Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

“What, does he think we won’t follow him?” Cad asked.

“I guess he wants to try and sneak a free round of gambling,” Balday-yow said.

“I’ll get him,” I grumbled, as I headed inside.

He shouldn’t be hard to find. He was the only person wearing a helmet. I suppose I should keep better track of the corporations. They all wear different patterns and colors, but to me they were all the same. I’ve never worked for them and they’ve never asked.

As I headed deeper into the casino there was suddenly an enormous explosion that knocked me flat on my back!

My head was ringing and my vision blurred. After a while, I managed to get back on my feet and clear my senses.

Belvaille might be the dumpiest space station in the most pathetic empire in the galaxy, but the buildings were meant to last. Almost every building’s exterior walls were two feet thick of steel alloy. The interior walls were generally much thinner, but still considerable.

The bomb had not damaged the roof that I could see, but the entire inside of the casino was gutted.

I did not hear any moans but I saw casualties. In fact, I was reasonably sure that nearly everyone who had been in the main room was no longer living.

I stared at the destruction completely dumbstruck.

Why would anyone do this?

“Building on fire!” I heard someone behind me shout.

I turned around and still sitting there, unmoved, were the Gandrine. I looked at them for what seemed like minutes, not sure if one had spoken, or I had just imagined it. Finally, the other one spoke:

“Yes!”

I walked home considerably depressed.

The corpse was still on my stairs. Somehow I had expected it to be gone. But I dealt with enough death today and I wasn’t looking for any more.

I went inside my apartment and turned off my tele so no one could call me.

My apartment was spacious for my needs. I had two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, one bath. I didn’t have a lot of stuff even though I had lived on Belvaille longer than nearly anyone. Almost a century and a half at this point.

I sat on my sofa and stared blankly at the dull silver wall in front of me.

I didn’t have a lot of money, maybe six months of savings. There was a time when I had been a multi-millionaire. That used to be a lot of money. Now I bet Belvaille had multi-billionaires.

Belvaille was located at the very edge of the Colmarian Confederation and very nearly the edge of the galaxy. Over a few centuries the station had become a backwater hideout for unsavory types on account of us being so far away.

But seven years ago some idiot had negotiated a deal with the Navy to turn Belvaille into an Independent Protectorate overseen by the Colmarian Confederation.

That idiot was me.

All the things that had once been illegal and ignored because of our vast distance and irrelevance, consequently became legal. I thought this change was going to be a boon for the criminal gangs that had long made their homes on Belvaille.

I suppose it was, but not for those of us who lived here.

When everyone learned that you could now manufacture, ship, buy, sell, goods and services that were illegal in the Colmarian Confederation, legally from this space station, there was a huge influx of people hoping to capitalize on our unique situation.

The number of turf wars increased dramatically and things got really bloody. I sat out the drama for a few years by selling one of my prized possessions to a collector and living off the proceeds.

When we thought everything had finally settled down, the corporations came. A big gang might have once had a hundred or so people working for it. But these corporations had millions of employees all over the galaxy.

Some of those employees were soldiers they sent to Belvaille. They probably had university degrees in Ballistic Weapon Application and Proper Posture. They were a whole different breed.

The smart gang bosses quickly sold out or took subservient roles. The ones who didn’t were absolutely crushed in the most efficient means possible.

Because not even murder was illegal on Belvaille anymore.

We technically had a government, but it was run by the corporations. And they weren’t about to arrest themselves.

The scales had changed so dramatically so quickly and it was impossible to go back. No one had openly blamed me for the changes, but I blamed myself.

The very boundaries of Belvaille had even changed. The corporations ran out of manufacturing space on the station so they brought maybe twenty or so gigantic freighters out here and anchored them to Belvaille with long cables, thus making them “part” of our city. You couldn’t walk to them of course, but they were apparently cranking out illegal goods.

At some point, I wondered if Belvaille would look like a fat spider sitting on a vast web of attached facilities.

Before all these changes took place I was once a highly sought-after bagman, fixer, and gang negotiator. Now I was lucky to be a doorman. And even that was over. I just let my employer, and his business, get destroyed by a bomb while I worked as security. That’s not exactly an endorsement for my efficiency.

I felt terrible for all the people who had died tonight, but on the other hand, what could I have done? I wasn’t fast enough to have stopped that guy before he ran in. Even if I had my gun out and immediately shot him, his armor probably would have deflected it.

And the guy killed himself with that bomb! This was just a whole other type of warfare than what I was used to.

Gang fights in the past could get dirty. People died all the time. I’ve killed more people than I’d like to admit. But there was still decorum to it. Even a sense of camaraderie. Because we all knew we were roughly the same kind of people: lower class garbage not welcome in Colmarian Confederation proper.

Due to corporations trying to consolidate their power and protect their investments, there were tanks driving on the streets of Belvaille. Tanks!

It wasn’t that I couldn’t compete with corporations, my skin was stronger than any body armor they had. It was that I didn’t want to.

I always heard about old people not being able to hack it at some point. And I’d seen that often in my line of work. The thugs with white hair stopped being thugs and became bartenders or apprenticed with counterfeiters or smugglers. Too many stab wounds or gunshots and you had to find a new line of work.

But I had never really heard about hitting a certain age and not wanting to hack it. I didn’t want to join a corporation and stand around in the back of trucks or guard some manufacturing plant. Punch my timecard and take my orders from a nameless entity ten thousand light years away.

I used to want to know about all the latest guns and locks and gimmicks and who worked for which gang. Now I really didn’t give a damn.

Was I just antiquated? Or had the game changed too much for my comfort zone?

Many of my old friends had left Belvaille or had been killed in the conflicts over the last years. The only reason I was still here and alive was because I was too stupid or stubborn to leave and I was bulletproof. If Cad or Balday-yow had gone inside instead of me when that bomb went off they would have died along with everyone else.

But my mutation wasn’t going to save me forever. Bullets and bombs were one thing but if a tank wanted me dead, I wasn’t going to have much say in the matter.

I turned on my tele and saw I had no messages. It was just instinct for me to turn it off when I didn’t want to be bothered. But there was no one left to bother me. A bomb blew up a casino and it was no big deal.

I called Garm.

Garm was a young woman who had once worked for the Colmarian Navy and been the official Adjunct Overwatch of the station, and thus kind of like our mayor. She was one of the few people who kept her position of influence despite all the adjustments.