Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years (7 page)

“What’s the requisition for?” I prompted.

“Nerve toxin.”

“What’s that?” Sonidara asked, more interested.

“It’s a—” Delovoa started.

“If you breathe it, it kills you. If you don’t
have a mask or antidote,” I said. I had heard Delovoa already try and explain
it and didn’t want him to try again.

Sonidara seemed to think about this.

“And what’s your concern, Hank?”

“The Navy doesn’t need nerve toxins. They got
guns. They got ships. They got soldiers. Every time the Knuckle Squads shake
someone down, they ask name and job. They’re collecting information on
everyone.”

“How does your toxin fit in?” she asked
Delovoa.

“Well, I only have a small amount now. But
theoretically it could be distributed via the latticework.”

“And what would that do?” Sonidara queried,
annoyed she had to keep asking him.

“Well, there’d be massive toxicological damage
to the population’s nervous systems,” Delovoa said flatly.

“What do you mean by that?” Sonidara asked.

“Everyone. The entire city would die!” I said.

Sonidara’s eyes went wide.

“Why would you even build something like that?”

“I’m not done yet,” Delovoa said, irritated.

“But why would you make something that would
kill everyone in the city?” Sonidara snapped.

“Technically it wouldn’t kill
everyone
.
I’ve taken the antidote,” Delovoa said, and he rolled up his left sleeve to
show his arm, as if we could see an injection mark or something. “And there’s
probably a number of Colmarians who are so mutated they wouldn’t be affected.
But other than that, it would kill most everybody.”

Sonidara stared at me, her mouth open. This was
clearly not the type of interaction that normally took place on Belvaille—or
anywhere, really.

I wasn’t especially keen on breaking bread with
a man who was at least contemplating exterminating all life on my city.

Two years ago I had negotiated a peace treaty
between Bora Nodal and Pleistane. Their blood feud had gone on for years after
Pleistane had murdered Bora Nodal’s son. Everyone said it would never get
settled until one or both were dead. But I worked and got them to sign an
armistice. It was the pinnacle of my career so far.

But Adjunct Overwatch Monhsendary was not a
gang boss pissed off about another gang boss. He was an official. If he
murdered everyone, presumably he had a reason and he had authorization.

There was no emotion there. There was no
profit. There was no status. I couldn’t negotiate with that.

At least, not like any negotiation I had done
in the past.

“What do you think the most important thing
about this city is?” Adjunct Overwatch Monhsendary asked me.

I was sitting in his office on the tenth floor
of City Hall.

I hated conversations like this. They had the
illusion of being interactive, but he had no interest in what I had to say.
Coming here was a mistake.

“Trees?” I said, deadpan.

“No,” he replied instantly. Then he looked at
my face to see if I was mocking him or being sarcastic. I maintained a stony
disinterest.

Monhsendary was military to the millionth
degree. He wore medals and pins and ribbons. If fabric wrinkles came within twenty
feet of him, they probably died in shock at how well maintained his uniform
was. His hair was white and perfectly level. You could use the top of his head
to adjust laser beams. He wasn’t a handsome man but he wasn’t ugly. He took as
many vitamins and had the proper diet and did the exact amount of exercise he
was supposed to do according to whatever Navy manual he had shoved up his ass.

“No,” Monhsendary continued, “the most
important thing on this city is the port.”

“The port? Why? We’re at the edge of the
galaxy,” I said.

“Are we?” he asked.

“Uh…yeah. I mean, I’m not a cartographer, but
I’ve seen a map. We’re way out here. The only tele stations we get are beamed
months late. It’s hard to gamble on sports because half the teams are disbanded
by the time we place bets.”

“The port was built for much larger operations
than they are currently being used for,” he said, ignoring me.

“Well, that’s great. We’d love for Belvaille to
go back to being an exploration city. We have all kinds of entertainment and
could support a huge population.”

“This should be a Navy installation.”

“Alright,” I said, shrugging. “It doesn’t
matter what kind of ships dock, I guess. Everyone has to eat and drink and
relax, right?”

I don’t think Monhsendary was capable of
physically bending. He probably slept standing up, leaning against a wall. But
he almost imperceptibly inclined toward me.

“You all need to leave the city.”

Okay. So I knew what he wanted. This was, as
they say, the starting bid for negotiations. But what would my counteroffer be?
Half of us leave?

“Um. It’s a big city. And it’s really boring
here without us. I mean, it’s boring here
with
us, so I can’t imagine a
city with just Navy people. I think we can all share.”

“I am aware of what goes on in this city,” he
said, letting the words hang there.

“You are?”

“Yes,” he said.
“Thievery and fornication!”

He dropped it like an anvil, like they were the
worst words in the Colmarian language, which had something like ten trillion
zillion words. Did he really not know Belvaille? He had been here for months
now.

“Um. Yes. I’ve heard that,” I said.

“Do you think the Navy requires such things?”

Man, if he was pissed about sex and thieves, I
hated to think what he’d do when he learned the city had slave prostitutes who
were illegally surgically-altered and under perpetual narcotic influence.

“No, probably not. But we also have restaurants
and hotels and clubs and all sorts of things.”

If we could get the Navy back in here, I don’t
think all that many people would care about turning their criminal operations
back to legitimate ones. Money was money—as long as they left us alone.

“Everyone needs to leave this station except
essential personnel, who are required to stay. Go tell your thieving
compatriots.”

I could tell by the way he said it that there
was no room for compromise and there was precious little room for me to get out
of here before he had a king-sized Knuckle Squad work me over.

I nodded and withdrew.

“He wants us all to leave?” Tamshius asked,
confused.

“Yeah. He seemed concerned that people have sex
on Belvaille. And rob each other. He was rather prudish for a sadist,
actually,” I said.

We were back at Sonidara’s office. Leeny was
here as well and he had asked that Tamshius come. I didn’t want to invite a ton
of bosses again. They could never agree on anything and half of them weren’t
even on speaking terms. The drama, not to mention the logistics, just became
difficult with so many prima donnas.

“So you didn’t manage to change his views at
all?” Leeny asked.

“I think this is his personality,
unfortunately. I can’t coerce him to change his opinion on…fornication.”

“On what?” Sonidara asked.

“Never mind.”

“Do you think he’d use nerve toxin on us?”
Tamshius asked.

I reflected a moment.

“It doesn’t strike me that he would. I don’t
know the guy well, obviously. And that’s something you want to be pretty sure
about. When the gas comes raining down, you don’t want to be like ‘woops, I
misjudged him.’”

“We could kill Delovoa. That would stop him
from getting any toxin,” Tamshius said.

“Delovoa is helpful—sometimes,” I said.
“Besides, it’s not this specific thing that’s the issue. It’s the fact he might
do it at all. If it’s not nerve toxin, it could just as well be something else,
Delovoa or not.”

“I agree,” Leeny said.

“I think we need to remove Monhsendary,”
Sonidara stated, thumbing a fertility statue on her desk.

“How?” I asked.

“How do you kill anyone? A gun will work,”
Tamshius said.

“They’ll gas us for sure if we blow the brains
out of an Adjunct Overwatch,” Leeny added.

“We could hire an assassin,” Sonidara offered.

The rest of us groaned.

Belvaille was a violent place. But it
was…family violence. Violence with character. As low as we were, we still
considered ourselves miles above assassins.

“You get those people here and they’ll never
leave,” Leeny said.

“Yeah, you guys think of your next gang war
once assassins are in play. Think of how things would change—and not for the
better,” I said.

Assassins tend to make negotiators superfluous,
so that was another reason I didn’t want them here.

“So then what do we do?” Sonidara asked.

“It seems to me they sent Monhsendary to
Belvaille for a reason. Either the Colmarian Navy thinks this city is useful or
he personally does. In either case, that is a dangerous belief in terms of
Belvaille’s continued survival. We need to make them think this station is as
lousy as they used to think it was,” I said.

“We’re all ears,” Tamshius said.

“I think the Adjunct Overwatch should have an
accident. A big, spectacular, Belvaille-really-sucks accident.”

Leeny, Tamshius, and I exited the warehouse
with the goal of working out the details later, after speaking to some of the
other bosses and getting the required resources.

“Get on the ground!” A guard screamed.

There were three of them across the street with
guns drawn. They had clearly been waiting for us because two were crouched and
aiming. They must have followed someone to the meeting.

“If they arrest me and check my record, I’m in
a lot of trouble,” Leeny whispered.

“I as well,” Tamshius agreed.

I sighed.

“Fine. But you two will owe me after this. Run
when they start shooting,” I said.

“What?” Leeny asked, alarmed.

I took a few steps toward the soldiers.

“Do you all still love your mothers? Even after
they did that to you?” I said, indicating their bodies.

“Stop there!” A guard yelled.

“I’m not sure what you used to make yourself so
stupid, but congratulations on its success,” I said.

The soldiers were clearly confused. Didn’t they
have guns?

“Get on the ground now!”

I walked forward.

“You all are so stupid when you were children I
bet you were scared of the light.”

The soldiers actually exchanged glances at
that.

“We will fire if you continue,” a guard warned,
though he didn’t shout it.

“Does your ass ever get jealous of how much
crap comes out your mouth?” I asked.

They fired.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

I convulsed as if I had been semi-mortally
wounded. I heard Tamshius and Leeny running away behind me. I lurched forward a
few more steps.

“What’s the difference between a Therezian
penis and a joke? Your mother can’t take a joke.”

Blam! Blam! Blam!

“Argh!” I exclaimed with lousy thespian skills.

Two more steps.

“You look like lobotomy patients—”

Blam! Blam! Blam!

“Whose faces caught on fire—”

Blam! Blam! Blam!

“And someone tried to put them out with a rusty
chainsaw.”

Blam! Blam! Blam!

I was directly in front of the soldiers now and
they seemed quite unsure what to do. I checked to see that Leeny and Tamshius
were nowhere in sight.

I stood up straight, no longer pretending to be
grievously injured.

“Hey, no hard feelings guys.”

“Drown him?” Delovoa asked.

“In what? His kitchen sink?” I answered.

“Poison?”

“That’s hardly indication that the city is in
trouble.”

“An explosion?”

“If we blow up a building, they’ll shut down
all of Belvaille and make us leave. How about Suffocation?” I asked.

“That might work, but I can’t see how we could
just suffocate Monhsendary. If we sabotage the city’s air system it could kill
quite a few people,” Delovoa said.

“Assassin?”

“I thought you said you were against those. And
what’s that have to do with proving the city is dangerous?”