“No,” I stated. I looked around to see if this was a set-up, but I couldn’t figure out what the punch line could be.
“What’s your name, son?” He put out his hand.
“Hank.” I shook.
“Hank. Just Hank?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I like about this part of the Confederation. All straight talk. Yes, sir. No ma’am. Corned beef and ham. Don’t break my hand! Woo! My name is Bronze Badel Bardel. Say that three times fast and you get a prize. Up to a three credit value,” he said, holding his hand up by his mouth conspiratorially. “Yeah, my parents had a sense of humor. How long you been around here? I’m new myself.”
“You mean in Deadsouth or Belvaille?” I asked. Bronze was a jovial person. He just oozed it. I found myself grinning just listening to him and I had very recently been worked over by a bunch of heavy machine guns.
“Whatever you want to tell me,” he responded. He put his hands in his pants pockets then quickly took them out. As if he couldn’t stand still that long.
“I’ve been on Belvaille maybe 140 years or—” I started.
“Wow!” He said, and pretended to keep his hat from blowing off his head from that information, but he wasn’t wearing a hat. “Hey, I need you to show me around. This place is so confusing. One minute you’re on 22nd Street then you take three steps and it’s Jagnope’s Nosesocket Avenue. I feel like I’ve been walking in circles but they say that’s impossible because the city is a square. Figures I’d even screw that up.”
“I need to clean up a bit and I have to stick around here a while.” I didn’t want to tell too much to this stranger and he got that.
“Sure! Sure! I don’t mean to pry. If you want, you can step into my pad right over there and you can do what you need. I got a few credits to my name and I’ll buy you a drink.”
I had been planning on basically breaking into one of the many abandoned apartments in this area and using the facilities. But I might as well have some company.
“That sounds great Bronze, uh,” I had forgotten all his name. He spoke so fast.
“Just call me Bronze. Or Badel. Or Bardel. Whatever it is, I’ve been called worse.”
We walked a few blocks. People literally were lying on the sidewalks and in the street. No vehicles drove around here. There was no reason. The people here probably didn’t know Belvaille had changed at all.
We went into a building and headed up the stairs. Bronze took them three at a time, but I was not a fast stair-climber. I was even slower carrying an autocannon and tired from my ordeals.
At the first landing, Bronze stopped and looked back. I had gone up maybe four steps. He chuckled and then watched me for a few moments as I struggled on.
“I thought you were pulling my leg there, Hank. But I guess a guy as big as you can’t also be quick on his feet. I’d say take the elevator, but it’s broke. And I’d offer to give you a hand but I think you’d pull me down the stairs.”
“It’s fine,” I huffed. “Please tell me you’re not on the top floor.”
“Just one more flight,” he said congenially.
I finally got up, sweating and my back tired.
He opened the door to his apartment and I noticed absently he didn’t use a key or code. He held the door for me and I went in first.
Inside it was spare, with barely any furniture and only some small boxes on the floor.
There was a man inside hurriedly digging through the boxes while on his knees. He had long orange hair, a torn black synth coat, and a long scraggly beard. He looked up at our entrance and his eyes bugged out in panic.
Bronze slipped by me at the door.
“Hey, brother, what can I help you with?” Bronze asked the man in good humor.
The man didn’t answer. He looked at Bronze and looked at me. Particularly me.
“We were about to fix ourselves something to drink, you want anything?” Bronze continued.
No reply.
“Do you know him?” I asked Bronze.
“Nope.”
Bronze walked into his kitchen and I heard him clanging around with what sounded like cups and bottles and cabinets.
I was blocking the door and the man in the room seemed acutely aware of that.
I took my autocannon off my back and swung it around to my front, holding it like I meant business. Every gun means business, that’s what they’re for. Laugh all you want at a little .22, you get shot by one you’re not laughing. But an autocannon that hurls a grenade four or eight or whatever miles, takes business to a whole other level. It was an advanced degree in business.
I motioned with my head to the door and stepped aside.
The guy who had been going through Bronze’s things took the hint and in one motion got to his feet and ran past me without looking back.
Bronze entered the room with three cups of mismatched colors and sizes. He seemed surprised it was just us.
“Where did that other guy go?”
“I don’t know,” I said, closing the door. “Bronze, you’re in Deadsouth now. You need to lock your door.”
“What for? I don’t have nothing to steal. I don’t even pay rent here, doesn’t seem right I should be barricading the place.”
“Someone could slit your throat while you’re sleeping,” I explained.
“Seems like an awful hassle to get some dirty socks. Bathroom is through there. Take a swig of this. It’s not good, mind you.”
I disconnected my autocannon and put it on the ground. It was so nice to be free from its bulk. I thought it was pretty cool that Bronze hadn’t even mentioned it.
I drank from the cup as Bronze pounded his.
I might not be the richest guy in the galaxy any more, but I was used to drinking good booze. I could hardly swallow this and when I did I coughed and got some in my nasal passages which was probably worse than a machine gun bullet to the eye.
“Yeah, not the best, I know,” he said.
I tried to recover and make conversation, but my nose burned and I was on the verge of sneezing.
“Wh-what do you do here on Belvaille?” I finally got out.
“Mostly I’m avoiding twelve ex-wives,” he laughed. “Or thirteen depending on who you’re going to believe. I heard there was good jobs here and no one bothered you.”
“Good jobs? Who said that?” I asked skeptically. I can’t think of any time when Belvaille was exactly a boomtown.
“Hey, I got this nice apartment. I got all the water I can drink, all the showers I can take, and I got free food,” he said, like Deadsouth was paradise.
“Where do you get free food?” Food was probably my greatest expense.
“I work at restaurants here and there. Do the dishes. Scrub the bathrooms. Man, you guys sure do a number on the toilets. It’s all that space food, I think.”
“That work doesn’t bother you?” I asked.
“Hank, I was a hard rock digger for ten years on three different planets,” he said. Then he flashed those wonderful teeth again. “Belvaille is a sweet slab of honey. You got a space station, not even orbiting a star, a million billion trillion miles from anything and it’s not only working, it’s luxurious. You got people sleeping in the streets without a care. Perfect temperature day or night. You got casinos! You know how many planets would die for a city this nice? And any time I want work I just go out and sniff around for clogged urinals.”
“Speaking of, let me go use your bathroom if you don’t mind.”
“Yeah, sure, sure. I’ll fix us some more drinks. I got two bottles.”
I was walking to the bathroom when I thought:
“Hey, Bronze, I eat space food too. I mean, I can use a bathroom in another apartment, mine is kind of broken right now.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’ll give me practice.”
In his bathroom I looked at myself in the mirror and the area around my eye was all puffy and I had broken some blood vessels. I had welts all over my face and fa
r more on my body. I thought it was a testament to Bronze that he hadn’t brought it up. I’m sure I would have asked, “Hey, how’d you hurt your eye?” Just kind of a normal conversation thing to ask.
Back in his living room we talked and drank. He offered me the only chair but I knew it was too flimsy for me so I parked on the floor. Bronze had quite a few stories and we sat trading them.
I had stories too, but mostly they were on the same theme: I beat up someone or someone beat me up.
Bronze Badel Bardel had been across the galaxy and back. Just about every one of his stories was…bad. Bad for him. But he just seemed to find it all funny.
After a while I felt like I was imposing. I had been hanging out drinking and chatting with Bronze for about five hours.
He was adamant about seeing me out.
I strapped my autocannon back on and headed to the stairs.
In the stairway we bumped into one if his neighbors coming up. He was surprised to see us.
“Yeepl,” Bronze shouted, “have you met my friend Hank?”
“Everyone knows Hank,” the man responded without a smile and clearly not as a compliment.
“Oh! Have I been partying with someone famous?”
Yeepl walked past us on the stairs.
“Bronze, let me pay you a bit for the booze,” I said. I felt guilty that he was so…poor and had been showing me such hospitality.
“No way! I should be paying you. You told me a lot of great things about this place.”
“Let me just beam you some credits.”
“I don’t have a tele,” he said, seeming proud.
“You…” I had never heard of anyone not having a tele. They were government issued. They were free to replace. Our whole Confederation ran on them. It just boggled my mind anyone could exist without using a tele. How did he do anything?
“Tell you what, though, if you find some good jobs, let me know. I can do anything. As long as it doesn’t require brains,” he laughed.
“Sure,” I said. “Are you going to be here?”
“Until they kick me out.”
Being kicked out of Belvaille’s Deadsouth was an oxymoron. It’s where you got kicked to.
CHAPTER 10
At City Hall I scanned more videos until I was bored silly. Watching tapes of people shuffle in line from every different angle was absolutely excruciating. I wasn’t making much progress.
I headed to the Belvaille Gentleman’s Club.
The club had been around at least as long as I had. It and its cousin, the Belvaille Athletic Club, were two permanent fixtures on the space station. The Gentleman’s Club was where all the thugs who worked for the gangs hung out. It was a place to relax and watch sports and not worry if the guy sitting next to you was going to kill you tomorrow.
After a few hundred years of hosting the toughest guys in the galaxy, it was a very smelly establishment. It stank. It wasn’t even something discernable like foot odor or sweat. I think the metal walls themselves had become infected. I was used to it.
Inside the club, I began to unbuckle my autocannon.
“I’m not taking that,” Krample said.
The man was maybe a million years old. Or at least he looked like it. He had been coat check in the Gentleman’s Club since as long as I can remember. If his skeleton weighed fifty pounds and his organs weighed ten, he had to weigh maybe sixty-one pounds total. He was just a tiny old man.
“But,” I began, “no guns allowed inside, right?”
“Where the hell do you think I’m going to put that?” he asked me.
“Can I just leave it here in the hallway?”
“People will trip on it. Take it with you.” He turned and that was the end of the discussion.
I had never, not once, seen someone carry a gun in the club.
I walked upstairs to the cafeteria and looked around to see what was going on. There were about twenty people in the room, assorted hitmen and enforcers. They all noticed my autocannon, but no one said anything.
“Hank,” someone yelled from across the room.
“Yeah,” I answered, ready to defend my autocannon-toting.
“Ginland glocken in two hours. Facing Nedle’s Nibash. What can I put you down for?”
Glocken was a sport. Ginland was the state we lived in, where Belvaille was. The team, The Reskin Sleepers, had never won in its history. It was the longest uninterrupted losing streak of any professional team of any kind. Nedle’s was a private team owned by some rich guy, not even a state team. I liked watching Ginland’s team because they were so horrible. They just made me feel better about myself.
“What is Nedle’s by twelve going to get me?”
“Even money. If you go by fifteen it’s five-to-three odds.”
Most games had scores of around seven max.
“Is Tommiah starting?”
“I don’t know, Hank. I think you’re the only person that follows that team.”
“Give me a bit, I want to check the sports page.”
I had to do some research. Even in Ginland they didn’t cover the home team very well. I sat down and ordered some food as I looked through obscure sports sections on my tele.
I could only find one person covering the game and I thought it might be a little kid. He described the players as “great” or “really great” or “super great” and didn’t seem to have a thorough understanding of the game.
“Hey, what odds will you give me that Ginland only loses by eight?” I asked.
Bookies are supposed to be poker-faced and consult their shifting array of odds, but he looked surprised and said without even thinking:
“Ten-to-one.”
“Fine. Put me down for a hundred.” It wasn’t going to break me. Besides, the day I stop betting long shots on Ginland is the day I’ve given up all hope completely.
A roughneck sat down next to me and looked a bit upset. I stopped him before he started.
“Krample said bring it up. Wasn’t my idea.”
“Hank, you got any work?”
“Oh. Well, you know I got fired when Yeolenz Flame got bombed.”
“Yeah, but people said you might be working on some other stuff. Something considerable.” He kept his voice down and his eyes scanned the club.
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“Just around.”
I might as well put out more feelers.
“I’m looking for an item. For some clients. Big time weapon.”
“Is it for the Navy?” he asked.
“Why would you say that?”
“You worked for them, right? An Oberhoffman?”
Man, this guy knew an awful lot about me.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s just hot and there’s a big reward.”
“How big a reward?”
“Big enough for me to call it ‘big,’” I said.
He didn’t seem to like that answer very much.
“Look,” I began, “they can’t ship it off station. They can’t talk about it or sell it or I’ll find them and just take it from them. They might as well get some money for it, no questions asked.”
“What about for the middle man?” he asked.
“Ten percent.”
“Ten percent of ‘big’?” he asked skeptically.
“It’s a lot. Trust me. Someone is going to get rich. Also, maybe you can give me some ideas. I’m looking for a woman—”
“Aren’t we all,” he cut in.
“I know about when she came on station and I’m looking through checkin and quarantine. What else should I be trying?”
“What’s she look like?”
“Disguised, maybe.”
“What’s her line of work?”
“I don’t know if she’s working at all. Maybe an assassin. Maybe nothing.”
“She got any money of her own?”
“I don’t know.”
“How much does it pay to find her? As much as the other one?”
“N
ot even close.”
“Then I say you better find another job. It’s a big city. Especially since the corporations have cut the city into pieces. You can’t search those areas easily. And she could be lying in the bathtub in some flop in Deadsouth and no one would ever know.”
“Yeah.” It did seem like a hopeless assignment when put that way.
Just then we heard some shouting and scuffling and then a full-on fight broke out behind us. Fists flying and noses breaking. Must have been eight guys going at it.
I had never seen a real fight in the Gentleman’s Club. This was where people came to get away from fights. The food was bad and expensive and it cannot be overstated how poorly the place smelled.
This was the last refuge of the gangs. The corporation soldiers didn’t come here. They were too good for this place.
I watched the guys fight and couldn’t help but think it looked like a bunch of wild animals fighting over the last scraps of food after they had lost their natural habitat.
CHAPTER 11
“Hank, I need your help, man,” Bronze’s face came on my tele looking concerned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I need you to double date with me.”
I hardly considered that an emergency.
“I didn’t think you had a tele,” I said.
“I don’t, it’s Qindol’s. Isn’t she pretty?” He held the tele up to her and the woman smiled as if she were not very comfortable with the situation.
“Why do you need me?”
“I don’t know anyone else and they said they knew you. There’s two of them.”
“I’m at the Gentleman’s Club. I need to go home and shower.”
“Fine, we’ll meet you at your place. Where do you live?”
“One. One. Hank Block.”
Bronze stared at the tele.
“Are you serious? Is that named after you?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. You are without a doubt the coolest person I have ever met! Guy has his own street! We’ll be right there.”
Hey, a date. When’s the last one of those I was on? I finished my sandwich because I didn’t want to be hungry on a date when I suddenly remembered:
Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap Page 6
