“Don’t get mushy. So what do you want me to do then? I can’t get lightweight all of a sudden.”
“Just, stand behind cover. Peek around corners.”
“You’re kidding,” I stated.
“They can’t shoot through the walls. We already know that, Hank. Think like someone who isn’t a mutant for once.”
I frankly didn’t know how I was going to do this. Carry corners around with me? I mean I was going to have to be in front of them sometime, right? Or how else would we fight? And couldn’t they just walk around the corner? Or even fly? I was too slow to be sneaky.
I just nodded my head.
“So when are we leaving?” I asked.
“When we find them, I’m setting up patrols.”
“Do I wait here? I have jobs to do. Paying jobs.”
She gave me a mean look but relented.
“No, you can go. But if I call you you’d better get here in five minutes. Not Hank-speed.”
“Fine.”
CHAPTER 9
I took a catnap to clear my head and moseyed back to my trusty drug dealer Grever Treest. Invasion or not, I still had an assignment and I was holding a lot of floppy-ears’ money.
Grever was, if possible, more edgy than he had previously been.
I figured out why soon enough when he let me inside and the first thing he asked me about was the Dredel Led. It seems Rendrae had released an “Extra” of The News and it was entirely about our robot friends. He also pulled out all the stops and somehow had a potpourri of data regarding Colmarians’ previous encounters with the race.
I was surprised to read that the Dredel Led were the catalyst for Colmarian mutation experiments.
It seems every empire at some point or other takes a shot at the Colmarian Confederation. It’s like a right of passage. But when the Dredel Led came knocking we didn’t have super weapons, or vast resources, or exotic alien physiology, or the overwhelming efficiency that comes from being ruled by just a handful of species. What we did have was the largest amount of biodiversity times a zillion.
So we started cobbling all that together in an attempt to create mutations. Now everyone is subjected to it. Mutants are basically organic landmines that make it harder for us to be conquered.
So that was our great strategy: make it simply not cost-effective to try to invade us.
I knew why we did mutations. I just didn’t know it was the Dredel Led that made us start. Rendrae mentioned the fact that we were losing a war against them and that’s what made us take the plunge into tinkering with our own population. I suppose at the time it was a pretty radical idea, but we’ve been doing it for so long now, it’s just the way it is.
Anyway, after reading that, I found the second reason why Grever Treest was so antsy. He took me into his bedroom and his entire bed was covered in drugs. It was the largest flat surface he could find.
He began detailing all the things he had scored.
“This one isn’t Blue Horizon, but it’s got kind of the same effect. I got four samples of your L-joccaine. This one has more of a mild burn. This is strong, but short in duration. The other two are solid, but kind of lighter, more of a haze than a blaze, you know?”
Grever spoke with encyclopedic knowledge about each and every drug, but all I could see was that I had totally screwed up.
I had stupidly assumed that when he said he would get half of the list, he was literally going to go down and get half of each individual drug. So when I went out trying to fill the rest of it, I bought the remaining half, or as close as I could.
So what I was looking at was basically 150% of some drugs and 0% of others. Some were replaced with completely different drugs and some were “almost” the same.
I didn’t know how drug deals worked intimately, but I figured I had accomplished about a third of what I was supposed to using all the money I was given, less about seven grand. If it was any other kind of transaction, it would be a total botch. I was just hoping this was how drug deals always worked.
I could see Jyen being really pissed and not paying me. I mean the only good thing was that I already got the money for it and at least nothing would come out of my pocket. If she was only interested in those exact drugs in those exact quantities…well, I could tell her to file a claim with Garm.
Grever was still speaking rhapsodically about the literal mound of narcotics in front of us.
“…this one will knock you flat, but don’t mix it with this or it might stop your heart. Ah, one of my favorites is this Oranium, which was crazy hard to find. I have this buddy who just—”
“Hey,” I interrupted. “Can you write all this down? I’m not going to remember any of it. And you need to put what amount you got. Oh, and we need to add it all up with my stuff.”