Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap (12 page)

I regrouped at the Belvaille
Gentleman’s Club the next evening. I didn’t want to, but it was my
responsibility.

Thirteen of my men were dead. Thirty-five
were injured. Only two escaped unscratched. One was named Nevinz-eor and the
other was Flizzer. Both of their nicknames suddenly, and irrevocably, were
switched to “Lucky.”

Of the defenders of the club, only
the ones who had gone through the roof with me survived. The owner was dead.

The mood was somber in the
Gentleman’s Club. That was a lot of guys who lost their lives.

Normally they would be griping
about me, some egotistical boss that had caused all this mayhem. But I wasn’t a
boss. I was supposedly one of them. Here I was sitting in the club, smelling
the same bad air, watching the same sports.

No one was talking. The Gentleman’s
Club was a pretty unruly place most times. But I felt like everyone was looking
over their shoulder at me. Like I was a Navy general keeping them in line.

I decided to take my leave and head
to the hospital and see how the guys were doing.

“Hey, Cad,” I said uneasily. He was
naked from the waist up and had his arm in a sling.

“We couldn’t hold the line,” he
blurted out. “There was too many. They killed Sassy.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t
know a corporation would be there. Did you?”

“Absolutely not. Did they say
anything before they attacked?”

“Nothing. At all. Just floodlights
and firing. They didn’t care who they shot at. They shot everyone who came out
of that club.”

“I looked them up. The corporation
was the Fifteen Stars Holding Authority,” I said.

“Typical corporate name. How did
you get away?”

“From the roof we jumped down to
the adjacent building. Then one more. Finally found a fire escape and it led to
the opposite street.”

“When I saw how many there were, I
dropped my gun and ran. I’m sorry, but there was no way. I think if I was
taller, I would have been killed.”

“Did they arrive in the APCs?”

“No, that’s what I was thinking was
weird. Those weren’t troop transports, they were the ones you shoot out of. So
they could only hold like ten each. And they were full of guys firing. All
those soldiers must have gotten there on foot.”

“They could have had other
transports or trucks parked a few blocks away.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But that was
seriously at least a hundred soldiers. Maybe two hundred. That wasn’t a
coincidence them driving around with that many guys and all piling out. That
was like a military operation.” He shook his head remembering.

“So what are you going to do after
you heal up?” I asked.

“Get the hell off this station!”

I came home and the Gandrine were
gone. Small miracle. But the pile of bodies was still there. I called up Garm
as I went inside.

“Hey, are you killing my dates?” I
asked her.

She hung up.

I called her back.

“What?” she asked, annoyed.

“I’m serious. Are you killing my
dates?”

“Your dates? Like people you’re
dating?”

“Yeah.”

“Physically murdering them?”

“Yes.”

“Why would I care enough to do
that?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m
asking.”

“Someone is killing your dates?”

“I literally got a morgue outside
my door,” I said.

“You know, someone was telling me
about that. I also heard about your fight at the club. People are…really scared
of you right now.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they think you’ve gone
crazy, massacring people and leaving the bodies everywhere.”

I was about to say, “no I’m not,”
but I did kill people at the club.

“I’m not crazy,” I said, grasping
for at least some denial.

“I believe you. Who were you
dating?”

“Hah! You do care,” I pounced.

“Care about what?”

“You said ‘how would you care
enough to do it,’ but if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t ask who I was dating.”

“I’m just making conversation.”

“Right. And you’re the queen of
small talk.”

“What
did
happen? I heard
like a hundred people died. That’s…a lot, Hank.”

“I’m not sure how it happened. I’d
ask them, but everyone who knew anything got killed. This corporation came out
of nowhere and began attacking.”

“Which one?”

“Fifteen Stars Holding Authority.
Do you know it?”

“I know of it. It owns one of the freighters.”

“The what?”

“One of the ships that’s hooked to
Belvaille.”

“What do they manufacture?”

“How should I know?” she complained.

“Well, what services do they use?”

“Electricity, water, air, gravity.
Same as anyone else. I don’t nose around what any of the corporations do.”

“I thought it was your business to
know all this stuff.”

And I saw from the tele screen she
was uneasy.

“Not with these guys. You work for
them and if you try and reach beyond that…well, we got enough evidence of what
they do.”

“So how’s Bronze?” I asked.

I saw her blush. Garm blush!

“Fine,” she said quickly, looking
away.

“You guys sleep with each other
yet?”

She looked back to the screen, brow
furrowed, mouth open in anger.

I hung up.

On the train I noticed people were not
sitting near me. Or looking towards me. Normally I would at least get a few
salutations. That’s fine. I could get more work done.

I rang Delovoa’s door.

His face came on the display.

“Hank, come in,” he said.

The door unlocked and I walked
inside.

“Hello?” He wasn’t around.

I moved to the basement. As I was
on the ramp down, I looked over and saw Delovoa standing beside a work table. A
nude man was lying on top of the table.

“I knew it!” I yelled, covering my
eyes. What was it with naked guys lately?

“Hank,” he said, “I’m glad you’re
here. Come down.”

“No way, weirdo.” I pawed around
with my hand to try and find the railing to get out of the basement.

“Hank, it’s okay. He’s dead.”

“Oh, yeah. That makes it great.”

“This is one of the soldiers you
killed,” he said.

And I paused, my hand still
covering my face.

“Why do you have a soldier I
killed?”

“Come down, I’m not going to yell
all this up to you.”

I removed my hand and walked down
the ramp to the lower basement.

“I swear, about half the time I
come here I see something I wish I hadn’t seen.”

I stopped nearish Delovoa but not
so near. My eyes were on the ceiling.

“So is this one of the bodies from
the club fight?”

“No. From the APC you destroyed.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you carry this body all the
way here?”

“No. I dragged it.”

“This city is so screwed up,” I
said, thinking about all the people who must have seen Delovoa dragging a dead
body for twenty or more blocks and didn’t care. “What did he die of, anyway?”

“Heat and concussion from when the
armor piercing shot burrowed through the plates of the vehicle. Which is why
his skin is charred in spots.”

“Lovely.”

“But this guy was really dumb,”
Delovoa stated.

“Well, he worked for a
corporation.”

“No, look.”

Delovoa took out an x-ray and held
it up to the light for me to see.

“What am I looking at here?”

“This is his brain.”

“I’m not a doctor, Delovoa.”

“You can see he’s missing half his
brain, can’t you?” Delovoa asked, annoyed. He highlighted it with his finger.
“This is his skull. This part is his brain. This is all empty.”

“Maybe the autocannon did that?”

“It’s not going to melt his
brain—half of it. He had on his body armor, including a helmet.”

“So he wasn’t very smart. I’ve
worked with a lot of people like that.”

“Now look at his DNA.”

Delovoa began to drag out some
equipment from under the table and get it all situated.

“Okay,” he said, once it was all
connected. “This is trying to match his DNA and mine.”

The machines hummed and whirred and
spat out a bunch of colored numbers onto a screen which were meaningless to me.

“He and I are a 23.2% match,”
Delovoa said.

“So you aren’t related?” I asked
blandly.

“Hank, even the weirdest Colmarians
are still Colmarians. We all share at least half our DNA. And often it’s up to
99%. I have more in common with a tree than I do with this guy.”

He saw from my face that I wasn’t
getting it.

“Look, I have some blood from
someone on-station that I’ll match to mine.”

“Delovoa, you’re starting to really
freak me out. Why do you have someone’s blood and all this DNA equipment?”

“I do paternity tests on the side.”

“Really? Like for who?”

“That’s confidential,” he replied
sternly. Then he leaned in to me and whispered, “Hrelix and Veolbos.”

“Oh, that’s his baby for sure,” I
said certainly.

Delovoa smiled broadly and nodded
at me.

“This is Hrelix’s blood. And she
comes from the other side of the galaxy.”

The machines went at it again and
popped out a result.

“There, an 83.6% match. And I’m a
mutant male nothing like her.”

“You’re staring at me like this
should be some huge information, but I don’t understand.”

“Hank, it’s not possible for us to
match this little. He shouldn’t even be functioning biological life. At least
not one that looks like that.”

“Maybe he wasn’t functioning. Maybe
he was already dead in the APC.”

“Doesn’t matter. The DNA would
still be the same. The autocannon didn’t blast apart his genetic makeup.”

“So what does it mean then?”

“We have a lot of DNA that we don’t
use. That is kind of…legacy, from when we evolved. It’s still there but it
doesn’t do anything. So what is happening is that he and I are matching on the
big stuff. Like how to create cells and proteins and organs and muscles and
whatever. But he doesn’t have any of the material we no longer use.”

Delovoa stared at me with his three
eyes popped.

I shrugged, waiting for him to
continue. Or at least talk simpler.

“Hank, he never evolved.”

“Wait, what? So is he sick?”

Delovoa’s head drooped.

“Ugh. Just because you don’t know
something doesn’t mean you have to guess. He’s not sick. I mean, he’s dead. But
he wasn’t sick. I think he was created in a lab.”

“Like this one?” I asked, wondering
if Delovoa was creating soldiers.

“No, not like this one. I build
guns and security systems. I’m an engineer. You would need vast resources to
create him.”

“But why? I don’t get it. What does
taking out his brain and DNA do?”

“I don’t think they took them out,
they never put them in. He has exactly what he needs to do his job. As much
brain as he needs to work.”

“So someone built him? Like a
machine? Is that even possible?”

“I think so,” Delovoa said, after
sucking in some air. “We had done it in our past. I remember reading about it.
It’s illegal.”

“Why illegal? Though, just about
everything is illegal in the Colmarian Confederation.”

“This isn’t just our law. This is
galactic treaty. Everyone agreed to it.”

“What’s the big deal? He’s stupid,
right?”

“You know how many procedures we
have at quarantine to prevent outbreaks from all the different planets? Well,
all our races have coexisted for, I don’t know, hundreds of thousands of years.
Our genetic material is all spliced and combined together. But this guy has DNA
that’s completely foreign. If he sneezed it might wipe out a planet’s
population.”

“So he
is
sick!” I said,
backing away.

“Well…” and Delovoa looked at him
and also backed away.

“I knew I shouldn’t have come down
here,” I said, heading for the ramp.

Delovoa was following slower.

“Oh, get me some autocannon ammo
first.”

Upstairs I had all of Delovoa’s
ammunition. A case of each shell type. We sat in his kitchen and talked.

“Where are your shoes?” Delovoa
asked, as if that was the most important thing.

“Never mind. How did you know to
drag that guy here and do those tests?”

“I grabbed him because I thought he
was going to be loaded with technology I could steal. But there was nothing at
all. He didn’t even have a tele or a radio. That made me really suspicious.”

“I know people who don’t have
teles. I don’t x-ray their brains and take their blood.”

“It was some of the stuff you said
and just how they behave in general. We never see them. Ever. They always wear
visors—tinted visors, on a station that doesn’t orbit a star and has controlled
lighting. You said they get all their uniforms at the same place for all the
corporations. They work together and have perfect coordination.

“So you’re saying it’s not just
that one guy?”

“Oh, no. I think it’s all of them.
Or a lot of them.”

“What if they all sneeze?” I asked,
panicked.

“I…” Delovoa sighed. “That wasn’t
literally what I meant. The station has ongoing sterilization. If you injected
some of his blood it would probably be really bad.”

“Why the hell would I inject a
corpse’s blood, you sicko?”

“You wouldn’t. I’m just saying if
you did,” he stated, as if that was completely logical.

“Do you think it’s just the
soldiers or everyone in the corporation?”

“No, I think it’s just the soldiers
and maybe only some of them. What I guess is that they are kind of programmed
to do a task. Like it’s their instinct. Which is why they don’t need teles and
can still coordinate so well. But while you might be able to make a generic
soldier like that, I couldn’t think you would be able to fill every job in a
corporation. They have thousands of different occupations. I can’t see why you
would want to.”

“That’s what I keep coming back to.
Guys with guns are really cheap. Why would you need to build soldiers? How much
would it cost to make that guy?”

“Oh. A lot,” Delovoa said.

“A hundred credits? A million?”

“I have no idea, really. It’s not
something anyone does.”

“Yeah, because there’s no reason.
You could just hire thugs on Belvaille. We might not be single-minded, but we
won’t kill you if we fart.”