Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (40 page)

“I’ll handle it, Boss,” Valia said,
departing.

I was still concerned that I had some
snitches in my Kommilaire. I didn’t want to put too much reliance on their
work. It was a crappy thing to admit, but I was about to go to war and I had
more faith in my Belvaille Militia than I did in my Kommilaire.

The rich lady had basically confirmed
Garm was hiring my Kommilaire to work with the ferals. She may have even hired
19-10 if Delovoa’s trace was accurate and Judge Naeb’s dying taunts could be
believed.

I was going to have to deal with her
sooner or later, but I had the opportunity to strike a blow against the Totki
and my time was running out. The Militia had performed amazingly well for an
entire month, but I didn’t have any delusions on how long I could hold them
together. I was all too happy to grant a pardon if we could just remove this
last major threat to the station.

I actually practiced with my guns for
two days.

I never practiced.

Consequently I learned that I have
really terrible aim. I mean, just bad. There wasn’t much I could do. Two days
wasn’t long enough to become a marksman.

I couldn’t wield any hand weapons
because I was too slow to use them. I was basically going to go out there and
be a target when the enemy had specifically asked to fight me.

I decided to make a will.

I invited over the head judge who
replaced Judge Naeb. I think he was quite relieved when he saw he wasn’t about
to mysteriously commit suicide.

Normally I would have done this using
gang rites and protocol. But I felt this was the next evolution in our society.
Belvaille had to move forward, and that meant real laws and rules.

“Well, let’s start with the assets you
have,” the judge offered, after we had been sitting for some time.

“I don’t have a lot, actually. I have this
building. But that was never made official. It was just kind of known that
wherever I live is mine.”

“How about Hank Block? What do you own
here?”

“Just this building. I had the signs
leftover from before.”

“How many securities and cash do you
have?”

“I tried to buy an aluminum, but that
didn’t work. I think I have about one hundred eighty-five thousand thumbs. And
of course The Thumb.”

“The infinite one?”

“Yeah. But I don’t know if I can give
that away.”

“I don’t think you can. It is a loan
guarantee in a sense.”

“The box it comes in is nice,” I said.
“I have clothes and some guns. These sculptures.”

“Who do you think would want them?” the
judge asked, his pen poised to write.

“Probably no one. The clothes won’t fit
anyone. The guns are cut up so I can use them and these sculptures…”

We looked at them.

“They could be sold for scrap metal
maybe,” the judge offered.

“Wow. This is depressing,” I said.

“It sounds like this building is your
main asset. You can parcel out the items inside, but it might be best to treat
it as one unit. So who do you want it to go to?”

I thought for a while.

“Can I donate it to the city?”

“Sure. They would realistically take it
if you didn’t have a will, anyway.”

“So basically I’m making a will to do
what they would have done without a will?”

“Yes. But you can make suggestions for
its use. Though the city could ignore them.”

“I don’t know. Whatever they need. More
prisons. Kommilaire quarters. Tax, er, contribution office.”

“That’s fine,” the judge said, writing.
“Here, sign at the bottom.”

He handed me the paper. The text saying
it was a will was about three times longer than the actual body. I shakily drew
my name at the bottom. My signature looked like that of a five year old trying
to write while sneezing.

“You can be proud of that, Supreme
Kommilaire.”

“Can I? A city full of murderers, drug
dealers, ferals, scam artists, prostitutes, and gangs is my best friend.”

I had teams of Kommilaire search the
Avenue With No Name but there was nothing out of the ordinary they could find.
I even sent multiple groups just in case some were being bribed by Garm. Then
again, she probably had enough money to bribe them all.

I looked at the maps and wracked my brain
on the best way to attack. Which way would Hong be expecting? Which way would
he think I was expecting he was expecting?

In the end I just chose randomly.

I couldn’t have the Militia come from
multiple blocks because they were too undisciplined and I had no way to
coordinate. I feared as soon as they were out of my sight everything would fall
apart.

The appointed time came and I switched
up my plans at the last minute just to be sure.

I marched my Militia to the south side
of the Avenue and up. Since even I hadn’t known I was going to do that, I was
hopeful this might be of strategic value.

It didn’t matter. The Totki were there
and waiting.

And holy crap there were a lot of them.

Some of the racial stereotypes of the
Totki were that they were all short, they talked funny, they smelled bad, and they
all looked the same. I told my Kommilaire not to engage in those slurs.

But it wasn’t a stereotype. They all
did
look the same.

I never dreamed there were this many
Totki on Belvaille. I must have thought I was seeing the same ones over and
over when in fact they were from whole different families and clans.

Hong managed to con me into facing his entire
army, which outnumbered mine threefold. Not only that, but I could see they
were not only armed with their usual spears, but guns, chainsaws, grenades, and
all manner of weapons.

My Militia had their sticks.

If I thought I could get away, I’d order
a retreat. But where could we go? They had us all out in the open. They would
chase us, picking off the stragglers until they got everyone.

My fat ass would be the first to go as I
doubt I’d even get to turn around before they swarmed all over me.

I handed out firearms from my vest to
the Militia nearby. No point dying with an arsenal of unfired guns on my chest.

“Point and shoot when you’re close
range,” I said.

“Don’t worry, Hank. I’ve shot half a
dozen people before,” one man bragged.

That was the state of my Militia that
those words were meant to comfort me.

I could hear Hong in the distance
rallying his men. He had an annoying voice.

“Hey, Hong. Hong!” I yelled.

“What?” he yelled back.

“Eat suck, suckface!”

I knew it was one of those things that
didn’t translate well, which is why I said it. There was a heavy silence
between the two armies.

“No,
you
suck face!” Hong finally
retorted, and he went on ranting about this and that and Su Dival and suck and faces.

I didn’t have a lot to say to my own
troops. I knew I should come up with some rousing speech about freedom and good
and liberty and justice, but I didn’t think it mattered.

“If you kill them,” I said, “you’re all
free.”

RARGH!

The Belvaille Militia took off
instantly! I hadn’t actually meant for them to charge now! We were too far
away. They would leave themselves spent and tired by the time they got to the
Totki.

I hobbled after my troops but it was
like I was trying to walk through space and they were all rocket propelled. When
I got to the fight, I suspected it would be over—and not in our favor.

But I didn’t need to reach the fight. Many
of the Totki surged forward and around my Militia. Their primary target seemed
to be:

Me.

Scores of Totki encircled me with long
polearms, devices on the tips. They jabbed at me like I was some ferocious wild
animal instead of a venerable, sluggish bruiser with bad vision and worse aim.

I fired and missed. I fired again and he
went down, though not the one I had been shooting at. Hey, this wasn’t so hard.

There must have been thirty surrounding
me and they started to push in.

Zap!

The polearms they used had some kind of
electrical prod on the end. I all but laughed. I had faced full-on lightning
bolts from a mutant named Jyen decades ago. She could light up a whole city
street and melt steel. She still didn’t do much to me. And back then I was maybe
a tenth the size I was now.

Zap! Zap! Zap!

I fired some more and dropped another
Totki.

Zap!

I felt a pain in the back of my right
calf. I looked down and didn’t see anything except my pants. Just then I felt
the pain shoot across the back of my neck and go down my arm.

No!

Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap!

I wasn’t sure how I got on my back but
there I was. Either the station had flipped ninety degrees and I was immune to
gravity or, far more likely, I had fallen and was suffering my millionth heart attack.

How had they known?

I was only marginally aware of what was
happening now. It’s like I was looking through my own body standing five feet
behind my eyes, unable to reach the controls. And it hurt a whole lot.

I could kind of see things, but they just
weren’t that important. Not as important as dying, anyhow, which kind of loomed
large in my consciousness.

I was so close. So close to saving
Belvaille. Yeah, it was just one city when I had helped doom an entire empire.
But it was something. Something to build on.

And here I was going to be killed by a
goofy little guy and some bug zappers.

Now what would happen to the city? To
the galaxy? More civil war?

We were a bunch of greedy bastards but
we didn’t deserve that. We deserved a break. Before there was nothing left to
fight over except dust and bones.

Gazing up at the latticework, as my
heart was being shocked into submission, I suddenly had a desire for a piece to
fall off and crush me. I wanted Belvaille itself to end my life. I had spent so
much of my existence here, it was only fitting.

I saw from the corner of my eye my
Militia fighting savagely against the polearm shockers.

“Protect Hank,” a voice shouted.

“Form around him,” another agreed.

“Keep them back!”

Did my Militia want the glory of killing
me themselves? I was confused. Then again, my brain wasn’t getting much oxygen.

Uulath’s face appeared above me.

“Hank, are you alright? Supreme
Kommilaire!”

“What are you doing?” I managed to
whisper.

“If you die, we’ll never get our pardons,”
he answered.

Figures.

I heard a mass of machine gun fire and
shouting and explosions and assumed the Totki had ratcheted up their assault
and were struggling to reclaim my corpse.

I saw flashes of movement and shouting
and all manner of combat, but couldn’t make sense of it. This dying was a slow
business.

After what seemed like hours, MTB and Valia
showed up. They were bloodied and bruised and smudged.

“Boss,” MTB said, “hang in there!”

“Sure,” I answered. As if I had a lot of
options on what I was going to do.

“We’re going to get the medical
technician,” Valia said.

“No! What are you all doing here?”

“We…we were waiting in reserve, Boss,”
MTB admitted.

“The Kommilaire? You’ll get massacred.”

“We recruited soldiers from the
Belvaille Confederation. Almost five thousand.”

“It was her idea,” MTB said, and I
wasn’t sure if he was blaming Valia or giving her credit.

Sure enough, after some time the
fighting died down and I wasn’t being jabbed with spears.

“Did we win?” I asked.

They looked around.

“The Totki lost, I’ll say that much,”
Valia stated.

“Good. Tell everyone they are officially
pardoned then drag me to my place. Oh, and let out the lady prisoners,” I said.

“But they didn’t fight. They didn’t earn
a pardon,” MTB said.

“Yeah, but I don’t want them singing at
me while I try and recover.”

Pain was good.

It meant I had time left. However
little.

The Confederation hadn’t come to my
rescue because I was wealthy or popular or famous. They came to my rescue
because I was an investment.