Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (28 page)

“Hank’s Butt,” she cried, blinking. “Of
course you care! You’re dragging yourself around every single day, fussing
about every little problem, about to keel over any minute.”

I gave her a look.

“What?” she asked. “You don’t think I
can tell? Maybe you have everyone else fooled, but you’re unbelievably sick. I
have no idea how you’re still alive.”

“Thanks,” I grumbled.

“I take it back. I know how you’re still
alive: it’s you trying to help this city in spite of itself. If you go off to
your mountain, I bet you’ll die the next day with nothing to keep you going.”

“Maybe,” I said, pondering that. “So
then what keeps you going?”

“I’m young, I don’t need anything to
keep me going. But I know I don’t want to waste all my tears on this city. It
won’t notice when I’m gone.”

“Oh, you never know. You might be
Supreme Kommilaire one day and give this same speech to another kid.”

“Seems like I’m already the one giving
the speech, old man.”

I got a confusing note from Hobardi. It
said he was withdrawing from the race.

That was it, just one sentence.

I had already taken his entrance fee and
I wasn’t going to refund it. But more importantly, I wasn’t going to cancel his
candidacy based on a note. It could be, and likely was, a forgery.

The Poop Wars were still going strong
and getting worse. This was just the kind of thing I expected next, the
candidates making fake claims on behalf of one another. I was going to have to
put my foot down about this sooner or later.

I wanted to talk to Hobardi. I had to
confirm the withdrawal note was a fake and ask him about the clone Two Clem. I needed
to know if Hobardi had been fooled or had known all along.

There was a holiday going on today in
Belvaille. With so many cultures and populations converging on the station in
the past decades, it seemed the number of holidays we had was about three a
day.

Mother Madchay’s March was larger than
most holidays. And I think it was originally created to commemorate some lady
who had magically saved a village from…I don’t know, some terrible thing.

Now, to the best of my understanding,
the celebrants were required to get as drunk as possible and have sex with as
many people as possible and to get in huge, drunken fights if they couldn’t
find anyone to have sex with. Mother Madchay had become a belligerent,
alcoholic slut.

Most of my Stair Boys were covering
that. More people died and were injured every year during the celebration than
were probably saved in the original incident, which made it a rather inefficient
and ironic miracle.

I had Valia with me, because she had
been helpful talking with Hobardi before, and five other Kommilaire, just in
case we ran into some errant Marchers trying to celebrate each other to death.

We indeed ran into several groups of
people alternately vomiting, fighting, and making out.

Drunks were hard to deal with. And if
they’re drunk enough to be dry-humping electrical junction boxes in the middle
of the street, you knew they were well beyond listening to any lecture on
propriety you might give them.

We had a good method for dealing with
drunks provided there were few enough of them. We just blasted them with cold
fire extinguishers for about twenty seconds.

At first they would laugh. Then they
would choke. Then they would feel their skin freezing. Your body is good at
getting you undrunk really quick. Or at the least making you put your clothes
back on and stop licking buildings.

A few more interruptions and we were in the
Sublime Order of Transcendence’s part of town and no one was having any fun.
Maybe Hobardi wouldn’t be such a bad Governor after all. At least he kept
things sedate. But I would look absurd wearing a toga and headdress.

The sexy secretary told me Hobardi
wasn’t seeing anyone. She took my inquiry as a request. I had not said it as
such, however, and ignored her, walking past.

She jumped up, pulled her miniskirt down
with both hands, and scooted over to try and stop me from proceeding further.

“The Grandmaster is not taking
visitors,” she said firmly.

Valia punched her in the nose, sending
the woman sprawling across the floor.

She saw my look and shrugged.

“She annoyed me.”

We wound through the compound looking
for Hobardi.

“Hank,” Valia said.

I turned and saw the Order’s mutant. The
tall, thin man wearing dark glasses and smelling of acid.

“You are trespassing,” he said in a dead
voice.

“I need to talk to Hobardi. He sent me a
message,” I said.

“The Grandmaster is occupied with his
meditations,” the mutant answered.

“Is that a code for something? If he’s
got diarrhea, I’m not going to embarrass him, it happens to us all. I just need
to ask him a few questions.”

The mutant put his fists on the sides of
his temples and pushed inward.

“What?” I asked.

I looked at my Kommilaire. They didn’t
know what he was doing either.

He then grabbed his own neck with both
hands and squeezed.

“What’s he doing?” Valia asked.

“Are you trying to tell me something? Is
Hobardi sick?” I asked.

“Maybe
he’s
sick?” one of my
Stair Boys said.

The mutant stopped, pursed his lips, and
then dug his fingers into his sides, under his ribs.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“Maybe he can’t talk,” Valia whispered.
“Are you saying ‘sides’?” she asked the mutant.

“Skin?” a Stair Boy said.

“Suicide?” another guessed.

The mutant put his thumbs into his mouth
and seemed to be biting them.

“Uh, teeth. Tongue,” I blurted.

“Thumbs. Like money? Do you want us to
pay you?” Valia tried.

The mutant stopped, looking annoyed. He
then put his right hand to his side, made like he was lifting something and
then held his finger and thumb out in an obvious display:

“Gun! Pistol,” I said.

I turned around to my Kommilaire to see
if they agreed.

They all had their pistols drawn with
blank expressions.

Hmm.

The mutant held his hand forward and
flexed his index finger.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

All my Stair Boys shot me!

“You know,” I said to the mutant, “I’m
bulletproof, right? Those are just guns.”

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

“I mean, it’s annoying and all. But what
do you hope to accomplish? Though it’s a cool mutation you have. What is it? Some
kind of mind…mind-thing?”

Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!

“Right,” I sighed.

I drew one of my rifles and cocked it.

The mutant made a jerky series of
motions with his fingers and I was suddenly being hit and kicked and grappled
by my Kommilaire. All of whom weighed a tiny fraction of me.

They were disturbing my hair and my
clothes a bit, but that was it.

Valia had her legs on my chest and was
hanging off my gun, trying to wrench it away. She’d have an easier time trying
to tow Belvaille with a space-donkey—if there was such a thing as
space-donkeys.

“I don’t want to shoot you, guy. Not
many of us mutants left. But you’ve kind of mind controlled my Kommilaire and
you’re wearing sunglasses inside, which is a pet peeve of mine.”

He made the finger-pistol movement
again.

“We already did this,” I sighed.

The Kommilaire all got off me, picked up
their pistols and put them to their own heads!

“Drop your gun,” he told me.

I dropped it.

“Look, I really just want to talk to
Hobardi. He’s not under arrest or anything. Take it easy.”

“And I said he’s not seeing anyone. Now
leave!”

I began walking backwards the way we
came when I saw something strange in Valia, who was to my left.

Her skin began to ripple and shift, like
it was a bed sheet and air was being blown under it. The features on her face
began to droop like they were about to fall off her skeleton. This mutant was
melting her!

The mutant had moved closer now that he
thought he had the upper hand. I quickly resolved to grab him. I couldn’t let my
people die.

I stretched out my arm and leaned
forward. I was right on target to put my hand on his chest and pin him down,
which would certainly crush him.

Closer.

Closer.

And then he apparently saw what I was
doing and hopped away, which put him well beyond my reach.

Now I was just falling. Or waiting to
fall. It seemed like it was taking a long while.

When I finally touched ground, I smashed
through
the thin floor and I was falling again, head-first this time.
Who replaces the steel floors on Belvaille?

I briefly saw another lit room I
descended through and hit another floor.

Which I also ripped through, continuing
my fall.

I came to a stop against the stout
basement, landing on my head and then flopping over onto my back.

It was raining Kommilaire.

They came spilling through the destroyed
floors above, flailing and cartwheeling and ultimately landing pretty
ungracefully, often on me.

But they didn’t seem to be mind controlled
any longer.

The mutant was here too. I tried to
extricate myself from my Stair Boys without injuring them further. Some were
moaning and holding sprained or broken bones which had been caused from their
fall.

As I gently scooped my employees to the
side, I pulled myself closer to the mutant, who was himself recovering from his
drop.

If I could get to him before he came
around…

He saw me and his eyes went wide—he had
lost his sunglasses. He made the finger-motion again.

Most of my Kommilaire didn’t have their
pistols, but a few did. And they dutifully put their guns to their own heads.

“What’s your name? We can talk this
through,” I said.

“Blam!”

I looked back, panicked, expecting to
see a dead Kommilaire. Instead I saw Valia standing, holding her smoking gun.

The mutant was dead, shot in the chest.

“You can’t control a red head,” Valia
said.

My Kommilaire were in a bad way after
fighting Hobardi’s mutant.

“Is everyone alright?” I asked dumbly.

Grumbles and complaints were the answer.

“I’m fine,” a perky Valia said.

Her face and skin were back to normal.

“You’re not melted?” I asked, as if she
might not be sure.

“Melted?”

“The mutant was like, smearing your face
around.”

She seemed skeptical.

“I don’t think so, Boss. He might have
been inside your brain.”

I crawled over to the stairwell so I
could use it to try and stand up. I passed the dead man on the way.

“Guess that’s one less mutant in the galaxy,”
I said.

“You sound sad, like I should have let
him kill us.”

“Well, the Colmarian Confederation
created mutants and the Confederation is gone. Every one that dies is the last
of a breed. Just think how helpful he would have been as a Kommilaire.”

“He didn’t seem too helpful.”

“He didn’t bother me. Not exactly. I
could have got him on our side I think.”

As I tried to climb up the stairs with
my arms I heard a sound.

Crack!

I twisted around and saw Valia behind
me.

“What was that?” I asked her.

“What was what?”

“That sound.”

“Did you feel anything?” she asked.

“No, why?”

She held out her pistol.

“Because I just hit you on the back of
the head as hard as I could.”

“Why would you do that? Jerk.”

“I wanted to see. He probably couldn’t
mind control you because you got a cranium that’s a foot thick.”

“It’s not a foot thick, it’s just dense.
And don’t hit me, you’re a subordinate.”

“You didn’t even feel it!”

“So? It’s disrespectful,” I said. “Hey,
all of you guys. Come over here and help me stand up.”

They were struggling unsuccessfully to
raise me.