Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years (8 page)

“Electrocution?” I asked.

“Hmm. That’s pretty good. Lots of ways to get
fried in a metal city.”

“Do you think it would stop the Navy from
building here?” I asked.

“No. Electrical problems aren’t uncommon. We’re
a space station. They’ll just chalk it up to a malfunction. If we killed a
dozen soldiers then they’d probably assume it was murder.”

After the shooting at Sonidara’s, Knuckle
Squads quadrupled their efforts. They were going after gang bosses now and even
grabbing people in their homes while they were sleeping.

The real problem was stopping retaliation.
Monhsendary was under the impression that the worst Belvaille had to offer was
kleptomaniac sex addicts. In reality, we had some tens of thousands of armed,
violent criminals who would have no problem murdering every last Navy soldier
in the city.

It was only the repercussions we feared.

“So then how can we do it?” I asked Delovoa.
“How can we get rid of Monhsendary and simultaneously make Belvaille look bad,
but not so bad they hammer us out of existence?”

Delovoa had given the demonstration on the
nerve toxin and Monhsendary had approved mass-production. So far, Delovoa
hadn’t manufactured any more. At some point, however, the Adjunct Overwatch was
going to demand it.

“What did he say exactly?” Delovoa asked.

“That they were going to use the port and turn
the station into a Navy city and we all had to leave.”

“Well then it’s obvious,” Delovoa said.

I had to keep an eye on the Adjunct Overwatch
but I couldn’t have people standing around City Hall. The Knuckle Squads would
get them.

I thought about using children, who seemed to be
immune from getting beat up for the most part, but kids weren’t extremely
dependable and I’d feel like a jerk.

Bullabar was a mutant who fit the role
perfectly. He looked like he was about four years old though he was something
like eighty. He had originally fled to Belvaille for running all kinds of scams
based on his appearance. Who didn’t trust an infant?

So every day Bullabar “played” on the sidewalk
across City Hall and reported on their activities.

After some months of nothing, the gang bosses
were getting anxious because they were having trouble restraining their men,
who really wanted to put the screws on the Navy at this point. Not to mention
the bosses didn’t like getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night
and kicked in the face.

When the Adjunct Overwatch paid a personal
visit to Delovoa, demanding to know the progress on the nerve toxin, I knew we
had to push ahead.

I had the appropriate facilities people file
reports with City Hall. The Navy loved reports. And while Belvaille engineers
weren’t very efficient or proficient, they knew how to cover their asses. So it
wasn’t uncommon for them to submit reports indicating there were problems in
the city’s infrastructure. That way if anything broke spectacularly, they could
point to the reports and do their best to avoid getting fired for incompetence
or thrown in jail for manslaughter.

“I can’t fake a military tele,” Delovoa said
flatly.

“What? I thought you said you had top secret
clearance and you worked in the Department of Pots and Pans or whatever!” I
demanded.

“I do. That doesn’t mean I can hack a tele. No
one can do that. I could send him a tele message just like anyone else.”

“That’s not the point. We only have a short
time left. Were you asleep during this whole plan that we’ve been going over
for months?”

“Not asleep, just resting my eyes.”

I wanted to hit him, but I needed him. That was
a cushy job being smart. You could be as big a prick as you wanted and no one
could do anything to you.

The Rettosians were coming to Belvaille.

The Rettosians were an empire distinct from the
Colmarian Confederation.

Their entire race looked like they were
perpetually melting. As if a normal Colmarian had been made out of wax and was
being heated. Yet they never slumped or exhausted themselves. They just oozed.
They were a well-established race and it was very peculiar for them to be
visiting a place such as Belvaille, which was far from their empire and of no
strategic importance.

They were sending a whole diplomatic envoy. For
what purpose, it was unknown.

The station went into high gear, however. We
expected them to arrive within a few weeks and we wanted to have all our
operations, legal and otherwise, in order.

The Rettosians had a reputation of being snobby
and only preferring the finer things in the galaxy. They wouldn’t stand a dirty
casino—at least that’s what we expected.

Even the Knuckle Squads stopped knuckling once
word got out about the impending visit. The soldiers marched wherever they went
and they wore their dress uniforms.

I was eager for the ship to arrive, as I hoped
that might help our current problems with the Adjunct Overwatch.

Time passed and we finally got word the
Rettosian ship had passed the Portal. It was only a matter of it navigating the
last bit to Belvaille and docking.

“Hank,” Delovoa whispered to me on his tele.

“What?”

“The Adjunct Overwatch is here.”

“Where?”

“My house. In my living room.”

“Now?”

“No, in the future, I’m a time traveler. Yes,
now,” he hissed.

“I’ll be right there!”

I hustled to the train as fast as I could. This
wasn’t how I had planned things.

“Adjunct Overwatch Monhsendary, what are you
doing here?” I asked, as he emerged from Delovoa’s home. He had three soldiers
accompanying him.

“Where I go is none of your concern,” he
replied.

“But shouldn’t you be welcoming the Rettosians?
They’ll be here any moment.”

He squinted at me, as if I were some perplexing
creature.

“Just because we spoke once, do not think we
are on familiar terms. Go back to your home or your place of employment before
I have you chastised.”

The soldiers puffed themselves up, showing they
were ready for a fight. I didn’t have time for this.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out my
four-barreled shotgun.

The soldiers drew faster and fired at me.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

“Ow! Ow! Ow!”

I aimed carefully and fired a tube of buckshot
at one soldier, roughly in the legs. He screamed and fell in a bloody mess.

The soldiers unloaded now and I covered myself
with my arms.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!”

When I heard their guns clicked empty, I looked
up and pointed my shotgun at another soldier.

“You want to do this the easy way or the hard
way?”

He began to reload his gun.

“Really?”

I fired another buckshot tube, this time aiming
for the chest, which was partially covered by his arms and the gun he was
reloading.

He went down without a sound, his arms and
chest mangled.

I pointed the shotgun at the last soldier.

“Same question.”

He dropped his gun. So two out of three
soldiers had some level of common sense.

“What is the meaning of this? This is treason!”
The Adjunct Overwatch declared. As if he was shocked that he wasn’t the most
popular guy in the city.

“Delovoa!” I yelled.

I had seen him peeking from his doorway.

“Yes?”

“Tie this guy up,” I said, indicating the last
soldier.

Delovoa looked at him. The soldier looked at
Delovoa.

“No.”

“What? Come on, I need to get going.”

“I’ll have tea with him. Would you like some
tea?”

The soldier blinked, gazed at his injured
companions.

“Sure,” he said, as if there was a choice.

He walked over to Delovoa’s front door.

“Alright, we’re going to be moving now, Adjunct
Overwatch,” I said.

“And what if I refuse to travel with you?”

Just then we heard an unholy shrieking.

The soldier who had reached Delovoa’s door was
clawing at the air, fell to his knees, and wore an expression that will haunt
me until the day I die. He then collapsed face first on the ground.

“By the way, that’s what the nerve toxin looks
like when it’s used on a Colmarian,” Delovoa said absently.

I pulled the top of my shirt over my face and
dragged the Adjunct Overwatch down the street. He allowed himself to be pulled,
not wanting to hang around any lingering nerve toxin.

I was riding in the train with a gun to the
head of the Adjunct Overwatch of the city.

I had already broken his wrist because he got
saucy. As we rode, though, I realized this was a rather crappy idea. I wasn’t
going to get very far with this hostage.

“Don’t move,” I warned him.

I got out my tele and called up Tamshius.

“Yes?”

“You need to attack City Hall right now.”

“What? Are you insane?”

“Do it! Get every boss you know and every thug
you can find or we’re screwed.”

“They got heavy weapons at City Hall. Not going
to last long in a frontal assault against the entire Navy.”

“You just need to hold out until the Rettosians
get here.”

There was a moment of dead air and then:

“On it.”

Hopefully that would clear out all the soldiers
from in front of us.

“What do you plan on doing with me?” Monhsendary
asked.

“You’re going to greet the Rettosians like I
said.”

We were in the belly of Belvaille’s port and I
was working feverishly to tie Monhsendary to one of the many machines that were
used to handle the coming and going of ships.

“Why do you care so much if I am here to meet
the Rettosians?” he asked.

“I don’t. There are no Rettosians.”

“Then who is coming on that ship?”

“No one. We faked the tele message. We couldn’t
fake a Navy one or we would have said some big Admiral was coming. The ship is
filled with explosives.”

“What? How do you know that?”

“Because we hired it. And bought it. And
planned all this. The ship is going to dock and blow this port to pieces.”

“Why?” he asked.

“So the Navy won’t ever put any confidence in
it again. We won’t be able to get supplies or do trading for a year or so, but
we’re willing to make that sacrifice.”

“This is pointless. We’ll know it was you.”

“No, you won’t. Only six people in the galaxy
know of this. Five of us will go to jail for life if we ever speak of it, and
one person,” I pointed at Monhsendary, “is going to die. We have copious
documentation that the port needed repairs—you just ignored it. This is what
happens when you refuse to negotiate.”

I finished the knots and hurried away.

“You’re a murderer!” He screamed at my back.

“Yeah, you were wrong about us. We’re not just
thieves and fornicators. We’re killers.”

Intelligent life did not normally evolve on
planets like Delovoa’s home world, Shaedsta. It was gray, flat, small, and
relatively inhospitable.

The beings that evolved there were also gray
and small and inhospitable.

For millennia, the intelligent life that called
Shaedsta home didn’t know their planet was anything other than awesome until they
finally reached the stars and settled on the planet two orbits over,
Shaedsta-2.

Shaedsta-2 was bigger, vibrant, and saturated
with oxygen and nutrients. It gradually turned the colonists larger, smarter,
and better in nearly all ways than their non-numeric brethren.

Anyone capable of leaving Shaedsta and
surviving on Shaedsta-2 did so, as the original home world became a refuge for
the meek and stupid.

Delovoa’s parents were small. His grandparents
were small. Delovoa himself was tiny. He could not survive the rigors of space
travel, which were rather brutal in those early technological days of Shaedsta,
let alone the increased gravity on Shaedsta-2.

The Colmarian Confederation, in its great and forever
expansion, enveloped the Shaedstan people when Delovoa was only seventeen years
of age.

As part of Colmarian Confederation policy, all
citizens underwent genetic manipulation in order to give rise to spontaneous
and random mutations. Mutations which could be used to defend the Colmarian
Confederation against its many adversaries, since it couldn’t do so militarily.