Hard Luck Hank Screw the Galaxy(64)

I had to think of another way of dissuading them. It apparently wasn’t going to happen via my silver tongue. If they were normal people, I could just hire some random goons to harass them until they became disenchanted. But either Jyen would fry them or Jyonal would turn their brains into delfiblinium.

Come to think of it, they were probably better equipped to deal with Belvaille than just about anyone. At least physically. Mentally and emotionally, however, they belonged in a zoo.

Belvaille was going to chew them up.





CHAPTER 24


I caught up with the rest of Garm’s tattletales, and like she said, it was no real problem taking care of them.

I didn’t even have to assault them, let alone murder any. It’s amazing how unbold some people become when asked to back up their words with action. And by action I mean getting beat up.

The guy who’d run away earlier was more of a problem. I swear he must have been in a constant state of sprint for six days. I’m not sure where he was expecting to go, but he did it well. It got to the point where I was getting eyewitness accounts that only described him as “blurry.”

But he had a home. And he had a lumpy little wife who didn’t care much for politics or positions or what her husband was trying to stand up to. She got him to come home, have a chat with me, and let me explain things. It was not a hard choice for him, really.

The bonfires had started in the meantime.

Enormous, multi-block purges of illegal goods. Whole warehouses full of stuff had been trucked out to the west and set alight.

It took everything the city had to control the blazes, and the flames were so high I bet some of the empty, adjacent apartment buildings deformed in the heat.

I stopped by just so I could say I saw it. I figured if there was any distant settlement that could see Belvaille it would have looked like a new star had entered the firmament.

They had to put the bonfires right next to some of the big filtration pumps so we all didn’t suffocate. But they could only burn things that could be burned, of course. Like, no use trying to burn weapons. You’d just end up with a street full of half-melted guns and that’s not going to fool anyone.

The fires went on around the clock. The material that didn’t get fully incinerated at one location they threw into another that was already burning, with the ashes and debris vented into space.

There were at least three main fires going at once. I saw thousands of gallons of illegal liquor get thrown on like aftershave. And you’re thinking, “Surely we could drink that?” But there wasn’t time.

Everyone had their hands full spit-polishing the city in anticipation of the Navy. I half expected crime to rise dramatically as folks got in their last shots and settled old debts before we were forced to act proper, but people were too preoccupied.

And strange as it was, there really was a kind of esprit de corps at the station. I hadn’t heard of even a scuffle breaking out.

Even Rendrae kept to his word and published lots of uplifting stories about nothing of real consequence. In exchange, I made sure Garm didn’t bother him.

Every day there were three scheduled evacuations from the airlocks. Contraband that couldn’t be destroyed was ejected at speed and would hopefully be far enough away when the ships got here they wouldn’t scan them.

It turns out our ability to hide items from detection had been grossly overestimated. We literally had square miles of illegality and only square feet that was securable. And that was parceled evenly among the bosses and probably amounted to no more than a few rooms apiece.

One of the weirdest developments of all this preparation was everyone got a new job. An official, pleasant-sounding occupation they could tell the authorities with somewhat of a straight face.

We had to account for all these people on the station, and it would do no good to tell them you were a smuggler’s assistant or a fence when we were pretending to be upright Colmarian citizens.

Most people were given a job assigned to one of their boss’s semi-legitimate enterprises. Waitresses, bartenders, cooks, etc. I think all the bookkeepers had put their heads together to come up with this master list.

I was made a pipe refitter in official employ of the city of Belvaille itself. They even provided me a paragraph describing what I did and a pair of soiled coveralls that didn’t fit.

I had a lot of people leaving me messages that they wanted to borrow money. With the Portal closed for so long, everyone was out of cash. The loan-shark rates were through the roof. The whole economy was starting to break down and bartering for wares and services was not uncommon.

Then I got a tele from Grever Treest, the drug dealer I had used to score the mounds of chemicals for Jyonal.