A few years ago, as a joke, MTB had attached a scale to the lifter to see how much I weighed. Before it broke it showed that I was over 13,000 pounds. That’s why my body was failing.
I was taller than average, but not so tall that my frame could hold six or so tons without issues. I was dense. So dense that I could not only be shot with any firearm and be unhurt, but I wouldn’t even feel it. I had no arches in my feet, most of my senses were dulled or gone, I couldn’t touch the top of my head or my knees without falling over, and I ate… a lot.
I was a mutant. It was something the old Colmarian Confederation had routinely done to its citizens. The results were completely random. I also healed rapidly. And when I healed, I grew even denser. The problem was we were always healing. Our cells were constantly dying and being replaced. My body was just too stupid to know that was normal.
So every day I was getting thicker and thicker, from my nerves to my blood vessels to my muscles. But judging by my increasing number of heart attacks, there was a definite upper limit to how dense I could become.
“How many guns do you have?” Valia asked.
“Few.”
My vest was covered in weapons. They hung from cables and dangled as I moved. I had maybe twenty or so pistols, rifles, submachine guns, shotguns. All the trigger guards were cut off so I could fit my fat fingers in them. If someone was going to run away from me, it’s not as if I could catch them. And if a big fight broke out, which they often did, I liked to have a lot of weapons handy.
I also carried a large hook and clamp secured to my arms with heavy chains and a huge electromagnet around my waist. I had all kinds of tools, really. Fire extinguishers, spanners, screw drivers, welders, flashlights, first aid kits. I couldn’t remember all the stuff. It weighed hundreds of pounds but I didn’t notice.
Although we had food with us, on my back I had an emergency supply of high calorie glop. It all tasted the same to me.
“Does it bother you I’m a woman?” Valia asked, and it almost seemed like she wanted it to be a problem.
“I don’t remotely care. We got species on the force that I’m not even sure what gender they are.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, as our caravan of police vehicles moved forward.
“I pick a new spot every day depending on the crime reports. You don’t look like you’re old enough to have been alive during the Colmarian Confederation,” I said.
“How do you know I was?”
“Because that’s a requirement for joining the Kommilaire.”
“Why?”
I puffed out a chuckle.
“MTB is going to get on you for not calling me sir, so you might as well start.”
“Why, sir?” she asked with some bite.
“A couple reasons. One, you got records. And we still have a crime database we can check, if you were alive during that time. Two, you’re not so young that you’ll let this job get the best of you. You’ll have some authority and some chances to abuse it. Third, you remember a time before this.”
I swept my arm outward as we drove. The streets were filled with people. Starving people did their laundry next to open sewers. Masses of common criminals worked everything from simple bunko scams to prostitution to racketeering.
Feral children gawked suspiciously at us. They were hateful little creatures who hadn’t even learned to speak Colmarian. They were one of the biggest blights on the city, ripping apart anything not bolted down and being responsible for a fair amount of violent crime.
“Some folks like to think the Colmarian Confederation was all bad,” I began wistfully, “but it was never like this.”
“Didn’t you personally destroy the Confederation?” Valia asked.
I thought about answering, but I was tired of that subject.
Very tired.
My Kommilaire and I reached our destination and we radioed one another to disembark and fan out. Most areas of the city actually welcomed us: the law walking amongst lawless Belvaille. But some areas were rather inhospitable.
I knew not all my Kommilaire were perfectly legit or righteous. Not much I could do about it, I was short-staffed as it was. I had never fired anyone. I just moved them to patrols where the Kommilaire weren’t especially appreciated. When you were busy trying to stay alive, you didn’t have much time to be dishonest.
Besides, the city didn’t pay that well. And having personal underworld contacts was helpful for a Kommilaire.
In other words, being a little crooked was one of the perks of the job.
The heavy lifter lowered me to street level.
“They call you the Stair Boys. It’s not a bad term. I use it,” I said to Valia.
“Why do they call us that?”
“I think it was an old joke about me being too heavy to walk up stairs so I had to hire people to search the upper floors of buildings. Which is true. So I guess it wasn’t a joke.”
“What all is illegal on Belvaille?”
I shrugged.
“Just use common sense, really. If someone’s screaming, it’s probably illegal.”
“Can I ask you… sir, where’s your accent from?”
“Eh. It’s just the way I talk.”
Even my tongue had thickened. I sounded like a deaf person who had been born that way. If you asked me to say “the thorny thistle shoots the shuttle.” It would sound like “dadnadadunudu.”
“Okay, find me some law breakers,” I said into my radio.
“You remember teles?” I asked Valia with a smile.
“Sir?”
“Teles. You know, back when you could talk to anyone anywhere without sending up smoke signals. These radios don’t even have a range across the whole city.”
“I think so,” she answered vaguely.
“What did you do when you were in the Confederation?”
“I was in the Navy.”
“The Navy?” That was surprising. “Which Navy?”
“The… Colmarian Confederation’s. Before it collapsed.”
“Collapsed? How polite. It was destroyed.”
The Colmarian Confederation, most backwards of all the galactic empires. When it had embarked on a civil war with itself, it stayed true to its ways and no faction changed their names or flags. So the Colmarian Confederation was fighting the Colmarian Confederation who was fighting the Colmarian Confederation and so on. I don’t know how anyone kept it straight. Maybe they didn’t try.
I stood in the middle of the street waiting for the Stair Boys to report back.
“Boss, we got an infraction,” one radioed, after a while.
I followed the Kommilaire to the building in question. I could hear a lot of commotion coming from inside.
Every type of weapon existed on Belvaille. We were at the exact geographic center of fifty years of war. If someone got mad enough, or drunk enough, or drugged enough, or just plain mean enough, those weapons would be used.
When I stepped inside the building, all the shouting stopped immediately.
I wasn’t just a Kommilaire. I was the Supreme Kommilaire. I could sentence anyone to anything. During some of the worst times in the civil war I had carried out some rather brutal punishments to maintain the peace.
The building was a combination bar and gambling hall. I knew it well. It was jammed to capacity, with about a half-dozen of my Kommilaire in mid-struggle with various patrons. But everyone was now frozen and looking at me.
The outlaws, who knew they were outlaws, and knew I knew they were outlaws, put their heads down and whispered prayers to their outlaw gods. But for everyone else, this was high entertainment.