The Starter

by Scott Sigler

  As Quentin suspected, his new lifeboat was beat to crap. Scratched, dented, long gouges in the orange paint. He’d had it, what, four weeks? Nothing he could do about it now. The spider machine that had carried the lifeboat gave off metallic groans as the legs folded in on themselves and lowered the body. The dented yellow head split, the bottom half descended to the ground. A man in a yellow jumpsuit and scuffed leather boots stepped out. Quentin couldn’t read Quyth, but he assumed the large patch on the man’s shoulder said something like Madderch Sanitation and Maintenance.

  “Howdy, all,” the driver said. “Shirop the Heavy-Handed told me you needed a local. The name is Jake. Jake Bible.”

  John stepped up quickly and shook the man’s hand. “John Tweedy.”

  “I know who you are,” Jake said. “I watched you Krakens guys beat the Death last year. The Krakens suck, by the way.”

  The fact that John didn’t instantly hit Jake right in the mouth was testimony to his stress level, his focus on rescuing Ju.

  “So how do we get to my brother?” John asked. “We’ve got to move fast, man.”

  “Depends,” Jake said. “I can’t get you to him until I know where he is.”

  John paused, then looked at Choto. “Can we trust this guy?”

  “I do not know,” Choto said. “I have never met this Human. But I am afraid we don’t have a choice. Wherever your brother is, he can’t hide for much longer.”

  “No kidding,” Jake said. “Ju has like the most famous face in all of The Ace. Villani wants him bad, too — she’s offered a reward of a hundred grand for info that leads to his arrest or capture or...”

  Jake’s voice trailed off when he saw John staring with those crazy eyes.

  “Say it,” John said. “Or what?”

  Jake took a small step back before answering. “Or his death. If you guys don’t get The Mad Ju off this station fast, the only way he’s leaving is in a coffin.”

  John nodded. “Okay, okay. I guess I have to trust you, Jake Bible. You get fifty grand if I reach my brother. Screw us, I’ll kill you myself. But if you rat us out? Then I turn you over to him.”

  John pointed at Mum-O-Killowe, who let out a long, low, answering growl.

  Jake took a good look at the twelve-foot-long Ki, then nodded. “Right,” he said. “I get it. You guys make your point loud and clear, no need for any violent examples. So where do we go?”

  “Have you heard of Chucky Chong’s League-Style House of Chow?”

  “The moo goo gai pan place?”

  John nodded.

  “I know it,” Jake said. “I’ll have us there in twenty minutes. It’s close, but we’ll have to take wall-crack paths. Cops are searching every vehicle in the city. So, everyone will be riding in the storage section of that.”

  Jake pointed to his spider-machine. Quentin sighed. Somehow he’d known that was coming.

  • • •

  AFTER THIRTY MINUTES OF BEING slammed around a storage space only slightly larger than the lifeboat, the maintenance machine’s back hatch opened. Quentin crawled out into a dirty back alley, stepping over a wrongly folded Mum-O-Killowe in the process.

  And he’d thought he felt beat-up after a game? That ride was like playing three games in a row.

  Quentin had to assume the customs inspection hadn’t been a coincidence, assume that Anna Villani knew he was here. A very real threat, yet he had been tucked away inside a maintenance machine, one that looked just like tens of thousands of other maintenance machines spread throughout the city. If he and his teammates hadn’t been spotted coming out of the Hypatia, then no one would know exactly where they were. As GFL players, they couldn’t be arrested or detained — but if Anna owned the cops, they probably weren’t worried about filing reports and following regulations.

  Jake Bible stepped out of the spider machine and quickly walked back to Quentin and the others, his head swiveling from side-to-side as he looked around the alley for anything suspicious. He carried two large duffel bags filled with something bulky, but obviously light.

  “This the place?” Quentin asked.

  “No, but close,” Jake said. “I had to park in an alley. A pier-maintenance crawler too near a main street would draw attention.”

  “So you have a grav-car for us or something?”

  “Nope. Now you walk.”

  “But we might get recognized,” Quentin said. “You recognized John right off.”

  “I brought you disguises,” Jake said, and tossed the bags to the ground at Quentin’s feet.

  Quentin knelt and opened the first bag. He reached in and pulled out a black jacket that had a blue-trimmed, metalflake-red circle on the left breast.

  “No way,” John said. “You want us to dress up like Orbiting Death fans?”

  “It’s perfect,” Jake said. “Probably fifteen thousand sentients in the city tonight wearing Death gear. It’s just what people wear here. Death football is like a religion. And a lot of plus-sized sentients are fans. You know, the GFL-wannabe types?”

  Quentin started passing out the gear: jackets, shirts, jerseys and — most importantly — hats. He and his teammates put on the items.

  Jake smiled. “Yeah, now you guys look good. I can get you more gear when the Death wins the Tier Two tourney and moves up to whip your fat Kraken butts next season.”

  John walked up and put his huge hand on Jake’s neck, squeezed, and lifted. “I let that earlier comment slide,” John said. “And I’ll let this one slide, too, because I need to get to my brother, but I’m starting to get offended.”

  I WILL BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH YOUR OWN FOOT scrolled across John’s face.

  He set Jake down gently. The smaller man rubbed his neck. “Right, got it. Gooooo Krakens, okay? Now, where’s my money?”

  “I get my brother, you get your money,” John said. He walked to the end of the alley. Quentin followed and looked out into the streets, up at the buildings.

  Madderch sat nestled inside a sprawling blue dome. Massive blue tinted crystals reached out from inside the dome, curving around themselves and intertwining with each other like some unfathomable concave beard.

  The city’s buildings were mostly made from the same blue metallic material, an organic substance that seemed bubbly, almost as if it was made by pouring water down a wall and letting it freeze, layer by layer, into a thick sheet of ice. Trimming maintenance vehicles, both flying and crawling, were always in motion, cutting away at spiraling growths that stuck out from buildings, streets, and even from the long connections that linked the buildings together. Some of the buildings towered so high the eye and mind had trouble reconciling it, trouble making sense of top floors that were almost a half-mile above ground level.

  The living crystal didn’t limit itself to well-defined buildings. Spires, spurs, and branches reached from building to building, curving over alleys, streets, even stretching out so far they arched over entire blocks. There were so many connections that by three or four blocks away, the buildings all looked like parts of an enormous sponge.

  On one of the buildings, Quentin saw a fifty-foot high animated image of Ju Tweedy jumping up and over clashing linemen to land in the end zone. Ju’s face had to be ten feet high, if not bigger. Every being in the city of Madderch knew exactly what he looked like. And at 6-foot-8, 365 pounds, even if you could disguise that famous face you’d have a hard time disguising the big body

  “Hey,” John said. “That’s the place.”

  Quentin looked to where John was pointing. The base of a towering building held many street-level businesses, but Quentin knew their destination when he saw it. Squiggly red symbols covered a white storefront, as did holos of Quyth Warriors repeatedly dipping pedipalps into square, white containers and pulling out bunches of long noodles. The sign above the restaurant read CHUCKY CHONG’S LEAGUE-STYLE HOUSE OF CHOW.

  Hundreds of sentients walked up and down the street, staying on the sidewalks to avoid grav-cars traveling more than a little too fast. O
ther sentients — mostly Quyth Workers, but also Humans, some Sklorno, flapping Creterakian civilians, and a few Ki — weren’t really moving at all. They leaned against walls, sat on the sidewalk, hung from streetlamps and signs, all with postures that either radiated defeat or ached with predation. Quentin recognized their kind from many years of surviving on the streets of Micovi: petty thugs, street toughs, drug addicts, drunks, hookers and the refuse common to any big city anywhere in the galaxy.

  “High-class place, John,” Quentin said. “You and your brother really know how to pick ’em.”

  “The egg rolls are unreal,” John said distantly, his wide-eyed gaze flicking from sentient to sentient. “They put shredded tenati mites in there.”

  Quentin shuddered at the thought, imagined that he might have been wrong — there might be something that tasted even worse than Ki leg. “All right. This burger ain’t gonna cook itself. John, get the rest of the team. We’re going in.”

  Quentin crossed the street, careful to avoid the cars. By the time he walked into Chucky Chong’s, his teammates were right behind him.

  The decor was a crazy mix of themes: Tower nautical and old-Earth China. A dozen sentients sat in cushioned red booths. Mostly Human, but there were a few Quyth Workers as well. One HeavyG man, his table covered with heaping plates. Everyone in the restaurant looked working-class: construction, maintenance, manufacturing, that kind of thing.

  Behind the counter floated a white-skinned Harrah wearing a red backpack. Gold characters — which Quentin could only assume were Chinese — emblazoned the backpack’s red enamel. The Harrah saw Quentin and the others, then flew out from behind the counter to stop in front of Quentin and John.

  “Herro,” it said to John. “It has been a rong time.”

  John nodded, smiled just a little. “Chucky.”

  Quentin looked from the Harrah to John. “This is Chucky Chong?”

  “What?” the Harrah said. “You no think I rook Chinese?”

  “I... uh... I wouldn’t know what Chinese look like, Mister Chong.

  “Rook rike me,” Chucky said, then turned to face John. “Now, I go get your... friend. You get him out of here, get him out safe?”

  John nodded.

  Chucky Chong’s white wing-flaps fluttered. He gracefully shot over the counter and through a door that probably led into the kitchen. Seconds later, he came out, trailed by a massive Human wearing sunglasses, a thick black hat and a long, tan coat.

  “Great disguise,” Quentin said. “We’ll get at least twenty feet before anyone recognizes him.”

  John either didn’t hear the comment or ignored it. He walked quickly to his brother, reached his hands up and held both of Ju’s shoulders.

  Ju smiled with relief. “Big brother.”

  “Hey,” John said. “Ready?”

  Ju nodded.

  Rebecca walked up fast and poked Ju in his chest. “Did you do it, Ju? Did you kill that girl?”

  Ju stared down at her. “Who is this?”

  “I’m the woman that just risked her life to save your ass,” she said. “And you’re going to look me in the eye and answer my question.”

  “Becca,” John said, “of course he didn—”

  Becca turned on him, her eyes full of fury and even more intensity than she showed on the field. “John, shut up. A woman was murdered. We’re not going anywhere until I believe Ju didn’t do it.”

  The restaurant fell silent. Ju looked down at her for a few seconds more, then slowly shook his head.

  “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I... couldn’t have done it. I loved her. They set me up.”

  Rebecca stared up at him, stared up hard. Ju did not look away. He had a sadness to his eyes, a fatigue. It seemed like a strange expression — a sense of loss combined with resignation, as if what was done was done and he already knew he had to move on.

  “Becca,” Quentin said. “We have to go.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” a voice called from the front door. “At least not with our running back.”

  Quentin turned to see six sentients: a normal-sized Ki in front, only about 250 pounds compared to Mum-O-Killowe’s 650, a Creterakian civilian on that Ki’s shoulder, two GFL-sized HeavyG, an over-sized Sklorno nearly as big as the Awa sisters, and a Ki so big it was still trying to fit its body through the front door.

  Chucky Chong shot through the air to hover in front of the new arrivals. “You no welcome heah! We crose! You go!”

  The six ignored the Harrah restaurateur. All of them wore nondescript clothes, save for the Creterakian. His garish outfit was light yellow with blue polka-dots.

  The colors of the Coranadillana Cloud Killers.

  “Crap,” Quentin said.

  Quentin recognized some of the Cloud Killer players, like the hard-hitting Sklorno cornerback Smileyberg, and the HeavyG tight end Jesper Schultz.

  John Tweedy stepped up to stand next to Quentin.

  “Damn,” John said. “I forgot that the Killers picked up Shi-Ki-Kill in the off-season.”

  Quentin pointed at the small Ki. “Is that Shi-Ki?”

  John nodded. The kicker-sized Ki grunted. Things had just become much, much more complicated. Coranadillana was a city on the planet Satah of the Harrah Tribal Accord. Satah, which was even closer to Orbital Station One than Ionath was.

  “Wanna know something, John?” Quentin said absently. “Considering that Shi-Ki is the only one besides you that could have possibly known Ju might hide here, and considering he plays for a Tier One team that is as bad off as we are, and considering that team has a bye week just like we do, John, it might have shucking helped if you’d remembered that.”

  “Sorry,” John said.

  Quentin shrugged. He hadn’t come all this way to lose the galaxy’s best running back to anyone, especially to a team that the Krakens played in just three weeks. “It doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  The small Ki barked a short, choppy sentence, his voice just as big and strong as that of Sho-Do-Thikit or Mum-O.

  “Barnes,” the Creterakian said. “Shi-Ki-Kill says that if that is a joke about his size, it’s not funny.”

  “I don’t care what he thinks,” Quentin said. “Ju Tweedy is coming with us.”

  “Wrong,” the Creterakian said. “My name is Molloya. I am the official representative of the warlord Yashahon, owner of the Cloud Killers and leader of the Yashahon tribe of planet Satah. I am here to offer Ju Tweedy a contract.”

  “How much?” Ju said.

  John turned on him. “Ju! You can’t sign with them!”

  “Why not? I have to get immunity or I’m screwed.”

  “But we came to get you!”

  Molloya flew overhead, just out of reach. The leathery, flapping noise reminded Quentin of his days back on Micovi, when the bats would “police” an area or a situation and people would die if they happened to move too fast. But he wasn’t in Creterakian-controlled territory anymore, and this disgusting creature flying above his head was just another scumbag gangster.

  “We offer league maximum,” Molloya said. “Three seasons, guaranteed.”

  John’s face turned white.

  “Nice,” Ju said. “But what about Anna Villani? Can you protect me from her?”

  Molloya let out a horrid, screeching sound that must have been Creterakian laughter. “Villani’s power is nothing compared to the glorious warlord Yashahon. Once we have you on Satah, you are safe.”

  Ju nodded, then turned to look at Quentin. “And what are the Krakens offering for a contract?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Quentin said. “There is a price on your head. Everyone on The Ace is looking for you, if Villani finds you, you’re a dead man, and you’re negotiating?”

  Ju shrugged. “Business is business. I’m a rare commodity. If you have an offer, make it. If not, I can live with three years max salary.”

  “We can match that,” Quentin said quickly, having no idea if the Krakens co
uld, nor having any idea what constituted league maximum.

  “He lies!” Molloya screamed from above. “He is not authorized to sign a deal, Ju, and time is ticking away. Villani is closing the noose. Barnes can’t make that deal, nor can any of his teammates. Ask him!”

  Ju looked from Molloya to Quentin. The look on Ju’s face was a mixture of calmness and greed. He felt safe now. His worst-case scenario was a trip to Tier One and a big paycheck. His best case was a trip to Tier One and an even bigger paycheck.

  “Well?” Ju said. “You did bring a contract box, didn’t you, Quentin?”

  Quentin’s hands clenched into fists. He hadn’t thought another team could get here this fast. He should have checked the schedule, seen who had an off-week, who was in the area. There was nothing he could do now unless he wanted to start a brawl, and a brawl might land them all in jail. He’d lost.

  “Know what, Ju?” John said. “I don’t think it matters who brought the contract box.”

  “And why’s that, big brother?”

  “Because your only chance is to walk out of here with the last team left standing.”

  Quentin started to say John, no, but it was already too late. The bulky linebacker turned and shot toward the Cloud Killers players, crossing the restaurant with the kind of blazing speed only professional athletes possess. Quentin saw Shi-Ki-Kill’s black eyes widen (perhaps that was a common fear response among all sentients) just before Tweedy slammed into him, driving him back, using him as a shield to crash through the other Cloud Killers players.

  Mum-O-Killowe must have started running a split second after John, because the young Ki followed John in, compressing and extending in a powerful, straight-line shot that took one of the HeavyGs right off his feet. Sho-Do-Thikit dove into the fray, as did Rebecca Montagne. The diner started to disintegrate. Tables and chairs shattered, counters cracked, dishes flew, and food sprayed in every direction.