“Okay! Okay!” I shout to the crowd in the main hall, trying to get them to look in the same direction while they jockey for position among the bleacher seats. That was a mistake, putting out any kind of seats because now they’re trying to sort themselves by rank. I’m not sure what constitutes pirate rank. How many ships you’ve plundered? Slaves taken? People murdered? Maybe something simple like height? Dammit, we should have just put me up high and them down in a pit, which is where they all belong anyway.
“Welcome to the team and all that!” I tell them. “This is the part where we introduce ourselves, and do some inner team building to make sure we get off to a nice start. Well, that’s not gonna happen. Why? Not because you might try to kill each other, but because we don’t have the time. We play our first game in a week. One goddamn week! Other teams in the Tournament have had years to find the cohesion that will carry them to victory. I expect you to have it from the start. And to help in that regard, I’d like to introduce our offensive coordinator.”
Jager steps forward with his sizeable arms folded across his sizeable chest. His necklace of teeth rests above his scarred knuckles. He’s wearing a bright orange polo. “From this point forward,” he says, “until we win the Tournament, all blood feuds are suspended.”
“What happens if we lose?” someone calls.
“I will strike your names from the clans,” Jager responds. “I will take your wealth and scatter your children to your enemies. Win, and you will know glory that none other can claim, and no one can take away from you. From this point forward, we are now all part of the same clan, the Chipper Cl–” Jager stops and rolls his eyes at me. “We need a different name. I’m not asking these players to die for such a pussy title.”
“I got it, fellas,” I hear Laura say from behind me.
I turn to see her shooing away a couple of clansmen from a large object shrouded in gray cowling. It's gliding in front of her on a floating platform. It’s tall. It looks like a suit, but I’m not sure why she has it covered. Laura directs it up next to me and stops, then turns to me and says, “I heard you talking about the team name. I got it. The suits match, too, and it takes too long to reconfigure them, so we’re stuck with it.”
I try to catch her eye. She looks tired. I want to see if our relationship has graduated from animosity to neutral or even to ‘maybe I’ll forgive the bum’, but Laura doesn’t look at me.
“Stuck with what?” Jager asks.
Laura smirks at him and yanks off the shroud.
Oh. My. Head. The suit is three meters tall. It’s all black, covered in a strange matte surface I’ve never seen before. It seems to suck in all the light around it. Silver and gold highlights break up its visual black hole. The face plate is smooth like the Mall androids. The suit bears an aggressive crest, pauldrons, and breastplate. It isn’t a spaceball suit. It’s battle armor. Hell’s ninjas look like this. God! It’s so fucking sexy. Right smack in the middle of the breastplate, is a blazing gold star.
Laura opens her mouth to say something, and I raise my hand to stop her. I bet she’s going to call us something uplifting. Starburst or Sun Rays, some shit like that. I glance over my shoulder at the hardened men and woman behind me, and get a sudden idea.
“Jager, do you have a knife?”
He pulls a slim blade out of his sleeve and hands it to me.
I suck in a breath and drag the edge across my palm. Ow! Owowowow! I slap my hand over the gold star, leaving a bloody handprint. Fuck, this hurts!
I turn back to the team. “We’re called the Blood Suns.”
Jager smiles then, a dark grin as black as the suit. He looks out over the assembled players. “Welcome to your new family. From this day forward, until we win and you take your glory, we are the Blood Suns. Swear your oath.”
Fifty men and women approach the suit. Each one, every single one of them, slash their hands and leave their silent blood oaths on the armor itself. I stand there and nod to each one as they pass. I'm making eye contact with one after another, so I don't see them mark the armor. I hear it. Sharp gasps of determined breaths. Droplets of blood spattering on the floor. Slaps of wet flesh on metal.
Kissy is at the end of the line. Her expression is unreadable. She mimics the others and cuts her hand. Silver gel oozes from her palm. When she moves past me, I turn to look at what they've done. Handprints cover the armor. Mine is the only one on the breastplate. More than one handprint is in the middle of the groin area. Of course, they did. Kissy slaps the armor on the breastplate. Her blood gel sparkles and then fuses to the metal. She inclines her head at me and joins the others.
Laura takes the dagger and, as I watch in a mixture of blood-fueled mania and horror, cuts her hand. She puts one foot on the knee guard, hauls herself up with a grunt and slaps the faceplate. It won’t obscure the suit’s vision, but it makes for a macabre scene.
Jager claps me on the shoulder so hard my knees buckle. “This is your leader! Behold his armor! When you clash on the field of battle, look to him and remember the oath you make today. Remember who you are. And make sure the enemies you let leave the field feel terror in their guts. May you find glory and plunder! What is your name?”
The team roars as one. “BLOOD SUNS!”
“What do you call your clan, your family?”
“BLOOD SUNS!”
“Who goes beside you as you ride into harm’s way?”
“BLOOD SUNS!”
“What will they carve in stone to remember your passing?”
“BLOOD SUNS! BLOOD SUNS! BLOOD SUNS!”
***
I send everyone down to the armory to get fitted for their suits while I go looking for a first aid kit. I can only handle so much zeal in one day. The clansmen are looking downright religious. I wasn’t expecting a set of armor from all that, by the way. Coaches do not wear armor on the sidelines. But this isn’t a typical team and it sure as hell won’t be a typical Tournament.
The more I think about it, though, the more I like it. The idea of wearing the metal on the field, the feeling of invincibility it gives me, the – well, gave me. The last time I wore a spaceball suit, I didn’t leave the field in one piece. That reminds me, I need to ask Laura if it’s safe for me to even wear the damn thing. She’d said something earlier about the suits fusing to players with implants. I like the armor, sure, but I don’t want to be stuck in it for the rest of my life.
The ship’s infirmary is two decks down. A short time later I’m sitting on a bench with bluish nanogel working its magic on the gash running across my palm. I love these little guys, so small yet so efficient, numbing the pain and regenerating my cells from the inside out. I’m not squeamish, so I get a few minutes of entertainment out of watching my own surgery. The nanogel evaporates as it heals, and the medibot hovering over my shoulder sucks it out of the air for reuse.
“Sharp things are bad,” the bot says when it’s finished.
“Thanks for the advice.” I leave the infirmary and go looking for Bucky. I need to talk to him about the one missing player from the first team meeting – Dexter Cribbens.
Turns out I don’t need Bucky to find Cribbens. I step off the lift on the armory deck and find Cribbens getting an earful from a woman. She must be his mother, the way her tone sounds. I can’t see her face, but her voice. Wait a minute. She’s wearing some familiar clothes. Buckles and zippers.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! Jint? Is Just Jint really Jint goddamn Cribbens?”
The Echelon agent whirls around and for a split second I think her hand is going for one of the knives at her back.
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Dexter looks mortified. Me, the coach, has just seen him get dressed down by his mom in public. Not my best moment, either, if my adolescent memory serves me correctly. Hard to tell, I was pumped full of so many drugs and booze as a kid it’s a wonder I made it into my twenties with my original liver.
“You!” Jint hisses. “You signed him to your team!”
“I did. He tried out. He did an amazing job, I might add.”
“See Mom?” Dexter says, “I told you! I’m going to play!”
“Against my express permission!” Jint shouts, rounding on her son. “I brought you to the tryouts to watch! I did not bring you so you could get yourself killed playing for this lunatic!” She turns back to me. “I want you to get him out of his contract!”
I hold up my hands. “You two didn’t see how we just changed the name of the team, did you? I’m pretty sure Jager isn’t going to let him back out.”
Jint’s face turns gray. “Jager? Erik Jager?”
I nod. I assume she knows Jager because Echelon knows about everybody. “He’s the team’s offensive coordinator, and I’ll tell you right now that he’ll view a contract release as very offensive.”
She swallows back whatever retort she’d queued up and rubs her face with one hand. “Okay, Dex, you can play. But, Stern, if anything happens to him, I will hold you personally responsible.”
“Oh, no. Not a chance. In case you haven’t noticed, this is spaceball. I hired fifty pirates to play on a team that’s heading into the Tournament in a week. I can’t promise what will happen to him on the field, what with all the terrible danger kickers are in all by themselves in the middle of nowhere. If I were you, I’d be more concerned about all the trouble he’s going to get in off the field. Lord knows I would. Dexter’s contract says he has to have a chaperone. Well, if you want him to stay alive, I suggest you take up that burden.”
“Fine!” Jint says. “Dexter, go get fitted for your suit! I’ll wait for you here.”
“Really?” he asks, uncertain. “You don’t want to make sure –”
“Boy, do you really want her to change her mind?” I ask. “And do you want her hovering over you in a room full of clansmen? Not exactly the manliest thing I can think of.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
“Bring a nanogel pack with you,” I tell him.
“What for?”
“You’ll see when you get there.”
Dexter practically teleports into the armory, leaving me in the hallway with his pissed-off mother. Ah, shit. Laura is going to be furious when she finds out I invited this minx into the team’s entourage.
“If he gets hurt, I’ll kill you,” Jint promises when we were alone.
“Um, about that. Can that start after the fitting?”
“Why?”
Dexter’s shout sounds muffled through the door, cracking voice and all.
“What was that?” Jint demands.
“That was Dexter getting initiated. No worries, just a scratch, and nothing the nanogel won’t take care of. But let’s talk about a new subject, one that won’t get me stabbed. How did your boy get to be such a good kicker? I’ve never seen anybody make a kick like that unassisted.”
“He’s always wanted to kick for a spaceball team. He’s been practicing ever since he was a little boy.”
“Really? A kicker? Most guys want to be the quarterback.”
“Well, Dexter’s not ‘most guys.’ And remember my promise, Stern. He gets hurt–”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, waving my hand at her. “Don’t worry.”
The armory door opens, and Dexter emerges with a confused-looking Kissy in tow. My quarterback is wearing clothes, but her black fuck-me boots and leotard leaves nothing to the imagination. She's holding the hand of a teenager whose mother happens to be standing within easy range of kicking me in the nuts.
“Mom!” Dexter says, his eyes wide with excitement. “I want you to meet the quarterback! This is Kissy! She’s an android! She’s going to teach me how to talk to girls! Isn’t she amazing?”
Oh, no. This isn’t happening. I feel my day turn to absolute shit, hear the bells of doom and everything. This is worse than him getting hurt. Jint works for Echelon. She knows everything about everyone on this entire goddamn ship. Including Kissy. Parents usually see their pristine kids poisoned by a myriad array of forces over several years. In Jint’s eyes, it’s going to happen all at once, right here. Today. Jint will blame me for corrupting her son. I press myself up against the wall and try to turn invisible.
“Hello, you must be Dexter’s mother,” Kissy says, extending her hand to Jint. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Um, yes,” Jint says, taking Kissy’s hand.
“I can see where Dexter gets his enthusiasm,” Kissy goes on, “you must be a great spaceball fan to come all this way to see our tryouts.”
“I didn’t–”
“Don’t you worry, Dexter will be quite fine on the team. Everyone here is a consummate professional. He’ll learn a great deal while surrounded by such fine individuals.”
Kissy sounds so serious and her expression is so genuine that I almost believe her. Almost. Calling a bunch of clansmen fine individuals is as much an insult to them as it is to the fine individual population, who likely would take issue getting lumped into the same category with thieves and murderers.
“I know all about you, Miss Kissy,” Jint says, not letting go of Kissy’s hand. “I know what you did before the coach found you. I’m sure you’ll be on your best behavior around my son.”
“Mum!” Dexter protests with a groan. “I’m standing right here!”
“Oh, of course,” Kissy says. “You may feel at ease, I’m off the market for the entire tournament.”
That makes feel at ease, too, but I don’t say that. I actually keep my mouth shut this time. This could still go either way, and I don’t want to be known later as the tipping point before it all went bad.
Jint takes back her hand. “Dexter, I expect a call when you’re done with your suit fitting. No wandering off.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever.”
Jint watches her son skip back into the armory, fixes me with a hard glare, and then spins on one foot and stalks away.
“I have something to tell you,” Kissy says to me after Jint’s gone.
“What?”
“Can we go somewhere private?”
“Uh, sure,” I say. We find a room down the hall, full of whirring machinery but no people. “What’s this about, Kissy?”
“Do you have ocular implants?”
“Yes, every coach does so we can see our players out on the field.”
She holds up her hand. “Do you mind?”
“I’m lost, Kissy.”
“Just relax.” She places one hand over my eyes and I feel the other grip the back of my head. Not hard, but not gently, either. I’m about to ask again what she’s doing when a hallway appears in my mind as if I’m walking down it. It looks familiar.
“What am I looking at?”
“I’m replaying a memory from yesterday,” Kissy says. “One of mine. It’s important.”
“Is this why you asked if I had implants?”
“Yes. I can only interface like this with people who have them.”
“I assume there’s a reason for that.”
“Yes. Sometimes, people want to experience what it’s like to have sex from another person’s perspective. Saves them from the hassle of surgery, not even the nano-trial packs. This is an alternative method. If you want, I’ll do it for you for free, because you’re a friend.”
“Uh, no thanks. Let’s get this over with.”
***
Kissy is walking along the hallway. I’m not saying “we” and certainly not “I,” because that’s too fucking weird. I mean, c’mon, any moment Kissy is going to look down at her tits and I want this moment to be firmly in the third person. So, she’s walking along, her visual and audio sensor package taking in the people in the hallway. Kissy can see a lot. Heart rates, pupil dilation, body temperature, even a scanner that detects weapons and implants. She can deduce a person’s emotional state from their stance and their vitals, and even predict how they’ll react to different communication techniques. If Kissy ever goes into politics, we’re all screwed.
I realize that all the people around her are pirates. I know, practically all my players are pirates, and surely there will be pirates all over the ship. But these pirates are different. These are not the riffraff that currently call themselves Blood Suns. No, these are important pirates. They let Kissy pass, but I get the feeling that it isn’t a normal occurrence to let anyone walk near them without a confrontation. Something holds them back.
Kissy rounds a corner and I realize that something is someone. Erik Jager stands with three other men speaking in low tones. They break off when they see Kissy. A wordless exchange with Jager and the three men move a few paces away. They continue to converse among themselves but keep an eye on the newcomer.
Kissy ignores them and focuses on Jager. “I want to make sure there are no more incidents like the one today,” she says. “I apologize that I killed your clansman.”
Jager looks amused. “Everybody has the right to refuse an offer,” he says, “so long as they can defend themselves should that offer become a demand. If any innocents die because they refused and could not defend themselves, that blood is on their hands, not the demanding party.”
“That’s an odd way to look at it.”
Jager spreads his hands. “It is our way.”
“What if you lose?”
“There are no innocents among us. We make sure of that.”
“I’m sure you do. Still, I’d like it if you could encourage your people to let the matter rest,” Kissy says. “I’d hate to perforate any of my potential teammates, or their kin.”
“Ha! After that display this morning, I doubt anyone else will pester you. But if it makes you feel better, I will speak to them.” He holds out his hand. “Deal?”
Kissy takes it. “Deal.”
Flash forward to meeting Jint in the hallway and taking her hand to calm her down. Another flash, picture of Jint, picture of Jager, picture of Dexter, and then an image of twirling DNA strands.
***
“Okay!” I say, breaking the connection. “I get it! No need to induce a seizure.” So, Jint and Jager got together at some point and made Dexter. The boy must not know, which is why Jint’s so jumpy about Jager…hmm, I wonder if Jager even knows? The guy is pretty insistent about getting involved in the team, and he didn’t have to. Unless he’s a huge a spaceball fan and wants front row seats to the show, or is bored, or both. Who knows? I certainly don’t, and I decide to tuck this information away until the time comes when I’ll know what the fuck to do with it.
“You keep this to yourself,” I tell Kissy. “No sense in stirring anything up.”
“I agree,” Kissy says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make sure Dexter isn’t getting into too much trouble.”
“Good luck with that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was fifteen, too, Kissy. He’s going to have more opportunities for mischief than every other teenager in the universe.” I shake my head. “If I survive this adventure, please remind me not to do this again. Now go finish the fitting. Practice starts in a couple hours.”
“So soon?”
“Kissy, the Tournament starts in a week. We won’t be ready, not by a long shot.”
“What are you saying? Do you expect us to lose?”
“Yep.”
“What? You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Don’t look so worried. It will only be the first game.”
“How can you be sure?” Kissy asks.
“We’re not ready now, and we won’t be in a week. But don’t worry, Kissy, your teammates are the most competitive people in the universe. One game, Kissy, and one game only. I’d bet my career on it.”