Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy

We spent the night playing cards and having a few glasses of alcohol, which I religiously refused, hoping Jyonal would do the same. He did not.

The poor bastards, having grown up in a laboratory, were virgins when it came to cards. I had to explain every rule. As we played, I tried to slander Belvaille as best I could, hoping to cast it in a darker light. I would have talked up other colonies and cities as better alternatives, but I didn’t really know any.

After a bit, though, I overplayed my hand.

“Do you not want us to stay, Hank?” Jyen asked astutely.

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I just want you guys to be clear on what the station is really like. I want what’s best for you two. I feel like we’re good friends,” I said.

“Me, too! We have so much in common,” Jyen said enthusiastically.

I gave her a look. I couldn’t think of two people I was more unlike.

“Right. But still, this isn’t the best place in the galaxy. It’s not much better than the facility you grew up in. Everyone here is a prisoner in one way or another.”

“Well, if we left you could come with us,” Jyen said, and she looked at her brother. “We could use your help. You know so much.”

Jyen put her hand on mine and looked into my eyes with those innocent blue orbs of hers.

“I’m just used to it here. And I’m old.”

“You’re not old,” Jyen laughed.

“I’m almost 300,” I said.

“You’re being silly, now,” Jyen said, making an illegal play in the card game.

I had to think of another way of dissuading them. It apparently wasn’t going to happen via my silver tongue. If they were normal people, I could just hire some random goons to harass them until they became disenchanted. But either Jyen would fry them or Jyonal would turn their brains into delfiblinium.

Come to think of it, they were probably better equipped to deal with Belvaille than just about anyone. At least physically. Mentally and emotionally, however, they belonged in a zoo.

Belvaille was going to chew them up.

I caught up with the rest of Garm’s tattletales, and like she said, it was no real problem taking care of them.

I didn’t even have to assault them, let alone murder any. It’s amazing how unbold some people become when asked to back up their words with action. And by action I mean getting beat up.

The guy who’d run away earlier was more of a problem. I swear he must have been in a constant state of sprint for six days. I’m not sure where he was expecting to go, but he did it well. It got to the point where I was getting eyewitness accounts that only described him as “blurry.”

But he had a home. And he had a lumpy little wife who didn’t care much for politics or positions or what her husband was trying to stand up to. She got him to come home, have a chat with me, and let me explain things. It was not a hard choice for him, really.

The bonfires had started in the meantime.

Enormous, multi-block purges of illegal goods. Whole warehouses full of stuff had been trucked out to the west and set alight.

It took everything the city had to control the blazes, and the flames were so high I bet some of the empty, adjacent apartment buildings deformed in the heat.

I stopped by just so I could say I saw it. I figured if there was any distant settlement that could see Belvaille it would have looked like a new star had entered the firmament.

They had to put the bonfires right next to some of the big filtration pumps so we all didn’t suffocate. But they could only burn things that could be burned, of course. Like, no use trying to burn weapons. You’d just end up with a street full of half-melted guns and that’s not going to fool anyone.

The fires went on around the clock. The material that didn’t get fully incinerated at one location they threw into another that was already burning, with the ashes and debris vented into space.

There were at least three main fires going at once. I saw thousands of gallons of illegal liquor get thrown on like aftershave. And you’re thinking, “Surely we could drink that?” But there wasn’t time.

Everyone had their hands full spit-polishing the city in anticipation of the Navy. I half expected crime to rise dramatically as folks got in their last shots and settled old debts before we were forced to act proper, but people were too preoccupied.

And strange as it was, there really was a kind of esprit de corps at the station. I hadn’t heard of even a scuffle breaking out.

Even Rendrae kept to his word and published lots of uplifting stories about nothing of real consequence. In exchange, I made sure Garm didn’t bother him.

Every day there were three scheduled evacuations from the airlocks. Contraband that couldn’t be destroyed was ejected at speed and would hopefully be far enough away when the ships got here they wouldn’t scan them.

It turns out our ability to hide items from detection had been grossly overestimated. We literally had square miles of illegality and only square feet that was securable. And that was parceled evenly among the bosses and probably amounted to no more than a few rooms apiece.

One of the weirdest developments of all this preparation was everyone got a new job. An official, pleasant-sounding occupation they could tell the authorities with somewhat of a straight face.

We had to account for all these people on the station, and it would do no good to tell them you were a smuggler’s assistant or a fence when we were pretending to be upright Colmarian citizens.

Most people were given a job assigned to one of their boss’s semi-legitimate enterprises. Waitresses, bartenders, cooks, etc. I think all the bookkeepers had put their heads together to come up with this master list.

I was made a pipe refitter in official employ of the city of Belvaille itself. They even provided me a paragraph describing what I did and a pair of soiled coveralls that didn’t fit.

I had a lot of people leaving me messages that they wanted to borrow money. With the Portal closed for so long, everyone was out of cash. The loan-shark rates were through the roof. The whole economy was starting to break down and bartering for wares and services was not uncommon.

Then I got a tele from Grever Treest, the drug dealer I had used to score the mounds of chemicals for Jyonal.

“Hank, can you come over? I really need to talk.” He sounded upset. But that was the general mood nowadays. The new normal.

I didn’t especially feel like it, but hopped on the train. I was curious to see how Deadsouth was handling the news of the Navy coming.

Based on the trashy streets and junkies leaning against buildings, they were handling it like they handled anything else. I’m not even sure they knew.

Grever checked his door and let me in. His apartment’s décor had changed somewhat since I had last been over. It was now absolutely filled with drugs. Piles of the stuff stacked a foot tall. You couldn’t even see the floor.

“Hank, thanks for coming,” he said, shutting the door immediately. He was still nervous, with darting eyes, and his hair was a perpetual grease spigot.

“What are you doing with all this?” I asked. “You’re supposed to get rid of it. You don’t think the Colmarian Navy is going to notice you have a couch made out of narcotics?

“Heh, good one. Yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know there’s places where we can hide stuff. But it’s just the luminaries who have access to it. They told me to shove off even when I offered to buy space.”

“So you figured I had access?” I asked.

“Well, you’re Hank, right?” He laughed.

Grever probably bought up all these drugs for next-to-nothing and now he was looking to use our tenuous connection to hide it when others couldn’t. Not a bad plan, that.