Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

He sighed then reluctantly nodded.

How was I going to do this? I didn’t want to shoot myself just to get a drop of blood.

I know.

I pointed to the gong. He rang it.

“Can you order me a whole Chilatae?”

“The reptile?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

You could just see all his dreams of a respectful ceremony were already out the window. With as much dignity as he could muster, which was considerable, he stood up and spoke into his tele which he kept on his desk.

He then returned and sat in front of me. He entered what appeared to be a meditative trance for the next thirty minutes while my food came.

There was a discreet knock at the door and Tamshius got up and answered it.

He handed me a container about a foot square and sat back down.

Inside was a cooked Chilatae. It was a relatively large water reptile that we cultivated on Belvaille because it was easy. They grew in aquariums. I wasn’t sure where it originated from.

I picked it up and started eating.

Without ringing the gong and with mouth open, Tamshius warned me urgently.

“You’re supposed to take it out of its shell first!”

I shook my head.

I chewed as hard as I could and sure enough, I felt a sharp pinch in my front upper. I scraped the area with my finger and got some blood.

I held it up to Tamshius to confirm.

He seemed like he wanted this whole ordeal over so he just nodded.

I wiped it on the contract.

Chilatae was kind of black and savory, so I was wiping saliva, blood, and black gunk from the reptile.

Tamshius covered the contract with a protective sheet. He walked around dousing the candles while half-heartedly chanting.

“Now let me show you my trick,” he said with a grin.

Tamshius had a vault. The biggest, meanest, most secure vault I had ever seen. It took him twenty minutes to open it.

I was expecting some loot or magical talismans but inside it was filled with complicated technical equipment.

“With this, I can record tele communications.”

“No way! You can hack teles?”

“Only messages sent.”

“That’s incredible. How does it work?”

“I did not invent it of course. I understand that messages are like ripples in a pond. If they bounce and return, they can be decoded. But not all messages do that.”

“So you have every tele ever sent?”

“Only this vicinity. And only for a short time period.”

I couldn’t believe this. He was plucking our most sacred transmissions out of the air. People had been trying that for ages. I wonder if that’s what Naked Guy had done when he knew I spoke to the Navy.

“If I send a tele right now to someone, you could record it?”

“It may be possible. It would have to bounce enough times. It can take days or weeks or never.”

No wonder he knew Garm’s plans. He had been listening to her.

“Would you have any transmissions from the Quadrad?”

“Only if the accursed women made any and they were recorded. But as I said, I only store a limited duration.”

“Can you look?”

“I require their names and any other information on them you can provide.”

I realized I didn’t know their names.

I stepped out of the vault to call Garm.

Figures. They had pretty, flowery, girly names. Either their parents didn’t know their little girls would grow into assassins or the Quadrad were ironic jerks.

I gave them to Tamshius and saw he began using the equipment himself. This struck me as incredible that a boss of his stature, not to mention age, was doing grunt technical work. That told me this machine was a secret even to his closest advisors. They must view him as an oracle with all the information he mysteriously knew.

I looked at the screens for a bit, but it was all commands and programs and nonsense.

There was only one seat inside the vault so I rested on the floor.

As hours passed I realized that this was one of the most valuable things on Belvaille. Just think, you could take this machine to Ank, the financial capital of the galaxy, and make infinite money. And here I was sitting on the floor because my knees hurt and I didn’t want to bother learning anything new.

“They sent one message.”

I used the vault door frame to stand and went over.

Only the audio was available.

They said they had the device and were awaiting instructions on how to reprogram the Portal. They were going to drive a tank through so they would be protected. They were on one of the freighters.

It was sent two days ago to an undetermined recipient off-station.

“What should I use to fight the Quadrad?” I asked Delovoa.

“Your hands,” Garm answered.

We were in Delovoa’s basement, working out a plan.

“I’ll never catch them!”

“You’re not supposed to. I’ll be fighting them.”

“What’s the point of me blundering around?” I asked.

“They have to keep moving because if you do catch them, you can break them in half. You’re just a distraction.”

“Delovoa should come too. He could help,” I said.

“They’ll just kill him.”

“No, thanks,” Delovoa said, after hearing that.

“I’ll get a shotgun then,” I said.

“They’ll take it from you and use it on me, or just destroy it. Hank, you’re of no value in this fight other than what I said.”

“I don’t like it. I could throw a grenade,” I offered.

“I don’t know what they are securing the a-drive with, maybe nothing. But you don’t want to go tossing explosives around a disintegrator. If it gets damaged it would be bad,” Delovoa said.

“How bad?”

“Actually, I have no clue. It could be good for all I know. It could make you grow younger and have baby soft skin. But I’m guessing an exploding a-drive core is bad.”

“Besides, I’ll be there,” Garm said. “I don’t want any grenades going off around me.”

“Can you fight both of them?” I asked.

“I’m going to try.”

“Is the core lethal by itself?”

“Eventually, sure,” Delovoa said. “But it killed their partner, so the Quadrad probably know enough not to wear it as a nose ring. Its danger falls off very quickly with distance. At thirty feet away you would not experience any adverse effects.”

I looked at Garm.

“So you want me to go to this fight empty-handed?”

“It may not seem like much but having you clomp around after them will throw off their whole attack and defense routines.”

“Should you and I work out some routines?”

“Yeah. Don’t step on me.”

It was a risk getting to the dock. The Navy arriving and attacking, along with the citizens rioting, had made the corporation start protecting their turf.

Garm scouted blocks ahead and I followed behind. I also carried all her equipment. I felt very secondary in this mission.

“Are they going to fire missiles at us if we leave in a shuttle? They blew up a battleship.”

“No,” Garm said. “The weapons they used on the Portals and Navy ships are too big to hit us. Besides, there are shuttles and repair craft all over Belvaille. We won’t look out of the ordinary.”

Garm knew the basics about shuttle flight. Particularly automatic pilot. I was already feeling emasculated on this trip so I had resolved not to throw up in the shuttle.

I managed to last a few minutes but seeing the spinning freighter and Belvaille and everything else, I lost my lunch. Why did they even put windows in spaceships? It was such a lousy design.

“Gah!” Garm said. “Clean that up.”

It didn’t take us long to dock at the freighter. It seemed pretty huge, but I wasn’t out in space often and everything seemed pretty huge.