Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years
Read Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years Online
Authors: Steven Campbell
HARD LUCK HANK
Delovoa & Early Years
by
Steven Campbell
Cover Art by Konstantinos Skenteridis
All images and content Copyright ©
2014 Steven Campbell
All rights reserved.
DULTZ LOST HIS LEGS
Belvaille was created by a huge construction
team.
People and companies who knew how to
manufacture buildings and roads and electrical grids and every other thing that
went into a space station. When they were done, they left and the people to
maintain those systems came and took over.
Organa Dultz was part of the construction team.
He helped build the sewers of Belvaille. But unlike everyone else, he stayed to
maintain them.
So he was, in essence, Belvaille’s first
citizen.
It was appropriate that the first citizen of
Belvaille had responsibilities encompassing poop and pee.
I came to Belvaille a few years after it was
officially open. It was the most remote place I could find and I hoped no one
would bother me here.
Organa Dultz was my boss.
The sewers, despite their technological
sophistication, still had a lot of grunt work involved.
And that’s where I came in. I unstuck blocked
pipes; I monitored usage and routed the flow; I performed minor fixes; and I
carried equipment. I carried lots of equipment. That was probably the bulk of
my job, pushing carts full of materials under the surface of Belvaille.
The only time I was above ground was after my
work day was over.
Everything was difficult on a space station.
Keeping your air circulating. Keeping your gravity in place. But the sewage
needs of a city in space were no less difficult.
The waste was truly waste and there was no room
to store it on the station.
It was frozen and jettisoned at speed from the
western end of Belvaille so it wouldn’t interfere with ships at the port in the
east or disrupt use of the telescopes in the north.
I was told it was frozen first because if it
stayed liquid, once exposed to space it would behave strangely, including crystalizing
all over the tubes and side of the station and it would be hell to get off. The
idea was to make it so many meteors which could be safely launched away.
But ships still had to be aware of their
trajectory, called the ‘Golden Road,’ or else they might run into great blocks
of frozen sewage while they were exploring.
Belvaille was, originally, designed to be the
base for further expansion across the galaxy.
Intrepid space pioneers and adventurers lived
on Belvaille. They had charters from the Colmarian Confederation to colonize
and mine and explore and reap all the rewards that could be reaped from the
vast riches of space.
None of the buccaneers and explorers had made
any money other than what the Colmarian Confederation paid them. Belvaille was too
far away from anything. Unless new Portals were created into deeper space,
which wasn’t going to happen, Belvaille was completely isolated.
All these wild explorers who were getting money
from the government had nothing to actually do. It would take tens of thousands
of years to reach any planets from Belvaille and there were no asteroids anyone
could find.
People spent a lot of time sitting around
getting drunk, and gambling, and going to clubs. Word got out across the empire
that there was money to be made and criminals came to make it.
What had started out as a bright city of
exploration at the edge of the galaxy quickly became a corrupt city of vice.
I kept pushing poop.
“Hank, where’s that pump?” Organa Dultz called
on my tele.
“Coming.”
“And bring three respirators. We got some
fractures.”
Organa Dultz was a short man, maybe five feet
tall, stocky and muscular. I cursed him for his body, because the entire sewer
system was his height. Every minute of my work day I was spent hunched over.
I was pretty agile and I didn’t get tired
easily and I was of course strong. So despite lacking any training whatsoever,
I was a good sewer technician.
I stood with Organa Dultz and another guy, up
to our ankles in dirty water, trying to fix some pipes.
For all his knowledge of sewer systems, and it
honestly did seem vast, Belvaille’s poop-works were constantly failing. I
wasn’t sure if that was normal or we were a special case or it had been
designed poorly.
“Put a patch on that. No, weld it.”
“I can’t see the break,” I said.
“Here,” Organa Dultz said, pushing me aside.
One. Two. Three. And it was done. It was so
fast I didn’t even see how he did it.
He fixed the other breaks, we pumped out the
water, and the system was whole for another day.
We had special showers in our offices we could
use to hose down and decontaminate.
I had long ago gotten used to the smell. But
when we went out together after work, we usually had our own section to
ourselves.
“What’s glocken?” I asked, responding to his
previous question, as we sat drinking in a bar.
“You’re kidding. You don’t know what glocken
is?” Organa Dultz asked, shocked.
My other co-workers at our table shook their
heads disapprovingly.
“It’s only the most skill-based sport in all of
sports! There are two balls and sometimes three. You can kick the ball. You can
roll the ball. You can throw the ball. And if the third ball is out, you can
bump the ball with the other ball. There’s twelve men on defense and nine on
offense, unless they chaos it, and then there’s thirteen on defense and eleven
on offense—which is when the third ball comes out. Some teams will go full
defense and win by sacrifice power moves. Some are all kicker offense
teams—hard to pull off, but nearly impossible to stop. The throwers are usually
big guys, kind of with builds like you. In fact, I’m amazed no one approached
you about playing. Rollers are short and fast, all leg muscle. That’s what I
played in school.”
“Huh,” I said, downing my drink to mask my
confusion.
“Ginland has a team, the Reskin Sleepers. They
haven’t won a game yet, but they just traded for some real powerhouse throwers.
They got a deep bench and a good coaching staff. Their odds are through the
roof. I’m going to make a killing.”
“Odds?” I asked.
Organa Dultz almost spit out his beer.
“You don’t gamble either?”
“No. Never had the chance, I guess.”
He pulled me to my feet and we started looking
around the bar. Or he did as he dragged me along.
“Tamshius! Hey, Tamshius,” Organa Dultz called.
The man in question was a thin, foreign-looking
fellow with a thick mane of black hair standing straight up. He dressed hip in
a long synth trenchcoat and wore a wrap-around mouth guard which was all the
rage now. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
“How’s your static?” Tamshius asked.
“What are the odds on the Reskin Raiders?”
Tamshius clicked his tele a few times.
“Five-to-one against. Two point spread. You
fishing?”
“I want a hundred on them getting first throw,
two hundred on them scoring first, and three hundred on them blocking first
kick.”
“You got it. Is that all?”
“Yeah. Anyone else betting on them?”
“No. You guys need to portal out, you’re
stinking up my space.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow to collect,” Organa
Dultz warned.
“You do that.”
As we walked away, Organa Dultz explained things.
“We can double our salaries by doing this. You
should have bet with me.”
“Really?” I asked. We weren’t paid very much.
Or at least I wasn’t. “How do you know who to bet on?”
“Don’t take the even money. You’ll never get anywhere
that way. Those are sucker bets. Go for the long shots. You won’t hit every
time but when you do, wham!”
“Cool,” I was already seeing myself in nice
clothes, eating nice food, with a pretty girlfriend.
“Hank, bring up that sluice mix,” Organa Dultz
said on the tele.
“On it.”
I stood up and grew lightheaded. I hadn’t eaten
in two days. I had lost all my money gambling, following Organa Dultz’s lead.
I was going to be kicked out of my apartment
soon if I kept this up. Not to mention starve.
I pushed the cart and when I was done, my arms
and legs were screaming.
“You’re dragging today. Did you go drinking
last night or something?”
“No. Just tired I guess.”
“Reskin Sleepers again tonight. What do you
want me to put you down for with Tamshius? I’m meeting him at lunch.”
“I…I don’t think I’m betting today,” I said.
“What? The odds are like 12-to-one! A hundred
credits and you walk away with 1,200. Think about that,” he said.
“They’ve never won. They never score,” I said.
I wanted to believe. I wanted 1,200 credits. But I wanted to eat, too.
“They can’t go on like this forever. If you
don’t stick with it, all that money you bet is lost for good. You need to
double down now. They will loan you the money if you haven’t got it. It’s not
like you don’t have a job. I can vouch for you.”
“No, thanks. I just don’t understand the game
well enough.”
“Yeah, it’s complicated. Did you read those
rules I teled you?”
“I did, but it didn’t help. It’s like 600
pages.”
“Only concern yourself with New Version IV. That’s
what Ginland plays. There are some regions that are on III and a few on Old
Version VII, but the Sleepers don’t play them much and I can tell you when they
do.”
“I think I’ll just watch you for a bit until I
get the hang of it.”
I could see he really wanted to convince me. He
was a preacher in the Reskin Sleepers religion and he feared for my everlasting
soul.
“It’s your loss and I hate to see you leave
money on the table like that. It’s not like we’re going to get rich working
down here.”
“Yeah. How about, just tell me when they win
and I’ll jump in.”
“You got it!” Organa Dultz beamed.
I opened my first savings account at this point
and put in forty-eight credits. I was pretty proud of that. I had my own bank
account. I was like officially a person with financial dealings. Not just some
stinky guy living in the sewers of a worthless space station.
Organa Dultz got more and more elaborate with
his handicapping. He had methods of betting that were so complex the greatest
mathematicians in the galaxy would be dumbfounded.
But he never talked to me about the results.
I don’t know if it was because the Reskin
Sleepers weren’t winning or he was upset I had rejected gambling with him.
Our relationship had grown chillier, however,
and I had some concerns he might fire me.
It was five years after the creation of
Belvaille when the checks from the Confederation stopped coming.
The focus of the government, ever in flux, no
longer considered exploration very sexy or worthwhile.
The people who had been getting regular money
from the government to “explore” suddenly found themselves unemployed.
The station emptied almost immediately.
But there were still criminals, still people
maintaining the station, as well as a skeleton crew of Colmarian Navy.