The pressure is on Galactic Sports Hall of Fame center Daron Soimvell, aka Superstud. Tamara is going for the impossible, a three-peat of the Galactic Octagla championship. To get the position they want in the playoffs, they have to take this set of games with their bitter rivals Pendrae United, the team they beat in the finals the last two years. No doubt at some point the team will be in a tight spot, and Coach Isley will call a slingshot play. Daron knows all about them. He could end up MVP. Or he could end up dead. But Daron has other things on his mind. He has sharp eyes and has seen things out of court he shouldn't. A known associate of drug lord Zloenni has been around their left winger, Ranga. These aren't home games where Daron could safely do something. They are on the Pendrae space station, part of Zloenni's territory. Octagla is a rough, fast-paced zero gravity hockey-lacrosse hybrid. It is played in a transparent eight sided court. The aim of the game is to score by shooting a ball into a goal protected by a goalkeeper. The rules are designed to keep the play going at a fast pace, and to maximize the shots on goal. All eight surfaces enclosing the zero gravity court are active play zones, as is all of the space in between. The players bounce off the walls as freely as the ball, or if it suits them, run on the surfaces with adhesive shoes. They wear compressed air jet packs for maneuvering in the open court space. It requires exceptional spatial coordination to not get disoriented when the other players are just as likely to be upside down or sideways coming at you. Catching a pass in zero gravity then smoothly converting the resulting angular momentum into what you want is much more difficult than in a planetside game where your feet are rooted to the ground. Readers will find a lot of the characters they enjoyed in the Gingezel series carried forward.
About the Author: Donald S. Hall, PhD. has been equally interested in sports, physics, and computing, so inventing the space sport Octagla was natural. Don played Junior A hockey, winning MVP for his team in their 1969 playoff run to the national semi-finals, and was invited to the Los Angeles Kings training camp. At graduate school he played goal for one year for the varsity team. He was also an avid box lacrosse player, playing goal at both the Junior and Senior levels. He and his co-author Judi Suni Hall, PhD. have shared their lives and careers since marrying as undergrads. They both did PhD.'s in theoretical physics, then moved into industry and worked at AECL, Canada's nuclear research lab. As Technical Director of AECL's risk analysis consultancy Judi worked with a number of industries, including the Canadian Space Agency. Don's research on expert systems led to collaboration with some of Canada's top AI researchers. Their lives were changed by a severely disabling virus and 10 years were a write off. Don now runs Apps & More Software Design and has the caregiver role as Judi is still severely disabled. In addition to writing science fiction, Judi and Don are internationally published haiga poets, fine artists, and award winning surface designers.