Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy (12 page)

“Do you know what that is?” Jyonal asked after
his eyes stopped glowing.

“No idea,” I said. “It looks kind of
psychedelic.”

“What’s that mean?” Jyen asked curious.

“Um, it means kind of crappy.”

“No, silly, it’s our payment,” Jyen said with
delight.

“Payment for what?”

“For you saving our lives.” Jyen walked closer
to me now, looked up into my face, one ear falling over her shoulder. “For
fighting the Dredel Led. You could have just let him kill us.”

“And what’s that?” I answered, pointing at the
cube.

“It’s delfiblinium,” Jyen said. “It was one
trick we used to pay for our transport out here.”

Delfiblinium was some super alloy. It could
only be created at the most prestigious labs and in minute quantities.

This slab of metal was worth a ton. In theory.
The problem was finding a buyer anywhere within the entire state of Ginland.
I’d be arrested immediately if I tried to sell it. It was just a highly illegal
doorstop.

“Thanks,” I said, not wanting to touch the
druggie-spawned metal. “But really, we need to get you two out of here.”

“How? The port is closed. Even the Portal is
shut down,” Jyen complained.

“The Portal too?” That was really bad. The
military controls the Portals. I might be able to get something out of the
port, with Garm’s okay, but that was irrelevant if the Portal was shut down. It
would take thousands of years to travel to the next inhabited system without a
Portal. It simply wasn’t possible.

“So are you back to full strength?” Jyen asked,
after some time of me standing quietly.

“For the most part, I guess. My teeth are
growing, but that will take time.”

“If you want, I can take a look at them. I made
all these myself,” Jyonal said, and he pulled back his lips with his fingers to
show off his teeth, which made him look crazier than usual.

“No, thank you,” I said a little too hastily.

As I saw it, there wasn’t a whole lot left to
talk about.

“Well, I’m off.”

“Hank, do you want to come over for dinner
later? You’re the only person we know on the station and we’re not sure how
safe it is to talk to others,” Jyen pleaded.

I paused for a bit. I could see being lonely
here. I did feel sorry for them in a way. But they were also the kind of people
you didn’t want as friends because of their baggage. You know, the
hunted-by-two-galactic-empires baggage.

“How about later this week?” I asked. Hoping
Jyonal wouldn’t turn me into a mushroom at the delay.

Jyen ran up to me and gave me a hug. Jyonal
shook my hand while his sister clung to me. Both seemed really tickled I’d
consented to dine with them.

“You’ll have to tell us all about your stories
here on Belvaille,” Jyen said, still with her arms on my shoulders.

“You bet,” I smiled.

As I was walking to the door, Jyonal said,
“Don’t forget that,” as he pointed to the multicolored square on the ground.

“Oh, right.” I reached down with one hand to
pick it up and it didn’t budge. I figured he had melted it to the floor by
mistake—which was of course understandable since he had constructed it from
thin air using his body, which he’d also constructed from thin air. But no, it
was just amazingly heavy. I had to lift it with both hands and use my knees to
hoist.

They used this metal for…I didn’t actually know
what they used it for. It was just the punch line to jokes. Like when you
wanted to say something was really expensive, you’d ask if it was coated with
delfiblinium. I was probably breaking a dozen laws just possessing it—a million
laws, knowing the Colmarian legal system. But I wasn’t about to refuse a gift
from Jyonal.

“Bye,” Jyen chirped.

“Bye bye,” I said, shuffling my way to the door
with the metal cube.

I immediately needed to ask Garm why the Portal
was down. No ship around here was going to have an a-drive, which could in
essence make its own Portal. They were far too big and costly.

So that meant until we got the Portal back up,
Jyen and Jyonal were our guests.

I found Belvaille to be treating me oddly.
People who would have normally not hesitated to yell out my name in salutation
I found strangely silent. If our eyes met or I said “hi” first, they would give
me a hasty wave and quickly avert their gaze. I couldn’t figure out whether
they were scared of me or were swallowing Rendrae’s rubbish. Or maybe they were
afraid Dredel Led were going to pop out at any moment and start wailing on
me—which was, frankly, a fear I also shared.

Of course quite a number of people treated me
very well. I received invitations and gifts from about a dozen bosses, ranging
from piles of alcohol to tokens. I put off visiting with any of them until I
could get my bearings with Garm. First things first, I wanted to throttle
Rendrae for his pointless incitements.

He had left instructions for me to meet him on
one corner at a specific time. When I got there, a kid came up and handed me a
note which had instructions on the next place to meet him.

This went on three more times and I was about
ready to go home when Rendrae finally showed up at his last out-of-the-way
location, behind a restaurant that had closed years ago.

“You look ridiculous,” I said.

While it wasn’t immediately clear who he was,
it was clear he was a person trying to hide his identity. With a hood, face
mask, gloves, scarf, and trench coat. He had on at least one layer of clothes
too many for the controlled atmosphere of Belvaille. Even with his disguise I
noticed Rendrae had lost weight since I last saw him.

“Nice to see you too, Hank. Glad you survived
Garm’s assassination attempt. But not all of us are as resilient as you and I
must take precautions.”

“Oh, come on, she didn’t mean to do that. I was
waving at her and she misunderstood.”

“Misunderstood. Hank, you need to wise up.
Belvaille is under siege and it’s not by robots. Here we thought we were the
one unrestricted station in Colmarian space and it turns out we were the most
controlled.”

“What’s controlled? When has any Colmarian
government personnel done anything around here?” I asked, exasperated.

“Then why is a battlecruiser group headed for
us right now?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I
said.

“There’s a Colmarian Navy battlecruiser group
coming to Belvaille,” Rendrae said confidently.

“I don’t even know what that is, but I assume
it’s because we were attacked by aliens. I’d be surprised if the military
didn’t come.”

“And why is the Portal shut down?” he asked
accusingly.

“Same reason, I’d guess. They want to make sure
no Dredel Led slip out of here into Colmarian space. I mean we barely caught
them as it was. Rendrae, you don’t really believe all this stuff you’re writing,
do you?”

“Of course I believe it.” He was indignant.
“Hank, tell me how our station, which specializes in every illegal activity
known to Colmarians, has escaped notice for so long?”

“Because they don’t
care
,” I practically
screamed. “We’re a speck of dirt. We aren’t worth their time.”

“We seem to be worth their time now.”

“Yeah, because we just got attacked by Dredel
Led. We went from speck of dirt to exploding supernova in terms of danger.”

“And don’t you find it amazingly odd that a
Therezian is here? When he has his choice of any planet and occupation in the
galaxy, he chooses to be a doorman on Belvaille. That’s almost insulting to our
intelligence. What’s he REALLY guarding?”

“I wish Wallow wasn’t here,” I said
matter-of-factly, as I absently felt my recently rebuilt hipbone. “But who
knows the psychology of Therezians? I heard what he’s doing isn’t out of the
ordinary.”

“How about this: did you know your ‘good
friend’ Garm was formerly a member of the Colmarian Secret Seven?” Rendrae
threw this question like a javelin.

“No,” I said, thinking. “But she had to come
from some department, right? I can’t imagine being sent to Belvaille was a
promotion. Look, Rendrae, she’s the most crooked person I know and I mean that
as a compliment.”

“I’ve run checks on about fifty of Garm’s
personnel here and guess what, almost all of them have backgrounds in the
Colmarian Intelligence Services. Is that also a coincidence? Open your eyes.”

This was kind of news. I had never paid much
attention to Garm’s people. I figured they were mostly just police. Still,
Rendrae was being paranoid.

“Hank, you can’t see the big picture.”

“Dirty deals are the big picture on Belvaille.
And look at you. What are you skulking around for? You think Garm is trying to
kill you? As if she doesn’t have better things to do.”

“I know she’s trying. Ever since I started
reporting on the real activities here, my circulation has gone through the
roof. I’ve got 95% coverage on the station. She hates the scrutiny I’m
creating.”

“That’s stupid. We got children here. We got
people who can’t even read. We got people who won’t read even if you had a gun
to their head. It’s impossible 95% of the population have a subscription.”

“Last week I topped 135,000,” he said smugly.

“There aren’t even that many people here. Are
they buying multiple copies?”

“I thought there were 145,000 here,” he said,
confused.

“No,” I answered, but didn’t elaborate.

“Well,” Rendrae began uneasily, “I know my
numbers. And I know Garm is hunting me. I’ve had to keep moving this whole
time.” He paused as I looked at him skeptically. “Hank, even if you want to
avoid all this data in front of you, why would the Dredel Led come here? It is
literally the last place out of trillions of Colmarian habitations they could
have assaulted. According to you there’s nothing here and we’re on the opposite
side of the galaxy.”

I took in a deep breath as I thought. I knew
why they had come, obviously. But I couldn’t tell Rendrae about Jyonal, not
with his big mouth. But his big mouth connected to a lot of ears and it was
messing up things on the station.

“Okay,” I began, and now I looked around
nervously, like some Rendrae imitation. “What I’m about to tell you, you can’t
tell anyone else.”

Rendrae practically snapped to attention. This
was about as close to ecstasy as he got, I suspected.

“I know why the Dredel Led came here,” I said
in a whisper.

“Why?” Rendrae whispered back.

We had almost merged into a single organism we
were standing so close together.

“I can’t tell you,” I responded.

And Rendrae jerked away, like an amoeba that
had tried to fuse with another, only to learn it was of the same sex.

“That’s it?” He was offended.

“Yeah,” I said, my spirits dampened.

“That’s your big secret? You have a lot to
learn, Hank.”

Then I realized I had left something out. Or so
I thought.

“Wait, wait, wait. There’s more,” I said.

Rendrae wasn’t very interested. He gave me one
ear and only halfheartedly.

“I know why the Dredel Led came here,” I
repeated.

“You stated that already.”

“And Garm doesn’t know.”

Rendrae looked at me. He blinked and his lips
were slightly parted.

“Garm—how much doesn’t she know?” Rendrae tried
to clarify.

“Nothing. At all,” I said with an ostentatious
sweep of my arms.

It was like a silent blow to Rendrae and he
tilted back on his heels.

“But you didn’t know a lot of things, Hank. How
can you know she doesn’t know?”

I could see I had him hooked. But his level of
detail was a bit irksome.

“Because they are independent. Because I am
positive.”

“But what about the Portal—,” he began.

“Look,” I cut him off, my patience gone. “I
told you all I can tell you.” But I had one more idea to help seal the deal. I
took out my shotgun and put it under Rendrae’s chin.

“If you repeat what I just told you—if you hint
what I just told you—I will kill you,” I said with a leaden voice. “And you
know this is not something I say idly.”

This was not taken so much as a threat by
Rendrae as a stamp of authenticity. His eyes literally glittered with the idea
he had Secret Knowledge. He giggled giddily.

“This is fantastic information, Hank. But what
good is it to me if I can’t comment on it? You owe it to the citizens to share
this.”

“The way I see it, I don’t owe the citizens of
Belvaille nothing. They didn’t spend a month in the hospital with fifty broken
bones and having their guts regrown. I did more than my fair share already.”

“True. True. And you’ve seen I’ve given you
generous thanks for that. But Hank.” Rendrae was pleading.

“No. More than my safety is at risk if word
gets out,” I said grimly.

Rendrae bit his fingernails at this new piece
of information. As if that was the only thing preventing him from repeating it
at the top of his lungs.

“So…,” and Rendrae was momentarily speechless,
which was a first.

“I’m going to talk to Garm later. I’ll ask her
about the stuff you mentioned. I mean, yeah, some of it is weird.”

“Be careful, Hank. She’s far more dangerous
than you think,” Rendrae said.

“Oh, I know she’s plenty dangerous,” I replied.

I went to see the mastermind of badness the
next day.

A world of change had come over Garm’s City
Hall. The soldiers stood around at attention. The check-in process was formal
and laborious. The interior of the building itself was scrubbed and orderly.

The soldiers I saw with their helmets off stood
to the side as I walked by and didn’t quite snap to, but close. No one smiled.

It took me thirty minutes to get in to see
Garm, which was ridiculous.

“So what’s—,” I started when I was finally
permitted to see her, and before I could complete the thought, she walked away
into what appeared to be a side room.

Okay. I followed her and she closed the door to
a bare closet, holding two chairs and bad lighting.

“This place is soundproof,” she explained, and
we both sat down.

“Awesome. So what’s this I hear about a
battlegroup coming here?” I said like I had something on her.

“Battlecruiser group,” she corrected. “Where’d
you hear that?”

“Never mind, what about it?”

“Eh, Rendrae probably told you,” she said.
“It’s true. Four battlecruisers, six cruisers, three destroyers—”

“Destroyers?” I interrupted.

“Yeah. Three destroyers, two transports, and
various logistics ships. All coming to good old Belvaille.”

“For what?” I asked.

She shrugged. “To find out why the first
contact we’ve had with the Dredel Led in centuries happened here and why it was
hostile, I guess.”

“How many troops are they bringing?”

Garm sighed.

“About a quarter million.”

I sat there. My mind refused to do the math.

“Can the city even hold that many people?”

“No. Most are going to stay on their ships, but
I’ve been instructed to make habitation available for twenty-five thousand
soldiers.”

As I was sitting there dumbly, Garm broke in.

“In case you’re wondering, we have 535
Colmarian military here now. And about 216 government workers who do services
for the station.”

Again, my mind was fumbling with the crazy
numbers.

“So all those ships are going to be at our
port? All those cops?”

“Well, most of those ships are too big to dock
at our port,” Garm corrected. “They’ll just be floating nearby.”

“Oh, good,” I blurted sarcastically.

“We need to make a lot of changes before they
get here,” she said.

“No way, you’re kidding? You mean the Colmarian
Navy isn’t going to be pleased to find we deal mostly in black market
activities?”

“This is serious, Hank. For everyone. The
Captain of that group has full legal rights. They’ve preemptively declared
martial law. For all I know they could start dragging people into the street
and executing them. I need you to help call a meeting of all the bosses.
Everyone. We got a few months to scrub this place down before they get here.”

“They’re taking months to come out here,
presumably they’re going to stay a while. How are we supposed to fake it that
long?” I asked.

“I don’t know. We’ll discuss it,” Garm replied.

“Hey,” I began, thinking. “I need you to open
the port so I can get a ship out of here.” Jyen and her brother had to get off
this station. That many troops were sure to find them.

“For you?” Garm asked.

“Yes,” I answered. I couldn’t tell Garm about
them, so I’d just say it was for me. No ship was single-passenger anyway.