Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap (24 page)

The General was in charge.

Some members of the unions
complained at the heavy-handed tactics of the Navy until they got a face full
of rifle butt. They kept surprisingly quiet after that.

With his officers around him, I
told them of my dealings with Naked Guy. Delovoa filled them in on the
biological soldiers and what weaponry they possessed. Garm told them about what
requests the corporations had made over the years and how that might play into
the current situation.

Then there was the Gandrine, the
Portal, and the Therezians.

“Return here at 017150 CST hours,”
he said.

“I have no idea what that means,” I
said.

“I can tell you,” Garm said,
tugging on me.

“Let’s test the pistol,” Delovoa
begged.

The three of us were alone in the
elevator.

“I need to get in touch with your
girlfriends. Sisters. Pals. Whatever.”

“Why?” Garm asked.

“Never mind why, I’m the
Surrogate.”

“That doesn’t mean you can give
orders, stupid. It just means you talk to the Surrogate for the Confederation.”

“Well, I’ll tell him you wouldn’t
help me.”

“He does seem pretty mean,” Delovoa
agreed.

“Fine.”

Garm and the pale sisters were
involved in a very in-depth negotiation. It involved lots of gesturing and not
a lot of talking.

“Help me take off these bandages,”
I asked Delovoa, as we stood a comfortable distance away from the women.

“Let me see the gun first.”

“No. For the hundredth time. You’re
going to do something dumb and kill us all like you always do.”

“When was the last time I ‘killed
us all’?”

“How about when you released a
giant robot named ZR3?” I asked.

He flinched and looked around. ZR3
had trapped Delovoa in his basement for a considerable period of time. After
that the robot had gone berserk across the city. It had taken a level-ten
mutant named Jyonal to even contain the machine. To this day it sat on its own
block under a metal bubble twenty feet thick. Besides Zadeck Street that housed
Wallow, that was the other block I was afraid of.

No one was allowed on the street
and it wasn’t mentioned even in whispers. Not many people knew what was
contained there, but they knew it was dangerous, so no one went.

I took off my own bandages.

The sisters and Garm approached.

“It’s worked out, they’re allowed
to help us,” Garm said, unpleased.

The pale sisters jumped up and
kissed me on the lips, one after the other. It was the least likely thing I was
expecting except maybe for them to explode into a song and dance number.

I looked at Garm, who was still
annoyed.

“Wait. What? Does that mean
something in Quadrad? Are they going to stab me now?”

“Just ask them what you want,” Garm
sulked.

“Your sister. She was looking for a
man to kill. Was this guy…uh, naked?”

“He was responsible for the
destruction of our companion’s home continent,” one of the pale sisters said.

Whoa. Killed a continent.

“Did he have a name? Or like, was
he nameless?”

“Shle-nidu.”

“Oh.” That was definitely a name.

“You’re thinking he is the same guy
who is running the corporation?” Garm asked.

“Who else could it be? How many
continent-killers do we have on Belvaille?”

“He murdered the population of the
continent. We were tasked with returning him to face trial. But she wanted to assassinate
him. When she broke our orders, we changed our goal of finding him to finding her.
Technically, we were still looking for a criminal.”

“Technically,” Garm mocked. And
they went off on some non-verbal argument using their weird Quadrad language.

“Stop. Did the guy have black
eyes?”

“We never saw him.”

“How were you going to find him?
Did you think he would be bragging he killed a continent? Have it written on a
t-shirt?”

“We were going to track his
financial dealings, his subordinates, and use your knowledge of the city.”

“Did you do that stuff?”

“We were prevented because of our
agreement with Garm.”

“How long would it take you if you
started now?”

“Why do we want him, Hank? If it’s
your guy, we already know where he is.”

“Just to make sure they’re the same
one.”

“What’s that matter?” Garm asked.

“Because if she was going to try
and disintegrate him, presumably she thought it would work. Did she know more
about this guy than you two did?”

“Yes, we believe she used Quadrad
resources to research him.”

“And then broke her contract,” Garm
said.

“So you don’t know if this guy is
really old and difficult to hurt?”

“We know nothing about him except
his crimes. We filed all our information so we couldn’t access it until we
reapplied to Garm’s territory.”

I considered this.

“Can you three Quadrad go to City
Hall and keep an eye on the Navy? Assist them where you can, they’re the only
thing that can even remotely stop the corporation at this point,” I said.

They didn’t seem happy to be
working with one another, or the Navy, but that was too bad.

“Delovoa, you’re good with corpses,
right?”

“This,” I said, “is Toby.”

“Who are these others?” Delovoa
asked, pulling his shirt over his nose and mouth to try and mask the smell.

“I forget.”

The whole front of my old
demolished apartment was very vomit-inducing. The corpses had not aged well.
The mild humidity and small number of microorganisms had at last gotten to old
Toby.

“You sure about this?” Delovoa
asked.

“No. But come on.”

We started and stopped carrying the
body a dozen times as each of us ran off to retch or was otherwise grossed-out.

Delovoa had it easy by lifting
Toby’s legs from the bottom of the pants. But I couldn’t find a non-slimy
holding spot. And then his jacket and shirt started to come off and things got
even more disgusting.

“We could use shovels,” Delovoa
said.

“Let’s just do this.”

We got Toby into a cart, his legs
dangling over the side, and I pushed it to the train. It was either that or a multi-hour
walk to Delovoa’s.

Anyone in our train compartments transferred
quickly when they saw and smelled our cargo. I felt certain my reputation
achieved a new low point.

When we got into Delovoa’s house I
pushed the cart to the ramp and headed down into his basement. I had just
reached the floor when a cacophony of sirens and alarms assaulted me. There
were lights flashing from the ceilings. Was it a fire?

“Get out!” Delovoa urged.

“Why?”

“Get out, fool.”

We hurried outside, Delovoa proving
remarkably spry.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Then why did you make me run? Do
you have random sirens in your house?”

“I sell alarms, remember? I got all
kinds of warning systems in my basement. I don’t remember what those particular
ones indicate. But I don’t have any alarms that warn me of good things.”

“So what could it be? Someone broke
in?”

“No, no. Poison gas. Biological
agents. It has to be something unusual or I would have heard it before.”

“I bet it was those Quadrad when
they kissed me,” I said, wiping my lips hard. “It was probably poison.”

After a while we braved going into
his kitchen, where we could hear the sirens screaming up at us.

“Shouldn’t you know what your own
alarms are for?” I asked him.

“Do you know what all the muscles
on your body are for?”

“Huh? Was it Toby decomposing that
triggered it? He smelled pretty bad.”

“Doubtful.”

“Are we safe up here?”

“Let me know if you feel
light-headed or confused.”

“What? So we’re going to wait until
we start to die? You’re like my medical technician.”

“Shh. Listen.”

The siren was warping. It was being
distorted. As if someone large were bashing the horn making the noise.

“That’s ominous,” I said.

“There’s some hazardous clean-up
suits we can get. I sold them to the city. I think that will protect us.”

“You think? Are we going to go down
there and die?”

“If it was coming from the body we
already pushed it here and breathed in everything.”

That was true.

“I pushed it. You just walked
beside me.”

“Let’s get the suits and I can find
out what alarm went off. If it’s super dangerous, we’ll leave.”

“Why do I have to go down with you?
I don’t know your alarms.”

“It’s the buddy system.”

“I’m not your buddy,” I said
defiantly.

We looked like we were about to
step out into deep space exploration in our brilliant orange suits. They only
had one suit on the whole station that fit me and it didn’t fit that well.

“Remember,” Delovoa warned, “if you
step wrong in that, your weight will tear the suit and then you’ll be exposed.”

“So why am I going?” I complained.

“Because you’re probably immune to
whatever it is anyway and you need to carry me out if I start getting sick.”

I grumbled but watched where I
walked.

Our visibility was cut by about 75%.

The alarm in his apartment was silent.

“That could be good or bad or
neither. Either the danger has passed, the danger has destroyed the sensors, or
the batteries ran out.”

In the basement we lifted Toby to Delovoa’s
examination bed. It was a lot easier the second time, when we were in airtight
suits, fearing for our lives.

We couldn’t tell which sensors had
been tripped because he had a million and they were all silent now.

Delovoa started scanning. I took a
few steps back to be safe.

“Look,” Delovoa said.

I came over and peeped through the
scanner.

“Why do you always show me this
stuff and think I’ll know what it means?”

“The face. That’s why there isn’t
much decomposition, it’s covered.”

“What’s he covered with?”

“That’s not a he.”

“Are you sure?”

Delovoa turned to look at me. I could
only see two of his eyes but I was pretty sure he was giving me a nasty
expression.

“I just can’t understand what
tripped my sensors,” he said.

“Is it this?”

I held up a metal cylinder about eight
inches long and a few inches wide.

“Where’d you get that?”

“I just frisked her.”

Delovoa started to scan it.
Suddenly he jumped away as fast as his suit would let him.

“Yow, that thing is pouring out every
band of radiation and antiprotons! That will eat through our suits.”

I put it on the table.

“Do you think it could be a
converted a-drive?”

He thought about that.

“I don’t know.”

Which had to be a first for Delovoa
to ever admit.

“Can you tell how she was killed?
I’m guessing this is the other Quadrad.”

Without even checking, Delovoa
answered.

“She was likely killed by that
device. Anyone is going to die holding onto that thing unshielded for too
long.”

“So she wasn’t assassinated.”

“She might have been.”

“It’s really important to be sure,
Delovoa. I have to know if the corporation was aware she was here and she had this
device.”

“Well, get that thing out of the
way and I’ll look.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“Because you’re probably safe from
the radiation and you have a lot of protons to annihilate.”

I looked around and found a piece
of metal rebar about eight feet long. I fumbled with it and managed to flick
the device onto the floor. I then pushed it against the far wall.

“That’s it,” Delovoa said
sarcastically, “just knock an a-drive core onto my metal floor. Nothing bad
could come from that.”

When it was sufficiently far away,
he gingerly went back to scanning Toby—well, the pale sister.

“I don’t see anything obvious that
would indicate she was shot or stabbed. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t
murdered another way. However, if she was killed by the device I’m not going to
be able to see it with this equipment. How did you know she was the Quadrad?”

“I didn’t. But he, or she, had been
dead outside my door a long time ago, about when the Quadrad had first come.
They had said she was looking for the Naked Guy and Garm told them I would know
how to find him. Zadeck had said she visited me and everyone agreed she would
be disguised. So I was guessing.”

“Now what?”

“Now you figure out how to turn a
malfunctioning a-drive core into a disintegrator.”

I got a call from Zadeck, of all
people.

I bet he was concerned the station
was filling with Therezians. Wallow wasn’t nearly as unique. I said I would
meet him on the very reasonable condition that Wallow didn’t harass or try to
kill me.

He agreed.

On Zadeck Street the foot traffic
was a tiny fraction of what it normally was.

I saw Wallow in the distance and
braced myself. I hoped this wasn’t a set-up. I reached for the General’s Ontakian
pistol.

Wallow was above me before I could
even draw the weapon. He turned on his heel and escorted me down the street,
standing erect.

He was my bodyguard!

“Move!” He shouted to anyone daring
to be within thirty feet of me.

They moved.

We reached Zadeck’s headquarters
and Wallow turned and stood watch. The bouncers opened the door with a small
bow.

Finally, a little respect.

Zadeck met me in the main room.
Other than when I kidnapped him, I think this was the only time I saw him out
of his office.

“Hank, good of you to come. Please follow
me.”

We walked back to his office and he
asked if I wanted any food or drink.

Yes to both.

As I sat on his luxurious chairs
stuffing my face, he wore a beatific grin.

“So,” he began casually, “a lot of
Therezians here.”

I didn’t see any need to keep
secrets. And who knew, maybe he could help.

“From Thereze,” I said, spitting
some food on the carpet by accident.

“Thereze? How?”

“Portal.”

“The Portals are disabled I was
told.”

“Portal southwest. In the street.”

“They brought in thirty Therezians
by hand?”

I paused eating.

“Thirty? Who said thirty?”

“My men counted.”

“They sure?”

“They are Therezians. Difficult, I
would say, to miscount.”

That meant they were accelerating.
I had been worried about eight.

“What do they eat?” I asked, idly
wondering if we were going to have Therezians scooping us up and shoving us
into their mouths.

“They eat remarkably little for
their size and produce no waste. They can survive at full capacity for months
without food or water.”

The galaxy was full of odd
creatures but Therezians were out there. Most times species were just strange,
but Therezians seemed to have every single benefit a race could have. It’s a
wonder they never took over.

“Do you know what they’re going to
be used for?” Zadeck asked. “Who commands them?”

“You don’t have to worry about your
street, if that’s what you’re wondering. They’re going to be used for war,” I
said.

“How?”

“I don’t know yet.”