Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap

by Steven Campbell

  “Who left?”

  “The Gandrine.”

  “Were they ever back at my apartment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you need to tell me that,” I said, annoyed.

  “They were back. But they’re leaving now.”

  “Follow them.”

  He was drunk. But I didn’t suppose you needed to be very sober to follow Gandrine.

  A luxury car drove up next to me and the window went down. Garm was in back.

  “Get in,” she said.

  “How is it that everyone knows where I’m at?” I threw my arms up in frustration.

  “You live here, right?” she asked, not understanding.

  “Yeah, but how did you know?”

  She blinked a few times, stuck her head out the window, and pointed behind me.

  I looked up the street a bit and there was a sign that designated this as Hank Block.

  “Who put that there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t your people do all the signs?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not as if I check on each one. There are a lot of signs in the city.”

  “How did they know I moved?”

  “Just get in.”

  Garm’s car had a lot of room, though my autocannon still didn’t fit well. There was a partition between the driver and us. When we were moving she explained:

  “I need you to help me with a strike.”

  “I can’t, I’m already trying to organize one.”

  “No, stupid, not that kind of strike. A labor one.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m busy.”

  “I know. And you didn’t tell me about it, you didn’t tell me Bronze was cheating on me, and you let him enlist in your suicide attack. So you’re going to do this before you die or before I kill you for doing all that other stuff.”

  I pondered that.

  “So what do you need?”

  “The Electromagnet Workers Union is striking.”

  “Against who?”

  “Me, dummy.”

  “Don’t they work for you?”

  She sighed and put her chin on her chest for a moment.

  “Yes. That’s why it’s a strike.”

  “What do they want?”

  “I don’t know. The usual junk. More money, less work.”

  “How do you expect me to help? This isn’t really my thing.”

  “Didn’t you used to negotiate between gangs for like…a thousand years or something? Did you forget how already?”

  “Oh, I thought I had to know something about magnets.”

  “It doesn’t matter what they do,” she said, frustrated.

  “I’m sure it matters or you wouldn’t be talking to me.”

  “Of course, but you don’t need to know the specifics. Without them, we would all die. There, simple.”

  “Well that’s true for like half of the services under you, right?”

  “Yes. But these are the first to demand more. If I give in, they’ll all do the same.”

  “So you want me to kill them?”

  “I think your brain is hardening like that technician said. Why would I want you to kill my highly-trained workers? This isn’t a gang fight, it’s a negotiation.”

  “Then how much are you willing to give them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “This is going to be a really short or really long negotiation. Where are we driving?”

  “To City Hall to talk to them. I have a meeting scheduled.”

  “Isn’t this the kind of tactic you use on the corporations and gangs?” I asked her. “Refuse service if they don’t agree to pay.”

  “Yes.”

  Apparently she did not see the irony. Or didn’t care.

  At City Hall I dragged out my autocannon and secured it on my back. I followed Garm to her private elevator and up to the eighth floor.

  The halls were packed with pudgy, technical-looking guys who gave Garm dirty looks as she walked. There were a lot of them, that’s for sure.

  In the conference room five of the pudgier technocrats sat sweating at a table. Their clothes were ill-fitting and fashionable maybe half a century ago on a planet with no fashion sense.

  There were also a dozen bodyguards in the room looking mean. I could tell they weren’t Garm’s because she forced all her people to wear uniforms.

  “I see you felt it necessary to try and intimidate us, Adjunct Overwatch,” one of the seated men said with a sneer.

  “I haven’t held that title in some time as you know and Hank is here as a negotiator,” Garm said plainly. “He has a lot of experience in these matters.”

  “Why is he armed?” another asked.

  “The same reason you have all these thugs,” she said.

  “First off, who here is coming with me to attack the corporation?” I said to the aforementioned thugs.

  Two guys tentatively raised their hands.

  “You either work for me or them. I’m not going to pay you to shoot me. If you work for me, get out of here,” I said.

  They chewed that question for a bit and remained where they were. So I just lost two soldiers. But that also meant they were either getting paid more than 30,000 or they liked the odds here more than for my mission. Either way didn’t bode well for these talks.

  The fat men grinned, their jowls making it look like forty smiles were mocking my failure.

  “Sit down, Garm,” I said.

  I wanted to put her on equal footing with the union. She pulled her chair far out and sat at an angle. Her knees bounced around as she sat, like a hyper child’s.

  “So what are you requesting?” I made the mistake of asking the union.

  Forty minutes later they were done and I was bored silly. I had tried sitting down myself, felt the chair giving way, so I sat against the wall, putting my autocannon next to me.

  I couldn’t understand the details of the demands, but the union obviously wasn’t very good at diplomacy. They seemed to be asking for anything and everything that could possibly be given. They nearly asked for a quadrillion percent raise, Belvaille to be named after them, everyone to become their personal slaves, and Garm to tuck them into bed each night and bake them cookies.

  Garm’s face was red. It took every ounce of her control to not beat these guys to death.

  “Gentlemen,” I began, downcast, “those requests are asinine.”

  They then went on a rant about how important they were and how the station would cease to exist without their expertise. Garm jumped in and told them how she had organized them in the first place and given them positions of influence instead of glorified maintenance roles.

  “Is anyone hungry?” I interrupted.

  They all looked at me like I was crazy.

  “I’m hungry, let’s order some food,” I continued.

  “Hank—” Garm began.

  “Are you mocking us?” a fat man asked.

  “No, I’m hungry. Are you hungry?” I asked the guard next to me.

  He nodded. Thugs were always hungry.

  “You’re trying to distract us,” one of the magneteers bellowed.

  “I’m trying to eat,” I countered.

  “He’s always eating,” Garm agreed.

  “Forgive me for being hungry. I didn’t know I was going to be babysitting today.”

  Cries of outrage! Some of them actually pulled themselves to their feet. That was all the excuse Garm needed to pop up and begin yelling back.

  The guards in the room were either not anxious for a fight or were waiting for the free meal I had hinted at.

  One of the engineers at the end of the table stood and banged a tool on the table. It got everyone to quiet down a bit.

  “This is what they want,” he said to his comrades. “Get us riled and bloodthirsty. Look at him sitting there. That’s Hank. If we lose control they’re going to kill us and say it was self-defense, and then deal with all those scared members out there,” he said, pointing to the
door.

  Wasn’t a bad idea, though I hadn’t thought of it. He faced Garm now.

  “If you don’t meet our demands, we won’t strike, but we’ll slow down and make mistakes and you’ll never know if it was intentional or an accident.”

  This was a difficult situation. It wasn’t like a gang negotiation because they weren’t a gang. We couldn’t just threaten to beat them up or they wouldn’t work well. They had to want the deal but I also had to make Garm happy.

  I walked over to whisper to Garm.

  “Come on, what can you give them?”

  “Nothing,” she said flatly.

  “Can’t imagine why you’re single,” I jabbed.

  “You are too,” she said without missing a beat.

  “Guys,” I started in my most pleasant voice. “The way I see it, you got it pretty damn good. You’re bleeding the corporations, the gangs, the businesses. If any of them go up or down it doesn’t matter to you.”

  They mumbled and muttered and disagreed.

  “But,” I said, “if you start raising your prices, you might kill your own monopoly. You exist because no one is bothered enough to compete with you. I don’t do this a lot, but let me tell you a bit about what the corporations did for me. You,” I said, pointing to one of my former soldiers, “what was I paying you?”

  “Uh, thirty thousand,” he said.

  “For a few night’s work. And you know how many people I’m looking to hire? Five thousand!” I lied.

  Silence in the room as they added that up. It didn’t take them long, smart bastards.

  “Right,” I continued. “They paid in full after a ten minute conversation. I got the money now. All of it. Do you really think you’re so important that they can’t replace you? They can’t hire a thousand of you at a moment’s notice? They just haven’t gotten around to it. Don’t give them an excuse.”

  “How do we know you aren’t lying?” one of them asked.

  “I’m advertising all over the place!” I turned to the guards for confirmation and while they didn’t openly agree, it was obvious. “It’s not a secret. Here, this is the money I have for weapons, armor, gear, clothes, and vehicles.” I punched up my tele. “The rest for salaries hasn’t been transferred from my bank because I don’t need it yet.”

  I threw my tele on the table where they could see my statement. Even Garm looked over. They were as impressed as I had been. It was an insane amount of money.

  “You guys have dream jobs. Why would you ever risk giving it up by making the corporations do a cost analysis of your work?”

  They seemed to digest all this slowly. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad liar.

  A few hours later I was strutting along to the car with Garm.

  Garm was not happy, but it was her howls of protest that helped close the deal. I made her give the union five extra days of vacation a year.

  I didn’t think they would agree to end the strike unless they thought they were getting a good deal. They didn’t know that Garm would have expressed the same outrage if she had been forced to give them one second of vacation.

  Both sides equally miserable. That to me was the sign of a successful deal.

  CHAPTER 46

  I was up to 641 confirmed for the upcoming attack. Wasn’t enough.

  Back at my place I noticed the Gandrine had returned. I teled Cad to ask him where they had gone but he didn’t answer.

  Annoyed, I walked past the Gandrine I was supposedly trying to spy on, and up the street to the apartment where Cad and his friends were hiding.

  It was empty.

  There was a card table, lots and lots of empty bottles, some take-out food packages, chairs, and two beds. The smell of multiple guys who had been sitting and eating in one room for a week hung in the air.

  Hmm.

  I wasn’t sure who Cad had hired to keep him company so I couldn’t call them.

  I left Cad a tele message to get back to me. Peering out the window I could see the Gandrine easily. I watched them for a few minutes. Yeah, I could see becoming an alcoholic doing this job.

  They might have gone to get supplies, but still it was very irresponsible. At least one of them should have stayed on duty.

  Back at my place I tried to relax. It wasn’t easy. I was leading a full-scale invasion against an enemy whose capabilities I didn’t know, but assumed to be considerable. Still, I needed to take my mind off things so I didn’t become a nervous wreck.

  I got a tele from Delovoa.

  “I have the list planned,” he said. “But, can I ask you, how much do you trust these guys you’re hiring?”

  “Trust like how?”

  “Trust to not steal valuable weapons and armor you give them.”

  “Very little. I probably know only about a quarter of them. A lot of them don’t even like each other. They’re from different gangs. It’s only the money bringing them together and the chance to sock it to a corporation.”

  “That’s a problem, Hank. What if you give them all this equipment and they don’t show up? Or they steal it? Or they go tell the corporation you’re going to attack? Or go work for them at a higher rate?”

  “Well…that would suck.”

  “I’m not going with you, so it’s not my neck, but I don’t want you to think you’re marching out with 800 guys and only 300 show up.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to see that either,” I exhaled. “I guess I could only pay them half at the morning of the attack. Then half after. And we only equip them right before the attack. But, we’re not going to get any training done.”

  “I thought about that too. Where would you train anyway? How are you going to train 800 people?”

  “I don’t know. Put down ten thousand bottles in the street and shoot at them? This hasn’t been done before on Belvaille. I’m kind of playing it by ear. I don’t even know where we’ll put all this equipment we get from the corporation.”

  “We’ll need a warehouse,” he said.

  “And how am I going to move my army? Ride the train? It will take us three hours just to get everyone in the same spot. And it’s not like we can all walk up one street. We’d be shooting each other in the back.”

  “No, you’ll need to go from multiple directions. Come over, we’ll look at some maps of the city.”

  “Did you ever figure out who stole your corpse?” I asked.

  “No. I suspect it was one of the corporations.”

  “I don’t want to do any planning there if you’ve been infiltrated by a corporation. It could be the one we’re attacking. You should come over here.”

  “Do you still have Gandrine sitting in front of your house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well I’m not walking by them. I think my place is safer.”

  “Let’s meet at City Hall.”

  “Will Garm get mad?”

  “No, I just did some work for her.”

  At City Hall Colonel Delovoa and I spoke and it became clear just how terrible this war was going to be.

  Naked Guy had given me the name of the corporation and location. It was Intergalactic Brands Ltd. They were located in a small section just north of the docks. Their colors were brown with a green cat. I knew nothing of them beyond that.

  “You’re going to need to do reconnaissance,” Delovoa stated.

  “Yeah, I should have started a while ago, but…well, I didn’t. I’ll tele some guys and set up an around-the-clock watch.”

  I looked at the map.

  “We have very limited areas of attack. We can’t move an army through the dock, it’s too crowded and we’ll get held up by heavy machinery. We can’t go from the east because there is no east, that’s the edge of the station. Too far north and you get into the rich neighborhoods and they have private security.”

  “And they might shoot at you, or worse, your army splits off and starts robbing people,” Delovoa said.

  Looks like we got these four blocks on the west, but that’s awful narrow. Two hundred unt
rained gang members, armed to the teeth, who all dislike one another, bumbling down each street.”

  This job was not giving me a warm feeling.

  CHAPTER 47

  “Thad Elon’s Teeth,” Delovoa exclaimed.

  We stood in a warehouse that we had previously appropriated for storage. I had given Delovoa’s list back to Naked Guy which detailed what equipment we would like from his Colmarian United Supply.

  The building was absolutely filled with military hardware. Row after row of guns and armor and gear. It was beyond counting.

  “How are we ever going to use all this?” I asked, dumbfounded. “I mean, how are we going to give it to people? Have them line up at the door and pick whatever they want?”

  We wandered through the aisles of equipment. Nothing was labeled and it seemed to be ordered haphazardly. There were racks of pants next to a box of grenades next to signal flares next to…

  “What is this?” I asked, picking up an odd device.

  “It’s for water breathing.”

  “We’re on a space station, why did you ask for this?”

  “I wanted to see if they would give it.”

  I twirled around looking at the mess.

  “How long will it take you to inventory?”

  Suddenly, Delovoa grabbed my arm, his face looking desperate.

  “You still have the money, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Off Belvaille.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Look!” He said, gesturing at our armory. “It—I guess it hadn’t been real in my head before this. But this isn’t a gang war, it’s a real war.”

  “But we have all this equipment to fight with.”

  “Do you know how to use all this stuff? I don’t.”

  “I thought you were an expert engineer.”

  “I am. But knowing how to build it and use it in a war are two different things. I’ve never been in a fight in my life. Just go. I’ll come with you—if you want. Belvaille is lost anyway. This is proof.”

  “We can’t, Delovoa. Do you think they gave me all that money and all this stuff and they’re not going to find us if we leave? We probably won’t make it to the Portal. I have to get these guys ready to fight. It’s the only way out of this.”