“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 destroyed 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.”