The Champion Read Free

wash out.
    He’d proven them wrong. He’d proven them all wrong. Maybe he couldn’t do anything to help people in the Nation, at least not right now, but he knew those people looked up to him. He’d once been a kid watching pirated GFL broadcasts, idolizing the stars — in particular, one Donald Pine. There were kids doing the same thing right now, Nationalite kids, idolizing one of their own. For those kids, Quentin could show that their fate wasn’t sealed, that someone like them could make it.
    “It feels ... it feels like anything is possible,” he said. “The Purist Nation people — not the rich rulers, not the priests and the mullahs, but the people — work harder and endure more oppression than any sentients in the galaxy. I’m proof that if Nationalites are given a chance, they can excel, they can dominate. Those who think my people can’t? They’re dead wrong.”
    A slow smile broke over Yolanda’s face, one that made Quentin nervous and he didn’t know why.
    “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
    With Yolanda’s question answered, thoughts of Jeanine returned. Quentin wanted out of the press conference, and he wanted out now. He’d done his part, answering questions asked by sentients who didn’t know what it was like to take a helmet in the throat, to play through a broken bone, to want to win so badly you’d cut off a finger just to stay in the game. Those reporters knew nothing about football, about the brutal reality of competing at the highest level — Quentin didn’t have the patience to put up with their ignorance for one moment longer.
    He slid his chair back and stood.
    Messal turned away from the podium mic so only Quentin could hear him.
    “Elder Barnes! If you leave now, Commissioner Froese will fine you!”
    “Let him,” Quentin said. “Money I’ve got.”
    He walked off the stage and into the hallways of the Shipyard, the home stadium of the Hittoni Hullwalkers.
    Quentin wanted to track down Bumberpuff. Had the Prawatt captain already found a ship that could reach the Portath Cloud? Would it be Bumberpuff’s old ship, the Grieve ? Quentin didn’t know. He couldn’t just book a passenger flight to the Cloud: for starters, no passenger ships went there, and even if they did, Gredok would find out where Quentin was headed and shut the trip down. Fred and Jeanine had taken Quentin’s yacht, the Hypatia , leaving Quentin no easy way to go rushing after them. So, he’d wait for Bumberpuff.
    Since there was nothing to do at that moment, and since Quentin had just won the shucking Galaxy Bowl, he decided he’d do his best to calm down, to relax as much as the situation would allow.
    He headed for the Ki baths.

2
    The Plan
    IF THERE WAS ANY VARIATION between the Ki baths from one facility to the next, Quentin couldn’t tell. Up on the Touchback , in the home locker room on Ionath, or even here at Hullwalkers Stadium in Hittoni on the planet Wilson 6, they all looked the same: faint purple lights filtering through hanging clouds of slowly moving steam, tile walls spotted with mold and moss, high-up spigots spraying down soft, steady streams of water, and an always-wet tile deck surrounding the most important part of all, the deep, round pool.
    His Ki teammates swirled slowly in their tightly packed, mostly submerged ball of thick serpentine bodies. After a game, even the Galaxy Bowl, the media rarely wanted to talk to linemen, so the Ki had come here to relax, to clean the blood and dirt from their battered bodies.
    Quentin stepped to the pool’s edge.
    “You guys mind if I listen to some music?”
    The twisting ball of Ki didn’t respond. With the Ki, that was the same thing as a yes .
    “Computer, play Trench Warfare, random track, shuffle through catalog.”
    The first song, “Entreaty to Reason,” came on. Quentin hadn’t spoken with Somalia Midori, the band’s lead singer, in months. He’d dated her, but distance and their careers — his football,