Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck by Steven Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

alone.
    I had to present my credentials before
the guard unlocked and opened the massive gate that barred entrance to the
street. The Kommilaire had to wait outside.
    I walked to the building to meet his
majesty. Guns from adjacent buildings tracked my movements.
    After a series of lengthy security
measures, I was finally admitted inside.
    A young, incredibly athletic man,
wearing billowing pink pants, stepped out to meet me. His hair was long and
curly.
    “And who are you?” he asked with a
sneer.
    At this, another figure appeared behind
him, wearing a tattered blue robe and slippers. He was very old and frail. His
head was peculiar in that it looked like an upside down, wrinkled pear, with no
hair. He had three misaligned eyes that blinked and looked independently of one
another.
    It was obvious he had no teeth and his
lips had collapsed inward to fill the space. His hands and feet looked gigantic
on his emaciated frame, which was visible because part of his robe was open.
    “Shoo! Shoo!” Delovoa said to the
golden-haired twink, slapping at him rudely.
    The younger man hurried away, pouting.
    “Hank,” Delovoa smiled his gummy smile,
“great to see you.”
    Delovoa was a mutant like me, though his
mutation no longer functioned. I think at one point he could create external
heat a few inches from his body. Handy if you needed to solder something, but
otherwise useless. That was a level-one mutation. I was level four.
    The scale for mutations went up to ten,
theoretically. I had met one level-ten mutant in my life, Jyonal. He could make
anything he thought of happen as long as he could imagine it, and as long as he
was high on drugs. Jyonal had even made himself a new body when he was trying
to hide from the authorities. He was a dangerous guy to have around.
    Delovoa was the last of the great engineers
and inventors—at least in this region of space.
    Without him the Portals would stop
working and the countless improvements he had made to Belvaille’s
infrastructure would fail.
    Belvaille was never designed to house as
many people as it currently did. It was only through Delovoa’s continual
jury-rigging that we weren’t all suffocating in a massive cloud of carbon
dioxide, were capable of recycling our waste, and able to refuel and repair space
ships.
    He was a god on Belvaille and it was a
death sentence to even joke about harming him. He didn’t pay for all this
security constantly monitoring his safety, the city did.
    And it did so gladly.
    His very name was synonymous with
brilliance and eccentricity. People quoted and misquoted him often. The only
ruling in a trial that could trump an official opinion from Delovoa was another
official opinion from Delovoa. Like if he said something had to be done for the
safety of the city, it was done. Period.
    We sat in one of his spacious living
rooms. Despite him having vast wealth, he was relatively humble. There were gadgets
and parts and wires all over the place. Toys and projects he was currently
tinkering with.
    He and I had gone through a lot
together.
    He had a special chair for me to sit in.
It was tall and kind of slanted and I could just lean into it without it
crumbling.
    Delovoa sat on a big cushion and his
bony knees stuck out.
    “What brings you here, Hank?”
    Why was I here?
    “Do you ever wonder why we do it,
Delovoa?”
    “Ah, a bitch-session,” he said, his three
eyes popping.
    He grabbed a little bell from the table
and rang it angrily, as if he hated it.
    “Boy! Boy!”
    A young man, different from the first,
came hurrying in. He was muscular and bare from the waist up.
    “Sir, you called?”
    “Not you, the pretty one. Oh, never
mind. Bring a bottle of Kozk and two glasses. And ice. And…” he turned to me,
“I’m sure you want food, right?”
    “Sure,” I answered.
    “Food. Something tasty. Bring a lot.
Hank eats everything. Go!”
    The young man darted away.
    “Do what, now?” he asked me.
    “Any of this. Remember the Naked