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

fight. I saw a Totki running towards me
with…duct tape?
    He jumped up and pressed it on my face
and it was so bizarre I was momentarily at a loss. I mean, I carried around
like 500 pounds of chains, did they think some adhesive ribbon was going to stop
me? Yeah, it was over my eyes, but it’s not like it was permanent. It didn’t
even hurt.
    I reached up to remove it.
    My fingers were far too thick and clumsy
to grasp the tape, let alone feel it. And I couldn’t hear any crinkling because
of the sounds of the battle. I tried rubbing at it, but I couldn’t generate
enough friction to burn away duct tape all that easily.
    Hmm.
    “Hey, can someone get this tape off me?”
I asked.
    I was basically an obstacle in a gang
fight. I could hear the commotion, but had no idea how the sides were faring.
    I couldn’t tell my Stair Boys to
apprehend the combatants as they were busy trying to kill each other.
    “Everyone just calm down. We can work
this out,” I said feebly.
    I heard my Stair Boys yelling and then
gunfire.
    Great.
    “Stop struggling,” Valia said. “I don’t
want you to turn my hands into jelly with your monster fingers.”
    I stood there as she removed the tape
from my eyes.
    When I was gifted with vision again, I
saw there were four dead, eight wounded, and none captured beyond those who
were too hurt to run away.
    About half of those hurt were from my
Stair Boys shooting.
    I did not feel this was a successful
patrol.
     

CHAPTER 11
     
    It was the next day and I was conducting
a small trial in my living room with Hong, Peush, MTB, Valia, and an
adjudicator named Gralion.
    “I demand Street Trial,” Hong declared,
wanting a public trial on one of the court streets.
    “No, your men are wounded and I don’t
have the desire for my guards to be sitting around at the hospital waiting for
a trial date. This gets solved now.”
    “What are the charges?” Gralion asked.
He was an older man who had never made judge and was bitter about it.
    “Assault. Endangering the telescopes.
Blocking the Waves. And attacking me.”
    “No one ‘attack’ you. It was tape.”
    “What?” Gralion asked.
    “Duct tape, I believe,” Peush said.
    “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I was still
attacked. And it wasn’t a gun, so it was illegal.”
    Neither Hong nor Peush really wanted to
be in the same room with each other, but they wanted their men back more and I
wasn’t doing two trials.
    “What do you sentence them to?”
    “I have eight wounded. Five from you,”
indicating Hong, “and three from you,” to Peush. “Half go to prison.”
    “Prison?” Hong screamed. “That too much.
Stair Boys do shooting, not us. It them that cause trouble,” he said, pointing
to Peush.
    “How can one-and-a-half of my men go to
prison?” Peush asked, smirking.
    “Round up. Two,” I said.
    “That’s very excessive, Supreme
Kommilaire,” Gralion said. “I think a fine is more in order.”
    “Yes!” Hong said.
    “I’m changing my sentence to death. All
of them.”
    “You can’t do that,” Gralion argued.
“That’s…double-jeopardy. Or mistrial.”
    He had apparently not bought the book of
legal terms.
    “Says who? Besides, you two were there
also. I could arrest both of you, so don’t get cocky,” I said.
    But I couldn’t arrest them. That was an
idle threat and they knew it. I was sitting here with them, the next day,
essentially negotiating for the release of their men. If I arrested Hong or
Peush, how many hundreds or thousands would march down here to set them free?
    “How do you decide which ones go to
prison?” Peush asked.
    I chose to back off a bit and give them
some room.
    “You pick the ones who go free. But I
need two from you and three from you,” I answered.
    “He should have three,” Hong said.
    “How about one and two between them?”
Gralion asked.
    “Two and two,” I countered.
    “Deal,” Gralion said.
    The bosses weren’t happy of course, but
by making the numbers even, they at