Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck by Steven Campbell Page A

helped the new
men to the medical bay, which was also run by prisoners.
    I looked around. The Royal Wing was an
enormous metal cocoon. It was cleaner than Belvaille because they couldn’t
afford to have trash or waste. Everything was put to use. Their housing was
little more than bare beams or rods that demarcated spaces. They built up
towards the ceiling which was maybe a hundred feet above. The apartments that
stretched up that high only had floors and maybe a blanket or two for privacy.
    They were a busy lot, constantly
repairing and rebuilding their city.
    The town was crowded with dirty men—most
of them were men—and they wore pretty much the clothes they had come in with.
So you could see styles that stretched across the decades just by taking a
stroll.
    People stopped what they were doing and
stared at me for a moment, but only a moment. They were occupied with
surviving. I put most of these people here and they didn’t have time for me.
    This place knocked me out. It was filled
with the worst offenders from Belvaille but run so efficiently.
    And the solution had been simple: take
away everything so they had nothing to fight over. Put them in a decaying
bathtub surrounded by the void of space. Then if anyone ever acted up, the mob
killed them and used their body parts as building materials.
    The Royal Wing had an exceedingly low
crime rate from what I understood.
    And I was here to meet its mayor.
    I finally found him. He was using a
makeshift saw to cut a pipe.
    “Hank!” He exclaimed. “When did you get
here?”
    “Just now. Dropped off some new
citizens.”
    Uulath was an emaciated, dark-skinned
man with dreadlocked brown hair. He looked slightly less dirty than his
compatriots, but only slightly. He had no shirt and every muscle on his gaunt upper
torso was defined. His pants were cut off at the knee from wear and he had no shoes.
You would guess he was an energetic middle-aged man, but prison life adds
years.
    No one died of natural causes in this
place, because no one was living naturally.
    “Are the ones you brought good workers
you think?” Uulath asked.
    “They’re beat up. Went to the medical
bay I assume.”
    He sighed.
    “You’re looking really huge, Hank. How
do you get so big?”
    “Mutation. You’re looking small.”
    “Starvation. What else you want?” he
asked, putting down the saw.
    “Can we talk?” and I was about to say,
“privately,” but I realized it didn’t matter who heard. They had no radios
here. No one talked to them. I could shout out my darkest secrets and it would
be as if I hadn’t told anyone.
    “Go ahead,” he said.
    A strange thing happened to inmates on
the Royal Wing. Everyone who came here died here, eventually. No one said they would
take care of you on the inside because no one had access to the inside except
the Kommilaire. No one said they would fight to get you released early, because
no one was ever released.
    Whatever you were before you came here, Olmarr
Republican, Totki, Order of Transcendence, banker, mother, father, whatever,
you were now a prisoner of the Royal Wing. Everything else about you was gone.
    Uulath got information on what was
happening on Belvaille from new prisoners. Information that they wouldn’t tell
anyone if they weren’t otherwise doomed. If people didn’t want to talk out of
some residual loyalty to their old lives, well, they eventually came around.
    A prison colony run by prisoners with
punishments meted out by prisoners was not a place to be anti-social.
    “Two Clem,” I said. “You know him?”
    “The actor?”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “I heard he was kidnapped. The Order
says Olmarr Republic. Olmarr says not them.”
    “Hmm. 19-10. An assassin. Or bounty
hunter.”
    “Never heard of him. You have an
election coming up, right?”
    “So they say.”
    “You have a lot of candidates,” Uulath
said.
    “Really?”
    He laughed.
    “Hank, do you remember why you arrested
me?”
    “You murdered a little