“Hut-HUUUT!”
The ball slapped into Quentin’s hands. He pivoted backwards off his right foot, coming all the way around before softly pitching the ball to Fayed. Already moving right, Fayed caught the ball and ran parallel to the line of scrimmage, Kopor the Climber out in front to block. Sho-Do-Thikit, the left guard, stepped back and pulled to the right, giving Fayed two blockers on the quick pitch. The play’s design was simple — get outside as fast as possible and try to cut up and out. A good block on the outside linebacker could leave Fayed one-on-one with the slender Sklorno defensive backs, a punishing equation that would almost always end with Fayed driving the defender back for positive yards, if not breaking the tackle outright for a big gain.
Quentin watched the three Krakens sweep right, orange jerseys with black numbers and orange trim, orange leg armor with black piping, orange and black helmets. The outside linebacker, a powerful heavy-G giant from Rodina named Sven Draupnir, drove upfield as the middle linebacker, Kylee Cannell, used his impressive speed to dash towards the sidelines, trying to stay just inside of Fayed’s left shoulder, preventing an inside cutback that could go for big yards. Draupnir crashed forward like a tank. Wen-E-Deret tried to reach him, but Draupnir stepped to the right tackle’s outside shoulder and drove past, batting away strong Ki arms like some mere annoyance. Wen-E-Deret gathered and leapt, but was too late. Kopor stepped up and met Draupnir head-on — the resulting collision sent a clack so loud it was heard in the upper deck, even over the roar of the crowd. Kopor was knocked back as if he were a child, rolling feet-over-head right into Fayed.
Fayed reached one arm down as his feet came off the ground. His extended hand met Kopor’s shoulder pad. Fayed pushed off quickly, an amazingly athletic move, his arm absorbing the shock. Instead of being knocked over, he was simply knocked back — his lithe feet landed on the ground, he stumbled once, then recovered and headed for the sidelines.
Fayed’s athleticism was a wonder to behold, but Cannell was no slouch. He used Fayed’s momentary stumble to close the gap. Cannell dove, his big fingers grabbing handfuls of Fayed’s jersey. Fayed’s strong legs pumped away, dragging the prone, 420-pound Cannell along the ground.
Topinabee raced up field at top speed, a silver streak headed for the encumbered Fayed. Fayed started to lower his shoulder, but like a water-skier bouncing up from some trick, Cannell slid to his feet, his fingers still deeply wrapped in Fayed’s jersey. With a primal grunt, Cannell planted his feet and swung. The motion first stopped Fayed cold, then ripped him in a blurring, backwards horizontal arc. At the end of the arc, almost 360 degrees from where he started, the orange-jersied blur met the oncoming silver-jersied blur of Topinabee with a crack that made the Draupnir/Kopor collision sound quiet by comparison. Quentin winced as the two came together. The crowd “ooohheed” in amazement, most of them probably wincing themselves.
Cannell pounded his chest, playing to the crowd.
Topinabee slowly rose to her feet, stumbled, then fell.
Fayed didn’t get up.
His foot twitched, and the fingers of his left hand opened and closed spasmodically, but he didn’t get up. He was laying facedown — actually, he should have been face-down, because his stomach and chest were on the ground, but his face was actually looking up.
“Oh High One,” Quentin said, then ran to his teammate.
Fayed’s eyes were wide with terror. He tried to breath, but couldn’t seem to draw air. His head was turned so far around, he could almost have looked down and seen his own spine.
“Fayed!” Quentin said. He reached for his teammate, then kept his hands away, remembering someone telling him once not to touch a head or neck injury.
“The banana… meteors…” Fayed said. His foot kept twitching, but his hand suddenly stopped the spasmodic opening and closing. The fingers froze in mid-move, curled rigid like a talon.
Quentin was distantly aware of a medsled racing out, of Doc fluttering down next to Fayed. Quentin felt a hand, or a tentacle, he didn’t know, grab his shoulder pad and gently pull him back.
Doc pulled a laser scalpel from his bag and deftly sliced off Fayed’s back armor. Doc then removed a small, rectangular device. He punched a few buttons on the device, then pressed it against Fayed’s back. There was a sickening squelching sound as tendrils reached out of both sides of the device and penetrated Fayed’s skin, curing in towards his spine. A soft orange light started flashing on the device — blink, blink, blink, blink…
Doc zipped to the medsled and maneuvered it over the top of Fayed’s body. The metallic tendrils reached down. The medsled lifted, and Fayed rose off the ground without his body moving an iota, like some magician’s trick of levitation. Doc flew off the field, the medsled moving behind him, slowly, so as not to jostle Fayed.
As the cart and patient slid noiselessly towards the tunnel, Quentin’s sharp eyes remained fixated on the orange light.
Blink, blink… blink…. blink….
Then nothing.
Before Fayed slid into the tunnel, Quentin knew the orange light had stopped flashing.
HE FINISHED THE GAME. He didn’t know how he did it, but he did it nonetheless. He even scored another touchdown, this one a twelve-yard run. He had to do the running himself — Yassoud’s face went pale each time Hokor called his number, and ran with all the intensity of a galley cook. When the game was on, Quentin didn’t have to think about it; he either ran the offense on the field, every last scrap of his intellect devoted to analyzing the defense, or he sat on the sidelines, intently studying a holotable of the last series in case he found a weakness to use on the next possession.
But when the final seconds ticked off the clock, and the scoreboard read Krakens 35, Survivors 7, he didn’t have anything else to distract him. The team gathered in the central meeting room. Hokor stood in front of the holoboard, as usual.
Except this time, his eye wasn’t black or orange or even pink.
It was deep purple. Opaque purple.
Quentin had never seen that color before, but somehow he knew exactly what it meant.
“First of all, I want to sing all of your praises for a hard-fought game,” Hokor said. “We played, and won, as a team. I have very little to say of negative things. The Ionath Krakens are now the champions of the Quyth Irradiated Conference.”
A half-hour ago, that same phrase would have drawn a deafening roar from the assembled players. Now it was met with silence, a silence broken only by some Human trying to clear phlegm from his throat.
“We have lost one of our warriors,” Hokor said. He looked down at a palmtop. “Mitchell Fayed suffered a severed spinal cord and a collapsed lung. Doc tried to used a Galthier Spinal Cord Controller to regulate Fayed’s breathing and heart rate, but there was too much damage, too soon. Attempts to repair the damage and reanimate him failed.”
There was a loud sob. Quentin looked over to the source of the sound. John Tweedy, big, dangerous, deadly John Tweedy, sat on a bench, his elbow on his knee, his forehead propped on his hand, his eyes squeezed shut, his solid shoulders shaking in time with his sobs.
The noise seemed to open a dam of emotion. Other Humans started sobbing, or sniffling, or coughing to hide their self-perceived weakness.