Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (37 page)

Rendrae was momentarily at a loss for
words.

“That’s…that’s…quite, uh, how do you
intend to carry out this action? My understanding is there are only several
hundred Kommilaire at your command. My sources have indicated there are many thousands
of hooligans about the city.”

“I’ve made my statement. No one can
declare ignorance,” I said.

“Of course. Again, we wish to thank you
for stopping by, and if there is anything else you ever want to discuss, I’d be
more than happy to assist you in relaying your message.”

The expectant, desperate eyes of the
Royal Wing stared at me.

“Did you read our Constitution?” Uulath asked.
“What did you think of it?”

“Nah, I didn’t read it. It was too
long,” I said.

The crowd of about a hundred people
sagged almost to oblivion. They knew it! I was just getting their hopes up only
to dash them like the cruel bastard I was. They would die on the Royal Wing
with no chance of ever leaving.

No one spoke, they were probably afraid
I’d only use it as an excuse to make their lives even more terrible.

“I got another idea,” I said. “I’m going
to give you all weapons and have you become my Belvaille Militia. I need to
fight the various groups on the station and I expect a lot of killing.”

Uulath blinked at me, scratching his
chin. It was almost like saying I was giving them leave to try and swim back to
Belvaille.

“Uh, how does that work, exactly? Your
Eminence,” Uulath quickly added.

“That’s it. We’ll give you guns and
knives and clubs and whatever else we have lying around. I’ll lead you
personally. We walk around, and if we see some Order hanging out causing
trouble, we kill them.”

All the prisoners were looking at each
other. Was this some trick?

“We’re going back to Belvaille?” one
person asked.

“Yeah, but I had Delovoa design some
security belts,” I said, holding up a synth belt for them to see. “If you try
and take it off or go too far away from me, it explodes.”

Uulath was tapping his fingers trying to
understand.

“Sir, not to be disrespectful, but we’ll
get massacred. Those are trained fighters in many cases. We haven’t even had a
proper meal in years—not that we’re complaining about the food!”

“Yeah. I suspect a number of you will
die,” I nodded.

“Forgive me,” a prisoner began meekly, “but
why would we want to do this? As difficult as the Royal Wing is, we aren’t
getting torn apart by chainsaws.”

“Oh, I forgot to say. For those of you
who survive and assist in putting down the dissidents, you will receive a full
pardon. We’ll worry about that Constitution stuff some other time. I need an
army. I’m not going to force anyone to participate. If you want to stay here,
stay here. What better way to prove you’re ready to re-enter Belvaille society
than by fighting for your city?”

“Can you do that?” Uulath asked.

“Do what?”

“Pardon all of us at once.”

“Sure, why not?” I said. “I’m rich.”

I came to the entrance of the Belvaille
Athletic Gentleman’s Club, saw the sign, and grumbled as usual.

Wait a minute.

“Dample,” I said to the coat check. He
almost fainted because I was addressing him directly.

“Yes, sir. Uh, Mr. Secretary. Supreme
Kommilaire,” he bumbled.

“I’m thinking, the sign outside. It’s
kind of lame. I think this should just be the Gentleman’s Club,” I said. “Send
me up some sandwiches.”

I was far down the hall when I heard his
distant voice answer.

“Yes, sir!”

My booth in the club had been
refurbished. It was still the same mass of metal, but it had been polished to a
shine and there was a velvet rope around it.

I plopped down and the Dredel Led server
came by immediately with a bucket of beer and two trays of sandwiches.

“On the house of course,” it buzzed, and
then zipped away.

The club fairly stopped as I sat there
eating. I could tell all the gang bosses wanted to come over and talk to me,
but weren’t so bold as to do it. So they were trying to discreetly get in my
field of view hoping I would invite them over.

After about fifteen minutes everyone was
congregated on one side of the club, facing me. They talked in loud voices and
gestured broadly. It was slightly ridiculous.

“Hank,” Jorn-dole said, sitting down
with a pleasant smile.

I hadn’t seen the handsome blond in
months. It was amusing that he was the bravest one out of all these thugs. He
probably didn’t know he was supposed to be impressed with my new wealth.

“How are you?” I asked him, working on
the second tray of food.

“I’m great. Great. The city seems quite different.”

“Does it?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “I won’t say it’s
a lot safer, but it is some. How do you feel?” he asked.

“Feel? What do you mean?”

“Are you well?” He seemed concerned.

“I got pulled by a train a while ago. I
recommend not doing that.”

“Did you go to the hospital?”

“No, he came to me. But there’s not a
lot they can do. I’m kind of on my last bullet at this point in my life. I
mean, they can scrape off the rust and oil the gun, but I still only have one bullet
left.”

“You spoke of retiring not long ago. Is
that still in the works?”

“Did I?” I asked. “I was probably just
complaining. I usually don’t mean half of what I say. I’m just exercising my
tongue. No, I’m pretty sure I’ll die on the job. I like the idea of them trying
to figure out what to do with my carcass.”

Busange, the man from The Murderers gang,
sat uneasily at my booth.

I’d say he kept his eyes to himself, but
he only had one eye.

“I don’t get what you’re asking,” he
said.

“I want to hire you guys.”

“But you’re not paying anything? And you
want us to fight everyone in the whole damn city?”

“Not exactly. I want you to train my new
Militia from the Royal Wing—”

He snorted at that.

“Those guys will kill us for sure. Or
run away at least.”

“No, I have security belts,” I said.
“They’ll explode.”

“So they’re walking around strapped with
explosives?”

“Delovoa invented them, they’re fine,” I
said.

“Oh.” He seemed appeased. “But what do
we get? How can I convince everyone to do this? The Murderers aren’t a normal
gang with a boss who barks and we all jump. I do the talking because I don’t
mind. But everyone is their own agent.”

“I’ll let you guys join the Confederation.
You can list yourselves on the Boards. Raise a ton of money. And advertise and
hire yourselves out to the Confederation members.”

“How’s that different from now?”

“Now you can’t do any of that stuff. Now
you’re just nobodies.”

He was silent.

“You think this might work? We’re not
bulletproof like you.”

“Hide behind the Royal Wing. They’re
fighting for a pardon—and they’re probably lousy with guns anyway and you don’t
want them accidentally shooting you in the back.”

“You’re a crummy salesman.”

“You know I got infinite money, right?”

“Yeah, but you’re not giving us any.”

“Tell you what, I’ll rush your
application through so you can be members right away. Issue some bonds on the
Boards.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Talk to some of the other gangs. You
know Cole-Kainen and his gang? He’s got a bunch of stores.”

“Yeah, we did security for him once,”
Busange said.

“He listed stock after he joined the
Confederation, fifteen percent ownership in his company. He told me in four
days he raised almost a half-million thumbs.”

That got his attention.

“Where did he get all that money?”

“The city!”

This was clearly a topic he didn’t
understand. Which was fine, I didn’t really understand either.

“But where is it coming from? Is it
you?”

“No. There’s billions of thumbs floating
around. Think how many people are on this station. You want a piece of that or
not?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Well, the new requirement is you got to
be in the Confederation to be on the Boards.”

“I just don’t know how easy it’s going
to be to train your Royal Wing…Militia.”

“You’ll find a way.” I saw he was about
to argue or add more, but I cut him off.

“I think we’re done here.”

aRj’in wore a pleasant smile and
smoothed his hair as he sat at my table.

He looked back at all the people waiting
and hoping to see me, as if to let them know he got in on his own merits.

“Do you have any word on who has been
hiring the feral kids?” I asked him.

“I do. I do,” he said, keeping his voice
low. “It’s a pretty dangerous area as you know, so we had a tough time. What we
finally did was get people in the buildings nearby watching, and when we saw
someone go in, we had another team on the ground follow them once they left.”

“Well?”

“We lost them twice. Didn’t get a good
look and…I’m not confident on the descriptions my men gave. But we managed to
track two this week. Two men. Colmarians.”

“At the same time?”

“No. They each went in alone on
different days.”

“Did your men see a kind of robot with
four arms?” I asked.

“That’s the thing that offed Peush,
right?” aRj’in asked.

“Yeah.”

“We’d notice him for sure. No, didn’t
see him.”

“Did you see the Colmarians hiring the
ferals?”

“No. No one can see that unless you’re
standing right next to them. And no pack of ferals is going to let you stand
right next to them. These two people walked in, plain as day, and walked out
thirty or forty-five minutes later. Unharmed.”

“So either they got really lucky or they
were hiring them,” I said.

“That’s what I think. Anyway, my men
followed them. And, well, they lost them. But I can tell you where we last
spotted them.”

“Go on.”

“Hank Block.”

aRj’in described the men who had hired
the ferals, but they didn’t immediately match anyone I knew. I didn’t pretend
to know all my Kommilaire’s faces perfectly, however.

It was disturbing info.

Perhaps this was what Zeti had meant by
being betrayed. Were my own Kommilaire working against me? What could they gain
by giving jobs to feral kids? I could see gangs using them against other gangs,
but not Kommilaire.

The next day it looked like we had
scooped up all the worst vagrants and junkies from Deadsouth, soiled their
clothes to oblivion, multiplied them by fifty, and then dumped the stinking
mass on Hank Block.

My glorious Militia was here.

The Murderers were helping corral them
and equip everyone with one of Delovoa’s security belts.

People were petrified of the devices and
wanted to know exactly what conditions would cause them to detonate. I told
them that it wasn’t their concern and if they did their jobs correctly, they
had nothing to fear.

They especially had nothing to fear
because Delovoa hadn’t made the belts. They were basic synth bindings with no
special properties at all other than being cheap. That was the power of
Delovoa’s name that it could turn a thin strap of synth into a virtual mind
control device.

The women from the Royal Wing weren’t
singing any longer, they were screaming obscenities at their former husbands
and captors. It made an appropriate background noise for our first training
session.

I decided against guns fairly early.
These were the absolute dregs of society who had been incarcerated with other
dregs of society on a prison colony for years. Many of them were mentally unbalanced,
to use a kind description.

Not only were they no good with
firearms, and not only did I not have enough to give them, but they would
likely start shooting one another or me or the buildings or the imaginary voices
they spoke to.

“I thought we would be better armed,”
Uulath said, concerned.

“Let’s start off with these…staves,” I
said, embellishing their weaponry.

It was hard to arm them. There were so
many. There weren’t enough knives or axes or swords on the station. So we got
tubing that carried electrical wires. We had lots of that. It was a very hard,
durable plastic about an inch in diameter. We cut them into sections four feet
long and handed them out as makeshift clubs.