Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years (16 page)

“Well, I’m going back home. It shouldn’t be
much problem getting work, and no one cared much for the Confederation anyway.
Where are you going?”

“Here.”

It wasn’t on any maps. It was just a blurb in
one of the local news sections: a space station at the edge of the Colmarian
Confederation.

“What will you do there?”

“Not sure. But I have to figure it will take at
least a year for me to get out there from here. How long will the Colmarian
Navy follow me?”

“Good luck, Delovoa,” Dr. Ahmendt said, shaking
the other scientist’s hand.

“You too.”

“Hey. Do you think we should have tried to set
Specimen JY-O free?” Dr. Ahmendt asked.

“I was a captive for a while and it sucked.
When you told me you had been there for eleven years, I buried a bomb under my quarters.
In about ten years from now, half that base will be blown to dust. It might
kill him, it might set him free. Either way, if he’s still there after that
long, I figure he’s better off.”

Delovoa wasn’t sure what he would find on Belvaille.

He didn’t know if the military there would
immediately arrest him once they scanned ZR3. Or once they scanned he was
escaped criminal Delovoa.

But the city was almost empty at that point and
the Navy was only a small presence at City Hall and the telescopes. Delovoa
only received the most cursory of scanning and decontamination. ZR3 wasn’t
reviewed at all.

Delovoa borrowed a push cart from someone and
moved his robot clear across the city with no one noticing. It was probably
more valuable than the city it was standing on and illegal just to view it. But
no one cared.

In the west, Delovoa looked at the city’s
blueprints and found himself the largest home. It even had a storage basement,
which was relatively unique on Belvaille. In the coming years Delovoa would
expand by burrowing into connecting utility tunnels and hollowing out a whole
block underground.

Looking around, he saw Belvaille as a dream
home.

It was filled with criminals like him who had
also come here to escape prosecution. For once he wasn’t the bad guy in a nice
area.

Delovoa opened his front door one day and saw
three Colmarian Intelligence officers standing there.

“Are you Delovoa?” they asked.

He sighed.

“Yes,” he said, holding out his hands waiting
to be arrested.

“We need you to repair one of our proton
collectors. We’ve got a requisition form,” the officer said, handing it over.

Delovoa gawked at it. Not only did the Navy
know Delovoa was on Belvaille, they didn’t care. In fact, they viewed it as a
benefit.

Delovoa was still technically a member of the
Department of Plumbing and Lighting. He had top secret clearance. He had never
been officially charged, let alone found guilty, of any crimes.

It was not easy shipping supplies out to
Belvaille. It was even harder finding quality people who wanted to stay there.
Having a valuable resource like Delovoa present, and isolated, was a win-win
for the Navy.

They could hire him to repair and build
whatever they required and he wouldn’t contaminate the rest of the Colmarian
Confederation. And compared to making custom supply and maintenance runs across
half the galaxy, Delovoa was incredibly cheap.

“Sure,” Delovoa said.

Soon Delovoa was a regular fixture at any place
with high technology that needed repairs or upgrades and people had the money
to pay him.

Delovoa was repairing the air conditioning unit
in one gang’s office, the boss liking it especially cold in the place, when a
rival gang burst in.

“Get down!” One of the thugs shouted to
Delovoa.

Delovoa hit the deck, covering his head and waiting
for the inevitable gunfire to break out.

Clang! Bong! Clack! Crash!

Delovoa peeked up at the odd sounds and found
about a half-dozen men from each side throwing metal parts at one another.
Large screws, bolts, wrenches, anything they could find.

“Ow!” One thug said as he was hit in the
shoulder.

“Hah!” His assailant taunted.

Delovoa looked around curiously.

“Excuse me. Excuse me,” Delovoa repeated.

The gangs reluctantly slowed and stopped.

“Hey, this is a firefight,” one of the men
complained.

“Do you all not have guns?” Delovoa asked.

“Guns?” one of the men scoffed. He was holding
what looked like a gear. “We’re at the ass-end of Ginland. We’re lucky to get
food shipped here.”

“So you just…throw junk at each other?”

“Fix the AC, man,” and a metal box clanged off
the far wall.

The debris started flying again but was
interrupted by Delovoa:

“I can manufacture guns.”

The hurling stopped and the thugs looked at
him.

“I can make grenades. Rockets. Cruise missiles.
Chemical weapons. Plasma guns—maybe.”

The toughs looked at the scrap in their hands
and thought about rocket launchers.

From that point on, it was an arms race.

Delovoa sold everything to everyone.

He sold security systems.

He sold systems to beat security systems.

He sold guns.

He sold body armor.

He sold armor piercing ammunition.

He manufactured the market and the competition
to the market.

A few times some upstarts would try and set up
shop and Delovoa would merely offer a 25% off coupon to whoever took his rival
out.

Delovoa changed the face of Belvaille and of
warfare on Belvaille. Gangs couldn’t be the loose clubs they were before. They
were regimented, hierarchical. And gang wars were deadly, disruptive events.

But more and more people were flooding into
Belvaille just the same. Delovoa provided some of the technical expertise to
get the largest illegal operations started.

Belvaille became a major exporter and more than
just a haven for lowlifes.

Delovoa even provided some medical services, because
the technicians on the city were horrible, and Delovoa liked having the chance
to experiment.

“Hey, that’s an Ontakian plasma pistol,”
Delovoa said.

“Yeah,” Hank answered.

“I’ll buy it from you.”

“It’s not for sale. I’m just here about my
ear.”

“I’ll give you a hundred thousand credits.”

“Guy, just check my ear, please.”

Delovoa had the large man lie on one of his
construction tables as he scanned him.

“Whoa, you’re a mutant. I can’t scan you.”

“Yeah. My left ear hurts is all. I don’t know
if there’s water in it or something else.”

“I’ll give you two hundred thousand credits for
your pistol.”

Hank looked back on the table.

“Seriously. Just check my ear. The gun isn’t
for sale at any price. It was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s.”

“That’s highly unlikely. And it’ll probably
explode if you ever tried to shoot it. I’ll give you three hundred thousand for
it. Final offer.”

“No, thanks. Just the ear.”

As Hank heard drilling and picking and cursing
from Delovoa, he made small talk.

“You also that scientist who makes weapons,
right?”

“Yup.”

“Could you make a plasma pistol?”

“Maybe if you sold me that one and let me take
it apart. But I think only the Ontakians have the raw parts. I don’t know how
to make a plasma cell.”

“Oh.”

“What is your mutation? You’re breaking all my
tools.”

“I heal fast. And I’m dense.”

“Ah, that explains the scanning. Does it have
any side-effects?”

“I guess I’m a bit slower than usual.”

“Hmm. So are you looking for a weapon?”

“Yeah. A gun. Something I don’t have to aim
well. And has a lot of power. And is small.”

“Like a plasma pistol?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to shoot this.”

“No, sir, you do not,” Delovoa agreed.

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“Sure. Guns are easy. In fact, I’ll cut you a deal.
I’ll fix your ear. Build you a gun. For free.”

“What’s wrong with my ear?”

“I don’t know. All you have to do is come back
a few more times, three times, so I can study your mutation.”

“You know anything about mutations?”

“Nah. Just a hobby.”

“Alright, I guess. What kind of gun will you
make?”

“One like you said.”

Delovoa was supremely interested in Hank’s
mutation.

If there was one thing Delovoa wished, it was
not to be so fragile. He had been at the mercy of bigger, stronger people all
his life. If he could be as smart as he was and as strong as Hank, he felt he
would be just about completely free. No one could ever threaten him again.

The ear was easy enough. A bullet had somehow
ricocheted deep into his ear canal and that was extracted.

“What’s this?” Hank asked.

“A shotgun. Four barrels.”

“It’s pretty big,” Hank complained.

“It’s fine. Here,” and Delovoa handed him a bag
of shells.

Scanning Hank was the hard part. Let alone
drawing any blood and analyzing it. And of course there was the near-impossibility
of actually duplicating Hank’s unique mutation.

“You
are
a medical technician, right?”
Hank asked as he lay under the largest scanner he ever saw and had tubes fitted
into his nose.

“Of course,” Delovoa lied.

“Wow,” Delovoa said. He could see Hank’s cells
replicating and repairing. The density of his internal structures was
phenomenal.

Hank got to like his new shotgun more, so he
put up with Delovoa’s probing and prodding. Besides, the guy seemed to know
what he was doing and he was the undisputed intellect of Belvaille.

Hank, in his new role as gang negotiator and
all-around tough guy, also used his proximity to Delovoa to keep abreast of all
the latest gadgets—since Delovoa usually invented them.

“But how is that lock different than your Mark
IV?” Hank asked, while lying on the exam table.

“I told you, it has the magnetic seal. You
can’t take that door off once the lock is triggered.”

“So you have to cut through a foot of steel to enter?”
Hank asked, thinking his next job was going to be especially difficult.

“I didn’t say that. It’s
magnetic
. What
does that tell you?”

“I don’t know. Magnets?”

“Electromagnets. Cut the power and they can’t
work.”

“Oh. How do you cut the power to one house?”

“I wouldn’t try. But you could cut the power to
the block fairly easily. Hey, have you been sick, recently?”

“No, I’m almost never sick. Why?”

Delovoa had been giving Hank some experimental formulas
to see how he would react. Delovoa used methods back from his first mutation
work on his home world of Shaedsta and information gleaned from Specimen JY-O.

Delovoa saw Hank’s cells repairing themselves
more rapidly than usual and the inner linings of some of his organs were
thickening.

“Woops,” Delovoa said.

“Woops? Woops, what?” Hank asked, suddenly
worried.

“Nothing. I just…knocked over my thing.”
Delovoa answered, quickly knocking over his thing on purpose. “I think we’re
done. I’ll show you how to cut the electricity to a block. Come on.”

Delovoa gave up the medical trade shortly after
that—at least on people who could cave in his skull with their fists. Biology,
and especially mutations, were just too unpredictable with too few results.

Ironically, Delovoa had the best long-term
relationship with the Navy of anyone on the station, even the officials
appointed there, who tended to be corrupt or incompetent exiles that were
intermittently purged by the establishment.

Once a year, Delovoa gave the Navy a classified
report on the state of affairs of Belvaille. He extorted tremendous amounts of
money from the local bosses and military to stay off that report.

Over the decades Delovoa mellowed with age and
his more radical notions flittered away along with his remembrances of his
eccentric experiments. ZR3 collected dust and his many enemies who had been
hunting him across the galaxy either died or picked more rewarding pastimes.

Delovoa became fantastically wealthy with time,
holding an unbroken monopoly on above-average intelligence on Belvaille. Most
importantly, he enjoyed it. The whole city, the whole state, knew of him and
respected his work.