The Starter Read Online Free PDF Page A

orange and black, crowd barriers being put up, general spit and polish on all areas for the parade that would kick off in a few hours. Some fans were already camped out behind the barriers, staking their places for the festivities. If this was how they celebrated promotion into Tier One, Quentin could only imagine what they would do for a Galaxy Bowl victory.
    The nightclub district ran along Fifth Ring Road. Fifth Ring was at the mid-point of the dome’s convex arc, the inner point where the mostly red, hexagonal buildings started getting smaller, going from the forty-story affairs at the city center to one-story flats at the dome’s edge. In the nightclub district, bars and restaurants packed the first two floors of almost every building. Fake exteriors done in hundreds of styles, colorful lights temporarily drowned out by the afternoon sun, holo-signs and other decorations calling out to potential patrons. Smooth, red crysteel started at the third floor and rose twenty to thirty stories above.
    Fifth Ring looked like the other ring roads: the wide dip of the mag-lev train track in the middle, supporting public transit cars that circled the city. On either side of the track, two lanes of road for cabs, trucks, and private cars. Outside lanes always carried clockwise traffic, inside lanes always ran counterclockwise.
    Pedestrian traffic tended to match this clockwise/counterclockwise pattern. John and Quentin were on the outside sidewalk, circling north. They walked among a diverse crowd made up mostly of Quyth Workers, but also peppered with plenty of Ki, Human, and HeavyG sentients. It was only noon and the area was already bustling — by the time the sun went down, the nightclub district would be so packed it could take ten minutes to exit one bar, go down the street a few buildings, and enter the next one. Despite the sweatshirt hoods, Quentin saw occasional smiles of recognition. He tried to ignore them and just keep walking.
    “It’s jumping,” Quentin said. “Seems busy for this early in the afternoon.”
    “Big sports day,” John said. “All kinds of stuff going down. Big hover-essedari race out in the wastes, so sentients are packing the bars to watch live coverage. Sklorno soccer championship league tourney is in the final four. That was last night, but it’s just broadcasting now. Oh, and in a few hours the Dinolition Derby signal reaches us from the League of Planets. I’ve got some big bucks on Lil’ Pete Poughkeepsie’s team.”
    “Dinolition?”
    John stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “You haven’t seen Dinolition?”
    Quentin shook his head. “Haven’t even heard of it.”
    AND YOU BELIEVE IN A HIGHER BEING?
scrolled across John’s face. “Oh, man, Q, you’re in for a treat. You think things are rough in the GFL? Try being a dwarf in turtle armor riding a seven-ton T-rex into a death match.”
    “You’re kidding, right?”
    “Hell no,” John said. “Dead serious. So yeah, a lot going on makes today a major sporgy.
    “Sporgy?”
    “An orgy of sports,” John said. “Sports orgy. Sporgy . And look, man, I want to help you find your parents and all, but I got games to watch so can we just get moving?”
    John looked annoyed. He shook his head, then started walking again. Quentin walked with him, not bothering to say that John had been the one to stop in the first place.
    “So,” Quentin said, “this guy is good?”
    “The best. Want a beer?”
    Quentin shook his head. He wanted to be totally sober for this. It felt good to finally take a step toward finding his parents. And yet, the fear lingered — what if he found out they were both dead? Then he was alone, no family at all. His teammates, sure, but no real family.
    Tweedy drained his beer and tossed the mag-can over his shoulder. It hit a passing Quyth Warrior in the head.
    “Hey, Human,” the Quyth Warrior said. “You pick that up.”
    Tweedy stopped, smiled, and turned around. Quentin sighed. They were trying to