Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years Read Free Page B

eightieth birthday, easily half the lifespan
of the average person.
    I chose to flee instead.
    I hopped a few dozen transports, changed my name
a half dozen times, and ended up in the last place anyone would ever find me:
Belvaille.
    So now I was the last of my line. The flag
bearer. The patriarch.
    I wasn’t sure if the Navy had sent me this
package as a kind of notice that I should come back and take my place on the
front lines, or if it was just a bureaucratic procedure.
    In any case, I didn’t care.
    It sucked that my father was dead, but me dying
right behind him wouldn’t undeaden him any. I had never seen him much in life
because he was always off doing Navy stuff, of which he never told me anything.
    But I can be pretty sure his activities didn’t
involve tooting a horn in a band.
     
    It was shortly after this that I found myself
in my first gang war.
    “Why me?” I asked. “I’ve never even met him.”
    “Doesn’t matter, they’ve declared war on us,”
my friend said.
    “They probably figure taking you out will hurt
us most. And it would,” Mordi Mudanus said.
    Mordi Mudanus was a fat man with stubby legs,
an enormous round belly, and freakishly long arms. His hands hung past his
knees. He wore what fine clothes he could get, but he only had a few vests that
could fit his girth. Belvaille had no good tailors as of yet.
    The gangs didn’t really know how to fight wars.
    They were very stilted affairs which reflected our
lack of manpower and dearth of real hard-nosed criminals at this time.
    One side would tell the other side they were
going to war with them. The reasons. The terms. And would print a list of what
they were actually going to attack.
    I was at the top of the list.
    “I quit,” I said.
    “You can’t quit,” Mordi Mudanus answered.
    “Watch me.”
    “They’ll kill you anyway.”
    “Why?”
    “Because they’ll just assume you’ll join back
up after the war is over.”
    “Then I’ll tell them I won’t.”
    “And they’ll kill you when you show up.”
    I came to Belvaille to avoid dying in the Navy
and I managed to get on a kill list in a fraction of the time.
    “Then what do we do?”
    “What guns do you all have?” he asked us.
    “Guns? None,” I said.
    “What do you carry on your deliveries?” Mordi
Mudanus asked.
    “A crowbar.”
    “What do you carry?” he asked my
gangmate.
    “A nail gun,” he said.
    “Right, I open the crates, he closes them,” I
explained. “We do deliveries, we’re not mercenaries.”
    Mordi Mudanus was exasperated.
    “What do you carry?” he asked our last comrade.
    “I push the dolly.”
    “So my security doesn’t have any weapons?”
Mordi Mudanus asked.
    We stared at our shoes.
    “Go get some guns!” He bellowed.
     
    It was not easy to buy weapons on Belvaille in
those days. There wasn’t a big need for them, they were heavy and bulky and
thus expensive to transfer in space freighters. Their ammunition was even
worse. No one actually manufactured guns on the station yet.
    Word must have also gotten out that we were at
war and my name was on the list.
    “Five hundred credits?” I asked.
    “Take it or leave it,” the dealer said smugly.
    He wanted 500 for a tiny little two shot pistol
that was half the size of my palm and whose muzzle velocity was so low that if
it got any slower the bullet would travel backwards.
    “Screw you. I’ll remember this next time you
need something,” I said.
    “You’re assuming you’ll still be alive,” he
replied.
    I was getting worried.
    I had a crowbar against an entire gang. And I
wasn’t even proficient with the bar at opening crates. I can’t imagine I’d be
some great martial artist.
    I was walking back to our office when I heard
shouting. I turned just in time to see two men across the street aim their
firearms at me.
    Oh, crap!
    One had a pistol and the other a long barreled
shotgun perfect for duck hunting.
    Before I could move, the guy with the pistol
fired right next to