A day in Unto Manninen’s life
Unto Manninen adjusted his reinforced titanium chest plate, feeling the familiar ache in his lower back as he pushed off across the frozen filth. At sixty-four, he was the oldest hooman still crazy enough to wear the black-and-white stripes in the Spare Parts Arena. He’d seen Gorks eat their own sticks and Radiunai try to skate on limbs that shouldn’t exist, but tonight’s “Grudge Match” was a different kind of headache.
The Radiunai were what happened when hooman DNA spent a millennia marinating in the glowing filth of the wasteland between megacities. They weren’t quite hooman anymore, and they certainly weren’t Gorks. They were a chaotic grab-bag of mutations. Their roster looked like a circus from hell. One Radiunai defenseman had three arms—perfect for holding a stick and an opponent’s throat at the same time—while their winger was a spindly thing with translucent skin and bioluminescent veins that pulsed a sickly yellow every time he breathed.
Unto reached into his pocket and felt the cold, comforting weight of his brass knuckle dusters. In this league, a whistle was just a suggestion; a lead-weighted punch to a green or glowing jaw was a definitive ruling.
“Listen up, you overgrown cabbages,” Unto growled as he skated between the two teams, looking up at Volkov and then over at the Radiunai captain, a man whose legs had been replaced by thick, chitinous insectoid limbs that skittered over the ice with terrifying grip. “I see a tooth on the ice before the puck drops, I’m sending someone to the cage. And you,” he turned to the three-armed defenseman, “keep that extra hand off the Gorks’ jerseys or I’ll break it. Clear?”
The Radiunai captain clicked his mandibles in a way that sounded like a threat. Unto didn’t blink. He just tightened his knuckles.
He dropped the puck and moved with a surprising, fluid speed born of decades on the ice. You didn’t stay still in the Spare Parts Arena—not unless you wanted to be part of the foundation. Unto carved a sharp arc away from the center just as Volkov turned center ice into a slaughterhouse. A spray of dark red blood hit the industrial mesh, and Unto checked his watch. Four seconds. A new record.
Unto skated through the chaos with the weary eyes of a man who had seen too much, expertly weaving between the massive, lumbering bodies. The Radiunai played with a strange, twitchy desperation. The three-armed defenseman was a menace, but not all mutations were built for the rink; one Radiunai player had developed massive, club-like feet that were great for stomping but made skating a tragedy of physics. He spent most of the period sliding helplessly into the stacks of old tires like a confused turtle.
A Radiunai winger tried to use a prehensile tail to trip Volkov right in front of Unto’s path. Unto didn’t hesitate. He leaned into a tight turn, his skates hitting the greasy ice with a sharp clack as he closed the distance. Before the mutant could pull the giant down, Unto swung. The knuckle dusters connected with the Radiunai’s jaw with a satisfying thud. The creature crumpled, glowing yellow fluid leaking from its lip.
“Two minutes for tripping,” Unto muttered, grabbing the twitching body by its collar and dragging it toward the chain-link penalty cage as he skated toward the far circle.
As the period wore on, the ice became a smeared canvas of crimson. Volkov, tired of being poked by extra limbs, decided to try a new tactic Miller had yelled at him: the “Screen.“ Instead of chasing the puck, Volkov skated directly in front of the Radiunai goalie—a creature with four eyes but a very soft chest. Volkov simply stood there, a green wall of meat, completely blocking the goalie’s view. When the Radiunai defenders tried to push him, Volkov didn’t budge; he just leaned back, crushing two of them against the iron goalposts.
Unto saw the play develop from the corner of his eye as he crossed the blue line. With the goalie blinded by Volkov’s massive back, Ivan fired a shot from the point. The goalie never saw it coming. The puck buried itself in the netting just as Volkov “accidentally” fell forward, flattening the goalie and the remaining defenders into a heap of tangled limbs and red splatters.
The buzzer sounded. As the players filed off toward the loading dock for the post-game gristle-skewers, Unto stayed on the ice for a moment. He glided slowly in a circle, watching the hooman cleaning crew start the hoses, turning the thick red sludge into a pinkish soup that swirled down the drains.
Volkov skated past him, leaving deep, jagged ruts in the ice. The Gork looked down at the tiny, old hooman. “Unto hit hard,” Volkov rumbled, nodding at the brass knuckles. “Even hit the glowing ones.”
Unto wiped a smear of red blood off his stripes and spat on the ice. “Blood is blood, Volkov. Doesn’t matter if it glows. It all washes away the same.”
Volkov grinned, a terrifying sight of yellow teeth and blood-flecked gums. “Next week, I stand in front of more glowing ones. Is good game.”
Unto watched him go, then began the slow, painful process of skating toward the exit. His knees hurt and he smelled like a slaughterhouse, but as he looked at the dented brass on his hand, he couldn’t help but smirk. It was a hell of a game.