Book Read Free

Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap

Page 11

by Steven Campbell


  I can vaguely remember myself at that age, and I was good-looking. I don’t mean that to show off, either. I was good-looking because I was young. Because I hadn’t been stressed-out yet. Hadn’t been shot in the face a hundred times. Hadn’t lived off the dubious nutritional value of space station food.

  I was about middle-aged now. Not that there was a set mark for that. I could live for another hundred years or two hundred years. Or because of my mutation, die tomorrow. Who knew?

  I wasn’t excited about taking this woman home—whose name I had forgotten to ask and now it was too late. Maybe a hundred years ago I would have been excited. Now it was just another thing to stress out about.

  I had gone to The Strip to try and purge my thoughts from all the things I had to do, but I’m not one of the people that can do that easily. Maybe that’s why I was a good gang negotiator.

  I was always on the job.

  Sitting here on the train with a cute blonde in my lap I was still piecing together how I would attack the Ulzaker-Ses club.

  There was going to be people in it no matter what time I attacked.

  Unless there weren’t!

  “Hey,” I said.

  “What?” The blonde brightened, seeing as I had been a big lump the whole time.

  “Nothing. I just thought of a way…” and I looked at her. “Thought what a sexy woman you were. Are.”

  “Aww,” she said. And put her head back on my shoulder.

  At my stop we began walking to my home. I’m not sure if she had been under the influence and my sober attitude had sobered her, she was naturally coming down, or she found me dull. But in any case she was a lot less bubbly.

  So about my front steps. How was I going to do this?

  “Want to play a game?” I asked her.

  “What kind?” she said, perking up.

  “I want to see if I can carry you all the way in. But you have to close your eyes.”

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” she warned, as if she weighed even half as much as my autocannon. “How far away do you live?”

  “Close. Come on, climb up.”

  I picked her up easily in my arms. In fact, she was a nice counterbalance to my gun.

  She laughed joyfully as I jiggled her around.

  “Cover your eyes,” I said.

  She did so, dutifully. Not asking how it related to being carried.

  The Gandrine were still there.

  “Keep those eyes closed,” I taunted.

  “I am!”

  I walked past my two gargoyles and then approached Toby and Byo’lene. I turned to the side so I could see where I was walking better. I didn’t want to step on the corpses. If I dropped the woman at that point, things might become very bad when she opened her eyes.

  Suddenly I heard a chok from in front of me.

  I looked down and the woman I was carrying had a circular wound in her chest. Right over her heart.

  Her hands, which had been pressed tight against her eyes, dropped flaccidly down. Her mouth which had been fixed in a smile, relaxed. Her eyes went glassy.

  I placed her on the ground and put my hand above her eye, blocking the latticework light and removed it, to see if her pupils reacted. They did not. Turning her, I saw an exit wound clear through her back.

  Staying hunched down, I got behind the Gandrine for cover.

  “Come on, I didn’t even know her!” I yelled to the street.

  I looked back at the growing pile of corpses at my front door. It was clear they weren’t trying to shoot me. But why shoot strangers?

  It’s like someone really wanted me to become antisocial.

  CHAPTER 26

  “Everything looks good?” I asked Cad the following night.

  “Yeah, it’s quiet. No one on the whole block,” he said.

  My big brainstorm was to bribe Garm’s people. Of course I had to give 25K to Garm and sprinkle about half that among her techs. Then they cut off the electrical grid to the Ulzaker-Ses club and the surrounding block.

  For the first few hours I knew they would be in a panic, trying to get the juice restored. Get their customers to stay put. At the third hour, they would chalk it up to Belvaille incompetence and not bother.

  We would attack on hour four of the brown-out.

  Hopefully there would be no customers, no security, no nothing.

  We were all currently in a vacant building just by the train line in the northwest going over last minute planning.

  I felt like a real gang boss. And I wasn’t very comfortable with that. I had been a sergeant many times. The leader of an operation. The head goon.

  But I was paying everyone here and it showed. They held the door for me. They pulled out chairs. They stood a respectable five feet away even if they had to rudely push the guy behind them to make space.

  “Listen up, everyone, Hank’s about to talk,” Balday-yow yelled to the assembled troops.

  All you could hear was the creaking of equipment.

  I stood over a little table with a map on it. My men crowded around it listening. I had picked what I felt were solid guys, so no one was daydreaming or drinking or otherwise goofing off.

  There was a real tension in the air. They knew they were getting a lot of money for a very short period of time, so this potentially could be dangerous. It was fifty guys who knew that when they stepped out the door they may have twenty minutes to live.

  “First off, if you got something to say, tell your captain and he tells me. We can’t have fifty guys yelling. Cad is going to set up a perimeter with his men outside and keep us posted if anything comes. If they bring in reinforcements, you got to hold them off until we can get outside and back you up.”

  “Right,” Cad said. He had Sassy with him as I wanted his ears and nose.

  “The rest of us are going in. It will be dark, with just the emergency lights. Fan out immediately across the floor. Stay behind cover and stay low. Anyone there who isn’t part of our team…”

  And I looked around at the men.

  “Dies.”

  They all exchanged looks. There was a lot of deep breaths and widening of eyes.

  I felt that order had to be given. If they left a skeleton crew of security we had to take them out fast before they called in their thirty friends and it became a real bloodbath.

  “Once the club is secure, I’ll set the charges and everyone gets out. When everyone is out and away from the building, the job is officially over. Then you go home.”

  “Hank, can we ask who this is for?” a young guy piped. He had been a referral.

  Some of the older, more experienced thugs, tsked, and elbowed him, and gave him hard looks. I ignored him.

  “That’s it. You know your groups. Everyone to the train.”

  The captains started screaming at their respective men, whipping them forward.

  I took a gamble putting us all on the same train. Yeah. Fifty guys in body armor carrying all the assorted shotguns, pistols, rifles, and submachine guns that Delovoa could scrounge on short notice. No, nothing’s going on, why do you ask?

  I could have asked the corporation to borrow an APC but I didn’t know anyone who could drive them and I didn’t want to use corporation resources. This was an old school gang affair as far as I was concerned.

  The train was powered all the way to three blocks from the club and then we had to get out—the power outage affected it as well. We moved double-time down the street, hugging the sidewalk. I wanted to get into the shadows of the brown-out as soon as possible.

  When we got there, it was dead silent. All the businesses were shuttered and empty.

  It wasn’t a very busy street to begin with and four hours of darkness meant there was no reason to be here at all.

  Unless you wanted to firebomb a building.

  Cad’s men took up their defensive positions.

  Two of my guys began cracking the locks while the rest of us waited impatiently.

  It took longer than I wished, but they
got the doors open.

  I went in first. If anyone was meant to draw fire it was me.

  It was nearly impossible to see inside. I waited for guys to filter in behind me and disperse themselves, and then I turned on my flashlight.

  Well, it was a club. Lots of tables. Chairs. Bars. Dance platforms.

  Some of the other men turned on their flashlights too. Keeping cover behind furniture and whatever else they could find, we slowly moved forward.

  We were all maybe fifteen feet inside when the shooting started.

  Dozens of automatic weapons appeared all across the club in every corner, behind every object, some just a few feet from where my guys were advancing.

  Everyone on my side began unloading as well. It was a full-on firefight.

  The light from the muzzle flashes was more disorienting than a strobe light. I think because the shots were so irregularly spaced that your pupils had just enough time to widen to the dark before they were shrunk tiny by another barrage.

  I couldn’t get a bead on where everyone was. I couldn’t even tell who was on whose side. I’m not sure anyone knew.

  It was just they were vaguely over there and we were vaguely over here.

  I saw guys going down. Heard moans in between the incredibly loud firing.

  We were outgunned, that much was obvious. I hadn’t equipped the guys with assault rifles because not everyone was good with them and I didn’t think we would be fighting a war inside a club. My men with pistols and shotguns and long rifles had no chance trading fire in the dark with enemies who seemed largely to have automatic weapons.

  One of my team, who had been apparently hiding behind me, fell to the ground gripping his leg. I felt I had to try and turn this around or we were going to lose.

  “Eat suck, suckface!” I warned.

  The shooting slowed substantially. Both sides had people who knew me. Or knew of me. And they knew what it meant when I said that. A lot of guys were taking the opportunity to get into cover or flee upstairs.

  I pulled my autocannon in place. Thought about it for a moment and loaded a canister shell. I had no idea what it would do inside a building.

  I leaned into the gun like Delovoa said and fired.

  Kachooom!

  There was that five-foot fireball. The speed of light was a lot faster than the recoil of the gun and I briefly saw and comprehended: destruction.

  Then I was promptly hurled backwards however many feet and landed like a turtle upside down.

  I was dazed from the blast and blinded by its light. But I rolled to my side and managed to get to my feet.

  I reloaded another canister round and blinked my eyes to try and get my sight back.

  My ears were ringing and I enjoyed the pleasant novelty of not being shot at.

  I saw a flashlight near my feet and picked it up.

  The club looked like someone had taken every piece of furniture and put it into a giant blender and then poured out that massive pile of debris against the far wall.

  There were men down everywhere. Mine. Theirs.

  “Hank,” I heard Cad yell on my open tele. “Some corporation is here. They got vehicles, and guys, and they’re shooting up everyone!”

  I took in as much air as I could and yelled to the club.

  “Hold your fire! Everyone! It is over. If you exit the building now, we will not fire on you! You have my word on that. If you are in this club in three minutes, you will be burned alive! Those are your two options. Help the wounded out. But get out now!”

  I set up some of the flashlights on the ground to see what I was doing.

  People stumbled past. I couldn’t see what they were wearing or who they worked for. I really didn’t care.

  I took from my backpack the charges that Delovoa had given me and placed them around the club. He told me they leaked a dense, highly flammable gas that was slightly lighter than air, so it would permeate the club. He assured me that when all five went off, the building would contain nothing but ash.

  “Hank,” someone said. I looked by the door and it was a guy in armor, holding his bleeding side. He was not one of my men.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you set your bombs?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  He grabbed hold of the doors and pulled them shut. I heard them lock. They were security doors and would be just as hard to open from the inside as the outside.

  “Sore loser!”

  I thought about the floor plans for this building but the lower entrances would also be sealed. And they would now be filled with flammable gas.

  I began to run towards the stairs. I got maybe five feet and reached down and ripped off my metal shoes, I couldn’t afford to trip in them. I continued up the stairs.

  At the first landing I saw about a half-dozen of the defenders waiting. They all turned their guns on me.

  “Don’t you smell that? We’re all about to be bacon! Come on.”

  I continued up the stairs and I heard the men following me. After two more flights of stairs they passed by, not worried so much about being shot in the back as being incinerated.

  The charges ignited and we could feel the heat. But the gas hadn’t penetrated this far up. I was glad Delovoa had miscalculated—or exaggerated. Still, everything in the building was going to burn and we were going to run out of air even if we weren’t cooked in this metal oven.

  We got to the top of the stairs and the roof access, but the door was locked.

  The guys were banging on it and kicking it and punching in random numbers trying to guess the combination. I knew that door and didn’t think I could force it open.

  “Back up,” I said.

  Not everyone did, until I got my autocannon out and pointed it at the door.

  I ejected the canister round and put in an armor piercing shell. I pushed the group back some but no one was willing to go down the stairs closer to a fire that was raging upwards.

  “Everyone lean against me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Push against me or I’ll knock us all down a flight of stairs and probably break half your bones.”

  They pushed.

  I aimed as best I could at the lock connected to the wall. I then closed my eyes, put down my head, and pulled the trigger.

  Kachooom!

  Firing the gun on the narrow stairwell caused a terrible shockwave. It felt like someone had opened my skull and hit me directly on the brain with a hammer. I could hear nothing. I had no orientation.

  I tried to shake the cobwebs from my head. I looked up and saw the door had been blasted open.

  The guys were in bad shape. I might have taken the brunt of an autocannon being fired in close quarters, but I was a lot more able to take it.

  I dragged them to their feet by their armor or their necks. Two were unconscious and I had the other guys carry them.

  We got onto the roof and into the sweet sweet air.

  I walked to the edge of the building and looked down.

  There must have been three APCs and countless soldiers. They were just everywhere. In my tele, I ordered a full retreat.

  Some of the guys from the stairs came by to watch. I wasn’t worried about them trying to push me off the roof because they couldn’t if they wanted to.

  “Is that your corporation?” I asked one.

  “Ours? You think we work with them? Why do you think we have so many guards? They’ve been trying to beat us for months.”

  It wasn’t Colmarian United Supply. The APC had spotlights and I could vaguely see the pattern on their vehicles was green and white diamonds with some writing I couldn’t make out. Probably something like, “Where the Customer Comes First.”

  The thing I wanted to know was how did this other corporation know we were here?

  CHAPTER 27

  I regrouped at the Belvaille Gentleman’s Club the next evening. I didn’t want to, but it was my responsibility.

  Thirteen of my men were dead. Thirty-five were injured. Onl
y two escaped unscratched. One was named Nevinz-eor and the other was Flizzer. Both of their nicknames suddenly, and irrevocably, were switched to “Lucky.”

  Of the defenders of the club, only the ones who had gone through the roof with me survived. The owner was dead.

  The mood was somber in the Gentleman’s Club. That was a lot of guys who lost their lives.

  Normally they would be griping about me, some egotistical boss that had caused all this mayhem. But I wasn’t a boss. I was supposedly one of them. Here I was sitting in the club, smelling the same bad air, watching the same sports.

  No one was talking. The Gentleman’s Club was a pretty unruly place most times. But I felt like everyone was looking over their shoulder at me. Like I was a Navy general keeping them in line.

  I decided to take my leave and head to the hospital and see how the guys were doing.

  “Hey, Cad,” I said uneasily. He was naked from the waist up and had his arm in a sling.

  “We couldn’t hold the line,” he blurted out. “There was too many. They killed Sassy.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know a corporation would be there. Did you?”

  “Absolutely not. Did they say anything before they attacked?”

  “Nothing. At all. Just floodlights and firing. They didn’t care who they shot at. They shot everyone who came out of that club.”

  “I looked them up. The corporation was the Fifteen Stars Holding Authority,” I said.

  “Typical corporate name. How did you get away?”

  “From the roof we jumped down to the adjacent building. Then one more. Finally found a fire escape and it led to the opposite street.”

  “When I saw how many there were, I dropped my gun and ran. I’m sorry, but there was no way. I think if I was taller, I would have been killed.”

  “Did they arrive in the APCs?”

  “No, that’s what I was thinking was weird. Those weren’t troop transports, they were the ones you shoot out of. So they could only hold like ten each. And they were full of guys firing. All those soldiers must have gotten there on foot.”

 

‹ Prev