“You all need to disarm or we’ll disarm you. And by ‘disarm’ I mean we tear off your arms,” I said.
“Hank,” one of the soldiers said. “White banner.”
Hobardi had raided the gangs when recruiting his troops, so they knew the terminology and rules. Hobardi had needed real soldiers who knew how to use guns and beat up people. Not train spiritual people how to be killers—the Captain appeared to be the exception to this.
“Gang protocol applies to gangs,” I told the soldier. “You’re some weird religion thing. You have no rights. What I can do, though, is get you employment in the gangs of this station. Maybe even get some of you jobs in my Kommilaire, if you’re good enough. That is, if you don’t want to hang around chanting and dancing and singing with everyone else out there.”
A silent moment.
“Which gangs can you get us work with?” one soldier asked.
They probably didn’t like working for Hobardi, but he paid extremely well and he hadn’t made them do anything. But now that he was gone, they were just travelling on momentum.
“Shoot this man!” The Captain yelled. “Your weapons will find purchase and your foes shall know ruin,” he said, obviously quoting some sacred text that didn’t know I was a level-four mutant.
The Captain kept raging and I realized I couldn’t get anywhere while he had hold over his men. There were still hundreds of well-armed soldiers in the Order. I was either going to have to fight and kill them all, or remove the leaders.
I fired, killing the Captain.
“Give him to your pals to prepare. I’m sure you have some special burial. Too bad. I can’t imagine this was his Amazing Thing,” I said.
“Oh, but it is, Hank,” one of the soldiers said. “The Amazing Thing is when we all die by fire.”
CHAPTER 63
“This is boring,” I nagged Delovoa.
“Your face is boring,” he answered, as he twirled and fiddled with controls.
We were at the telescopes and Delovoa was working at one of the stations.
“How long is this going to take, my feet hurt.”
“Well my ears hurt listening to you.”
“You’re not even trying to be funny,” I said.
“I don’t have to try. Watch.”
The regular operators were standing a safe distance away, overwhelmed at seeing the richest and smartest men in the known universe sharing the same room with them.
“Boo!” Delovoa shouted at the spectators, who then scurried away like frightened insects.
“That was dumb,” I said, unimpressed.
“You’re dumb.”
“Look, I got thousands of psycho Militia sleeping in the streets. Is this going to work?”
“Probably,” Delovoa said with confidence.
“Is it going to kill everyone? I’m breaking my back to save this city and it would be just like you to fry everyone’s skin off.”
“Their skin will be fine,” he said, unnecessarily specific.
“Can’t these things scan the whole galaxy? How big is one city? It should be done by now.”
Delovoa stepped away from the controls.
“Do you want to do this? I’ll take over the Militia and you fix the city’s infrastructure.”
“Fix it? Another part fell off the latticework yesterday.”
“Yeah, but it was in Deadsouth,” Delovoa shrugged.
We were trying to track 19-10. And for the last five hours we were failing. Delovoa said he had been working for six hours before that, but I wasn’t entirely sure I believed him. There were an awful lot of empty wine containers lying about.
“There!” Delovoa pointed.
I looked at the screens. Even if my vision wasn’t so poor, it would have been nonsense to me.
“What?” I asked.
“That signature can only be from the decay of chrodite-399. 19-10 must have portaled.”
“Where?”
“There,” Delovoa said, pointing at the screen again.
“Yeah, fine. But where is that?”
Delovoa sat down and began making calculations. It took him ages.
“Huh,” he said. “That’s City Hall.”
CHAPTER 64
Now that I didn’t need money, everyone was trying to give me some. Where were these people twenty years ago?
I was at a block party for Belvaille’s wealthy elite. Not the gang wealthy, but the rich and snobby.
Getting money from the gangs was easy: I simply asked them. I set up a fee structure for the Belvaille Confederation to pay for the Kommilaire. To show you how bad at finances I was, I got more money in a week than I did in six months last year. I was either going to have to give some of it back or start outfitting my Kommilaire in diamond body armor.
But I needed to involve the wealthy citizens of the city. These wealthy citizens.
I wanted them engaged in the ongoing welfare of the city beyond who had the most extravagant parties.
I needed to tax them.
If their money was directly being funneled into the city, they would have to become interested. But Belvaille never had a tax before and no one wanted to give money to a government of dubious value that didn’t exist yet. The City Council? Governor? No one knew who they might be. I was asking these discerning citizens to give a lot of money to potential bums and idiots.
It was a hard sell.
The Confederation was well and good, but the city needed ongoing repairs and upgrades. Delovoa couldn’t handle it all and at some point enough equipment was going to fall off the latticework that we were all going to die from cosmic radiation or something.
I needed a lot of money and I couldn’t wait for a fundraiser every time there was an emergency.
The block party had servants. Lots of servants. People whose job it was to open doors and look severe. Well, that and show off how much money their employer had. If you could afford to pay someone to literally stand around, you had some serious cash.
The wealthy were not as ingratiating to me as the gang bosses were. These people were not bred to be afraid of their superiors—I think because they didn’t recognize the concept.
Whole gaggles of them would walk up and touch me lightly on the arm or the shoulder or the side. They were touchers. After a while I wondered if they were trying to leave their scent marks on me.
The turn-out had been quite a lot more than I expected and I found myself a bit flustered at how to proceed. These weren’t gang folks.
There were a few former thugs here and there that they had captured and tamed into being house servants. They stood like statues, not a trace of their former selves left. It was almost eerie. But I’m sure they were paid well.
I had said I was going to give a speech, but what was I going to say?
How come I had no problem talking to a Confederation of criminals but I was tongue-tied around these posh pants?
They hadn’t even brought out any food, or at least not in Hank-portions. I was handed a few dainty crumbs that were about the size of my thumbnail.
“Hank, splendid, splendid work,” a man said to me. His mustache curled and joined his eyebrows.
“Supreme Kommilaire,” his wife corrected. Her skin was extraordinarily wrinkled. It was a chemical process I had heard about. Instead of fighting the ravages of time they embraced and even accelerated them. “Do you know when the election will be reinstated? We’ve so looked forward to it.”
“Quite,” her husband added.
“Did you know who you were going to vote for?” I asked.
“Garm’s ticket seemed excellent,” the wife said without mockery.
“The dead people?” I tried to confirm.