Free Fair Game by Alan Durant

CHAPTER 1
PENAL COLONY 156
    My name is Billy B. The B stands for Balentine but no one ever calls me that. In the year 2074 I was sent to prison for a computer crime. I crashed the state betting system for a week with a virus. I served my time on Penal Colony 156 in Deep Space 7. That’s no holiday resort. Deep Space 7 is a wilderness of dead stars. Penal Colony 156 is its black heart. Only the worst criminals end up there. The judge sent me there to teach me a lesson.
    I learnt a lesson all right. A year later I came back to Earth a changed man. But not in the way the judge had hoped. On Penal Colony156 I learnt, for the first time, the thrill of real, live sport. We boxed, we raced, we threw… but, best of all, we played football. Nobody I knew on Earth had ever played football. We’d gamed it on screen with simulators, yes. But not on a pitch, kicking a real ball. No one did that any more. It was stupid, violent, dangerous… That’s what we were told, anyway. But what I found out in prison was that it was also wild, amazing, fun. And I couldn’t get enough of it.
    It’s all thanks to Danny Marconi. He’s a lifer on Penal Colony 156. His grandad was Tony Marconi, a famous football star when it was the most popular game in the world. Thousands of people used to go to stadiums to watch it. That was back before simulators took over. There are no simulators in prison. You have to make your own fun. So Danny started games of football.
    The football on Penal Colony 156 wasn’t like the game I’d played on screen. It was hard and tough. The ball was a pig’s bladder. The goals were chalked on the prison yard walls. Youcouldn’t handle the ball (unless you were the keeper), but you could handle your opponent. It was like a cross between football, rugby and wrestling.
    I lost count of the times I was thrown to the ground the first time I played. I was grabbed every time I got the ball. I ended up with a mass of cuts and bruises. But I learnt fast. The secret was to keep one step ahead of your opponent. You had to think fast and move with speed. I was quick on my feet and I had skill too – a lot of it. I could go past a man with ease. And I had a good shot on me. I could score with my right or left foot from a long way out. After only a few games I was the prison’s star player. Every team wanted me on its side.
    I got offered ‘gifts’ to buy my services. My work duties were covered. I was given the best food. My bedding became luxurious. Other prisoners looked out for me. I made some good friends. But I made some enemies, too. Pablo Martinez, for example. He’d been the star player beforeI showed up and he didn’t like me being better than him. He didn’t like it at all. More than once he’d threatened to kill me. I knew it was only talk, though. He wouldn’t dare harm me. Danny Marconi would have killed
him
. I liked Danny. He was good to me even before he saw how good I was at football. He liked my spark, he said. Most of the prisoners on Penal Colony 156 had lost their spark years ago. I didn’t blame them. If it hadn’t been for football, I’d have lost my spark pretty fast. The football made life OK.
    I was glad the day my sentence was up. But I knew I’d miss the football and the friends I’d made – Danny, Mitch Brown, and my cellmate, ‘Cog’ Lorenzo…
    â€œSee you around, Cog,” I said when I walked out the cell door.
    â€œI hope not,” Cog said grimly. “You don’t want to come back here.”
    I smiled and raised my hand.
    Little did either of us know just how soon I’d be back.

CHAPTER 2
BORED
    I found it hard to settle back on Earth. I was given a place to live. There were no jobs but I had my state bounty. Every citizen had one – a sum of money to live on. I had no family – my parents and my two sisters had died in the Great Plague of 2069. I’d had a few