“Got it, kid?”
Quentin nodded. Pine smiled, slapped him once on the shoulder pad, then jogged back behind the line to stand with Yhitzak.
“Let’s go,” Hokor called. “Run the play.”
The offensive line formed up again. Quentin staggered his feet as Pine had done, and reached far under Bud-O-Shwek. The Ki’s rear felt cold and hard. He felt the pebbly skin against the back of his hands. A wave of revulsion tinged with a hint of fear swept through him. He was touching one of them. Bud-O-Shwek seemed indifferent: his front right leg curled around the ball, waiting for the snap-count.
Quentin looked over his center and surveyed the defense.
It was like looking straight out into a nightmare.
Mai-An-Ihkole and Per-Ah-Yet, the starting Ki defensive tackles, eyed him with obvious hunger, their black eyes glistening. Ki helmets consisted of a clear, circular visor that ran all the way around the head, accommodating for their 360-degree vision. Above the visor, the black helmet pointed back like a dog’s claw, protecting the delicate vocal tubes.
The two Ki tackles were flanked by defensive ends Aleksandar Michnik and Ibrahim Khomeni, both amongst the biggest Humans Quentin had ever seen. They both hailed from Vosor-3, a world with gravity three times that of Earth.
Once, in school, he’d seen pictures of an extinct creature called a “gorilla.” The class had been on creation, how all creatures were created as-is by the High One. In the Planetary Union and the League of Planets, apparently, they believe that Humans had evolved from these gorillas. Quentin had agreed that the idea was absurd, that it was ridiculous to think gorillas had given birth to Human babies. But now, looking at the 525-pound Michnik, with arms bigger than Quentin’s thighs and legs bigger than Quentin’s chest, he suddenly had to wonder what a gorilla looked like if you shaved off all its fur and dressed it in football pads.
From the middle linebacker’s spot, John Tweedy’s evil laugh rang through the air. “Well, looks like we’ve got it easy now. The rookie is here to answer Sklorno prayers again.”
EAT CRAP LOSER scrolled across Tweedy’s face.
At left and right outside linebacker, respectively, Virak the Mean and Choto the Bright bounced in place: fast, vicious, powerful, one-eyed Quyth Warriors. Sometimes they moved on legs and arms, low to the ground and leaning forward, waiting to attack, and sometimes just on their legs, standing tall and surveying the field. If they blitzed, Quentin knew he’d have to react instantly to avoid them.
The Sklorno defensive backs added yet another horrific element to the defense, their translucent bodies and black skeletons showing clearly where the black jerseys and pads did not cover. Their armored eyestalks quivered with excitement.
He felt a flutter in his stomach, a queasy feeling he’d never experienced before on a football field. He knew the feeling, but vaguely, a distant echo of something he didn’t have time to think about.
“Blue twenty-one,” Quentin called. “Blue… twenty-one.”
Tweedy moved forward, his huge frame standing right at the line of scrimmage, in between Mai-An-Ihkole and Per-Ah-Yet.
“Here it comes, rookie!” Tweedy screamed, his face a contorted mask of psychotic rage. The strange feeling in Quentin’s stomach grew in intensity. Was Tweedy just showing blitz, or was he coming for real?
“Flash, flash!” Quentin called out, audibling to a short-pattern pass. If Tweedy blitzed, Warburg would likely be open on a crossing route. “Hut-hut!”
The line erupted like nothing Quentin had ever seen or heard — so loud! The clatter of chitin and Ki battle screeches and Human grunts and smashing body armor filled the air like some medieval battle holo. Quentin pushed away from the line and reached the ball back for Yassoud to carry, then pulled it away at the last instant as a play-action fake. Quentin moved back four steps then turned and stood tall, looking for an open receiver.
Per-Ah-Yet ripped through the line and moved forward like a 560-pound, four-armed assassin. Quentin stepped up in the pocket and scrambled to the left to easily avoid the rush — or so he thought. A Human defensive tackle would have slipped by, momentum carrying him past as Quentin bounced forward towards the line. But Per-Ah-Yet wasn’t Human. The Ki stopped on a dime and turned as his body contracted like an accordion. He expanded suddenly and violently, driving towards Quentin, long body trailing behind like a snake. Per’s arms reached out much faster — and longer — than Quentin could have expected in his split-second decision to scramble. The long, thick, spider-like arms flashed out and hauled him in, lifting him off the ground, then driving him to the turf under all of Per-Ah-Yet’s weight and momentum. Quentin hit the ground hard. His body armor protected him from cuts and joint injuries, but couldn’t do much to guard him from the concussive force of a 560-pound defensive lineman slamming him to the ground.
He suffered a second or two of confused blackness. He didn’t know where he was. His brain couldn’t process the situation — he’d scrambled like that hundreds of times in his short career, moving past defensive tackles as if they were statues, leaving them in awe of his speed and athleticism. No one caught him from behind. No one. He’d been almost ten yards from this Ki, a huge cushion, and the lineman knocked the living tar out of him.
Suddenly, Quentin recognized that feeling in his stomach — fear. The same feeling that ran through his mind and body for every punch-in and punch-out. The same fear he’d felt as a small boy, when the Holy Women that ran the orphanage had told stories about the nightmarish Ki, how they ate Humans, how they came in the night to snatch away bad little boys. He hadn’t recognized it because he’d never before felt that emotion on a football field. Now the twelve-foot-long, multi-armed boogey-creature from his childhood nightmares wasn’t just real, it was on him, smothering him.
“Get off me!” Quentin shouted as he tried to scramble out from under Per-Ah-Yet. The Ki’s four-jointed arms grabbed Quentin’s helmet and held it tight, his face close enough to push against Quentin’s facemask. Two of the five black eyespots stared into Quentin’s eyes. Per-Ah-Yet’s hexagonal mouth opened to expose the triangular black teeth.
“Grissach hadillit ai ai,” it hissed, the sound from his wormlike vocal tubes muffled by the curving black helmet.
Quentin didn’t understand the alien’s words. Per-Ah-Yet pushed off him, heavily, and moved back to the defensive huddle.
Yassoud reached down to help Quentin up.
“He doesn’t like you very much,” Yassoud said.
“What did he say?”
“He said something to the effect that you’d look good roasting on a spit at his family picnic.”
Quentin stood, his body emitting a dull throb of complaint. Defensive players weren’t supposed to hit quarterbacks, not in practice. He’d just been leveled and nobody seemed to care. Hokor, for one, wasn’t saying anything. Quentin nodded. Now he understood. Oh yeah, he finally got it. This wasn’t just a mind-game, he really wasn’t going to start. No coach let the defense hit a starting QB.
He was just a rookie, and that meant he was fair game.
It was going to be a long day.
AT THE END of practice, Hokor gathered the team in the orange end zone. They circled around their little coach in his little cart, fifty tired and bruised players that looked like they’d just been through a battle.
“Good practice today,” Hokor said. “We have only one more practice before we open the season. I know that is hard on you rookies, but most of you won’t see much playing time. That is the nature of the league’s schedule, and there is nothing we can do about it. Tomorrow’s practice is a non-contact run through.”