Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

“Yeah?”

“Did you set your bombs?”

“Yeah, why?”

He grabbed hold of the doors and pulled them shut. I heard them lock. They were security doors and would be just as hard to open from the inside as the outside.

“Sore loser!”

I thought about the floor plans for this building but the lower entrances would also be sealed. And they would now be filled with flammable gas.

I began to run towards the stairs. I got maybe five feet and reached down and ripped off my metal shoes, I couldn’t afford to trip in them. I continued up the stairs.

At the first landing I saw about a half-dozen of the defenders waiting. They all turned their guns on me.

“Don’t you smell that? We’re all about to be bacon! Come on.”

I continued up the stairs and I heard the men following me. After two more flights of stairs they passed by, not worried so much about being shot in the back as being incinerated.

The charges ignited and we could feel the heat. But the gas hadn’t penetrated this far up. I was glad Delovoa had miscalculated—or exaggerated. Still, everything in the building was going to burn and we were going to run out of air even if we weren’t cooked in this metal oven.

We got to the top of the stairs and the roof access, but the door was locked.

The guys were banging on it and kicking it and punching in random numbers trying to guess the combination. I knew that door and didn’t think I could force it open.

“Back up,” I said.

Not everyone did, until I got my autocannon out and pointed it at the door.

I ejected the canister round and put in an armor piercing shell. I pushed the group back some but no one was willing to go down the stairs closer to a fire that was raging upwards.

“Everyone lean against me,” I said.

“What?”

“Push against me or I’ll knock us all down a flight of stairs and probably break half your bones.”

They pushed.

I aimed as best I could at the lock connected to the wall. I then closed my eyes, put down my head, and pulled the trigger.

Kachooom!

Firing the gun on the narrow stairwell caused a terrible shockwave. It felt like someone had opened my skull and hit me directly on the brain with a hammer. I could hear nothing. I had no orientation.

I tried to shake the cobwebs from my head. I looked up and saw the door had been blasted open.

The guys were in bad shape. I might have taken the brunt of an autocannon being fired in close quarters, but I was a lot more able to take it.

I dragged them to their feet by their armor or their necks. Two were unconscious and I had the other guys carry them.

We got onto the roof and into the sweet sweet air.

I walked to the edge of the building and looked down.

There must have been three APCs and countless soldiers. They were just everywhere. In my tele, I ordered a full retreat.

Some of the guys from the stairs came by to watch. I wasn’t worried about them trying to push me off the roof because they couldn’t if they wanted to.

“Is that your corporation?” I asked one.

“Ours? You think we work with them? Why do you think we have so many guards? They’ve been trying to beat us for months.”

It wasn’t Colmarian United Supply. The APC had spotlights and I could vaguely see the pattern on their vehicles was green and white diamonds with some writing I couldn’t make out. Probably something like, “Where the Customer Comes First.”

The thing I wanted to know was how did this other corporation know we were here?

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.”