Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck

by Steven Campbell

  That wasn’t really a denial.

  “Yeah, but is this your speech?”

  “Hank, may I have a word?”

  “Watch them,” I told my Stair Boys, who took up positions between the two groups.

  I walked some distance away with Peush.

  “Hank, we consider you a hero. You helped instigate the rise of the Second Olmarr Republic. Your name is mentioned liberally in the Noconeir.”

  I so didn’t care what that was, and gave a weak smile. But then I realized this was the stuff I had to care about. I couldn’t just brush it away.

  “What’s the Noconeir?”

  “It is the entire history of the Olmarr Republics. First and Second.”

  “Sounds long.”

  “If you connected the words end-to-end it would extend from here to the planet Ue’wantasha.”

  “Must use big words.”

  “The point is, Hank, why are you bothering yourself with those things? It’s their kind that brought about the decline of the First Olmarr Republic. They weakened our purity until we became a Confederation. A failed Confederation. You of all people know how bad the original empire was.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t know anything about Republics.”

  “I’d be happy to give you a copy of the Noconeir.”

  “I don’t have time to read a book that spans solar systems. And how truthful is it going to be? How many eye witness accounts do you have from that long ago?”

  “A number of libraries and computers still exist, and we researched their archives diligently. You’re respected on the station, Hank, you shouldn’t be walking around every day dealing with this.”

  “No?” I asked, humoring him.

  “You should be taking advantage of your wisdom and experience, sitting in an office, telling others what to do. Eating. You should be Governor, let the young people handle security.”

  I smiled.

  “Young people like your Olmarr Republican guards?”

  “I’m not suggesting that, but we do have many disciplined and principled members who would be willing to assist. Just say the word and we would back you. You have to know that you would easily win, and you could give up all…this.”

  I looked over to Hong, who was doing his best to stretch the forty feet so he could overhear our conversation.

  Peush was a tough character to figure out. I knew Hobardi was full of crap. I knew Hong was a zealot for his people. I had no idea where Peush was. Did he believe all this Second Republic stuff?

  “Do you know Two Clem?” I asked him, and I looked closely for a reaction.

  “The actor?”

  I saw nothing to betray further knowledge. Hong was easy to bait. So was Hobardi, who didn’t even try to be serious. But Peush was calculating and collected. Even if he knew, even if he was carrying Two Clem on his back right now, I’m not sure he would have betrayed his poker face.

  “Come on, let’s talk to Hong,” I said.

  We walked back and I got the men face-to-face, though I stood nearby.

  “I am losing my allotted broadcast time,” Peush complained.

  “So what!” Hong fired back.

  “How about this, you give your normal speech, but with a Totki observer?” I offered.

  “I am not going to be censored,” Peush stated.

  “How about you have me present while you give the speech? I mean, I could do that anyway, in the name of public safety.” I turned to Hong. “Does that satisfy you?”

  “No, they say we rats. Say we should die. Say our children should die. Take all our property.”

  “That isn’t in my speech,” Peush said. “Though it’s not a bad set of ideas.”

  Three people were on the ground bleeding before I had even realized a fight started.

  Peush was whisked to the back of his group and safety, but Hong fought right in the front. The Totki were good warriors, but the Olmarr had those high-speed, electric chainsaws which were savagely effective.

  “Hank, look out!” I heard MTB shout.

  I turned, not especially concerned, as I was unable to get very concerned in a fight. I saw a Totki running towards me with…duct tape?

  He jumped up and pressed it on my face and it was so bizarre I was momentarily at a loss. I mean, I carried around like 500 pounds of chains, did they think some adhesive ribbon was going to stop me? Yeah, it was over my eyes, but it’s not like it was permanent. It didn’t even hurt.

  I reached up to remove it.

  My fingers were far too thick and clumsy to grasp the tape, let alone feel it. And I couldn’t hear any crinkling because of the sounds of the battle. I tried rubbing at it, but I couldn’t generate enough friction to burn away duct tape all that easily.

  Hmm.

  “Hey, can someone get this tape off me?” I asked.

  I was basically an obstacle in a gang fight. I could hear the commotion, but had no idea how the sides were faring.

  I couldn’t tell my Stair Boys to apprehend the combatants as they were busy trying to kill each other.

  “Everyone just calm down. We can work this out,” I said feebly.

  I heard my Stair Boys yelling and then gunfire.

  Great.

  “Stop struggling,” Valia said. “I don’t want you to turn my hands into jelly with your monster fingers.”

  I stood there as she removed the tape from my eyes.

  When I was gifted with vision again, I saw there were four dead, eight wounded, and none captured beyond those who were too hurt to run away.

  About half of those hurt were from my Stair Boys shooting.

  I did not feel this was a successful patrol.

  CHAPTER 11

  It was the next day and I was conducting a small trial in my living room with Hong, Peush, MTB, Valia, and an adjudicator named Gralion.

  “I demand Street Trial,” Hong declared, wanting a public trial on one of the court streets.

  “No, your men are wounded and I don’t have the desire for my guards to be sitting around at the hospital waiting for a trial date. This gets solved now.”

  “What are the charges?” Gralion asked. He was an older man who had never made judge and was bitter about it.

  “Assault. Endangering the telescopes. Blocking the Waves. And attacking me.”

  “No one ‘attack’ you. It was tape.”

  “What?” Gralion asked.

  “Duct tape, I believe,” Peush said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I was still attacked. And it wasn’t a gun, so it was illegal.”

  Neither Hong nor Peush really wanted to be in the same room with each other, but they wanted their men back more and I wasn’t doing two trials.

  “What do you sentence them to?”

  “I have eight wounded. Five from you,” indicating Hong, “and three from you,” to Peush. “Half go to prison.”

  “Prison?” Hong screamed. “That too much. Stair Boys do shooting, not us. It them that cause trouble,” he said, pointing to Peush.

  “How can one-and-a-half of my men go to prison?” Peush asked, smirking.

  “Round up. Two,” I said.

  “That’s very excessive, Supreme Kommilaire,” Gralion said. “I think a fine is more in order.”

  “Yes!” Hong said.

  “I’m changing my sentence to death. All of them.”

  “You can’t do that,” Gralion argued. “That’s…double-jeopardy. Or mistrial.”

  He had apparently not bought the book of legal terms.

  “Says who? Besides, you two were there also. I could arrest both of you, so don’t get cocky,” I said.

  But I couldn’t arrest them. That was an idle threat and they knew it. I was sitting here with them, the next day, essentially negotiating for the release of their men. If I arrested Hong or Peush, how many hundreds or thousands would march down here to set them free?

  “How do you decide which ones go to prison?” Peush asked.

  I chose to back off a bit an
d give them some room.

  “You pick the ones who go free. But I need two from you and three from you,” I answered.

  “He should have three,” Hong said.

  “How about one and two between them?” Gralion asked.

  “Two and two,” I countered.

  “Deal,” Gralion said.

  The bosses weren’t happy of course, but by making the numbers even, they at least couldn’t say I treated either side preferentially. This was the outcome I had been planning all along.

  “Fine, tell me the names of those you want freed. A couple guys are really hurt, so you might want to just let them go to prison—or maybe you want to set them free. Up to you.”

  “May we see them?” Peush asked.

  “No.”

  Not sure why I said that. I just didn’t want to deal with it, I guess. I wanted to get them shifted to prison so we could move on.

  Peush gave me the names of ones who were apparently higher in the Olmarr Republic hierarchy. Hong gave me names of ones who had important familial ties.

  I radioed for those to be released and the others to be prepped for transfer. Everyone was pissed off, but they should have thought of that before they got into a street fight in front of the Supreme Kommilaire.

  “Boss, your Stair Boys suck,” Valia said, when we were alone later.

  “Shut up, new guy,” MTB responded.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, as soon as you were blinded, they spent about thirty seconds trying to figure out how to break up the fight and then they just pulled their guns and shot at everyone. I’m surprised more people weren’t hurt.”

  “It didn’t happen like that at all,” MTB countered.

  “Then what did happen?” I asked, “Because I see a lot of gunshot wounds and no injured Stair Boys.”

  “Would it have been better if your own people were hurt?” he asked, mock surprised.

  “Just give me your view.”

  “Well…” and I could see Valia’s account wasn’t too far off based on his expression. “Maybe they did panic a bit. It’s not exactly easy to take a chainsaw from a guy trying to kill another guy who is wielding a spear.”

  “Yeah,” I conceded. “You think training would help? I don’t think we’ve ever had any. Not for real.”

  He shrugged.

  “How do you train for Belvaille, Boss? You learn by doing, as I see it.”

  I decided to personally transfer the prisoners to their final home.

  RW33. The Royal Wing. It was a huge freighter sitting a short distance from Belvaille.

  Valia was with me in the shuttle, as I thought it wouldn’t be bad for her to see the process.

  Used to be I hated flying. I would throw up every single time I entered zero gravity. Now, I loved it. I was weightless! I could move around and lift my arms with little effort.

  It was only about a fifteen minute trip total, but it was fun. I felt like a kid again. Though I still had my same mass, so I had to be careful not to go accelerating myself too much or I could cause some damage, maybe even wreck our ship.

  The prisoners, two from each gang, were fairly injured and covered in bandages or lying down. I didn’t even have them restrained. They seemed resigned to their fates, especially knowing that their leaders had specifically chosen not to save them. Being picked last for kickball was one thing, but this was harsh.

  We docked with the freighter.

  Our ship was merely connected to the side and we were still weightless. This is how we delivered supplies as well.

  We opened a door and there were a series of sealed hatches ahead. They couldn’t open any of those until we had disembarked.

  The prisoners were helped out and into the first compartment. I went with them.

  “Where are you going?” Valia asked.

  “Sir,” I reminded her.

  “You’re going onto the prison ship?” She was stunned.

  “Yeah, I need to talk to some people. I’ll be fine.”

  “Are there any Kommilaire on there? Sir.”

  “Nope. Just prisoners.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. Five thousand? Eight thousand? I’ll be back in a bit.”

  I closed the doors between us and waited for the locks. I then opened the next hatch and moved the prisoners over. Gravity increased gradually at every seal until it matched that of Belvaille.

  I opened the last door.

  Four prisoners were waiting. They were surprised to see me.

  “New citizens,” I told them.

  They got stretchers and helped the new men to the medical bay, which was also run by prisoners.

  I looked around. The Royal Wing was an enormous metal cocoon. It was cleaner than Belvaille because they couldn’t afford to have trash or waste. Everything was put to use. Their housing was little more than bare beams or rods that demarcated spaces. They built up towards the ceiling which was maybe a hundred feet above. The apartments that stretched up that high only had floors and maybe a blanket or two for privacy.

  They were a busy lot, constantly repairing and rebuilding their city.

  The town was crowded with dirty men—most of them were men—and they wore pretty much the clothes they had come in with. So you could see styles that stretched across the decades just by taking a stroll.

  People stopped what they were doing and stared at me for a moment, but only a moment. They were occupied with surviving. I put most of these people here and they didn’t have time for me.

  This place knocked me out. It was filled with the worst offenders from Belvaille but run so efficiently.

  And the solution had been simple: take away everything so they had nothing to fight over. Put them in a decaying bathtub surrounded by the void of space. Then if anyone ever acted up, the mob killed them and used their body parts as building materials.

  The Royal Wing had an exceedingly low crime rate from what I understood.

  And I was here to meet its mayor.

  I finally found him. He was using a makeshift saw to cut a pipe.

  “Hank!” He exclaimed. “When did you get here?”

  “Just now. Dropped off some new citizens.”

  Uulath was an emaciated, dark-skinned man with dreadlocked brown hair. He looked slightly less dirty than his compatriots, but only slightly. He had no shirt and every muscle on his gaunt upper torso was defined. His pants were cut off at the knee from wear and he had no shoes. You would guess he was an energetic middle-aged man, but prison life adds years.

  No one died of natural causes in this place, because no one was living naturally.

  “Are the ones you brought good workers you think?” Uulath asked.

  “They’re beat up. Went to the medical bay I assume.”

  He sighed.

  “You’re looking really huge, Hank. How do you get so big?”

  “Mutation. You’re looking small.”

  “Starvation. What else you want?” he asked, putting down the saw.

  “Can we talk?” and I was about to say, “privately,” but I realized it didn’t matter who heard. They had no radios here. No one talked to them. I could shout out my darkest secrets and it would be as if I hadn’t told anyone.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  A strange thing happened to inmates on the Royal Wing. Everyone who came here died here, eventually. No one said they would take care of you on the inside because no one had access to the inside except the Kommilaire. No one said they would fight to get you released early, because no one was ever released.

  Whatever you were before you came here, Olmarr Republican, Totki, Order of Transcendence, banker, mother, father, whatever, you were now a prisoner of the Royal Wing. Everything else about you was gone.

  Uulath got information on what was happening on Belvaille from new prisoners. Information that they wouldn’t tell anyone if they weren’t otherwise doomed. If people didn’t want to talk out of some residual loyalty to their old l
ives, well, they eventually came around.

  A prison colony run by prisoners with punishments meted out by prisoners was not a place to be anti-social.

  “Two Clem,” I said. “You know him?”

  “The actor?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I heard he was kidnapped. The Order says Olmarr Republic. Olmarr says not them.”

  “Hmm. 19-10. An assassin. Or bounty hunter.”

  “Never heard of him. You have an election coming up, right?”

  “So they say.”

  “You have a lot of candidates,” Uulath said.

  “Really?”

  He laughed.

  “Hank, do you remember why you arrested me?”

  “You murdered a little girl.”

  “And do you remember what she was wearing?”

  A silent pause.

  “A dress. A green dress.”

  “That was almost thirty years ago. You,” he said, pointing at me, “were born for that job. The gods made it for you. But you’re crap at politics. And Belvaille is politics now. That’s all the new people talk about.”

  He smiled at me.

  “Do you know how many people I’ve killed since I’ve been here?” he asked.

  “I suspect a lot.”

  “None. I look to you for guidance,” he said.

  “What?” That struck me as an odd statement for the mayor of the Royal Wing to make. I was immediately suspicious.

  “You are the strongest person on Belvaille but you hardly ever kill anyone. You use your head more than your fists. It’s something I wish I had known when I was younger.”

  “Do you guys have any urgent needs?” I asked.

  I didn’t know if he was trying to sweet talk me, but we weren’t friends. When the Totki had put duct tape so effectively on my eyes, it made me realize that they had been sitting around concocting that strategy. A strategy based specifically on fighting me. How much time did Uulath have to think about me and how he might manipulate me?

  “Ten rolls of mylon plastic and two water filtration systems would be great. We have eight different water containment areas based on how clean it is. The eighth one is like liquid rust.”

  I took a deep breath and pondered his request.

  He chuckled and wore a wistful, melancholy expression.

  “You’re thinking, ‘What can I give them yet still leave this place a living hell?’ You are our sun god, Hank. We fear you like the insects that crawl around in the safety of the night.”