Octagla 2: Rematch

Tamara is going for the near impossible, a three-peat of the Galactic Octagla championship. That was before the game with arch rivals Pendrae United that hospitalized Hall of Fame center Daron and ended his career. Now his teammates are looking for the rematch.

But that isn’t all. Daron’s family works for notorious drug lord Ghen Kulgalu, and they don’t think his “accident” was an accident. They’re determined to find the truth.

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.