At least that was the story.
Quentin couldn’t help but believe some of it. That story, after all, had been drummed into his head since before he could speak. Yet that didn’t dull his excitement as the Touchback prepared to drop out of the punch space near Earth orbit. Earth. The beginning of Humanity. Regardless of the Purist Nation’s current politics, Earth was where it had all begun.
Not for just the species, like Quentin could give a crap about that.
Earth was the birthplace of football.
Quentin could barely contain his excitement. What would he see first? The legendary Kraft Cheese Stadium? The 200-year-old Ford Orbital Stadium, site of five Galaxy Bowls, site of all the Earth Football League Championships from 2482 until the end of the league in 2566? The Professional Football Hall Of Fame, in some place called Canton? Perhaps one of the many universities where they still played collegiate football, a historic if quaint anachronism. Some had even called college football “Tier Four” football, a place for people to play when they weren’t good enough to cut it on a Tier Three team. Rumor was the entire Krakens squad would be guests at one of the most historical games in the sport, eight hundred years of tradition marked by a game with a team called “Michigan” versus a team called “Ohio State.”
His excitement ran at such a high level he almost forgot to be afraid of punch-out. Almost. The Touchback shuddered as they slipped back into reality. Viewscreens changed from pitch-black to a stunning view of a cloud-speckled blue world.
Earth.
A dozen orbital stations, the biggest only a twentieth the size of The Ace or Emperor Two, floated in Earth’s near-space. Two of those stations had long, thin tubes running down towards the surface of Earth, stretching out so far that the silvery tendrils faded away into nothing. Quentin wondered if they were some kind of communications assembly.
It was the most highly populated Human planet at eighteen billion beings, although a good five billion of those were of the Whitok and Dolphin species that lived in the planet’s vast oceans. The Whitokians living there, of course, were the original catalyst that resulted in Mason Stewart and his followers leaving Earth on their long pilgrimage to the Promised Land. That anti-alien bias had permeated every aspect of Purist life. Quentin now knew this, and knew that he could never go back to living in such a place, not when he fought on the field with his alien teammates day-in and day-out. He had no place to call home. Maybe someday, after he retired, he’d come and live on Earth.
The Touchback veered towards one of the orbital stations with the long tendril. As it drew close, Quentin saw that the tendril was far from thin — it was a massively thick tube that stretched down and down and down. Like other orbital stations, this one had many long piers that jutted out from a central radius. Each pier reached out for miles, dotted with ships of all makes and colors. The Touchback gently approached a pier, and shuddered lightly as mechanical arms reached out to lash the bus to an anchoring port.
[TEAM DISEMBARK] the computer voice said. [ALL PLAYERS DISEMBARK]
“Aren’t we taking the shuttle down?” Quentin asked Yitzhak as the team walked out.
“Shuttle? Not on Earth, buddy. No shuttle traffic allowed. Everyone takes the tube to get to and from the surface.”
A recorded voice droned over hidden loudspeakers.
[WELCOME TO HUDSON BAY STATION. PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP ON THE MOVING SIDEWALK. NO WEAPONS OF ANY KIND ARE ALLOWED ON HUDSON BAY STATION. WELCOME TO HUDSON BAY STATION…]
Just outside the hatch, a long, two-band moving sidewalk ran off into the distance, towards the station’s central spine. The band on the outside moved at a decent clip, while the central band seemed to move twice as fast. Just past the moving sidewalk was a large, clear tube. Inside the tube were two more tubes, side-by-side, each filled with water. Bubbles and bits of flotsam showed the nearest tube flowed towards the station’s core, while the one on the other side flowed out to the end of the pier. Inside the tube, Quentin saw Whitokians, Dolphins and Leekee swimming along like fish in a packed aquarium.
The team filtered onto the walkway, which briskly moved them along the pier. Quentin watched Yitzhak casually step onto the first band. As he moved away, he carefully stepped on to the central band. He shot down the pier moving at least twenty miles an hour. Quentin followed suit. He stepped on the first band and almost lost his balance at the sudden shift in momentum. He steadied himself, then stepped onto the second band to experience another surge of acceleration. He jogged down the central strip until he caught up with Yitzhak.
“Why don’t they use shuttles?”
Yitzhak laughed. “Because they don’t want to get blown up, that’s why. Anything that gets below the 80,000 feet boundary is instantly attacked and destroyed by a flight of Creterakian fighters.”
“Destroyed? But why?”
Yitzhak looked at Quentin for a moment, a quizzical look on his face. “Are you serious?”
Quentin felt a little stupid, but he nodded.
“Because of the suicide attacks,” Yitzhak said. “Purist Nation terrorists. They attack any chance they get, blow themselves up as long as they can inflict heavy casualties.”
Quentin felt defensive anger swarm to the front of his thoughts. “What makes you think they’re from the Purist Nation.”
Yitzhak put a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. “Don’t get mad at me, Q. There’s a dozen terrorist groups on Earth, and after an attack, they contact the media and actually claim responsibility. Their goal is supposedly to drive all aliens off the planet. The Purist Repatriation Assembly is the worst. Two years ago the PRA managed to nuke a Whitok city in the Atlantic, killed three million Whitok, Dolphins and Humans. That was just the initial blast. That area of the Atlantic has been utterly devastated. They’re still working on the radiological cleanup. Some people wanted to bring in a big team of Quyth engineers, who are the experts on cleaning up radiation, but there’s too much suspicion that the Quyth will squat on that spot the way they did on Ionath and Whitok.”
Virak overheard the conversation and walked over. “Those fears are stupid. Why would we want to start a colony on a planet that does not live in freedom?”
Yitzhak shrugged. “That’s Earth citizens for you. You know how suspicious they are. But hey, if you’d lived through 280 years of terrorism, your people would be suspicious, too.”
The walkway zipped along the pier, passing a regular progression of dock-locks. Most locks were closed, but some were open, and Quentin saw just about every species represented. The fast-moving sidewalks seemed to control congestion on the pier, but it was still a very busy place indeed.
“I hope there’s no construction this time,” Yitzhak said. “I’d really like to get down to the surface sometime in the near future.”
“There’s always construction,” Virak said.
The walkway entered a large, noisy, domed open space. Ornate lights lined the ceiling, and voices in all languages repeatedly echoed through the cavernous space.
[THE RED ZONE IS FOR LOADING AND UNLOADING OF PASSENGERS ONLY, PLEASE DO NOT LOITER IN THE RED ZONE.]