The Milkmaids are a penal colony team. I know we’ve all heard of prison sports teams full of misunderstood inmates who get the chance to be part of something bigger than themselves – and while they may not win the big game, they’re better human beings for the experience. The Milkmaids are not one of those teams. They are the scariest motherfuckers you will ever meet. They’re all hardened criminals selected for combat based on how long they’ve survived the supermax Hysis penal colony. Prisoners get pushed out of a shuttle and left to fend for themselves with a jumpsuit, floppy shoes, and an eating utensil. It’s amazing how many people a determined individual can kill with a spork.
From the vids I’ve seen of Hysis, the prison is split into two kingdoms. One of them has walls and the other doesn’t. I think that walls in general represent some sort of challenge to those living outside of them, and the idea that there’s a place a person can’t go makes them unhinged. It might not be better in there, it could even be worse, but people won’t stop until they get in. If they can’t get in, then they try to tear it down. I guess what I’m saying is that the Hysis population fights a lot. I think Chippers owns a network that broadcasts all sorts of shows from inside Hysis – battle shows, character shows, redemption shows – you name it, there’s a show about it.
Anyway, the Milkmaids were the idea of some idiotic social scientist who thought that a spaceball team would create a bond between them and that they wouldn’t be at war all the time. It doesn’t really work, but they kept the team because of the ratings and equipment sponsorships. The selected Milkmaid doesn’t get new digs or live a life of luxury, either. They’re still in general population, which is why the Milkmaid roster in in constant flux. Sporks are a constant threat on Hysis.
The networks are all talking about the similarities between our teams. Thing is, all of the Milkmaids get caught. So I’m thinking that my guys are a bit smarter – but then I think about the average visitor to the KornerStone and figure that my team just lives in places cops are scared to visit.
I try not to pay too much attention to the ‘Net, though. I can learn about any subject, see it, hear it, and even smell it and touch it if I have the right sensory implants. I can have news feeds scrolling across my eyes if I want, little doorways into the universe happening around me. My problem with all that is that there’s so much information available that it deadens the experience of actually living. This is not to say that I don’t look up things from time to time, but it usually only occurs when I’m about to buy something and I want to get the reviews. Will it work as advertised, or will it blow up in my face and leave me disfigured for however long it takes for me to get to a hospital, that sort of thing.
I can learn almost whatever I want about other people using the ‘Net, too. Yes, even smell and touch with the right implants. Gross. I never do. Not even people I’m about to do business with, something Laura gives me shit about. I want my first impression to actually be a first impression, not a summary judgment of information I’ve already received and formed an opinion about. Call me old-fashioned. Go ahead, I won’t get offended.
I do use the ‘Net for team research, though. The information gathering app that’s built into my sensory suite is amazing. I ask it questions like “List all strategies the Milkmaids have played over the past 100 years, and group them by similarity.”
Bam! I get this list:
Head-hunting.
Murder.
Intimidation.
Brute force blitzes.
Penalty attrition.
Ice hockey passing.
Okay. So not a lot of spaceball techniques. I check out the last one, because that seemed like sports, passing a lot – only to find out that they practice this trick with live hand grenades. I wonder how many of the Milkmaids have hand replacement implants.
I’ve played against teams like the Milkmaids before. Momma’s Bunch is the obvious one here, but it’s not like I’m doomed to repeat the trauma and eternal psych-out of the day I lost my arm. There are plenty of teams in the league who’ve discovered that their planet’s population really digs it when they play demolition derby instead of spaceball, and pays them handsomely for it. The trouble here is that most wrecking teams have the intelligence to tone it down a bit when playing against a bunch of pirates. Not the Milkmaids. They’re all rabid.
Maybe we can just lose this one. Throw it. It’s the last game before the playoffs and we’re undefeated. We’re locked in already. It’s common practice to relax on the last game. Save the best players, let them rest before the playoffs.
I think about explaining to Jager that I want to throw the game. The idea makes me sick to my stomach. Jager probably has that Veeni mifi knife lying around somewhere. Maybe he’ll make my death spectacular. Nah, he’ll be pragmatic about it. He’ll shove me out an airlock.
Then there’s Laura. I gotta get her to the championship game, and I have to guarantee that the whole universe is watching. An undefeated team of misfits is irresistible. Besides, I know she’ll cheat if it looks like we can’t win, but she has enough on her plate and doesn’t need to do my job, too. I’d never hear the end of it.
Before Laura filled me in on what’s really going on, I wanted to win because A: it’s nice to win, and B: it would’ve been an Eternal Fuck You to the Spaceball League. I can come out of retirement, slap a team together in two weeks, and win your fucking circus. Now I have a whole war riding on my shoulders, and my wife has placed a ridiculously large bet on me pulling through for her and the rest of the universe.
Urgh. This is why I don’t like getting involved in the big Tapestry of Life. Too many threads. It seems too big for one person, and my ego isn’t large enough to delude myself into thinking I’m sufficiently important to make a lick of difference. But somebody does, and I’ll be damned if I let her down. What’s my next move, then? Well, I have to beat the Milkmaids and I have to do it without losing half my players.
I’m still dwelling on it when someone knocks on my door. “Open,” I say, and then immediately regret not getting up to check. People are trying to kill me, and here I am letting just anybody in. It’s Jint. One look at her face and my fight or flight instinct very nearly engages.
“Have you come up with a plan against the Milkmaids?” she demands.
“I’m working on it right now,” I tell her.
“And?”
“I never give out my game day strategies, Jint, not to anybody.”
“I know. It’s one of your more irritating habits.”
“You know my habits?”
“Echelon, remember? I know everything about you.”
That makes me uncomfortable. There are a lot of things I know about me that make me uncomfortable. For instance, the idea of somebody else with the details of that awful summer day with Jenny Winters when I was thirteen makes me want to throw up. I shake off the memory and say, “So why are you asking for something you already know I’m not giving?”
“I know all about the Milkmaids,” she says. “I want to know how you’re going to protect my son from them.”
“Dexter is a kicker. They’ll never be near him.”
“I don’t want him on the same field as the Milkmaids,” she says.
“He will be tonight,” I say. “And he’ll still be a kicker, which means the other team isn’t allowed to touch him. So I fail to see what the problem is.”
“If the Milkmaids read the team roster and make the connection that Dexter is my son, then they’ll go out of their way to touch him.”
“Am I to understand that you put some of the Milkmaids on Hysis?” Please say no, please say no.
“Yes,” Jint says. “Four of them. Every single one of them is a degree of degenerate you have never encountered.”
“I dunno, I’ve met a lot of degenerates.”
“The worst go to Hysis. I had help putting them there, too, and I’m the last member of my team left alive.”
I study her. “You’re the last alive because you have a dangerous line of work, or you’re the last alive because you’re being hunted down one by one?”
“Hunted,” she admits.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“How does it feel?”
“I’m sorry?”
“That pit in your stomach is what happens to everybody when you say ‘I’m Echelon.’ How does it feel?”
Her jaw drops. “I can’t believe how insensitive you are! I’m standing here telling you that my son is in danger from a group of disgraced Echelon wet workers, and you’re playing armchair psychologist? How do you get off saying something like that to me?”
“Wow.”
Her brows furrow. “Wow, what?”
Wow, I’m surprised I haven’t been slapped. I’m not telling her that, though. “Just, wow.”
“Wow, WHAT?”
“How did you ever get to be in Echelon, anyway?” I ask her. “You’ve given away a lot of secrets in the past five minutes.” I tick them off my fingers. “You’ve told me details about your Echelon operations. I know about how some of the Milkmaids don’t like you. You’re on the run. And some of the Milkmaids are former Echelon. Is there anything else you’d like to share while you’re at it? I’m big on the sharing these days. Let’s get it all out in the open so I know where the steaming piles of shit are. I really hate stepping in other people’s crap.”
She steps forward and shakes her finger under my nose. “You protect my son on the field.”
“He’ll be fine,” I say.
She gives me another glare and then walks away.
“I have a plan,” I murmur to myself.
I do have a plan. It’s somewhere in my head, I just know it. Coaxing it out might take some effort, though.
***
I go out to the observation deck to have my lunch. Make a little picnic of it. Maybe the big open space will help me think of a strategy, maybe I can visualize the players and how they’ll move around on the field. Mostly, I just visualize my guys getting torn up and killed. Lunch sucks.
The Milkmaids’ strength, besides their intimidating roster, is the fact that they play every game like it’s their last. They really, really do. It’s one thing to think like it’s your last game, and to treat every opponent like they’re the ones to send you home, but that’s just a psychological tool regular players use to focus their energy on game day. You can’t actually think that the entire time, because the whole point of the regular season is to get to the end. The Milkmaids don’t think the same way. I look up their game day rosters for last season, and discover that their entire team rotated players out six times. They churned through six entire strings of players to get to the end of the season. Either in their games or between them, the Milkmaids lost nearly five players a week. Jesus.
I hear heavy footsteps. Crazy Eddie hunches his way through the door. It’s the first time I’d seen him within three meters since the day I recruited him. I know he’s been spending all of his free time on Freehaven in-between games and practices. This isn’t a “Hey, how’s it going” kind of meeting, this is an “Um, can I talk to you?” one.
“Can I talk to you, Coach?” he asks.
“Sure, Eddie,” I say. “What’s on your mind?”
“The Milkmaids.”
“What about them?”
“We got a good game plan for beatin’ them tonight?”
“We do, Eddie,” I lie. “I’m counting on you being there for us, just like you have all season.”
“Thanks, Coach. I won’t let the team down. The reason I wanted to talk, though, is that when I was on Pronos, I heard about the Milkmaids from the other inmates. The things people said about ‘em, they, they–”
“Do the Milkmaids scare you, Eddie?”
He thinks for a moment, and then says, “Yeah, Coach. They do.”
Oh, we’re fucked. This giant of a man just stands there and admits that the Milkmaids give him the willies. “They’re just people, Eddie. They’re nastier than you, they’ve done far worse things than you, and they probably think bad thoughts all day long, but they’re just people. They’re scared, too.”
“Of what?”
“Of going back to Hysis.” I have a crazy thought that perhaps we could turn the Milkmaids, get to them somehow and promise them asylum, but then I remember that four of them will kill Jint and her son, so no, that option is out. Back to fearing for our lives. “Would you want to go to Hysis?”
“No way, Coach!”
“So imagine how they feel, and they’ve been there already. And if they make it through the game, they have to go back. Your average Milkmaid is a suicidal player. That makes them vulnerable.”
“How do you figure?” Eddie asks.
“They’ll take risks we won’t, and create opportunities for us where we usually wouldn’t get any. You’ll have more interceptions than usual, because they’ll throw it when they shouldn’t. We’ll get more completions because they’ll blitz Kissy when they shouldn’t. We–”
“I’m not worried about that stuff, Coach,” Eddie interrupts me.
“What, then?”
“I hear what the Milkmaids do with their sporks.”
“Eddie.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you really think Laura would let you fly around in something that could be damaged by a goddamn utensil?”
“Well, no, but–”
“And do you think she would give you a suit that wouldn’t protect you from assholes like the Milkmaids?”
“No, but–”
“Eddie, she told me that if I’d been wearing your suit back when I played, I’d still have my own arm. Do you think she’d make that promise lightly?”
“No, Coach.”
“Are you still scared of the Milkmaids, Eddie?”
He thinks for another minute. “Maybe a little. But not as much as before. Thanks, Coach.”
“You’re welcome.”
He leaves, probably feeling a bit better about himself, a bit less frightened, and a bit more confident that his coach has a plan to win.
I hope I can deliver.
***
I retreat to the bathroom later that afternoon to get away from everyone. It seems like half the team is stopping by to see how I’m doing, and whether or not I have a plan to keep everybody alive in the Milkmaids game. So here I am sitting on the can and doing a word search puzzle to keep the bad thoughts out of my brain. I’ve done my business. I’m just procrastinating instead of putting my pants back on.
I hear the door open. Then heels. I look up, though I can’t see anything except the stall walls. I hold my breath. Maybe if I don’t make any noise, they’ll do whatever it was they came in to do, and never know I was here.
“Stern?”
What the fuck? “Janine?”
“I thought you’d be in here, hiding like a little girl.” Her voice and her heel strikes move closer to the stalls.
I put my pants on in case she gets any funny ideas. When the toilet is done auto-flushing I say, “It was the quietest place around until you walked in.” I open the stall door. She’s standing just outside and has to back up. “What can I do for you today?”
“You can tell me what you’re planning for the Milkmaids.”
For fuck’s sake, not her, too. “Why would I tell you that?”
“So I can tell Bucky and then he can tell all of the players who are begging him for details. They can’t get anything out of you. You’re making him miserable, and when he’s miserable, I’m miserable.” She steps closer and shakes her finger at me. “You do not want to make me miserable, Mr. Stern.”
That’s very brave of her, considering what happened to her the last time she got in my face. I decide to be nice. I got laid last night. I’m feeling at one with the universe. “I don’t tell anybody my game day strategies,” I say. “I think you’d be hard pressed to find a coach who does.”
“This is different.”
“What’s different about this is that you’re standing in the lavatory badgering me about it. What’s different about this is that you seem to feel like you’re entitled to information that I wouldn’t tell my mother. But do you know what’s really, truly different about this?”
“You have no idea what to do about the Milkmaids, do you?” she asks.
The fight leaks right out of me. “No, not really,” I admit. I go over to clean my hands. I wave them through the blue forcefield in the wall, and it removes all the germs from my skin that aren’t supposed to be there. “You caught me, I have no idea. At least not yet. Something will pop, I just have to think about it some more.”
Janine laughs at me. “You’re not going to figure it out,” she says. “There’s nothing to figure out with the Milkmaids. They kill their opponents. It’s simple. They don’t play to win. They play to kill. Usually in the most spectacular way they can manage. You can’t figure out how to beat them on a spaceball field if they’re not there to play spaceball. Look, I know you don’t know what to do, and that probably pisses you off. Maybe more now that I’m standing here telling it to you. But you have to know that regular tactics aren’t going to work with the Milkmaids.”
I pull my hands out, cleaner than an operating table. “And you have an idea to fix that?”
“It’s the only one that will work.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Stop thinking that the only attack your offensive coordinator can manage is on the field.”
I wait for the rest of her idea, but that’s it. “Are you suggesting that I ask Jager to wipe out on an entire team?”
“Nope,” Janine says, then starts for the door. “All I’m suggesting is that you ask him for some advice.”
She leaves. I stare at the door for a few minutes, trying to figure out if there’s another way. Just because I don’t have a plan to beat them isn’t a good enough reason to request the wholesale slaughter of a spaceball team. I can stomach quite a few things, but this is too much. Then I think about Laura and the burden riding on her shoulders. Am I willing to risk her plans on the off-chance I can pull a win over the Milkmaids out of my ass? The simple answer is no. Good thing I’m a simple guy.
I still feel like throwing up all the way to see Jager.
***
The pirate godfather is in the same corridor on Freehaven that Kissy showed me when she found out about Dexter’s heritage. He has the same guys standing around him, too. They have looks on their faces that say they knew why I’m here, and what I’m about to ask. I hate being predictable.
“Hi, Jager,” I say, “I thought I’d find you here.”
“Why?” he asks. “You have never been here before.”
“Ah, never mind about that. I want to talk to you about the Milkmaids.”
Jager smiles at me. “No luck finding answer in bathroom?”
“How did you know I was – no, don’t say anything. Look, I’m not sure I can beat them on the field, not without losing half our players. I don’t want to lose everybody at once like that, the team will never recover.”
“But lose one player is okay?”
“A team can bounce back from one player,” I say. “Rage and payback and all that. Six or seven people at once, though, that’s tough.”
“How can I help?”
“Any ideas on how to keep the Milkmaids from playing tonight?” I ask. “Something non-lethal?”
Jager grins at the last part. “Yes, I do. Did.”
“Did what?”
“Did already.”
“I’m sorry?”
Jager claps his hand on my shoulder. I see it coming and try not to flinch. “I heard you have trouble,” he says, leading me away from the other men. “I have trouble myself. You see, I want to destroy Milkmaids before they destroy us. Self-defense, yes? And perhaps boon to universe, they are not men. Animals in armor are animals all the same. But put hit on team would be, as you say, bad precedent. Never in history of League has this happened. Our fear should not rule us to break tradition. So I keep Milkmaids away without killing them. Easy. It is good you came to see me.”
He lets go of my shoulder. We’re at the end of the corridor, at the exit. Jager turns to go back, and I realize I have no idea what he’s talking about. Do I want to know? Is it good enough that we won’t be playing the Milkmaids tonight, or do I really have to be aware of the circumstances that make that possible?
I open my mouth to ask.
Jager raises his hand without turning around.
I close my mouth.
He puts his hand down and keeps going.
***
We don’t play that night. A mysterious virus gets into Hysis’ network and shuts down everything. Shuttles, satellites, anything with a whisper of technology in the penal colony goes silent. It’s the first time an entire planet has gone dark since the war. The Milkmaids forfeit the match.
Jager is wearing a small, secret smile the next time I see him. I don’t ask about Hysis. He won’t tell me if I did. What I do know is that the man clearly has connections outside the pirate clans. He made a whole planet shut down for a day.
Say what you want about the Milkmaids.
The scariest motherfucker I know wears pink shirts.