"I feel like a baked potato wrapped in foil," Cal grumbled.
He was standing in the airlock of the visitor's clubhouse on Hydra-Minor. The environment outside was a swirling soup of ammonia rain and methane gas. To survive it, the League mandated the Mark-IV Environmental Exosuit.
It was bulky, white, and stiff. The helmet was a fishbowl that projected a Heads-Up Display (HUD) onto the glass. The gloves were thick, pressurized gauntlets that supposedly used haptic sensors to simulate the feeling of touch, but to Cal, it felt like wearing oven mitts.
"Stop whining," Nex's voice crackled over the internal comms. "Suit integrity is green. Oxygen levels are optimal. And try not to puncture the suit sliding. The atmosphere here will turn your lungs into liquid soap in about four seconds."
"Comforting," Cal muttered. He tried to grip a baseball. The haptic feedback buzzed against his fingertips a millisecond after he squeezed. It was like playing a video game with terrible lag. "Nex, the latency on these gloves is garbage. I can't feel the seams."
"Then don't rely on feel," Krix hissed over the channel. The Viperian was having a terrible time; his tail had to be coiled awkwardly into a special leg-pouch, making him look like he was wearing a loaded diaper. "Rely on geometry."
The airlock cycled. HISSSSS.
They stepped out onto the field.
"The Rig" was a terrifying marvel of engineering. It was a massive, floating platform suspended on pylons above a churning, yellow ocean. The rain fell in sheets, sizzling slightly as it hit the energy shield that protected the spectators, but the field itself was open to the elements.
The wind howled, but inside the suit, it was dead silent. All Cal could hear was his own breathing and the static of the team radio.
The Hydra-Spawn were already warming up. They were amphibious nightmares—long, serpentine lower bodies with four arms and two distinct heads on flexible stalks.
"Two heads," Gorth's deep voice rumbled in Cal's ear. "One watches ball. One watches me. I cannot steal bases."
"You couldn't steal bases anyway, big guy," Cal said.
The umpire—a drone modified with heavy-weather shielding—hovered over the plate. "Play ball! Atmospheric hazard level: Severe."
Cal clumped his way to the mound. The gravity was light—0.8 Earth standard—which meant he felt buoyant inside the heavy suit. But the lack of friction was a problem. The mound was a slick, synthetic grate designed to drain the toxic rain.
Borp waddled behind the plate. His new durasteel armor was covered by an oversized enviro-suit, making him look like a parade balloon.
Cal couldn't see Borp's fingers. The suit gloves were too thick for signs. Instead, icons flashed on Cal's HUD.
FLASH: FASTBALL - HIGH.
Cal wound up. The suit restricted his movement. He felt like a robot rusting in real-time. He tried to snap his wrist, but the gauntlet fought him.
He released the ball.
The pitch sailed five feet over the batter's heads. Both of them.
"Ball one!"
"Adjust your servos!" Xylos clicked frantically over the comms. "You are pitching like a rusty gate!"
"I can't feel the release point!" Cal shouted back, his visor fogging up with frustration.
The first inning was ugly. Cal walked the bases loaded. The Hydra-Spawn didn't even have to swing; they just watched the balls sail by with their four eyes, their bifurcated tongues tasting the ammonia air.
"Bases loaded. No outs," Nex recited calmly. "Cleanup hitter approaching. This is Thraxx. He leads the league in doubles."
Thraxx slithered into the box. His two heads weaved independently, creating a hypnotic, swaying motion.
Cal looked at the HUD. CURVEBALL.
He tried. He really tried. But the rain made the ball slick—even through the gloves—and the suit's feedback was just too slow. The ball slipped out early.
It hung. A meatball.
Thraxx swung two of his four arms. CRACK.
The ball screamed into the gap in left-center. By the time the outfielders—encumbered by their suits—could chase it down on the slippery grate, three runs had scored.
3-0, Hydra-Spawn.
Cal got out of the inning only because the next batter hit a line drive that miraculously stuck in the webbing of Zix's glove.
Back in the dugout, Cal ripped his helmet off (after the airlock cycled, of course). He was drenched in sweat, but his hands were cold.
"I can't do this," Cal slammed the helmet down. "It's numb. I'm guessing every pitch. I might as well be throwing blindfolded."
"The haptics are designed for mining, not pitching," Nex admitted, looking at a diagnostic screen. "There's a three-millisecond delay between the pressure on the glove and the signal to your nerves."
"Three milliseconds is the difference between a strike and a home run!" Cal yelled.
Borp sat next to him, his suit squeaking. He tapped his helmet, then pointed to Cal's bionic arm.
Vibration, Borp signed.
"What?" Cal asked.
Borp made a buzzing motion with his hand. Internal.
Cal looked at his right arm. Under the skin of the suit, under his own skin, was the synthetic weave Dr. K'rll had installed. It was wired directly into his nervous system.
"He means bypass the glove," Nex realized. "The suit sends data to your skin sensors. But your arm... your arm has its own internal gyroscope and pressure sensors."
"So?"
"So," Nex's fingers flew across his datapad. "If I hack your suit's firmware, I can shut off the glove's haptic feedback entirely. You won't feel the 'touch' of the ball on your skin."
"How does that help?"
"I can route the suit's pressure data directly into your arm's neural interface," Nex said. "It will bypass the tactile nerves and go straight to your proprioception—your sense of where your body is in space. You won't 'feel' the ball. You will become the ball."
"That sounds incredibly dangerous," Cal said.
"It could overload your motor cortex and cause a seizure," Nex shrugged. "Or it could eliminate the lag."
Cal looked at the scoreboard. 3-0. Bottom of the second.
"Do it," Cal said. "Hack me."
When Cal took the mound for the third inning, the world felt different.
Nex had killed the sensation in his right hand. It felt dead, numb inside the gauntlet. But as soon as Cal gripped the ball, a strange sensation washed over him. He didn't feel the leather texture. Instead, he felt a hum in his shoulder. He saw a wireframe grid in his mind's eye, showing the exact vector and weight of the object in his hand.
It wasn't touch. It was data.
He looked at the batter. A Hydra with a nervous twitch in his left head.
Borp signaled SLIDER.
Cal wound up. He didn't try to "feel" the snap. He just aligned the data points. He moved his arm until the internal vectors lined up green.
He released.
The ball snapped out of his hand. It cut through the ammonia rain like a bullet. It broke ten inches laterally, right over the outside corner.
"Strike one!"
The delay was gone. The connection was instantaneous.
"Whoa," Cal whispered. "I can see the spin."
He didn't mean visually. He meant he could sense the RPMs as a frequency in his shoulder.
He struck out the side on nine pitches.
The game turned into a duel. The Hydra-Spawn pitcher was a master of the wet environment, throwing sinkers that died in the heavy rain. But Cal was now a machine. He was painting the corners with mathematical precision.
Top of the seventh. Still 3-0. The Wanderers couldn't score.
"We need runs!" Xylos clicked. "Gorth! Hit the ball!"
"Ball is heavy," Gorth complained. "Rain makes it soft."
"Then hit it harder!"
Gorth stepped up. He swung so hard he slipped on the grate, falling to one knee. But he connected. The ball stayed low, a line drive that skimmed the wet surface like a skipping stone. It skipped past the outfielder and splashed into the puddle against the wall.
Double.
Krix moved him over. Then Borp, the unlikely hero, blooped a single into right.
3-1.
Top of the ninth. 3-1. Two outs. Bases empty.
Cal was cruising. He felt invincible. The data stream in his head was a symphony of vectors and velocity.
Then, the weather turned.
"Warning," the HUD flashed red. "Atmospheric instability detected. Storm surge imminent."
The wind picked up. The rain went from vertical to horizontal. The platform began to sway.
"The rig is unstable!" the umpire buzzed. "Game called if play cannot continue!"
"We need this inning!" Cal shouted.
The batter was Thraxx again. The one who had cleared the bases in the first.
The wind was howling so loud it drowned out the comms. Cal felt the platform lurch beneath his feet.
He checked the data. The wind was blowing in at 40 mph.
Fastball is risky, his internal logic calculated. The wind will stand it up.
He needed something heavy. Something that cut under the wind.
He needed a sinker. But a sinker required friction to generate the tumbling spin, and the suit was slick.
Cal looked at the HUD. He focused on his grip pressure. He squeezed the ball until the data warned of STRUCTURAL FAILURE RISK—not of the ball, but of his own finger servos.
He ignored the warning.
He threw the pitch.
Thraxx saw the arm speed. He expected the fastball. He swung his four arms in a chop, aiming to drive the ball into the grate.
The ball arrived. But Cal had squeezed it so hard, and released it with such precise, computer-aided pronation, that it dropped like a cannonball.
It fell beneath Thraxx's bat.
STRIKE THREE.
Thraxx spun around, his two heads tangling in confusion.
"Game over!" the umpire yelled, just as a massive wave of yellow sludge crashed over the energy shield, spraying the field with toxic mist.
Cal stood on the mound, the data in his head finally quieting down. He felt the numbness in his hand return, the connection severed as Nex reset the system.
His arm throbbed—a phantom ache of the human nerves he no longer used.
"We got him," Cal breathed, his visor fogged entirely now.
In the locker room, peeling off the suits was an ordeal. The smell of ozone and sweat was overpowering.
Nex examined Cal's arm. The synthetic muscle fibers were hot to the touch.
"You redlined the servos," Nex said, looking concerned. "Another inning and you might have melted the neural interface."
"Doesn't matter," Cal said, flexing his hand. The feeling was coming back—pins and needles. "We won."
"We move on," Gorth rumbled, rubbing a bruise on his hip from the slip. "To the Division Championship."
"Who is it?" Cal asked, dreading the answer. "Lava people? Gas clouds?"
Nex checked the bracket. He paused. He looked at Cal with a strange expression.
"No," Nex said. "The Sol-System Sentinels."
Cal froze. "Sol-System? As in...?"
"Earth's sector," Nex nodded. "They are the 'Human' team. Though they allow cyborgs and genetic enhancements."
Cal laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.
"So," Cal said, looking at his bionic arm. "I have to beat my own species to get to the World Series."
"Not just your species," Nex added, scrolling down. "I see a name on their roster. A pitcher. 'Vance, Tyrel'."
The locker room went silent.
Cal felt the blood drain from his face.
"Tyrel?" Cal whispered. "My cousin? The one who got drafted first overall? The one who..." Cal's voice trailed off.
"The one who made the Majors while you were in rehab," Nex finished softly. "Yes. He's their ace."
Cal stared at the wall. The universe wasn't just strange. It was cruel.
"Well," Cal said, grabbing a towel. "Tyrel always did have a better fastball than me."
He looked at Gorth, Borp, and the rest of his ragtag alien family.
"But," Cal said, a dangerous light entering his eyes. "He's never pitched against a slime-covered Brontok in zero-G."
Cal slammed his locker shut.
"Let's go home."