Quentin turned and looked at Pine. He’d seen Pine run; the man had good reason to be worried. Quentin was faster, more agile, stronger and just plain tougher than Donald Pine.
“Thanks for the advice. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got studying to do.”
Pine shrugged. “Suit yourself. If you need any help, let me know. Hey, maybe I can talk to Scarborough, get you some after-practice reps to get used to the speed of the game.”
“I don’t need help from a cricket.”
Pine stared, then shook his head. “Yeah, you seem so normal on the outside, I forget where you come from. Just remember, kid, those salamanders and crickets are your teammates — you may have won games single-handedly back in the PNFL, but it doesn’t work that way here.”
“Thanks, pops, I’ll remember that,” Quentin said as he clicked the remote control to bring up the next player.
Pine stood, shook his head one more time, and walked to the door he stopped just as the door swished open, and looked back at Quentin.
“Listen, kid, I’m not much for giving advice where it’s not asked, but I feel you deserve to hear something. To play this game, you’ve got to know your history. Until the Creterakians took over, all the races were more likely to slaughter each other than talk, let alone work together. There’s hatred here that goes way beyond anything related to sports. I’m not the greatest quarterback to ever play the game, but I figured out something a long time ago — for these warring races to play together as a team, someone has to step up and lead. Leading in the GFL means you forget your bigotry and get along with everyone. And it’s a hard job. Damn near impossible. I expect everyone to get along and play as a unit. Warburg is one thing, but you’re a quarterback, and as such people tend to follow your lead. Your racism will cause problems, and I won’t tolerate that. When you play for my team, you will respect your teammates.”
Quentin felt his anger rising. Who the hell did this guy think he was?
“Your team?” Quentin said coldly. “Keep on living in that fantasy world, Pine, and you’ll be a happy man in the retirement home. It’s not going to be your team much longer.”
Pine stared back hard, then sneered. “Whatever you say, rookie. It will be your team, all right. It will be your team when I decide to hang it up. Until then, you haven’t got what it takes to be a starter, and you certainly don’t have what it takes to beat me.”
He walked out, the door swishing shut behind him.
Quentin turned off the holotank and stared at the blank wall. He hated salamanders, he hated crickets, and he hated blue-boy Donald Pine. But they would all learn. The Krakens were Quentin Barnes’ team now, and sooner or later everyone would play by his rules.
THE SECOND DAY of practice saw Quentin, Pine and Yitzhak once again descend the lift into the orange end zone. The Sklorno receivers were there, this time in full pads, but so were Humans and Quyth Warriors — the linebackers — and eight new Sklorno — the defensive backs. All the defensive players wore black jerseys, while the offense wore orange.
“Do they worship Pine, too?” Quentin asked Yitzhak while pointing to the Sklorno defensive backs.
“They do, but in a different way. He leads the team, unifies us, and that makes him greater than a normal being. The receivers view catching a pass as a blessing, almost a gift from God. The defenders see a pass as a challenge given to them by God, a test of their will and physical abilities. To continuously fail to stop the passing game means they are unworthy, or something like that.”
The three quarterbacks reached the end zone and started to warm up. Three orange-jerseyed Humans jogged from the center of the field to greet them. Warburg and the other two tight ends he had not yet met. Warburg gave Quentin a warm handshake.
Warburg introduced the other two men. “This is Yotaro Kobayasho and Poncho Saulsgiver.” Quentin shook their hands. Yotaro was the biggest at 7-foot-1 and 380 pounds. He had a shaved head and three short, parallel scars on each cheek. Saulsgiver had pure white skin, like Yitzhak, with ice-blue eyes and white hair. At 6-foot-10 and about 355, he was the smallest of the three. Quentin shook both of their hands.
Hokor’s hovercart floated down and everyone pulled on their helmets.
“Let’s get started,” Hokor shouted before his hovercart even reached ground level. “Starting ‘O’ get on the goal line, we’ll work the tight package.”
Quentin started to move towards the goal line when he heard the words Starting O, then remembered he was not the starter.
Pine lined up on the goal line, back facing the end zone. Kobayasho lined up as the left tight end, and Warburg as the right. Scarborough lined up wide right, with Hawick two steps inside of Warburg and two steps behind him. The defensive backs showed bump-and-run coverage, playing directly in front of Scarborough and Hawick. Three linebackers spread out in their normal positions for a 3–4 defense. The outside linebackers were Quyth, one of whom wore number 58 — he was the guard that had stun-sticked Mum-O-Killowe into submission on the landing dock at the Combine. The middle linebacker, number 50, was Human. He radiated lethality in a way Quentin had never seen or felt.
Pine barked out the signals, dropped back five steps, planted and bounced half-step forward. The receivers sprinted out on their patterns: Scarborough on an in-route, Hawick on a post, Kobayasho on a ten-yard in-hook, Warburg in the flat.
The defense dropped into coverage. Sklorno defensive backs drifted into a zone, and the Human middle linebacker backped-aled straight back five yards. But it was the movement of the Quyth outside linebackers that shocked Quentin. They didn’t run, they rolled to their positions, tucking up into a ball and rolling out — literally — to cover the flats before they popped up like some jumping spider, arms and pedipalps out and waiting.
Kobayasho was open on the hook, but Pine didn’t throw. He checked through his reads, one-two-three-four, then turned and gunned the ball to Warburg, who had hooked up at four yards and drifted into the flat. Warburg caught the pass and turned upfield before Hokor blew the whistle. The players lined up again.
“Why didn’t he hit Kobayasho?” Quentin asked Yitzhak.
“See number fifty there? That’s John Tweedy, starting middle linebacker. All-Tier-Two last year. He’s got phenomenal quickness. Kobayasho looked open, but even on a ten-yard bullet Tweedy can get to the ball. He also pretends to be slower than he is. He’ll do it for most of the game if he has to, to lull the quarterback into a pattern. When the ball is finally thrown to Tweedy’s zone it’s because the QB thinks he can’t get to it. He had six interceptions last year.”
Quentin looked at the bulky linebacker. Something seemed to be on his face… scrolling letters, hard to see but still legible under the facemask.
“What’s up with his face? Does that say ‘You rookies smell like nasty diarrhea?’“
Yitzhak laughed. “Yeah, probably. Tweedy has a full body tattoo.”
“A tattoo? But it’s moving.”
“Sure, it’s an image implant. Lots of guys in the league have tats. You’ve never seen one before?”
Quentin shook his head. “Not like that.”
“They imbed little light emitters in the skin. They can make changing patterns, words, whatever. Tweedy went for the full package, complete skin coverage with a cyberlink. He can think of words and they play on his face, his forehead, chest, wherever.”
Tweedy stood and pointed at Pine. “How’s that arthritis, old man?” he said in a gravelly bellow.