Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (38 page)

This was going to be a tidal wave of insane
people carrying sticks who had been promised freedom if they killed enough bad
guys. If I was a bad guy and I saw this body coming at me, I would have a
strong desire to not be so bad, and in the opposite direction.

I got on my heavy lifter and we took
off. The Murderers marched at the rear of the column and were to let me know if
anyone broke off or misbehaved.

I estimated there were a little over
four thousand in the Belvaille Militia. Only about a hundred people didn’t join
from the Royal Wing and it was because they were too old or sick to safely
travel.

Looking back at them didn’t give me a
lot of confidence in their abilities. But the cynic in me realized this was at
least one way to deal with the Royal Wing population.

Of course, if they figured out those
belts didn’t do anything they’d just run off into the west and meld with the
feral kids.

I had word that the Sublime Order of
Transcendence was fighting with the Olmarr Republic about forty minutes away.

Both factions had essentially gone berserk.
When Peush was murdered by 19-10, the Republic started beating on anyone that
was in their way and organized. I guess their goal was capturing the election
if and when it came about—or they were just angry.

The Order dropped the cutesy act and
mobilized their army, which was the most well-equipped force on the station. I
couldn’t dream of giving my Kommilaire the weapons the Order possessed.

The Republic was far more organized and
far more numerous, but the Order had more money and more support.

But neither of them had the Belvaille
Militia, which emerged several blocks from the skirmish.

There must have been a thousand or so
people clashing. This certainly fit my requirements of being out after curfew
and armed. There was gunfire and chainsaws and lots and lots of blood.

“Stop fighting and return to your
homes!” I bellowed through a bullhorn.

It’s pretty tough to stop a war by
talking at it so I didn’t really expect much.

I turned back to my Militia, which
stretched as far as I could see.

“Okay,” I said, “go kill them all.”

I wasn’t sure how much prodding or
instructions I would have to give. The answer was none.

They surged past my heavy lifter, some
even climbing up and over, all screaming and waving their sticks. I had seemingly
forgotten that a lot of the Royal Wing inmates were violent criminals. The most
violent of violent criminals—who were dumb enough to get caught and disliked
enough to not have any friends or powerful gang affiliations.

They might not have been born for this,
but they were subsequently molded for it.

When they had gone past, I noticed about
a dozen of my Militia had been trampled. You knew you had enthusiastic soldiers
when not even running over their own men could slow them down from engaging enemies
that had vastly more killing power.

The Order and Republic had not listened
to me and my silly bullhorn.

But they noticed the rapidly approaching
Militia. Fighting halted completely for about six seconds. I think I could have
gotten the Order and Republic to sign an everlasting, ironclad peace agreement
in those six seconds.

If I could have magically stopped my
Militia in its tracks.

But I could not, and the Militia
barreled into the well-fed, well-armored, well-equipped, elite forces of
Belvaille and began beating them mercilessly with plastic rods.

They traded in their sticks for
chainsaws and guns when opportunities presented themselves. It was carnage.

“You…” Busange started, standing next to
my heavy lifter, “should stop them.”

This was a guy with no ears and one eye,
a spokesman for a gang called “The Murderers,” and he was witnessing something
that made him squeamish.

It was a full-on massacre. There was no
way to stop it. I said kill them all and they were going to kill them all.

I learned my greatest lesson in politics
right there. Religion and ethnicity and history and territory were all fine things
to fight about. But the Militia was fighting for their very lives. They had
nothing to lose and absolutely everything to gain.

It wasn’t even a close fight.

“Well, find out who’s alive and dead,” I
told Busange, when the killing had died down to a mild hum.

“I’m not going over there!” He said.
“You saw what they did with just your stupid sticks. Now they got guns!”

I wasn’t entirely sure how many people
we lost because I wasn’t entirely sure how many we started with.

We guessed around 300 had fallen on our
side. That’s 300 prisoners to their 1000 Order and Republic soldiers.

The good news was I suspected the most insane,
bloodthirsty ones were the majority of our dead. Because they were the first
ones in, the ones not protecting themselves, the ones the enemy realized they
had to put down immediately.

The sneaky ones who sat at the back and
let their comrades take the brunt of the blows were survivors. A few more
conflicts like this and I’d be left with nothing but the perfect citizens for
Belvaille.

I couldn’t deny I was being rather
heartless about it all.

But I had talked myself stupid and
gotten nowhere with these factions. I had a chance to effect some real change
with the Confederation but it wouldn’t work if we still had the Totki and other
groups having the power to do what they wanted without consequence. There weren’t
enough Kommilaire to arrest them all or even threaten them now that they were
out in force.

They had to be destroyed, or at the very
least, broken.

I locked down the telescopes and stopped
the factions from broadcasting. I didn’t want them rallying outside support and
spewing more hate as we made this final push.

We rode out against several more
assemblies of Order and Republic, smashing them to pieces each time and
suffering a small amount of casualties.

The street riots, the ones composed of
just regular people who had seized the opportunity to cause problems, went away
instantly. Once they got word that I was driving around with thousands of Royal
Wing Militia, armed with beat sticks, and smacking people to death…well, it
wasn’t so exciting to be out after curfew anymore.

Besides, the economy had turned around
dramatically because of the overall rise in the markets. Companies were hiring
and there was money to be made—without the risk of getting mutilated in the
process.

I hoped to encounter the Totki, because out
of the three big groups, their leader was still alive and ranting. But Hong was
craftier than I had thought. The Totki almost completely disappeared once the
Militia began its activities. Now that I finally wanted them out in the
streets, they weren’t obliging.

The Republic members were harder to find
since they were spread throughout the city, but the Order had numerous blocks
that were strictly their own.

Two weeks after I started my crusade, we
pushed into the Sublime Order of Transcendence’s part of the city.

My Militia had a number of former Order
members and they translated the messages of their robe-wearing, chanting
brethren for me.

It seemed Hobardi had placed great
significance, religious significance, on his death and now all the remaining
Order followers were standing around waiting for the Amazing Thing.

That was literally the term they used, which
was a pretty stupid name, if you asked me. Presumably this was a section of the
religion that Hobardi hadn’t put much thought into as he hadn’t been planning
on dying so soon.

Everyone knew Hobardi was dead, killed
by me and Valia at the Temple, though they didn’t know it was only a clone. The
real Hobardi’s location was unclear to me. He could be in my Belvaille Militia,
standing not thirty feet back, unwashed and unshaved. But all indications were
he was dead.

The Order members lit candles and struck
gongs and danced and meditated and drew symbols on themselves.

Fine.

But they still had their special forces
teams. I talked to some who talked to some and passed me to others until I was
in a room with about five well-armed Order men. They looked like a combination
of Colmarian Navy soldiers and priests.

“Hobardi is dead,” I told them. “What
are you still fighting for? The religion was crap anyway.”

“How dare you!” Their Captain screamed.
He was the leader of the military wing of the Order and he took it all
seriously. He was so serious he made MTB look like a singing juggler by comparison.
The red veins in his eyes almost pulsed.

“We still have instructions from the
Grandmaster and we shall see them carried out!”

I looked at his men. They clearly didn’t
share his zeal, but weren’t overtly tipping their hands. I couldn’t negotiate
with a loon. Hobardi was easier than this guy. At least Hobardi knew he was a
joke.

This soldier was wearing a significant
suit of body armor. Not even sure how he moved around, but it was going to be
impervious to nearly any of my guns unless I shot him in the face.

“Excuse me,” I said, walking past one of
the soldiers.

The man moved back as I approached the
Captain.

I put my fingers down the front of his
armor by the neck, wiggling them to get purchase.

“Stop it! What are you doing?” the
Captain exclaimed.

I put the fingers of my other hand down
the back of his armor.

I then pulled my arms apart and ripped
his body armor off like the shell of a nut. I did that to let the others know
that their cool armor wasn’t significant to me. I held the rather startled Captain
with my left hand and put a pistol to his chest.

“You all need to disarm or we’ll disarm
you. And by ‘disarm’ I mean we tear off your arms,” I said.

“Hank,” one of the soldiers said. “White
banner.”

Hobardi had raided the gangs when
recruiting his troops, so they knew the terminology and rules. Hobardi had
needed real soldiers who knew how to use guns and beat up people. Not train
spiritual people how to be killers—the Captain appeared to be the exception to
this.

“Gang protocol applies to gangs,” I told
the soldier. “You’re some weird religion thing. You have no rights. What I can
do, though, is get you employment in the gangs of this station. Maybe even get
some of you jobs in my Kommilaire, if you’re good enough. That is, if you don’t
want to hang around chanting and dancing and singing with everyone else out
there.”

A silent moment.

“Which gangs can you get us work with?”
one soldier asked.

They probably didn’t like working for
Hobardi, but he paid extremely well and he hadn’t made them do anything. But
now that he was gone, they were just travelling on momentum.

“Shoot this man!” The Captain yelled.
“Your weapons will find purchase and your foes shall know ruin,” he said,
obviously quoting some sacred text that didn’t know I was a level-four mutant.

The Captain kept raging and I realized I
couldn’t get anywhere while he had hold over his men. There were still hundreds
of well-armed soldiers in the Order. I was either going to have to fight and
kill them all, or remove the leaders.

I fired, killing the Captain.

“Give him to your pals to prepare. I’m
sure you have some special burial. Too bad. I can’t imagine this was his
Amazing Thing,” I said.

“Oh, but it is, Hank,” one of the
soldiers said. “The Amazing Thing is when we all die by fire.”

“This is boring,” I nagged Delovoa.

“Your face is boring,” he answered, as
he twirled and fiddled with controls.

We were at the telescopes and Delovoa
was working at one of the stations.

“How long is this going to take, my feet
hurt.”

“Well my ears hurt listening to you.”

“You’re not even trying to be funny,” I
said.

“I don’t have to try. Watch.”

The regular operators were standing a
safe distance away, overwhelmed at seeing the richest and smartest men in the
known universe sharing the same room with them.

“Boo!” Delovoa shouted at the
spectators, who then scurried away like frightened insects.

“That was dumb,” I said, unimpressed.

“You’re dumb.”

“Look, I got thousands of psycho Militia
sleeping in the streets. Is this going to work?”

“Probably,” Delovoa said with
confidence.

“Is it going to kill everyone? I’m
breaking my back to save this city and it would be just like you to fry
everyone’s skin off.”

“Their skin will be fine,” he said,
unnecessarily specific.