Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap (18 page)

After a long train ride I stepped
into the Belvaille Gentleman’s Club and my first thought was that the toilets
had overflowed again. There were people standing three across in the hallway.

But then they spotted me and it
turned into everyone calling out my name, tugging on me, patting me on the
back, and telling me how great I was.

Krample, the coat check, almost
exploded.

“You! You son of a bitch, this
isn’t your private meeting hall. Get these people out of here!”

I ignored him and continued
walking. After about ten feet I already had a headache.

The Gentleman’s Club was a huge
building, one of the original ten story structures. From what I could tell it
was currently packed with scumbags and lowlifes.

This was yet another instance of me
not thinking things through. How was I possibly going to hire this many people?
Let alone equip. Let alone pay.

My first instinct, and I thought it
was a pretty good one, was to leave. Maybe I could take out another ad in
The
News
and simply tell them where to attack. Be like a real general and run
this from the sidelines.

I fought my way up to the cafeteria
and it was the same. The whole club was like this. Guys were stuffed into every
room.

A few times I tried telling people
to shut up so I could think, but that didn’t work. It just became a hundred
people yelling at everyone else to shut up so I could think and them yelling
back.

This was why I left the Navy—or was
never in it. And why I never wanted to be a boss. Organizing things was
stressful.

I couldn’t even order any food
because they had eaten it all. All of it! As far as I was concerned one of the
only reasons to go to the Gentleman’s Club was to eat.

Wait, I’m a multimillionaire boss.

“You,” I said, pointing at a random
guy. “Go get me four orders of chocko stix at Martha’s Bottle.”

He sprang to attention and pushed
his way through the crowd to fulfill the order.

“What? What’d he say? He’s hungry.
Hank’s hungry!”

About another dozen men took off,
presumably trying to kiss up and get me more food. Which was fine.

But this was impossible. I couldn’t
possibly do this all by myself. So I took a page from the gangs and from the
military.

“You. You’re now a captain.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re an…enforcer, first
class.”

“Thanks!”

“And you’re a facilitator.”

“Can I be an enforcer?”

“You’re not anything, now.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

I basically made officers of anyone
I knew and sort of trusted within pointing range. I would work out what it all
meant later. But I needed some organization.

It was a cute concept to be rebels
marching to our own tune, but there couldn’t be 800 such people. Not when we
were going to be armed with heavy weapons and fighting a real corporate military.

After about three hours I was absolutely
exhausted.

I ate too much food for one thing
and I wanted to lie down.

I had minted thirty-five brand new
officers whose titles signified nothing. They were already arguing over who was
higher rank.

There were, at last count, 437
people who wanted to enlist in my army. I needed more. Even though I had
nothing to equip them with, no way to get them around, and no way of
determining if they were right for the job or were even likely to show up. They
could be junkies from Deadsouth for all I knew.

There were people who were clearly
not right. They were old, fat, crooked even by my standards. I had a fear that
half of them would run away as soon as the fighting started.

What a nightmare.

Bronze slipped through the crowd
and appeared in front of me with his wonderful smile.

“Hank! Man, took me an hour to get in.
There’s people backed into the street.”

“Bronze, what are you doing here?”

“Hoping for a job.”

He saw me thinking about it.

“Come on, Hank, I’ve been asking. I
can shoot a gun. Not great, but I can.”

I sighed. He was probably better
than half the guys around me. None of them were dating Garm, however.

“Alright,” I said reluctantly.

Four of my officers jockeyed with
each other to take down Bronze’s information.

I saw Delovoa getting elbowed and
pushed around in the mass of hairy arms.

“Ah, Colonel Delovoa!” I bellowed.

The tide parted and Delovoa was
promptly dropped on the ground. He was helped to his feet just as quickly. His
three eyes were spinning.

Some of my ad hoc officers saluted.
Poorly.

“We need to talk about supplies and
strategy and stuff,” I said as importantly as possible.

I moved to escort him out of the
building.

“I just walked through all that,”
Delovoa complained.

“I’ll be back tomorrow to continue
recruiting,” I yelled to the crowd. “Tell your friends.”

On the train Delovoa and I talked.

“The corporation is offering you a
lot of nice things, but none of them are crew-served weapons,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Weapons capable of taking out a
lot of enemies at a time
or
taking out heavily armored vehicles. Things
like recoilless rifles and mortars.”

“I don’t think those guys can use
any of that stuff. I don’t think half of them have used a pistol.”

“They’ll have to learn if you want
to fight a corporation in their own territory. Harsh language and body odor aren’t
going to stop a reactive armor tank.”

“I blew up one tank already,” I
bragged.

“You didn’t blow up a tank. That
was an APC.”

“No, the second one. The one that
put me in the hospital. It had a gun just like mine.”

“If it had an autocannon it wasn’t
a tank. It was an armored fighting vehicle. Your gun wouldn’t do anything to a
tank.”

“I thought you said it could shoot
through the weak side of one.”

He shrugged.

“That was just basement talk,” he
said, as if that explained everything.

“What?” I was annoyed. What if I
had fought a true tank and found my gun did nothing? “Alright, this is real
talk. I have to attack in three months. Do you think I can get them trained in
time on those big weapons you were talking about?”

“Doesn’t matter if they aren’t
offering you any. But no, I don’t think you can. You’ll have trouble getting
them trained on the basics like how to move without killing each other.”

“Then what do you suggest we use to
fight armored vehicles, Colonel?”

“Pyrotechnics. Everyone understands
fire.”

“They left,” Cad teled me as I was
walking.

“Who left?”

“The Gandrine.”

“Were they ever back at my
apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you need to tell me that,” I
said, annoyed.

“They were back. But they’re
leaving now.”

“Follow them.”

He was drunk. But I didn’t suppose
you needed to be very sober to follow Gandrine.

A luxury car drove up next to me
and the window went down. Garm was in back.

“Get in,” she said.

“How is it that everyone knows
where I’m at?” I threw my arms up in frustration.

“You live here, right?” she asked,
not understanding.

“Yeah, but how did you know?”

She blinked a few times, stuck her
head out the window, and pointed behind me.

I looked up the street a bit and
there was a sign that designated this as Hank Block.

“Who put that there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t your people do all the
signs?”

“Yeah, but it’s not as if I check
on each one. There are a lot of signs in the city.”

“How did they know I moved?”

“Just get in.”

Garm’s car had a lot of room,
though my autocannon still didn’t fit well. There was a partition between the
driver and us. When we were moving she explained:

“I need you to help me with a
strike.”

“I can’t, I’m already trying to
organize one.”

“No, stupid, not that kind of
strike. A labor one.”

“Oh. Well, I’m busy.”

“I know. And you didn’t tell me
about it, you didn’t tell me Bronze was cheating on me, and you let him enlist
in your suicide attack. So you’re going to do this before you die or before I
kill you for doing all that other stuff.”

I pondered that.

“So what do you need?”

“The Electromagnet Workers Union is
striking.”

“Against who?”

“Me, dummy.”

“Don’t they work for you?”

She sighed and put her chin on her
chest for a moment.

“Yes. That’s why it’s a strike.”

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know. The usual junk. More
money, less work.”

“How do you expect me to help? This
isn’t really my thing.”

“Didn’t you used to negotiate
between gangs for like…a thousand years or something? Did you forget how
already?”

“Oh, I thought I had to know
something about magnets.”

“It doesn’t matter what they do,”
she said, frustrated.

“I’m sure it matters or you
wouldn’t be talking to me.”

“Of course, but you don’t need to
know the specifics. Without them, we would all die. There, simple.”

“Well that’s true for like half of
the services under you, right?”

“Yes. But these are the first to
demand more. If I give in, they’ll all do the same.”

“So you want me to kill them?”

“I think your brain is hardening
like that technician said. Why would I want you to kill my highly-trained
workers? This isn’t a gang fight, it’s a negotiation.”

“Then how much are you willing to
give them?”

“Nothing.”

“This is going to be a really short
or really long negotiation. Where are we driving?”

“To City Hall to talk to them. I
have a meeting scheduled.”

“Isn’t this the kind of tactic you
use on the corporations and gangs?” I asked her. “Refuse service if they don’t
agree to pay.”

“Yes.”

Apparently she did not see the
irony. Or didn’t care.

At City Hall I dragged out my
autocannon and secured it on my back. I followed Garm to her private elevator and
up to the eighth floor.

The halls were packed with pudgy,
technical-looking guys who gave Garm dirty looks as she walked. There were a
lot of them, that’s for sure.

In the conference room five of the
pudgier technocrats sat sweating at a table. Their clothes were ill-fitting and
fashionable maybe half a century ago on a planet with no fashion sense.

There were also a dozen bodyguards
in the room looking mean. I could tell they weren’t Garm’s because she forced
all her people to wear uniforms.

“I see you felt it necessary to try
and intimidate us, Adjunct Overwatch,” one of the seated men said with a sneer.

“I haven’t held that title in some
time as you know and Hank is here as a negotiator,” Garm said plainly. “He has
a lot of experience in these matters.”

“Why is he armed?” another asked.

“The same reason you have all these
thugs,” she said.

“First off, who here is coming with
me to attack the corporation?” I said to the aforementioned thugs.

Two guys tentatively raised their
hands.

“You either work for me or them.
I’m not going to pay you to shoot me. If you work for me, get out of here,” I
said.

They chewed that question for a bit
and remained where they were. So I just lost two soldiers. But that also meant
they were either getting paid more than 30,000 or they liked the odds here more
than for my mission. Either way didn’t bode well for these talks.

The fat men grinned, their jowls
making it look like forty smiles were mocking my failure.

“Sit down, Garm,” I said.

I wanted to put her on equal
footing with the union. She pulled her chair far out and sat at an angle. Her
knees bounced around as she sat, like a hyper child’s.

“So what are you requesting?” I
made the mistake of asking the union.

Forty minutes later they were done
and I was bored silly. I had tried sitting down myself, felt the chair giving
way, so I sat against the wall, putting my autocannon next to me.

I couldn’t understand the details
of the demands, but the union obviously wasn’t very good at diplomacy. They
seemed to be asking for anything and everything that could possibly be given.
They
nearly
asked for a quadrillion percent raise, Belvaille to be named
after them, everyone to become their personal slaves, and Garm to tuck them
into bed each night and bake them cookies.

Garm’s face was red. It took every
ounce of her control to not beat these guys to death.

“Gentlemen,” I began, downcast,
“those requests are asinine.”

They then went on a rant about how
important they were and how the station would cease to exist without their
expertise. Garm jumped in and told them how she had organized them in the first
place and given them positions of influence instead of glorified maintenance
roles.

“Is anyone hungry?” I interrupted.

They all looked at me like I was
crazy.

“I’m hungry, let’s order some
food,” I continued.

“Hank—” Garm began.

“Are you mocking us?” a fat man
asked.

“No, I’m hungry. Are you hungry?” I
asked the guard next to me.

He nodded. Thugs were always
hungry.

“You’re trying to distract us,” one
of the magneteers bellowed.

“I’m trying to eat,” I countered.

“He’s always eating,” Garm agreed.

“Forgive me for being hungry. I
didn’t know I was going to be babysitting today.”

Cries of outrage! Some of them
actually pulled themselves to their feet. That was all the excuse Garm needed
to pop up and begin yelling back.

The guards in the room were either not
anxious for a fight or were waiting for the free meal I had hinted at.

One of the engineers at the end of
the table stood and banged a tool on the table. It got everyone to quiet down a
bit.

“This is what they want,” he said
to his comrades. “Get us riled and bloodthirsty. Look at him sitting there.
That’s Hank. If we lose control they’re going to kill us and say it was
self-defense, and then deal with all those scared members out there,” he said,
pointing to the door.

Wasn’t a bad idea, though I hadn’t
thought of it. He faced Garm now.

“If you don’t meet our demands, we
won’t strike, but we’ll slow down and make mistakes and you’ll never know if it
was intentional or an accident.”

This was a difficult situation. It
wasn’t like a gang negotiation because they weren’t a gang. We couldn’t just
threaten to beat them up or they wouldn’t work well. They had to want the deal
but I also had to make Garm happy.

I walked over to whisper to Garm.

“Come on, what can you give them?”

“Nothing,” she said flatly.

“Can’t imagine why you’re single,”
I jabbed.

“You are too,” she said without
missing a beat.

“Guys,” I started in my most
pleasant voice. “The way I see it, you got it pretty damn good. You’re bleeding
the corporations, the gangs, the businesses. If any of them go up or down it
doesn’t matter to you.”

They mumbled and muttered and
disagreed.

“But,” I said, “if you start
raising your prices, you might kill your own monopoly. You exist because no one
is bothered enough to compete with you. I don’t do this a lot, but let me tell
you a bit about what the corporations did for me. You,” I said, pointing to one
of my former soldiers, “what was I paying you?”

“Uh, thirty thousand,” he said.

“For a few night’s work. And you
know how many people I’m looking to hire? Five thousand!” I lied.

Silence in the room as they added
that up. It didn’t take them long, smart bastards.

“Right,” I continued. “They paid in
full after a ten minute conversation. I got the money now. All of it. Do you
really think you’re so important that they can’t replace you? They can’t hire a
thousand of you at a moment’s notice? They just haven’t gotten around to it.
Don’t give them an excuse.”

“How do we know you aren’t lying?”
one of them asked.

“I’m advertising all over the
place!” I turned to the guards for confirmation and while they didn’t openly
agree, it was obvious. “It’s not a secret. Here, this is the money I have for
weapons, armor, gear, clothes, and vehicles.” I punched up my tele. “The rest
for salaries hasn’t been transferred from my bank because I don’t need it yet.”

I threw my tele on the table where
they could see my statement. Even Garm looked over. They were as impressed as I
had been. It was an insane amount of money.

“You guys have dream jobs. Why
would you ever risk giving it up by making the corporations do a cost analysis
of your work?”

They seemed to digest all this
slowly. Maybe I wasn’t such a bad liar.

A few hours later I was strutting
along to the car with Garm.

Garm was not happy, but it was her
howls of protest that helped close the deal. I made her give the union five
extra days of vacation a year.

I didn’t think they would agree to
end the strike unless they thought they were getting a good deal. They didn’t
know that Garm would have expressed the same outrage if she had been forced to
give them one second of vacation.

Both sides equally miserable. That
to me was the sign of a successful deal.