Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

“I don’t know.”

“Then why did you make me run? Do you have random sirens in your house?”

“I sell alarms, remember? I got all kinds of warning systems in my basement. I don’t remember what those particular ones indicate. But I don’t have any alarms that warn me of good things.”

“So what could it be? Someone broke in?”

“No, no. Poison gas. Biological agents. It has to be something unusual or I would have heard it before.”

“I bet it was those Quadrad when they kissed me,” I said, wiping my lips hard. “It was probably poison.”

After a while we braved going into his kitchen, where we could hear the sirens screaming up at us.

“Shouldn’t you know what your own alarms are for?” I asked him.

“Do you know what all the muscles on your body are for?”

“Huh? Was it Toby decomposing that triggered it? He smelled pretty bad.”

“Doubtful.”

“Are we safe up here?”

“Let me know if you feel light-headed or confused.”

“What? So we’re going to wait until we start to die? You’re like my medical technician.”

“Shh. Listen.”

The siren was warping. It was being distorted. As if someone large were bashing the horn making the noise.

“That’s ominous,” I said.

“There’s some hazardous clean-up suits we can get. I sold them to the city. I think that will protect us.”

“You think? Are we going to go down there and die?”

“If it was coming from the body we already pushed it here and breathed in everything.”

That was true.

“I pushed it. You just walked beside me.”

“Let’s get the suits and I can find out what alarm went off. If it’s super dangerous, we’ll leave.”

“Why do I have to go down with you? I don’t know your alarms.”

“It’s the buddy system.”

“I’m not your buddy,” I said defiantly.

We looked like we were about to step out into deep space exploration in our brilliant orange suits. They only had one suit on the whole station that fit me and it didn’t fit that well.

“Remember,” Delovoa warned, “if you step wrong in that, your weight will tear the suit and then you’ll be exposed.”

“So why am I going?” I complained.

“Because you’re probably immune to whatever it is anyway and you need to carry me out if I start getting sick.”

I grumbled but watched where I walked.

Our visibility was cut by about 75%.

The alarm in his apartment was silent.

“That could be good or bad or neither. Either the danger has passed, the danger has destroyed the sensors, or the batteries ran out.”

In the basement we lifted Toby to Delovoa’s examination bed. It was a lot easier the second time, when we were in airtight suits, fearing for our lives.

We couldn’t tell which sensors had been tripped because he had a million and they were all silent now.

Delovoa started scanning. I took a few steps back to be safe.

“Look,” Delovoa said.

I came over and peeped through the scanner.

“Why do you always show me this stuff and think I’ll know what it means?”

“The face. That’s why there isn’t much decomposition, it’s covered.”

“What’s he covered with?”

“That’s not a he.”

“Are you sure?”

Delovoa turned to look at me. I could only see two of his eyes but I was pretty sure he was giving me a nasty expression.

“I just can’t understand what tripped my sensors,” he said.

“Is it this?”

I held up a metal cylinder about eight inches long and a few inches wide.

“Where’d you get that?”

“I just frisked her.”

Delovoa started to scan it. Suddenly he jumped away as fast as his suit would let him.

“Yow, that thing is pouring out every band of radiation and antiprotons! That will eat through our suits.”

I put it on the table.

“Do you think it could be a converted a-drive?”

He thought about that.

“I don’t know.”

Which had to be a first for Delovoa to ever admit.

“Can you tell how she was killed? I’m guessing this is the other Quadrad.”

Without even checking, Delovoa answered.

“She was likely killed by that device. Anyone is going to die holding onto that thing unshielded for too long.”

“So she wasn’t assassinated.”

“She might have been.”

“It’s really important to be sure, Delovoa. I have to know if the corporation was aware she was here and she had this device.”

“Well, get that thing out of the way and I’ll look.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“Because you’re probably safe from the radiation and you have a lot of protons to annihilate.”

I looked around and found a piece of metal rebar about eight feet long. I fumbled with it and managed to flick the device onto the floor. I then pushed it against the far wall.

“That’s it,” Delovoa said sarcastically, “just knock an a-drive core onto my metal floor. Nothing bad could come from that.”

When it was sufficiently far away, he gingerly went back to scanning Toby—well, the pale sister.

“I don’t see anything obvious that would indicate she was shot or stabbed. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t murdered another way. However, if she was killed by the device I’m not going to be able to see it with this equipment. How did you know she was the Quadrad?”

“I didn’t. But he, or she, had been dead outside my door a long time ago, about when the Quadrad had first come. They had said she was looking for the Naked Guy and Garm told them I would know how to find him. Zadeck had said she visited me and everyone agreed she would be disguised. So I was guessing.”

“Now what?”

“Now you figure out how to turn a malfunctioning a-drive core into a disintegrator.”

I got a call from Zadeck, of all people.

I bet he was concerned the station was filling with Therezians. Wallow wasn’t nearly as unique. I said I would meet him on the very reasonable condition that Wallow didn’t harass or try to kill me.

He agreed.

On Zadeck Street the foot traffic was a tiny fraction of what it normally was.

I saw Wallow in the distance and braced myself. I hoped this wasn’t a set-up. I reached for the General’s Ontakian pistol.

Wallow was above me before I could even draw the weapon. He turned on his heel and escorted me down the street, standing erect.

He was my bodyguard!

“Move!” He shouted to anyone daring to be within thirty feet of me.

They moved.

We reached Zadeck’s headquarters and Wallow turned and stood watch. The bouncers opened the door with a small bow.

Finally, a little respect.

Zadeck met me in the main room. Other than when I kidnapped him, I think this was the only time I saw him out of his office.

“Hank, good of you to come. Please follow me.”

We walked back to his office and he asked if I wanted any food or drink.

Yes to both.

As I sat on his luxurious chairs stuffing my face, he wore a beatific grin.

“So,” he began casually, “a lot of Therezians here.”

I didn’t see any need to keep secrets. And who knew, maybe he could help.

“From Thereze,” I said, spitting some food on the carpet by accident.

“Thereze? How?”

“Portal.”

“The Portals are disabled I was told.”

“Portal southwest. In the street.”

“They brought in thirty Therezians by hand?”

I paused eating.

“Thirty? Who said thirty?”

“My men counted.”

“They sure?”

“They are Therezians. Difficult, I would say, to miscount.”

That meant they were accelerating. I had been worried about eight.