He and I dealt with each other frequently. As a member of Old Belvaille, and specifically the gang culture, I liked talking to Zadeck far more than I did most people.
“Is now a good time?” Zadeck wheezed.
It wasn’t due to age that he had his gleaming medical devices. Zadeck had been shot numerous times. He was always a bit of a dandy, so his life support systems were plated in gold.
“It’s fine, Zadeck. How are you today?”
“Lower back is hurting more than usual. I’m trying to wean myself off pain relievers.”
“Good idea. Take it from a guy with permanently dull senses: you want to feel everything you can, while you can.”
He smiled.
“The election,” he said, tapping his fingers on the arm of his wheelchair, “how do you view it?”
I sighed.
“Honestly, I haven’t paid much attention. But everyone else seems to be.”
“Don’t underestimate its importance.”
“But why? The Governor and City Council. What will they do? I suspect nothing.”
“The people are pinning a lot of faith on them. Can’t you hear it on the loudspeakers? Every day it’s election this and election that. And on the street, folks are mad for it.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
He looked at me slyly.
“Are you going to run for office?” he asked point-blank.
“What? No.”
He seemed to consider my response.
“Why, are you?” I asked him.
“No one would elect an unpopular invalid. I’ll keep my current businesses.”
“But it wouldn’t hurt you to be friends with the new government, assuming they have any power.”
“Of course.”
We both sat silently for some moments.
“I have some information for you, Hank.”
“What will it cost?”
“You can decide. 19-10 has come to Belvaille,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You really don’t keep track of anything off this station, do you?”
“I can’t keep track of what’s on this station.”
“19-10 is an assassin. A bounty hunter. Very famous across the galaxy. He wears a four-armed Colmarian Messahn battlesuit.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“It was a weapon created during the war. Only a very few made. It can teleport. Like a Portal or an a-drive on a ship, but anywhere without limitations.”
That was something.
“So just pop across the galaxy? Or into someone’s house? How did that not stop the war? Or win it?”
“Well, I don’t know the specifics. This is just what I’ve heard,” he said.
“Hmm. So I’ll look around for someone with four arms, I guess. In a metal suit.”
“That’s just the first part. He’s here to kill you.”
“What did I do to him?”
“You do know how assassins work, right? Someone hired him.”
“Who?”
“That, I don’t know. But there are, as you must know, many contracts against you. When big name assassins take up a contract, they let everyone know, so other big names don’t interfere.”
“Well that’s courteous of them. Do you know anything else about him? Where he’s at or staying?”
“I don’t, unfortunately. But if I learn anything I’d be happy to tell you.”
I sat thinking about all this.
“I’m going out patrolling tomorrow,” I said finally. “Any recommendations?”
Zadeck also seemed to think. But he did a poor job of acting.
“Avenue Yein is very dangerous at night. I wonder if there’s any illegal activity going on there.”
I tried to picture that block. It was packed with gambling houses and brothels. But there was one establishment that I thought was owned by someone big enough to give Zadeck competition.
“The Busher building? Do they have their papers in order?” I hazarded.
Zadeck’s eyebrows raised and he puckered his lips as if that were some unique question he had never pondered.
“I don’t know. You might check, though.”
“Alright,” I said, and picked up another sandwich.
“Nice talking with you, Hank.”
“You too. I hope your back is better.”
Thirty or so sandwiches later, I was brooding on what Zadeck said.
Assassins were odd things. Belvaille had more than its share of killing. Hell, I did more than my share. But for an assassin, it’s their business. They haggle over the price of dead husbands, slaughtered police, and killed mothers.
You got to be of a particular sensibility to wake up every day thinking of murder. Probably not the kind of person who enjoys a good fart joke.
I knew there were assassins hiding on Belvaille, but they didn’t advertise, and they kept a low profile. If I caught them, it was straight to the Royal Wing. Belvaille never really used assassins. All the gangs fought. And yes, people died. But their business wasn’t death. That’s no good for anyone.
Maybe it was a fine line, but we all understood it.
A dark man with dark hair and a big dark beard came by my table. He was muscular and wore a tight-fitting shirt to show off that fact.
“Hank,” he said. “I heard about the court ruling. Funny stuff.”
He took out a pistol and pointed it lazily at my face. He wore a sneer which showed he had discolored teeth that almost matched the color of his beard.
“What’s your name?” I asked, stuffing another sandwich in my mouth.
“Aneoan,” he answered, keeping the gun level with me. He seemed to be enjoying it.
“How do you spell that?”
“A-n-e-o-a-n,” he said.
I scratched my leg and tried to clear sandwich bits from between my cheek with my tongue.
“It’s true that it is legal to point a gun at me.”
“Ahh!” Aneoan screamed and fell to the ground, gripping his thigh.
“But I hereby sentence you to be shot in the leg for having too many vowels in your name.”
CHAPTER 5
Supreme Kommilaire wasn’t a salaried job, per se. In fact, it didn’t pay at all except for what money I could embezzle and extort. So I wasn’t above doing the odd job now and then to make ends meet.
“He has four clubs, two of which look to be profitable. He has a small warehouse he owns with a long-term tenant. He is starting to deal in metal from off the city, but he’s keeping that secret, so I assume it’s either not profitable or he’s worried about other bosses horning in. He has maybe seventy-five enforcers and fifty regular employees,” I said, reading off the list.
There were three thugs, with one serving drinks, and a boss listening to my information as he got a massage.
He was a big guy who had grown flabby with age. You could often trace the lineage of people who had made it to the gang boss level by their appearance alone. This guy had clearly been hired muscle maybe fifty years ago. His name was aRj’in.
“What do you think he’s worth in terms of a loan?” he asked.
“Depends on what he’s buying. If he wants to try and refurbish his clubs, I’d say 100,000 thumbs. He’s got an eye for it. I think his wife is helping on that end.”
“She’s a showgirl floozy,” aRj’in sneered.
“Whatever she is, she’s good at it. You can see a profit off that if the juice isn’t too high. If he wants to push his metal business or warehouses, I wouldn’t give him more than 25,000 and I’d charge higher interest. There’s more competition and he’s a small player.”
aRj’in hummed about this as his masseur pounded his thick back like a slab of meat, making his breathing come out like a machine gun.
“Why should I care what he wants the money for as long as he pays me back?”
“Do you think the Ank just give out cash? They don’t make bad investments,” I said.
He snorted
and waved off his masseur, sitting up on the table.
“Do I look like an Ank? If he could get thumbs from one of them he wouldn’t need a loan shark.”
“It’s your money. Do with it what you want. I’m giving you my opinion.”
“The Supreme Kommilaire’s view on lending money.” He seemed amused by this. One of his men brought a drink over without being asked.
Now that he was sitting up, I saw aRj’in had some gunshot wounds that hadn’t healed completely. They were decades old, but abundant.
“Just Hank’s view,” I clarified.
“Why the distinction? Don’t your words have more meaning if you say Supreme Kommilaire?”
“Do you not know who I am otherwise?”
“I know you’re just a guy working for me. Like anyone else.”
“You paid for information,” I said.
“And what do you get paid?”
“5% from you and 5% from him, if you loan.”
“So it’s in your interest to tell me to make a big loan?”
“It’s not in my interest to give bad information or no one would hire me again.”
He was trying to convey something with his tone. But I wasn’t really getting it.
“So what will you buy with your fee? Some Kommilaire uniforms? Maybe some new hats for your men?” he asked.
“Yeah, probably.”
“Isn’t this illegal?”
“Illegal? Like how?” I asked.
“Breaking the law. Going against the government. Or do you always work for loan sharks?”
“I don’t always work for loan sharks. I sometimes work with pimps. And prostitutes. And armed robbers. And drug dealers. And arms manufacturers. But I don’t think of it so much as working for them as with them.”
“I’m sure you do,” he smiled.
“You see, I can radio my Stair Boys to come in here and raid this place. Take every thumb you have and every bit of property. Then sell it off and buy more hats than we have heads. And if you dare raise a stink about it, I can throw you all out the airlock so your bodies don’t clutter up my pretty space station. And you know who will say that’s ‘breaking the law’ and ‘going against the government’?” I asked, leaning in closer. “No one. Because no one is going to cross me in this city or I’ll throw them out the airlock too. I can throw out as many as I need until people realize it’s a bad idea to make smarmy remarks to my face.”
Despite his recent massage, aRj’in did not look so relaxed.
“Now where’s my 5%?” I asked.
After my visit with aRj’in, I met up with MTB and we headed east, just outside the docks.
“What did he do?” the man with no ears and one eye asked. His name was Busange.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m just looking for him is all you need to know,” I answered.
I was at the headquarters of a group that called themselves The Murderers. They weren’t a traditional gang. They hired out their men to other gangs for fights or short-term contracts.
They weren’t technically assassins. I frowned on assassins. But they sure as hell weren’t stand-up comics either.
MTB was holding a drawing of someone who had attacked and wounded several Kommilaire and subsequently escaped. There wasn’t much I could do except ask around.
“What’s in it for us if we see this mystery man?”
“Anyone caught sheltering him or hiding him gets the same penalty he gets,” I said.
“You haven’t even said what he done. For all I know you could be giving him a reward.”
“Funny guy. He’s going to the Royal Wing.”
“You got anything to sweeten the deal?” he muttered.
I looked at MTB, but he was not a fan of compromise.
“Sure. If you turn him over, you get one free…pass,” I said.
“Pass? Pass what?”
“Like a pass. If you get caught you can use your pass.”
“Yeah, but pass what?”
“Pass out of trouble. I’ve arrested some of you guys, right?” I asked.
“Gave us fines,” he replied.
“Broken some bones,” another said. He was sitting so far in the shadows I hadn’t even seen him there.
“Fine, so next time an arrest or fine comes up, you can use your pass.”
“And we won’t get arrested?”
“Right.”
“Huh. So what if we like, just for instance, killed a Kommilaire?”
“No. No. It won’t work then. Come on, man, think.”
“How should I know? I never heard of no pass!”
“I just came up with it now,” I said.
“Maybe we could list the crimes it’s good against?” MTB said uneasily.
“Crimes?” I asked, annoyed. We didn’t even have a list of crimes, how would we have a list of crimes to invalidate? “If you see him, we’ll make it worth your while,” I clarified.
“Can’t you just offer a reward?” Busange asked.
“If I had money to throw around on rewards I wouldn’t have to threaten people.”
CHAPTER 6
Blackheart Alley was, as always, black.
Belvaille got all its lighting from the latticework superstructure that surrounded the city. But it had seen better decades and many of the lights were now permanently damaged, which left areas of the city in perpetual darkness.
With our backs pressed against the walls, I waited until the voices grew louder and louder and then I stepped out into the middle of the street.
“Hong. Are you just out for a stroll this fine evening?” I said.
About a dozen men armed with pikes and spears and other long hand-to-hand weapons stood in front of me bathed in the flashlight glow from my Stair Boys.
I had gotten a tip that the Totki Clan was going to make a serious attack tonight. Apparently the information was correct, as this was far from their home turf. It had been a quiet week since my court trial and I wanted to keep things quiet.
However, as I stood there feeling pleased with myself, more and more Totki stepped into the light. They had been walking a staggered distance apart.
There must have been a hundred of them. What, did they have some kind of breeding program?
Hmm.
I only had fifteen Stair Boys with me. A small riot had broken out and the rest of my men were trying to put it down.
My original plan had been to arrest all the Totki, let them cool off a bit, and then turn them loose, confiscating any weapons. But we couldn’t do that to a hundred.
Hong was the second-in-command of the Totki Clan on Belvaille. He was a small man and to assume the traditional Totki ethnic appearance he had dyed his skin a bland yellow, had stretched his ears, put a plate in the bridge of his nose to elongate it, shaved all his head except for the very top in a circle, and wore blue caps on his teeth.
Hong carried a long, metal, bladed weapon, and I knew from reputation he was skilled with it.
“Are you carrying any illegal guns?” I asked him, assuming an official tone.
Firearms were technically banned on the city, though they were still common. Because of this, most gangs carried hand weapons and trained with them. I suppose it was a bit safer that you had to get murdered with a sword instead of a pistol, but it was a lot messier.
“Why you always bother us? Why you always say we break law? Why every time Totki move in our own system, we get trouble?” he spat.
Hong was a firebrand. Maybe not a great orator, but he was energetic. And right now he severely outnumbered us.
“You’ll shut your hole and answer the Supreme Kommilaire when he asks you a question,” I heard Valia shout from next to me.
There was a pause as this surprised just about everyone. Valia was unarmed. She was about the size of a baby’s eyelash and twice as cute. And the Totki did not have an over-appreciation for women in non-domestic roles.
“This your new bodyguard?” Hong teased. “Kommilaire grow smaller and smaller.”
MTB was helping quell the riot. I hadn’t thought this was going to be a difficult task.
I had to handle this with tact. I was not concerned for my safety. I was concerned for the safety of my men. We had guns, but likely some Totki did as well. And they could just hack my Stair Boys to pieces and scatter. Then I’d have to hunt them down for the next six months and I just couldn’t do that.
“You have no firearms?” I asked again.
“No, these legal,” Hong said at the wicked array of spears, the Totki’s favorite weapon.
“Do you have a Type-B carry license for them?”
“What that? No such thing!”
He was right. But I wasn’t sure how to defuse this situation. Not only that, but I had to make it so we didn’t look bad or they would take it as a victory and it would make dealing with them in the future more difficult.
The only reason anyone listens to our orders is because they listen to our orders. If they simply stopped, we wouldn’t be Kommilaire any longer.
“Let me see that,” I said.
Hong reluctantly let me take his pike. It had some kind of triggering mechanism on it.
“That pneumatic. Not gunpowder.”
I activated it and the blade shot out like a rocket-propelled cleaver. It clanged off the ground and people jumped out of the way.
Hong saw my expression.
“What? That legal. You only bother Totki.”
“I search everyone. I was just in a trial earlier, prosecuting your friends the Olmarr.”
The Totki nearby who heard, spat and cursed at mention of the name of their rivals.
“And he get off! No punishment. See?” Hong argued.
“You tell me where their weapons are and I’ll go take them,” I said.
Hong looked away.
“I’m here to protect everyone,” I continued.
“We don’t need protect. Everyone say they protect the Totki Clan. These our solar systems! These our planets for ten thousand years until you come and take our resource.”
“Well, it wasn’t me, I wasn’t alive ten thousand years ago.”
“Boss,” I heard Valia say to me.
I looked at her curiously. It was like she was oblivious to the danger she was in.
Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck Page 4