THE ALL-PRO (7 page)

Hokor sat behind his desk. His desktop showed several three-inch-high holographic players in a close-up of on-field action. Stats floated beside the players. Off to Hokor’s right, Gredok sat in a chair custom-made to his small dimensions. Messal the Efficient stood next to Gredok. Quentin and Don sat in chairs in front of Hokor’s desk.

“So, we can get her?” Quentin said. “We can get Cheboygan?”

He spoke to Gredok, but it was really a numbers-crunching question. Messal the Efficient worked a palm-up display, ripping through numbers faster than Quentin could track. Messal’s duties, it seemed, encompassed far more than keeping the
Touchback
neat and orderly.

Everyone waited for Messal’s answer. A Quyth Worker, Messal had the same back-folded legs, middle arms, single eye and pedipalp structure shared by Leaders and Warriors. Workers were taller than Leaders, with muscle-knotted pedipalp arms well suited to manual labor. Subservient in every way, Quyth Workers deferred to Leaders, Warriors, even members of other species.

Holotanks behind Hokor showed several players wearing a myriad of Tier Three colors. The Krakens had set their sights on eight candidates. They probably wouldn’t get them all, but Gredok would land at least half.

Messal looked up. “Table fluctuations indicate we will have the finances to sign our top priorities — receiver Cheboygan, defensive back Gladwin, defensive tackle Tim Crawford and the half-breed defensive end Rich Palmer. Second priorities are defensive back Cooperstown, outside linebacker Cody Bowyer and linebacker Regat the Unobtrusive.”

Don nodded, satisfied. “If we get them all, that really bolsters our defense. We need depth at defensive back. Too bad about Standish getting pregnant.”

Don was right about that. The Krakens’ four starting defensive backs — strong safety Davenport, free safety Perth, cornerback Berea and cornerback Wahiawa, who had taken over the starting job from Stockbridge — were decent players, but the Sklorno backing them up weren’t nearly as talented.

“Are you guys
sure
Standish is gone?” Quentin said. “I mean, so she got knocked up, so what?”

“Her body will permanently change,” Don said. “By the time she’s recovered from dropping that egg sac, she’ll be a step slower than
you
. If a Sklorno gets pregnant, her career is over.”

Last year, Standish had been the team’s backup right cornerback, assigned with the task of covering the opposition’s receivers. She saw little playing time, but when she’d been in the game she’d done her job well. Losing her hurt, but it was better than losing Wahiawa or Berea, the starting cornerbacks. The saying went that you were only as good as your bench — the Krakens had to grab rookies to fill that gap.

“Then I hope we get Gladwin and Cooperstown,” Quentin said. “Defense has enough problems as it is.”

“We’ll get them,” Hokor said. “Then we are all in agreement?” He asked that out of courtesy. The final decisions were his. Only Gredok, the team owner, could overrule him. Gredok had to keep a running balance between personnel needs versus team finances.

Finances — that was where Quentin would make his play.

“There’s one more,” Quentin said. “I want Tara the Freak from the Mathara Manglers.”

Coach Hokor’s black-striped fur fluffed up. “I told you, Barnes, absolutely
not
.”

Quentin leaned forward in his chair, rested his elbows on Hokor’s desk. “Why not, Coach? Because he
looks funny
?”

Hokor slammed his pedipalp fists down on his desk. “He does not just
look funny
, Barnes! He is
malformed
!”

“You don’t seem to have anything against Rich Palmer. He’s half-Human, half-HeavyG.”

“He’s your kind,” Hokor said. “No one cares how ugly you all are. We Quyth do care about failed genetic lines. He is called Tara the
Freak
for a reason!”

Quentin leaned back, threw his hands up in frustration. “Oh,
no
! Oh, High One, he is
malformed
! What’s going to happen? His long pedipalp arms are suddenly going to pop off his head, grab a hatchet and chase us around like some horror-holo?”

Quentin felt a hand on his right shoulder.

“Q,” Don said. “There’s more to it than that.”

It was all Quentin could to not to slap Don’s hand away. “The guy can catch the ball,” Quentin said. “He can run routes over the middle. He can take hits. When he’s in the game, linebackers will have to cover him, have to watch for him, and that opens up other areas of the field. What
more to it
is there?”

“Much more,” Gredok said.

Whenever the Quyth Leader spoke, those around him listened carefully. Gredok’s black fur looked impeccably groomed — silky, shiny, smooth. He wore an outfit of spun silver, burnished so it wasn’t reflective enough to compete with the red and blue jewels that formed patterns of a solar system across his chest. Dozens of bracelets hung from both sets of wrists. As usual, Gredok’s attire screamed
money
and
prestige
.

“Barnes,” Gredok said, “you’ve been studying with Kimberlin, have you not?”

Quentin nodded.

“And have you learned about the Quyth culture?”

“A little. Lately I’ve been focused on physics, some galactic history, that kind of thing.”

“Well, then allow me to edify you,” Gredok said. His voice rang with calm control, the voice of a sentient who got what he wanted without yelling, without showing emotion. “Hokor told me of your interest in this player. I had my scouts look into him. It is amazing that Tara was not killed when he came out of the egg sac.”

“What? Kill him when he’s a
baby
?” Such barbarism, and yet everyone called Quentin’s home system of the Purist Nation
primitive
.

“The malformed are usually killed by their Leader,” Gredok said. “I myself killed two of my brothers once we had hatched and I saw that they were imperfect.”

Gredok, a killer from the time he could walk. Quentin shouldn’t have been surprised, but such cut-throat behavior shocked him regardless.

“Why would you kill your own family?”

“It is related to breeding, Barnes. A prospective female will examine not only the Leader with which she might have progeny, but also that Leader’s Worker and Warrior sac-mates. This gives her better knowledge of the Leader’s larger genetic makeup, and what their offspring may turn out to be. If she sees imperfections in the genetic stock, she will simply choose another Leader with which to breed.”

“You killed your own
brothers
,” Quentin said. Quentin would have given anything to have his brother back, anything to find his sister, and Gredok had killed two of his own? Sometimes it was hard to accept other cultures as equals — evil was evil, no matter how you tried to justify it.

“I did,” Gredok said. “And I am not alone. That is why you don’t see many mutations in the Quyth culture. Tara is the only survivor of his brood. Some viral contamination in his egg sac, it seems. He’s been an outcast all his life.”

Hokor waved his hands across a three-inch holo of Cheboygan. She vanished. He tapped a few icons, replacing her with a holo of Tara the Freak. Tara’s long pedipalp arms drew everyone’s attention.

“Tara is the only Quyth Warrior on the Manglers’ roster,” Hokor said. “That is why he can play in Mathara. We have four Warrior players.”

“So Tara would be our fifth,” Quentin said. “So what?”

Gredok’s left-middle pincer played with the bracelets on his right pedipalp. “You ask why an obvious prospect like Tara is available? Because Tier Two and Tier One teams know he is ... Pine, what is the word you use to describe a player whose team-unity disruption factor outweighs his or her on-field benefit?”

“Locker-room poison,” Pine said.

A touch of orange swirled across Gredok’s large cornea. Quentin knew that expression — Gredok found something humorous. “Yes,” the Leader said. “
Poison
. How appropriate.”

“So no one wants him,” Quentin said.

“Correct,” Hokor said. “No one wants the mutation.”

Quentin looked around the room. He’d based his strategy on this moment, knowing he’d have to make his play at the last second and convince Gredok just before the team owner headed out to battle for players.

“No one wants him,” Quentin said. “That means he’s affordable.”

Gredok said nothing, but his eye swirled with a touch of light red.

“Messal,” Quentin said, “what is Tara’s salary?”

“One hundred thousand,” Massal said. “We’d have to pay at least double that to the Manglers as a transfer fee.”

Quentin nodded. Time to play his hand. “So let me see if I get this right. We have a player who can help this team. A player who can take hits and is highly resistant to injury. A player who can catch spit in the wind. A player who we can have for a transfer fee of two hundred thousand, and sign him at the Tier One
minimum
salary, probably for a three-year contract. And we’re going let him go because he has long arms?”

Hokor banged on his desktop again. “You don’t understand! The other Warriors will not accept it!”

Quentin shrugged. “Huh. So our Warriors decide who plays for the Krakens and who does not? And here I would have thought their
Shamakath
made those decisions.”

The office fell silent. Hokor’s fur fell flat. He sat back down in his little chair. Don Pine looked away, but Quentin stared right at Gredok, waiting for a response.

Quentin saw more threads of a light red flow across Gredok’s eye. Light red, the color of friendship, appreciation, or — in this context, Quentin guessed — respect.

“Barnes makes a good point,” Gredok said. “I will look further into this Tara the Freak. If I choose to sign him, the other Warriors will support the decision.”

Don shook his head. “No, they won’t. No disrespect, Gredok, but this is a mistake.”

Quentin turned on Don. “That’s exactly what you said about George Starcher. How did he turn out?”

Don leaned back. “George is fine,
so far
. But if you bothered to do any research before you made these emotional decisions, Q, you’d know George is
always
fine for the first season with a new team.”

“It’s different this time,” Quentin said. “He knows this is his last chance.”

Don shrugged. “I hope you’re right. And I hope you’re right about Tara, but I know you’re not.”

Quentin waved his hands in annoyance. Don Pine was one of the greats, but he was also old and jaded. So pessimistic!

Quentin turned to face the team owner. “Gredok, forget this
looking into
stuff — are you going to sign Tara the Freak, or not?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Quentin saw Hokor’s fur ruffle, saw the Coach’s eye swirl with threads of black and dark blue. There was no way around the disrespect of appealing to the team owner and overruling the head Coach. Don didn’t want Tara, Hokor didn’t want Tara, but that didn’t matter. Quentin would not allow prejudice or racism to determine who suited up in the Orange and the Black.

“Yes,” Gredok said. “We will sign Tara.”

Hokor stood up, fur fluffed out full length. “But
Shamakath
! You can’t—”

“I
can’t
?” Gredok let the word hang.

Hokor paused, then his fur fell halfway to flat. His eye flooded with the green of anxiety — he had overstepped his bounds. Hokor ran a pedipalp over his six antennae. “My apologies,
Shamakath
. Of course, the final decision is yours.”

Gredok stood. “The decision
is
mine. And the responsibility, Barnes, is yours. Prepare yourself for an adverse reaction from your Warrior teammates. If you can’t make the other Warriors accept Tara, I will cut him. I am willing to gamble based on your instincts, but we are too close to a championship team to tolerate ongoing disruptions.”

Quentin nodded. “I agree.”

“You
agree
?” Gredok said. “How nice for you.”

They filtered out of the office, leaving Hokor to keep flipping through player holos.

Quentin had just taken more control over the franchise, and at Hokor’s expense. Quentin would make it up to him. Once Tara started catching passes over the middle, Coach would see, and everything would work out.

Transcript of broadcast from Galactic News Network

“Yes, Brad, I’m at Planet Yall in the Sklorno Dynasty, near the scene of tragedy. Flight 894-B, a ship loaded with some fifty thousand Sklorno, exploded near dawn, local time, killing every sentient aboard. This is the worst maritime disaster in this area since the Creterakian conflict.”

“Tom, was this an accident or was it foul play?”

“Well, Brad, that very question is on the minds of investigators from both the Sklorno Dynasty and the Creterakian Empire. A punch-drive explosion caused the disaster. There is no indication of weapons fired at the ship. Investigators are confident the explosion was internal, although it is as yet unknown if that explosion was accidental or if it was sabotage. A group called the Purist Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for the blast, but Creterakian officials say that is unlikely and that the terrorist organization is simply trying to take the credit.”

“Tom, any statement from the Purist Nation?”

“Yes, Brad, the Grand Mullah herself stated that the Purist Nation had nothing to do with the disaster, although she did say that since all the lives lost were, quote,
of demonic descent, the deaths were clear evidence of God’s direct interaction in the universe,
end quote.”

“So if it’s not a Purist sect, Tom, who would the suspects be?”

“Well, Brad, Creterakian officials think that if it was sabotage, the Zoroastrian Guild has to be behind it.”

“The Zoroastrian Guild being that shadowy organization dedicated to overthrowing the Creterakian Empire’s control of several systems, of course.”

“That’s right, Brad, but what scares experts isn’t the Creterakian analysis, but rather the Sklorno Dynasty’s growing opinion that the culprit is, in fact, the Prawatt Jihad itself. Yall is only a few short light-years away from the Prawatt/Sklorno border. If the Sklorno believe the Prawatt are responsible for this bombing, there could be major ramifications.”