Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap (14 page)

I came to and Garm was sitting next
to my bed like a concerned, and sexy, mother hen.

“How long this time?” I asked her.

“Three days,” she said, looking up
from her tele.

Medical systems didn’t work on me
for the most part. They couldn’t scan me. So I was just sitting in bed with a
feeding tube in my nose. I picked it up and felt it was full of material. And
it smelled like rubber.

“Yeah, you eat so much that the
normal tubes were too small. They cut that from a fuel line.”

Just Belvaille…

Garm stood and pressed the
technician button.

“Where’s my autocannon?”

“You’re lying in the hospital after
fifty people were trying to pry molten metal from your body and you’re worried
about your stupid gun? Bronze came by to visit.”

“Really? Anyone else?”

Garm looked a little guilty.

“That’s right, everyone else thinks
I’m psychotic,” I pouted.

“Yeah, and who could imagine why?” she
said, indicating my bedridden state.

Devus Sorsha came in after a
moment.

“Ah, glad to see you’re awake,
Hank. I put more sedatives into your food to help you recuperate, but I wasn’t
sure how many to use. You might have a slight dependence. I’ll prescribe some
lower doses so you can wean yourself off.”

I looked at Garm like, “How did we
ever get such horrible people?”

“Also, I noticed something
disturbing from your prior visits,” he continued. He put a tele in front of me
and Garm came around to look also. I couldn’t make sense of it.

“As you know, you are extremely
difficult to scan. Not without using a wavelength so narrow it would be dangerous
to tissue and require a huge power supply. But I have seen that your skin and
muscles around your wounds, when they heal, they almost double in cell
density.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Almost like a scab, or
inflammation, your mutation seems to be trying to protect you by hardening.”

“How long does it last?” Garm
asked.

“That’s the thing. Unlike a scab,
it appears to be permanent. The injuries he sustained years ago have resulted
in his body overall becoming denser.”

“So I am getting slower,” I said. I
mean, I knew I wasn’t getting any faster and I assumed it was just because I
was old.

“Yes. Because you’re not getting
any larger, you’re just packing more mass into the same space.”

“Am I eventually going to become a
Gandrine?” I asked. “Not able to move more than a few steps a minute?”

“I think the real concern is if
your organs are also responding this way. It’s one thing to be getting slower,
as you say, but if your heart and lungs and other such organs are also
thickening, there will be a point they simply can’t fuel your body or even
move. You may have circulation issues and suffer a stroke or other serious
condition.”

“Is that happening?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” he said. “We can’t
scan you.”

Garm put her hand on my shoulder as
we stood there quietly.

“I’ll just leave this here,” Devus
Sorsha said, and he put a paper next to my bed.

I picked it up, supposing it would
be technical information about what he had just said.

It was a bill for services.

“A hundred thousand credits!”

“People had said things, but I
assumed they were just making it up,” Garm gasped.

“Oh. These are the Gandrine, Toby,
Byo’lene, and someone else,” I said, introducing everyone on my front steps.

I still didn’t feel the best, but I
couldn’t afford to be in the hospital any longer. Especially if they were going
to make me a drug addict.

Garm walked forward gingerly. She
finally looked at me.

“A toilet?”

“I have a better one inside. Your
trash people suck,” I spat.

I unlocked my apartment and went in.

“Oh.”

Garm came in behind me and also
stopped.

“Garm, these are my employers. But
I take it you all know each other.”

The pale sisters stood facing us.
Garm flashed some hand gestures to them, they flashed some back.

Then Garm took out her pistol, dove
to the side, and fired at them!

“Huh?” I pronounced.

The pale sisters twirled away, each
bouncing off a different wall and drawing their weapons.

What happened next I wasn’t exactly
sure, because I couldn’t quite see it.

There was a huge blur of movement
as Garm displayed herself to be as fast as the pale women.

It took me about a minute of
watching, but I finally got the sense they weren’t happy to see each other. And
in fact were trying to kill one another. Unless:

“Is this some kind of Quadrad
greeting?”

No one acknowledged me. In fact my
only presence in the fight was as an obstacle to be flipped over, spun around,
and otherwise bypassed.

I saw flashing blades and gunshots,
but they seemed no closer to hitting one another than I was to winning Little
Miss Belvaille beauty pageant.

“I just got out of the hospital,
guys. I really don’t need this,” I grumbled.

If I felt Garm was in danger, I
would have been a lot more concerned. But I was partially drugged, very tired,
and this merely felt like a gymnastic opera. And opera was boring.

I walked through my living room,
women springboarding off my back, and using my torso to hide behind.

I looked down the hall to my
bathroom. My shiny new bathroom. I just had that toilet fixed!

See, this was why I needed a
shotgun. What was I going to say, “Everyone stop fighting or I’ll kill everyone
in the room with my autocannon?”

I walked back to the door. Picked
up my autocannon and secured it to my vest.

“Everyone stop fighting or I’ll
kill everyone in the room!”

Ignored.

They were even diving off the
barrel of the cannon like it was a cool new prop to use in their dance routines.

The door was still open. I could
leave or wait until they tired themselves out.

But I didn’t want Garm to get hurt—or
my weekly paycheck from the sisters to get cut off.

I walked back into the living room.
I pushed my couch away so I could have a long clear access to the door.

Garm had run out of bullets at this
point and had somehow grabbed some weapons from my kitchen. I couldn’t see what
she was using but I heard a lot of metal-on-metal clanging.

“Alright!” I said to the room. “I’m
going to fire this autocannon out the door on the count of five. Do
not
be in front of the gun when it goes off or you will be dead.”

I hoped the tank explosion hadn’t damaged
my autocannon. It very well could have.

I took a moment to look it over as
women cartwheeled around me. I was going to fire out the door and presumably
hit the building across the street. I didn’t want to use a canister or HE
because that might hit the Gandrine, and that was all I needed. So another
armor piercing shell.

“Okay, counting. Five!”

I hunched down and braced myself
for the recoil. Man, I really didn’t feel like dealing with this gun right now.
My ears were still aching. I aimed at the upper portion of my open doorway to
ensure when the projectile went out, there was no way it would hit the Gandrine.

“Four! Three!”

I notice the fight had shifted to
behind me.

“Two! One!”

Kachooom!

“Damn,” I said, slowly picking
myself up. My couch was on fire.

The Fighting Quadrad Trio had
wisely moved away, but they obviously hadn’t been around an autocannon firing
in a small metal apartment. They were on the ground knocked silly. Garm was
shaking her head and on all fours. The pale sisters were only starting to stir.

I unhooked my autocannon and
dropped it. I was going to deal with the women, but then I realized my couch
was really, really starting to burn.

The automatic fire control didn’t
activate. I remembered I disabled that like fifty years ago, though I couldn’t
recall why.

I went to my couch and scooted it
to the door and pushed it outside. It hadn’t wanted to go, but I forced it,
breaking off a few burning pieces which I also kicked out.

I walked back inside and grabbed
hold of each pale lady, threw one over each shoulder, and deposited them in my
bathroom.

I hurried back out to Garm, who was
now on her feet.

“Hank, you need to—”

I grabbed her and put her on my
shoulder before she could get all quick and bounce away. I noticed she had been
wielding a metal pot. She had turned a damn pot into a deadly assassin weapon.

“Hey!” She yelled at me.

I hustled her into the bathroom and
closed the door on us.

I was standing in a bathroom built
for one, with three angry women about to spring into combat and kill one
another.

It was cozy.

“So what’s all this about?”

There wasn’t enough room for them
to fight and they probably didn’t relish the idea of dying in a lavatory.

“Hank,” Garm began, “there should
be three of them.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m looking for
the other. You got me the job.”

She looked at me but only for a
split second, before returning her cautious gaze to the pale ladies.

“When they requested access to
visit, they requested access for three, to find a criminal and return him. Not
two.”

“So one got lost and I’m looking
for her.”

I didn’t understand why this was so
important I had to torch my couch.

“I did not give permission for two
to come and look for their companion!” She said that last part at the sisters.

“You gave us permission to find a
criminal and return her. That is what we are doing,” a pale woman said.

“I didn’t say ‘her’!” Garm shouted.

“And you didn’t say ‘him.’” the pale
lady replied coolly.

“So this is all because you’re
looking for a different person than Garm thought? Who were you looking for?”

“They didn’t tell me,” Garm said.
“But you said he was a criminal.”

“We didn’t say ‘he,’ and she
is
a criminal. Many times over.”

“But you said a criminal back on our
home world,” Garm parried.

“And she is.”

Garm seemed to think about this.

“You guys like my new bathroom? I
had everything redone. Free!” I said, wanting to contribute to the
conversation.

“So you’re saying you are following
my directions, only substituting your companion for your original target?” Garm
asked.

“Yes,” a pale sister responded.

Then all three began that weird
non-verbal communication as I stood there admiring my toilet. I’m glad they
didn’t make me use it on them.

“Move!” Garm barked at me.

I moved away from the door and Garm
squeezed out.

The pale ladies were also about to
try and leave but I closed the door.

“A few questions,” I said. “Have
you been killing my dates?”

“What is a date?”

“Those dead bodies outside my
apartment.”

“We are not permitted to do
anything other than hire your services.”

“Fine,” I said, running out of
ideas on that front. “Someone stole a weapon from the Navy not long ago. Do you
have it?”

They paused in answering. I saw the
quickest flitter of fingers between the sisters though their heads and eyes
didn’t move.

“We do not.”

“Does the sister I’m looking for
have it?”

“She is not our sister.”

“Quadrad. Buddy. Pal. Whatever. The
person you hired me to find. Does she have it?”

Another pause.

“Possibly.”

Hah. Who says I’m stupid?

“Does she plan on selling it here?”

Pause.

“No. She plans on using it.”

Whoa.

“This is why she is a criminal. She
broke her oaths by coming here alone without Garm’s permission. We are trying
to return her to the Quadrad to face charges.”

“Who were you all originally
looking for?” I asked.

“We cannot say. That operation is
no longer being carried out.”

“But it may help me find her.”

“The other is not your concern,” they
said.

I thought about asking for the device.
Like, “Hey, do you guys mind if I have the weapon you stole from the Navy?” But
then I thought that was pretty dumb. Of course they would mind. I doubted they
searched through a dumpster and happened to find a disintegrator.

But the advantage was mine.

If my target did have the device,
and I did find her, that meant I would be able to get it before the pale
sisters. Of course, it also meant the criminal assassin I was looking for was
armed with a disintegrator.

And that didn’t sound good.

I now had a toilet, a burnt couch,
three corpses, and two Gandrine outside my apartment. It was like the worst
yard sale ever.

The pale ladies dropping by had
given me a lot more to go on, though they might not have known it.

From the picture of her I had, she
looked just like the other Quadrad, so I assumed she was as skilled. If she was
going to use the disintegrator, there had to be a reason. Meaning, she couldn’t
kill them normally, otherwise she wouldn’t waste such a valuable item.

Garm had personally held off two of
the sisters. So Garm might be a potential target. Wallow could squash a pale
sister with no effort whatsoever, so he could be a potential target. The
Gandrine probably wouldn’t even notice a pale sister stabbing them, so a
disintegrator might be the only method of efficiently killing one.

Then of course there was me. As
annoying as the pale sisters were, in a real fight I believed I could withstand
them. I just needed a lot of toilets.

Maybe she was even killing the
people who came to my front door. But why wasn’t she taking that opportunity to
disintegrate me?

I also didn’t know why she would
care. I hadn’t even heard of the Quadrad until recently.

But really there were very few
people to disintegrate on the station. Two were sitting right here and one was
me. If I waited next to the Gandrine, one of us being disintegrated would be an
awfully big clue to where she was.

But I wanted to be a bit more
proactive than that.

Especially since I had no idea how
a Navy, a-drive disintegrator operated. Did you just point it at someone and
shoot? Or was it mounted and powered by an actual Navy vessel? It might be able
to erase the whole space station for all I knew.

Instead of waiting to get turned
into nothing, I decided to go with my current leads provided by Tejj-jo.

I checked at Leeny’s to see if he
had seen the pale sister or used her as an escort. The woman from the passenger
list was there.

Although fit and attractive, she
was clearly not the pale sister.

That only left Zadeck’s paid
girlfriend to match the scrambled section of quarantine records.

I was eating some fake sausages in
a restaurant, when a little boy came up to me and stood by my table
expectantly.

“Yes?” I asked him.

He handed me a note and then ran
away. The note said: “Read the second to last advertisement in the help wanted
section of today’s
The News
.”

I turned to it as I ate. It was
gibberish. Just a bunch of words seemingly chosen at random.

I shrugged and left the restaurant
after paying my bill. I headed to the train. As I was waiting for it to arrive,
a different little boy ran up to me.

He handed me a note and ran away
just as quick.

“Hmm.”

The note said: “The advertisement
is a code.”

I looked at it again. I tried
taking the first letter of each word, but that made it worse. I tried skipping
words. Tried reversing them.

I gave up. I’m not a code breaker.

A tele came from Delovoa.

“Hank, where you at?” he asked.

“Going home, why? Is that you with
the kids?”

“What? Just come over,” he said.

I headed to Delovoa’s, even though
I was worried about catching diseases from his dead corporate soldier.

Inside, Delovoa looked
disconcerted.

“Follow me,” he said, as means of
introduction.

We walked towards his basement without
fully going down.

“Look.”

“What am I supposed to be looking
at?” I asked.

He pointed to nothing.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Exactly. Someone stole him,”
Delovoa breathed.

“Stole who—you mean the corpse?”

“Yes. They broke into my house,
bypassing all of my security, and removed him. There’s no trace he or anyone
was here!”

“Well that’s just great!” I
protested. “I got three dead bodies on my front yard I can’t pay anyone to take
away and someone broke into your apartment and actually stole your corpse.”

“Did you tell anyone I had it,
Hank?”

“Who would I tell?”

“Nothing else was taken. They
tracked my movements, waited until I was out of the house, and overcame a very
significant number of security systems to get that body.”

“I mean, it’s really weird,
Delovoa, but so what? Isn’t it safer to be rid of him? Did he have sentimental
value?”

“I thought you followed these
events,” Delovoa said, irritated.

“You thought I was interested in
corpse theft?”

“No, but obviously there is
something bigger here. Why would they recover him?”

“Maybe they wanted to give him the
rest of his brain. I don’t know, Delovoa. I don’t even understand what he was.”

“A biologically engineered
Colmarian, missing significant portions of DNA.”

“Right. And that’s my concern? Like
I go around monitoring who has good DNA. As you remember, until very recently I
was a doorman.”

“Why aren’t you taking this
seriously, Hank?”

“Because I don’t see how it matters
and I don’t know what we can do. Maybe if I brought some of my corpses down
here I could get rid of them.”