I looked outside. The lights were still off on the space station. They wanted to make sure that everyone saw what was out there, regardless of when they woke up.
It was difficult to tell where one ship ended and another began. I wondered which were the dreadnoughts. You couldn’t really get a sense of scale from here. Because they were in space, at X, Y, and Z axes, the lights would often overlap or seem irregular. But from the ground, now and then at the right angle, a row or two would appear in perfect symmetry, so you knew the ships were all aligned in some proper military fashion. They had to be, there were simply too many to be floating around haphazardly.
Because of the darkness, I didn’t see Jyen and Jyonal until they were right in my face, standing in my apartment.
“Hank, what’s going on?” Jyen asked, grabbing hold of me.
“The Navy. You need to get back to your apartment. Don’t come out. Have your papers ready if anyone calls on you. Study your documents and be ready to answer any questions,” I said severely.
“Can we still go to clubs?” Jyen asked.
I think she would have electrocuted me if she could have seen the expression on my face.
“No.”
CHAPTER 33
I was on edge, having barely slept a wink. I finally decided I needed some food and needed to see what was going on.
The lights were now on. Looking up it was almost possible to pretend the Navy hadn’t come. All those ships had been just a dream.
Except for the soldiers.
At each corner stood a half-dozen armed soldiers who scrutinized me with extreme intensity as I passed.
They wore charcoal-colored body armor and carried either wicked, long rifles or fat, snub ones. I didn’t immediately recognize the guns, as Belvaille didn’t specialize in military designs. But the shorter one was obviously a multi-barreled submachine gun designed to throw as much metal downrange in as short a time as possible. The rifle was some kind of high-caliber precision shot. There were far more men with the automatic weapons.
They also carried sidearms which I couldn’t see. They had on helmets with their visors down. Since there was no glare to worry about, I took this to mean they were getting visual instructions via their helmets or perhaps some scanning-type information. Or they were all ugly.
As I moved closer to the port, ostensibly looking for a restaurant, the soldier density rose exponentially. Just ten blocks out there were what looked like thousands of them.
I was shooed away as the mass of troops moved in synchronization transporting gear with all manner of heavy lifters. It seemed the first order was to unload everything from the ships. How they were going to move all those crates across the city was anyone’s guess but they were already stacked taller than some of the warehouses.
“I said get going,” a soldier barked. And a dozen men with nothing better to do pointed their guns at me.
It was then I also noticed the emplaced heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.
I actually felt somewhat relieved seeing all this. If they were spending this much effort moving in, they at least weren’t going to blow us up from space.
Belvaille’s preparations seemed comical. We were going to trick an entire occupying army? Pretend we were a quaint tourist attraction off the beaten path?
And my, how power had changed. What was a boss now? What possible influence could he have? Belvaille was now a military base that happened to have some civilians on it.
A diner some ways from the port was packed. It was perhaps half soldiers and half regulars. The only people talking were the soldiers.
The people of Belvaille all had their heads down as they dutifully ate their meals. I walked in and people I knew gave me half-inch nods.
“Can I help you, sir?” the cook, who had known me for decades, asked with a leaden voice. I ordered and took a seat.
After about ten minutes a squad of troops came in. A slight buzzing or whistling emanated from them—I think it was their intra-unit communication systems.
“Groll-uot-a, stand,” one of them said to a person eating, who was trying to hide in his food. I vaguely knew him as a man named “Gouel.” He did something in smuggling.
“Stand!” the guard yelled again and hit Gouel on the head with his gun. The squad dragged him to his feet and out of the diner.
The tension relaxed afterwards and people went back to their business. But it was a stilted calm. No one was really hungry and the soldiers who had been laughing and talking earlier were now closer together and speaking in quiet tones.
I put my head down and ate my food like everyone else.
I guess you could say things went downhill from there.
The ridiculous amount of soldiers increased dramatically with no signs of slowing. Apparently they hadn’t all come on shore at once because our feeble port was simply incapable of handling that many ships and personnel. Likewise, soldiers had to transfer in space from the larger ships to ones able to dock at Belvaille.