Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

“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.”

Over the last week I had successfully found everyone from the passenger list except three women. One I could immediately cross off because no amount of disguises would make her that old and large. The ship had to scan everyone who boarded and they would notice an inflatable body suit.

The other two women were listed as “courtesans” for occupation. I didn’t know if that was a nice word for prostitute since I couldn’t really think of any courty stuff you could do on Belvaille.

I looked at the records of the women closely. Either of them could be the pale sister.

As I walked to my apartment, I saw the Gandrine were back. They had been gone for a few days and I had hoped they had gotten bored of my stairs.

“Afternoon, everyone,” I said, walking past them.

Inside there was the terrible racket of grinding metal.

I peeked into my bathroom to see how the plumbers were doing.

One of the men, face covered with a protective mask, saw me and anxiously tapped the other plumber working the metal saw that was currently digging into my wall.

They turned off the machine, took off their masks, and stood facing me with a look of apprehension.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked.

“Great! Great, Hank. We should be finished in about three hours at the most,” one said.

“So you’ll be able to get my toilet back in?”

“Yeah, no problem. We’ll even reinforce it so it will be less likely to slide out from under you again.”

“It didn’t…alright, fine. How much will all this cost?”

The plumbers looked at each other worriedly.

“We figured, for all the good stuff you done for Belvaille,” one began.

“We’d do it for free,” the other finished.

“Look. Guys. I know there’s some stuff outside my apartment. But I didn’t have anything to do with that.” My voice rose at the end of the sentence like I was about to say what really happened. But then I realized if I told them it would sound stupid. So I just stood there.

They waited for me to continue. But seeing that I didn’t, they quickly filled the void.

“Oh, totally!” One plumber said. “That’s what I was telling him.”

“We both said it,” the other agreed. “We figured…” And he didn’t have anything to add either. Like three corpses magically appeared and two Gandrine randomly chose my house to sit in front of.

“Right. So I’ll leave you guys to it,” I said.

Courtesans.

I didn’t know any courtesans. Of course it was just something they wrote on their ingress statement. The other Quadrad had called themselves tourists, so it wasn’t the most accurate of forms.

I sat in a restaurant waiting for the best definition of a courtesan I knew.

Tejj-jo was the most beautiful woman on the station, at least in my estimation. And I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. She had been the moll, doll, mistress of maybe a half-dozen gang bosses and other luminaries over the years.

To me, she was far too attractive.

Everyone had their type. What they find to be dating material. And there’s damn little you can do about it. I liked cute and pretty. But Tejj-jo really was beautiful. She looked like artwork. And while that’s great and all to look at, I had as much desire to touch or kiss her as I did any artwork.

It was 4:48pm and she was supposed to meet me here at 4:00.

I was a bit surprised she had agreed to meet me with so little convincing. Our last talk hadn’t been especially smooth.

She finally came in the door at 4:57, which I guess was just enough that she could say she wasn’t an hour late.

She had extremely long auburn hair, which was one of her trademarks. Though instead of any kind of styling, it fell like water from her head without a single ripple. She had a great body that was not fully concealed under her fur coat. She was tall, taller than I was, and walked like you imagined artwork would walk.

Everyone in the restaurant watched her enter.

She approached my table, saw me, and immediately started laughing hysterically.

I looked around, wiped my face—as I had eaten while I was waiting—but she kept on going.

People were starting to notice and looked at me to see what was so amusing. Even her laugh was attractive.

“What?” I asked.

But she just kept going. She was holding her stomach at this point and she had tears rolling down her face. At first I thought she might be mocking me or pretending, but no one could fake laughing like that.

I drummed my fingers on the table waiting for her to stop.

She finally approached, not to sit, but to rest against the table.

“So how are you doing?” I asked.

And that kicked the laughing up another notch. She was about to cause herself internal bleeding any moment.

After what seemed like hours, with the restaurant all gawking, she managed to point at me.

“This?” I said, following her finger. “It’s a helmet.”

She exploded! She fell to her knees laughing at my cap. I was still wearing it because I didn’t want any monster soldiers to attack me and so far it had worked.