Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (5 page)

My guess was this guy was a businessman.
He probably took a look around and was shocked. But Belvaille could use more
jobs. People with jobs were too tired to cause problems for me and my
Kommilaire.

The waiter rolled on over with a huge
tray and deposited about fifty pounds of sandwiches and gallons of beer. It
took it a few minutes to unload all the food.

When it had left, Jorn-dole stood with
his mouth open. He leaned in to whisper.

“Was that,” he started, pointing at the
server. “Was that a Dredel Led?”

“Yeah. It works here,” I said of the
robot.

The Dredel Led was a wheeled metal
machine about five feet tall. It was a narrow black cylinder with spindly robot
arms. It made an excellent waiter because it could zip around and between
people at great speed—as long as the floor was level and clean. I had never met
any two Dredel Led that were remotely identical in appearance or function.

“Didn’t they attack the station? Attack
you? Weren’t we at war with them?”

I ate some sandwiches, answering with my
mouth full.

“That was almost a century ago. We have nearly
every species in the galaxy on Belvaille, with more coming all the time. This
is a great place to start a business. We have Gandrine and Dredel Led. If you go
outside and look up you’ll see the gaseous species Keilvin Kamigans floating
around—what they’re doing up there I don’t know, maybe pissing on us. There’s
even a Boranjame,” I said. “But he’s only about this big.”

I held my arms about four feet apart. Boranjame
were a crystalline species that never stopped growing. The prince I met long
ago was miles across.

Jorn-dole’s mouth still hung open.

“And everyone gets along?”

“I didn’t say that. But look, the war
wasn’t other races attacking us, it was a civil war. We didn’t need any help destroying
ourselves. But if you’ll excuse me now, I just want to eat my food. I hope you
enjoy your stay on Belvaille,” I said.

“Thank you, Hank.” Jorn-dole smiled and
departed.

I sat there eating my pile of sandwiches
that covered most of the table, trying to think things through.

Belvaille had become more and more
complicated. Religions, political factions, businesses, ethnic groups,
refugees, homeless, feral kids, beggars, as well as the usual gangs and gang
bosses.

Used to be when there was a problem, I
would fix it. “Fix” usually involved expelling or jailing or maiming or killing
the source of the problem—but more often simply talking it out.

There were too many of them now.

Even if I lined up every serious
troublemaker and drove by on my heavy lifter kneecapping them all, that
wouldn’t solve anything. I’d just have a third of the population with no
kneecaps.

And I couldn’t get personally involved
in every problem like I used to. There weren’t enough hours in the day.

I should get this stuff written down and
organized. I had always trusted to my memory to keep everything straight, but I
couldn’t remember millions of people and their dispositions.

We had some files for the Kommilaire,
but it simply took too much manpower to maintain them. We needed people
patrolling the streets far more than we needed clerks shuffling papers.

As for electronic storage, I didn’t
trust it. The Colmarian Confederation had been run on teles. Personal
communication devices and computers. When the empire fragmented, I think a big
part of the devastation that followed came from our teles being disconnected.
Every transaction, every interaction, was done via tele. All of a sudden they
were gone and we had nothing to take their place.

Today, if you wanted to say hi to
someone on another planet, you got in a ship, travelled anywhere from a few
months to a few years, landed, got out and said hi. If the other planet wasn’t
connected by a Portal, you couldn’t communicate with them at all. Those systems
were lost.

Something was going to have to give. I
felt like the city was barely holding itself together.

It was like someone dropping a single
feather on your shoulders one after another. At first you don’t notice them at
all, but eventually those feathers are going to crush you to death.

While I was deep in my ruminations, a
man rolled up to my booth in a golden wheelchair.

He was an elderly man, but not ancient.
He was, however, hooked up to numerous machines and wore a respirator to breathe.

“Hello, Zadeck,” I said.

Zadeck had been one of the younger crime
bosses before Belvaille had moved. His claim to fame was he had a Therezian
bodyguard named Wallow. Therezians were giants, thirty, forty, eighty feet tall,
and nearly impervious. Wallow had been sucked out into space, however, ages ago.

Zadeck had adjusted and adjusted well.
He was one of the most important crime bosses on Belvaille now. I didn’t know
the extent of his activities, but I knew they were substantial.

He and I dealt with each other
frequently. As a member of Old Belvaille, and specifically the gang culture, I
liked talking to Zadeck far more than I did most people.

“Is now a good time?” Zadeck wheezed.

It wasn’t due to age that he had his
gleaming medical devices. Zadeck had been shot numerous times. He was always a
bit of a dandy, so his life support systems were plated in gold.

“It’s fine, Zadeck. How are you today?”

“Lower back is hurting more than usual.
I’m trying to wean myself off pain relievers.”

“Good idea. Take it from a guy with
permanently dull senses: you want to feel everything you can, while you can.”

He smiled.

“The election,” he said, tapping his
fingers on the arm of his wheelchair, “how do you view it?”

I sighed.

“Honestly, I haven’t paid much
attention. But everyone else seems to be.”

“Don’t underestimate its importance.”

“But why? The Governor and City Council.
What will they do? I suspect nothing.”

“The people are pinning a lot of faith
on them. Can’t you hear it on the loudspeakers? Every day it’s election this
and election that. And on the street, folks are mad for it.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He looked at me slyly.

“Are you going to run for office?” he
asked point-blank.

“What? No.”

He seemed to consider my response.

“Why, are you?” I asked him.

“No one would elect an unpopular
invalid. I’ll keep my current businesses.”

“But it wouldn’t hurt you to be friends
with the new government, assuming they have any power.”

“Of course.”

We both sat silently for some moments.

“I have some information for you, Hank.”

“What will it cost?”

“You can decide. 19-10 has come to
Belvaille,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You really don’t keep track of anything
off this station, do you?”

“I can’t keep track of what’s
on
this station.”

“19-10 is an assassin. A bounty hunter.
Very famous across the galaxy. He wears a four-armed Colmarian Messahn
battlesuit.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“It was a weapon created during the war.
Only a very few made. It can teleport. Like a Portal or an a-drive on a ship,
but anywhere without limitations.”

That was something.

“So just pop across the galaxy? Or into
someone’s house? How did that not stop the war? Or win it?”

“Well, I don’t know the specifics. This
is just what I’ve heard,” he said.

“Hmm. So I’ll look around for someone
with four arms, I guess. In a metal suit.”

“That’s just the first part. He’s here
to kill you.”

“What did I do to him?”

“You
do
know how assassins work,
right? Someone hired him.”

“Who?”

“That, I don’t know. But there are, as
you must know, many contracts against you. When big name assassins take up a
contract, they let everyone know, so other big names don’t interfere.”

“Well that’s courteous of them. Do you
know anything else about him? Where he’s at or staying?”

“I don’t, unfortunately. But if I learn anything
I’d be happy to tell you.”

I sat thinking about all this.

“I’m going out patrolling tomorrow,” I
said finally. “Any recommendations?”

Zadeck also seemed to think. But he did
a poor job of acting.

“Avenue Yein is very dangerous at night.
I wonder if there’s any illegal activity going on there.”

I tried to picture that block. It was
packed with gambling houses and brothels. But there was one establishment that
I thought was owned by someone big enough to give Zadeck competition.

“The Busher building? Do they have their
papers in order?” I hazarded.

Zadeck’s eyebrows raised and he puckered
his lips as if that were some unique question he had never pondered.

“I don’t know. You might check, though.”

“Alright,” I said, and picked up another
sandwich.

“Nice talking with you, Hank.”

“You too. I hope your back is better.”

Thirty or so sandwiches later, I was brooding
on what Zadeck said.

Assassins were odd things. Belvaille had
more than its share of killing. Hell, I did more than my share. But for an
assassin, it’s their business. They haggle over the price of dead husbands,
slaughtered police, and killed mothers.

You got to be of a particular
sensibility to wake up every day thinking of murder. Probably not the kind of
person who enjoys a good fart joke.

I knew there were assassins hiding on
Belvaille, but they didn’t advertise, and they kept a low profile. If I caught
them, it was straight to the Royal Wing. Belvaille never really used assassins.
All the gangs fought. And yes, people died. But their business wasn’t death.
That’s no good for anyone.

Maybe it was a fine line, but we all
understood it.

A dark man with dark hair and a big dark
beard came by my table. He was muscular and wore a tight-fitting shirt to show off
that fact.

“Hank,” he said. “I heard about the
court ruling. Funny stuff.”

He took out a pistol and pointed it
lazily at my face. He wore a sneer which showed he had discolored teeth that
almost matched the color of his beard.

“What’s your name?” I asked, stuffing
another sandwich in my mouth.

“Aneoan,” he answered, keeping the gun
level with me. He seemed to be enjoying it.

“How do you spell that?”

“A-n-e-o-a-n,” he said.

I scratched my leg and tried to clear
sandwich bits from between my cheek with my tongue.

“It’s true that it is legal to point a
gun at me.”

“Ahh!” Aneoan screamed and fell to the
ground, gripping his thigh.

“But I hereby sentence you to be shot in
the leg for having too many vowels in your name.”

Supreme Kommilaire wasn’t a salaried
job, per se. In fact, it didn’t pay at all except for what money I could
embezzle and extort. So I wasn’t above doing the odd job now and then to make
ends meet.

“He has four clubs, two of which look to
be profitable. He has a small warehouse he owns with a long-term tenant. He is
starting to deal in metal from off the city, but he’s keeping that secret, so I
assume it’s either not profitable or he’s worried about other bosses horning
in. He has maybe seventy-five enforcers and fifty regular employees,” I said,
reading off the list.

There were three thugs, with one serving
drinks, and a boss listening to my information as he got a massage.

He was a big guy who had grown flabby
with age. You could often trace the lineage of people who had made it to the
gang boss level by their appearance alone. This guy had clearly been hired muscle
maybe fifty years ago. His name was aRj’in.

“What do you think he’s worth in terms
of a loan?” he asked.

“Depends on what he’s buying. If he
wants to try and refurbish his clubs, I’d say 100,000 thumbs. He’s got an eye
for it. I think his wife is helping on that end.”

“She’s a showgirl floozy,” aRj’in
sneered.

“Whatever she is, she’s good at it. You
can see a profit off that if the juice isn’t too high. If he wants to push his
metal business or warehouses, I wouldn’t give him more than 25,000 and I’d charge
higher interest. There’s more competition and he’s a small player.”

aRj’in hummed about this as his masseur
pounded his thick back like a slab of meat, making his breathing come out like
a machine gun.

“Why should I care what he wants the
money for as long as he pays me back?”