“Put your tele near it.”
I put my tele near the device and the screen suddenly warped and cut off.
“Ahh!”
I backed away and tried to restore my tele.
“Hello? Delovoa?”
I went back to the device, smiled at Naked Guy, tried desperately to remember any of the instructions which were recorded on my nonfunctioning tele.
Delovoa had created a flimsy control panel with a tiny screen and a dozen buttons, none of which were labeled. I pressed buttons erratically, checking my tele now and then.
The chances of me getting out of here alive were growing very small.
As I was standing away from the device, tapping my tele against the wall, I saw a bright light from behind me.
I turned around and immediately fell on my face.
“What?” I asked. I had been pulled forward. All the soldiers in the room were in a pile in the center of the floor, trying to untangle themselves.
I looked up and Naked Guy was the only one of us still on his feet. The cables that had been attached to him had completely disappeared. The white cream that had been on his body was gone.
He held his hand in front of his face.
“What a cruel, cruel joke,” he said with the only bit of emotion I had ever heard him utter.
His hand looked like it was smoking. Then I saw it on his torso. Was he on fire? Or smoldering?
As I watched, he began to dissolve. Like a cube of colored sugar dropped into water.
In mere moments he was completely gone!
“It worked,” I said mostly to myself.
But the soldiers heard it too. And with Naked Guy gone, they no longer seemed to care I was wearing a diaper.
CHAPTER 75
I didn’t hesitate and started crawling as fast as I could to the door.
This was not very fast.
I looked back to see the soldiers had recovered their weapons and were aiming at me. I had just enough time to cover my head.
There were two loud explosions that lifted me into the air and flung me against the doorframe. I landed on the floor outside of the room. I kept crawling, looking for something sturdy enough to help me stand up.
I put my weight on an office chair and it bent and broke. I then grabbed hold of a large computer bay and hauled myself up using that.
Turning around, I expected to see the soldiers rushing out, but there was nothing but smoke wafting from the conference room.
I hurried over to where I had dropped my autocannon and strapped it on. I loaded a canister round and inched back to where the disintegrator was. I couldn’t just leave it here.
Peeking around the corner I saw the room was destroyed. The soldiers had killed themselves firing their weapons in the close quarters. Half a brain.
I hurriedly looked for the a-drive, but couldn’t find it. All the chairs and tables had been obliterated. You would need an archeologist to discover anything in here.
While I believed I should be safe alone in the building, I didn’t feel it.
I wanted to get out of here. I just disintegrated my first multi-billion year old Naked Guy. I felt that was a significant enough accomplishment for the day.
I made note of what building it occurred in. I could tell the Navy to come and search for the disintegrator and I could collect my million credits.
I left the facility and almost got my head taken off.
A tank fired a shell that hit a structure down the street, but I was sure I heard it zip past.
In the street there were two “corporations” facing each other, fighting.
“What?” I said to no one.
Hadn’t this charade been put to rest?
Soldiers were dying on both sides as I stood there watching. But every once in a while, one of them would clearly aim at me, fire, and then go back to shooting the other corporation.
This was what they had been doing when they got everyone to flee the station.
Did killing Naked Guy somehow reset their patterns?
They clearly weren’t aiming well. Normally folks wouldn’t have noticed this stuff because they would be busy running for their lives. But I could stand here and watch them relatively safely. They were either the worst shots in the galaxy or they were not trying to kill one another.
And since I knew they were all the same group, clearly it was the latter.
I moved through the street fight so I could get to safety. I was shot a few more times. Once at point blank range by a guy who had, a moment before, been crouching and firing ninety degrees in another direction.
They weren’t even subtle about it.
“Did it work?” Delovoa asked. He was wearing a bathrobe, slippers, and had some kind of gel smeared on his face.
“What…race are you, Delovoa? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”
“I’m Colmarian. I’m a mutant like you.”
I went in his house to see he had a meal prepared and was eating breakfast. I sat down and helped myself. My stomach was demanding food.
“Well?” he asked.
“Yeah, took a while, but I guess he’s disintegrated.”
“What did it look like? How did it happen? Where is the device?”
“I left it there. I couldn’t find it.”
“What? Do you know how valuable it’s worth?”
“A million credits.”
“More than that. Just an a-drive core alone costs hundreds of millions.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never bought one.”
I frowned at him, but kept eating.
“The corporations are attacking each other again,” I said, after satisfying my hunger.
“I wonder why.”
“I think killing the guy might have broken them.”
“Maybe. In any case, with him gone the next step is to take out the Portal. There are really a lot of Therezians now. I think they are accelerating their transfers,” Delovoa said.
“Or they’ve gotten better at it. How are we going to take out a Portal?”
“That,” Delovoa said, pointing to my autocannon. “Load an HE shell and shoot it.”
“I thought you said not to use those.”
“Not in a close fight. But you can shoot it at a Portal.”
“How am I going to get past all the Therezians? Even if they aren’t actively guarding the Portal, they’ll step on me by accident.”
“I talked to Garm about it and she has a solution.”
CHAPTER 76
Looking down was not something I recommended.
I was climbing the latticework with most of the remaining Navy forces, to a location above the Portal. An elevator had gotten us up here, but we had to walk the rest of the way along the roof of the city.
We were currently thousands of feet above Belvaille, amongst the lights, ventilation, and other noisy life support systems. The only means of travel was a little one-foot wide metal footpath with a railing to the side.
Each of us was equipped with parachutes and our plan was to jump down from above so as to avoid the attention of the Therezians. The General was not with us as he had taken a handful of his troops to secure the disintegrator.
Looking up was also not something I would recommend because you saw space. Space was actually fairly bright without any lights or atmosphere in the way. You couldn’t read by it, but it was enough to be impressive and a bit dizzying.
I had my autocannon with me and the General had let me continue borrowing his Ontakian pistol. I had my doubts about whether I was going to get my million credits for the disintegrator, so it was good to keep the pistol as a bargaining chip.
One of the soldiers came back to talk to me. Most of them were already well out of sight.
“Hey,” the soldier said.
“Yeah?”
“We’re going to go ahead and jump when we reach the point.”
“I thought we were supposed to go together.”
“You�
�re too slow. It’s going to take you all day to get there at this rate and we just confirmed we need to put the Portal out of commission as soon as possible.”
My tele still didn’t work so they must have talked to the General themselves.
“Well, do I turn around?”
“No, you’ll be the second wave in case we fail.” He left to rejoin his team.
“Okay. Good luck,” I said to his back.
I guess I could understand that. Those young guys sure were nimble up here.
I walked alone in the dark, being certain to keep my gun and parachute from getting tangled on anything. On the ground, I wasn’t especially concerned if I ran into things, I usually knocked them over or they broke. But if I tripped and fell off this latticework or into one of these huge machines, I was dead.
After what I guessed to be some hours, I was regretting the Navy going alone. I had no idea what was happening. They were probably fighting right now and I still had hours to go to reach the jump point.
I didn’t have anything to take my mind off what I was doing either, and this was kind of a scary place. A few times I had gotten my autocannon stuck in the railing, almost tripped, and become frozen with fear. I didn’t consider myself afraid of heights per se, but I was never in high places.
When I looked down and saw the city, there was a realization that all of that could kill me. It wasn’t a phobia, being afraid, it was healthy self-preservation.
Sometime later I noticed a blue beacon ahead on the latticework and saw it was where the Navy had cut through the mesh supports so they would have an unobstructed jump.
The cords of their parachutes were tied to the railing. I assume they didn’t all jump at the same time, so presumably it worked or the others wouldn’t have gone afterwards.
I tried to look down and see what was going on, but couldn’t make out much because of the distance and the lights. Even though they were facing down they were still extremely bright. They were simulating planetary daylight after all. I could see the Portal pylons. This spot seemed to be some blocks from them.
I could also make out Therezians too, lots of them, but they were in the distance. Presumably they moved away from the Portal after they came in so they didn’t crush any of the equipment.
I prepared for the jump. I shifted my autocannon to my lower back under the parachute. Made sure my clothes were tight and secure. I connected my rip cord to the railing.
That was a long way down, actually.
I squinted for another five minutes or so trying to figure out if the Portal was still working and it was necessary for me to jump.
Off the latticework.
At the very edge of space.
But there wasn’t anything for it. I walked all this way and I had no clear signs the Portal was destroyed. There were no soldiers dancing for joy in the middle of the street that I could see.
I took a deep breath and jumped.
The ground immediately started rushing towards me. I looked up to see my parachute had deployed successfully. But the street was still coming awfully fast. Soon I realized that these parachutes weren’t designed for someone of my weight.
There’s a primal fear that comes over you when you understand you’re about to hit the ground at an absurd speed. I flailed my arms and legs helplessly as if I could escape from my fall.
“Ahhh!”
I hit the ground feet-first like a brick and then landed on my side. I was sure I broke both my feet and at least dislocated my shoulder.
My first thought was, “What should I eat for dinner?”
I disconnected my parachute. Using my right arm, I unbuckled my autocannon and put it on the ground in front of me. I used that to stand. My feet hurt a lot but they weren’t broken. At least not badly.
My left shoulder was definitely not happy, however.
I took turns yanking on my autocannon to try and pop it back into place. I then hit it with my right arm and pulled on it, but that did nothing. I swung it in circles.
“Ow!”
I stopped doing that. I could live with it for a while.
I put my autocannon on, moving one strap from my left shoulder to my right, and gingerly began walking forwards on aching feet.
I travelled a block when I started seeing them. Dead soldiers were all across the street. Most of them, I noticed, were against the walls of buildings. They were not killed by gunfire. They were mangled and mashed.
I moved another block and it connected with a side street. There, walking even slower than me, were two blood-soaked Gandrine.
They were coming towards me.
Gradually.
How did they ever kill those fast soldiers?
I could autocannon them or plasma pistol them. Or I could talk.
“Hi,” I began cheerfully. “Um, you may not know, but the…guy with no clothes. Old Colmarian guy with the beard and hair. Who ran the corporations. He’s dead. He was disintegrated.”
It became clear the Gandrine were not moving towards me, they were heading back to the Portal. They scraped along the road past me, oblivious.
“So whatever deal you might have had with him, it’s over. He’s gone.”
They kept going, uninterested.
“Hey! The Naked Guy had planned to start a galactic civil war! Billions of people could die. Whole planetary populations. The Therezians are just one weapon in that war. Can you hear me? You bringing more here might cause untold deaths.”
The Gandrine stopped.
Very slowly they turned in unison to face me.
“So what!” One yelled.
They turned back towards the Portal and continued walking.
I had been ready for a lot of responses, but that was not one of them.
CHAPTER 77
I hadn’t thought the Gandrine were uncaring, just uninterested. But maybe they couldn’t feel empathy for the Colmarian Confederation. It wasn’t their empire after all.
But why would they keep bringing in Therezians unless they were also part of the final attack? Or they didn’t understand. Or they were homicidal psychopaths.
The Gandrine had reached the Portal control area and they appeared to be working on it.
I loaded an HE round. I disconnected my autocannon and put it on the ground. From there, I aimed it at the controls some two blocks away. I was worried I would miss if I tried to fire while standing.
I got down on my knees behind the gun, leaned over and put my weight on it.
I turned away, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger.
Kachooom!
I got flipped up in the air like a bottle cap. I landed on my bad shoulder.
There was an explosion down the street and the control panel was clearly demolished and burning in several places. Numerous other explosions erupted and I saw the nearest Portal pylon tilt dangerously.
It kept coming in my general direction and I crawled to my autocannon, which had spun away about ten feet. I used it to stand up and right as I turned around, the pylon came crashing down not thirty feet behind me.
It’s amazing how metal can become almost liquid when under enough stress. This pylon, which was probably five feet in diameter and taller than a tall Therezian, melted into the street. Pieces scuttled past my feet as it came apart.
From the smoke and dust of the wreckage, I saw some darker shadows.
Gandrine.
I tested taking a few steps backwards. My feet still hurt a lot. This was going to be a really close race if they “chased” me.
However, I was concerned about what part they might still play in this. Did they know of Naked Guy’s plans? Were they active participants? They certainly didn’t seem to care much about the fate of my empire.
I loaded an armor piercing round. I hadn’t had a chance to strap on my autocannon, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Holding it up so I could try and aim, I balanced it with my bad arm and held it against my chest. I had to spread my legs far apart and lean backwards. The
barrel was wobbling dangerously as I couldn’t keep it steady, but when it passed over the figure of the Gandrine on the right, I pulled the trigger.
“Eat suck, suckface!”
Kachooom!
I was slammed to the ground on my back. The wind knocked out of me. And now I felt like I had dislocated my other arm.
I had never had the wind knocked out of me before. I knew that’s what it was, but part of my brain wondered if I had collapsed lungs or something even more serious. What seemed like five seconds later, I heard a loud banging behind me. It took me a minute to figure it was my autocannon returning from its skyward arc.
Using the heels of my feet, I tried to turn myself around so I could see what happened.
The two Gandrine stood there, but the one on the right had clearly been hit. I could see a large depression on its chest. Like…someone had shot an armor piercing autocannon round into rock.
The shale Gandrine began to chip. And then its whole left side collapsed onto the street. It still stood there, but nearly half of it was removed.
The other Gandrine took a step towards me. Then another. Then another. Then another. It didn’t take me long to notice it was moving at non-Gandrine speeds and was accelerating.
I was still winded and prone on my back, with two bum arms and two bum feet.
I tried to scootch away.
The Gandrine was stomping faster and faster. It wasn’t exactly running, because at no point were both of its legs in the air, but it was power walking straight at me.
I covered my face and covered my privates.
I felt the Gandrine step on me, worsening my winded condition and cracking more than one rib. As it ran over, it flipped me up and onto my stomach, breaking my nose. That was one heavy slab of rock!
I was extremely tired. I wanted to sleep. No, that was me passing out. If I did that, I was going to end up crushed against the walls like the soldiers.
The Gandrine was slowly turning around after overshooting my prone form by forty feet. It took him that long to slow down.
“I have time,” I thought.
But time for what? I couldn’t even stand up when I wasn’t crippled.
The Gandrine came charging at me again. I covered my head with my left arm just as he stepped on my neck. If I hadn’t protected myself I felt he would have broken my skull. My arm felt even worse.
Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap Page 28
