Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap

by Steven Campbell

  There wasn’t much I could do. It seemed the high-explosive shell had lodged enough metal into my muscles that I was lacerated like an insect in a collection case.

  I tried to move my left hand to get my tele. The splinters dug into me with each twitch and I gave up. Just lying here wasn’t incredibly painful as long as I didn’t move and took shallow breaths. Maybe they would sweep me out with a broom after a while.

  My feet seemed to be fine. I could wiggle my toes without pain. That was a slight triumph since it proved my new boots worked. The center of my chest, which had been blocked by my autocannon, also mostly escaped injury. I had turned my face down when I fired so my chin and nose were cut up as well as the top of my head.

  It felt like I lay there for an hour, though I doubt it was that long. I reached the conclusion that the soldiers weren’t going to do anything about me. Why should they, I wasn’t exactly a threat. I was going to have to use my tele.

  I carefully shifted my hand to my pocket. I could feel the shrapnel cutting me.

  Finally I had my tele out and dropped it on the ground beside me.

  Now what?

  I swiped around with my finger. I think I accessed every application in the galaxy before I finally got someone.

  “Hank?” I heard a voice answer. They could tell it was me based on my tele.

  “Hroo dis?” I said as best as I could.

  “What?”

  “Who you?”

  They hung up.

  I realized my tele was facing the ceiling and having a face full of shrapnel sounded an awful lot like being drunk.

  I got three more people, all of whom I couldn’t convince to talk to me for more than a few excruciating sentences.”

  Finally I got one of Garm’s offices and had them transfer me to her tele.

  “What?” she answered.

  “Hoshpial!” I gargled.

  “You’re at the hospital?”

  “No. Dake me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Dono.”

  I did my best to tilt the tele around.

  “Are you standing on your head or something?”

  She’s making jokes!

  “Hoshpial!” I yelled again.

  “Hank, where are you?”

  “Sou’eash.”

  “That doesn’t tell me much.”

  “Aye See,” I said in my best “Y Street” interpretation.

  I took the tele in my hand, and while screaming, lifted it up to my face and held it in my mouth. I figured from that angle it had a view of the front door I came through.

  I dropped my arm back down and tried to relax despite the pain.

  “I’m coming! It’s going to take us a while to find you, though. Are you west of Teazshole?”

  I had my tele in my mouth and couldn’t respond if I wanted to. And if I could I would have cussed her out.

  “Alright, we’re coming,” she said, then hung up.

  My tele tasted kind of gross. I guess that was a good sign I wasn’t about to die. Or who knows, maybe everything tasted gross when you were at death’s door.

  I dwelled on that a moment. Would it taste good? Would your brain override your tongue and tell you the glob of mud you swallowed on the battlefield as you lay dying tasted like sweet custard? I was getting morbid, but I had good reason.

  As I waited for Garm to go door-to-door looking for me, I thought about what Naked Guy had said. How was he going to get all these Therezians out of here? The Navy would never let them be shipped.

  Not sure how long I lay there, long enough that I did some thinking about life and death. No great insights came to me other than realizing high-explosive rounds were things to be avoided.

  “What happened to you?” I finally heard Garm gasp.

  CHAPTER 59

  I felt my autocannon and I were growing apart as people.

  This came to me as I lay in the hospital and they tried to chisel all the metal fragments out of my body. What was it, maybe half the time I fired the gun I ended up here. There had to be a less efficient way of visiting the hospital.

  “I hung-y,” I said.

  Devus Sorsha, the worst medical technician in the galaxy, was again attending me.

  “If we feed you, my concern is that your epidermis will heal over the wounds and we will not be able to remove them.”

  “I hung-y,” I said louder.

  Garm stepped in.

  “I saw him eat a whole restaurant. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let him get too hungry.”

  “We could restrain him to the table,” Devus Sorsha offered.

  “That would probably be a good idea.”

  “It’s wounds like this that are most dangerous for you, Hank,” the medical technician said helpfully. “They’re eventually going to take their toll.”

  “Shu’ up.”

  “Shouldn’t he have drugs?” Garm asked.

  Devus Sorsha cleared his throat.

  “We seem to have misplaced our supply of anesthesia.”

  This place sucked so bad.

  As they went about their work, I felt I was being quite the trooper given the circumstances. Not only were a half dozen people “operating” on me with power tools, but I was starving and chained to a metal table without any pain relief.

  Delovoa came in presently.

  “What did you do to my autocannon?” he asked, annoyed.

  “Shu’ up.”

  “Why would you use an HE round at close range?” Delovoa asked. “The canister wouldn’t have hurt you at all. I told you not to use it.”

  “What did you shoot?” Garm asked.

  I tried to tilt my head and felt the chains tug and the shrapnel cut. Garm saw me wince and heard me grunt.

  “We’ll be back later, Hank. Get some rest.”

  It seemed very unlikely I was going to get any rest until I was a few pounds lighter.

  CHAPTER 60

  “Can you get in contact with your sisters?” I asked Garm.

  I was swathed head-to-toe in bandages. I wasn’t bleeding but the technicians had created a mess digging for metal in my skin. To “be on the safe side,” they slathered me with antibiotics and wrapped me up. I suspected they were trying to literally cover up their incompetence.

  I had been slamming hard liquor for days trying to get enough of a buzz to dull the pain, but my body converted everything to fuel my healing. I might as well have been drinking bread.

  “My sisters?” she asked.

  “He means the Quadrad,” Delovoa said.

  I had gotten them both up to speed on my encounter with Naked Guy. I left out a lot because frankly I didn’t know how to explain it and I worried they would think I was insane.

  “What do they matter?” Garm asked testily.

  “I believe they can help.”

  “They aren’t permitted to do anything,” she replied.

  “Oh, will you drop that? No one cares if this is your ‘territory’! There’s eight Therezians over there who say this is their city now. And what are you going to do about it? Pout?”

  “They work for the corporation though, right? Or that naked guy?” Delovoa asked.

  “I don’t know. He said he was going to use them.”

  “And this person you met can’t be reasoned with or bribed?” Garm asked.

  I indicated my bandages.

  “Does it look like it?”

  “You look stupid, by the way,” she said.

  “You look stupid. I’ve just been shot to hell, remember?”

  “You shot yourself.”

  I was about to respond when she got a tele. She put her ear to it.

  “What? How? I’ll be right there.”

  “What was that?” I asked, seeing her expression.

  “The Navy has remotely taken control of our port. They’re bringing in ships.”

  “Yeah, he said he was.”

  “Who? When?” she demanded.

  “The General. He said sometime th
is week they would land troops.”

  “Why didn’t you say this?”

  “Honestly, I forgot. There was a lot going on.”

  We went to City Hall to monitor the situation. Garm was concerned the Navy could hijack important Belvaille systems. If they could seize the port, what else could they do? Could they turn off life support if we appeared to be a big enough threat?

  I looked around for the jerk that denied my trash pick-up but didn’t see him.

  We huddled by some screens that bleeped and beeped and displayed lots of numbers. A skinny operator with bad skin sat in front of it.

  “Here they come,” he said. “It looks like three ships. Transports or shuttles.”

  “How many could those hold?” Garm asked.

  “Ung uh,” he replied sagely, shrugging.

  “Look,” Delovoa said, pointing to the screen.

  I saw a pile of digits floating around.

  “Those must be supply ships. There is a lot of traffic between Belvaille’s freighters,” the operator claimed.

  “Those aren’t ships,” Delovoa countered. Then he gave a lengthy description why, which clearly no one in the room understood.

  “Hey!” Someone yelled from across the floor. “The Portals are down.”

  Garm looked at me like I had an inkling of what was going on. I was bandaged and without a gun. I was just a really big door stop at this point.

  But Delovoa was clear.

  “Those freighters are armed! They just took out the Portals!”

  “With what?” I asked.

  “Look. Look. Scan the Navy ships.”

  The operator was lost.

  “Which ones?”

  “By the Portals.”

  The operator fumbled with the controls.

  “Stop!” Delovoa yelled and pressed his three eyes to the screen as if he could use it to peer directly into space.

  “It’s moving,” the operator said.

  “The Portal?” Garm asked.

  “No, the battleship.”

  “See all these?” Delovoa said, indicating gibberish. “Those are missiles slamming into that battleship. All those freighters are firing weapons.”

  I looked up to the sky. I don’t know why I always do that. I saw the ceiling. It just felt like I should be hearing or seeing something that big and it not just be numbers on a tiny screen. Besides, I didn’t even know what their orientation was. They could be beneath me for all I knew.

  “If they disabled the Portals,” Garm said, “we are stuck here.”

  “Stuck where?” I asked, thinking she meant City Hall.

  “At the edge of the galaxy.”

  CHAPTER 61

  Garm was not happy going to the port to meet the Navy transports that had escaped the attack.

  I felt we should give our welcomes so they didn’t get any wrong ideas. Such as thinking we had anything to do with the corporation that had launched a ton of missiles at them.

  When we arrived, the Navy was already in place, peeking around corners. Pointing guns. Shouting.

  “Freeze! Get your hands up!”

  Delovoa’s hands shot up like he was trying to touch the latticework—I think he was even standing on his tippy toes. Garm slowly put her hands about equal to her head. I just stood there. Eating.

  My body still ached and I was hungry and their guns weren’t that impressive.

  “I am an administrator of this Independent Protectorate,” Garm said with gusto. “I demand you explain your presence.”

  The General walked forward along with about fifty other soldiers.

  “General,” I exclaimed. I had not been expecting him.

  The soldiers surrounded us. I could see many more in the distance unpacking gear.

  The General ignored Garm and Delovoa and spoke to me.

  “Where can we set up a base of operations? I understand many of the warehouses are compromised. Are the telescopes under surveillance?”

  “The telescopes are—” Garm started.

  “You are the Surrogate under Article 7 section 5,” he interrupted, pointing to me.

  Garm was stewing.

  “What? What’s that mean? What did I do?”

  “You’re our representative,” Garm said through clenched teeth.

  “I need a condition report on the station,” he continued.

  “Well…it’s pretty crappy,” I said learnedly.

  I heard a familiar rumbling and looked back and saw a corporate APC approaching the port.

  “Those are the bad guys!” I shouted.

  The General barked some orders and the Navy fanned out in defensive positions.

  Garm grabbed Delovoa and hurried him down the street into one of the nearby buildings. I wasn’t going to be able to reach the door in time, so I used my Surrogate intellect and covered my head and lay flat on the ground.

  I just got out of the hospital. I was still in, if not agony, body-wide hurting. I didn’t want to get in a firefight so soon. And I had nothing to fight with. I couldn’t even throw a rock because Belvaille had no rocks—and I couldn’t throw.

  Hearing a million guns firing from the ground was a different experience. It wasn’t terrible. In fact it wasn’t bad at all, because for once no one was shooting at me.

  Some Navy soldiers stepped on my back to move to new positions, but other than that, it’s like I wasn’t there.

  “Hank, come on!” I heard Garm yell behind me.

  No, thank you. I wasn’t going to move until the gunfire stopped. I didn’t peek. I didn’t move my arms. I didn’t move at all. If it’s working, don’t fix it. And so far I hadn’t been shot once.

  All in all, it was done relatively quickly.

  When you’re actually in a fight, you tend to lose track of time. But I didn’t have a whole lot to do. I would guess from start to finish, explosions and all, it was less than five minutes.

  There were only a handful of weapons firing now, but a lot of yelling. I was about to lift my head, when something told me to wait for every single shot to be silent.

  “You can get up now, Mr. Brave,” Garm said.

  I pushed up on my arms and tried to get my leg under me and I pitched forward and landed on my stomach.

  Garm laughed but I panicked.

  I couldn’t stand!

  I rolled on my side but I couldn’t get my legs under me. My knees hardly bent.

  “You’re kidding me,” Garm said seriously.

  “It might be the bandages,” Delovoa suggested.

  Both of them stared at me with perverted interest as I spun around on the ground like a broken toy.

  “Help,” I finally said, humiliation overcoming pride

  Garm pulled on one arm and Delovoa the other, but it was like two fish trying to tow a lake. When I used them to help me up, I simply pulled them to the ground.

  “Go to the wall,” Delovoa said.

  I was really starting to get scared.

  The General returned with a number of his men, one of them dragging the corpse of a corporate soldier.

  “Is this the uniform of the group that is using the Portal?” he asked.

  I was trying to climb the wall. It wasn’t working. My hands just weren’t sticky enough and the walls were too smooth with nothing to grab. I couldn’t bend my knees or lift my legs. What Devus Sorsha had said was true. I was becoming too thick to move properly.

  “Well…” I started.

  Then I slid to the ground on my side, my face to the building. I spun around on my butt so I could at least face the General.

  If he thought my actions were odd, he didn’t show it as he maintained his usual glower.

  “There is only one corporation. Run by one man. I told you that.”

  I guess he didn’t believe me. Or was confirming. Or whatever.

  “You should be careful with that body,” Delovoa said, “it is biologically engineered.”

  The General’s face creased even further.

  “I have 250
men who need a base.”

  “City Hall,” I said immediately.

  “No,” Garm corrected.

  “Not even the corporation will attack it. They can’t risk damaging the vital systems.”

  “Right, so his men shouldn’t hide there. That puts us all in danger.”

  “We already are,” I said.

  “How do we reach City Hall?” the General asked.

  “Take the train.”

  “We’re not riding public transportation in a war zone!”

  “Then you’re walking across the city in a war zone. It’s kind of that way,” I said, pointing over my shoulder. “And can you guys help me stand up?”

  On the way to the train we saw the carnage that was the leftover remains of the corporate soldiers. Those flesh bags had beaten 800 or so of Belvaille’s best and sort of brightest and 250 Navy commandos came down and shot them to hell in five minutes.

  It was embarrassing.

  Admittedly, there were no tanks and a lot less corporate soldiers, but still, not one Navy soldier had been killed in the exchange.

  “Excuse me. Pardon me. Pardon me,” I said, as I pushed to the front of the crowded train to see the General.

  “So what happened on the battleship?” I asked him.

  “We’re not discussing tactical situations in transit.”

  I looked around the train, which was wall-to-wall with commandos.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s no one here except us.”

  Garm remained seated in the rear, frowning, her arms crossed. But Delovoa was next to me.

  “Our ships are destroyed. Or at least incapacitated enough they can’t respond to communications.”

  “Isn’t a battleship the second biggest vessel? How did you not scan that many missiles?”

  “Fourth largest,” the General amended. “The weapons didn’t show up on scan until they were en route and it was far too late. Our transports had just disembarked. We believe that is what triggered the attack.”

  “What do you plan on doing?” I asked.

  “Apprehending the leader of this station and installing interim Navy control.”

  “What do you plan on doing besides that? Because that’s not going to happen.”

  “We will require your assistance in our push to their base,” the General said.