Modeled after gridiron football, the ancient sport still played in atmo by teams too poor to afford exosuits, spaceball evolved over the centuries into a serious cash cow for advertising conglomerates, sports apparel manufacturers, and medevac companies. Teams are still composed of quarterbacks, linemen, tight ends, pass receivers, defensive linebackers, special teams, and even a kicker. The goal is to score touchdowns and field advancement is measured in downs, though instead of just one hundred yards, the field is now a kilometer in length. Players trade pads and cleats for reinforced ulenium exosuits. Assault and battery is allowed, even encouraged, and hardly any game ends without a maiming or suspicious death.
Before I exit the sleeping tube, I call an old friend, someone I know I can count on in a tight spot. I’m in a vise. I let the call ring twenty times before I pay the extra fifty credits to override. I’m rewarded with the image of a sixty-year-old man doing the horizontal tango with a girl a third his age, in full motion color. It’s like a space wreck – I’m revolted but I can't tear my eyes away. That’s the downside to cranial comm implants. I really can’t look away. I could’ve ended the call to make the nightmare stop, but fifty creds is fifty creds.
“Bucky!” I finally manage to shout. “Answer your damn vid!”
The girl shrieks and Bucky yells, “Goddamn it, Rick! Can’t a man get laid without you peeping over his shoulder?” He rolls off the girl, giving me a great view. Bucky’s wrinkled face appears in the way.
I consider him the best defensive coordinator alive, though you wouldn’t know it to look at his record. He lost more than he won, a statistic I blame on faulty players. If he had guys crazy enough to do what he wanted, he’d win every game. Good thing I know where to find people like that, but Bucky isn’t going to be happy about it. “Bucky, if you would just get the comm implant, I wouldn’t have to—”
“You know I don’t do that fucking implant shit,” he snaps.
“I saw your balls flop back and forth. I can’t un-see that. I’m gonna need a shitload of therapy.”
“Well, what’s so goddamn important?”
“Get yourself together and meet me in Freehaven. I need your help to put together a team.”
“Early to be looking at next year, ain’t it?”
“It’s late. We play in two weeks.”
Bucky snorted. “This is a joke, right? I thought you was banned. And aren’t you supposed to be in a freezer?”
“I was, on both counts. Paul Chippers is the money, and he swung a deal.”
“Deal? What kind of deal?”
“Lots of bribes.”
“And why are we meetin’ in Freehaven, of all places?”
“Because most of the players I want to hire are there.”
Bucky spat on the floor. Indoors, outdoors, he doesn’t care. The universe is his spit cup. “From the clans? From the fuckin’ clans? Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?”
“I need a team that can beat the Andosians. They’re telepathic. Every player knows what all his teammates know. I want to overwhelm them with the most brutal offensive line I can get on short notice. The clans are the place to get it.”
Instead of expensive wars, the pirate clans on the Rim settle most of their territorial disputes with games of spaceball. No holds barred contests sans referees. Victorious teams usually win not by score, but by being the only ones left standing at the end of the day. Nobody hires clan players because the personal injury insurance rates cost more than their entire roster. They don’t have Paul Chippers footing the bill.
“Well, if you want crazy, then you picked a helluva place to get it. It’s in the water out there. How long I got?” Bucky asks.
“I’m still Pronos, and I’ve got a couple of stops on the way. Say, two days?”
“I can do that. What’re we called?”
I tell him.
“Aw, fuckin’ hell, Rick.”
***
I take a shuttle over to the Pronos Penitentiary Facility, a penal colony built on the southern pole. We’re talking right on top of the damn thing, too, so cold my dick shrinks to the size of my pinky toe upon exiting the shuttle. I find the man I’m looking for on a long list of pending transfers, and arrange for a room to brief the prisoner. He comes to the room escorted by six nervous guards. I say nervous because the human tank standing between them can probably eat a shock stick and shit out a light bulb.
Crazy Eddie is seven feet tall and weighs over four hundred pounds. I can’t remember if he has a surname. After looking into eyes that hold more than a hint of madness, I decide Crazy is an apt first name for the best pass blocker in the universe. It’s rumored he can teleport, but of course only when no one is looking. Crazy Eddie refuses to use an environment sleeve inside of his exosuit, thereby making any breach of the protective shell fatal. He says it allows him to move faster. I figure he just doesn’t like the suit sock. The sock is a one-piece jumpsuit that regulates all sorts of physical things but has the tensile sensation of wearing a blanket of squirming worms. So yeah, gross.
“I know you,” Crazy Eddie pronounces as soon as the guards leave the room. “You’re that mad bastard who shot a bee a few years back. How come you’re not in here with me?”
“I got off with community service,” I say. “What’re you doing in here, Eddie?”
“Mix-up.”
“Always is.”
“I knew you’d understand.”
“I need you to play for me, Eddie.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he says, gesturing at the walls with hands larger than my head, “I’m kinda stuck here.”
“What’s the buyoff set at?” I ask. Crime has a price. Oh, I’m not talking about the sociological costs, or the victim’s pain, or that kind of shit. Crime has an actual cost, in credits. Prison companies design their detention centers to be so nasty that you’ll sell your own mother to get out of one. Sort of a store with products you don’t ever want to buy, and with no exits. Ever hear people ask if the rich can do anything and get away with it? Well, if they’re rich enough, then the answer to that question is a definitive yes. Yes, they can.
“Half a mil,” Crazy Eddie says.
“I’ll have you out of here in twenty minutes.” I pause, and then say, “If you want to play, that is.”
“Hell, yeah! Who’s running the team?”
“Me. I got the ban lifted.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“Paul Chippers is backing the team. Know who he is?”
“Doesn’t he own a couple of big companies?” Crazy Eddie asks.
I nod. Slow, so he won’t get confused. “That’s right, Eddie. I’m going to put some traveling expense credits in your account. After you’re released, get to Freehaven by Wednesday. We start then.”
“Two days is all I get?”
I don’t want to give him even that, but I’m sure as hell not going to travel with him. “How long is your sentence?”
“Ten years.”
“What would you rather have, ten years or two days?”
He thinks about it. “I guess I’ll take the two days. What did you say the name of the team was?”
“I didn’t. You don’t want to know, Eddie. See you in Freehaven.”
***
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
My next stop isn’t really a stop. It’s a Hail Mary, shot in the dark, pee in the middle of the night without turning on the lamp in the lavatory and going by sonar, whatever you want to call it. I find a charter pilot and pay her ten large to haul my ass out to the Fleet training grounds on the other side of the Pronos solar system. The pilot isn’t crazy about flying near Fleet Marine starfighters armed with live shots, but she’s crazy about spaceball. Once I tell her who I am and what I’m doing, she forgets that we were heading unannounced into a shooting range.
“I can’t believe I’m flying with the real Rick Stern,” the pilot says for the hundredth fucking time since I stepped onboard. Her name is Luci.
A half-dozen starfighters buzz us. I see cannons and missiles all over them and my stomach lurches. “Don’t you have to send some code, so we don’t get blown up?” I ask.
“Oh, don’t worry honey, I won’t let anything happen to you,” she says, and then mashes her hand on her control panel. The starfighters even out in front and somebody came over the intercom and tells us to follow them. Luci wiggles her fingers at me. “See? Magic fingers! Bet you’re wondering what else they can do, eh, big boy?”
We dock with the local station and I disembark from the ship into the not-so-welcoming arms of the Fleet Marines.
“Luci said she had priority cargo,” the guy in charge says. “Who’re you?”
“My name is Rick,” I say. “I need to see Laura Rivens.”
“Are you expected?”
“Nope, and I’m trying to keep it a surprise.”
The marine shakes his head. “First, Miss Rivens is not fond of surprises, and two, she works in a restricted area. I don’t think you qualify as authorized personnel.”
“It’s Mrs.,” I tell him.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s Mrs. Rivens. She’s married.”
The marine frowns. I watch the guy’s fantasy evaporate from his eyes. “What?” he asks. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
I give him a lopsided grin. “That sorry bastard would be me.”
***
Laura and I met back when I was the coach for the Helios Hawks. She was in charge of the exosuits, making sure they were combat – I mean, game – ready. We had the usual whirlwind romance, ending up with a drunken wedding neither of us remembered and I was sure didn’t mean anything. We made a great team, with me devising clever plays and her blurring the lines between legal and completely immoral suit mods. We would’ve made the Cup that year, but then I slept with somebody I shouldn’t have, shot a bee, and discovered Laura was sincere about the whole married thing. I got banned and she was gone.
Mrs. Rivens arrives on the hanger deck eight minutes after I tell the Marine who I am. First time in two years I’d seen her, and she looks just as mad. By the way, anybody who tells you “time heals all wounds” has never been married – nobody can hold a grudge like your wife. So, don’t trust that sweet smile for a second, because in the back of her head she’s planning your absolute destruction.
She stalks right up to me, her black hair bouncing on her shoulders in that nice way I’ve always adored and punches me square in the mouth. Put her back into it, locked her wrist, the whole ninety meters. My legs disappear at the hip. I don’t remember hitting the deck, but there I am, staring at the gray plating and wondering why the hell I didn’t expected that.
“Hey hon,” I say, checking my teeth with my tongue. All there. “Nice to see you, too.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” she shouts at me. “No, don’t tell me. You’ve got some harebrained plan to make a quick credit, or some shit. You need me to build you something that will never work, not unlike our marriage, I might add. Why don’t you take your fucking sorry broke ass back to whatever rock you climbed out from under? Leave me the fuck alone!”
Then she kicks me in the stomach. I was just getting up, too. Laura pulls her foot back for another go and I decide once is enough, thanks.
***
It’s sometime in early 2840 and I’m about to have a really bad day. I’m hazy on the exact date. I know I’d just turned 23 but thank God it wasn’t my actual birthday because it would’ve made that day into a real shitty one for the rest of my life. It starts out pretty good, though. I wake up from a dream and find the girl who was in it doing exactly what I’d dreamt she’d done with my morning wood. Come to think of it, after comparing all the mornings I’ve experienced since that one, it’s fair to say that day started out absolutely fucking incredible.
Her name is Mandy and she dates spaceball quarterbacks. We’ve been together three weeks, ever since her ex-boyfriend got creamed and I went from backup QB to the real deal. Finally. You’d think that in a universe this big there’d be enough spaceball teams to accommodate all the players. But no, somebody still has to get their goddamn chest cavity crushed to advance your career.
Along with my promotion I also got the quarterback’s suite. I get my own bunk with my own shower and enough room to stand up without banging my face on a bulkhead. It even has a window overlooking the field – not that there’s anything there, this being space and all. But it’s nice to peer out and imagine how I was going to obliterate the team we’re playing today. Some upstart from the Rim called Momma’s Bunch – a sure sign of no sponsors and shitty suits. I see us flying in tight formations while the Bunch flounders around. I see me there in the pocket. Launching the ball even as their linebackers close in, watching them adjust course and shoot past me. My long-range optics sees the red streak of the spaceball caught in the end zone, adding yet another TD to our ever-increasing score. Then my eyes roll up in my head because Mandy can do amazing things with her tongue.
Right after that my great morning rolled off a goddamn cliff.
The suit technician assigned to me that day didn’t have his coffee, or breakfast, or a morning blowjob, or whatever the guy needed to set him on his feet, because he nearly breaks my hand putting on my suit.
“Jesus, Mike!” I shout. “My fingers go in one hole each, not all in the fucking thumb!”
All motion in the fitting room stops dead. It’s a big room. Thirty people are stuffing themselves into suits. Lots of technicians and robots and tubes and wires and hissing oxygen. Enough electronic whizzbang equipment to build a whole starship. They all freeze. I can feel terror ooze into the room. A soft creeper along the floor that’s invisible but if it touches your foot, you’re a goner. Injuring a quarterback before a game means somebody is going to die. Always happens. Don’t ask me why. It’s just one of those things.
“Would you all stop fucking staring at me?” I say to them. I wiggle my fingers at them. “My hand is fine.”
The room jumpstarts back to frenzied activity. It’s a little forced.
I gave Mike the finger. “Try not to break it off, asshole.”
Mike shrugs. “Whoops.”
The game starts with a shitty snap and awful field position and it seems like it takes us all goddamn day to march down the field and score. That touchdown costs us the entire first quarter and three of my receivers. Momma’s Bunch are animals. I mean, it’s normal to have collisions, but these fuckers seem like they’re in a demolition derby instead of a spaceball game.
Turns out, demolition is all they’re good at. When they get the ball, we intercept it on the first play.
Intercepting a spaceball, a tiny, little fucking ball in the vastness of the arena, means one of two things. Either you can be in the right place at the right exact time and should be buying lottery tickets, or the offensive coordinator for that team is a moron. And he’s serious about it, because it takes real skill to fuck up like that.
So, I zoom back out onto the field, call the play, take the snap, and look for my receiver who is supposed to be where my playbook says he’ll be aaaaat right now!
He isn’t.
I check the little green dots on my suit’s heads-up display that show me where everybody is. My receiver’s callout box is flashing red and indicates that he’s in three different places. His suit’s emergency medical suite is having a real hard time keeping the biggest chunk of him alive.
Then I notice that there’s a green dot behind me, and it belongs to one of my offensive tackles. That is not a good place for him to be. Through the big gaping hole in my offensive line charges two Momma’s Bunch enforcers. Oh, the real term is linebackers, but in spaceball, these guys are the enforcers. They have one job, and one job only. Fuck up the quarterback.
My suit has an inertial dampener, so when they crash into me I hear the dull screech of metal on metal rather than feel it. We go end over end, and I can tell from my HUD that they’ve grappled me. To this day, I can remember the words that slice through my head.
fuckfuckFuckFuckFUCKFUCKFUCK!!!!!!!
Here’s why: it’s tough for referee cameras to tell what’s happening between suits that are stuck together and careening through space.
I hear more metal screeching. Then the hull breach alarm klaxons go off, great loud screams in my ears that go well with my own screams. One enforcer has an ulenium cutter and it passes clean through my right shoulder.
My arm goes flying.
The enforcers push off of me. I can hear them laughing on the All-Suits Commlink. It’s where players taunt each other during the game. We tell each other how many times we’ve fucked the other guy’s mom, his girlfriend, and his baby sister who’s not even out of grade school yet. There are things you just don’t say to people, not without expecting to get shot, and the ASC hears all. Okay, okay I might have said some unflattering things about the other team. Everybody does it, sure, but I didn’t say anything that warranted this kind of treatment.
My suit’s medical package knocks me out while the internal shield system closes off the big hole in my suit. I end up on a hospital ship next to the recent team quarterback, who’d gotten a new ribcage to replace his shattered one. I get a new arm. Sure, the cybernetics are seamless. I have nerves and skin and even fingernails that grow, but it doesn’t work quite the same. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night and can’t feel anything past my shoulder. Not interested in experiencing that sensation anywhere else on my body, I decide to retire from playing.
I never see Mandy again.
***
So, I’m really careful not to crush all her toes when I grab Laura’s foot and yank her off her feet. The sound of her butt smacking off the deck is very satisfying. I pull her leg across my stomach until she’s straddling my chest. I sit up and cover her mouth before she can say anything that I’d regret hearing.
“Before you try to bite my fingers –” I start, she tries, I grab her hair and pull hard, she stops. “I’m not broke, I’m coaching again, Paul Chippers is the money, and he’s written me a blank check to win the Cup. So, I need a suit expert, and you’re the best. Always have been, always will. You can hate me if you want, and I’m sorry for that, but I need you. Name your price.” I let go of her.
She stares at me for a bit. “Ten million.”
“It’s yours.”
“And a divorce.”
“Sure,” I say, a little disappointed. I just let her beat me up, after all. But whatever, okay, anything to get her to sign on.
The corner of her mouth twitches. Laura rolls off me and stands up. I follow, a bit slower. “Is that a yes?”
“I’ll think about it,” she says over her shoulder, already walking away.
“Then I’ll see you in Freehaven,” I say.
She stops. Turns around. Stares. “That has got to be the craziest, stupidest, most asshole thing you’ve ever cooked up. The clans? The fucking clans? I might as well say no right now and save myself the trouble. All they care about is the size of their dicks and how many virgins they’ve fucked at one time.”
Always a classy girl. “I need crazy,” I tell her. “No, more than that, I need off the wall, one step away from an asylum, homegrown fucking psychotic. There’s only one place to find people like that, people that play no holds barred spaceball and crawl out of the arena alive. One place. Freehaven.”
“Yeah, if you can point them all in the same direction,” she says.
“I believe that’s what you call a ‘coach’ these days.” I dust off my pants. “Anyway, if you feel like you’re up to it, I mean, if you haven’t gotten rusty or anything, or you’ve lost the touch, I understand, and I can find somebody else to–”
“Do you want another fucking punch in the mouth?”
I grin at her. “See you in two days.”