The Champion (71 page)

Haney scooped up the unconscious Nancy, cradled her in his arms. He’d torn off a shred of his own black jersey and tied it tight around her thigh wound. Hokor stood close, squeezing down on the impromptu bandage with his pedipalp hands to provide additional pressure.

“We must leave, now,” Gredok said. “If I were the one ordering a hit, I would make sure my employees confirmed the job was complete. Systems have been compromised, which means we cannot trust escape pods. The shuttle is the most logical way off the
Touchback
. We will go to the landing deck. If our shuttle is undamaged, we will board and exit the
Touchback
.”

“Wait,” Quentin said. “What about the rest of the team?”

“Captain Cheevers told us they are locked in the practice field,” Gredok said. “The attacker has no interest in them, just you. I need to get you to safety, Barnes. Brobst, lead us to the aft lift. We’ll take that or the emergency stairs down to Zero Deck and see if we can go through the locker room to the loading dock.”

Smoke everywhere, the VR room a wreck, Kopor and the HeavyKi dead, Nancy wounded and unconscious, yet Gredok sounded calm as could be — obviously, this wasn’t the first time the Leader’s life had been in danger.

The burned Brobst kept his pistol at his chest as he walked to the entryway. Virak followed a few feet behind.

Quentin thought about the
Touchback’s
layout. The VR room was on Deck Eighteen of the aft section. All decks but One and Zero ended at the practice field’s black end zone. If the practice field was locked, the only way to the forward section was underneath it, on Deck Zero.

He reached out to take Nancy, but Haney shook his head.

“I got her, Q. If they’re coming after you, you need to be able to move.”

Haney and Hokor followed Virak and Gredok out.

Quentin was the last one in the VR room, save for the body of Kopor. He took another look at the corpse of his friend and teammate.

Kopor had just wanted to play football. There was no church that worshiped him, no massive contract, no endorsement deals ... he had just wanted to
play
. Now he was gone.

That death is on your hands, Barnes
.

Rage came; Quentin didn’t fight it. He wanted a weapon. He found a jagged pipe, something that had probably once been part of the VR room’s magic. He held it in his right hand. It felt solid and good in his grasp.

As he exited the room, he saw the remains of the HeavyKi — black blood and entrails splattered across a bulkhead, his insides torn from his long body like someone had skinned a twelve-foot-long alligator. Fon-Ga was his name? He’d had only three eyes left, because Quentin had ruined two of them in a bar fight years ago.

Now he was dead, too.

Quentin jogged to catch up with the others.

Brobst led the group down the high-ceilinged corridor’s orange walls, over its black and white carpeting. Holoframed players, the stars of Ionath’s past and present, looked out, oblivious to the situation. Bobby Adrojnik was one of those framed players: would Quentin wind up just another dead Krakens quarterback cut down in the prime of his career?

The long hallway ended at the small lift lobby. The emergency stairwell door was on the left, and just past it, the lift doors. Across the lobby were the doors to the Krakens administrative office: shut, hopefully locked. Dozens of staff members were in there, probably — Quentin hoped they were smart enough to hide under their desks and stay put.

A beep sounded: the lift was on its way up.

Gredok was right: the killers were coming to finish the job.

“The stairs,” Quentin said. “Move!”

Brobst ran to the stairwell door. He pushed it open, aimed in at the same time.

“Clear,” he said. He held the pistol at his chest, barrel angled at the floor, held the door open with his body.

Virak carried Gredok onto the stairwell’s metal-grate landing. Virak held Gredok with his middle arms, aimed the dead HeavyKi’s pistol with his pedipalp hands, barrel leading the way down. They descended the metal stairs.

Haney went next, struggling to carry Nancy’s 320 pounds.

As Coach Hokor followed them in, the lift door
beeped
again, and opened.

The killers were here.

Quentin couldn’t put Hokor, Haney and Nancy in further danger by following them down. He had to buy them some time.

Jason Procknow walked out of the lift. He seemed surprised to see Quentin just ten feet away; he stared at the thick pipe Quentin held like a club.

I can take him out, he’s big but not that fast, I can
—

Out of the lift behind Procknow, skinniness exaggerated by the HeavyG’s wideness, stepped Jonathan Sandoval.

Quentin froze: he was so screwed.

Sandoval smiled wide.

“Hello again, Quentin.”

“Sandoval, what are you doing?”

“I wanted to cash in on my extraordinary abilities before the bats took them away,” the reporter said. He thumped Procknow on the shoulder, let the hand linger. “Turns out I lost one job, but got another, thanks to this racist piece of garbage.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Quentin saw Bobby Brobst waiting just inside the stairwell door, holding it open with his shoulder, the gun at his chest. He stood still, watching Quentin, waiting for a signal or an opportunity. Quentin wanted to buy Trevor a little more time to get Nancy out of there, for Hokor to get away. Quentin’s body tensed, ready to jump into the stairwell landing at the first hint of Sandoval’s movement.

Quentin gave the smallest shake of the head:
no, not yet
. Brobst nodded.

Stall, buy them time
 ...
maybe this is about you, but they’ll take out anyone else they can to cover their tracks
 ...

“You’re something else, Sandoval,” Quentin said. “How did you go from working for the bats to working for the people who want to destroy them?”

“When I saved your life on Neptune, the guys who were trying to kill you recognized me,” Sandoval said. “They came to my place a few days ago. They wanted to kill me, but we got to talking and worked out another solution.”

Kimberlin had been right ... the thugs on Neptune had been Guild.

“Let me guess, Sandoval — they paid you in gems?”

“Cashable all over the galaxy,” Sandoval said. “I’ll buy me a little ranch on New Rodina and live out my days in comfort. I
told
you I was going to get paid, you moron. Too bad it has to be this way.”

Just a few moments more
 ...

Sandoval had been paid in gems, which meant the Abernessia were involved ... it didn’t take much to connect the dots.

Quentin glared at Procknow.

“You told your new-blood Guild handlers about what Petra wants me to do. I’m so stupid — I talked about it right in front of you,
and
told you what Whykor said about the
Touchback’s
old systems. It never crossed my mind you’d use that info to sell out a teammate.”

“I have kids,” Procknow said quickly, as if having children excused any and all actions. “I know Hokor would have cut me next year, so I’m out of Tier One — no salary, no courier pay. I had to put money away for my family while I still could.”

“And that’s worth
murdering
your teammates?”

Procknow’s brow furrowed with confusion, then he shook his head.

“No one is going to
die
. You get roughed up enough that you can’t play on Sunday, but we’re not going to kill anyone.”

He actually believed what he was saying. Behind him, Sandoval smirked.

“Kopor is dead, Jason,” Quentin said. “Your bomb killed him.”

“
What
?” Procknow shook his head harder. “Don’t try and mess with me, Barnes, that was just flash-bangs.”

“He’s
dead
. So is one of Gredok’s bodyguards. Just flashbangs?” Quentin held out his left arm, showed the bloody shard sticking out of it. “Do flash-bangs make shrapnel like this?”

Procknow stared at twisted bit of metal. He turned to face Sandoval.

“You told me they were just flash-bangs! You said no one would get hurt! You said we had to make sure Barnes didn’t play!”

Sandoval made a face like the news surprised him. He hit his forehead with the heel of his hand.

“Oh,
dang
, that’s right — I
did
say we were just going to hurt him. I forgot I told you that. But it all works out, big guy, because as forgetful as I am, there’s something that I
do
remember. Know what it is?”

Procknow shook his head.

Sandoval smiled. “Where you keep the gems they paid
you
.”

The reporter’s right arm snapped out, the hand a flat blade, the motion so fast Quentin barely saw it. The tips of his fingers jabbed into Procknow’s thick throat: a surprisingly delicate
crunch
, the sound of a glass lamp falling only far enough to crack, not shatter.

Procknow was as good as dead. Quentin knew it instantly.

The HeavyG’s knees wobbled. Just as he started to sag, Quentin swung the pipe in a vicious right-to-left arc. Procknow dropped in a heap, the pipe blurring right over where his head had just been and
clonking
Sandoval in the left temple. The reporter fell to his right, back into the lift.

Quentin stepped to the open lift door, ready to rush in and hit Sandoval again, but stopped — the man was already struggling to his feet. Sandoval’s body wasn’t fully obeying his commands, but his eyes were angry, sharp and focused. The shot he’d just taken should have killed him. Did the mods make him unbeatable?

The lift doors slid closed.

The doors, they get stuck
 ...

He jammed the pipe into the space between the door and the housing. He shoved it in as far as it would go, then gripped the free end with his right hand and leaned back with all his weight. The pipe groaned, metal against metal, then bent. Quentin let go: the pipe didn’t move, it remained jammed in the door.

Maybe that would buy a few seconds. A
slam
against the inside of the lift doors made him jump in surprise. He ran into the stairwell.

“Bobby, come on!”

The burned-faced man shook his head. Pain pinched his features, but he was ready to do his job.

“Gredok told me to stay, Mister Barnes, make sure he wasn’t followed.
Go!
”

Quentin started to protest, but if Bobby made the decision to stay, there wasn’t time to argue about it: Quentin wasn’t going to die for the man.

“Just run,” Quentin said as he started down the stairs. “That guy is modded all to hell!”

Bobby nodded —
thanks for the concern
— then looked to the stairwell door, ready to shoot.

The pounding from inside the lift reverberated through the stairwell as Quentin descended. His limp left arm messed with his balance. First aid or no first aid, he needed to pull that shard out of his forearm.

He stopped, grabbed the bit of metal with his right hand, and yanked it free with a fast tug. Blood flowed freely. He tossed it aside, metal skittering on metal, then held the wound tight as he started down again.

Quentin reached Deck Zero. Hokor was waiting for him, holding open the stairwell door. Blood covered the black-striped yellow fur of his hands and arms.

Gunshots from above, echoing down the stairwell from eighteen flights up. Quentin paused for a moment, hoping it was over.

Then, the sound of footsteps on metal stairs — footsteps that moved too fast to be from a normal Human.

Quentin nudged Hokor into the corridor, stepped in himself, then quietly shut the stairwell door. Maybe Sandoval would guess wrong and get off on Deck One. Anything to buy some time.

He and Hokor ran down the long hall toward the locker room. Hokor couldn’t hope to keep pace, so Quentin scooped him up with his right arm and sprinted. They were directly under the practice field; Quentin wondered if Becca was above him, if she was okay.

They passed by Doc Patah’s training room on the right and reached the locker-room door, which was closed. Quentin slowed, not knowing if the automatic door was shut off, but it hissed open, half sliding right, half sliding left, and they ran through into the central locker room.

Inside waited Virak, still effortlessly holding Gredok, and Haney, still struggling to carry Nancy’s mass. Haney’s chest heaved from exhaustion.

They stood by the holoboard. Past them was the forward entrance to the locker room. That door opened to a short hall ending in a single flight of metal stairs that led up to the
Touchback ’s
main corridor, which ran from the practice field’s orange end zone to the loading dock.

“Barnes, put me down,” Hokor said.

Quentin did.

Gredok hopped down as well. He pointed at Haney.

“Get Wolf to the loading dock.”

Haney readjusted Nancy’s weight, then lumbered to the forward door. It hissed open and he went through.

Gredok quietly said something to Virak.

“Yes,
Shamakath
” the Warrior said, then walked toward Quentin. Quentin didn’t understand what was happening until Virak brushed past, headed for the aft door.

Quentin grabbed his middle arm, stopping him.

“Virak, don’t go back there! It’s Jonathan Sandoval. He’s modded and dangerous. I think he got Bobby — we all have to get out of here.”

Virak looked back to Gredok.

“Follow my orders,” the gangster snapped. “Barnes, you will come with me. Virak will buy us time to get to the shuttle.”

“But he doesn’t stand a chance!”

Quentin’s left arm dangled, limp and useless but still loaded with ripping pain, specks of fire tingling through his bones. He and Virak together might take Sandoval, but with this arm, Quentin was useless in a fight.

“Virak, go,” Gredok said. “Your cowardice shames us both.”

That was all the motivation the Warrior needed: he yanked his arm free. He took three steps toward the aft door, then another Leader’s voice boomed through the locker room.