Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (10 page)

“No, they say we rats. Say we should
die. Say our children should die. Take all our property.”

“That isn’t in my speech,” Peush said. “Though
it’s not a bad set of ideas.”

Three people were on the ground bleeding
before I had even realized a fight started.

Peush was whisked to the back of his
group and safety, but Hong fought right in the front. The Totki were good warriors,
but the Olmarr had those high-speed, electric chainsaws which were savagely effective.

“Hank, look out!” I heard MTB shout.

I turned, not especially concerned, as I
was unable to get very concerned in a fight. I saw a Totki running towards me
with…duct tape?

He jumped up and pressed it on my face
and it was so bizarre I was momentarily at a loss. I mean, I carried around
like 500 pounds of chains, did they think some adhesive ribbon was going to stop
me? Yeah, it was over my eyes, but it’s not like it was permanent. It didn’t
even hurt.

I reached up to remove it.

My fingers were far too thick and clumsy
to grasp the tape, let alone feel it. And I couldn’t hear any crinkling because
of the sounds of the battle. I tried rubbing at it, but I couldn’t generate
enough friction to burn away duct tape all that easily.

Hmm.

“Hey, can someone get this tape off me?”
I asked.

I was basically an obstacle in a gang
fight. I could hear the commotion, but had no idea how the sides were faring.

I couldn’t tell my Stair Boys to
apprehend the combatants as they were busy trying to kill each other.

“Everyone just calm down. We can work
this out,” I said feebly.

I heard my Stair Boys yelling and then
gunfire.

Great.

“Stop struggling,” Valia said. “I don’t
want you to turn my hands into jelly with your monster fingers.”

I stood there as she removed the tape
from my eyes.

When I was gifted with vision again, I
saw there were four dead, eight wounded, and none captured beyond those who
were too hurt to run away.

About half of those hurt were from my
Stair Boys shooting.

I did not feel this was a successful
patrol.

It was the next day and I was conducting
a small trial in my living room with Hong, Peush, MTB, Valia, and an
adjudicator named Gralion.

“I demand Street Trial,” Hong declared,
wanting a public trial on one of the court streets.

“No, your men are wounded and I don’t
have the desire for my guards to be sitting around at the hospital waiting for
a trial date. This gets solved now.”

“What are the charges?” Gralion asked.
He was an older man who had never made judge and was bitter about it.

“Assault. Endangering the telescopes.
Blocking the Waves. And attacking me.”

“No one ‘attack’ you. It was tape.”

“What?” Gralion asked.

“Duct tape, I believe,” Peush said.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I was still
attacked. And it wasn’t a gun, so it was illegal.”

Neither Hong nor Peush really wanted to
be in the same room with each other, but they wanted their men back more and I
wasn’t doing two trials.

“What do you sentence them to?”

“I have eight wounded. Five from you,”
indicating Hong, “and three from you,” to Peush. “Half go to prison.”

“Prison?” Hong screamed. “That too much.
Stair Boys do shooting, not us. It them that cause trouble,” he said, pointing
to Peush.

“How can one-and-a-half of my men go to
prison?” Peush asked, smirking.

“Round up. Two,” I said.

“That’s very excessive, Supreme
Kommilaire,” Gralion said. “I think a fine is more in order.”

“Yes!” Hong said.

“I’m changing my sentence to death. All
of them.”

“You can’t do that,” Gralion argued.
“That’s…double-jeopardy. Or mistrial.”

He had apparently not bought the book of
legal terms.

“Says who? Besides, you two were there
also. I could arrest both of you, so don’t get cocky,” I said.

But I couldn’t arrest them. That was an
idle threat and they knew it. I was sitting here with them, the next day,
essentially negotiating for the release of their men. If I arrested Hong or
Peush, how many hundreds or thousands would march down here to set them free?

“How do you decide which ones go to
prison?” Peush asked.

I chose to back off a bit and give them
some room.

“You pick the ones who go free. But I
need two from you and three from you,” I answered.

“He should have three,” Hong said.

“How about one and two between them?”
Gralion asked.

“Two and two,” I countered.

“Deal,” Gralion said.

The bosses weren’t happy of course, but
by making the numbers even, they at least couldn’t say I treated either side
preferentially. This was the outcome I had been planning all along.

“Fine, tell me the names of those you
want freed. A couple guys are really hurt, so you might want to just let them
go to prison—or maybe you want to set them free. Up to you.”

“May we see them?” Peush asked.

“No.”

Not sure why I said that. I just didn’t
want to deal with it, I guess. I wanted to get them shifted to prison so we
could move on.

Peush gave me the names of ones who were
apparently higher in the Olmarr Republic hierarchy. Hong gave me names of ones
who had important familial ties.

I radioed for those to be released and
the others to be prepped for transfer. Everyone was pissed off, but they should
have thought of that before they got into a street fight in front of the
Supreme Kommilaire.

“Boss, your Stair Boys suck,” Valia
said, when we were alone later.

“Shut up, new guy,” MTB responded.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, as soon as you were blinded, they
spent about thirty seconds trying to figure out how to break up the fight and
then they just pulled their guns and shot at everyone. I’m surprised more
people weren’t hurt.”

“It didn’t happen like that at all,” MTB
countered.

“Then what did happen?” I asked, “Because
I see a lot of gunshot wounds and no injured Stair Boys.”

“Would it have been better if your own
people were hurt?” he asked, mock surprised.

“Just give me your view.”

“Well…” and I could see Valia’s account
wasn’t too far off based on his expression. “Maybe they did panic a bit. It’s
not exactly easy to take a chainsaw from a guy trying to kill another guy who
is wielding a spear.”

“Yeah,” I conceded. “You think training
would help? I don’t think we’ve ever had any. Not for real.”

He shrugged.

“How do you train for Belvaille, Boss?
You learn by doing, as I see it.”

I decided to personally transfer the
prisoners to their final home.

RW33. The Royal Wing. It was a huge
freighter sitting a short distance from Belvaille.

Valia was with me in the shuttle, as I
thought it wouldn’t be bad for her to see the process.

Used to be I hated flying. I would throw
up every single time I entered zero gravity. Now, I loved it. I was weightless!
I could move around and lift my arms with little effort.

It was only about a fifteen minute trip
total, but it was fun. I felt like a kid again. Though I still had my same
mass, so I had to be careful not to go accelerating myself too much or I could
cause some damage, maybe even wreck our ship.

The prisoners, two from each gang, were
fairly injured and covered in bandages or lying down. I didn’t even have them restrained.
They seemed resigned to their fates, especially knowing that their leaders had
specifically chosen not to save them. Being picked last for kickball was one
thing, but this was harsh.

We docked with the freighter.

Our ship was merely connected to the
side and we were still weightless. This is how we delivered supplies as well.

We opened a door and there were a series
of sealed hatches ahead. They couldn’t open any of those until we had
disembarked.

The prisoners were helped out and into
the first compartment. I went with them.

“Where are you going?” Valia asked.

“Sir,” I reminded her.

“You’re going onto the prison ship?” She
was stunned.

“Yeah, I need to talk to some people.
I’ll be fine.”

“Are there any Kommilaire on there?
Sir.”

“Nope. Just prisoners.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. Five thousand? Eight
thousand? I’ll be back in a bit.”

I closed the doors between us and waited
for the locks. I then opened the next hatch and moved the prisoners over.
Gravity increased gradually at every seal until it matched that of Belvaille.

I opened the last door.

Four prisoners were waiting. They were
surprised to see me.

“New citizens,” I told them.

They got stretchers and helped the new
men to the medical bay, which was also run by prisoners.

I looked around. The Royal Wing was an
enormous metal cocoon. It was cleaner than Belvaille because they couldn’t
afford to have trash or waste. Everything was put to use. Their housing was
little more than bare beams or rods that demarcated spaces. They built up
towards the ceiling which was maybe a hundred feet above. The apartments that
stretched up that high only had floors and maybe a blanket or two for privacy.

They were a busy lot, constantly
repairing and rebuilding their city.

The town was crowded with dirty men—most
of them were men—and they wore pretty much the clothes they had come in with.
So you could see styles that stretched across the decades just by taking a
stroll.

People stopped what they were doing and
stared at me for a moment, but only a moment. They were occupied with
surviving. I put most of these people here and they didn’t have time for me.

This place knocked me out. It was filled
with the worst offenders from Belvaille but run so efficiently.

And the solution had been simple: take
away everything so they had nothing to fight over. Put them in a decaying
bathtub surrounded by the void of space. Then if anyone ever acted up, the mob
killed them and used their body parts as building materials.

The Royal Wing had an exceedingly low
crime rate from what I understood.

And I was here to meet its mayor.

I finally found him. He was using a
makeshift saw to cut a pipe.

“Hank!” He exclaimed. “When did you get
here?”

“Just now. Dropped off some new
citizens.”

Uulath was an emaciated, dark-skinned
man with dreadlocked brown hair. He looked slightly less dirty than his
compatriots, but only slightly. He had no shirt and every muscle on his gaunt upper
torso was defined. His pants were cut off at the knee from wear and he had no shoes.
You would guess he was an energetic middle-aged man, but prison life adds
years.

No one died of natural causes in this
place, because no one was living naturally.

“Are the ones you brought good workers
you think?” Uulath asked.

“They’re beat up. Went to the medical
bay I assume.”

He sighed.

“You’re looking really huge, Hank. How
do you get so big?”

“Mutation. You’re looking small.”

“Starvation. What else you want?” he
asked, putting down the saw.

“Can we talk?” and I was about to say,
“privately,” but I realized it didn’t matter who heard. They had no radios
here. No one talked to them. I could shout out my darkest secrets and it would
be as if I hadn’t told anyone.

“Go ahead,” he said.

A strange thing happened to inmates on
the Royal Wing. Everyone who came here died here, eventually. No one said they would
take care of you on the inside because no one had access to the inside except
the Kommilaire. No one said they would fight to get you released early, because
no one was ever released.

Whatever you were before you came here, Olmarr
Republican, Totki, Order of Transcendence, banker, mother, father, whatever,
you were now a prisoner of the Royal Wing. Everything else about you was gone.

Uulath got information on what was
happening on Belvaille from new prisoners. Information that they wouldn’t tell
anyone if they weren’t otherwise doomed. If people didn’t want to talk out of
some residual loyalty to their old lives, well, they eventually came around.

A prison colony run by prisoners with
punishments meted out by prisoners was not a place to be anti-social.