Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap

by Steven Campbell

  Ignored.

  They were even diving off the barrel of the cannon like it was a cool new prop to use in their dance routines.

  The door was still open. I could leave or wait until they tired themselves out.

  But I didn’t want Garm to get hurt—or my weekly paycheck from the sisters to get cut off.

  I walked back into the living room. I pushed my couch away so I could have a long clear access to the door.

  Garm had run out of bullets at this point and had somehow grabbed some weapons from my kitchen. I couldn’t see what she was using but I heard a lot of metal-on-metal clanging.

  “Alright!” I said to the room. “I’m going to fire this autocannon out the door on the count of five. Do not be in front of the gun when it goes off or you will be dead.”

  I hoped the tank explosion hadn’t damaged my autocannon. It very well could have.

  I took a moment to look it over as women cartwheeled around me. I was going to fire out the door and presumably hit the building across the street. I didn’t want to use a canister or HE because that might hit the Gandrine, and that was all I needed. So another armor piercing shell.

  “Okay, counting. Five!”

  I hunched down and braced myself for the recoil. Man, I really didn’t feel like dealing with this gun right now. My ears were still aching. I aimed at the upper portion of my open doorway to ensure when the projectile went out, there was no way it would hit the Gandrine.

  “Four! Three!”

  I notice the fight had shifted to behind me.

  “Two! One!”

  Kachooom!

  “Damn,” I said, slowly picking myself up. My couch was on fire.

  The Fighting Quadrad Trio had wisely moved away, but they obviously hadn’t been around an autocannon firing in a small metal apartment. They were on the ground knocked silly. Garm was shaking her head and on all fours. The pale sisters were only starting to stir.

  I unhooked my autocannon and dropped it. I was going to deal with the women, but then I realized my couch was really, really starting to burn.

  The automatic fire control didn’t activate. I remembered I disabled that like fifty years ago, though I couldn’t recall why.

  I went to my couch and scooted it to the door and pushed it outside. It hadn’t wanted to go, but I forced it, breaking off a few burning pieces which I also kicked out.

  I walked back inside and grabbed hold of each pale lady, threw one over each shoulder, and deposited them in my bathroom.

  I hurried back out to Garm, who was now on her feet.

  “Hank, you need to—”

  I grabbed her and put her on my shoulder before she could get all quick and bounce away. I noticed she had been wielding a metal pot. She had turned a damn pot into a deadly assassin weapon.

  “Hey!” She yelled at me.

  I hustled her into the bathroom and closed the door on us.

  I was standing in a bathroom built for one, with three angry women about to spring into combat and kill one another.

  It was cozy.

  CHAPTER 35

  “So what’s all this about?”

  There wasn’t enough room for them to fight and they probably didn’t relish the idea of dying in a lavatory.

  “Hank,” Garm began, “there should be three of them.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m looking for the other. You got me the job.”

  She looked at me but only for a split second, before returning her cautious gaze to the pale ladies.

  “When they requested access to visit, they requested access for three, to find a criminal and return him. Not two.”

  “So one got lost and I’m looking for her.”

  I didn’t understand why this was so important I had to torch my couch.

  “I did not give permission for two to come and look for their companion!” She said that last part at the sisters.

  “You gave us permission to find a criminal and return her. That is what we are doing,” a pale woman said.

  “I didn’t say ‘her’!” Garm shouted.

  “And you didn’t say ‘him.’” the pale lady replied coolly.

  “So this is all because you’re looking for a different person than Garm thought? Who were you looking for?”

  “They didn’t tell me,” Garm said. “But you said he was a criminal.”

  “We didn’t say ‘he,’ and she is a criminal. Many times over.”

  “But you said a criminal back on our home world,” Garm parried.

  “And she is.”

  Garm seemed to think about this.

  “You guys like my new bathroom? I had everything redone. Free!” I said, wanting to contribute to the conversation.

  “So you’re saying you are following my directions, only substituting your companion for your original target?” Garm asked.

  “Yes,” a pale sister responded.

  Then all three began that weird non-verbal communication as I stood there admiring my toilet. I’m glad they didn’t make me use it on them.

  “Move!” Garm barked at me.

  I moved away from the door and Garm squeezed out.

  The pale ladies were also about to try and leave but I closed the door.

  “A few questions,” I said. “Have you been killing my dates?”

  “What is a date?”

  “Those dead bodies outside my apartment.”

  “We are not permitted to do anything other than hire your services.”

  “Fine,” I said, running out of ideas on that front. “Someone stole a weapon from the Navy not long ago. Do you have it?”

  They paused in answering. I saw the quickest flitter of fingers between the sisters though their heads and eyes didn’t move.

  “We do not.”

  “Does the sister I’m looking for have it?”

  “She is not our sister.”

  “Quadrad. Buddy. Pal. Whatever. The person you hired me to find. Does she have it?”

  Another pause.

  “Possibly.”

  Hah. Who says I’m stupid?

  “Does she plan on selling it here?”

  Pause.

  “No. She plans on using it.”

  Whoa.

  “This is why she is a criminal. She broke her oaths by coming here alone without Garm’s permission. We are trying to return her to the Quadrad to face charges.”

  “Who were you all originally looking for?” I asked.

  “We cannot say. That operation is no longer being carried out.”

  “But it may help me find her.”

  “The other is not your concern,” they said.

  I thought about asking for the device. Like, “Hey, do you guys mind if I have the weapon you stole from the Navy?” But then I thought that was pretty dumb. Of course they would mind. I doubted they searched through a dumpster and happened to find a disintegrator.

  But the advantage was mine.

  If my target did have the device, and I did find her, that meant I would be able to get it before the pale sisters. Of course, it also meant the criminal assassin I was looking for was armed with a disintegrator.

  And that didn’t sound good.

  CHAPTER 36

  I now had a toilet, a burnt couch, three corpses, and two Gandrine outside my apartment. It was like the worst yard sale ever.

  The pale ladies dropping by had given me a lot more to go on, though they might not have known it.

  From the picture of her I had, she looked just like the other Quadrad, so I assumed she was as skilled. If she was going to use the disintegrator, there had to be a reason. Meaning, she couldn’t kill them normally, otherwise she wouldn’t waste such a valuable item.

  Garm had personally held off two of the sisters. So Garm might be a potential target. Wallow could squash a pale sister with no effort whatsoever, so he could be a potential target. The Gandrine probably wouldn’t even notice a pale sister stabbing them, so a disintegrator might be the only method of efficiently kil
ling one.

  Then of course there was me. As annoying as the pale sisters were, in a real fight I believed I could withstand them. I just needed a lot of toilets.

  Maybe she was even killing the people who came to my front door. But why wasn’t she taking that opportunity to disintegrate me?

  I also didn’t know why she would care. I hadn’t even heard of the Quadrad until recently.

  But really there were very few people to disintegrate on the station. Two were sitting right here and one was me. If I waited next to the Gandrine, one of us being disintegrated would be an awfully big clue to where she was.

  But I wanted to be a bit more proactive than that.

  Especially since I had no idea how a Navy, a-drive disintegrator operated. Did you just point it at someone and shoot? Or was it mounted and powered by an actual Navy vessel? It might be able to erase the whole space station for all I knew.

  Instead of waiting to get turned into nothing, I decided to go with my current leads provided by Tejj-jo.

  I checked at Leeny’s to see if he had seen the pale sister or used her as an escort. The woman from the passenger list was there.

  Although fit and attractive, she was clearly not the pale sister.

  That only left Zadeck’s paid girlfriend to match the scrambled section of quarantine records.

  I was eating some fake sausages in a restaurant, when a little boy came up to me and stood by my table expectantly.

  “Yes?” I asked him.

  He handed me a note and then ran away. The note said: “Read the second to last advertisement in the help wanted section of today’s The News.”

  I turned to it as I ate. It was gibberish. Just a bunch of words seemingly chosen at random.

  I shrugged and left the restaurant after paying my bill. I headed to the train. As I was waiting for it to arrive, a different little boy ran up to me.

  He handed me a note and ran away just as quick.

  “Hmm.”

  The note said: “The advertisement is a code.”

  I looked at it again. I tried taking the first letter of each word, but that made it worse. I tried skipping words. Tried reversing them.

  I gave up. I’m not a code breaker.

  A tele came from Delovoa.

  “Hank, where you at?” he asked.

  “Going home, why? Is that you with the kids?”

  “What? Just come over,” he said.

  I headed to Delovoa’s, even though I was worried about catching diseases from his dead corporate soldier.

  Inside, Delovoa looked disconcerted.

  “Follow me,” he said, as means of introduction.

  We walked towards his basement without fully going down.

  “Look.”

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?” I asked.

  He pointed to nothing.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Exactly. Someone stole him,” Delovoa breathed.

  “Stole who—you mean the corpse?”

  “Yes. They broke into my house, bypassing all of my security, and removed him. There’s no trace he or anyone was here!”

  “Well that’s just great!” I protested. “I got three dead bodies on my front yard I can’t pay anyone to take away and someone broke into your apartment and actually stole your corpse.”

  “Did you tell anyone I had it, Hank?”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “Nothing else was taken. They tracked my movements, waited until I was out of the house, and overcame a very significant number of security systems to get that body.”

  “I mean, it’s really weird, Delovoa, but so what? Isn’t it safer to be rid of him? Did he have sentimental value?”

  “I thought you followed these events,” Delovoa said, irritated.

  “You thought I was interested in corpse theft?”

  “No, but obviously there is something bigger here. Why would they recover him?”

  “Maybe they wanted to give him the rest of his brain. I don’t know, Delovoa. I don’t even understand what he was.”

  “A biologically engineered Colmarian, missing significant portions of DNA.”

  “Right. And that’s my concern? Like I go around monitoring who has good DNA. As you remember, until very recently I was a doorman.”

  “Why aren’t you taking this seriously, Hank?”

  “Because I don’t see how it matters and I don’t know what we can do. Maybe if I brought some of my corpses down here I could get rid of them.”

  CHAPTER 37

  I exited Delovoa’s place and a little girl who had obviously been waiting for me across the street, skipped up and held out her hand, holding a note.

  “Where the hell are all you kids coming from?” I said, looking around.

  She stood there silently until I took the paper. Then she ran off.

  The note said: “If you had bothered to at least work a little on the code it would have instructed you to meet me at the Ulzaker-Ses club, 3rd floor, today at 9pm.”

  I checked my tele. It was already past 9pm, but I didn’t feel like having another deluge of little children assault me with notes and codes, so I headed to the club that had been the recent site of carnage.

  The fire had destroyed the club’s interior, leaving indistinguishable charred piles everywhere.

  I stepped delicately through the refuse. I didn’t want to disturb any bodies, not from squeamishness, just from a sense of propriety. My feet were going to be black with soot after this.

  It was also quite dark as the firebombs had melted any lighting that existed. Only the street illumination that came in from the windows made anything visible.

  I walked around for maybe fifteen minutes, but saw nothing code-worthy.

  “Come upstairs,” a voice called down to me. The voice was clearly modulated, disguised via some electronic means. I could tell it was masculine, however.

  Things were starting to become at least slightly more intriguing. I made sure my autocannon was prepared. I loaded a canister shell, recalling the havoc it had caused when discharged into this very club.

  Upstairs I walked into the main room when I heard:

  “Stop!” The voice said. I could not see who said it, as it came from deeper into the room where it was very dark.

  “I’m here, what do you want?”

  “There is something very wrong with Belvaille,” the voice said.

  “That’s a pretty broad statement. Also pretty self-evident.”

  “Have you wondered how all these tanks and weapons reach Belvaille when they have to travel through the Jam?”

  “They’re disassembled, I assume.”

  “Really? And you think Navy scanners are so feeble they can’t tell a tank that has been taken apart? If all you needed was a screwdriver to bypass their blockade, there would be no need for a place such as Belvaille which can ship illegal goods legally.”

  “Fine. So how are they getting here? Are they manufactured?”

  “There are no forges here. Even you have to know that.”

  “So what then?” I asked.

  “Are you familiar with the way Portals work?”

  “Sure. Ships use them to travel to other Portals.”

  “But how do they work?”

  “Technically? I haven’t a clue.”

  “You know you can only put Portals in certain regions of space. And every Portal sits in one of those areas. Have you heard of that?”

  “Yeah. It’s called like the ‘Portal diameter,’ right?”

  “No, it’s called nothing like that,” the voice said testily.

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean because I brought up the subject.”

  “Alright. Go on.”

  “All these ships attached to Belvaille have engines.”

  “Ships usually do.”

  “Those freighters have pulled Belvaille, and themselves, to be in the region of space capable of using Portals.”

&n
bsp; “Belvaille has moved? How didn’t anyone notice that?”

  “Who said they haven’t? And it’s not like they did it fast.”

  “Why would they do it, though?” I asked.

  “What would we gain by being in the depression?”

  “I guess we’d save on fuel costs for ships coming into and out of the Portals, since we’d be a little bit closer.”

  “But why be in the actual depression? What value is there?”

  There was silence as I thought.

  “We can see ships coming out?”

  “What? Why does that matter?” the voice asked, annoyed.

  “I said fuel. Um.”

  “Think. Why are the three Portals where they’re at?”

  “So the Navy can protect them?

  The modulated voice took a deep sigh.

  “The Navy can protect wherever the Portals are. But why are those Portals sitting in space where they are?”

  “I guess…so if a ship comes out of one it doesn’t run into another? Actually, I don’t know. I don’t know where the Portals are.”

  “Of course you do!”

  “How do you know? I’ve never seen the Portals! They could be big pieces of candy sprinkled with fairy dust for all I know.”

  “But you know where they’re at, you already said so!”

  “When? In my sleep? When did I give you the coordinates for the Portals? I only know they exist because people tell me they do. It could all be a really elaborate practical joke.”

  “No, you said the Portal diameter,” the voice argued.

  “And you said that wasn’t the right term.”

  “Okay, but pretend it is. So where are the Portals?”

  “How should I know! I’m not a ship captain!”

  “They’re in the Portal diameter, you idiot!”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, sure. I thought you meant something else.”

  “So what does Belvaille gain by being in the Portal diameter?”

  “Like I said, fuel savings?”

  “Rings of Noeln! Hank, if you didn’t have your mutation you would have died a hundred years ago. You have to be the dumbest person on the station.”

  “I’m sorry, Rendrae—I mean mysterious stranger—but I don’t know what you’re getting at.” This was clearly Rendrae. I have no idea why he was trying to be secretive, but he loved this kind of nonsense.