Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy

“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.