Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (33 page)

“That just proves my theory that the
more people you gather together, the dumber everyone gets. That was what
happened to the Colmarian Confederation. They had like ninety percent of the galaxy
under one government and the intelligence of a mollusk.”

“Great speech, but back to my question.
Could they destroy the Portals?”

“No, Portals are extremely hardy. They
survive in deep space for thousands of years, subjected to micro-particles and
meteors and extreme temperatures and radiation, not to mention giant ships occasionally
bumping into them.”

“I seem to recall Naked Guy shutting
down some of Ginland’s Portals,” I said.

“That was a billion year old guy who
started a galactic civil war attacking the cheapest Portals in the most remote
state in the empire. And he still only temporarily disabled them. Anyone else would
have to go inside the superstructure to truly damage any of these Portals. And
then my robots would kill them.”

“Your what?” I asked, shocked.

“Nothing.”

“You have robots? After all we went
through fighting them. You created robots?”

I couldn’t believe Delovoa.

“How do you think I fix the Portals?”

I didn’t answer, knowing he would make
me feel stupid.

“Come on, stupid, take a guess. Have you
ever seen me put on a space helmet? Go out and physically fix one of the
Portals?” He flapped his arms as if he were gliding through the cosmos. “My
robots repair them. But they’ll also kill anyone who steps inside since no one
is supposed to be there. I was worried about people stealing parts. You can’t
exactly buy Portal equipment anymore.”

“So you built killer robots?”

“They’re only killer if you invade a
Portal. And it sounds like it was a good thing I created them. Anyone going
inside would run into my ZR4, ZR5, and ZR7 series models.”

“Are those related to ZR3, the robot
that practically destroyed this station?”

“Of course not,” Delovoa said, his three
eyes all looking in different directions.

I knew I shouldn’t ask but:

“What about ZR6?”

“You don’t want to know.”

I changed the subject, because he was
probably right.

“Parts are falling off the latticework,”
I said.

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“And one of the trains exploded.”

He nodded, lips pursed.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well, what? Do you need me to give you
an Obvious Award? Do you think I have a spare train sitting in my kitchen next
to my anti-battlecruiser laser? Even if I did have a train somewhere, we’d
never get it back on the tracks. None of those machines exist. Maybe one does
somewhere in the galaxy, but you’ll never find it, and you’ll certainly never
ship it here.”

“You’re just a bucket of positive
energy. You should run for Governor.”

“No way, you’ll have me assassinated.”

“Ho ho ho. Did you make a new voting
machine yet?”

“You’re worried about the election? How
many people are going to vote during an insurrection?”

“So what have you been doing? Sitting in
here eating and drinking as the city literally falls apart?” I asked,
exasperated.

“I have a way to find 19-10,” he said casually.

“You already have one. That scanner
thing. I gave it to MTB.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t work. I was just
tired of listening to you.”

I stood up, about to throttle this
three-eyed goon.

“Calm down,” he said.

“So what is this device? A magic whistle?”
I asked.

“No, it’s so simple I’m not sure why I
didn’t think of it before. Except that it was too simple. We have the greatest
detectors in the known galaxy: the telescopes.”

I wasn’t ready for that.

“Can they even be turned to face us?”

“Sure. They can scan and transmit in 360
degrees. They just weren’t designed to look at something this nearby. I want to
make sure I don’t irradiate everyone.”

“Whoa. Whoa. Is this going to kill us
all?”

“Oh, you’ll be fine. You got dragged
from a train and didn’t even get a scratch.”

“Not just me. The city.”

“It would be one way to quell the rioting…”

“Don’t joke. You can’t mess this up. No
Delovoa half-assed attempts.”

“No need to be rude,” he pouted.

“Hey,” I said, thinking. “Could the
telescopes be used to shoot space ships?”

“No. If they were close enough and the
ships had thin enough hulls, I could maybe make the people onboard sterile. But
that’s not much use unless you’re worried about generations of attackers.”

Ah, well.

“So
think
about doing the
telescope thing. But be sure you have it perfect. And don’t do it without my
consent,” I said.

“Oh, I’m not leaving here to go to the
telescopes without a thousand Kommilaire guarding me. Not with a riot going
on.”

“Well, don’t hold your farts waiting on
a thousand Stair Boys. The most we’ve ever recruited is about four hundred.”

“And you complain that
I
just sit
around doing nothing?”

I couldn’t stop the Totki from sticking
spears in the Order or the Olmarr from chainsawing the Totki.

But I could talk to the gangs. I
understood gangs. They were a rational bunch of people. Smelly, but rational.

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever
heard,” I said.

“What’s wrong with it? You used to be
just a hired thug in your day and you’ve become Supreme Kommilaire,” Lisedt
said. “I’m now Queen Lisedt, Mistress of Belvaille.”

At least gangs came up with good titles.
Lisedt was the woman I had saved from her two partners not long ago. The winds
had shifted substantially and she found herself with a gang that was on the
winning side. They were winning enough that she felt a coronation was
appropriate.

“No one is going to accept that. No one
has ever ‘ruled’ Belvaille.”

“What about Garm?” she challenged.

“Except her. Garm still rules Belvaille.
But she’s not a gang. She owns the dump.”

“Says who? I don’t see her.” Lisedt
crossed her arms.

We were in one of Lisedt’s clubs. She
had about thirty guys with weapons protecting her. Some were bandaged and
beaten from the ongoing fights.

“I can’t see…protons, but that doesn’t
mean they aren’t there,” I said, frustrated.

“What’s a protons?”

“What would a queen even do?” I said,
trying to tackle this from another angle.

“Rule Belvaille,” she said haughtily.

“What’s that mean, though? What do you
do about crime and the feral kids and electricity and shipping and the
telescopes and trials?”

“Fix them,” she said.

I asked the Kommilaire for an Inventory.

It’s when they go out and get the names
and businesses of all the gangs operating and their relationships and
locations. To the best of their abilities.

Long ago I knew all the gang bosses and
most of the criminals in the entire city. But now there were far too many.
There could be ten gangs operating in one block easily.

While it was a pretty chaotic time to
get an Inventory, I wanted to see if I could get in front of some of the gangs
and maybe slow things down or speed them up. At least make it less volatile.

I had to pay Rendrae a significant
amount of money to fill in the details since he had so many contacts. He knew
what was going on more than anyone. Everyone knew Rendrae and knew he was
unbiased.

Maybe his image had been slightly
tarnished with his news reports on Judge Naeb and such, but he was still the least
stinky turd in the outhouse.

“Let me show you how I see things,”
Dimi-Vim said.

He was the furry man who had been one of
Lisedt’s partners. Now he was wearing fancy clothes and had trimmed all his
hair and looked quite respectable.

Rendrae notified me that Dimi-Vim had
something I might want to check out.

We were on the ground floor of one of
his clubs. The club was still going on because he didn’t want to lose revenue,
but it meant we had to shout. And my hearing wasn’t as good as it used to be.

“What?” I asked, for the tenth time.

“Look!”

Dimi-Vim unfurled a gigantic map on four
tables that had been pushed together. It showed his section of the city, all
color-coded with markers and pins and symbols.

“Wow,” I said. “That’s cool. Where did
you get this?”

“I made it,” he said proudly.

This would be a great starting point for
our Inventory. I don’t know why I never thought of using maps before. We just
used paper and talked about it. Sometimes we had rough sketches, but Dimi-Vim had
the whole topology of the city here.

“Hey, make me a copy of this.”

“No,” he said, trying to cover the
enormous map with two hands. “This is my competitive advantage.”

“I’m not in business against you,” I
said.

“You are, kind of. I mean you aren’t in
business
with
us.”

“It’s not like you can only be one or
the other. This will help out my team.”

“Why would I want to help you guys?
You’re police.”

“Please, what?” I asked.

“Po-lice!” He yelled over the music.

“It’s not like I’m arresting you. I’m
here to try and help you.”

“Then tell me what the other gangs are
doing.”

I shrugged.

“Lisedt wants to be a queen,” I said.

“She’s crazy, no one cares about her.”

“I’m just trying to negotiate what you
all want. Besides, I could just take that map.”

“Hank, you came here under a white
banner,” one of his men said.

“What?” I didn’t hear him.

“White banner. Banner. White. You can’t
take it,” all his men yelled.

“Right. I wouldn’t take it. But I’m
saying I could.”

“Yeah, but we know you won’t. So it’s
not a threat,” Dimi-Vim said.

“No, I’m not threatening you. I’m…” What
was
I saying? All this yelling was confusing me. I think I had a
residual concussion from my train trip as well. “Let me just have a copy of the
map. I won’t give it to anyone else.”

“A hundred thousand thumbs,” he said.

“Are you kidding? Is that like a thumb
per proton?”

“What’s a proton?”

“It’s a…I don’t know. Something Delovoa
told me once.”

“Delovoa?” he asked, looking around
anxiously.

“You Kommilaire don’t have maps?” one of
his men asked.

“We have maps, just not gang maps. Like
maps of sewers and the latticework and trains and power grid. But I want to
make a map of the whole city for gangs.”

“How about, I give you this, if you give
me your whole map when you’re done?” Dimi-Vim said.

“How is that a fair trade? You only have
maybe three percent of the map filled and it’s just you.”

“So?” he puffed.

I was about to explain the basics of
comparable trading when I thought about it: maybe it was a good idea if all the
gangs had the map. If they knew where the boundaries were. If those boundaries
were formalized. I wouldn’t have to show them all the details, just
territories. We had never had that on Belvaille. It had just been via
understanding—that often became misunderstood.

They were blabbering at me some more,
but I was suddenly thinking about this grand scheme. I could give gang licenses
per block. I could sanction gang wars and buyouts. If I had a map I could do
all this. It would be like the Boards, except bloodier.

“Hey, give me that,” I said.

“What? No. White banner. White banner,”
he argued.

“I got an idea. It will help you out, I
swear. I’ll give you the full copy when I’m done, like you said.”

“How do I know you’re telling the
truth?”

“Why would I lie?” I asked.

“No one knows why you do anything,
Hank,” he sulked.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought to make a
consolidated map.

No one wanted to tell me what they were
doing until I told them what I was doing. And even then they didn’t want to
tell me.

Then there were people who simply didn’t
fit into normal boundaries.

Such as the guys who had been bribing Judge
Naeb: Wiessstauch and his compatriots. They didn’t have any territory per se.
They sold political influence.