Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years

by Steven Campbell

  “Then why are you working here?” I heard Tamshius yell after me.

  Two days later I was still in the hospital sitting by Organa Dultz’s bed.

  They said he would make it, but both his legs had been amputated because of severe frostbite. He hadn’t regained consciousness yet.

  I wasn’t sure why I was here. I guess making certain no one came to finish the job.

  “Hey, kid.”

  Tamshius was leaning against the doorjamb looking cool and deadly.

  I stood up, ready for a fight.

  “Stay back or I’ll punch you in the stomach,” I said. Not having any experience threatening people.

  “Easy pago, I’m not here to get dusty. My boss wants to give you a job.”

  “Sure. What is it, being shot by you guys? Or as soon as I leave, you kill him?”

  “He got the message. We’re done with him. No, my boss wants you to collect debts for him. I take the bets and if they don’t pay…that’s your job. Things are too busy, I can’t go chasing everyone.”

  “Well, sorry to hear that. I’m not going to throw people in freezing sewage.”

  “That’s the good part, kid, you don’t have to. You’re bulletproof! Use whatever method you want. Hell, just talk to them if you like. They got to listen, they can’t shoot you.”

  “Doesn’t sound like something I’d be good at,” I said.

  “First job pays 5,000 credits.”

  I couldn’t conceal my amazement. Was that even possible? How could anyone make money paying someone else that much?

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  Tamshius gave a little salute and sauntered off.

  I sat down, scratching my head.

  “Hank…” I heard the weak voice of Organa Dultz.

  I got up and went by his bed.

  “I’m here.”

  “Take the job.”

  “You heard him? Is it for real?”

  “Of course. You don’t want to be working in the sewers the rest of your life. End up like me. You got a lot of potential.”

  I smiled despite myself.

  “Besides,” he added, “it will make me feel better to know the next time they won’t send some animal after me. It will be you.”

  MY FIRST MURDER

  It was ten years after Belvaille had opened and the city no longer resembled its earlier version.

  The vast majority of economic activity on the city now came from illegal sources.

  There had been a criminal element on the city almost from the start, catering to the needs of the explorers who were given monthly checks from the Colmarian Confederation yet had nothing to actually explore—other than the bottoms of liquor bottles. But those criminals had always been of a minor sort, half entertainers, half businessmen.

  Now real criminals were here and operating in earnest.

  However, if you could set up a successful brothel in regular Colmarian space there wasn’t any reason to relocate to Belvaille. The population was a fraction of a large planetary city.

  So Belvaille attracted a very particular kind of criminal.

  Those with money to invest in a brand new operation on a brand new city; those not particularly welcome in the main Colmarian Confederation; and those brave and unattached enough to go to the ass-end of the galaxy.

  There were no gangs at the start. There was no need for them.

  Most of the crime wasn’t focused on Belvaille, it was focused off Belvaille. The population had left, so you couldn’t make a living selling forgeries to the locals, there just wasn’t enough business. You had to sell off-station.

  But there were a limited number of ships making runs to Belvaille and a limited market within range of those ships. There was no point spending 250,000 credits delivering 100,000 credits’ worth of counterfeit goods five Portals away.

  After a time, the different criminals began fighting for space on those ships and for access to the most attractive markets.

  It began small enough, but as the population of Belvaille ramped-up again, and the operations grew larger, the gangs also grew larger to protect themselves from one another.

  At this point, a big gang might have twenty people, with only about five of those actually dedicated to security. It was an expensive proposition paying for someone to stand around scratching his butt because of the prospect of violence.

  I was such a butt-scratcher.

  I worked for Mordi Mudanus, who was a kind of middle man. He bought supplies and made contracts on behalf of others.

  I did deliveries, collected payments, guarded shipments, and did anything where being bulletproof was a benefit—which was most things.

  I had about 75,000 credits in the bank now and felt fantastically wealthy. I kept telling myself I should splurge and buy something, but I didn’t really need anything, so I kept saving.

  We had a postal service on Belvaille same as anywhere else. I never concerned myself with it because I never got mail.

  When I came home from lunch one day, however, I had a note that there was a package for me. This was a little disconcerting because no one in the galaxy knew I was on Belvaille, at least no one who didn’t also live on Belvaille.

  I went to the post office, picked up the metal container, and took it home, wondering what kind of horror it contained.

  I pried it open with great effort and found at the top a dark blue cloth.

  Pulling it out I saw it was a Navy uniform, specifically, my father’s.

  He was a big man, my father. It would have been baggy on me and I was not a small person. It had his name, and it had various medals and ranks which meant nothing to me.

  I pulled out the trousers and found wrapped in them my father’s old plasma pistol.

  He had always carried it with him. It was an Ontakian plasma pistol taken from that alien race when one of my forefathers had battled them.

  There was nothing else in the box.

  This told me several things. It told me the Colmarian Navy knew I was here, and it told me my father was dead.

  My father had served in the Colmarian Navy, his father, his father, his uncle, their sisters, sons, daughters, everyone in my family tree who possessed my mutations. They had all died in the Colmarian Navy as well.

  None of them died peeling potatoes or slipping on bars of soap. All of them, to a person, died in combat. Being nearly invulnerable with heightened regeneration was a surefire way to get murdered—if you were in the Navy.

  And when they died in combat it wasn’t a stray bullet that got them, or a stray hundred bullets. Our mutations made that impossible. It took something big and terrible to kill us and those things weren’t in short supply in the galaxy.

  I had seen the writing on the wall when I was young. I was going to join the Colmarian Navy and I was going to die there. I don’t think it was ever demanded, but after like the fifteenth generation of service, it stops becoming a request.

  As I saw it, I didn’t choose to have this mutation and even if I had, I didn’t owe the Navy my life because of it. People in my family tended to die before their eightieth birthday, easily half the lifespan of the average person.

  I chose to flee instead.

  I hopped a few dozen transports, changed my name a half dozen times, and ended up in the last place anyone would ever find me: Belvaille.

  So now I was the last of my line. The flag bearer. The patriarch.

  I wasn’t sure if the Navy had sent me this package as a kind of notice that I should come back and take my place on the front lines, or if it was just a bureaucratic procedure.

  In any case, I didn’t care.

  It sucked that my father was dead, but me dying right behind him wouldn’t undeaden him any. I had never seen him much in life because he was always off doing Navy stuff, of which he never told me anything.

  But I can be pretty sure his activities didn’t involve tooting a horn in a band.

  It was shortly after this that I found myself in my first
gang war.

  “Why me?” I asked. “I’ve never even met him.”

  “Doesn’t matter, they’ve declared war on us,” my friend said.

  “They probably figure taking you out will hurt us most. And it would,” Mordi Mudanus said.

  Mordi Mudanus was a fat man with stubby legs, an enormous round belly, and freakishly long arms. His hands hung past his knees. He wore what fine clothes he could get, but he only had a few vests that could fit his girth. Belvaille had no good tailors as of yet.

  The gangs didn’t really know how to fight wars.

  They were very stilted affairs which reflected our lack of manpower and dearth of real hard-nosed criminals at this time.

  One side would tell the other side they were going to war with them. The reasons. The terms. And would print a list of what they were actually going to attack.

  I was at the top of the list.

  “I quit,” I said.

  “You can’t quit,” Mordi Mudanus answered.

  “Watch me.”

  “They’ll kill you anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’ll just assume you’ll join back up after the war is over.”

  “Then I’ll tell them I won’t.”

  “And they’ll kill you when you show up.”

  I came to Belvaille to avoid dying in the Navy and I managed to get on a kill list in a fraction of the time.

  “Then what do we do?”

  “What guns do you all have?” he asked us.

  “Guns? None,” I said.

  “What do you carry on your deliveries?” Mordi Mudanus asked.

  “A crowbar.”

  “What do you carry?” he asked my gangmate.

  “A nail gun,” he said.

  “Right, I open the crates, he closes them,” I explained. “We do deliveries, we’re not mercenaries.”

  Mordi Mudanus was exasperated.

  “What do you carry?” he asked our last comrade.

  “I push the dolly.”

  “So my security doesn’t have any weapons?” Mordi Mudanus asked.

  We stared at our shoes.

  “Go get some guns!” He bellowed.

  It was not easy to buy weapons on Belvaille in those days. There wasn’t a big need for them, they were heavy and bulky and thus expensive to transfer in space freighters. Their ammunition was even worse. No one actually manufactured guns on the station yet.

  Word must have also gotten out that we were at war and my name was on the list.

  “Five hundred credits?” I asked.

  “Take it or leave it,” the dealer said smugly.

  He wanted 500 for a tiny little two shot pistol that was half the size of my palm and whose muzzle velocity was so low that if it got any slower the bullet would travel backwards.

  “Screw you. I’ll remember this next time you need something,” I said.

  “You’re assuming you’ll still be alive,” he replied.

  I was getting worried.

  I had a crowbar against an entire gang. And I wasn’t even proficient with the bar at opening crates. I can’t imagine I’d be some great martial artist.

  I was walking back to our office when I heard shouting. I turned just in time to see two men across the street aim their firearms at me.

  Oh, crap!

  One had a pistol and the other a long barreled shotgun perfect for duck hunting.

  Before I could move, the guy with the pistol fired right next to the ear of the man with the shotgun, who doubled-over and grabbed his head in pain. His shotgun went off, hitting the street.

  The handgunner fired several more times and the man with the shotgun reloaded and fired a halfhearted blast in my direction.

  They then ran off.

  It was clear Belvaille was still working out the kinks on this whole gang warfare concept as I don’t think either of them hit within fifteen feet of me.

  Maybe a crowbar was the way to go.

  Mordi Mudanus’s idea was to work down our side of the list in this war and try and come out ahead.

  The whole point was to see which side broke first and then sued for peace. And I suppose he liked the fact that I was on the top of their list because I was hard to hurt.

  But I didn’t like that plan.

  Because it meant I was going to have twenty people trying to kill me as we inched our way down a list of people and things. If I survived this, I was done with this gang. From now on, I worked freelance. I’m not joining the Navy and I’m not joining any gangs.

  Don’t take sides.

  Let them fight their own stupid wars.

  But right now, I was in the war no matter what I did or said. I had to fight my way out of it. I figured the best and most direct way was to kill their boss.

  The gang that had declared on us was run by Samaleon, so he was my objective.

  I didn’t ask Mordi Mudanus because he would have said no, not wanting to be likewise targeted.

  But his name wasn’t at the top of the list and mine was.

  I grabbed my crowbar and my father’s Ontakian plasma pistol.

  I sent a note to Samaleon that I would fight him on D and 14th block.

  About eight guys, armed to the teeth, went running out of Samaleon’s offices. I waited for them to pass and then I crossed the street to the office.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Hello?”

  “We’re closed,” a voice answered.

  It belonged to a big man, with a big black beard, young and fit.

  “Hey, you’re Hank,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re supposed to be at D and 14th.”

  “I lied.”

  He picked up a heavy pistol from a table and yelled over his shoulder.

  “Boss! Hank is here.”

  I looked behind him and saw a back office with the light on. Great. I had to get past this guy before Samaleon made a getaway. But he didn’t look like the kind of person, holding that big gun, who would let me waltz past.

  I had my crowbar ready and he had his pistol ready, when I heard an electronic whirring.

  From out of the back office, an ancient man on a wheelchair came puttering out.

  I was so surprised I spoke without realizing:

  “You’re Samaleon?”

  “Yes,” the feeble man replied. “Does Mordi Mudanus know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  He shook his little skull, which looked like it was about to fall off any second.

  “There is a sanctity and ceremony to these things, young man. We are not heathens.”

  Both of them looked at me with disdain.

  “Begging your pardon, but that’s easy for you to say when a whole gang isn’t gunning for you.”

  “And so you thought you would just change our traditions? You made this decision yourself? Do you understand what would happen if everyone did what you’re doing? This is a small space station,” he chastised.

  “Well…I didn’t see any way around it. I mean, I didn’t know you…” and I was going to say something like “were old and sickly,” but I merely trailed off.

  “Yes, you don’t know me and I don’t know you. But there is a means of solving disagreements and you can’t just come here and petition to have your name moved on our list.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, not understanding.

  “I said you can’t just assume we’ll make any changes. Just like Mordi Mudanus won’t change his list. It is part of the war.”

  “I didn’t come to get you to change your list, I came here to kill you,” I said.

  “Bon-Peeb,” he said to the bearded man, “shoot this jackass.”

  The man lifted his gun and shot me between the eyes on his first pull.

  “Ow!”

  I swung wildly with my crowbar, moving closer, but he shot me again in my face which kept my eyes closed.

  “Ow!”

  He shot me in my chin, which really hurt. I snuck a peak and saw Bon-Peeb h
ad moved farther away. This wasn’t working.

  Why did I come here? I could have died in the Colmarian Navy in a cool uniform fighting for my species on some strange planet.

  I reached into my jacket and pulled out my Ontakian plasma pistol, dropping my crowbar to the ground with a clang.

  I heard Samaleon’s wheezy little voice taunting me.

  “Why the void did we put you at the top of the list? You suck!”

  I pointed my pistol at Samaleon.

  “Yeah? Well…eat suck…suckface!”

  I pulled the trigger and nothing happened.

  Come to think of it, I had never seen my father actually use this pistol. It might be jewelry for all I knew. I didn’t know a whole lot about guns, especially plasma guns. Did I have to do anything first? Cock it? Load it?

  Bon-Peeb shot me in the back of the head while I was staring at my gun.

  “Ow!”

  “Did you get that at a toy store?” Samaleon chuckled.

  This was going a lot worse than I had suspected. I felt my face getting puffy from the gunshots. Bon-Peeb had really good aim and he was going to blind me in all likelihood.

  I pressed areas on the pistol that I hoped were buttons or switches or openings. Maybe I should have looked at this before I came.

  Bon-Peeb had just reloaded and was aiming when, by accident, I switched on the power to my ancient alien artifact.

  From the sides of the pistol a green glow like I had never seen burst forth. It practically warped my corneas, but I couldn’t look away. The gun itself emitted an enormous gurgling rumble, like a subwoofer the size of a freighter that was stuck in a frequency somewhere between physical and mental. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the city itself was vibrating.

  I completely lost track of the “fight,” staring at my gun. It had so knocked me senseless that I momentarily forgot I was in mortal danger. It was like I was suffering a continuous stream of mild concussions while being hypnotized.

  After what seemed like minutes, I finally managed to look up, and I saw Samaleon had risen from his wheelchair and had one arm reaching out toward me and one hand absolutely clawing at his chest.

  His expression was one of terror.

  And then he fell down.

  I turned off the gun and it was like the ocean receded from my skull and I had the ability to think again.