Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy

by Steven Campbell

  Then they were gone. They never turned off the lights completely. Ever.

  With the constant light of Belvaille, we couldn’t see stars. Couldn’t see past our own little environment. But with the latticework off, everything was clear.

  But instead of a galaxy of stars, what we saw was far more startling.

  There were countless bright lights. Reds, yellows, greens, blues that glowed crisp and unwavering in our view. They belonged to hundreds of ships that were now floating around Belvaille.

  The Navy, it seemed, had arrived.

  I got back to my place as quickly as possible.

  “Wake up!” I yelled to Delovoa, who was asleep on my floor, a huge white metal robot standing over him.

  Delovoa grumbled and murmured but didn’t stir.

  I pulled the scientist to his feet, risking getting mashed by ZR3.

  “You’re leaving. Now.”

  “What?” he stammered.

  I dragged him through the house and outside. When we exited, Delovoa looked up to the sky.

  “So it’s real,” he said vaguely.

  It was dark outside. Very dark. This was the best and only chance I was going to have of moving these two. A moment later, ZR3 pounded out after us. I think it took the front door with it.

  We only saw a few people on the way, but visibility was so low I couldn’t make out who it was. And while I could only indistinctly see them, the gleaming white tower of ZR3 was likely more visible. Still, I couldn’t worry about that now.

  It took us more than an hour to reach the secret apartment—one of the units not shown on the most recent map. It was just three large rooms. It had once been an electrical substation, though all those components were long gone and now it was merely vacant.

  The door didn’t even have any locks or codes on it.

  “Stay here and don’t move,” I said once we were inside.

  This building was perfect for them. ZR3 could easily fit now that all the generators had been removed, and no one would think of checking this structure as it was labeled with all kinds of hazardous warnings. I had already stocked it with supplies and sundries for Delovoa to occupy himself with. That was before he had pirated my own apartment.

  “Hank,” Delovoa began feebly, “what’s going to happen to me?”

  Standing there in the makeshift residence, a tremendously illegal alien in tow, an armada surrounding us, no way to escape, it was a valid question.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, Delovoa,” I answered honestly. “I’ll do my best.”

  When I got back home I was on needles waiting for the Navy to come in any moment. I had both guns in my hands. After about six hours, I felt I was being a little self-important. Presumably the Navy would land first. Maybe do some setting up. With a flotilla that size, it could be a while.

  I looked outside. The lights were still off on the space station. They wanted to make sure that everyone saw what was out there, regardless of when they woke up.

  It was difficult to tell where one ship ended and another began. I wondered which were the dreadnoughts. You couldn’t really get a sense of scale from here. Because they were in space, at X, Y, and Z axes, the lights would often overlap or seem irregular. But from the ground, now and then at the right angle, a row or two would appear in perfect symmetry, so you knew the ships were all aligned in some proper military fashion. They had to be, there were simply too many to be floating around haphazardly.

  Because of the darkness, I didn’t see Jyen and Jyonal until they were right in my face, standing in my apartment.

  “Hank, what’s going on?” Jyen asked, grabbing hold of me.

  “The Navy. You need to get back to your apartment. Don’t come out. Have your papers ready if anyone calls on you. Study your documents and be ready to answer any questions,” I said severely.

  “Can we still go to clubs?” Jyen asked.

  I think she would have electrocuted me if she could have seen the expression on my face.

  “No.”

  CHAPTER 33

  I was on edge, having barely slept a wink. I finally decided I needed some food and needed to see what was going on.

  The lights were now on. Looking up it was almost possible to pretend the Navy hadn’t come. All those ships had been just a dream.

  Except for the soldiers.

  At each corner stood a half-dozen armed soldiers who scrutinized me with extreme intensity as I passed.

  They wore charcoal-colored body armor and carried either wicked, long rifles or fat, snub ones. I didn’t immediately recognize the guns, as Belvaille didn’t specialize in military designs. But the shorter one was obviously a multi-barreled submachine gun designed to throw as much metal downrange in as short a time as possible. The rifle was some kind of high-caliber precision shot. There were far more men with the automatic weapons.

  They also carried sidearms which I couldn’t see. They had on helmets with their visors down. Since there was no glare to worry about, I took this to mean they were getting visual instructions via their helmets or perhaps some scanning-type information. Or they were all ugly.

  As I moved closer to the port, ostensibly looking for a restaurant, the soldier density rose exponentially. Just ten blocks out there were what looked like thousands of them.

  I was shooed away as the mass of troops moved in synchronization transporting gear with all manner of heavy lifters. It seemed the first order was to unload everything from the ships. How they were going to move all those crates across the city was anyone’s guess but they were already stacked taller than some of the warehouses.

  “I said get going,” a soldier barked. And a dozen men with nothing better to do pointed their guns at me.

  It was then I also noticed the emplaced heavy machine guns and rocket launchers.

  I actually felt somewhat relieved seeing all this. If they were spending this much effort moving in, they at least weren’t going to blow us up from space.

  Belvaille’s preparations seemed comical. We were going to trick an entire occupying army? Pretend we were a quaint tourist attraction off the beaten path?

  And my, how power had changed. What was a boss now? What possible influence could he have? Belvaille was now a military base that happened to have some civilians on it.

  A diner some ways from the port was packed. It was perhaps half soldiers and half regulars. The only people talking were the soldiers.

  The people of Belvaille all had their heads down as they dutifully ate their meals. I walked in and people I knew gave me half-inch nods.

  “Can I help you, sir?” the cook, who had known me for decades, asked with a leaden voice. I ordered and took a seat.

  After about ten minutes a squad of troops came in. A slight buzzing or whistling emanated from them—I think it was their intra-unit communication systems.

  “Groll-uot-a, stand,” one of them said to a person eating, who was trying to hide in his food. I vaguely knew him as a man named “Gouel.” He did something in smuggling.

  “Stand!” the guard yelled again and hit Gouel on the head with his gun. The squad dragged him to his feet and out of the diner.

  The tension relaxed afterwards and people went back to their business. But it was a stilted calm. No one was really hungry and the soldiers who had been laughing and talking earlier were now closer together and speaking in quiet tones.

  I put my head down and ate my food like everyone else.

  I guess you could say things went downhill from there.

  The ridiculous amount of soldiers increased dramatically with no signs of slowing. Apparently they hadn’t all come on shore at once because our feeble port was simply incapable of handling that many ships and personnel. Likewise, soldiers had to transfer in space from the larger ships to ones able to dock at Belvaille.

  In a week, the city was firmly under martial law, with bunkers on every corner. If you wanted to walk to the train, you had your identification checked at least five times,
as if you were going to get phony papers in the half block between when you got your ID last checked—I mean it was possible on Belvaille, but still pretty excessive.

  They had not made any large-scale forays into the uninhabited areas of the city, but were slowly setting up living quarters in the northwest. They cordoned off that area so it was impossible to see what they were doing.

  The hidden caches hadn’t been found yet and Delovoa was safe for the moment, but at this rate I wasn’t sure how long that would last. There were just so many troops.

  The number of arrests had been escalating as well. What was more frightening was that no one knew where the arrestees were being held. There were whispers that they were simply being killed. The city didn’t have the jail facilities to hold the number of people being taken, and it seemed an awful hassle to be transferring them all back to military vessels.

  Anyone who was anyone was in hiding—or hiding as much as they could in a space station saturated with police.

  The clubs were all closed. The casinos were shut down. Even the social clubs, the Belvaille Athletic and Belvaille Gentleman’s Club, were closed, and I didn’t think those had ever closed. Not even during riots.

  What probably scared people the most was the fact our teles were all jammed. There was a looping message from the Navy and that’s it.

  Teles were impossible to hack. Literally impossible. In a city full of some of the best criminals—okay, some of the better criminals—in the galaxy, no one even bothered with teles. You could do nothing to them whatsoever. But all of ours had become messageboards for the Colmarian Navy.

  “Hi, Garm,” I said, as she walked up next to me on the sidewalk.

  “Hello,” she responded. “I don’t have much time, come on.”

  Garm was in a new military dress uniform I had never seen before. It was a bit sexy. She wasn’t looking at me as she kept her eyes forward.

  “So, how about this weather?” I began as we walked nowhere and tried to look as if we were up to nothing. We kept our voices low.

  “I don’t think they’re going to leave and I think it’s only a matter of time before they arrest me.”

  “You?” I was shocked.

  “They know everything. Everything we’ve done here. I’ve done. I don’t know how, but if I illegally crossed the street ten years ago, they somehow got pictures of it and witness testimony. They’re only keeping me around now because I know all the internal systems and who does what. As soon as they learn all the technical aspects of the city, I suspect they’ll have no more use for me.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What are they doing with the people they arrest?”

  “They don’t tell me.”

  “So that’s it? They’re going to throw us all in jail?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m not going to be cooperating for long,” she said ominously.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to try and pull a Rendrae and think you can fight these guys. I mean look around.”

  “I’ve already been talking with Rendrae. We’re putting together strategies. We hope we can count on you, but I understand if you want no part of it. I suspect you’ll be okay no matter what.”

  It was absolutely shocking to hear Garm talking like this. She was about the most sensible, level-headed person on the station, and if she was speaking these words, things must truly be bad.

  “I don’t know what to say, Garm.”

  Then I heard a voice above me.

  “Hank. Eat suck. Suckface!”

  I turned around and WHAM.

  There was familiar, salty blood, like a hobo’s wine in my mouth. I was plastered all over a guard bunker which I had destroyed like a cannonball. I heard soldiers shouting and saw people running about as my eyes began to focus.

  “What…idiot…gave him…a weapon?” I staggered.

  Wallow was surrounded by soldiers who were trying to calm and cajole the monster, with limited success. What was most striking, however, was that he was wearing some makeshift Navy uniform. All black, big boots, buttons—the works. He even had a truncheon of some kind, which is what he had punted me down the street with.

  I wondered if the Navy kept super-sized clothes on board their ships on the chance they might happen to run into a Therezian who was looking to enlist. Or maybe Rendrae was right and Wallow was part of some deep conspiracy all along.

  But then I decided it was best to pass out.

  CHAPTER 34

  I woke up in the back of an ambulance, but I told them to drop me off at my apartment. I wasn’t going to the hospital and have them play around with me again.

  I checked my teeth. I had recently gotten my falsies removed and it would be just like Wallow to knock them out again. But they seemed okay.

  Shuffling into my apartment, I longed for a drink and a nap. But there were two people inside waiting for me.

  One was a handsome, middle-aged man in a military uniform with an obscene number of commendations on it. He wore a crisp hat and, amazingly, had a sword on his belt. Not a fancy technological sword, just a regular old sword. Like he was expecting any minute to be attacked by time travelers from 50,000 years ago.

  The other man was shorter, older, less attractive, had fewer medals, and numerous medical implants on his face.

  “Hi,” I said, nonplussed.

  “Ah, you must be Hank,” the swordsman answered. “Forgive us, but your door was open. In fact, it doesn’t seem as if it can close.”

  He had a peculiar accent. Not one I was familiar with. He was cocky without being a jerk about it.

  “I’m sure this is regarding something,” I started, “but I just got my head cracked by a Therezian and I’d just like to take it easy if you don’t mind.”

  “Ah, yes, I heard about that. Ensign Wallow seems to have some history with you. Forgive me,” the man said, smiling.

  My curiosity got the better of me.

  “Did he always work for you guys?”

  “No, no. You just need to understand how their minds work.” The way he stated that made me think he was going to tell me more, but he didn’t.

  All this time the older man had been staring at me intently. He had a bitter little face, that one. As if he was swooshing vinegar around his mouth constantly.

  “I haven’t introduced myself. I’m not used to…,” he trailed off. “I am The Honorious Consular Prefecture Wardian Swife Jonathe.”

  I didn’t quite snort, but I sniffed. Where did they come up with these titles? I wasn’t even sure where his name started in all that mess.

  “Cool.” I offered my hand, which he shook in a powerful grasp.

  “This is Kaprine General Mush’tathina,” he said, introducing the older man, who did not seem anxious to shake my hand and I didn’t offer it. He didn’t have a sword, but he had a pistol in a holster.

  “But you don’t need to introduce yourself, we are all aware of your exploits for the Colmarian Confederation,” he said, smiling.

  I just couldn’t get over that sword. I mean, what was the purpose? There was almost no greater indication this man wasn’t a real combatant than carrying an ancient weapon. I wonder if it works as some kind of reverse status, where the higher the rank, the lower the technology. So the super-duper-high overlord of the Navy would carry a stick or a clump of dirt.

  “It says you’re a pipe refitter,” General Mush’tathina said with his ugly mouth. “What does that entail?”

  I scratched my ear.

  “Pipes. Fitting them together and stuff,” I said with no authority.

  “You fought two Dredel Led. How did you defeat them?” Wardian Jonathe asked. He was pleasant, curious, but I could tell he didn’t get fifty pounds of medals on his chest being a sap.

  “I…just shot them.”

  “With what? You’ll excuse me, but as Consular Exar of the Southern States and Wardian of the 3rd Navy, the safety of my citizens is of paramount co
ncern. I need to know what weapon to use if they should return.”

  I reached into my jacket and took out my shotgun.

  The General quickly took it from me. He moved far faster than his age would indicate.

  “It’s a shotgun,” he said dismissively to the Wardian.

  “Wow, you ARE a general,” I said.

  He didn’t hand it back.

  “So you’re saying that gun was used to kill the Dredel Led? The one lying in many pieces at citizen Delovoa’s residence?” The Wardian’s voice was still kind. He had a manner of talking that put you at ease even though every instinct told you not to be. Or maybe that was my brain still reeling from Wallow’s blow.

  “Things happened so fast…,” I trailed off.

  “The report is that you tracked the robot down over days,” he interrupted calmly.

  “Yeah, but after that it was fast.”

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” he asked, walking to the kitchen instead of the scraps that used to be my couch. He sat and I realized that right on the table in front of him was a cube of multicolored metal, just looking for a comet to bash. Was he goading me? I did my best not to panic.

  “And you’re a mutant, correct?”

  “Yeah. Like a lot of people.”

  “True, true. It’s our great gift. Do you happen to know what level you are?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get me to indict Garm and her false list. I wasn’t sure about anything.

  “I can’t remember how they label them. I’m like a four. Or ten. Or something.”

  “I suspect that helped you in fighting them?” he asked.

  “Suppose so.”

  He then looked to his General.

  “You know it’s a shame our mutations are all random. What we couldn’t do with more fellows like Hank, eh?”

  The General looked more evil if anything.

  “Of course, I heard tales,” the Wardian continued conversationally, “stories of mutations that are actually passed along genetic lines. Father-to-son-to-granddaughter. That sort of thing. Extremely rare. They call it ‘Bequested Variation.’ It’s not always beneficial, but I do recall a legend about one family long ago. A whole extended tribe fighting together on behalf of Colmarian freedom. The heroes of the Ontakian War so they say.”