Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap (13 page)

Over the last week I had
successfully found everyone from the passenger list except three women. One I
could immediately cross off because no amount of disguises would make her that
old and large. The ship had to scan everyone who boarded and they would notice
an inflatable body suit.

The other two women were listed as
“courtesans” for occupation. I didn’t know if that was a nice word for
prostitute since I couldn’t really think of any courty stuff you could do on
Belvaille.

I looked at the records of the women
closely. Either of them could be the pale sister.

As I walked to my apartment, I saw
the Gandrine were back. They had been gone for a few days and I had hoped they
had gotten bored of my stairs.

“Afternoon, everyone,” I said,
walking past them.

Inside there was the terrible
racket of grinding metal.

I peeked into my bathroom to see
how the plumbers were doing.

One of the men, face covered with a
protective mask, saw me and anxiously tapped the other plumber working the
metal saw that was currently digging into my wall.

They turned off the machine, took
off their masks, and stood facing me with a look of apprehension.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked.

“Great! Great, Hank. We should be
finished in about three hours at the most,” one said.

“So you’ll be able to get my toilet
back in?”

“Yeah, no problem. We’ll even
reinforce it so it will be less likely to slide out from under you again.”

“It didn’t…alright, fine. How much
will all this cost?”

The plumbers looked at each other
worriedly.

“We figured, for all the good stuff
you done for Belvaille,” one began.

“We’d do it for free,” the other finished.

“Look. Guys. I know there’s some
stuff outside my apartment. But I didn’t have anything to do with that.” My
voice rose at the end of the sentence like I was about to say what really happened.
But then I realized if I told them it would sound stupid. So I just stood
there.

They waited for me to continue. But
seeing that I didn’t, they quickly filled the void.

“Oh, totally!” One plumber said.
“That’s what I was telling him.”

“We both said it,” the other agreed.
“We figured…” And he didn’t have anything to add either. Like three corpses
magically appeared and two Gandrine randomly chose my house to sit in front of.

“Right. So I’ll leave you guys to
it,” I said.

Courtesans.

I didn’t know any courtesans. Of
course it was just something they wrote on their ingress statement. The other
Quadrad had called themselves tourists, so it wasn’t the most accurate of
forms.

I sat in a restaurant waiting for
the best definition of a courtesan I knew.

Tejj-jo was the most beautiful woman
on the station, at least in my estimation. And I wasn’t the only one who felt
that way. She had been the moll, doll, mistress of maybe a half-dozen gang
bosses and other luminaries over the years.

To me, she was far too attractive.

Everyone had their type. What they
find to be dating material. And there’s damn little you can do about it. I
liked cute and pretty. But Tejj-jo really was beautiful. She looked like
artwork. And while that’s great and all to look at, I had as much desire to
touch or kiss her as I did any artwork.

It was 4:48pm and she was supposed
to meet me here at 4:00.

I was a bit surprised she had
agreed to meet me with so little convincing. Our last talk hadn’t been
especially smooth.

She finally came in the door at
4:57, which I guess was just enough that she could say she wasn’t an hour late.

She had extremely long auburn hair,
which was one of her trademarks. Though instead of any kind of styling, it fell
like water from her head without a single ripple. She had a great body that was
not fully concealed under her fur coat. She was tall, taller than I was, and
walked like you imagined artwork would walk.

Everyone in the restaurant watched
her enter.

She approached my table, saw me,
and immediately started laughing hysterically.

I looked around, wiped my face—as I
had eaten while I was waiting—but she kept on going.

People were starting to notice and
looked at me to see what was so amusing. Even her laugh was attractive.

“What?” I asked.

But she just kept going. She was
holding her stomach at this point and she had tears rolling down her face. At
first I thought she might be mocking me or pretending, but no one could fake
laughing like that.

I drummed my fingers on the table
waiting for her to stop.

She finally approached, not to sit,
but to rest against the table.

“So how are you doing?” I asked.

And that kicked the laughing up
another notch. She was about to cause herself internal bleeding any moment.

After what seemed like hours, with
the restaurant all gawking, she managed to point at me.

“This?” I said, following her
finger. “It’s a helmet.”

She exploded! She fell to her knees
laughing at my cap. I was still wearing it because I didn’t want any monster
soldiers to attack me and so far it had worked.

“Ih—” she said, but couldn’t
continue.

Her face was red and she was
gasping for air.

“A corporation gave it to me,” I
explained. I felt she was being childish.

She waved for me to stop and was
shaking her head as if I were torturing her.

“It—” she tried again, but got no
further.

Every time she looked up at me she
returned to uncontrollable mirthfulness. Weren’t people supposedly scared of
me? I had two plumbers giving me free maintenance work not a handful of hours
ago.

Tejj-jo took a seat across from me
and was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. I think her body was simply unable
to sustain any more laughter. Pointing at my cap she said:

“That’s a diaper!” And lost control
again.

“It’s a cap,” I disagreed. Looking
around to see if anyone heard her.

Through her tears, she shook her
head.

“That’s from my birth world. Look
inside. There will be three blue squares and a red triangle.”

I took it off and looked. There
were two blue squares and a red triangle under what I thought was the band. She
saw the marks.

“Or two squares. It’s been a long
time,” she acknowledged.

“What? I mean, how did…” I
stammered.

“That’s a diaper for upper class
families. That’s what the marks indicate. I remember my nieces and nephews
wearing them.”

I quietly folded the ornate diaper,
trying to make it as small as possible.

“Someone must have been playing a
joke on you,” she said.

I nodded with a fake smile, but
couldn’t bring myself to look her in the eye.

So. I’ve been walking around for
months wearing a diaper on my head. Okay. Fine. I can live with that.

Naked Guy didn’t exactly strike me
as a prankster. But we’ll talk again at some point I’m sure. I’ll just table
this discussion until then.

“Right. So what I wanted to talk to
you about,” I started, but I saw she couldn’t focus while the diaper was in
view. I put it on the seat next to me. “Have you seen any of these women? I
believe they might be in some of the same cliques you’re in.”

I gave her the documents and she
looked them over carefully. She lifted her face and addressed me seriously.

“I’m sorry for laughing at you
earlier. I had heard about it, but I was just really surprised.”

“Myah,” I mumbled.

Going back to the documents she
made the connection.

“This one isn’t using that name.
But I recognize her. She is new to the station. She’s dating Zadeck,” she said.

“He’s straight?” I was surprised.

“I don’t think he’s dating her that
way.”

I rolled my eyes. I guess that was
the life of a courtesan.

“This other woman I believe is an
escort. You might contact Leeny and see if she works for him. But people come
and go.”

“Thanks. Hey. Can I ask why you
decided to come meet me when I called?” I was wondering what tips for dating
beautiful women I might have inadvertently learned.

“I thought it was prudent to visit you
instead of risking you coming for me. I heard you were walking around barefoot,
killing people, leaving their bodies all over the city, while wearing a diaper.”

Leeny was basically a pimp. A
city-wide pimp. But not very pimpy. He was fatherly from what I understood and
didn’t abuse his workers. He also owned a number of apartments and hotels.

As I was heading to his office, I
exited one street and casually looked to my right to see if there was any
traffic.

Sitting there, two blocks away, was
a tank.

I paused.

That was a tank. Not an APC. It was
not facing me. It was fully in profile and stationary. The corporate pattern
painted on the vehicle was black with white circles and words written in
yellow. I didn’t know it.

I squinted, looking at its armament
closer. I recognized it. It was the same gun I currently had on my back.

“Hmm.”

I heard a loud electric whirring
noise and saw the turret that contained the cannon was swiveling in my
direction.

I turned and headed back to the
street I just left, going as quickly as I could.

At this point, I was sure it was
the same gun as mine because it fired at me. Though it was modified because
instead of firing one round, it fired what must have been two shots every
second!

Those guys also must not have
listened to Delovoa because they were clearly shooting high-explosive shells. I
could hear them hitting the buildings down the street from me and exploding.

The cannon was loud from the
shooting side, but over here on the receiving end, with pounds of explosives detonating,
I was completely deafened.

But they missed with all their
shots, and missed far. I guessed they had gotten off eight before I made it out
of sight.

Ahead of me was a full block of
apartments with no side ways or alleys. If this tank chose to follow me, there
was no way I could outrun it.

My heart was racing. I took out my
own autocannon and secured it on my vest.

I heard the engine of the tank. It
was unmistakably loud, as it had to push twenty-five tons of steel and weapons.

I realized if I went into one of
these buildings to hide, this tank could just autocannon HE rounds in there
through the front door and windows until everything was dead. There were few
back doors in Belvaille.

I loaded an armor piercing round
and leaned against the wall closest to the direction the tank was coming. If it
drove down the middle of the street, I was only going to get one shot before
they took their turn.

The engine got louder and louder
and I felt the vibrations in the metal sidewalk.

It was doing what I had hoped.

The front of the tank pushed past
the corner and it was only ten feet away from me. It had cut the corner and was
driving on the sidewalk of the cross street.

Delovoa said my gun could shoot
through a tank. Now I was going to put that to the test.

Kachooom!

There was a horrible grinding noise
after that. But my first concern was getting off my back and onto my feet.

The hearing in my right ear was
totally gone. Firing that close to the wall the sound wave had bounced off and
probably burst my eardrum.

I saw the twisted metal on the tank
where I had hit it.

But it was moving!

It admittedly wasn’t moving as
fast. I had deformed part of the guard that covers the tracks and they were
scraping loudly.

Wait.

Delovoa said this gun could
penetrate the
weak
side of a tank.

I kept as low as possible and moved
forward to the tank.

I literally passed under its gun
and around the wall to try and get behind it.

If it backed up, it would run me
over.

I moved further away but I wasn’t
sure how much time I had. It was going to look down the street and see I wasn’t
there. Once that turret swiveled, it could shoot me wherever I was. Even if I
was too low, it could hit the wall with HE shells and scatter shrapnel
everywhere.

I was now about thirty feet away.

I reloaded my autocannon and
adjusted the straps so they were secure.

The tank had just cleared the
street and the gunner must have seen my slow ass wasn’t there and there was
nowhere to go but behind it.

The cannon began to spin in my
direction.

Kachooom!

BOOM!

I saw the tank jump two feet in the
air when it exploded! This was a fraction of a second before I was cartwheeled
down the street by the force of the detonation.

The ammo inside must have been
destroyed.

I had a three inch chunk of steel
in my left forearm, a two inch one in my right leg just above the knee, and a four
inch piece in my lower right abdomen.

My autocannon was down the street,
the steel cables having been snapped like cheap twine.

“There’s your diaper!” I taunted
the wreckage.

Adrenaline was an amazing thing.

I was certain that I could become a
galactic cross-country champion if only I had an eight-headed slime monster
chasing me the whole time.

Ten seconds ago I felt great. I had
just destroyed a tank single-handedly!

Now I was lying on the ground
bleeding from giant pieces of metal protruding from my body and overall I
didn’t feel so hot.

Fortunately, I was a block from a
train station and it was only one transfer to the hospital. If people thought I
was scary before, those on the train were practically hiding under their seats
as I bled all over the floor.

I managed to drag my autocannon
with me, as anything that can blow up a tank deserves to not be abandoned.

I didn’t often have to visit the
hospital. My mutation prevented most injuries and those I did experience I
could heal away very rapidly.

But when I came here I was
generally going to be hanging out for weeks.

The medical technician who met me
was the one who always met me. He was an older gentleman named Devus Sorsha.

He was horribly incompetent.

I wasn’t sure if he always worked
on me as a punishment by the rest of the hospital staff, or it was a reward.
Belvaille clearly wasn’t going to have the best medical technicians in the
galaxy. Such people would be working some place more prestigious—like a prison.
We had to take what we could get.

Devus Sorsha straddled my leg as I
lay on the hospital bed. He had a huge pair of bolt cutters and he was trying
to pry one of the pieces of steel from my body.

“Hey,” I said. “Shouldn’t I be unconscious
for this?” As it was excruciatingly painful.

“We can’t get an IV through your
skin.”

“I have a mouth, you know.”

Another technician was messing with
my ears. I think bandaging me. I couldn’t be sure, because several assistants
were trying to hold me down to prevent me squirming. I tended to do that when
someone twisted a knife inside me.

“Do oral sedatives work on you?” he
asked, surprised.

Man, this guy was terrible.

“Sure. I still eat. And drink.”

“Which ones should I use? And what
dosage?”

“How should I know?”

Another technician began pulling on
a piece of metal stuck in my upper back. How it got there was a mystery. He had
his foot against my shoulder and was yanking on the scrap with a pair of pliers
like I was a broken motor.

Devus Sorsha came back and fed me
three pills as his technician friend kept working. I found it very difficult to
swallow in those circumstances.

The sheets weren’t all that bloody,
because my body clots wounds almost immediately as it starts recovery.

They got additional people to try
and pull on the metal and it was more painful than my original wounds.

Garm arrived shortly. To her credit
she stood by me and gave what moral support she could. It was reassuring having
her there. Because I knew that if these half-wits killed me, she would throw
them out the air lock.

And they knew it too.

The drugs finally started to take
hold and it was just pressure and absurd comedy.

They had to bring in machines to
pry the shrapnel out. There was loading equipment from the docks in the hallway
working on me. Cables were clamped to the pieces of shrapnel and the machines
were trying to pull them out. My whole hospital bed was dragged to the hall
until it hit the door and couldn’t go any further.

Wasn’t I too old for this?

The fact that I could see the farce
of the whole experience in stark relief should be proof enough I had outlived
Belvaille’s dubious charms.

How many more times could I
reasonably survive such incidents?

I don’t even know why I was
fighting a tank.

A tank!

Like that’s some normal thing that
happens on Belvaille now.

How was your day? Fine. Just blew
up a tank and got twenty pounds of twisted metal shoved into me.

I looked at Garm through all the
people straining and hammering at my body. I remembered asking her, during our
brief time dating, “Why do you keep doing it? You have more money than you
could possibly spend in a lifetime.”

And her answer was, “I don’t know
how to stop.”