Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap

by Steven Campbell

  I dragged myself through the dock, my legs screaming in pain, my stomach screaming louder. I had never been this ravenous in my life and I was a person who was quite often hungry.

  I checked all my pockets for crumbs. Some food I hadn’t thought about. I put a piece of my shirt in my mouth and began to chew on it. The action made me feel slightly better but it was also frustrating.

  What if Bronze had some food? What if his jacket was full of rations and water?

  I stopped.

  No, he wouldn’t have anything. And I was a bit frightened that if I walked all the way back and he had nothing, I would do something regrettable.

  The dock had very little activity, probably because a war had been fought recently. But a worker turned a corner and saw me. He stood a few feet away and he looked horrified.

  I saw him mouth my name.

  I don’t know why or how but all I said was:

  “Rarayah!”

  He ran away.

  That was dumb, I should have asked him for food. Or water. Or directions. I was only vaguely aware that I was pushing my broken frame through the docks, but not necessarily the right way.

  I took the risk of consulting my tele. I looked at the street signs. It seemed a tremendous effort to actually use my brain.

  Contsu House. A restaurant. It was only eight blocks away! I headed towards it. But I made myself the promise that if it wasn’t there, I would eat the first living thing I could catch.

  All along the way my legs felt like they were on fire. The pain was unbelievable. But the ache in my stomach was primordial. It was twisting my mind. I was looking at doors and wondering if I could eat them. They looked so similar to large crackers. I wondered why the asses who had constructed this city hadn’t left great piles of food lying around. What if people got hungry? It seemed a massive oversight. There was all this metal and no food.

  I had to rest numerous times, leaning up against buildings. I didn’t dare sit down because I wasn’t sure my legs could get me back up.

  In the distance I could see the restaurant!

  It was at the end of the block on the other side of the street. I had to cross the street. Why did they put it on the other side of the street? What a terrible thing to do!

  I lumbered to the door and pressed on it. It swung in.

  There were customers everywhere. The wait staff behind the counter saw me and froze in panic.

  I didn’t care.

  I walked forward to the counter. Anyone nearby got out of the way. I could walk around the counter where the little door was and enter the kitchen.

  Or.

  I lifted my arms and brought them down on the counter. The surface cracked. I did it again and again. I then leaned into it and pushed my way through the counter.

  The kitchen!

  I grabbed handfuls of food and shoved it in my mouth. I was drinking cooking oil. I was eating flour by the pound. I chewed raw, space-sourced pseudo-meat like it was flower petals from heaven. My face was so covered in food I couldn’t see and I was groping randomly for things to eat.

  It was all so delicious. So wonderful. Nothing could ruin the joy of this moment.

  My whole digestive system from mouth-to-throat-to-stomach seemed ready for anything. As fast as I could scoop food into my maw it processed it. I was the most efficient machine on Belvaille. In the state of Ginland. In the whole Colmarian Confederation.

  I wanted to eat all the food everywhere!

  And I was making a go of it. As I barely escaped eating my own hands a blast of white obscured my vision.

  I kept eating.

  The blast happened several more times. I finally noticed enough to care and turned my head, though I continued chewing.

  Garm stood there holding a fire extinguisher. Her eyes were wide.

  She was trying to coerce me to follow her, but I wasn’t interested in leaving my food.

  One of her soldiers came in and began packing up the restaurant’s grub in a large plastic container. Several customers helped him carry it.

  It was then that I noticed the whole restaurant was milling around watching me—from a safe distance.

  With the promise of the food container, I followed Garm to her car.

  In the back seat I ate and ate and ate.

  If anything was said that entire time, I didn’t hear it.

  CHAPTER 50

  I woke up in a dingy apartment in a filthy bed with my legs in two casts, propped on a makeshift metal box. All I knew was that it wasn’t my apartment.

  I was hungry again.

  “Hello?” I asked.

  No one responded.

  I saw a gallon of water on a small table next to my bed but I couldn’t reach it. I tilted and twisted, but that made my legs hurt so I lay back down.

  I couldn’t find my tele. That was more disconcerting than anything. Many people slept with their teles, that’s how integral they were to our being.

  Hadn’t I met Garm? This certainly wasn’t her apartment. She lived in luxury. Other than a chair and the table and the bed, there was nothing in the room. Not even a carpet. It could be a flophouse in Deadsouth for all I knew except the room was too small.

  But at least I was alive, which was more than I could say about a lot of people at that battle I’m sure. I was anxious to know who had escaped. How it all happened.

  I felt very vulnerable lying in an unknown bed, no weapons, no tele, immobile.

  I must have dozed off, because I came to and the medical technician Devus Sorsha was examining my legs. He was cutting the casts off with a pair of thick scissors.

  “You awake?” he asked in a pleasant manner.

  “Do you have any food?” I asked. “And will I be able to walk again?”

  “I’m sure your legs are fine,” he said, discarding the casts on the floor. “In fact, your body’s mutation is quite amazing.”

  He began jabbing my legs with a metal pointer. Not delicately.

  “Does that hurt?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Fascinating. Normally with wounds like yours we would have to graft whole new sections of skin. You just regrew what you needed and sealed the rest. It’s almost impossible to tell where the lacerations were.”

  He stared intently at my feet and legs.

  “Do you want to try walking?” he asked.

  “No. I just regained consciousness. But I’ll eat.”

  “I don’t have any food with me. I just came to check on your progress.”

  “I thought you said you had food,” I accused him.

  “No. I didn’t say that.” He stood up from the bed as if he was suddenly concerned for his safety.

  “Who brought me here? Where’s my tele? Where is this apartment?”

  “Garm brought you I believe. She called me to come last week.”

  “A week?”

  “Yes. We’re under City Hall. This is one of the jail cells.”

  “Do you know where my tele is?”

  “I don’t. But I’ll let Garm know you’re awake…and hungry.” He started to pack his few things in a bag.

  “Is there anything I should do with my legs?”

  “Don’t do whatever you did to hurt them.”

  “No, I mean to heal.”

  He shrugged.

  “Get rest. Fluids. You seem to require a lot of sustenance. You ate a lot since you’ve been here.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Yes, well, let me contact Garm.” He started to leave.

  “So am I okay otherwise?”

  “Were you injured in other locations?”

  This guy was terrible. He seemed to read my expression.

  “We can’t scan you. We don’t know if you’re hurt unless it physically shows. Your lower legs and feet seemed to be the only areas that were substantially damaged.”

  “Fine. Thanks. Wait. Who is paying for this?”

  “It’s been taken care of,” he said magnanimously.

  He gav
e a small bow, as if he were some important, knowledgeable person, instead of a quack, then he left the room.

  When he was gone, I gingerly lifted my legs with my arms and slid them to the floor. They didn’t hurt.

  I pushed off the bed and took a few steps. My skin felt thick and tight. Like I was wearing knee boots that didn’t flex at the ankles.

  Was this what he had referred to before when he said my body was healing back denser?

  I walked around the room and between my limp and my new legs I felt like I was waddling. I slapped my calves a few times hoping it was just stiffness. Stood on my tiptoes. Maybe I would get used to it, like I got used to my bad knee.

  After some time, both Garm and Delovoa came in to see me practice-walking around the room.

  “Glad to see you up,” Delovoa said.

  “Where’s my tele?” I demanded.

  “We all have to take them off,” Garm stated. “It’s these cells. Alarms go off if you bring teles back here. They’re just at the end of the hall.”

  “Oh.”

  “I recovered your autocannon, it’s at your apartment,” Delovoa said.

  “How the hell did you get that? I dropped it at the fight.”

  “I know. I found it among the wreckage and got a lifter to pick it up.”

  “Why would—,” I started, but Garm interrupted me.

  “Listen to what he has to say.”

  “There were three different corporations there. Intergalactic Brands Ltd, who you were supposed to be engaging. Northern Skies Ltd. The Colmarian Collective LLC.”

  “I guess I’m glad it took more than one corporation.”

  “But it was one corporation,” Delovoa exclaimed. “They all had the same guns. The same armor. The same tanks. The same APCs. The same bullets. And I took blood samples from the fallen soldiers in each corporation. They’re one hundred percent matches. They only have one soldier—just a lot of him.”

  “Then why pretend to be different corporations?”

  “They aren’t pretending anymore,” Garm said. “They attacked the telescopes.”

  “What?” That was truly shocking if they openly went against the Navy.

  “They rounded up all the workers and forced them off the station in transports.”

  “The Navy is going to blow us out of space!” I said.

  “Maybe,” Garm said. “But they haven’t done anything yet.”

  “Why would the corporations do that?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” Delovoa said.

  “Me? How would I know? I’ve been in here for a week.”

  “But you met with the corporation when this attack was authorized,” Garm said. “It seems to me they wanted all potential resistance removed from Belvaille. And it has been, for the most part.”

  “I didn’t meet with the corporation, I met with a flunky who didn’t have a name and couldn’t afford clothes. I don’t know where their real leaders are or their plans. You deal with them all the time, Garm.”

  “No I don’t. I told you I just send out invoices and notices. I’ve actually never met anyone face-to-face. I hadn’t thought it odd until now.”

  “Probably because everyone here is a clone,” Delovoa said. “Except the person Hank met.”

  “We know they are bringing in military hardware, but we thought it was so they could fight each other. If they are all the same corporation, why do they need an armed space station at the edge of the galaxy?” Garm asked.

  “I think your Quadrad sisters might know something about all this,” I said.

  “You’re Quadrad?” Delovoa asked, impressed.

  “It’s supposed to be secret. But yes, I am. Keep it to yourselves.”

  “The Navy is looking for the sisters too. Well, sort of. They’re looking for something they stole. A disintegrator.”

  “There’s no such thing,” Delovoa said.

  “Yeah, tell that to the Navy. But the Quadrad told me the other sister they paid me to find was going to use the disintegrator on someone here.”

  Garm was shocked.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

  “I don’t know. You don’t tell me everything.”

  “But that’s pretty important! There are not many people she would need to use it on.”

  “Yeah, and I’m one of them,” I said.

  “I could be too,” Garm spat.

  “Excuse me,” Delovoa said politely, “but I’ve heard you two go back and forth before and I don’t think we have time for it.”

  We both paused to regroup.

  “Bronze is dead,” I said sadly. “I didn’t eat him.”

  The second part only slightly confused Garm. But she seemed resigned and merely nodded.

  “How many people survived the corporation attack?” I asked.

  “Well,” Delovoa started, “just you.”

  CHAPTER 51

  I headed back to my place on battered legs.

  They told me that I likely didn’t have much to fear being out in the open as the corporations, or corporation, didn’t seem interested in the citizens anymore. They had killed everyone they wanted to kill, thanks to me.

  We had pieced together the events from the last years and it seemed like a concerted effort to get anyone capable of opposing them off the station. The corporation battles with “innocents” getting caught in the crossfire for instance.

  The Yeolenz Flame casino being bombed and my assault on the Ulzaker-Ses club. Things like that had been going on ever since the corporations came. It forced everyone with common sense to leave Belvaille and all those without common sense to end up dead.

  There was only a handful of the old guard left and we weren’t going to be mounting any campaigns against a united corporation.

  When I came to the new Hank Block I looked up at the street sign for some moments.

  I took the pole in my hands and shook it back and forth with all my weight until it began to loosen in its socket. I was able to eventually wrench it from the ground. I stepped on the thin metal plate that displayed my name and bent it back on itself.

  I did not feel I deserved a street named after me.

  The only good thing I’d seen in a long while was the fact the Gandrine weren’t sitting on my steps.

  I walked to my front door when Rendrae peeked out of the adjacent apartment.

  “Hank,” he said, looking around anxiously, “we need to talk.”

  “I’m not in the mood,” I said, entering my place.

  He followed in after me, slamming awkwardly into the door as I was closing it.

  “This is urgent! I live in this building now. My home isn’t safe.” He closed my door behind us and locked it.

  The fact he hadn’t sent little children, wasn’t in disguise, or modulating his voice meant he was frightened enough to drop that silliness. Still.

  “Rendrae, I hate to dispel your delusions, but no one cares about you.”

  “Then why did my offices get destroyed by a tank two days ago?”

  “A tank blew up The News?” It sounded pretty unlikely.

  “I wasn’t there to see it, but the neighbors were. Nothing else was touched. And they didn’t exactly blow it up, the building is still standing. But they destroyed everything inside.”

  “Hmm. So is that what you wanted to tell me?”

  “No. Can I sit down?”

  “Sure,” I said tiredly.

  He sat down, pulling his plump leg up to cross it.

  “Have you seen what the Gandrine are doing?”

  “No. Well, I tried, but I haven’t heard back.” I thought about that. I didn’t have any messages from Cad and it had been quite a while. It’s possible he could have taken my money and left the station, but I think he would have at least told me in transit.

  “I’ve spoken to numerous engineers on Belvaille. The station’s power consumption has increased over a hundred fold in the last month.”

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t know
what to say.

  “Not only that,” he continued, “but I’ve spoken to someone who helped secure one of the corporate freighters to Belvaille. He said inside it had pods that he recognized and were, and I quote, ‘capable of containing infectious biological agents.’”

  That sounded bad.

  “The soldiers on Belvaille are all biological. Like they’re all the same blood thing. DNA.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, I’m tired. Delovoa said they were all the same. They’re making soldiers. Like in a shop. And they’re all the same. All the corporations are the same one too.”

  Rendrae’s head almost exploded. He jumped to his feet and took out his tele to take notes.

  “Wait. Go over that again.”

  “I’m exhausted, Rendrae. And I’m not the person to ask. Tele Delovoa, he knows how it all works. It never made any sense to me. But that’s maybe the shop they’re building the soldiers in.”

  “What if they are storing biological weapons instead?” he asked.

  “What are they going to use them on? Us? They don’t need them.”

  “Why would they ‘need’ to destroy my offices?”

  “I don’t know. Because your paper is boring?”

  He flashed me a mean look and I realized I better backtrack if I ever wanted to get him out of my apartment.

  “Sorry. I’m getting crabby. Can we talk about this tomorrow? Follow up with Delovoa and he’ll set you straight.”

  “Will you monitor the Gandrine?” he challenged.

  “Sure. I need something restful to do anyway.”

  CHAPTER 52

  The next day I saw my autocannon with a note from Delovoa. He explained all the repairs he had made to the weapon. I didn’t understand it of course. I was more interested in how he had gotten into my apartment and how he had carried the gun to begin with.

  I had over a hundred messages on my tele. I assumed from widows and girlfriends wondering where their lost partners were. I felt I owed them…something, but I couldn’t bring myself to call that many people with bad news just yet.

  There were four messages from the General. I called him up.

  I was transferred from three different officers and left waiting for thirty minutes but he finally picked up.