As the restaurant emptied, I looked at Been-e and motioned for him to start explaining.
“Right. So Zadeck is kind of mad at you,” he began tentatively.
“You don’t say.”
“You dragged that Dredel Led over to Wallow and got them to fight. He kind of felt you should be punished for that. You know how bosses are.”
“Oh, please. Wallow probably didn’t even break a sweat ripping that thing to pieces.”
“Well, I think it was more a point that he wanted you to know,” and Been-e seemed to think about this, like he was reciting a message from Zadeck. “He thought you kind of stepped over the line. Used him, or whatever.”
“So he tried to have me killed?” I shouted.
“Oh, no. He knew this wasn’t going to kill you. Everyone told him that. It was more…just to do it, I guess.”
“And so you volunteered?” I asked.
“I told you, it’s been hard. And I’ve known you so long, I figured you might blow away some stupid kid who did it. At least you’d hear me out. And I knew it wouldn’t do you no harm. I seen you get shot all over. I even loaded the cartridge light—but don’t tell that to Zadeck, please.”
“You got some nerve asking me for favors.”
I felt the bullet in my head again. It wasn’t a small bullet but it really was superficial, I was sure I could pop it from my skin with no problems. But I decided to leave it there.
Then I looked down at the pistol.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“Um, I bought it from Ioshiyn. Why?”
I slumped.
“I sold him that gun,” I replied, irked.
“Really?” Been-e said. I could see he was wondering how this changed my reaction towards him.
“But Hank,” he broke in, “I loaded light. I knew this wasn’t going to do nothing. At all. Look, you’re sitting here talking to me. I told Zadeck this would happen. And I said I’d be a good guy to do it, because we worked together.”
“Yeah, that’s why he wanted you. Because he liked the idea of getting a friend to shoot me. Makes him feel bigger,” I stated glumly.
“Well, you did try and get Wallow killed,” he said.
“To save the station,” I barked, “including him.”
“I know that. I know that. But Hank, you’re not thinking like a boss. Zadeck without Wallow is nothing. You almost…more than killed, Zadeck. You almost made him a nobody.”
I took a breath and thought about this. Been-e definitely understood Belvaille.
“How much did you get paid?” I asked casually.
“Five grand.”
“What?”
I tried to jump to my feet in outrage, but I bumped into the table.
“I know it’s not a great price, but like I said, it’s been tough finding work and I need to sock away some cash.”
I could take getting shot in the face. Getting shot in the face by an old friend. Getting shot in the face by an old friend for trying to save everybody. But I wasn’t going to sit here and be demeaned by the fact the prospective killer was only paid five thousand. That was beyond an insult. He was saying “here is what I think Hank is worth,” and then scraping some crud off his shoe.
“How do you think that makes me feel? How would you like to know someone got paid that little to kill you?”
“It wasn’t really a hit. It was more a”—and he bounced his head around trying to come up with a better term—“a thing. Like. Hey. Hey!”
I sat there stewing. Bullet in my forehead. Five grand. That was nothing. That was humiliating.
“So what do you think I should have asked for?” Been-e finally asked.
“Like fifty grand. Easy. I mean, I’m bulletproof, right? I’m muscle, right? Or I thought I was. I just killed TWO Dredel Led. Five grand? You don’t even kill little old ladies for that. That’s an insult to you, too.”
“I know,” he said. He was still staring at the table, mortified.
I looked around at the empty restaurant.
“What, are the waitresses all gone?” I asked irritably.
Garm’s big meeting the next day was convened in the Belvaille Athletic Club, the exclusive establishment that only catered to bosses.
There was a very strict unwritten rule that thugs went to the Belvaille Gentleman’s Club and bosses went to the Belvaille Athletic Club, with no violence tolerated in either. It had been like that forever. You could sit down and have a drink next to a guy you had been fighting with an hour ago.
I shouldn’t have been allowed in since I wasn’t a boss, but these were bad times and it was the only building where the bosses all felt safe together. No personal bodyguards were here—Garm had provided security.
I showed up late because I felt like showing up late. I walked up to the club and there were at least twenty military personnel stationed around. And they weren’t being lazy, they were alert. Everyone was nowadays.
I actually had to give my name and ID to enter.
“Ah, my friend, good to see you,” Tamshius said. “You are looking well.”
There were about a hundred bosses in the room. It was pretty incredible. You could turn Belvaille into a respectable place in two seconds if you had a grenade.
There was statuary and crystal and artwork and brilliant metals on every square inch. However, unlike many bosses’ private establishments, the Athletic Club was refined. Subdued. It was the Old Money of Belvaille. It might well pass for a high-end country club on a respectable planet instead of being a haven for criminals. Bosses come and go, but the Athletic Club was eternal.
The Belvaille Gentleman’s Club, by contrast, was primarily where you ate, drank, bitched about work, and watched sports. It also had a perpetual, indescribable stench that clung to you long after you left the building.
“Nice of you to show up,” Garm said icily. I knew she hated me keeping her waiting, especially since she had to entertain a bunch of chauvinist lawbreakers who disliked her in principle because she was a cop—though not a very good one.
The bosses were all spread around the cavernous room sitting in luxurious chairs. A thirty-foot table was meant to be the center of the meeting, but most bosses had pulled their seats away in order to get as much space as possible. Even facing apocalypse they were catty and distrustful.
I walked up to the table and others slowly came closer as well.
“Good, let’s start,” Garm began. “We…what’s that on your head?” she said to me, surprised enough to interrupt her speech.
“A bullet,” I replied coolly. I had not removed it since yesterday. I was just going to wait until the skin popped it out. It was a good conversation starter if nothing else.
Everyone at the table was staring at me. I kept nonchalant. Besides, any facial movements threatened to squeeze out the bullet like an overripe pimple. Yup, I kill alien robots and get shot in the face. Big deal.
But then I looked over and saw Zadeck. He was trying to use the other bosses as camouflage.
“What the null is he doing here?” I yelled. The balls on that guy.
Garm looked around. She was obviously clueless as to the situation.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out my shotgun. The fifty bosses that had been at the table soon became five, the rest taking cover in a decidedly un-boss fashion.
At this, about a dozen soldiers who had been positioned in inconspicuous areas rushed forward with their rifles out.
“Put it down!” one of them screamed.
“Hold it. Hold it,” another said.
“I got a shot,” said one with a young voice who obviously didn’t know me.
“Hank, come on,” said a reluctant guard, who obviously did know me, “you’re making this difficult.”
“What are you doing?” Garm shouted. She got in front of me and forced my shotgun to the side. Now the last bosses at the table finally moved as my barrels swung across their positions. I wasn’t able to aim with Garm twisting my
arm around, and she’d apparently had some real combat training because she did it with relative ease, despite me being vastly stronger than her. She just redirected my exertions.
“Zadeck put a hit on me. That’s how I got this souvenir,” I said, pointing towards my forehead.
Garm seemed surprised at this news, glancing over her shoulder briefly.
“Everyone here has grievances with each other, Hank. You know that. We all have to put them away for the time being for the greater good.”
“I’m not a boss. I’m me. And when someone shoots me, I shoot them back. And we see which of us dies first.”
“Technically, it wasn’t a-an assassination,” Zadeck said from what sounded like a billion miles away. “I knew Hank would survive quite easily.”
I was feeling foolish with Garm twisting my gun around and around and me getting nowhere closer to aiming. I let my hand go limp and she took my shotgun from me. Which I felt was a bit unnecessary.
“Zadeck!” Garm barked. “You need to apologize to Hank so we can get on with this.”
Garm didn’t know what she was asking. Standing in front of every rival he’s ever had or ever will, it probably would have been easier to let me have one free shot.
He stepped forward gingerly, looking at the other bosses. You could see him thinking.
“I don’t see—,” he started.
“You either apologize or you leave and be the only person not here. And trust me, you want to be here,” Garm said, determined.
“Just do it,” one boss piped. “We’re wasting time.”
Zadeck cleared his throat. He blanked his face. Gave a little bow.
“You have my deepest apologies, sir.” It almost bordered on parody, but it was not so obviously sarcastic that it was invalid. Having to apologize twice would have killed him.
“No problem,” I mumbled, and I snapped the bullet from my forehead. It came out with hardly any pressure at all.
“Fine. Good. Okay—,” Garm started.
“I got a grievance too,” a small-timer said.
“Shut up.” Garm lost it. She pointed at everyone in the room. “All of you, every single one, are going to be dead in a month if you don’t listen.”
That was one way to get attention. Garm should have been a public speaker. She thrust my shotgun at me, which I collected and returned to its holster. She then straightened her hair and smoothed her uniform, neither of which appeared unkempt even after she disarmed me.
“Right. As some of you may have heard, the Colmarian Navy has sent a battlecruiser group to Belvaille. It is on its way. The Captain of that detachment has already declared martial law on this station. Twenty-five thousand soldiers are going to be disembarking and living here. The duration is unknown.”
“Do they just want to make sure the Dredel Led are gone?” an ancient boss asked.
“I do not know what their priorities are,” Garm said. “But the way I see it, every bit of contraband that exists anywhere on this station has to be destroyed or hidden. And if it’s hidden, it has to be hidden well.”
“I’m not flushing my livelihood down the toilet just because some Colmarian monkeys show up,” Ddewn said. I figured he’d be trouble. But there were lots of agreements to his outburst.
“There’s one thing the Captain specifically didn’t tell me about, but I learned anyway. On the other side of the Portal—”
“You mean that broken thing that’s preventing us from getting any goods in or out of here?” a boss who I knew to be big on foodstuffs said. A chorus echoed his anger.
“The Navy controls the Portals,” Garm said, and by her manner you could tell she had explained this many times recently. “They turn it on or shut it off as they see fit. Don’t blame me. But anyway, on the other side of that Portal sits a dreadnought.”
She had obviously meant this to have some meaning, but it was clear no one here had any stake in it.
“Put it this way, a dreadnought makes a battleship look like a mouse. I mean a mouse compared to something really big.”
Still no recognition.
“Okay, a dreadnought is the Colmarian Navy’s largest capital ship. Its weapons are only good for shooting other massive ships. Or bombarding planets. Or…blowing up space stations.”
That got some reaction.
“You’re worrying about losing some liquor or some drugs? I’m worried about them turning on that Portal, wheeling that dreadnought through, and having it kill every living thing on Belvaille,” she said.
“They wouldn’t do that!” an obese boss named Galagher yelled. He wasn’t much of a boss, but we extended the net pretty wide for this meeting. He was a recent addition to the station, one of the newer breeds trying to buy his way up.
“Why? Because Belvaille is such a bastion of noble enterprise?” Garm asked. “We were just compromised by Dredel Led. What do we have going for us?”
“Would they really kill all these people?” I asked.
“They’re bringing transports. Presumably they have enough space to evacuate us. But will they chance that with Dredel Led around? They might not even disembark. Saying they’re bringing transports could be them trying to con us so a panic doesn’t break out over their real intentions of destroying the station.”
“So why bother?” said a gloomy man with a face to match.
“That’s worst-case scenario. Actually, that’s just one. The other is they stay here. Forever. Battlecruisers hovering nearby and a quarter-million soldiers.”
“How many?”
“That battlegroup,” she said, “holds anywhere from 200 to 300 thousand troops.”
The bosses, so recently worried about the prices of liquor, their shipments perpetually stalled at the Portal, and various other small things, found themselves pondering an ocean of police trampling them underfoot. That is, if they weren’t destroyed from space.
“Can we leave Belvaille? I know the Portal is down. Could we load our goods on ships and wait them out?”
“They would scan us,” Garm said. “The Navy is coming from as far away as the Colmarian capital, which is why it’s taking them so long to get here. That’s how big a deal it is. Our port is closed. It is to remain closed until they arrive. If a ship left and was scanned down, they wouldn’t bother boarding it.”
“So is there nothing we can do?” Tamshius asked plaintively.
“First off, look around. Go on. Everyone here is now your best friend. If ANY static goes off between you, I will have you killed. And I’ll use Hank, who will beat you to death and, knowing him, will complain about it to your corpse for the next month,” she said.
I kind of snapped out of my reverie at the mention of my name. This was really a lot of bad information for anyone to handle. But I didn’t mind being the heavy if it kept us alive.
“What I’m counting on is them not staying for too long. They have blueprints of Belvaille, but they are old ones. We’ve made changes to the station that aren’t recorded anywhere. That means there are buildings, sewers, ducts, structures that the Navy won’t know exist unless they trip over them. We can use those as caches to hide our stuff. And even with all the troops here, most of the southwest is still going to be shut down. We can risk hiding things there too. But look, we don’t have a ton of room. You’re going to have to dump a lot.”
“And let me guess, you’re selling us the right to use that space?” Ddewn said, his eyes slants.
“You don’t get it?” Garm asked, shaking her head. “Belvaille is a clean city as of now. There are no deals going on. None. If you spit on the sidewalk I’ll have you arrested for littering.”
“How are we supposed to survive like this?” a thin boss with a raspy voice wearing a poofy brown robe asked. I was wondering the same thing.
“I don’t know. Talk to some normal businesses here and find out what they do,” Garm said.
There was a lull, with everyone somber. Thinking about how much money they would lose. Or what having your city destro
yed by a dreadnought would feel like. Or me sitting on them until they died.
“If there’s going to be twenty-five thousand troops here,” I said slowly, “they’re going to want to party. I don’t care where they came from or what branch of the service. This could be a business opportunity for you guys.”
And it was like a huge beam of sunshine hit them.
That Garm immediately obscured.
“But wait first. We don’t know their intentions. I mean I don’t, and I’m an Adjunct Overwatch in the Colmarian military. I find that distressing to say the least.”
“Maybe they’re looking to replace you,” Tamshius said not-so-under his breath, which garnered some laughs.
“They don’t need a dreadnought to replace me,” Garm replied icily. “Unfortunately, this isn’t a voluntary program. If you choose to not dispose of your illegal goods, I’ll be doing it for you. Because I’m not going to have you get caught and go crying about me or him or him,” she said, pointing at random people.
The room was indignant. These were businessmen. The idea of throwing away goods was repugnant to them. Garm cut through their noise.
“I don’t want to risk venting too much contraband from the station, especially once the big ships pass the Portal. So we need to get that done fast. If there’s an asteroid belt of stolen electronics orbiting Belvaille we won’t fool anyone. I know it’s hard to do, but it has to be done. We’re going to be visiting each of you this week.”
You could see there were a lot of questions, but at the moment they were swallowed up in fear.
“That’s it, folks,” she said far too cheerfully.
I hung around to talk with Garm.
“Is there really a dreadnought sitting at the Portal?” I asked.
“Not yet. We still have some time, but I wanted to get started early because I know this is going to be rough. But yeah, it’s on its way. I had some people contact me. It’s pretty hard to keep a thing like that secret.”
“Could it be coming out here for another reason? You said the telescopes saw stuff around here.”
She looked at me and seemed tired. Garm was never tired.
“Hank, there is no reason whatsoever for a ship of that size to be so far away from home. Out of the millions of ships the Navy has, they’ve got seven dreadnoughts.”
Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy Page 12