Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (23 page)

I wondered how many other people didn’t
believe it.

Wiessstauch ordered me some more drinks
and rose from my booth with a smile.

“Stability is what this city needs. We’ve
had enough murders don’t you think?”

I was out on a patrol doing patrolly
stuff when I got a radio call from Delovoa. He had his own radio of course and
his own interrupt frequency for emergencies.

“Hank, come over,” he said without
urgency.

“I’m working. What’s up?”

“I have that visitor you said I should
warn you about.”

“19-10?” I asked. He was awful calm.

“No, moron. Two Clem?”

“Two Clem is there?”

“What did you think I meant by visitor?”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a bit. Don’t let
him leave.”

“How will I stop him?”

“Are you kidding? You have a street full
of heavy machine guns and security guards.”

“I’m not going to kill him,” Delovoa
said.

“He doesn’t know that. Just wait for me.
I won’t be long.”

I talked to the Stair Boys I was with.
MTB was still doing his Deadsouth beat so it was just Valia and a dozen people
with me.

“I have to go run some errands,” I said.
“Keep going to Ostliche’ Avenue.”

“Should we hit the Dog Parke, Boss?”
Valia asked.

I was originally going to rough up one
of the venues that wasn’t paying their Kommilaire protection fees. I didn’t
want them to think that just because my name was getting dragged through the slop,
we were going to back down on our usual activities.

However, with me gone, it was just them.
And I didn’t want them getting shot up.

“No, just keep a presence. Hang around
for a few hours. That should be enough to send a message without provoking a
fight.”

“Right.”

I headed to the train. I wanted to do as
little walking as possible.

In the past, I was pretty confident that
if I had a heart attack and fell down somewhere in the city, I would be
reasonably safe. I was a folk hero after all.

But with all the Judge Naeb and Su Dival
and Garm and election nonsense, I didn’t want to risk a crowd of people
standing over my drooling form trying to figure out how to kill me.

I got to Delovoa’s and was met by the
usual handsome young men.

I was taken to a rear apartment where
Two Clem and Delovoa were lounging and supping on wine and crackers.

Two Clem was not young. He had been a
celebrity maybe a century ago, or even longer than that. Still, he didn’t look
bad. Whether a combination of good genes, or drugs, or surgeries, he certainly
appeared a lot better than I did after the same span of time.

“Two Clem,” I said, entering the room.
“It’s good to see you again.”

He gave me an uninterested half-glance
and went back to speaking to Delovoa.

“Uh, Hank,” Delovoa interjected, on my
behalf, “have you met my guest? Two Clem, this is our Supreme Kommilaire and
Secretary of City.”

This time he didn’t even acknowledge me.

“It’s been a pleasure as always, Delovoa.
I’ll talk to you again soon,” Two Clem said.

With that, he wiped his mouth and
removed some crumbs from his outfit, which I noticed was rather subdued from
the clothing I had seen him wear in the past. Though our styles tend to change
after eighty years. Actually, I was wearing the same clothes from that era,
only wider.

“Hey,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

He walked past me without a word.

“Stop him,” I said to Delovoa.

“Me? You could stop him with just your nose.”

But he was fast-walking to the door and
I couldn’t fast-walk to anything. I could shoot him, but that’s not very useful
against someone I wanted to speak to.

“You have a bunch of manservants, or
boyservants, tell them to grab him.”

Delovoa rang his bell like mad and four
twinks rushed in.

“Don’t let that man leave!”

As they reached Two Clem, he suddenly
turned, and kicked the living crap out of them all!

There was no way he could beat up Delovoa’s
chiseled man-muffins unless he was a mutant or something. The guy was likely
within a few decades of my age, which meant he could reasonably be considered a
senior citizen.

But he was a blur of motion and combat
finesse. I had seen such skill exhibited only a few times: by Garm and other
assassins like her from the Quadrad.

Other than bleeding on him, the twinks
did nothing to Two Clem. However, they did manage to slow him down. And I
walked past and planted myself in front of the door.

He was fast, I’ll give him that. But unless
he could move eight tons, he wasn’t going to get out of here.

“Two Clem, I only want to talk,” I said.

Delovoa came into the hallway leading to
the door and gawked seeing all his servants groaning on the floor.

“I would like to leave,” Two Clem said.
His eyes did not focus on me but seemed to be looking past.

“Why are you and Hobardi on the outs?
Did you know they are looking for you? Is this—” and I realized I didn’t
understand most of what had just happened. “How did you do this?”

“I would like to leave,” he repeated.

I looked back to Delovoa, who shrugged
helpfully.

“What were you talking about?” I asked
Delovoa.

“Nothing. Just normal stuff. He says he
might run for office.”

“That’s not nothing!” I asked Two Clem,
“Is that true?”

He stood there impassively.

The twinks on the floor warily scooted
away when they regained consciousness and the use of their limbs. I kept
throwing questions at Two Clem but he didn’t answer. It’s like he completely
shut down.

“Do you think he’s hypnotized or
something?” I asked Delovoa.

“I was talking to him for hours.”

“Why didn’t you call me right away?” I
asked.

“I was lonely and wanted to talk and
figured you would do something like this,” he said, as if that was a good
answer.

I didn’t want to move away from the door
and try and grab Two Clem because I didn’t know what that would gain me. If I
had him in my hands what would I do, break his legs?

I wondered what Hobardi wanted done.
Would he pay me for Two Clem’s return? Pay me for his murder?

It was ridiculous that I was thinking
about sending a courier to go get someone else to give me information on the
person standing seven feet away from me.

And then I saw it:

A light twinkled between Delovoa and me
and this time I was ready.

“It’s 19-10! Get down.”

I had my guns out…about half as fast as
19-10 appeared, fired, and vanished again.

Two Clem hit the floor.

“Damn!” I shouted.

I walked to his body and saw he had four
of those unique puncture wounds in his skull.

“Behind you, Hank!” Delovoa yelled.

I turned just in time to see 19-10
again. He fired. But it wasn’t at me. It was at the already dead form of Two
Clem.

Huh?

Two Clem was shot again in the head.

As I was trying to see why, or what the
pattern was, 19-10 disappeared from behind me and reappeared on the other side
and fired four more shots and vanished. He kept hitting Two Clem’s head.

“Hank, he’s still here, remember?”

“Why is he still shooting him?” I said to
the ether: “hey, he’s dead.”

“Who knows, cover him up,” Delovoa said
hastily.

“With what?”

“Your body!”

I looked down just in time to see 19-10
appear again, fire, and disappear. Two Clem was shot in the head again.

I didn’t want to do this for a lot of
reasons. I couldn’t get back up on my own. A dangerous assassin was teleporting
around me. And I was going to squish the body a lot more than 19-10 ever could.

But he seemed to be aiming for the head
over and over.

So I turned sideways and fell to the
floor.

“Ow!” Delovoa said, presumably because
of the vibrations in his feet.

I then reached out my arm and kind of
pulled the corpse of Two Clem in like a morbid stuffed animal and snuggled it,
keeping his head covered with my elbow and between my knee and chest.

“Now what?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Delovoa said, “this is
as far as I thought.”

“Is this going to give me cancer?” I
asked, as Delovoa tried to fit his personal deep scanner into the space I was
leaving for Two Clem’s corpse.

“You
wish
all you had was cancer.
Actually, I’m not sure. But it would take longer to metastasize than you’ll
likely live anyway.”

“Thanks,” I said gloomily.

It had been some hours since 19-10 had
been here and I hadn’t moved much. He had appeared a few more times attempting
to try and get shots on Two Clem, but I had his skull sufficiently covered so that
it wasn’t possible.

Delovoa and I weren’t especially anxious
for our own safety. If 19-10 had wanted to shoot us, he could have done so at
any point in the past months. The more looks I got at 19-10’s guns, the more I
was sure I wouldn’t even feel them. And Delovoa was simply too valuable to
anyone who treasured their own existence and quality of life—at least on
Belvaille.

When Delovoa had some of his personal
security leave their posts at the walls and gates and come inside to protect my
prone form, that was the last we saw of 19-10.

It was possible he was still hanging
around waiting and watching in his other dimensions, but Delovoa figured he would
waste fuel doing so. It’s not like that armor was a space ship with a gigantic
fuel tank.

I had some of the twinks bring me food
and drink while I was waiting.

A few hours past this and Delovoa had scanned,
probed, poked, scraped, and otherwise examined the former Two Clem.

We were alone in the hallway, my side
hurting from lying on it for so many hours, when he made his pronouncement.

“Ooh, gross,” he said, crinkling his
nose.

“What?”

“He was a clone.”

“Two Clem was?”

“Yeah.”

That was…really odd.

“Is there anything else you need to
check or can I stand up now?”

“Can you even stand up?”

“No, I’ll need help. But can I get off
this body?”

“Yeah, I think 19-10 was trying to stop
us from finding this out.”

“How?” I asked, as I slowly scooted away
from the corpse.

“Remember how I found out those other
soldiers were clones a long time ago?”

“No,” I said.

“Their brains. They aren’t fully-formed.
They don’t need all the capabilities a true Colmarian has because they are
built for doing specific functions.”

“So you think 19-10 kept shooting him in
the head to destroy his brain?”

“I’m sure of it. If you see the scans,
you can tell. A few more attacks and it would take me a month to try and figure
out what had once been inside his skull. Because it would have been all over my
floor in little tiny pieces.”

“Wait, didn’t they also have bad DNA?” I
said, remembering I had been concerned about clones sneezing on me.

“Yeah, his is fine.”

“So he’s not like Naked Guy’s army of
clones?” I asked, bringing up our encounter from decades past. Clones had been
used to instigate the Colmarian civil war.

“No, he’s not like them. But close.”

“Do we have a million variety of clones
or something?”

I had managed to get into a seated
position with my legs out in front of me and I was taking a break.

“All the clones should have been
destroyed in the war,” Delovoa said.

“How do you know?”

“Because, owing to their lack of brain,
they aren’t good at doing much except whatever they were designed to do. In the
case of the war, it was fighting. So they would keep fighting until they were
killed.”

“Did you know
he
was a clone?”

“Yeah, I just told you he was.”

“But did you know when you were hanging
out eating cake?” I asked.

“Of course not.”

“So there might be other clones who
aren’t purely combat. And remember, you said the Messahn battlesuit was
designed to be worn by a clone.”

“Yeah.”