Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years (3 page)

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 14
^th
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 14
^th
.”

“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 had 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.

I walked cautiously over to Samaleon’s still
form on the ground.

“What the hell was that?” I heard Bon-Peeb ask.

“Your boss is dead,” I stated, after examining
the body.

Bon-Peeb was quiet for some moments. I assume
out of respect. But then he asked:

“Are you guys hiring?”

Krample was an entrepreneur who was truly ahead
of his time.

About thirty years ahead of his time, which
meant he was a really bad entrepreneur.

He owned two buildings, the Belvaille
Gentleman’s Club and Belvaille Athletic Club.