We never could figure out their weaponry. Any time we tried to replicate it, it blew up or just didn’t work. This pistol was supposedly my great-grandfather’s. It’s beyond illegal and I got offered 300,000 credits for it once.
I’ve never actually fired it and I’d have to be completely crazy to try. But nothing brought a potential fight to a screeching halt like flashing a scary alien artifact. If I had thought they were really going to fight, I would have reached for my shotgun instead.
There was a lull as their brains clicked over how they should proceed.
Then, as my attention was directed towards the armed men in front, a multi-ton crate was dropped on me from above.
I hit the floor face down and found my legs up to about my waist were under a cargo container. I managed to hold onto my pistol despite the force, which hadn’t hurt incredibly much but was certainly surprising. Now I was annoyed. Not because they had tried to smush me, but because I looked like a doofus pinned to the ground after I had just given my badass talk.
The sailors were still in awe. If they hadn’t been impressed by my Ontakian pistol, they were by the fact my head hadn’t popped off and my guts squirted out when this crate landed on me.
“Guys, give me a hand,” I said, realizing there was no way I was going to get myself out alone.
Zadeck’s men came over cautiously and began pulling. I held my pistol as they tugged on my arms and pried at the container.
After an inordinate amount of time they finally freed me, and I stood up with as much dignity as I could muster. This was difficult considering I no longer had pants on, which had been mostly scraped off during my extraction. I was left in my underwear and ragged strips of my pants that hung from my belt and pooled sadly around my ankles.
I looked at the crane arm that had dropped the load. Followed the line. Over to the control booth. A sailor sat at the controls. He was a youngish man, maybe early fifties, and he wore the expression of someone who realized he’d just made a terrible, life-ending mistake.
“Hey, come here,” I said to him.
He didn’t come. I suppose a lot of people lie about having mutations in Colmarian space. It’s a way to avoid getting thumped if you convince people you can exhale supercooled nitrogen or whatever. Of course, that’s usually a lot of crap, so these guys probably figured I was lying too.
Well, I wasn’t lying.
Despite this setback, I tried to clear my head and get back to business.
“Look,” I said. “I know Zadeck. I can’t imagine he’s trying to cut you out. Have you guys delivered to him before?”
It took everyone a moment to come back to reality.
“Yeah, third time. But he’s always paid at shipment,” the Captain said, seemingly more ready to negotiate now that he understood I was for real.
“See? This is probably a misunderstanding. Where are you guys staying on station and for how long?”
“We’re at the Chelsea Halfway House,” the Captain answered.
“That place sucks. Go to the Marine Marina and tell the front desk you’re a guest of Hank. But don’t bust up any of the rooms.”
“Just ‘Hank’?” he asked.
“Everyone knows him,” Rooltrego volunteered. I could tell both sides were feeling a little more comfortable.
“I’m going to go over and talk to Zadeck. There’s nothing you can do here. You made your shipment. I promise I’ll get you your money.”
“I have your word on that?” I could see he was uneasy, but it was a better option than being shot with an Ontakian weapon by a pant-less mutant.
“Yup.” I went over and shook his hand. I liked shaking hands. My mitts felt like rocks and it was an extra means of intimidating people.
“Okay, guys. Move this stuff,” I indicated to Zadeck’s men. Some restlessness remained, as the crew still had their weapons. I tried to defuse it further by approaching one of the guys holding a gun.
“That’s a Dooli?” I asked him. “How’s it shoot?”
“What? Oh, yeah it is. It’s fine, doesn’t kick that much but it doesn’t sit right in the hand. Pretty narrow.” Crooks loved to talk weapons. It was how they bonded.
“Is that really an Ontakian pistol?” he asked quietly.
“Yup.”
“Can I see it?”
“Nope.”
CHAPTER 3
When the sailors finally departed for their hotel and the many sins Belvaille had to offer, I returned to my apartment to get some new clothes.
Had I just washed them too much? My pants, that is. Was that why they had holes and came apart when I got pulled from under the crate? I tried to remember when I bought them, but drew a blank. The days and decades tended to blur on Belvaille.
The streets were quiet, with very few people about. It was still considered morning by Belvaille standards and the city tended to wake up late. This was fortunate for me since I was still relatively unclothed.
The whole space station was an exact square, fifteen miles by fifteen miles, with trains bisecting it regularly. Some extremely wealthy gang bosses owned cars, but there wasn’t much use for them except as status symbols.
The buildings varied from one to ten stories tall, the shortest being things like warehouses and maintenance facilities, the tallest being residential complexes. All of them were dull silver unless painted and boringly square in design to maximize real estate.
The city itself was open air. Or open space. There was a latticework of supports high above the city that controlled lighting and air and whatever else goes on up there. The whole station was of course protected by a shield, to keep those pesky meteors away and our atmosphere in place.
I stumbled into my apartment and looked for something to drink. I just wanted juice, something cold.
My place wasn’t fancy and was on the ground floor to save me walking. There were five rooms and a bathroom. My only decorations were scraps of junk and weapons and laundry. The furniture had been replaced as fights necessitated, and what remained was scorched and torn. I had taken up a cornucopia of hobbies and inevitably given them up after a few months. There were rusty instruments, barely begun paintings, puzzles, blocks of somewhat chiseled metal, and many other things scattered around my rooms.
The doorbell rang and I thought about whether or not to answer. After a moment I threw open the door and outside was a petite woman with vibrant blue skin, a tiny nose, and incredibly long, floppy ears that hung halfway down her ample chest. She was dressed in what I assumed to be a fashionable outfit because it looked weird. It was plastic weave and cords, but spun and twisted as if it were based on a design that had once been cloth in some ancestral past. It accentuated her attractive figure while not showing much skin. She wore white gloves and had tall boots that disappeared under her dress. In fact all of her body was covered except her neck and face. Her age was hard to tell, but she looked extremely young, maybe barely in her twenties.
“Er, hello,” I said.
“Are you the one they call ‘Hank’?” she asked in a lilting accent.
“Yeah, that’s me. What can I do for you?”
She seemed suddenly very excited and clasped her hands together in front of herself like she was a little girl and I was certain to give her presents.
“Could I come inside?” she asked.
I hesitated. Bringing a stranger into my home didn’t scare me, but I kind of felt like relaxing at this point. And while this woman was cute in a gigantic ear kind of way, and it might be a job she was offering, something told me it was going to be a hassle not worth the time.
“Sure,” I said finally, holding open the door.
She entered and stared around my apartment with what I thought was a sense of wonder. But then I realized it was confusion.
“You are the one in The News they call ‘Hank’?”
There was only one newspaper on Belvaille. The News. “The Twenty Most Influential” quarterly list it published was about the closest thing we had
to being designated royalty. For the last eighteen years I had placed #21 with an asterisk.
“Yes.”
She looked around my apartment some more. It wasn’t big. Or clean. Or free from smashed bullets on the walls or the residue from fires. It did not look like the home of the 21st most influential person who lived on a crime lord’s space station.
As she continued to scan, I found myself growing more self-conscious. Would it kill me to fix the place up?
Then she looked at me. My torn jacket. My smudges caused from dropped shipping crates. The fact I was standing in my underwear. I could see her earlier enthusiasm retreating.
Most times I met people I either went to their place, we met at some restaurant, or if they came to my apartment they were the kind of guys that didn’t care if there were dirty clothes on the floor. Hell, they didn’t care if there were dirty corpses on the floor.
“Let me go change real quick,” I said, suddenly feeling prudish.
I hurried to my bedroom and grabbed the first pair of pants I saw and put them on.
“What can I do for you?” I asked after returning.
“My brother and I are new to the space station. We came from the state of Lagles Prima. It wasn’t easy getting here.”
I was vaguely aware of the name. It was practically the other side of the galaxy. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would travel so far to reach our humble state of Ginland, let alone our far more humble space station.
Belvaille had been constructed some 300 years ago back when every empire believed their prestige was dependent on how much territory they could claim. It was meant to be a stepping stone for the great Colmarian Confederation to expand outward across the galaxy.
But then I think we realized that the great Colmarian Confederation wasn’t that great and we had a lot of trouble managing the space we already owned. So they shut down all the Portals leading to Belvaille except one and about 95% of the population left.
“I may be interested in hiring you, if you are available,” she continued.
“For what?” I asked.
“Forgive me, but I must be certain you are the correct person. You are a mutant, right?”
“Yes.”
“And what are your abilities?”
“I’m hard to hurt.”
“Excellent,” she said, seemingly overjoyed. “So what if a destroyer was to hit you?”
You know how you get on different threads of a conversation and your brain conjures up images trying to fill the gaps? I didn’t know what she meant by “destroyer” and I was thinking it might be some brand of firearm I didn’t know.
“What’s a destroyer?” I asked.
“A ship.”
I cocked my head.
“No. I am, my body is, difficult to injure. Bullets and bolts will hit me, but I will be fine.”
“Right. So what if a destroyer’s cannons shot you?”
“A destroyer,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“Like a Colmarian Navy ship?”
“Yes,” she said brightly, happy I finally understood her ludicrous question.
“So like, you’re asking what would happen if I was maybe, swimming around in space, minding my own business—”
“The reason doesn’t matter.”
“Right, sure,” I said to this lunatic. “And this destroyer turned its cannons on me and fired. You’re asking what would happen?”
“Exactly,” she said with deep contentment, as if she were being totally reasonable.
“Well, I’m not a physicist.”
“You don’t have to be precise. Just what do you think?”
“I’d explode and be smeared all over the galaxy,” I said tersely.
“Oh,” she said, and looked greatly disappointed.
“Wait, you said a destroyer, right? Those ships that hold thousands of people? That guard the Portals and chase down smugglers and such?” I was still wondering if we were talking about the same thing. She couldn’t honestly expect anyone to survive personally being attacked by a military vessel. That was nonsense. No mutant of any level could do that. Mutations were generally small things like being able to rotate your eyeballs 360 degrees, and many times they weren’t even helpful.
“Yes. And you’re positive that would happen?”
“Well…no, I’m not positive. I’ve never actually put on a spacesuit and gone out and punched a destroyer. Didn’t seem like a smart play.”
“So you don’t really know?”
I didn’t want to lie to her and who knows, maybe she had a destroyer chasing her all the way to Belvaille and her idea was to fling me at it.
“I guess technically I don’t know. But I’m pretty certain I’m not going to win a fight with any military vessel.”
“What mutant level are you?”
“I’m a level four.”
She shook her head in surprise, her ears twirling around her face like braids.
“Level four, that’s it?”
I was really over this conversation. I sometimes had jobs requested by the more run-of-the-mill citizens of the station, but it often seemed to turn into stuff like this. They just didn’t know what they wanted, how, or how much. And that’s fine, they were in different lines of work. I mean I can’t tell someone how to fix a coolant module, and the folks that work on it would probably think I was an idiot if I tried to make any suggestions.
“Yup, I’m just a little old level four.”
“Are you sure?” she asked skeptically.
“That’s what they told me.”
“And when was that?”
“When they first classified me. I don’t know, maybe 160 years ago?”
“Oh,” the woman said again, thinking. “And you haven’t been tested since then?”
“No,” I said, instinctively flexing my pinky that had long ago been chopped.
“Hmm,” she said, scrutinizing me. “I would like to give you some money to purchase some drugs for me.”
Ugh! I can’t believe I listened to all this just so she can try and get high.
“I don’t really do that. But there are plenty of people who I’m sure will be happy to sell to you.”
She ignored me and pulled from her glove a folded piece of paper and handed it to me. It was a list with a truly fantastic amount of drugs on it. Not enough to go into business, but certainly more than enough for personal use.
“I want you to get these. Or as many as you can. I will pay you 10,000 if you can get them to me in 48 hours and 20,000 if you can get them to me in 24 hours.”
Those numbers made me reevaluate the list. I’m not a prima donna. Odd jobs are what I do. And I can help out a nice blue lady now and then.
“This stuff is pretty expensive,” I said. “If you’re new to Belvaille you have to realize that only a few dozen drugs are actually manufactured here. The rest have to be smuggled in and there’s just not a big market for a lot of these.”
She handed me a token for 40,000 credits.
Tokens weren’t used much anymore in the rest of Colmarian space I’ve heard, most transactions being tele-to-tele or straight to banks, but Belvaille was sentimental about anonymous, portable tokens.
“Will this be enough?”
I looked over the list for real this time, doing some calculations. I wasn’t a big drug expert, never really got the appeal. I figured she gave me more than enough to cover most of the list, and a few of the drugs wouldn’t be available at any price, they just weren’t here. She probably gave 10K too much, which I considered a good sign of faith. Even if she tried to screw me over, I had a solid cushion to make sure I got paid.
“Okay, I can do this. What’s your name and where do I reach you?”
“I’ll come back tomorrow if that’s okay?”
Wasn’t she a polite little drug addict?
“Well, I come and go a lot. I actually don’t spend much time here. You can tele me, though.” I gave her my number. Hey, anyone who gives me forty g
rand is a new personal friend.
“My name is Jyen,” she said, offering her gloved hand.
I awkwardly shook her tiny hand with three of my fingers.
“I’m hoping this shouldn’t take too much time to gather.”
“Thank you for your assistance, Hank. May I call you ‘Hank’?”
I briefly thought of what else she could call me, but I didn’t come up with anything funny.
“Sure.”
I showed her out and closed the door. Hot damn. Old Hank’s luck was definitely taking a turn for the better.
CHAPTER 4
I headed to meet Zadeck. I gave him a tele, but I liked talking face-to-face. People can say whatever they want to a little screen on your wrist. If you’re there in person, I find it’s just a completely different atmosphere. He said to meet him at one of his clubs.
I spoke to a few familiar faces on the train. One guy wanted to use me as a reference for bodyguard work, but I declined as gracefully as possible as I didn’t know him well. Another guy passed along an offer of a permanent job, but I declined that also. My motto for survival on Belvaille was: don’t take sides. It’s what had kept me employed all these years.
Gangs were unusual things. They were like fraternities, only meaner. They often had their own clubhouses and uniforms and they could be as tight-knit as families. I could never understand why guys gave so much to such a random collection of people. Why they were willing to die for some emblem that wouldn’t even notice they were gone.
I stopped along the way at a soup spot to refill the tank. I normally ate more than an average person, but not nearly as much as my mass would indicate. Another anomaly of my mutation.
The soup was on the house, because that was one of the occasional perks of being me. I really tried to take care of the people who worked on Belvaille by tipping well, as it never hurt to have too many friends. But the proprietor in this case was refusing my money.
Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy Page 2
