

Quentin leaned in and whispered. “Don’t use that word. Remember?”

“I do,” Choto said. “My apologies.”

Quentin leaned back. “And I’m fine. My head is killing me, but I’m okay. You?”

The pink faded from Choto’s eye, but the black and the dark-red swirls remained. “I feel like my internal organs are decomposing inside,” he said. “No, allow me to clarify — it feels like I am full of the decomposing feces of a ten-kiloton Farnier Bird. They are carrion eaters and already full of decomposing material themselves, you see.”

That made Quentin laugh, which brought on another wave of head pain. He rubbed his eyes and took a breath, waiting for it to pass. A ten-kiloton equivalent of a buzzard? He’d have to see one of those someday. At any rate, the Quyth weren’t known for exaggeration, which meant Choto felt something awful.

“Wake up the other Warriors,” Quentin said. “Especially Virak.”

Choto glanced over to Virak the Mean, who was still sleeping in his bunk.

“Do not think Virak is your ally,” Choto said.

Quentin nodded. “I know who he serves.”

Virak’s loyalties remained with Gredok the Splithead. Gredok had played games with Quentin’s heart and soul, had created a fake father to sway Quentin’s decisions. Someday, perhaps someday soon, the crime lord would pay for his actions. When that happened, Virak would become a dangerous enemy.

“He’s not my ally, but he’s still my teammate,” Quentin said. “And he knows how to fight. We may need that soon.”

Quentin thumped Choto on the shoulder. The hulking Quyth Warrior jogged off to gather up the rest of his kind.

John came running through the black bunks. He was laughing, holding a semi-conscious Doc Patah on an upturned left hand like a waitress carrying a large platter. Doc’s wing-flaps hung mostly limp but fluttered lightly from the air passing over them.

“He’s like a kite, Q!” John stopped in front of Quentin. He tossed Doc Patah into the air; like a balloon, the naturally buoyant Harrah floated up, then gently down.

John laughed and pumped his right fist as if he’d just sacked a quarterback. “Q, this is awesome! We could tie a string to him and see how high he goes!”

Quentin gently reached up and put one hand on the Harrah’s underside, one hand on top of the flat, boxy backpack that all Harrah wore. He held Doc in place.

“John, he’s not a toy.”

IF IT LOOKS LIKE A TOY AND FLIES LIKE A TOY … flashed across John’s face. John frowned. “Sometimes, Q? Sometimes you’re no fun.”

“We’re in the middle of an alien spaceship, everyone has been gassed, we’ve been out for who knows how long, and they could execute us at any moment. Does that sound like a time to have fun?”

John shrugged. “If we’re gonna die, what better time is there to have fun? You be sad about it if you want, but some of us know which side of our bread is covered in eggs.”

John walked off, whistling a tune.

Doc Patah’s backpack speakerfilm let out a burst of static, then he spoke. “Thank you, young Quentin. I was afraid John was going to see how far he could throw me.”

“John would never do something like that,” Quentin said, knowing full well that John would do exactly something like that. “You all right, Doc?”

Doc Patah’s shape changed slightly as he became just a bit thicker, then he floated out of Quentin’s hands. His wing-flaps undulated slowly.

“I will be fine,” he said. “Although, I haven’t felt this bad since my younger days when my tribe-mates and I would intentionally ingest a diluted poison made from rotted puree of a cluster-fruit found on the planet Shorah.”

Quentin tried to imagine what kind of an insane culture would drink poison, diluted or not. Maybe Humans were just smarter than the other races when it came to some things.

“Everyone feels like crap,” Quentin said.

“The symptoms are consistent with being kept unconscious for an extended period of time,” Doc Patah said. “A very long time.”

How long was a very long time? Quentin had no idea if, or when, they might find out. And what was the point of drugging everyone?

“Doc, do you think they’re going to try and kill us?”

Doc Patah’s speakerfilm let out his well-known sigh of annoyance. “Try to kill us, young Quentin? Building beds and life-support systems doesn’t seem like a very efficient way to murder a sentient, now does it? No, they are not trying to kill us. Not now, at least. However, they could be taking us to a specific location for execution, as is common in ritualistic murders.”


“Thanks,” Quentin said. “That makes me feel so much better.”

“You’re welcome. I live to serve.”

The interior airlock doors opened. Wahiawa, Davenport, Cheboygan and Mezquitic all ran in carrying orange-uniformed Ionath staff — a Human, Messal the Efficient, and another Worker Quentin didn’t recognize. The Sklorno gently set the staffers on the deck, then sprinted out, presumably to find more sentients to rescue.

Quentin waved Messal over. The Worker stumbled forward as a few more staffers entered under their own power. Messal looked … rumpled. Quentin had never seen the Worker when his uniform wasn’t immaculate and neatly creased. Messal’s big cornea had a hazy film over it. His sparse fur stuck out in all directions.

“Elder Barnes,” Messal said. “I do not feel well.”

“Welcome to the party, pal,” Quentin said. “Messal, I need you to make me a list of every sentient on this ship. If anyone isn’t in the shuttle bay, I need to know where they are and what condition they’re in. I want everyone accounted for.”

“Yes, Elder Barnes.” The Worker walked away, straightening his uniform with one pedipalp hand and activating his palm-up display with the other.

“Young Quentin, excuse me,” Doc Patah said. “I must check on the sentients in the medbay, then I will examine everyone on board for any long-term effects.”

Quentin pointed at the big, dangling bag of Ki. “What about the —”

Before he could finish the sentence, the cable holding the bag disintegrated into a cloud of black dust. The cluster of Ki fell fifteen feet, landing so hard Quentin felt the vibration. The now-conscious Ki tumbled away from each other, big legs and arms waving in uncoordinated motions.

Up in the shallow dome’s rigging, Tara the Freak hung from one long pedipalp arm. His free hand waved at Quentin.

“Nicely done,” Doc Patah said. “Your Ki teammates will be fine. They can process far more poisons than can either of our species. As I look around, no one seems hurt — that tells me that the Prawatt knew what they were doing. I will let you know the status of Coach Hokor.”

With that, the Harrah’s gray wings undulated, carrying him across the landing bay to the internal airlock doors. As he floated out, Captain Kate Cheevers walked in. She saw Quentin and made a beeline for him.

“Barnes, any idea of what’s going on?”

Quentin shook his head. “Just that they gassed us after the Game. We were all here in the landing bay, then everyone started dropping.”

Cheevers nodded. “Yeah, same thing up on the bridge. We watched the Game. I watched you, especially.” She winked at him, her head twitching to the right at the same time. “You looked good out there, pretty boy. Real good.”

Was she really hitting on him now? Why did no one seem to understand how serious this was?

“Thanks,” he said. “Any idea how long we were out?”

She shook her head. “Computer is shut down all over the ship, including the bridge. All systems are off, and that black stuff blocks all of our viewports, so we can’t even take a star reading to see where we’re at.” She looked around, saw the Sklorno bringing sentients in. She nodded, looked up at him. “You did a good job so far getting everyone together, and I appreciate that. But that stunt you pulled up on the bridge when the Prawatt boarded us? You better remember that this is my ship. I am the captain. What I say goes. Got it?”

Quentin stared down at her. He remembered how she’d looked when Bumberpuff and the other Prawatt had entered the bridge. She had looked defeated. Captain Kate had quit, and in this galaxy, there was no place for quitters. Now, however, wasn’t the time to worry about that.

“I got it,” he said.

Kate nodded. Wink-twitch.

She walked back to the internal airlock, obviously heading for the bridge. Quentin would let her run things unless her decisions put the team at risk or did anything that threatened to delay their return. If he had to take over, he would — he had seen Kate’s true colors.

He saw teammates coming his way. Don Pine and the bleach-white-skinned Yitzhak Goldman, his backup quarterbacks, a still-wobbly Michael Kimberlin, Choto the Bright and Virak the Mean. Virak’s eye was flooded a deep black.

“What has been done to us?” he said. “Where can I find the ones responsible?”

Quentin shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Our first priority is to make sure everyone is okay.”

“Our first priority is to make sure Gredok’s property is in good health,” Virak said. He pointed to the twenty-odd civilian staffers that had gathered in the shuttle bay. “They are easily replaced, players are not.”

“Wrong,” Quentin said a bit more forcefully than he’d intended. “We make sure everyone is okay. Just because those sentients don’t play on the field doesn’t make them less important than we are. And we’re not property, Virak — we are individuals, and we all matter.”

Virak’s pedipalps twitched — he was laughing at Quentin.

Kimberlin rubbed his eyes, then looked around the shuttle bay. “At least everyone is still alive, even the Sklorno,” he said. “That is more than I would have hoped for. You have done well, Quentin.”

Yitzhak clapped Quentin on the shoulder. “You beat the crawlies,” he said. “But they said they’d let us go. What do they want with us?”

That was the million-credit question, and Quentin still had no idea. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “Let’s get everyone together and figure out our next step.”

Don pointed to the internal airlock. “Well well well, look what the dog dragged in.”

Doc Patah floated through the door, followed by a stumbling Coach Hokor the Hookchest. He had a bandage wrapped around his tiny, yellow-furred head and a little Krakens baseball cap pulled down on top of that.

Messal the Efficient appeared at Quentin’s side. “Elder Barnes, all personnel are accounted for. Captain Cheevers and her command crew are on the bridge. All players, staff and other crew are here, as you requested.”

Then came a sound, a sound like dirt pouring from a high shovel to scatter across the floor. The bunk beds started to collapse, sagging like sand castles caught in a sudden rain. The material puddled on the shuttle bay deck, then flowed backward toward the big exterior airlock doors. That same material that had blocked those doors melted away, revealing a reddish light beyond.

A pair of massive, gnarled, very un-Human black hands slid inside the landing bay, one gripping the left-hand door, the other gripping the right. Each hand was the size of Mum-O-Killowe.

The door machinery groaned. Vibrations rumbled through the deck. The big hands slowly slid the doors open.

Don nodded in mock appreciation. “Oh, joy,” he said. “Looks like we’ll finally get some answers.”

The doors were now a good fifteen feet apart. The red light shone in from beyond. The black hands slid away.

Wherever they were, the wait was over.

“Virak,” Quentin said, “get us ready to fight.”

Quentin saw Virak’s eye briefly flood orange — the color of happiness — then the scarred, heavily enameled combat veteran began screaming orders that even a non-soldier would follow without thought.

? ? ?



QUENTIN STOOD IN THE CENTER of the shuttle bay. Virak stood on his right, Choto on his left. Rebecca Montagne and the rest of the Humans and Quyth Warriors spread out on either side in a line eighteen players long from end to end. In front of them was a line of twelve Ki, their bodies low to the ground and ready to push forward. The HeavyG players made up a third rank — right behind Quentin stood the eight-foot-tall Michael Kimberlin. Alexsandar Michnik and Cliff Frost were on Kimberlin’s left, Ibrahim Khomeini, Tim Crawford and Rich Palmer were on his right.


The crew of the Touchback and the Ionath franchise staff were farther back in the shuttle bay, protected by fifteen Sklorno. Captain Kate stood side by side with Coach Hokor — while Quyth Leaders might be adept at calling out strategy, when it came to an actual fight, they knew their place was far behind the bigger, stronger Warrior caste.

Virak had ordered the Sklorno up front, but Kimberlin had reminded everyone that the Sklorno and the Prawatt nations were already nearly at war. The wrong word, even the wrong gesture might make the Sklorno rush forward and start something that couldn’t be stopped. With all of his godly gravitas, Quentin had warned the ladies to stay back unless he ordered them to act.

The giant, black hands reappeared. A mountain of a creature ducked through the twenty-foot-high shuttle bay doors. Quentin had never seen anything like it. Six thick, insectile legs connected to each point of a heavy, hexagonal base. From that base, a twisted trunk of a body rose up some twenty-five feet to a waving mass of gnarled cables, each thicker than Quentin himself. The two huge, Human-looking black arms stuck out from halfway up the trunk. Six legs moved, and in it came.

Hundreds of armed X-Walkers rushed in through the open doors, ran under the huge creature and spread out to either side, forming a perimeter. Behind the X-Walkers came other strange, black creatures — some taller, some shorter, all carrying weaponry he couldn’t identify.

Within seconds, a semi-circle of gnarled black creatures faced off against the Ionath Krakens. At least the guns weren’t pointed at Quentin and his teammates, but rather up, at the domed ceiling — maybe he’d have a chance to talk before any fighting began. No, correction, before a slaughter began; the Prawatt outnumbered the Krakens five to one, and that didn’t even count the gigantic, hexagonal thing that loomed over everyone.

Quentin didn’t back up. Neither did his teammates. They were unarmed, outnumbered, but there wasn’t any place to run.

Then, through the line of black X-Walkers, came the first Prawatt that Quentin Barnes knew by sight — Captain Cormorant Bumberpuff.

The captain’s blue streamers were gone. In their place were bands of gold-trimmed red and blue wrapped tightly around his X-body. Small discs of shiny gold or silver hung from small ribbons. Were those medals? Even in an alien race, Quentin recognized such trappings as the dress uniform of a military officer.

Bumberpuff strode forward. His rigid steps seemed measured, formal. He stopped a few feet away from the Krakens line.

“Quentin Barnes, I have come for you.”

In front of Quentin, Mum-O-Killowe stood up on his hind legs, his long body rising some thirteen feet high as his roar echoed off the landing bay’s domed walls.

A tadpole-shaped blur of silver flew in from behind the line of Krakens. Shizzle landed on Mum-O’s right shoulder.

“The great Mum-O-Killowe says if you come for one of us, you come for all of us,” the Creterakian called out. “The highly intelligent and also quite modest Mum-O says if it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.”

The entire line of Ki rose up on their hind legs; a waving, roaring, pebble-skinned display of promised violence. That sense of aggression instantly spread through the whole team. Quentin felt Choto lean in slightly on his left, Virak on his right. Every member of the Orange and the Black was ready — the Ionath Krakens would not go down without a fight.

The Ki dropped down to their normal six-legged stance. They spread their arms to their sides, interlinking them into a protective wall of multi-jointed muscle.

Bumberpuff had taken a step back. Many of the X-Walkers, in fact, had shifted their position. What had been a perfect, rigid line of military precision now looked a bit scattered, as if every one of them wasn’t quite sure where or how it was supposed to stand.

“Bloodbath?” Bumberpuff said. “You want a bath of blood?”

Quentin stepped forward. He put his hands on the intertwined arms of Mum-O and Sho-Do. They let go, allowing him to approach Bumberpuff.

“We won,” Quentin said. “We demand you release us! The deal was if we played and beat you, we would go free, yet you drug us? You kidnap us?”

A body made of boneless, semi-see-through arms and legs, yet Quentin could sense confusion in the captain.

“There has been a misunderstanding,” it said. “You are free. You have not been kidnapped — the Old Ones want to see you.”

George Starcher hopped over the Ki arms and rushed forward. “Did you say Old Ones?”

“George, not now,” Quentin said. “Captain Bumberpuff, if we won and we’re free, why are you threatening us with all of these soldiers and their guns?”

Bumberpuff paused for a moment. Then he started to rattle a little, the same way he had when Quentin had first met him on the bridge.

“This isn’t a threat,” he said. “It is an honor guard. And we had to put you to sleep to protect the location of our home planet.”

Home planet? But that was so far away. That would mean …

“We’ve been asleep for three months,” Quentin said. “Three months. The date, what’s today’s date?”

“In Earth Time, it is August twenty-fifth.”

The Galaxy Bowl had been played on May eighteenth. Who had won the championship? Far more important than that, the 2685 Tier One preseason began January first, just fifteen weeks away. Twelve weeks of that time span would be spent traveling back to known space — if they didn’t head back soon, they might miss the start of the Tier One season.

If they missed the preseason — or even worse, if they actually missed a game — they had no chance of reaching the playoffs, of winning the Galaxy Bowl.

“You lied,” Quentin said. “Your culture is a culture of liars. You said you would let us go.”

“We will,” Bumberpuff said. “I promise you, we will. Bringing you here is the highest honor our culture can bestow, Quentin. The Old Ones themselves asked for you.”

Quentin shook his head. This couldn’t be happening, not after all he and his teammates had been through. “We need to go back,” he said. “Right now.”

“But we are here,” Bumberpuff said. “We have landed.”

“Take … us … BACK!”

Bumberpuff wasn’t rattling anymore. Apparently this was no longer funny to him.

Kimberlin pushed through the Ki line with a sense of urgency bordering on panic.

“Quentin, do you realize the significance of this?” He pointed to the open shuttle bay doors. “The Prawatt home planet is out there. No one has ever seen it! No one even knows where it is.”

Quentin heard the words, tried to process them, tried to let them cut through his rage. “Finding planets isn’t my business,” he said. “Know what my business is? Winning football games.”

Kimberlin shook his head, a wide-eyed thing that made his lips wobble. Quentin had never before seen the man show such emotion.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “They gassed us so we couldn’t help anyone find their home planet. Do you know why? Because for three centuries, the Prawatt have effectively been at war with every race in the galaxy. There are no diplomatic relations of any kind. There are no ambassadors, there’s no trade. What we do here now could change that.”

It was just like Mike to make things sound so grand and important. Football players played football — they didn’t make cultures stop hating each other.


“You want diplomacy, get a diplomat,” Quentin said. “We already missed the Tier Two Tournament, we missed scouting for new players. Who knows what Gredok has done while we’re gone. We need to get back — that’s all any of us should care about.”

Yitzhak Goldman broke ranks and ran up to Quentin.

“Q, Mike’s right — this is history in the making! What if this leads to peace between the Prawatt and the other races?”

Growing up on Micovi had burned one truth into Quentin’s head: no matter what, sentients would always find a reason to fight, always find a way to justify slaughter.

“Zak, get real,” Quentin said. “We won a game. You don’t get peace because one team throws a ball through a hoop more times than another team. A shucking victory parade isn’t going to end centuries of hate.”

Yitzhak smiled that all-knowing smile of his. “As a Purist Nation citizen, what was the only thing that taught you to stop hating the other sentient races?”

Quentin blinked. The answer to that question was, of course, football. That was why the Creterakians started the GFL in the first place, to create a game that required all races if you wanted to win. A sport had succeeded where diplomacy and philosophers and politicians had failed to create common ground — football marked the first thing that brought five races together to play instead of fight.

“This is big,” Yitzhak said. “Bigger than the Krakens, bigger than the season. There may never be another opportunity like this again. Not just in your lifetime, but ever. Remember back in Danny Lundy’s office, when I said that sentients want to follow you? That you could use that natural leadership ability for something greater than football?”

Quentin did remember. He looked from Yitzhak to Kimberlin, who had asked Quentin the same question in a slightly different way.

Then, a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. He turned, knowing he would see the blue face of Don Pine.

“Kid, don’t be a dumb-ass,” Don said. “I don’t know about this something greater crap Zak’s prattling on about, but come on — you could be the first sentient to see this place, and you’re going to say no? Come on, man, use your head.”

“But Don, we’re three months away from home! I mean, I’d love to contribute to galactic peace and love, or whatever, but what if we miss the preseason!”

Don shook his head and sighed. He looked at Bumberpuff.

“Hey, Captain Silly Name, how long do you want to keep us here?”

“As long as you like,” Bumberpuff said. “But seeing the Old Ones will take a day at most.”

Quentin’s face felt hot. He was turning red. The Krakens were here, there was nothing he could do about that now, but he’d never thought to ask how long the Prawatt wanted to keep them. If he’d controlled his emotions, he probably would have thought of that. A day or two wouldn’t make any difference at this point.

Don patted Quentin’s shoulder and smiled. “So as long as we’re in the neighborhood, maybe you could be the first person in history to see the Prawatt planet? And, while you’re at it, spare an hour or two to show this race that not everyone is out to kill them?”

Don turned and walked back to his place in the line, leaving Quentin to shake his head — one minute he hated Don Pine for being a weak, self-centered liar, the next he wondered how he would ever get by without Don’s advice.

Quentin turned to face Bumberpuff.

“Captain, I’d be honored to see your world. Can the whole team come?”

“Only you and one other are allowed to meet the Old Ones,” Bumberpuff said. “And you may only choose from those that played against the Harpies. As for the rest, I will assign liaisons to escort them through the city, within a reasonable range. And the Sklorno are not allowed to leave your ship.”

Centuries of hatred wasn’t just going to vanish in a puff of smoke, it seemed, but Quentin wasn’t going to press the point — he didn’t trust the Sklorno to behave themselves.

He could only take someone who had played in the Game. Cheboygan and Halawa were out, obviously. Quentin couldn’t bring Mum-O. There was no telling how the lineman would react to the strange situation.

That left just Becca and Yassoud. Yassoud had played well, but if Quentin was to pick someone who had a better game, Becca was the obvious choice.

He turned to face his teammates. “Becca? Will you come with me?”

Her big eyes grew even bigger. Her mouth opened, then closed. She nodded, then walked forward.

Standing side by side, Quentin Barnes and Rebecca Montagne followed Captain Cormorant Bumberpuff out of the landing bay.