Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years (2 page)

With a whole city at their disposal, the
criminals kicked into overdrive. They couldn’t rely on the empire for money
anymore so they started making their own. Smuggling, drugs, counterfeiting,
black market, anything you could possibly imagine.

And with no real police here, more and more
fugitives began arriving for the simple convenience of hiding from the
authorities. You had to be a truly bad person for them to come all the way out
to Belvaille to apprehend you.

Organa Dultz almost never spoke to me except to
relay orders. He used to feel like my mentor, now he never taught me anything.
 He put me on the night shift and he worked days. Everyone else was fired.

I worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, all
manual labor.

Those were tough times for me and I became
addicted to a drug: coffee. I drank a
lot
of coffee. I bet I was
personally responsible for half the sewage output of Belvaille, which kept me
in a job.

It was a strange, vicious circle.

When you spend so much of your time in one
place, that place becomes your home. And when that home was a sewer with a low
ceiling, you become a pretty odd fellow.

I kept my eyes out for other work, but my
resume was limited to pushing around carts full of sewage equipment. I had no
skills at all.

This was my first time living away from home
and I had ended up here and ended up doing this. I might have gone back if I
wasn’t so damn embarrassed—and if I wasn’t hiding out in my own right.

The whole glitzy crime world that was springing
up on Belvaille was a wild and exciting arena, but it didn’t impress me much.
In a way I felt like a doctor: no matter what jewelry you had on or what sports
coat or what elegant gown, I knew all the gross stuff that was inside you.

But hell, I was a troglodyte who lived in the sewers.
It’s not like I could throw stones.

I worked. I ate. I drank coffee. I went back to
my apartment and slept.

And I showered an awful lot.

I was sleeping when my tele rang.

It was Organa Dultz.

“Hello?” I answered blearily.

“Hank,” you awake?

“Uh…”

“Sorry to bother you. I’m in big trouble.”

Adrenaline kicked in. I assumed he was stuck in
the sewers or had been hurt.

“What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I’m heading to the sewers. I’m going to hide
in Junction C,” he explained.

“Hide? What? Why?”

“I’m…I owe a lot of money.”

“Owe? To who?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just meet me there. Okay?”

“All right, I’ll be there.”

“Junction C.”

“Junction C,” I repeated.

I got up and started getting dressed. As I was
on the train, I thought about this.

What was I going to do? More importantly, what
did he expect me to do? I had like two hundred credits in the bank.

At the main sewer office I suited up in my
usual rubber waders and gloves.

I bent over and began the walk to Junction C.

As I was going, I was feeling worse and worse
about this. Organa Dultz hadn’t spoken to me in a familiar way in months. As
soon as he was in trouble he was my pal? What if this goes bad for me?

There were a lot of shady people on Belvaille
now. I didn’t want to piss off the wrong folks.

My walking became slower as I reached Junction
C. Not because of any danger, but because I was considering turning back.

What did I owe Organa Dultz?

He was my boss. I did my work for him and that
was that. If I was in trouble would he help me? I don’t know. But he did give
me a job, with no credentials whatsoever. And he did keep me on when layoffs
came.

Then I heard Organa Dultz scream!

I ran forward as fast as I could while still
keeping my head down.

Junction C housed one of the freezing units.
The sewage was frozen here and then transferred to the tubes for expulsion into
space. The area was about thirty feet wide, fifty feet long, and had a ceiling
ten feet above.

Organa Dultz was up to his thighs in a block of
waste that was being frozen!

I saw Tamshius watching casually from a safe
distance.

I ran over and got behind Organa Dultz. He was
below me in a metal tub filled with a mostly solid, frozen block. His lips were
blue and his face pale. His eyes couldn’t see or if they could, he didn’t show
any signs of recognition.

I bent down and grabbed him under the arms to
try and lift him out before he was frozen completely.

It took several minutes to freeze each tub as
they were massive. He had probably been dropped in once the freezing began which
was why he was only up to his thighs instead of sinking all the way over his
head.

“Let him be, skark,” Tamshius sneered the
insult.

I ignored him and pulled Organa Dultz. It was
like he was in quicksand. I feared his legs would completely separate from his
body if I pulled too hard.

Organa Dultz reached back with an arm and
grabbed hold around my neck, proving he was still alive and wanted to remain
that way.

I managed to drag him out and lay him on the
ground next to the tub. I didn’t have anything to put on him and I was sure if
I used the emergency showers that would be even worse.

“Your funeral, kid,” I heard from behind me.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” I said, after being shot.

I looked at Tamshius holding his pistol. His
eyes were huge.

“Why did you say ‘Ow’?” He asked.

“Because it hurt!”

“Yeah, but why aren’t you dead?”

“Because I’m bulletproof.”

Blam!

“Ow!”

I stood up and took a step toward Tamshius,
ready to shove that gun down his throat.

He dropped it immediately and put his hands up.

“Sorry! How are you bulletproof?”

“I just am.”

I picked up Organa Dultz and put him on my
back. I needed to get him to a hospital, fast. I headed back the way I came.

“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.”

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.