Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy

He turned his back and began striding across the massive room. I followed, with the General close behind me, his breath on the back of my neck.

“Why is it you think we’re here, Hank?” the Wardian asked.

I thought this would be a good time to broach the demands of the resistance.

“Well, I guess the Dredel Led. And I suppose it has something to do with the…somewhat illegal activities on Belvaille,” I said delicately.

The Wardian turned to face me and for the first time wore an expression of utter bewilderment.

“What?” he asked, dumbstruck.

I looked back at the General, whose face was so creased with frowns I was waiting for him to fold away into nothingness.

“Er, well, you all came and made some arrests and—”

The Wardian’s face showed no sign of recognition and he turned to the General.

“Random screenings,” the General responded casually.

The Wardian regarded me, surprised.

“You think that this fleet,” he began, and he activated something in his hand. With that, the whole edge of the room, the wall and parts of the ceiling and floor, scrolled away, showing the immensity of the armada arrayed around us. It was quite jarring, as it looked like we were exposed directly to the void with nothing in between. “You think that,” he said, pointing, “is here because of…crime?”

I rubbed my wrists where I had been handcuffed, thinking how to respond.

“Maybe we could have hired some police instead? The fuel costs to deliver these ships here likely exceeds the entire economic output of your space station for the next thousand years.”

“Hm,” I puffed, feeling not only stupid, but that I had no business speaking to a Wardian on a dreadnought about anything whatsoever.

“No, we are here because of a ship we have been tracking for some time via your station’s telescopes. A vessel of the Boranjame.”

“What?” I asked, shocked.

“A convergence is happening in this area. Whether the Dredel Led made the Boranjame come investigate or the other way around, or if news of a level-ten mutant interested them, we don’t know. But we have to stand our ground.”

So they knew about Jyonal, or maybe my own false classification. I didn’t ask him to clarify.

“Our intercepted relays lead us to believe the Boranjame may use this opportunity to expand into our space. If they did, they would pass here on the way to some of our populated worlds.”

The Boranjame were the big boys of the galaxy, literally and figuratively. They were the most powerful empire by far and rarely lost a war.

Then it hit me.

“You plan on fighting them?”

Boranjame ships were literally planets. The race existed only in deep space. When they moved into a new region, they stripped apart all the local worlds for resources and made their ships even bigger—or built new ones. A dreadnought was as large as a metropolis, but it was a far cry from being planetoid.

“You need to evacuate us,” I said urgently.

“To where?” The General sneered. “Any place we take you would be their first stop. They won’t bother with this space station, it’s too small.”

“They will if you’re standing here shooting at them.”

“We have another ship just like this one ready to Portal in, as well as the entire 2 ndand 8 thfleets. We are just the tip of the spear.”

“Look, I’m no Wardian, but can even fifty dreadnoughts take out a Boranjame ship?” I asked. “You can’t fight a planet.”

“That’s a common misconception. Only their royalty have ships of that size,” the General said. “And they won’t dare send a royal vessel on an exploratory mission. Their other vessels are much smaller. Only fifteen to thirty times the size of this dreadnought.”

“What are you going to do against that? Dent its hull?”

The Wardian took a deep breath and turned to look out at space.

“The Colmarian Confederation’s defense, Hank, is you. Mutants. It’s why we aren’t invaded more often. Any attacking species that attempts to occupy us knows they will have to deal with randomly dispersed mutations. Our Navy can’t remotely cover all our territory. Not even a fraction of it.”

“So why use it all here?” I asked.

“Because the Boranjame won’t ever land. They won’t set foot on our soil. Whether we have mutants or not is irrelevant to them. They can destroy our worlds from space and absorb them. Knowing we can’t resist, they’ll just feed on us. They won’t ever stop.”

“We would not be the first empire they destroyed,” the General said, “merely the largest.”

Holy crap. I stood there trying to process.

“We need your help, Hank,” he said.

I laughed. Though with somewhat of a hysterical shade.

I’ve been in over my head before, seemingly a whole lot recently. But what in the Prison Planet’s Pleasure Dome could I possibly do to change this situation?

“We need you to get this resistance under control.”

“Aren’t they kind of insignificant?” I asked.

“We’re going to be using this station to refuel and refit and repair. As well as for logistics support,” the General stated. “The telescopes need to be under our full control. They are vital.”

“The communications systems here are some of the most advanced in the Confederation, believe it or not. Also, I understand there’s some other robot down there? Do you know anything about this?” the Wardian asked.

Perspective. It’s a weird thing. A ferocious Dredel Led was “some robot” to him.

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Can you handle that as well?”

My eyes darted around as I thought.

“I don’t see how. Not without a lot of help.”

“It is a priority that it be neutralized,” the General said.

“There’s some demands I have,” I said.

Both men exchanged looks.

“Excuse me?” the Wardian asked.

“Nothing crazy. Just, maybe we could work out a deal.”

“We can discuss these matters afterwards,” the Wardian said.

“I’ll need something in writing,” I added. If he’s the tip of the spear, he’s going to die first and won’t be able to sign anything.

They were staring at me, not sure if they’d heard correctly. This wasn’t going well. I decided to throw down my cards.

“Without some guarantees I won’t be able to budge the resistance. And they were just about ready to attack those telescopes last I heard.”

The Wardian flinched slightly.

“I think we can work something out,” he said, with a weak smile.

I stayed a bit longer with the Wardian working out details. I got the sense that for every minute he talked to me, millions of credits worth of “real” decisions weren’t being made.

After a shuttle back to Belvaille, a military car dropped me off at my house, without the fuss of tying me up or anyone smacking me on the noodle. In fact, I was shown quite a deal of respect.

Inside my apartment, Jyen and Jyonal were waiting in my kitchen.

“Come in,” I said, somewhat annoyed. “No one bothers knocking nowadays anyhow.”

“Your door doesn’t close,” Jyen explained. “We saw the soldiers take you away. Are you okay?”

I had to be somewhat careful how I broached this subject. I looked at Jyonal, who seemed perfectly normal, which made me nervous.

“Well…,” I began, uneasily. Then I smiled brightly and clapped my hands together. “It seems this was all a big misunderstanding between everyone and the Navy. They’re nice guys.”

“Do they know about us?” Jyonal asked.

I thought if there was some way I could linguistically deny that question.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to limit my responses.