The Rider, a Galactic Football League novella
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2016 by Empty Set Entertainment, LLC
www.emptyset.com
www.scottsigler.com
ISBN: 978-1-939366-51-1
Cover design by Scott E. Pond at Scott E. Pond Designs
Cover figure design Ray Dillon
Ebook design by Chris Casey
Published in the United States of America By Empty Set Entertainment
Also by Scott Sigler
Novels
Infected (Infected Trilogy Book I)
Contagious (Infected Trilogy Book II)
Ancestor
Nocturnal
Pandemic (Infected Trilogy Book III)
Earthcore
The Generations Trilogy:
Alive
Alight
Alone
The Galactic Football League Series (YA):
The Rookie
The Starter
The All-Pro
The MVP
The Champion
The Galactic Football League novellas (YA):
The Reporter
The Detective
Title Fight
The Color Series short story collections:
Blood is Red
Bones are White
Fire is Orange
Where THE RIDER falls in the Siglerverse timeline:
This novel takes place in the month of August, 2683. It begins at the same time as Chapter 2 of THE ALL-PRO, which is Book III in the GFL series.
Week 10
The Interview
Week 11
Week 12
Match Week 10
Reef Stompers at Roughland Ridgebacks
x = Qualified for Dinolition championship tournament.
The fur-covered Nightmare Beast came straight at him: four massive legs supporting a seven-tonne body mostly covered in battered blue composite armor decorated with scratched and gouged advertising logos. Its rider, a tiny Quyth leader dressed in matching blue armor and carrying a long lance, was screaming at the creature. The beast’s hooked, armor-covered pedipalps were almost as big as the legs. Those pedipalps reached forward, twitched, ready to grab prey and drag it to the vertical maw of jagged, black teeth.
Beneath his black and crimson helmet, Poughkeepsie Pete smiled. Most people said Nightmare Beasts looked kind of like spiders or crabs. To Pete, the thing looked like a giant tick.
Ticks ... nasty somethings born to be squished.
This was the moment the stadium crowd had waited for, that he had waited for — one heavyweight squaring off against another in a battle that might leave one of them dead. That might prove true, but if so, it wouldn’t be Pete’s mount left broken and bleeding on Smithwicks Arena’s packed dirt.
Kill one of mine, will you? Let’s see how you bleed.
“Bess, rush.”
Pete’s thighs pressed in against the leather saddle. He felt the power generated by the 6,500 kilos of muscle and bone beneath him. Ol’ Bess quickened her pace. The T-Rex — the only one of her kind in the sport of Dinolition — leaned into her sprint and roared. Pete’s fingers tightened on the war hammer in his left hand.
The nightmare beast closed in for a head-on collision, its single eye looking out through the thick bars of a protective visor. Pete unhooked his armored left boot from the saddle’s stirrup.
In that moment before contact, Pete knew the crowd ate up the spectacle: an alien creature bedecked in sparkling blue armor collision-coursing toward a thirteen-meter-long beast covered in glistening red composite plate.
Scant meters before the crushing impact, Bess effortlessly shifted right so the two monsters would pass side by side. The little Quyth Leader reacted well, swinging his lance to drive the point into Pete’s red-armored chest.
Pete swung his left foot back and over Bess’s body, coming out of the saddle, letting the right stirrup carry all of his weight — the lance tip hissed through empty air where Pete had just been. Right hand on the saddle horn, Pete wrist-whipped his war hammer in a short circle, bringing it down on his opponent’s lance, snapping the long weapon in two a good meter from the tip.
Pete’s strike against the lance was more distraction than disarmament, keeping the Leader from recognizing Bess’s simultaneous move. The T-Rex drove her wide, armored head down hard against the Nightmare Beast’s rear left leg — plates of blue armor bent and spun free to expose the black and green carapace beneath; black liquid sprayed out in a cloud as the leg snapped.
Screeching with pain, the Nightmare Beast turned sharply, spinning in place like a disc anchored by three still-functioning legs. The creature thrust its blocky head forward and bit at Bess’s neck. Jaws that opened side-to-side rather than up-and-down snapped together. Most of the jagged, black teeth scratched harmlessly against Bess’s sparkling red armor — doing little more than scraping a gouge in the logos for Junkie Gin and Madek’s Hover-Repair — but two teeth drove through a seam in that armor and dug into the soft flesh beneath.
Crimson blood flew. Bess reared back, the six-tonne T-Rex roaring in pain. Pete timed the momentum of her lurch, right hand on saddle horn and right boot locked in the stirrup. The one-meter tall, armor-clad man waited until Bess regained control before he kicked his left leg back over the saddle and clicked it home.
“Bess, bite!”
Pete’s mount lunged down with all the power in her massive frame, but this time instead of using her head as a battering ram, she opened wide her jagged maw and clamped her jaws tight on the beast’s already damaged leg. At the same time, Pete — his boots locked in the armored stirrups — stood tall in the saddle and put all his weight into a swing at the Nightmare Beast’s head.
The spidery thing shivered at the shock of two simultaneous wounds: twenty-centimeter teeth crunching through the Beast’s armor, exoskeleton, and into the flesh beyond, and Pete’s war hammer smashing against the creature’s left pedipalp. The alien monster screeched in a high-pitched wail and bucked backwards.
Jaws dripping with blood, Bess pressed in with a roar so loud it made Pete wince. She opened wide and bit again, this time into the Beast’s flank, her teeth armor-piercing daggers that punched through blue plate.
Blood sprayed from the wound, sheeting the Ford Punch-Drives logo painted on Bess’s red helmet, even splashing across Pete’s visor, helmet and chest. The spectators would love that, he knew, seeing their favorite rider drenched in the hot blood of his enemy.
The Beast stumbled backwards on unsteady legs, trying to escape the T-Rex’s savage attack. Pete saw that the Quyth Leader rider had slid to the side and was fighting to stay in his saddle, middle and pedipalp arms grabbing at stirrups, pommel, the saddle itself, the Beast’s armor: anything to keep balance.
Pete waved the war hammer in a circle above his head, playing to the deafening crowd.
“Bess, butt!”
The big, beautiful T-Rex swung her armored head, smashing it into the Nightmare Beast’s rider. The Leader sailed from his saddle. His armor instantly contracted, compacting the rider into a tight, protective, armored ball that crashed into the rock-hard dirt, a pretty bit of blue sculpture thrown to the ground like a discarded mag-can.
Pete looked to the Stomper’s end of the pitch some twenty meters away. No enemy riders between him and the Stomper’s dugout, between him and the blue and steel-grey flag that hung above it, swaying slightly in the afternoon breeze. The rest of the Stompers riders must be attacking the Ridgeback’s flag.
“Bess, sprint!”
Pete leaned forward in the saddle at the exact moment Bess lurched toward the enemy flag. One powerful thrust, then another, speed building, smooth strides clearing three meters, then four, then almost five as she hit top speed.
They closed in on the Stomper’s flag. Pete waited to hear the trumpets announcing his own flag had been taken and the game was over, anxiety building that he was so close to victory and might have it snatched away at the last second.
That sound did not come.
Bess slowed, the jarring deceleration punishing Pete as it always did. She skidded the last five meters — Bess loved to skid — and Pete stood in the saddle. He heard the crowd roaring. Bess raised higher. Pete grabbed the Stompers flag pole and yanked it free of the stadium wall.
He whipped the flag left and right, the fabric rat-tat-tatting against the air.
Trumpets blared through the stadium’s speakerfilm, bahhh-bah-bah-bah-bomp — the sound that marked victor or defeat — followed by the announcer’s voice echoing over the joyous screams of the Ridgeback faithful.
“Game over! Roughland Ridgebacks win round three, Capture the Flag. The Ridgebacks win the match, two games to one!”
Bess craned her armored, blood-splattered head to the left, peered back at Pete with one large, green eye. He saw the long gouge in her helmet that crossed over the open eye hole — had that strike dug any deeper, his beloved mount might have lost that eye forever.
Pete nodded to her. He smiled wide, reached an armored glove out to lightly pat her armored nose.
“Good girl, Bessie. Now give these rubes something to write home about.”
The T-Rex stood fully upright and lifted her head to the sky. Her victory roar rattled Pete’s teeth. Before the sound died away, the 30,000-sentient crowd’s own call joined hers, filled the stadium with the rabid glee of the bloodthirsty bunch who had paid good money for this spectacle.
A decent crowd, Pete noted, but not a sellout. A little over three-quarters full: Not good enough.
What more of a show can we give them? We’ve got to make it better.
Pete nudged Bess’s side. The T-Rex head-dipped into a theatrical bow, relatively small arms tucked up tight against her massive chest. Pete unhooked his boots from the stirrups, then hopped up to stand on the saddle. Bess did a slow, shuffling circle. The crowd roared louder.
Not for the first time, the words of team owner Salton the Grimy words echoed in Pete’s mind: Sentients don’t just want a fight ... they want pageantry.
Pageantry. So comical. Animals engineered for bloodsport, riders trained to fight and prepared to die, all for the sake of entertaining those who wouldn’t know danger if it tore open the roof of their safe little houses, reached in and bit them in half.
Still, this was Pete’s job — he loved it so, no matter how much the principles of it offended him — and he would do it well. If the crowd wanted to see him primp and posture like an egomaniacal actor desperate for recognition, then that’s what they would get.
When Bess finished the clumsy circle, Pete sat back in the saddle. Bess leaned into her normal, mostly horizontal posture — head out front, heavy tail parallel to the ground — and stomped toward the gated dugout at the far end of the oval arena floor. They passed by two limping, blue-armored Spider Bears going the other way, ridden by equally beat-up and bedraggled armored Quyth Leaders — the two Stompers mounts and riders that had been trying to take the Ridgebacks’ flag even as the Nightmare Beast had tried to defend their own.
A flag hung from the top of the dugout. Red marked with the black logo of the Roughland Ridgebacks: a shield with a dino-toothed bite out of it. Pete and Bess’s teammates — riders and mounts both — waited there.
Critter Clark, Pete’s good friend and the eldest rider on the team, stood next to his mount, Missy. The gallimimus’s red and black, logo-covered armor was dented on her flank, exposing the dark-yellow feathers beneath. A trickle of blood oozed from beneath the plates that covered the left thigh of her long, powerful, ostrich-like legs, although Missy seemed to be in no discomfort. A jagged crack lined Clark’s torso armor from left collarbone to his sternum, splitting the Hilldigger Ground Trucks logo there, but — like his mount — he seemed unharmed. Clark was a little taller than Pete, which meant Clark didn’t quite reach the top of Missy’s 120-centimeter-high hip. Clark gently patted his mount’s long neck — even though she couldn’t feel his touch through her armor, Missy cooed at the attention.
The team’s only beishanlong grandis, Dusty, lay on the dirt floor next to Tony Koester, her white-haired, white-skinned rider. Dusty’s neck armor was a splintered mess. When healthy, Dusty’s powerful legs could accelerate the 542-kilo dino to a shocking 80 kilometers an hour, turning her into a red-armored, black-skinned blur that caused no end of match-up trouble for opposing teams. Trouble was, Dusty wasn’t that good at reacting to attacks: she rarely came out of a match without a wound, and had spent half the season on the injured reserve. Tony knelt beside her, his gloves and helmet off, petting her scratched and wounded head.
Critter Clark and Tony, good riders, good teammates. And then, there was Ian.
When Pete saw Ian standing with his back against the wall, he wanted to charge the kid. Ian’s mount, Tumult, the Ridgeback’s best speedster, had been trucked off the pitch, because a ground truck with a crane was the only way to move a dead mount.
Pete pulled Bess up to the dugout area and flipped off of her back. He somersaulted and landed in a crouch. The crowd bellowed once more.
The announcer’s voice echoed through the stadium: “After three games, with a score of two to one, the Roughland Ridgebacks win!”
That was the cue for final ceremonies. Usually, the wrap-up was a civilized affair, the knightly riders congratulating each other on skill and bravery as the crowd clapped in polite approval — but this time, Pete had other plans.
“Let’s go, boys,” he said.
Pete started walking toward the center of the pitch. Ian, Clark, and Tony walked with him.
From the other side of the long pitch, three Quyth Leader riders from the opposing team walked out to meet them. Pete knew the Ridgebacks should have skunked the Reef Stompers three-nil, but Ian’s dumb-ass showboating had cost Roughland both a mount and a game.
Pete pulled off his helmet, letting his long, red hair spill down his back. He cradled the helmet under his right arm. He held his war hammer in his left hand, the blood-splattered end balanced on his shoulder.
The Stompers team captain, Sabat the Nifty, was still inside Bess’s stomach where he would stay until she pooped him out — in the first round, Bess had snatched him right off his mount and swallowed him in one gulp. It would be several more hours before he emerged with her stool, safely turtled up (hopefully, anyway) in his life-supporting armor.
With Sabat indisposed, his second-in-command, Yopat the Crazed, would do the honors. Yopat’s blue armor had looked a lot better at the start of the match than at the end, and the orange-furred sentient walked with a bit of a limp.
Adult Quyth Leaders were all about Pete’s height, yet much thinner than the stocky dwarf. Leaders had two sets of arms. The first set, similar in thickness to Human arms, was set low, just above the hips of their back-folded legs. Those arms, and the legs as well, ended in three-pincered claws. A Leader could walk on all fours but never did — only the lower castes touched their middle hands to the ground.
The second set of Yopat’s orange-furred arms technically weren’t “arms” at all, but rather “pedipalps,” limbs that Quyth ancestral species had used to hold prey while the vertical mouth chewed away. Millions of years ago, the pedipalps had evolved into slim, dexterous appendages ending in three thin fingers capable of fine work.
The pedipalps extended from the sides of the vertical mouth, which sat just below the single, softball-sized eye. Long black antennae, in three rows of two down the middle of Yopat’s head, stuck out through the sweaty, helmet-haired fur, arced gracefully down the back of the Leader’s head.
“Yopat, I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” Pete said. “You tried to blind my mount — twice.”
The Leader’s eye swirled with black and flecks of green. Quyth eyes were normally clear, showing the multiple vision discs behind the cornea, but that cornea showed various colors based on the sentient’s emotional state. Pete knew black meant anger — Quyth Leaders always seemed to be angry about something — but he didn’t know what the green flecks meant.
“Yes,” Yopat said. “It seemed strategically appropriate.”
Pete’s fingers flexed on the handle of his war hammer. “You’ll hear from Guestford about that.”
“I am unconcerned about your desire to ... what is the word your people use? Oh, yes, your desire to tattle on me.”
Pete fought the urge to smash his war hammer into Yopat’s head.
“You’re actually kind of lucky,” Pete said. “This win means we jumped over you for fourth place. We’ll be fighting for the championship at season’s end while you’ll go home. You’ll have to wait until next year before I get my payback.”
“It is too early for your flightless bird reproduction math,” Yopat said. “Two matches remain in the season. You have the Resurrected next week, and they will crush you. Meanwhile, we will win both of our remaining encounters and finish one match ahead of you in the standings.”
Clark tilted his head at Pete.
“Flightless bird reproduction math?”
“He means we’re counting our chickens before they’re hatched.”
“Ah, those are the correct words,” Yopat said. “We will qualify for the tournament, while you will stay home and eat disappointment.”
Pete held up the war hammer. “I should make you eat this.”
The Leader tensed, warily eyed the war hammer. “With a weapon in your hand, you certainly like to talk. Don’t you, pigmy?”
Pete smiled. “Oh, look at you, you know lots of our words, including ones you think are insults. Here’s another one for you to remember — the word isouch.”
Pete whipped his helmet forward. It struck Yopat in his blue breastplate. The Leader tumbled backward onto the pitch. Pete dropped his hammer and jumped on top of the furry sentient. The other two Leaders moved to join the melee, but Clark and Ian caught them before they had a chance.
The crowd roared to life once again. Pete rained down blows on Yopat’s cracked torso armor. The Stompers’ second-in-command screamed with pain and anger, but Pete barely heard. His armored fists splintered what was left of Yopat’s blue chest-plate.
Strong arms grabbed Pete from behind and lifted him a half-meter off the ground. Pete stared down at the pair of thick, chitin-covered Quyth Warrior arms wrapped around his chest.
Leaders were Pete’s size: Warriors were not. The one holding Pete had to be over two meters tall, and — judging by the muscles rippling beneath the enameled and engraved chitin — was probably 110 kilos if it was a gram.
Dangling in the air, Pete stared down at his foe and snarled.
“Next time, Yopat, your bodyguard won’t save you.”
Yopat glared upward from the pitch.
The world rotated. The Quyth Warrior held Pete before him and marched to the Ridgebacks’ dugout with agonizing slowness, Pete’s boots dangling uselessly. Pete didn’t struggle. If the Warrior wanted, it could break Pete’s small body into pieces. The crowd was cheering Pete’s name, but he barely noticed — it was times like this that he hated being small.
Twice during the match, Yopat had driven his lance-tip at Bess’s eyes. That was against the rules, since eyes were the most vulnerable part of any mount, especially Dinos. It wasn’t just bad form, it was bad for business: lose the big mounts fans wanted to watch, and that meant fewer butts in the stands. Flesh could be repaired quickly — eyes could not.
The Warrior dropped Pete to the ground, then roughly turned him around. Pete looked up into the Warrior’s baseball sized eye. The Warrior’s thick eyelids — layered with plates of protective chitin — narrowed, and the cornea swirled with dense curls of black like runs of ink spilled onto curved glass.
Judging by the density of enamels and engravings on this Warrior’s hairless carapace, he had served in the military, spent time in prison, or probably both. His pedipalps were as big as Pete’s arms, and his middle arms thicker than Pete’s legs.
The Warrior pointed a pedipalp finger in Pete’s face.
“Next time, Human, I’ll kill you.”
A low, bass growl vibrated through both of their bodies. Pete didn’t need to turn to see what it was, as the Warrior’s cornea reflected the image of Bess’s big head leaning in close. The Warrior’s eye changed from black to pink — the color of fear.
“Bring friends,” Pete said. “Bring lots of friends.”
The Warrior’s pedipalps twitched. “We shall see,” it said, then turned and walked quickly past the approaching Ridgeback riders.
Ian offered the war hammer to Pete. “Wow, Cap — you beat the hell out of that little orange-furred bastard.”
Pete nodded and took the hammer. “Next time, we’ll see how Yopat does without protection.”
Clark put a hand on Pete’s shoulder. “Come on, Captain. It’s time for post-match interviews.”
Pete groaned and looked up at Bess. The T-Rex stared at him, her mouth partially open. He smiled: just the sight of her filled him with pride and love.
“Did you have a fun match, girl?”
The huge animal dropped its head and gently brushed her snout against his shoulder. Pete managed to stay upright, but he stumbled sideways, laughing.
“Okay, take it easy. Let’s get you to the stables.”
Clark and Tony went to their mounts, climbed atop them and headed for the out-gate. Bess followed.
Ian, the youngest of the Ridgebacks team, stared after them, his eyes glazed with the loss he tried so hard to conceal.
There would be time to yell at him later. For now, the kid’s heart was ripped into pieces.
“Ian,” Pete said. “I’m sorry about Tumult.”
“Did my best, boss.”
You don’t even know what your best is yet, you arrogant pup. When you do, you’ll be a legend.
“Come on, Ian. Let’s head in. Bess, stable.”
The two short men followed the large T-Rex out of the stadium, Pete’s war hammer twirling in his hands.
• • •
The locker room smelled of sweat, dinosaur dander, and the blood of mounts and riders alike. Pete’s armor lay piled on the floor. He peeled off his Ridgebacks undershirt and flung it into the hamper. The other riders had already showered and headed back to the stables to check in on their mounts.
Pete was almost always late to check on the animals and supervise the load-out. The media — the few reporters that actually covered Dinolition, anyway — demanded interviews immediately after a match. Commissioner Rachel Guestford had made it a standing rule that team captains gave interviews while still wearing their armor.
As a sport, Dinolition was still very new. New, and barely making enough money to stay afloat. While things looked like they were picking up, Dinolition was still a marginal sport; the sentients involved had to do anything possible to get attention. Beyond the obvious spectacle of the mounts, the pre-match showmanship and the crap Salton the Grimy called “pageantry” were part of the sport’s draw — and so was showing up at press conferences in cracked armor still covered in blood.
Pete walked into the shower. Although the stall had originally been used to fill water troughs and bottles for the Roughland cricket team, Pete had had it converted to a real shower. Nanites cleaned a body just fine but didn’t satisfy in the way hot water did. Throughout his career in the Galactic Circus and his stint in the backwater kill pits, nanites hadn’t been available. Once upon a time, Pete had dreamed of taking a nanite shower, just like the rich folk, just like the tech-spoiled people in the League of Planets. Now that he had the cash to afford them (not that it took much money for the basics, he’d just been that poor back then), he was already set in his ways.
Hot water jetted from one of the walls, sprayed against his tired muscles. He turned in a slow circle. These faucets had been meant to fill water bottles: what was stomach high for the average man was head-height for Pete’s one-meter frame.
He scrubbed his skin, spending extra time on the white and purple scars that covered his chest and back. He worked at his scalp, making sure he got all the filth out of his long hair. It felt good. It felt like closure on the day’s battle.
The press conference had been a debacle, of course. The very first question from Orlon the Questioner had set the tone. As if Pete shouldn’t have expected a Quyth Leader reporter to be biased toward those scumbag Stompers riders.
“After the match, what happened out there on the pitch when you were supposed to be exchanging sportsmanlike appreciation of each others performances?” Orlon had asked.
Pete had stared at the blue-and-black-furred journalist. “Nothing more than a display of inter-species solidarity.”
The reporters had laughed, but Pete hadn’t smiled. Guestford travelled constantly, always using her looks and caché as a former movie star to promote the sport anywhere she could. This week, unfortunately, she’d been in attendance at Smithchwicks as the on-pitch announcer, which meant Pete wouldn’t have to wait that long to get his ass chewed out.
A Human reporter — a normal-sized Human, that was — stood for a question.
“Old Bess took some serious damage today,” the reporter said. “Will she be ready for her next match?”
A smile finally crept across Pete’s face. “Bess is tough. She’s the toughest creature in the league. What you see as major damage is nothing more than scratches to her. She’ll be more than ready.”
A hand shot up from the back of the room. Pete nodded to the smartly dressed HeavyG woman.
“Lonny Branderschweis-Smith-Parker, Rodina Times. What about Tumult? The death of a mount is a critical loss to any franchise. Did Ian Bahas make a mistake?”
Pete felt his cheeks flush, but managed to tramp down any other sign of his simmering anger. At least, he thought he did, but he was so damn angry.
“Ian is a great rider, one of the best in the league,” Pete said. “Accidents happen. While fortune may favor the brave and skilled, it sometimes goes against you. The Stompers played a good match today and Tumult was unlucky. I don’t think I would have played it any other way.”
Pete felt like a puppet with a hand of both Guestford and Salton inside of him at the same time, controlling his responses, their constant training in how to handle the media dictating what Pete would say before he even knew to say it.
“I see,” Lonny said. “Will Tumult be missed?”
Pete sighed. The inevitable question. The league had Sklorno teams, Quyth teams, Human teams, and soon might even have Ki teams — if there were any members of that species small enough to be riders, which Pete doubted — but Humans seemed to be the only ones that bonded with their animals. The press took every opportunity to play up that angle: emotional tragedy is always a good story.
“Tumult was a great fighter, a great mount,” Pete said. “I’ll miss her. I know Ian is heart-broken over the loss.”
A Sklorno female stood and chirped a question over Lonny’s follow-up. “Do you have another achillobator with Tumult’s skills?”
Pete gritted his teeth. “No comment.”
Lonny shouted another question without waiting for permission.
“The Stompers were in fourth place coming into this match, one game ahead of you. Your win gives both teams the same record, but with your significant lead in points differential, your team is in clear control of the final championship tournament slot. Considering today’s post-match altercation, if you do make the tournament, would it bring you great joy that this win knocked the Stompers out of the tournament?”
Pete wanted to scream yes, along with several expletives to properly illustrate the point, but he did not. He had to admit it — Yopat was right. Two matches remained in the regular season. If the Ridgebacks took both, they were in the tournament for sure, but the next match was against the undefeated Chachana Resurrected. As team captain, Pete needed to make it clear to his squad that the Stompers match was already history, make sure their focus was on the Resurrected and nothing else.
“Sometimes emotions get the better of us out on the pitch, sure,” he said. “But we’re all professionals. We would never target anyone, because without great mounts — and great riders — this sport would collapse. The Stompers are a solid organization. There’s no bad blood on our end.”
Orlon the Questioner raised his pedipalp again.
Pete nodded to the Quyth Leader.
“There are rumors,” Orlon said, “of financial difficulties for the Ridgebacks. Care to comment?”
Pete blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Is Salton the Grimy interested in selling the team?”
Those words stuck in Pete’s head for the rest of the press conference, had still been in there when he’d taken off his armor, and now, sitting in front of the water jets, they were still echoing in his thoughts.
The hot water felt so nice. Pete had already used up his share. But hey, being the team captain had its privileges.
“Sell the team,” he said aloud. “Over my dead body.”
He bent over and touched his palms to the shower floor, trying to stretch out a knot in his back. The water cascaded over his skin. His spine popped and a jolt of pain surged through it. He gritted his teeth.
The damage he’d taken in the Galactic Circus, the kill pits, and in dozens of Dinolition matches was starting to show. His back hurt almost all the time. His spinal cord had been pinched more than once. Another serious hit and he could wind up paralyzed — for good, this time. Medical science could only do so much to keep a battered body going; retirement was inevitable.
“But not yet,” he said quietly. “Not this season.”
He stood up and tapped the wall. The water shut off. He wrung out his long hair, then tied it in a loose tail. He tapped the wall again and warm air from all sides blasted against his skin. He raised his arms, letting the currents dry him. After a moment, he tapped the wall again and the dryers shut off. Pete untied his hair and stepped out of the shower cubicle.
The stone floor chilled his bare feet. Roughland was hardly known for its amenities. Located in the middle of the massive, seemingly endless mountain desert known as “The Wastes,” Roughland wasn’t the kind of high-tech city for which the League of Planets was known. Settled by sentients fleeing the elitist, body-mod culture of League scientists, most Roughland buildings were constructed from “indigenous materials.” More often than not, that was a fancy word for “rocks.” The Roughland Chamber of Commerce liked to say the city was “a return to simpler times.” Based on the cracks in the ceiling, Pete wondered if that was a good thing.
He walked to his locker and dressed in a pair of hemp pants and a Ridgebacks tee. Bess’s visage was emblazoned in black on a field of red. He stared into the locker at the black and orange Ionath Krakens jersey hanging from the hooks. Children’s size, which fit him perfectly. With a sigh, Pete slipped into it, put on his boots with the two-inch heels — when you’re going to hang out with a GFL player, every little bit of height counted, especially when you are so little to begin with — and left the locker room.
Outside the stadium, the sun had left and so, too, had the crowds. Smithwicks Arena was some distance away from the city itself, having been built as part of a grand complex that was to include housing, office buildings, shops, and a tunnel spur to the main tubeway. The stadium had gone up; nothing else had. The huge construct stood alone, towering above the rocky landscape.
The stadium drew crowds for cricket games, the occasional concert and Ridgeback matches, and little else. The nearest tubeway spur entrance was twenty kilometers away, requiring people to either use their own vehicles or wheelbus from the spur to the stadium.
All that isolation did provide one benefit: Ranch Ridgeback was within walking distance. With no population nearby, there was little reason to keep the dinos at some faraway location.
A brown-fatigued stadium security guard nodded as Pete passed.
“Good match,” the guard said. “Sorry about Tumult.”
Pete nodded and kept walking.
Tumult. Next to Bess, the speedster had been his favorite. He’d trained her since she left the incubator. She had been astonishingly fast, obedient, and loyal. She’d protected her rider with maternal ferocity. The ranch wouldn’t be the same without her.
Ranch Ridgeback was just south of Smithicks Arena. The Ridgebacks and the Rodina Colonials, the local cricket team, shared the stadium. Although the Ridgebacks were a far greater draw, the Colonials had been the facility’s original occupant, and the city elite made it clear which franchise was more important — a millennia-old sport that traced its roots back to ancient Earth held priority over one that hadn’t even hit its tenth anniversary. Pete wondered if the Chamber of Commerce shared that view.
When visitors came to Roughland, it was to watch the Ridgebacks. Not just visitors from Rodina, but from off-planet. Sentients spent enormous amounts of money and untold time in space just to see Dinolition matches. After a Ridgebacks contest, the city was always full of wealthy sentients — drinking, eating, purchasing knick-knacks and generally shoving giant fistfuls of much-needed cash in to the city’s economy. As for the Colonials, no one came from off-planet to see them, and not very many of the locals did, either.
Dinolition was growing, no question. At this pace, soon the Ridgeback’s home matches would sell out every seat of Smithwicks Arena. Soon, but would it be soon enough?
Pete trudged through the litter left by the spectators. Empty mag-cans of Roughland Stout crunched under his feet. The janitorial staff hadn’t started their rounds yet — they usually waited for the teams to load out before they began their routine. By midnight, the arena would look as though no sentient had ever been there.
A breeze blew from the south, carrying the smell of excrement — both dino and bovine. Pete smiled. The girls were eating and resting.
Ranch Ridgeback’s stables were made of bluewood, harvested from the planet’s northern hemisphere. Red veins streaked through the huge blue pillars. The structure was more than tall enough to accommodate Bess’s full height. Blue timbers framed heavy black bars and grates — one could never forget, ever, that most of the mounts came from ancient predators. Sometimes, things went wrong, and the last thing the sport needed was several tonnes of carnivore running loose in the mountains.
Pete stepped through the sentient-access gate and into the entryway. Nothing to see in this area by hallways, offices and equipment rooms, but Pete could hear the snort and lowing of beefalo from the nearby livestock area. The sound was a familiar counterpoint to the smacking of jaws and the occasional snuffle from the dinos.
Some of the mounts were omnivorous, but not Ol’ Bess. She liked meat — live meat most of all, and she preferred to pick her own meal. After a match, Bess would be let out of her individual pen and into the hunting space, where the beefalo herd waited. Sometimes she killed her prey there and then carried it back to her pen, sometimes she only wounded it, preferring to finish the job in the comfort of her own space.
Pete entered the armory. Clark was applying a composite sealant to a crack in his red armor’s left thigh. He had the suit mounted on a repair rig: helmet on top, then the wide, curved shoulder plates, the sleeve armor, the articulated gauntlets that covered Clark from fingertips to elbow, the cuirass, which protected his chest and the ribs, then the tasset lame, the interlinked bands that covered the waist and crotch (the important stuff, as Clarke described it), finally the thigh, knee and lower leg armor, then the boots. All made of a crysteel variant for low weight and high strength, all pieces capable of “turtling” together to create a hermetical seal that would not only protect a rider against falls from significant height, but also kept them alive inside a mount’s digestive system.
Pete had been swallowed once, three seasons back. That spider-bear gulped him right down. Once Pete got over the terror of being inside a predator, he’d actually been a little grateful to spend a day in there before the spider-bear puked him back up — grateful, because he really didn’t want the 10,000 fans in attendance that day to know he’d literally crapped himself when the spider-bear’s big head had shot in for what should have been a fatal bite. Spending a day trapped in a sealed suit with your own poop? Un-fun, but at least he’d been able to keep that secret to himself.
He absently ran his hand across the orange numbers on his Krakens jersey. The GFL players wore full-body armor, too, but nothing like the Dinolition rigs. Football armor was pricey, but didn’t have the same life-support tech. A rider’s suit cost almost as much as a mount did, all part of the massive expense of fielding a Dinolition team.
Every time Pete saw someone’s armor on a rig like that, he thought of grade school, of an image he’d seen in an ancient history class. A warrior sect from old Earth called the “Samurai” had worn armor that didn’t look all that different from what riders used. It had been protective plate and nothing else, of course, not even a shred of real protective tech, but on display in some forgotten museum, it could have passed for rider armor if you blurred your eyes enough. And, of course, if you imagined that armor fashioned for a much smaller Human.
Clark looked up as Pete approached. “Ah, there you are, Cap.”
Pete frowned. “You could take the night off, Critter. You know we won, right?”
Clark shrugged. “And let you be a martyr about how you’re always working while the kids go out and party? Naw. Besides, I won’t sleep right unless I know I got these cracks melded and test the full seal.”
“What, you’re not tough enough to handle a couple hours of stomach acid? You big baby.”
Clark nodded. “I prefer to be the digestor, not the digestee. I might not be long for this universe, Boss, but I’d rather keep all the days that I have left. Don’t want to spend my final years eating my meals through a straw like Walker.”
Any mention of that name brought with it a sobering chill. Dominique Walker had ridden for the Frontier Ancients over on Wilson 4. Three matches ago, Clark had shown a stunning display of skill, launching Missy in a leap over Walker’s megatherioides that finished with Missy back-kicking Walker right off her saddle. The kick, unfortunately, had hit Walker square in the head — even advanced inertia-dampening and hardened Crysteel can’t protect the brain from bouncing off the inside of the skull.
“Critter, I’m getting tired of hearing you be all guilty over that. The game was Dismount. You dismounted Walker — that was your job.”
Clark nodded, leaned closer to the crack in his armor and squeezed more repair cement into it.
“Ayuh,” he said. “That I did.”
Pete stopped talking for a moment and watched his friend’s sure hands slowly fill the cracks. The Ridgebacks had a team armorer, Luscious Buhari, who came in the day after a match, but she rarely had anything to do — real riders knew their gear was the difference between life and death, and did every repair they could on their own to make sure it was done right. The armorer would do diagnostics on the electrical system, the power cell, comms and all that, but for straight-up plate integrity, Clark took care of that himself.
“Looks like your suit took more damage than I thought,” Pete said.
“This?” Clark pointed to the crack. “’Tis but a scratch, boss. I’ll fix this up then flight-check all the systems. It’ll be fine.”
“Make sure you’re there when Luscious checks it tomorrow,” Pete said. “I don’t want her lazy ass missing anything. You’re there tomorrow, you hear me?”
Clark stood. He stared, his face a picture of patience.
“Be there to watch Luscious like I am every single time that hack lays hands on my rig? That what you mean, Pete?”
Pete sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “Of course. Sorry, I know you’re there every time, I just—“
“It’s Tumult,” Clark said. “I get it.”
Pete nodded. “Bess, too. She almost lost an eye tonight.”
“You better talk to Guestford about Yopat,” Clark said. “That little orange-furred bastard needs a whuppin’.”
“Considering how I let my temper slip after the match, I figure she’ll talk to me before I can talk to her.”
Clark shook his head. “We aren’t kids anymore, Cap. Don’t you think we’re getting a little old to be brawling?”
Pete wanted to give a smart-ass answer, but that pain in his back told him there was nothing to say. Clark was right. Pete knew it. He’d known it before he’d started that fight, yet he’d started it anyway.
“You annoy me,” he said. “I gotta check on the girls.”
Clark turned back to his work. “Goodnight, then.”
Pete left the armory and walked to the supply room’s doorway. Inside were Tony Koester and two other dwarfs — Dar, her skin and hair just as white as Tony’s, and Rob Stikz, a blue-skinned native of Satirli 6. The three were taking post-match inventory of the equipment boxes. Salton the Grimy — the Ridgebacks’ owner — was so cheap a missing piece of tackle was cause for a blowout.
Stikz rummaged through the crates and called out item numbers. Dar touched her messageboard with each number called. Neither had dressed for that day’s game, which meant they drew check-in duty. Every rider had a role, even the ones that didn’t ride.
Tony, however, had dressed, had ridden, and therefore wasn’t responsible for check-in. Just like Clark, the kid should have been out celebrating the win. Pete felt a swell of pride that the youngster was here, helping out with equipment check-in instead of partying like a rock star.
Dar looked up, saw Pete standing in the doorway. Her face lit up with a wide smile.
“Pete! Did you bring your armor? I have to check it in so it’s ready for Luscious to examine tomorrow.”
“In the locker room,” Pete said. “Go fetch it for me.”
Dar’s smile vanished as her nose wrinkled. “Fetch it your own damned self, you old bastard.”
“I’ll go,” Stikz said. He headed the way Pete had come.
Pete high-fived Stikz as he passed. Stikz was the team’s second-youngest rider, and always seemed eager to please.
Pete walked up next to Dar and peered into the container. Scratched and battered pieces of red and black rider armor filled the high lipped box. Looked like Ian’s gear.
“Everything where it should be, Dar?”
She smirked. “Exactly where it should be, except for Clark’s armor, and — of course — yours.” She looked down at the messageboard and scrolled through the entries. She leaned in close to Pete and whispered. “Tony already cleaned Tumult’s tackle. I re-entered it into unattached inventory.”
Pete shook his head. “Put her gear in a separate box.”
She raised her brows. “Um, why?”
“It’s being retired,” Pete said. “Tony, thanks for getting everything square.”
The white-skinned dwarf ran his hands through a tangle of long, ivory hair. “No, problem. You going to see Guestford soon?”
Guestford, Guestford, Guestford ... was she the only thing his teammates wanted to talk about?
“Probably,” Pete said. “Can’t say when.”
“You going to ask about raising league minimum?”
Pete sighed. “For the tenth time, Tony, you’re not getting more money this season. Wait until after the tournament and I’ll ask her” He walked past the table to the supply room’s far entrance.
“We not slaves, Pete,” Tony yelled after him. “We deserve to get paid!”
Pete didn’t bother replying. Slaves. How ridiculous. Tony could hang up the saddle anytime he wanted, no one was making him do this job.
Pete entered the hall and followed it to the end, then opened the door there and stepped into Ranch Ridgeback’s sprawling dino area. The clear roof thirteen meters above revealed a few clouds and a dense mass of stars. The city was far enough away that the sprawl of urban lights didn’t obscure things too much. When dawn broke, the ceiling automatically tinted to keep the dinos in the shade.
In front of Pete lay the wide, circular training ground, itself rimmed by the individual, gated pens for the mounts. The individual pens surrounded it, allowing riders, trainers, gene-slingers and vet-techs to take individual animals straight out into the open space.
Pete followed the training grounds’ left-hand curve toward the achillobator pen. With Tumult gone, only three of them on the roster: Birdy, Bandit and Bucky. As Pete approached, they raised their green- and blue-feathered heads and stood at their full height. The creatures were nearly six meters long from snout to tail and almost two meters tall at the hip. Bucky, the largest of the three, stepped around the trough and pressed against the fence, leaning her head over and prancing in place as Pete walked up.
Pete stood still as the ostrich-like dino offered one of her short, feathered arms. The clawed hand splayed open. Pete gripped it with his own and gently squeezed. The dino snorted, then lowered her long neck to caress his cheek with her face.
“Good girl, Bucky.” Pete rubbed his face against hers and patted her neck. She let out a low, mournful moan.
Pete sighed. “I know, girl. I’m sorry.”
He had to put on the stone face in front of the media and the other riders, but not in front of the mounts. His connection to them, to all of them, ran deeper than any he had with sentients. Sentients could lie, cheat and steal. Sentients could betray you, sentients could change, loving you one day and not loving you the next. Mounts, especially young ones like these killeys, wanted very little out of life; they wanted to eat and sleep, they wanted to play, they wanted to fight out in the arena, and they wanted to love. Mounts had been engineered as more than some reptilian ancestor — they had been created as a combination of lethal beast and loyal family dog.
Be good to a mount, be kind to one, and they would love you without reservation until the day they died. Hell, even if you weren’t nice to them, the probably loved you anyway, and would follow you wherever they could, hoping that maybe you’