Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap (2 page)

A few hours
passed and we were standing around doing nothing. The casino was not very busy
today.

A transport
truck then slowly drove by us carrying maybe twenty troops in the open back.
The soldiers were armored head-to-foot in the latest technological body armor,
had full helmets with opaque visors, and carried some wicked submachine guns. A
freight truck followed right after the transport, presumably with some
newly-manufactured goods that were bound for proper Colmarian space.

“They’re cool,”
I said sarcastically, and the guys laughed.

But those
soldiers were the new us. The guys who had slowly taken all our jobs. There was
a point when Belvaille was a city of gangs and gangsters and criminals but now
it was a city of corporations.

Cad,
Balday-yow, myself, we were relics. Old school toughs who didn’t know how to do
anything else.

There was still
work for us, as there were still bars and casinos and rackets that hadn’t been
taken over by the corporations yet. But their numbers were dwindling.

Sassy was
asleep on the ground and I was leaning up against the doorway resting my feet.
Cad and Balday-yow were arguing over which glocken players had the most
potential.

A soldier
approached the door, which was unusual. Corporate lackeys never came to the
casino. They had their own restaurants, bars, sleeping quarters. The city was practically
demarcated by the different corporate regions of control.

“Identification
please,” I stated woodenly, after standing up straight.

The soldier
then ran past us into the casino.

We doormen all
exchanged surprised looks and laughed.

“What, does he
think we won’t follow him?” Cad asked.

“I guess he
wants to try and sneak a free round of gambling,” Balday-yow said.

“I’ll get him,”
I grumbled, as I headed inside.

He shouldn’t be
hard to find. He was the only person wearing a helmet. I suppose I should keep
better track of the corporations. They all wear different patterns and colors,
but to me they were all the same. I’ve never worked for them and they’ve never
asked.

As I headed
deeper into the casino there was suddenly an enormous explosion that knocked me
flat on my back!

My head was
ringing and my vision blurred. After a while, I managed to get back on my feet
and clear my senses.

Belvaille might
be the dumpiest space station in the most pathetic empire in the galaxy, but
the buildings were meant to last. Almost every building’s exterior walls were
two feet thick of steel alloy. The interior walls were generally much thinner,
but still considerable.

The bomb had
not damaged the roof that I could see, but the entire inside of the casino was
gutted.

I did not hear
any moans but I saw casualties. In fact, I was reasonably sure that nearly
everyone who had been in the main room was no longer living.

I stared at the
destruction completely dumbstruck.

Why would
anyone do this?

“Building on
fire!” I heard someone behind me shout.

I turned around
and still sitting there, unmoved, were the Gandrine. I looked at them for what
seemed like minutes, not sure if one had spoken, or I had just imagined it.
Finally, the other one spoke:

“Yes!”

I walked home
considerably depressed.

The corpse was
still on my stairs. Somehow I had expected it to be gone. But I dealt with
enough death today and I wasn’t looking for any more.

I went inside
my apartment and turned off my tele so no one could call me.

My apartment
was spacious for my needs. I had two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, one
bath. I didn’t have a lot of stuff even though I had lived on Belvaille longer
than nearly anyone. Almost a century and a half at this point.

I sat on my
sofa and stared blankly at the dull silver wall in front of me.

I didn’t have a
lot of money, maybe six months of savings. There was a time when I had been a
multi-millionaire. That used to be a lot of money. Now I bet Belvaille had multi-billionaires.

Belvaille was
located at the very edge of the Colmarian Confederation and very nearly the
edge of the galaxy. Over a few centuries the station had become a backwater
hideout for unsavory types on account of us being so far away.

But seven years
ago some idiot had negotiated a deal with the Navy to turn Belvaille into an
Independent Protectorate overseen by the Colmarian Confederation.

That idiot was
me.

All the things
that had once been illegal and ignored because of our vast distance and
irrelevance, consequently became legal. I thought this change was going to be a
boon for the criminal gangs that had long made their homes on Belvaille.

I suppose it
was, but not for those of us who lived here.

When everyone
learned that you could now manufacture, ship, buy, sell, goods and services
that were illegal in the Colmarian Confederation, legally from this space
station, there was a huge influx of people hoping to capitalize on our unique
situation.

The number of
turf wars increased dramatically and things got really bloody. I sat out the
drama for a few years by selling one of my prized possessions to a collector
and living off the proceeds.

When we thought
everything had finally settled down, the corporations came. A big gang might
have once had a hundred or so people working for it. But these corporations had
millions of employees all over the galaxy.

Some of those
employees were soldiers they sent to Belvaille. They probably had university degrees
in Ballistic Weapon Application and Proper Posture. They were a whole different
breed.

The smart gang
bosses quickly sold out or took subservient roles. The ones who didn’t were
absolutely crushed in the most efficient means possible.

Because not
even murder was illegal on Belvaille anymore.

We technically
had a government, but it was run by the corporations. And they weren’t about to
arrest themselves.

The scales had
changed so dramatically so quickly and it was impossible to go back. No one had
openly blamed me for the changes, but I blamed myself.

The very
boundaries of Belvaille had even changed. The corporations ran out of
manufacturing space on the station so they brought maybe twenty or so gigantic
freighters out here and anchored them to Belvaille with long cables, thus
making them “part” of our city. You couldn’t walk to them of course, but they
were apparently cranking out illegal goods.

At some point,
I wondered if Belvaille would look like a fat spider sitting on a vast web of
attached facilities.

Before all
these changes took place I was once a highly sought-after bagman, fixer, and
gang negotiator. Now I was lucky to be a doorman. And even that was over. I
just let my employer, and his business, get destroyed by a bomb while I worked
as security. That’s not exactly an endorsement for my efficiency.

I felt terrible
for all the people who had died tonight, but on the other hand, what could I
have done? I wasn’t fast enough to have stopped that guy before he ran in. Even
if I had my gun out and immediately shot him, his armor probably would have
deflected it.

And the guy
killed himself with that bomb! This was just a whole other type of warfare than
what I was used to.

Gang fights in
the past could get dirty. People died all the time. I’ve killed more people
than I’d like to admit. But there was still decorum to it. Even a sense of camaraderie.
Because we all knew we were roughly the same kind of people: lower class
garbage not welcome in Colmarian Confederation proper.

Due to
corporations trying to consolidate their power and protect their investments, there
were tanks driving on the streets of Belvaille. Tanks!

It wasn’t that
I couldn’t compete with corporations, my skin was stronger than any body armor
they had. It was that I didn’t want to.

I always heard
about old people not being able to hack it at some point. And I’d seen that
often in my line of work. The thugs with white hair stopped being thugs and
became bartenders or apprenticed with counterfeiters or smugglers. Too many
stab wounds or gunshots and you had to find a new line of work.

But I had never
really heard about hitting a certain age and not
wanting
to hack it. I
didn’t want to join a corporation and stand around in the back of trucks or
guard some manufacturing plant. Punch my timecard and take my orders from a
nameless entity ten thousand light years away.

I used to want
to know about all the latest guns and locks and gimmicks and who worked for
which gang. Now I really didn’t give a damn.

Was I just antiquated?
Or had the game changed too much for my comfort zone?

Many of my old
friends had left Belvaille or had been killed in the conflicts over the last
years. The only reason I was still here and alive was because I was too stupid
or stubborn to leave and I was bulletproof. If Cad or Balday-yow had gone
inside instead of me when that bomb went off they would have died along with
everyone else.

But my mutation
wasn’t going to save me forever. Bullets and bombs were one thing but if a tank
wanted me dead, I wasn’t going to have much say in the matter.

I turned on my
tele and saw I had no messages. It was just instinct for me to turn it off when
I didn’t want to be bothered. But there was no one left to bother me. A bomb
blew up a casino and it was no big deal.

I called Garm.

Garm was a
young woman who had once worked for the Colmarian Navy and been the official Adjunct
Overwatch of the station, and thus kind of like our mayor. She was one of the
few people who kept her position of influence despite all the adjustments.

She organized
the various facilities groups into one union and became their leader. So if you
needed water, electricity, sewage treatment, or simply not to get sucked out
into space, you had to deal with her. She basically had a monopoly for life on
a space station, which was an awful good monopoly to possess when you live on a
space station.

She was an
extremely attractive woman, though a bit hyperactive because her mutation
caused her to never sleep. She had short-cropped black hair and a muscular
build.

I had dated her
for a few months some years ago, but it just didn’t work out. We had professionally
worked together for too long and I always thought of her as Garm and not a lady
I was dating. We were also both way too headstrong.

I still had
fantasies about her now and then. But only like once or five times a week.

“What?” she answered
on the tele.

“Did you hear
about the Yeolenz Flame?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I told
Xominion he should put up safety doors, but he wanted to keep the traffic going.
Did the Gandrine do anything?”

“You know, I
think they’re still sitting there. I hadn’t thought about it. They did actually
notice the building was on fire though.”

“Prodigies, I
tell you. Hey, are you alright?” she asked, looking concerned on the tele
screen.

“Oh, yeah, I
mean it knocked me down and dazed me for a while, but I didn’t get injured.”

“I know that. I
saw you fight a Dredel Led robot clear across the city. A little bomb isn’t
going to hurt you. But…you know, are you okay?”

“Sure. Though I
might have to hit you up for a job. I can like haul stuff, if you don’t mind it
being moved slowly.”

“Hold off on
that,” she said. “Hey, I need to run to a meeting. And don’t worry about
things, something else might come along.”

She gave me a
wink and hung up.

The next day, I
washed and shaved and dressed. I went into my living room to put on my jacket
so I could go out and get something to eat. Right in front of my doorway, two
strange women were facing me.

They had
absolutely pale skin. Almost pure white. They both had giant manes of silver
hair that poofed-up and whose ends practically touched my dirty floor.

They were both athletic
without being bulky. I could tell because they wore almost no clothes. They had
on what appeared to be metal armor that only covered the tops of their
shoulders, their forearms, and knees. It was ornate and polished. They wore
bras that seemed to be of a similar design and didn’t look especially
comfortable. One wore a bikini bottom while the other had a long loincloth that
hung down to her ankles and was highly decorative. They both had on spikey
boots that went up to their knees and they had black synth collars around their
necks.

“Uh, hello,” I
said, quite surprised to find nearly-naked pale women in my apartment.

“Are you named
Hank?” one of them asked in a thick accent.

I was still
looking them over so I took a moment to respond.

“Yeah. That’s
me.”

With that, one
of them drew two wickedly-curved daggers from her belt and the other drew a
short sword with a serrated blade.

I didn’t even have
a moment to say anything before they attacked. All I saw was one do a cartwheel
and as I watched that, dumbfounded, the other stabbed me in the neck.

“What
are—gack!”

As I tried to
respond to the first slice, one woman stabbed me in the mouth. The blade actually
poked the back of my throat.

I tried to push
it out, but they just bounced and flipped away. One then jumped against my wall
and did a somersault and stabbed me on top of the head while the other woman
ducked beneath me and got me under my armpit as I was flailing helplessly.

They were
moving so quickly I could barely follow. They used their long hair to mask
their movements, as it hung in the air or whipped around they would strike.

I reached for
my shotgun but not only was it knocked away, they cut off my entire holster.

I started
swinging wildly and it was like trying to hit a fly with a tree. I wasn’t even
connecting with the air they left behind.

I got stabbed
in the ankles, the groin, my navel, my eyes. Finally I felt a dagger go up my
rear end and I realized I had to get out of here.

Blades weren’t likely
to kill me, but they just might cause some damage I’d rather not have. Covering
my face and ears, I tried to make my way deeper into my house.

They sliced up
one of my boots and it fell off instantly. They cut me between my toes and I
felt a knife go under one of my fingernails. I was bleeding now, not badly, but
enough to be concerned. A bomb hadn’t even caused me to bleed and these two had
managed it with some silverware.

I finally made
it into my bathroom and turned on the light as a matter of habit. I then got
down on one knee and leaned against the fixtures.

I ripped my
toilet up and water sprayed everywhere.

I held my
toilet like a club with my right hand and faced them.

“Come on, you
spinny bitches!” I shouted.

Yeah, they
could flip around and dance off the walls in my living room, but there was no space
for that in my bathroom. I was too slow to catch them with my hands, but I
couldn’t miss by swinging a toilet in these confines.

The two of them
stayed outside with their blades ready. One was crouched impossibly low to the
ground while the other held her two daggers, arms wide.

I don’t know if
they paused because they were wondering if they could fight me on the wet tiles
of my bathroom, or because they were grossed-out by how seldom I cleaned my
toilet.

They both stood
up straight and made some very quick, non-verbal communication with each other
and sheathed their weapons.

“We would like
to hire you,” a pale woman said.

“Yeah, right.”

One of them
threw a token into the bathroom. I recoiled at first, wondering if it was some
kind of weapon. But I knew tokens. There were 20,000 credits on it. In my
doorman job I was paid that about every three months.

“We will pay
you 10,000 a week plus expenses. That is a retainer.”

I figured these
ladies were assassins. But who would want to assassinate me? I wasn’t important
anymore.

“What do you
want me to do?” I asked warily. I still held my toilet at the ready.

“We need you to
find someone.” The two women alternated speaking. Even their voices were
similar.

“Why did you
guys attack me?”

“We had to make
sure what Garm said about you was true,” she stated simply.

“Garm?” I
dropped my toilet. “Did she tell you about my mutations?”

“Yes.”

I was going to
have to have a talk with her. Maybe this was what she meant about see what
comes up, when I had asked her about a job.

“Who do you
want found? I don’t know as many people as I once did.”

One of the
women activated her tele and I saw I had a message. I looked at the image they
sent me, though I kept one eye on them in case it was a trick. The portrait
looked exactly like them.

“Who is this,
your sister?”

“Do you mean
biologically speaking?”

“No, I mean did
you all go to the same sorority,” I answered sarcastically, but they didn’t get
the joke. “It won’t be hard finding her if she looks like this.”

“She will
almost certainly be disguised,” one said.

“Well then it
will be very hard to find someone that doesn’t look like you. Because that’s
basically everyone.”

“We know within
a week the date of her arrival.”

“Oh.” I thought
about that. I knew some people at the port and I could get video records of
everyone who checked in. And she had to eat and sleep somewhere. “I might be
able to find her. But I need more money. You all made me break my bathroom. And
I’m a bit upset you attacked me.”

I looked at
myself in the bathroom mirror and my clothes were practically diced off. I had
blood flecks in my eyes and nose and mouth and ears. They sure did a number on
me, I looked like hell.

The two women
again “spoke” briefly to each other with hand gestures.

I then saw on
my tele they had beamed my account an extra 5000 credits. I wouldn’t say I
trusted them, but I was a lot more trusting.

“So who are you
guys?” I asked.

“We are merely
tourists. We will leave once you have located our companion and she returns
with us.”

Yeah, tourists,
I can see that. Because Belvaille was so picturesque.

“Okay, I’ll
take the job,” I said. “Tele me all the information you have on her and I’ll
get to work on it tomorrow.”

We stood there,
neither side moving. Water was spraying all over me and the pale women were
watching me absently.

“You can leave
now,” I said from the safety of my bathroom.

They turned and
walked back to the living room.

I tried to put
my toilet back in place, but it was busted pretty bad. I washed my hands and
then washed my face. How did they get daggers in all those spots while I was
moving? But they’re about as much tourists as I was a flower girl at a lesbian
wedding.

I walked out of
my bathroom and to the front door to make sure it was closed.

Out of nowhere
one of the pale sisters leaped up, wrapped her legs around me, and kissed me on
the lips!

She then did a
backflip away, casually turned around, and left the apartment.