Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck

by Steven Campbell

  “I’m thinking, the sign outside. It’s kind of lame. I think this should just be the Gentleman’s Club,” I said. “Send me up some sandwiches.”

  I was far down the hall when I heard his distant voice answer.

  “Yes, sir!”

  My booth in the club had been refurbished. It was still the same mass of metal, but it had been polished to a shine and there was a velvet rope around it.

  I plopped down and the Dredel Led server came by immediately with a bucket of beer and two trays of sandwiches.

  “On the house of course,” it buzzed, and then zipped away.

  The club fairly stopped as I sat there eating. I could tell all the gang bosses wanted to come over and talk to me, but weren’t so bold as to do it. So they were trying to discreetly get in my field of view hoping I would invite them over.

  After about fifteen minutes everyone was congregated on one side of the club, facing me. They talked in loud voices and gestured broadly. It was slightly ridiculous.

  “Hank,” Jorn-dole said, sitting down with a pleasant smile.

  I hadn’t seen the handsome blond in months. It was amusing that he was the bravest one out of all these thugs. He probably didn’t know he was supposed to be impressed with my new wealth.

  “How are you?” I asked him, working on the second tray of food.

  “I’m great. Great. The city seems quite different.”

  “Does it?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said. “I won’t say it’s a lot safer, but it is some. How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Feel? What do you mean?”

  “Are you well?” He seemed concerned.

  “I got pulled by a train a while ago. I recommend not doing that.”

  “Did you go to the hospital?”

  “No, he came to me. But there’s not a lot they can do. I’m kind of on my last bullet at this point in my life. I mean, they can scrape off the rust and oil the gun, but I still only have one bullet left.”

  “You spoke of retiring not long ago. Is that still in the works?”

  “Did I?” I asked. “I was probably just complaining. I usually don’t mean half of what I say. I’m just exercising my tongue. No, I’m pretty sure I’ll die on the job. I like the idea of them trying to figure out what to do with my carcass.”

  Busange, the man from The Murderers gang, sat uneasily at my booth.

  I’d say he kept his eyes to himself, but he only had one eye.

  “I don’t get what you’re asking,” he said.

  “I want to hire you guys.”

  “But you’re not paying anything? And you want us to fight everyone in the whole damn city?”

  “Not exactly. I want you to train my new Militia from the Royal Wing—”

  He snorted at that.

  “Those guys will kill us for sure. Or run away at least.”

  “No, I have security belts,” I said. “They’ll explode.”

  “So they’re walking around strapped with explosives?”

  “Delovoa invented them, they’re fine,” I said.

  “Oh.” He seemed appeased. “But what do we get? How can I convince everyone to do this? The Murderers aren’t a normal gang with a boss who barks and we all jump. I do the talking because I don’t mind. But everyone is their own agent.”

  “I’ll let you guys join the Confederation. You can list yourselves on the Boards. Raise a ton of money. And advertise and hire yourselves out to the Confederation members.”

  “How’s that different from now?”

  “Now you can’t do any of that stuff. Now you’re just nobodies.”

  He was silent.

  “You think this might work? We’re not bulletproof like you.”

  “Hide behind the Royal Wing. They’re fighting for a pardon—and they’re probably lousy with guns anyway and you don’t want them accidentally shooting you in the back.”

  “You’re a crummy salesman.”

  “You know I got infinite money, right?”

  “Yeah, but you’re not giving us any.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll rush your application through so you can be members right away. Issue some bonds on the Boards.”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  “Talk to some of the other gangs. You know Cole-Kainen and his gang? He’s got a bunch of stores.”

  “Yeah, we did security for him once,” Busange said.

  “He listed stock after he joined the Confederation, fifteen percent ownership in his company. He told me in four days he raised almost a half-million thumbs.”

  That got his attention.

  “Where did he get all that money?”

  “The city!”

  This was clearly a topic he didn’t understand. Which was fine, I didn’t really understand either.

  “But where is it coming from? Is it you?”

  “No. There’s billions of thumbs floating around. Think how many people are on this station. You want a piece of that or not?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Well, the new requirement is you got to be in the Confederation to be on the Boards.”

  “I just don’t know how easy it’s going to be to train your Royal Wing…Militia.”

  “You’ll find a way.” I saw he was about to argue or add more, but I cut him off.

  “I think we’re done here.”

  aRj’in wore a pleasant smile and smoothed his hair as he sat at my table.

  He looked back at all the people waiting and hoping to see me, as if to let them know he got in on his own merits.

  “Do you have any word on who has been hiring the feral kids?” I asked him.

  “I do. I do,” he said, keeping his voice low. “It’s a pretty dangerous area as you know, so we had a tough time. What we finally did was get people in the buildings nearby watching, and when we saw someone go in, we had another team on the ground follow them once they left.”

  “Well?”

  “We lost them twice. Didn’t get a good look and…I’m not confident on the descriptions my men gave. But we managed to track two this week. Two men. Colmarians.”

  “At the same time?”

  “No. They each went in alone on different days.”

  “Did your men see a kind of robot with four arms?” I asked.

  “That’s the thing that offed Peush, right?” aRj’in asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’d notice him for sure. No, didn’t see him.”

  “Did you see the Colmarians hiring the ferals?”

  “No. No one can see that unless you’re standing right next to them. And no pack of ferals is going to let you stand right next to them. These two people walked in, plain as day, and walked out thirty or forty-five minutes later. Unharmed.”

  “So either they got really lucky or they were hiring them,” I said.

  “That’s what I think. Anyway, my men followed them. And, well, they lost them. But I can tell you where we last spotted them.”

  “Go on.”

  “Hank Block.”

  CHAPTER 61

  aRj’in described the men who had hired the ferals, but they didn’t immediately match anyone I knew. I didn’t pretend to know all my Kommilaire’s faces perfectly, however.

  It was disturbing info.

  Perhaps this was what Zeti had meant by being betrayed. Were my own Kommilaire working against me? What could they gain by giving jobs to feral kids? I could see gangs using them against other gangs, but not Kommilaire.

  The next day it looked like we had scooped up all the worst vagrants and junkies from Deadsouth, soiled their clothes to oblivion, multiplied them by fifty, and then dumped the stinking mass on Hank Block.

  My glorious Militia was here.

  The Murderers were helping corral them and equip everyone with one of Delovoa’s security belts.

  People were petrified of the devices and wanted to know exactly what conditions would cause them to detonate. I told them that it wasn’t their concern and if
they did their jobs correctly, they had nothing to fear.

  They especially had nothing to fear because Delovoa hadn’t made the belts. They were basic synth bindings with no special properties at all other than being cheap. That was the power of Delovoa’s name that it could turn a thin strap of synth into a virtual mind control device.

  The women from the Royal Wing weren’t singing any longer, they were screaming obscenities at their former husbands and captors. It made an appropriate background noise for our first training session.

  I decided against guns fairly early. These were the absolute dregs of society who had been incarcerated with other dregs of society on a prison colony for years. Many of them were mentally unbalanced, to use a kind description.

  Not only were they no good with firearms, and not only did I not have enough to give them, but they would likely start shooting one another or me or the buildings or the imaginary voices they spoke to.

  “I thought we would be better armed,” Uulath said, concerned.

  “Let’s start off with these…staves,” I said, embellishing their weaponry.

  It was hard to arm them. There were so many. There weren’t enough knives or axes or swords on the station. So we got tubing that carried electrical wires. We had lots of that. It was a very hard, durable plastic about an inch in diameter. We cut them into sections four feet long and handed them out as makeshift clubs.

  This was going to be a tidal wave of insane people carrying sticks who had been promised freedom if they killed enough bad guys. If I was a bad guy and I saw this body coming at me, I would have a strong desire to not be so bad, and in the opposite direction.

  I got on my heavy lifter and we took off. The Murderers marched at the rear of the column and were to let me know if anyone broke off or misbehaved.

  I estimated there were a little over four thousand in the Belvaille Militia. Only about a hundred people didn’t join from the Royal Wing and it was because they were too old or sick to safely travel.

  Looking back at them didn’t give me a lot of confidence in their abilities. But the cynic in me realized this was at least one way to deal with the Royal Wing population.

  Of course, if they figured out those belts didn’t do anything they’d just run off into the west and meld with the feral kids.

  I had word that the Sublime Order of Transcendence was fighting with the Olmarr Republic about forty minutes away.

  Both factions had essentially gone berserk. When Peush was murdered by 19-10, the Republic started beating on anyone that was in their way and organized. I guess their goal was capturing the election if and when it came about—or they were just angry.

  The Order dropped the cutesy act and mobilized their army, which was the most well-equipped force on the station. I couldn’t dream of giving my Kommilaire the weapons the Order possessed.

  The Republic was far more organized and far more numerous, but the Order had more money and more support.

  But neither of them had the Belvaille Militia, which emerged several blocks from the skirmish.

  There must have been a thousand or so people clashing. This certainly fit my requirements of being out after curfew and armed. There was gunfire and chainsaws and lots and lots of blood.

  “Stop fighting and return to your homes!” I bellowed through a bullhorn.

  It’s pretty tough to stop a war by talking at it so I didn’t really expect much.

  I turned back to my Militia, which stretched as far as I could see.

  “Okay,” I said, “go kill them all.”

  I wasn’t sure how much prodding or instructions I would have to give. The answer was none.

  They surged past my heavy lifter, some even climbing up and over, all screaming and waving their sticks. I had seemingly forgotten that a lot of the Royal Wing inmates were violent criminals. The most violent of violent criminals—who were dumb enough to get caught and disliked enough to not have any friends or powerful gang affiliations.

  They might not have been born for this, but they were subsequently molded for it.

  When they had gone past, I noticed about a dozen of my Militia had been trampled. You knew you had enthusiastic soldiers when not even running over their own men could slow them down from engaging enemies that had vastly more killing power.

  The Order and Republic had not listened to me and my silly bullhorn.

  But they noticed the rapidly approaching Militia. Fighting halted completely for about six seconds. I think I could have gotten the Order and Republic to sign an everlasting, ironclad peace agreement in those six seconds.

  If I could have magically stopped my Militia in its tracks.

  But I could not, and the Militia barreled into the well-fed, well-armored, well-equipped, elite forces of Belvaille and began beating them mercilessly with plastic rods.

  They traded in their sticks for chainsaws and guns when opportunities presented themselves. It was carnage.

  “You…” Busange started, standing next to my heavy lifter, “should stop them.”

  This was a guy with no ears and one eye, a spokesman for a gang called “The Murderers,” and he was witnessing something that made him squeamish.

  It was a full-on massacre. There was no way to stop it. I said kill them all and they were going to kill them all.

  I learned my greatest lesson in politics right there. Religion and ethnicity and history and territory were all fine things to fight about. But the Militia was fighting for their very lives. They had nothing to lose and absolutely everything to gain.

  It wasn’t even a close fight.

  “Well, find out who’s alive and dead,” I told Busange, when the killing had died down to a mild hum.

  “I’m not going over there!” He said. “You saw what they did with just your stupid sticks. Now they got guns!”

  CHAPTER 62

  I wasn’t entirely sure how many people we lost because I wasn’t entirely sure how many we started with.

  We guessed around 300 had fallen on our side. That’s 300 prisoners to their 1000 Order and Republic soldiers.

  The good news was I suspected the most insane, bloodthirsty ones were the majority of our dead. Because they were the first ones in, the ones not protecting themselves, the ones the enemy realized they had to put down immediately.

  The sneaky ones who sat at the back and let their comrades take the brunt of the blows were survivors. A few more conflicts like this and I’d be left with nothing but the perfect citizens for Belvaille.

  I couldn’t deny I was being rather heartless about it all.

  But I had talked myself stupid and gotten nowhere with these factions. I had a chance to effect some real change with the Confederation but it wouldn’t work if we still had the Totki and other groups having the power to do what they wanted without consequence. There weren’t enough Kommilaire to arrest them all or even threaten them now that they were out in force.

  They had to be destroyed, or at the very least, broken.

  I locked down the telescopes and stopped the factions from broadcasting. I didn’t want them rallying outside support and spewing more hate as we made this final push.

  We rode out against several more assemblies of Order and Republic, smashing them to pieces each time and suffering a small amount of casualties.

  The street riots, the ones composed of just regular people who had seized the opportunity to cause problems, went away instantly. Once they got word that I was driving around with thousands of Royal Wing Militia, armed with beat sticks, and smacking people to death…well, it wasn’t so exciting to be out after curfew anymore.

  Besides, the economy had turned around dramatically because of the overall rise in the markets. Companies were hiring and there was money to be made—without the risk of getting mutilated in the process.

  I hoped to encounter the Totki, because out of the three big groups, their leader was still alive and ranting. But Hong was craftier than I had thought. The Totki almost completely disappeared once the
Militia began its activities. Now that I finally wanted them out in the streets, they weren’t obliging.

  The Republic members were harder to find since they were spread throughout the city, but the Order had numerous blocks that were strictly their own.

  Two weeks after I started my crusade, we pushed into the Sublime Order of Transcendence’s part of the city.

  My Militia had a number of former Order members and they translated the messages of their robe-wearing, chanting brethren for me.

  It seemed Hobardi had placed great significance, religious significance, on his death and now all the remaining Order followers were standing around waiting for the Amazing Thing.

  That was literally the term they used, which was a pretty stupid name, if you asked me. Presumably this was a section of the religion that Hobardi hadn’t put much thought into as he hadn’t been planning on dying so soon.

  Everyone knew Hobardi was dead, killed by me and Valia at the Temple, though they didn’t know it was only a clone. The real Hobardi’s location was unclear to me. He could be in my Belvaille Militia, standing not thirty feet back, unwashed and unshaved. But all indications were he was dead.

  The Order members lit candles and struck gongs and danced and meditated and drew symbols on themselves.

  Fine.

  But they still had their special forces teams. I talked to some who talked to some and passed me to others until I was in a room with about five well-armed Order men. They looked like a combination of Colmarian Navy soldiers and priests.

  “Hobardi is dead,” I told them. “What are you still fighting for? The religion was crap anyway.”

  “How dare you!” Their Captain screamed. He was the leader of the military wing of the Order and he took it all seriously. He was so serious he made MTB look like a singing juggler by comparison. The red veins in his eyes almost pulsed.

  “We still have instructions from the Grandmaster and we shall see them carried out!”

  I looked at his men. They clearly didn’t share his zeal, but weren’t overtly tipping their hands. I couldn’t negotiate with a loon. Hobardi was easier than this guy. At least Hobardi knew he was a joke.

  This soldier was wearing a significant suit of body armor. Not even sure how he moved around, but it was going to be impervious to nearly any of my guns unless I shot him in the face.