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door.
    “Alright, we’re going to be moving now, Adjunct
Overwatch,” I said.
    “And what if I refuse to travel with you?”
    Just then we heard an unholy shrieking.
    The soldier who had reached Delovoa’s door was
clawing at the air, fell to his knees, and wore an expression that will haunt
me until the day I die. He then collapsed face first on the ground.
    “By the way, that’s what the nerve toxin looks
like when it’s used on a Colmarian,” Delovoa said absently.
    I pulled the top of my shirt over my face and
dragged the Adjunct Overwatch down the street. He allowed himself to be pulled,
not wanting to hang around any lingering nerve toxin.
     
    I was riding in the train with a gun to the
head of the Adjunct Overwatch of the city.
    I had already broken his wrist because he got
saucy. As we rode, though, I realized this was a rather crappy idea. I wasn’t
going to get very far with this hostage.
    “Don’t move,” I warned him.
    I got out my tele and called up Tamshius.
    “Yes?”
    “You need to attack City Hall right now.”
    “What? Are you insane?”
    “Do it! Get every boss you know and every thug
you can find or we’re screwed.”
    “They got heavy weapons at City Hall. Not going
to last long in a frontal assault against the entire Navy.”
    “You just need to hold out until the Rettosians
get here.”
    There was a moment of dead air and then:
    “On it.”
    Hopefully that would clear out all the soldiers
from in front of us.
    “What do you plan on doing with me?” Monhsendary
asked.
    “You’re going to greet the Rettosians like I
said.”
     
    We were in the belly of Belvaille’s port and I
was working feverishly to tie Monhsendary to one of the many machines that were
used to handle the coming and going of ships.
    “Why do you care so much if I am here to meet
the Rettosians?” he asked.
    “I don’t. There are no Rettosians.”
    “Then who is coming on that ship?”
    “No one. We faked the tele message. We couldn’t
fake a Navy one or we would have said some big Admiral was coming. The ship is
filled with explosives.”
    “What? How do you know that?”
    “Because we hired it. And bought it. And
planned all this. The ship is going to dock and blow this port to pieces.”
    “Why?” he asked.
    “So the Navy won’t ever put any confidence in
it again. We won’t be able to get supplies or do trading for a year or so, but
we’re willing to make that sacrifice.”
    “This is pointless. We’ll know it was you.”
    “No, you won’t. Only six people in the galaxy
know of this. Five of us will go to jail for life if we ever speak of it, and
one person,” I pointed at Monhsendary, “is going to die. We have copious
documentation that the port needed repairs—you just ignored it. This is what
happens when you refuse to negotiate.”
    I finished the knots and hurried away.
    “You’re a murderer!” He screamed at my back.
    “Yeah, you were wrong about us. We’re not just
thieves and fornicators. We’re killers.”
     
HOW DELOVOA GOT HIS BRAINS
     
    Intelligent life did not normally evolve on
planets like Delovoa’s home world, Shaedsta. It was gray, flat, small, and
relatively inhospitable.
    The beings that evolved there were also gray
and small and inhospitable.
    For millennia, the intelligent life that called
Shaedsta home didn’t know their planet was anything other than awesome until they
finally reached the stars and settled on the planet two orbits over,
Shaedsta-2.
    Shaedsta-2 was bigger, vibrant, and saturated
with oxygen and nutrients. It gradually turned the colonists larger, smarter,
and better in nearly all ways than their non-numeric brethren.
    Anyone capable of leaving Shaedsta and
surviving on Shaedsta-2 did so, as the original home world became a refuge for
the meek and stupid.
    Delovoa’s parents were small. His grandparents
were small. Delovoa himself was tiny. He could not survive the rigors of space
travel, which were rather brutal in those early