I walked out of my bathroom and to the front door to make sure it was closed.
Out of nowhere one of the pale sisters leaped up, wrapped her legs around me, and kissed me on the lips!
She then did a backflip away, casually turned around, and left the apartment.
CHAPTER 4
I stepped outside the next morning and saw the corpse. I kept forgetting he was there. I looked at him closer.
Yup, still dead.
I felt I should give him a name seeing as he was my neighbor. And since I didn’t want to go digging through his corpse-y clothes hoping he had some identification.
Toby.
“Morning, Toby,” I said good-naturedly. “Keep an eye on things, will you?”
After an uneventful train ride I visited my tailor, Ioshiyn.
He had once been an enforcer and thug like me, but got half his face blown off in a fight and wisely called it quits. Now he had a shop and made clothes. Had a few assistants and seemed to be doing pretty well.
“Hank,” he said with a slight lisp due to his missing face, “what can I do for you?”
I placed my huge bag of pants on the table.
“Can you fix the legs on these? Since I lost my job I don’t have to worry about Sassy chewing them up anymore and I guess I should repair them.”
“Who’s Sassy?”
“That’s Cad’s Mallute. Big chewy thing,” I said, pointing my fingers downward to indicate fangs. “I don’t know why, but he always used to attack my right leg. Maybe it smelled like food.”
Ioshiyn looked at the torn clothes.
“Some of these are too far gone to sew up. But we can replace the leg. It might be cheaper to buy a new pair, though.”
“How about this?” I said, placing the pieces of my boot that the pale woman had cut on his counter.
“How’d you do that? Stick your foot into a thresher?”
“Long story.”
Ioshiyn looked it over but from his half-expression, the prognosis didn’t seem good.
“I can put it back together, but it won’t be nearly as strong as it was. Not with this material. I know you need durable boots. It might come apart again when you’re walking.”
I was trying to save more money and didn’t want to keep buying stuff. Technically I didn’t really need boots to protect my feet, but I needed them for traction. Walking barefoot on Belvaille’s metal surfaces gave me almost no grip.
“What kind of boots do you recommend for me? Cheaper is better.”
“Take a look at this,” Ioshiyn said, motioning me to follow him in back.
We went past racks of hanging clothes and his assistants stitching and pressing outfits.
Ioshiyn opened a pressurized container that hissed when it was cracked. He took from it a dark weave of fabric and handed it to me.
It was incredibly rough but very flexible.
“Try and tear it,” Ioshiyn said.
I twisted it and pulled, but it didn’t respond.
“What is it, some new kind of synth?” I asked.
“Therezian hair,” Ioshiyn said proudly.
“Wallow’s hair?”
“No, not Wallow. I don’t know who. This is just one hair that they cut and wove into a fabric. This stuff will last forever.”
“How much does it cost?” I asked, curious.
“I could make you some boots from it for about ten grand.”
I handed it back.
“What part of ‘cheaper’ didn’t you understand?”
“I was just showing off,” Ioshiyn said, as he carefully replaced the fabric. “I know how often you destroy boots being as heavy as you are. Eventually they would pay for themselves. Think of it, just one pair for the rest of your life. Only replace the insoles as they wore out.”
“I can’t afford them.” Then I got to thinking about it. “How do they get hair from a Therezian? Do they just hang around waiting for it to fall off?”
“I don’t know. Zadeck probably knows. Maybe Wallow sheds and he sells the hair. I should ask him.”
Zadeck was Wallow’s…boss, for lack of a better word. Therezians tended to attach themselves to someone even though they were individually about as self-sufficient as a species could be. Zadeck was just a sissy little Colmarian who owned a ritzy shopping block in the northeast. Wallow was the protector of the block, allowing the wealthy citizens of Belvaille more security than in the rest of the station. Not even the corporations dared step foot in there unannounced. A tank meant nothing to Wallow.
As I was about to return to the front of the store, I noticed a bunch of colored suits hanging on the wall.
“You make uniforms for the corporations?” I asked.
Ioshiyn seemed guilty.
“Yeah. They have their own tailors but I make the basic designs. They do all the alterations. It’s work.”
“You don’t have to apologize. Money is money. How many corporations are there?”
“I’ve done…whew, maybe fifteen different designs? About ten are regulars.”
“Ten corporations,” I said, marveling. “Seems like more. Do you make their armor too?”
“Oh, no, just clothes.”
“Damn, I was going to ask you what weapons would be good vs. their armor.”
“Heh. I don’t know. But I can tell you their clothes are really constrictive. Full body suits.”
That just reinforced the idea I was never going to be working for a corporation. Being forced to walk around in a sleeping bag…
“So what do you want me to do with your pants and boots?” Ioshiyn asked.
“Fix what you can, but if it’s going to cost more than new, obviously don’t try.”
“Okay.”
“I guess I’ll go barefoot for a while,” I said.
“You don’t have any shoes at all?”
“Oh, I got shoes, but I hate shoes. If I pivot on my foot I always tear them at the seams.”
“I’m telling you, Therezian hair is the way to go,” Ioshiyn tempted.
“Maybe I’ll climb up Wallow and go harvesting when he’s asleep.”
The plumber squatted in my bathroom, banging and beeping on his various tools.
“So can you fix it?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “By the way, do you know you have a dead body outside?”
“Yeah. Why can’t you fix it?”
“Because when you sat on this you twisted the pipes clean out of the wall.”
“I didn’t break it by sitting on it,” I said, annoyed.
“It’s none of my business. Why don’t you use one of the toilets upstairs? This whole building is empty, right?”
“Because this is my apartment. I want my bathroom fixed. And I don’t want to walk upstairs every time I have to pee. I don’t walk up stairs very well either.”
“Pee in the shower,” the plumber offered helpfully. “Or move to one of the apartments in the next building. Then you can still be on the ground floor.”
“Then I’ll be that much farther from the train. Do you have any idea how long I’ve been in this apartment?”
“Long enough to bust a metal toilet clean from the wall.” He saw my reaction. “Look, Hank, I’m not trying to annoy you. Those pipes are all crooked. I don’t have the tools to cut them out and even if I straightened them they wouldn’t be sealed and your wall would leak.”
I stood there irked. I would have to charge the pale ladies more for this. Speaking of which:
“Hey, have you seen this woman?” I showed the tele picture to the plumber.
“I wish.” He kept staring at the image long after he had acknowledged not seeing her. I finally had to pull my tele from his hands.
“Is there anyone who can fix my wall?” I asked.
“I’m sure the tools are around, I just don’t have them. It’s not a one man job to cut through these buildings, you know. Why don’t you just put your toilet outside on the street? I mean you have this whole block to
yourself, don’t you? I’d sure like to be able to come home and just have my crapper be waiting for me on the sidewalk.”
“That’s gross, man.”
He looked back at me.
“You got a dead body not five steps from your front door. Are you really worried about the property value?”
CHAPTER 5
Toby hadn’t changed much since I first saw him.
There were no rats or insects or much in the way of viruses or rampant bacteria on Belvaille. Most of that stuff was killed at quarantine and through ongoing sterilization.
The Colmarian Confederation had something like 50,000 species in it and countless inhabited planets. Couple that with space travel between them all and if we didn’t have good quarantine, our empire would have self-exterminated ages ago.
So Toby would lay here until I got rid of him as it would take forever to decompose. He didn’t even smell that bad. I knew plenty of live people who stank a hell of a lot worse.
He wouldn’t fit in my trash can and the nearest dumpster was in corporation territory. I tried to stay out of those areas because there was constant fighting between corporations—which also made it a bad place to be walking around with a corpse on your shoulder.
I would work it out later.
I went to visit my friend Delovoa. He and I had been through a lot together in the past.
Delovoa was a big-brained scientist who sold technology to anyone who wanted technology. Even the corporations used him because Belvaille was still far away. We had three Portals leading to Belvaille. But our population wasn’t large enough for it to be profitable to ship many specialty goods here.
The Navy controlled the Portals as they were insanely expensive pieces of hardware to manufacture and only empires could do it. Theoretically, ships could have their own a-drives which would in essence allow them to portal on their own, but only military vessels had them.
I had wondered how much the Navy would leave us alone once we became an Independent Protectorate, but they had mostly kept to their word. They leased from us a huge set of telescopes they used to eavesdrop on the rest of the galaxy, but other than that, they weren’t much of a presence here.
The Portals, however, were another matter. Sure, Belvaille was independent. Fat lot of good it will do you, though. If you want to go to the next system you need to use a Portal. And to approach the Portals you have to pass the Jam: about a half dozen Navy cruisers and a battleship.
They charge a toll to use the Portals. I heard for a large freighter the fee can be almost a million credits! That would be enough to buy a whole freighter—and not a bad one.
Belvaille going independent was the most profitable thing that ever happened in terms of the Colmarian Confederation, because they never made a single credit off us before.
I buzzed Delovoa’s door and waited. He had about the most secure home on the station because he also sold, and designed, automated security systems and he wasn’t going to skimp on himself.
After a while he finally opened the door.
“Hank! Long time,” he said, shaking my hand.
Delovoa had three eyes that blinked and looked independently of one another, which could take some getting used to. I usually just picked one and made eye contact with that. His head was somewhat of an upside-down pear shape and he was bald. He was a thin man and tended to wear lab clothes.
His insatiable curiosity had been a cause of problems in the past, but I bought most of my goods from him because he did excellent work. Delovoa’s place was massive. It was one of the few buildings that had a belowground space, which was where he kept most of his wares and did his tinkering.
“Do you make the body armor for the corporations?” I asked, as we walked through his basement.
“No, they do their own things like that.”
“Ioshiyn makes all their uniforms.”
“I highly doubt it,” Delovoa said dismissively.
“He does, I saw them hanging there. Like twenty different corporations.”
Delovoa’s three brows furrowed.
“How many people does he have working for him?”
“Just a couple that I saw,” I said.
“And just that one shop?”
“He’s not a franchise.”
This seemed like some mystery to Delovoa. But I think he was annoyed that someone was getting corporation business besides him. Not that he made clothes.
“Where are your shoes?” he said, finally noticing I was barefoot.
“I’m going to try and get them repaired. That’s why I was at Ioshiyn’s. But I’m here because I need a new gun,” I said.
“I don’t believe it, are you finally retiring your shotgun?” Delovoa asked, his eyes staccato blinking.
“I’d like to keep it, but I need something better. More power, smaller, maybe more bullets, and better accuracy.”
“That’s not really possible, Hank. But let me show you something. I was designing a gun just for you as a matter of fact. I was going to give it to you on Thad Elon’s Day.”
There were maybe a dozen Creation Myths for the Colmarian Confederation. Different regions believed different people or groups were responsible for the formation of our empire. No one knew for sure. Thad Elon was one of the more popular mythologies. Some people thought of him as a hero, other regions did nothing but use cuss words all day in commemoration. It really depended on whether you felt the Colmarian Confederation was an outrage or merely inept. There wasn’t a whole lot of middle ground.
In Delovoa’s basement we went past row after row of weapons and security systems and anti-security systems. I felt myself growing more excited.
“Here you go,” Delovoa smiled, spreading his arms magnanimously.
On the table in front of us was a seven-foot weapon of some kind. It had an absurdly long barrel surrounded by a metal cooling sleeve, a drum magazine underneath, two metal bars sticking out on the side—I think one was for your forehand—and a very bulky mechanism at the rear. It had no stock and the rear grip stuck out to the right side and instead of a trigger for your finger, it was long enough that you could put your whole hand on it. It was vastly bigger than Balday-yow’s machine gun.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
“It’s an autocannon,” Delovoa said proudly. “They’re usually mounted on vehicles.”
“I’m not a vehicle,” I reminded him.
“This is what you wanted. It’s stronger—a lot stronger. It’s not smaller but—”
“No kidding it’s not smaller,” I interrupted.
I reached down and took hold of it where I thought my hands should go and tried to lift it. It didn’t move. I figured it was bolted to the table for testing, until it rolled a bit.
“Holy crap, how heavy is this thing?”
“About 300 pounds. Without ammo.”
“What?” I took out my shotgun. “This weighs about seven pounds. With ammo!”
“The shotgun era is over. Unless you’re going to shoot random citizens, that gun is no good. The autocannon is perfect for you. It’s just like your old plasma pistol.”
“My plasma pistol was even lighter than my shotgun,” I disagreed.
“But you scared people with it. You didn’t even have to shoot it. That,” he said, pointing to the autocannon, “will scare people.”
“Yeah, it scares me too. I can’t carry that around, I’ll break my arms.”
“Hank, I made this for you. You’re the only person on the station who could use it.” Delovoa’s eyes were wide and he was enthusiastic. “You control it with your weight, not your strength. It’s mounted on vehicles not because of their engines, but because they’re heavy and can handle the recoil. You could too. Straps attach to a metal-and-synth vest and the crossbar goes against your hip, so the weight is distributed across your body. You’d be an organic tank!”
“So what does it do?” I asked, slightly succumbing to his zeal.
“It shoots these,” he said,
and reached into a metal box behind him and pulled out a one foot shell.
“You’re kidding. I’m not looking to invade a planet,” I said.
“This is an armor piercing round. Remember those Dredel Led you fought—by hand? You fire this: boom. End of fight.”
I took hold of the shell. It alone weighed nearly as much as my shotgun. I had once gotten in a battle with some angry robots from another empire. I had no effective means of fighting them other than my plasma pistol, which was now destroyed. I took quite a beating from them.
“It can punch a hole through the weak side of a tank and has an effective range of four miles,” Delovoa continued.
“Four miles? I can’t even see four miles. What’s the point of that?”
“I didn’t say you could see four miles. I’m saying that if it’s pitch black and you can’t see your hand in front of your face this thing will shoot four miles. So know what’s in front of you. Actually, that’s just its effective range. It would probably go twice that distance.”
“So if I’m standing at City Hall I can shoot someone loading at the port?” This gun was losing more of its appeal.
“It also shoots these,” Delovoa said quickly, and pulled out another shell about the same size, but had a different tip and was painted red. “That’s a high-explosive round. Actually, you probably shouldn’t use those. But it shoots these too.”
He quickly handed me another shell that looked like a gigantic shotgun shell because it had a flat end.
“That’s a canister round. It works similar to your shotgun in concept.”
“Really?” That interested me. I really liked my shotgun because I wasn’t very fast and couldn’t aim that well. It let me shoot in the general direction of someone and still hit.
“Yeah. Your shotgun shoots two ounces of steel pellets at about 1500 feet per second. The canister rounds shoot about two pounds of tungsten ball bearings at around 2800 feet per second.”
“What does all that mean? Like if I shot someone wearing body armor, what would happen?”
“Let’s put it this way. If you stood in the middle of the street and fired, everything in front of you within maybe two blocks would die.”
Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap Page 3
