Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck

by Steven Campbell

  “How about Hank Block? What do you own here?”

  “Just this building. I had the signs leftover from before.”

  “How many securities and cash do you have?”

  “I tried to buy an aluminum, but that didn’t work. I think I have about one hundred eighty-five thousand thumbs. And of course The Thumb.”

  “The infinite one?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t know if I can give that away.”

  “I don’t think you can. It is a loan guarantee in a sense.”

  “The box it comes in is nice,” I said. “I have clothes and some guns. These sculptures.”

  “Who do you think would want them?” the judge asked, his pen poised to write.

  “Probably no one. The clothes won’t fit anyone. The guns are cut up so I can use them and these sculptures…”

  We looked at them.

  “They could be sold for scrap metal maybe,” the judge offered.

  “Wow. This is depressing,” I said.

  “It sounds like this building is your main asset. You can parcel out the items inside, but it might be best to treat it as one unit. So who do you want it to go to?”

  I thought for a while.

  “Can I donate it to the city?”

  “Sure. They would realistically take it if you didn’t have a will, anyway.”

  “So basically I’m making a will to do what they would have done without a will?”

  “Yes. But you can make suggestions for its use. Though the city could ignore them.”

  “I don’t know. Whatever they need. More prisons. Kommilaire quarters. Tax, er, contribution office.”

  “That’s fine,” the judge said, writing. “Here, sign at the bottom.”

  He handed me the paper. The text saying it was a will was about three times longer than the actual body. I shakily drew my name at the bottom. My signature looked like that of a five year old trying to write while sneezing.

  “You can be proud of that, Supreme Kommilaire.”

  “Can I? A city full of murderers, drug dealers, ferals, scam artists, prostitutes, and gangs is my best friend.”

  CHAPTER 66

  I had teams of Kommilaire search the Avenue With No Name but there was nothing out of the ordinary they could find. I even sent multiple groups just in case some were being bribed by Garm. Then again, she probably had enough money to bribe them all.

  I looked at the maps and wracked my brain on the best way to attack. Which way would Hong be expecting? Which way would he think I was expecting he was expecting?

  In the end I just chose randomly.

  I couldn’t have the Militia come from multiple blocks because they were too undisciplined and I had no way to coordinate. I feared as soon as they were out of my sight everything would fall apart.

  The appointed time came and I switched up my plans at the last minute just to be sure.

  I marched my Militia to the south side of the Avenue and up. Since even I hadn’t known I was going to do that, I was hopeful this might be of strategic value.

  It didn’t matter. The Totki were there and waiting.

  And holy crap there were a lot of them.

  Some of the racial stereotypes of the Totki were that they were all short, they talked funny, they smelled bad, and they all looked the same. I told my Kommilaire not to engage in those slurs.

  But it wasn’t a stereotype. They all did look the same.

  I never dreamed there were this many Totki on Belvaille. I must have thought I was seeing the same ones over and over when in fact they were from whole different families and clans.

  Hong managed to con me into facing his entire army, which outnumbered mine threefold. Not only that, but I could see they were not only armed with their usual spears, but guns, chainsaws, grenades, and all manner of weapons.

  My Militia had their sticks.

  If I thought I could get away, I’d order a retreat. But where could we go? They had us all out in the open. They would chase us, picking off the stragglers until they got everyone.

  My fat ass would be the first to go as I doubt I’d even get to turn around before they swarmed all over me.

  I handed out firearms from my vest to the Militia nearby. No point dying with an arsenal of unfired guns on my chest.

  “Point and shoot when you’re close range,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, Hank. I’ve shot half a dozen people before,” one man bragged.

  That was the state of my Militia that those words were meant to comfort me.

  I could hear Hong in the distance rallying his men. He had an annoying voice.

  “Hey, Hong. Hong!” I yelled.

  “What?” he yelled back.

  “Eat suck, suckface!”

  I knew it was one of those things that didn’t translate well, which is why I said it. There was a heavy silence between the two armies.

  “No, you suck face!” Hong finally retorted, and he went on ranting about this and that and Su Dival and suck and faces.

  I didn’t have a lot to say to my own troops. I knew I should come up with some rousing speech about freedom and good and liberty and justice, but I didn’t think it mattered.

  “If you kill them,” I said, “you’re all free.”

  RARGH!

  The Belvaille Militia took off instantly! I hadn’t actually meant for them to charge now! We were too far away. They would leave themselves spent and tired by the time they got to the Totki.

  I hobbled after my troops but it was like I was trying to walk through space and they were all rocket propelled. When I got to the fight, I suspected it would be over—and not in our favor.

  But I didn’t need to reach the fight. Many of the Totki surged forward and around my Militia. Their primary target seemed to be:

  Me.

  Scores of Totki encircled me with long polearms, devices on the tips. They jabbed at me like I was some ferocious wild animal instead of a venerable, sluggish bruiser with bad vision and worse aim.

  I fired and missed. I fired again and he went down, though not the one I had been shooting at. Hey, this wasn’t so hard.

  There must have been thirty surrounding me and they started to push in.

  Zap!

  The polearms they used had some kind of electrical prod on the end. I all but laughed. I had faced full-on lightning bolts from a mutant named Jyen decades ago. She could light up a whole city street and melt steel. She still didn’t do much to me. And back then I was maybe a tenth the size I was now.

  Zap! Zap! Zap!

  I fired some more and dropped another Totki.

  Zap!

  I felt a pain in the back of my right calf. I looked down and didn’t see anything except my pants. Just then I felt the pain shoot across the back of my neck and go down my arm.

  No!

  Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap!

  I wasn’t sure how I got on my back but there I was. Either the station had flipped ninety degrees and I was immune to gravity or, far more likely, I had fallen and was suffering my millionth heart attack.

  How had they known?

  I was only marginally aware of what was happening now. It’s like I was looking through my own body standing five feet behind my eyes, unable to reach the controls. And it hurt a whole lot.

  I could kind of see things, but they just weren’t that important. Not as important as dying, anyhow, which kind of loomed large in my consciousness.

  I was so close. So close to saving Belvaille. Yeah, it was just one city when I had helped doom an entire empire. But it was something. Something to build on.

  And here I was going to be killed by a goofy little guy and some bug zappers.

  Now what would happen to the city? To the galaxy? More civil war?

  We were a bunch of greedy bastards but we didn’t deserve that. We deserved a break. Before there was nothing left to fight over except dust and bones.

  Gazing up at the latticework, as my heart was being shocked into submission, I suddenly had
a desire for a piece to fall off and crush me. I wanted Belvaille itself to end my life. I had spent so much of my existence here, it was only fitting.

  I saw from the corner of my eye my Militia fighting savagely against the polearm shockers.

  “Protect Hank,” a voice shouted.

  “Form around him,” another agreed.

  “Keep them back!”

  Did my Militia want the glory of killing me themselves? I was confused. Then again, my brain wasn’t getting much oxygen.

  Uulath’s face appeared above me.

  “Hank, are you alright? Supreme Kommilaire!”

  “What are you doing?” I managed to whisper.

  “If you die, we’ll never get our pardons,” he answered.

  Figures.

  I heard a mass of machine gun fire and shouting and explosions and assumed the Totki had ratcheted up their assault and were struggling to reclaim my corpse.

  I saw flashes of movement and shouting and all manner of combat, but couldn’t make sense of it. This dying was a slow business.

  After what seemed like hours, MTB and Valia showed up. They were bloodied and bruised and smudged.

  “Boss,” MTB said, “hang in there!”

  “Sure,” I answered. As if I had a lot of options on what I was going to do.

  “We’re going to get the medical technician,” Valia said.

  “No! What are you all doing here?”

  “We…we were waiting in reserve, Boss,” MTB admitted.

  “The Kommilaire? You’ll get massacred.”

  “We recruited soldiers from the Belvaille Confederation. Almost five thousand.”

  “It was her idea,” MTB said, and I wasn’t sure if he was blaming Valia or giving her credit.

  Sure enough, after some time the fighting died down and I wasn’t being jabbed with spears.

  “Did we win?” I asked.

  They looked around.

  “The Totki lost, I’ll say that much,” Valia stated.

  “Good. Tell everyone they are officially pardoned then drag me to my place. Oh, and let out the lady prisoners,” I said.

  “But they didn’t fight. They didn’t earn a pardon,” MTB said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t want them singing at me while I try and recover.”

  CHAPTER 67

  Pain was good.

  It meant I had time left. However little.

  The Confederation hadn’t come to my rescue because I was wealthy or popular or famous. They came to my rescue because I was an investment.

  When MTB and Valia told the gang lords that there was a chance their Confederation might come crumbling down because the inventor of it was about to be torn to pieces by a horde of surly foreigners, they all threw aside their differences and jumped to my aid.

  They’d be damned if they were going to lose money on this deal.

  The basic premise of the Confederation had worked! The members recognized a threat to the greater organization and responded. It meant their fates were now intertwined and they weren’t just looking out for their own gangs. The importance of that was hard to overstate.

  Devus Sorsha poked and prodded and needled me scarcely less than the Totki had, but eventually I began to heal.

  The Royal Wing was empty. The Sublime Order of Transcendence was back to being an overblown group-help organization for those with poor fashion sense. The Totki were all but obliterated and held in racial contempt by most of the station.

  The Olmarr Republic was headless and rudderless. I knew they still existed and would try to get a foothold with the disenfranchised and downtrodden whenever it was convenient. But at least for the moment they weren’t a major player.

  There was still Garm, however.

  Behind all these groups, in the shadows somewhere, she was pulling strings and making plays. Rendrae had always preached against her and I had chalked it up to hyperbole. I guess I still had a soft spot for her.

  It was hard to deny that City Hall wasn’t working in the best interests of Belvaille, however.

  I didn’t know what those interests were, but I was going to find out.

  I wasn’t at full strength. I probably wasn’t at half strength.

  It had taken me three weeks to recover from the Totki, and in that time I had at least two more minor heart attacks.

  “I really appreciate this!” I yelled up to the sky.

  Wallow walked ahead of me impassively.

  Anyone in the street, near the street, in view of the street, left hastily.

  We came to the blocks that housed City Hall. The thirty-foot walls were beyond my ability to breech, but I hoped Wallow might help.

  The walls were about half his height but five feet thick.

  He came to the first one, looked it over for a good while, placed his hands here and there, and then:

  Crack!

  He ripped a section of the wall straight up and tossed it to the side as if it were a rolled-up doormat.

  I saw machine guns and cannon fire erupt from other walls and bunkers and Wallow didn’t even notice them.

  He walked through the opening and tore holes through the remaining walls.

  Finally, he must have seen a bunker firing at him and he backhanded it, smashing the reinforced steel to nothing. The other gunners wisely silenced their attacks.

  At the base of City Hall, Wallow pushed his hand through the first floor and swirled his wrist around so that he might make an opening for me—even though a door was already there.

  All of this he did in about five minutes.

  He walked back to me, nodded, and continued onward. Hopefully he was returning to his resting spot in the northeast.

  I was thankful I had been feeding him all this time.

  My full contingent of Kommilaire waited some blocks away. I didn’t think they would be of any use, but I wanted them to witness whatever the outcome might be.

  I walked into the gap Wallow created and Garm’s people filed out to stop my progress.

  “Halt!” One said.

  “I want to talk to Garm.”

  “She isn’t seeing anyone.”

  “You have gaping holes in your walls and I have the biggest army on the station,” I said, pointing back to my Kommilaire. “She’s going to talk to me one way or another.”

  Some of the officers excused themselves to confer.

  After a while they returned.

  “You may go up, but you have to remove all your weapons.”

  “I can’t walk up stairs and I doubt your elevator can support me.”

  “The freight elevator can.”

  “Alright.”

  I got their help taking off all my weapons. They wanted everything gone. My hooks. My cables. My magnet. My food. My tools.

  “What’s this?” one asked, holding up a large pouch and tube connected to my waist.

  “That’s kind of a colostomy bag. Most toilets can’t support me and my colon hasn’t aged well, so I either go on the floor or use that.”

  They let me keep it.

  We used the door instead of the hole left by Wallow. I looked up to see if the building was bent or otherwise unsound, but it appeared intact.

  I hadn’t been inside City Hall in decades. It was dark. Sanitized. Lifeless. A control center without a lick of elegance.

  Garm used to have so many carpets they were in layers on her floor. She used to have paintings on her ceiling because she ran out of space on the walls.

  If this was her new style, she had truly changed.

  The elevator was glacial and I could hear the cables and pulleys crying out in pain as it tried to lift me. I had a lot of time to think as I went up to the tenth floor, alone. I’d been thinking about the same thing for three weeks, ever since I knew this encounter had to happen.

  I was born a mutant. My parents were mutants. Their parents were mutants. They all fought, and died, for the military. Everyone expected me to fight, and die, for the Colmarian Navy as well. I said forget that, and
ran off to the furthest place I could find.

  This city.

  I didn’t get an education other than from Belvaille. I was out here with a bunch of criminals at the edge of the galaxy. How could it not make me who I was?

  But I was different now. Maybe not Jolly Sunshine, but I was the Supreme Kommilaire! If you had told me I was going to be a police chief a century ago I would have never believed you. I came here to escape that life.

  Garm always had a choice. She had a great job as Adjunct Overwatch. She could have called in military support for Belvaille any time she wanted and cleaned up the city—like I was trying to do now.

  Instead, she turned a bad situation worse.

  The previous city administrators at least tried to maintain some sense of order. Garm took a cut of all the dirty deals. They flourished under her. The gangs, the gang wars, anything illegal.

  Maybe that was okay when we were a little space station on the ass of the biggest failure of an empire in the known universe, but now we had to turn a corner. The galaxy was in ruins, we couldn’t treat Belvaille like it was our personal playground, here for us to plunder at any cost. Garm had to understand that.

  Or Garm had to go.

  The elevator door opened and Garm stood directly in front of me!

  She wore her black hair short and sharp as always. Her body was as muscular and tight as ever. Her eyes were alert and twinkled. She was dressed in her old Adjunct Overwatch outfit with military insignias.

  She had not aged a day since I last saw her.

  I stood there dumbfounded.

  How was that possible? Everyone I knew from those early years was hardly recognizable today. You’d need a geneticist to tell I was the same person as I was seventy-eight years ago.

  But there she stood, not the least bit different than I had remembered her.

  “Hank, it’s good to see you,” she said, smiling. “Come in.”

  I stepped inside, unable to take my eyes off her. She held my arm like we were going on a stroll.

  “Sorry I haven’t seen you in a while,” she said. “I haven’t really seen anyone.”

  “Except those rich people,” I said, snapping back to reality.

  “They serve their purposes. How have you been?”

  “I’ve been terrible! What do you mean, ‘how have I been’?” I asked, annoyed.