Hard Luck Hank Screw the Galaxy(99)

“It’s not a planet, Hank. It’s a spaceship. An armed one. If the Navy is smart, they’ll run,” Garm said.

“What will that solve?” I fired back.

“Them being blown up,” she said simply.

I didn’t have real access to the top-secret Navy intel, but I could tap into some officer tele channels because of my rank. In their haste and panic, they weren’t very cautious with messages.

The Navy was indeed fleeing. It became pretty obvious as all the remaining soldiers disembarked. They abandoned everything they couldn’t carry in their hands.

They were all gone in a little over two days.

Not only were they leaving Belvaille to its destruction, but the entire state of Ginland that housed it. Who knows how many billions of people. Once folks learned we were not being evacuated, there was panic and more than a handful of deaths.

We didn’t receive official word until the fleet was underway. Basically the gist was they were in combat mode and couldn’t risk the rest of the Colmarian Confederation by taking time to rescue all us civilians. And they expected to be in battle shortly anyway.

It was as cutthroat a sentiment as I’d ever heard in all my years on Belvaille. And just like that, the Navy was gone. Every ship except maybe a few dozen shuttles and some frigates with mechanical problems they left behind.

For the Boranjame world-ship to use its a-drive deeper into Colmarian space, it had to reach the unique area around the Portal. Delovoa calculated that when it was finally close enough to be able to activate, Belvaille would actually be within the diameter of the ship. So even if we survived its gravity, which we wouldn’t, it would physically run into us. And that’s assuming it didn’t blast the station out of the way first.

Freighters had been languishing around the station for months, but people couldn’t be put in cargo holds, they’d die in transit. We figured only a few thousand people at the most could be evacuated from the station using every ship we had. Because of that, we decided to not even try, lest open conflict broke out for those precious seats. The dock was closed.

Jyonal knew a world-ship was coming before the rest of us did when the Navy tried to kidnap him before they left. That didn’t turn out so well for the poor souls who failed to realize what he was capable of.

But as strong as he was:

“I can’t hurt that thing,” Jyonal told us. “It’s too far away, I can only affect stuff I can see. Besides, it’s a planet.”

We had all gathered at City Hall. With Delovoa, Garm, and many of the bosses on the steps addressing the crowd. Seemed like every person in Belvaille was there. Old, rich, poor, children. The streets were crammed with folks looking for a miracle, as they were well aware of what was in store for us all.

Garm stood up to begin. She spoke into a microphone.

“Does anyone have any ideas?” she started with confidence.

“If we get out of the way of the ship, won’t it just leave us alone?” I asked. “We’re pretty small.”

“That’s a good point,” Delovoa stated. “If they are after resources, they’d expend more trying to deal with us than they could ever recoup.”

An old-timer who ran systems spoke up quietly.

“Belvaille can move. In addition to its stabilizers it has real engines, but they haven’t been turned on in fifty years at least. And it’s not fast. It’s a space station,” he explained.

“The Boranjame aren’t fast either,” Delovoa said.

“Those engines don’t work,” another old-timer, clearly involved with the same work, replied. They began to argue about it.

“Can’t we take the Portal? I know there’s some ships here,” one person asked.

“Not enough time and not nearly enough ships,” I said.

“Can’t we send a ship to them and talk? Work out an agreement?” a boss naïvely asked.

“That’s a world-ship. That means somewhere on board is a member of the royal family. Anything that gets remotely near it will get scanned down and destroyed,” Garm replied.

“Delfiblinium can’t be scanned,” I blurted.

“Hank, that square of delfiblinium you have won’t do anything to a world-ship,” Delovoa cautioned.

“You got some delfiblinium?” one of the bosses asked me with respect.

“We have as much as we could possibly need.” And I looked towards Jyonal.





CHAPTER 44


Most of the station was trying to get the engines going and get us fit for travel.

Jyonal was at the dock with Jyen creating as much delfiblinium as he could.

And I was getting the bad news from Delovoa and Garm.

“We can’t just stick it in a shuttle,” Garm said. “They would detect the shuttle even if they didn’t scan the metal.”