The Champion (55 page)

Patah had let him take off the shoulder sling. It was nice to be free of it. Quentin hated any reminder that his career was always one hit away from being over.

The shuttle door opened on its bottom hinge, lowered to the deck. Two power-armored Sklorno stepped out first, then Leiba the Gorgeous, holding his stun-stick. Last out: Commissioner Rob Froese and Gredok the Splithead.

For once, Gredok did not speak first. He calmly stepped to the side, leaving the floor to the commissioner.

“We need to speak to one of your players,” Froese said. “Whykor, do it.”

The white-furred Worker raised a pedipalp, palm up. A single icon floated above it: a slowly spinning red star. With his other pedipalp, he reached out one finger and poked the icon.

There was a pause, then a muffled
beep
from among the players. The Krakens glanced at each other, then down as it
beeped
again. Quentin craned his neck to see who it might be. He spotted Kimberlin, who looked aghast. Another
beep
— only it wasn’t coming from Mike: the players closest to him were looking at someone else.

Leiba moved toward the sound, the power-armored Sklorno flanking him. Krakens scurried out of their path.

There was one more
beep
, then the players cleared away from the only person who didn’t move at all, a person who just stood there, head down.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Yolanda said.

She sounded almost disappointed.

Standing there, suddenly all alone, with a final
beep
coming out of his pants pocket, was Yitzhak Goldman.

“Shuck me,” Quentin said.

Leiba and the two armored Sklorno surrounded him.

Froese waved a little hand inward. “Come on, Goldman. Let’s go.”

Yitzhak looked around, perhaps wondering if he could make a break for it, but like Dan Campbell three seasons earlier, he knew there was nowhere to go.

“My kids,” he said. “My wife.”

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Froese said. “Let’s just get you out of here nice and calm.”

John Tweedy stepped forward, nostrils flaring, muscles flexing.

“You ain’t taking him anywhere, shorty. No way Yitzhak has mods.”

Froese paused, caught between instantly responding to this challenge to his rule and obvious sympathy for John’s faith in his teammate.

“Stay back, Tweedy,” Froese said. “This isn’t about mods.”

“He doesn’t
have
any,” John said. He turned, looked at Quentin. “Tell him, Q! Tell Froese that Zak is clean!”

Quentin didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. John’s face creased with confusion and heartbreak — he’d expected his brother to instantly back his play.

This was wrong, all
wrong
. There had to be something else to this — Yitzhak couldn’t be a terrorist.

Quentin quickly scanned the players; so many expressions of anger, of concern for Yitzhak. And then Quentin saw Kimberlin, those same emotions visible but also one more:
fear
.

And then Quentin understood — only one of them carried the transmitter, but
both
of them were in on it.

Kimberlin stepped forward. “This isn’t going to happen,” he said. “Zak’s not going anywhere.”

Ju stepped out of the pack, his hands flexing into fists as he inched closer to one of the armored Sklorno.

“Zak isn’t some rookie fresh from the combine,” Ju said. “Nobody is taking our teammate.”

Other voices grumbled in agreement.

Leiba’s cornea swirled with yellow-orange: he was
excited
, ready to fight the entire team if he had to. The Warrior slowly spun the stun-stick as he glanced from player to player, figuring out his first target.

More Krakens started to creep forward, faces scowling, bodies leaning in with aggression.

“
Stop it
” Yitzhak barked with the full volume of a voice that could make snap counts heard over the din of 150,000 screaming fans. The punch of his words froze everyone cold.

“This isn’t about mods,” he said. “And it isn’t about anyone but me.” He glanced at Kimberlin. “I’m going. Everyone just stay out of it.”

With that, he strode to the shuttle and straight up the ramp, so suddenly that the powered-armored Sklorno had to scramble to stay with him.

Yitzhak stopped at the top, then looked back out.

“Froese, are you coming? I haven’t got all day.”

Yitzhak vanished inside.

Quentin stared after him. Yitzhak was in a
hurry
to get out of there, and Quentin knew why — he wanted to protect Kimberlin.

Froese looked at the gathered players.

“You’re all dismissed,” he said. “We’ll take it from here. Everyone,
out
. Except you, Hokor, I need to talk to you. And you, Barnes. You’re the team leader, you stay.”

Some of the players — the Prawatt mostly — left immediately. Others lingered for a few moments, then filed out the airlock door and into the ship proper.

Quentin watched his teammates filter past. John seethed. Ju looked like he wanted to turn and go after Leiba, stun-stick or no stun-stick. Kimberlin reeked of anxiety, doubt and internal conflict.

But one player had an expression unique among all the Krakens:
relief
. That player was Jason Procknow, HeavyG backup defensive tackle.

Procknow, the only other player from the Purist Nation on the Krakens roster.

Kimberlin and Procknow were
both
involved somehow. Quentin knew it, knew it without question.

The airlock door hissed shut. The shuttle bay seemed empty, suddenly
louder
with hanging echoes. The glowing sign in the arched ceiling —THE IONATH KRAKENS ARE ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH ANOTHER GFL CHAMPIONSHIP — THE ONLY VARIABLE IS TIME — seemed somehow juvenile.

Froese and Leiba stood in front of Quentin, Yolanda, Whykor, Gredok and Hokor.

“Coach Hokor,” Froese said, “I can’t tell you much, but out of respect I want you to know that this is something much bigger than mods.”

“I assumed,” the coach said. “Frankly, I do not care what is involved. You would not have gone through all this trouble for a triviality, Commissioner. What I care about now is planning our bye week so I can bring another quarterback up to speed.”

Froese tilted his head toward the airlock door. “Then you can go.”

Hokor glanced at Gredok.

“It is fine,” the black-furred Leader said. “I will handle it from here.”

Hokor turned and walked out of the shuttle bay.

Could Coach really be that heartless? Didn’t he care about Yitzhak’s
life
? Maybe he did but was hiding it. Then again, Hokor had lost players on the football field many times — was losing someone for a crime really any different?

Gredok stood up to his full height. “Unlike my coach, I am
very
interested in the details,” he said to Froese. “You have interrupted my season and compromised my roster, Commissioner. I expect to be informed of every detail.”

Froese normally puffed himself up when Gredok started dishing out orders, but this time, the commissioner simply nodded. However much Froese loved his job, at that moment he didn’t want to be the one doing it.

“That’s fine, Gredok,” he said. “I will keep you informed.”

Gredok turned to Quentin. “And
you
. You and I will discuss this later.”

The gangster then followed the coach out the airlock door.

Yolanda sniffed. She looked like she might cry.

Froese cocked his head. “Tears, Yolanda? For a terrorist?”

“For his friends, you jackass,” she said. “Didn’t you see how awful that was?”

The commissioner sighed. “I did. But this has to be done.”

She nodded. “Yeah. It has to be done. You have to do your job, and I have to do mine. I’ve got my story.”

“There is no story,” Froese said.

Yolanda looked at him blankly for a moment. She sniffed one more time, almost a leftover shred of the empathy she’d felt seconds before, an emotion quickly vanishing amid a slowly growing cloud of anger.

“What are you talking about, Froese? This is the story of the year. It runs tonight.”

“There
is no story
” the commissioner said, his voice cold and unforgiving. “I’ve already sent a message to your bosses at
Galaxy Sports Magazine
. I told them you have zero proof to back up your claims.”

The words stunned Quentin. Froese had helped set the whole thing up, and now he was shutting it down?

Yolanda’s breathing became ragged. Quentin could see her pulse hammering in her neck and temples.

“You
know
I have proof,” she said. “Whykor, tell this idiot about your ...”

She blinked. Quentin sensed her fury easing off, replaced by a growing tragic awareness.

Yolanda looked at Whykor.

“Tell him about the messages, your database, the device,” she said. “Tell him about the evidence.”

Whykor looked at Froese, and in that moment Quentin understood. Froese had used Yolanda to find the Guild plant — the commissioner had never had any intention of letting the story get out.

“Go ahead, Whykor,” Froese said. “Answer her question.”

The Worker’s white fur ruffled. “I have done all I can to find the information you sought, Yolanda, but I found no evidence to support your claims.”

Her mouth opened; a small breath slid out. Her eyes showed the pain of betrayal. Quentin’s heart broke for her.

“Whykor, you bastard,” she said. “I trusted you.”

The Worker’s eye flooded red-orange. He all but burned from total shame.

“Commissioner Froese is my
shamakath
,” he said. “I must do as he asks.”

Froese patted him on the shoulder. “Get into the shuttle. You don’t have to apologize to her for protecting the league.”

Whykor walked to the ramp. His pedipalps drooped, as did his middle arms; he reminded Quentin of a Human child being sent to his room for doing something bad.

Yolanda glared at Froese. “You used me, used my skills to find a player in your precious league that is a damn
Zoroastrian Guild member
, and now you think you can make the story go away?”

Froese held up his hands in a
what can you do
gesture.

“There are no Guild members in the GFL,” he said. “Such a thing would be terrible for the league. It would anger millions of sentients, and it would put players in danger wherever they go. So as I said, there
is
 ...
no
 ...
story
.”

Yolanda’s little hands balled into purple-skinned fists.

“I’ll go public anyway,” she said. “I worked on this for
years
, you understand me? So unless you think you’re going to take me to whatever secret torture chamber you have hidden away on your ship, unless you think you can actually make
me
disappear like you plan to do with Goldman, the story runs. Or do you really think you can make a member of the press just
vanish
?”

She was calling the bluff he’d dropped on her ten days earlier, just before the
Touchback
had left for New Whitok.

Froese smiled. Quentin looked away — those red teeth were so disturbing.

“I don’t have to do anything to you, Yolanda,” Froese said. “You have no proof for your story. You don’t have the message logs, you don’t have the partial decryptions, you don’t have the device itself, and you don’t have
Goldman
. My office has already put out a press release that he has illegal mods, which was why we took him into custody. So all you have left is your claim that twelve messages were received by Guild cells and just so happened to coincide with a Krakens away game. The BSI and NCIA will publically state that your information is
wrong
, that you are making it up.”

“I’m not making up anything and you know it!”

Froese shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I know. What matters is who the public believes — a reporter that gets paid for sensational stories, or the government agencies sworn to protect innocent civilians? If you run the story, everyone involved
but you
will deny everything. You’ll come across like a crackpot conspiracy theorist capitalizing on the tragedy of a player who made bad choices and broke the law so his career wouldn’t end.”

She sneered, pointed a finger at Froese’s face and started to talk, but he cut her off before she could get going.

“I’m not
finished
,” he snapped. “Your bosses at
Galaxy Sports Magazine
have been informed that if they run any slanderous, unsubstantiated stories about the GFL, I will block
any
access to the league until the reporter who filed that story is fired. I will then announce that the GFL will not work with said reporter. Seeing as the GFL is the biggest thing going in the history of sports, and seeing it entails Tiers One, Two
and
Three, no one will employ a reporter that isn’t allowed to cover it. So,
no
, Yolanda, I don’t need to take you to the
Regulator
. Run your story if you want. With some luck you
might
get a job covering the Sklorno soccer league or Harrah tribal death matches. Or, you could ship off to the Prawatt Jihad — who knows, maybe they need someone to start writing about
The Game
. Whatever happens, you will never cover the GFL again.”

Yolanda started to tremble, the rage inside of her so volatile it moved her body.

Quentin was both impressed and saddened. Froese knew how to play the power game as well as Gredok, it seemed, but was the commissioner placing football above justice for those killed by Yitzhak’s involvement? If so, did Quentin have any right to judge? He knew Kimberlin was involved but wasn’t saying anything — yet — because losing Kimberlin affected the Krakens’ chances at another Galaxy Bowl.

“We’re done here,” the commissioner said. “Don’t worry, Yolanda, there are other exclusives in your future. Just accept that this one didn’t go the way you’d hoped. Don’t rock the boat, and you’ll be happy in the long run, I promise you.”