Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

She organized the various facilities groups into one union and became their leader. So if you needed water, electricity, sewage treatment, or simply not to get sucked out into space, you had to deal with her. She basically had a monopoly for life on a space station, which was an awful good monopoly to possess when you live on a space station.

She was an extremely attractive woman, though a bit hyperactive because her mutation caused her to never sleep. She had short-cropped black hair and a muscular build.

I had dated her for a few months some years ago, but it just didn’t work out. We had professionally worked together for too long and I always thought of her as Garm and not a lady I was dating. We were also both way too headstrong.

I still had fantasies about her now and then. But only like once or five times a week.

“What?” she answered on the tele.

“Did you hear about the Yeolenz Flame?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I told Xominion he should put up safety doors, but he wanted to keep the traffic going. Did the Gandrine do anything?”

“You know, I think they’re still sitting there. I hadn’t thought about it. They did actually notice the building was on fire though.”

“Prodigies, I tell you. Hey, are you alright?” she asked, looking concerned on the tele screen.

“Oh, yeah, I mean it knocked me down and dazed me for a while, but I didn’t get injured.”

“I know that. I saw you fight a Dredel Led robot clear across the city. A little bomb isn’t going to hurt you. But…you know, are you okay?”

“Sure. Though I might have to hit you up for a job. I can like haul stuff, if you don’t mind it being moved slowly.”

“Hold off on that,” she said. “Hey, I need to run to a meeting. And don’t worry about things, something else might come along.”

She gave me a wink and hung up.

The next day, I washed and shaved and dressed. I went into my living room to put on my jacket so I could go out and get something to eat. Right in front of my doorway, two strange women were facing me.

They had absolutely pale skin. Almost pure white. They both had giant manes of silver hair that poofed-up and whose ends practically touched my dirty floor.

They were both athletic without being bulky. I could tell because they wore almost no clothes. They had on what appeared to be metal armor that only covered the tops of their shoulders, their forearms, and knees. It was ornate and polished. They wore bras that seemed to be of a similar design and didn’t look especially comfortable. One wore a bikini bottom while the other had a long loincloth that hung down to her ankles and was highly decorative. They both had on spikey boots that went up to their knees and they had black synth collars around their necks.

“Uh, hello,” I said, quite surprised to find nearly-naked pale women in my apartment.

“Are you named Hank?” one of them asked in a thick accent.

I was still looking them over so I took a moment to respond.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

With that, one of them drew two wickedly-curved daggers from her belt and the other drew a short sword with a serrated blade.

I didn’t even have a moment to say anything before they attacked. All I saw was one do a cartwheel and as I watched that, dumbfounded, the other stabbed me in the neck.

“What are—gack!”

As I tried to respond to the first slice, one woman stabbed me in the mouth. The blade actually poked the back of my throat.

I tried to push it out, but they just bounced and flipped away. One then jumped against my wall and did a somersault and stabbed me on top of the head while the other woman ducked beneath me and got me under my armpit as I was flailing helplessly.

They were moving so quickly I could barely follow. They used their long hair to mask their movements, as it hung in the air or whipped around they would strike.

I reached for my shotgun but not only was it knocked away, they cut off my entire holster.

I started swinging wildly and it was like trying to hit a fly with a tree. I wasn’t even connecting with the air they left behind.

I got stabbed in the ankles, the groin, my navel, my eyes. Finally I felt a dagger go up my rear end and I realized I had to get out of here.

Blades weren’t likely to kill me, but they just might cause some damage I’d rather not have. Covering my face and ears, I tried to make my way deeper into my house.

They sliced up one of my boots and it fell off instantly. They cut me between my toes and I felt a knife go under one of my fingernails. I was bleeding now, not badly, but enough to be concerned. A bomb hadn’t even caused me to bleed and these two had managed it with some silverware.

I finally made it into my bathroom and turned on the light as a matter of habit. I then got down on one knee and leaned against the fixtures.

I ripped my toilet up and water sprayed everywhere.

I held my toilet like a club with my right hand and faced them.

“Come on, you spinny bitches!” I shouted.

Yeah, they could flip around and dance off the walls in my living room, but there was no space for that in my bathroom. I was too slow to catch them with my hands, but I couldn’t miss by swinging a toilet in these confines.

The two of them stayed outside with their blades ready. One was crouched impossibly low to the ground while the other held her two daggers, arms wide.

I don’t know if they paused because they were wondering if they could fight me on the wet tiles of my bathroom, or because they were grossed-out by how seldom I cleaned my toilet.

They both stood up straight and made some very quick, non-verbal communication with each other and sheathed their weapons.

“We would like to hire you,” a pale woman said.

“Yeah, right.”

One of them threw a token into the bathroom. I recoiled at first, wondering if it was some kind of weapon. But I knew tokens. There were 20,000 credits on it. In my doorman job I was paid that about every three months.

“We will pay you 10,000 a week plus expenses. That is a retainer.”

I figured these ladies were assassins. But who would want to assassinate me? I wasn’t important anymore.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked warily. I still held my toilet at the ready.

“We need you to find someone.” The two women alternated speaking. Even their voices were similar.

“Why did you guys attack me?”

“We had to make sure what Garm said about you was true,” she stated simply.

“Garm?” I dropped my toilet. “Did she tell you about my mutations?”

“Yes.”

I was going to have to have a talk with her. Maybe this was what she meant about see what comes up, when I had asked her about a job.

“Who do you want found? I don’t know as many people as I once did.”

One of the women activated her tele and I saw I had a message. I looked at the image they sent me, though I kept one eye on them in case it was a trick. The portrait looked exactly like them.

“Who is this, your sister?”

“Do you mean biologically speaking?”

“No, I mean did you all go to the same sorority,” I answered sarcastically, but they didn’t get the joke. “It won’t be hard finding her if she looks like this.”

“She will almost certainly be disguised,” one said.

“Well then it will be very hard to find someone that doesn’t look like you. Because that’s basically everyone.”

“We know within a week the date of her arrival.”

“Oh.” I thought about that. I knew some people at the port and I could get video records of everyone who checked in. And she had to eat and sleep somewhere. “I might be able to find her. But I need more money. You all made me break my bathroom. And I’m a bit upset you attacked me.”