Force equals mass times acceleration.
This guy was way more massive than I was and moving fairly quickly. So that’s how Gandrine fight. They run into things and those things die.
The Gandrine was turning around again.
Despite the pain, I rose to my arms and drew up my legs. I forcibly bent my knees even though it felt like I was tearing my skin. As the Gandrine was about to lay into me I curled up into a tight fetal position on the ground.
It kicked me like a ball and I rolled a good twenty feet. But I forced it to stumble. Force equals mass times acceleration also applied to it hitting the ground face first.
I felt the road quiver as it slid through the tacky surface like water.
I had to hope it got to its feet at least as slowly as I did.
My arm really hurt. My whole body did. But I reached for the General’s Ontakian plasma pistol.
I powered on the weapon and the red glow burst from the crystal and the deep rumble made my body ache even more.
I fired.
A red laser-like beam touched the Gandrine and faded. No effect.
The Gandrine was beginning to stand.
Was the plasma pistol fake? Had the General given it to me knowing it did nothing? I pressed the trigger again and noticed it stayed on longer because I had held the trigger longer. My old Ontakian pistol had merely fired a blob of energy that shot through buildings.
The Gandrine had lifted its lower body.
I fired again, this time not releasing the trigger.
The red beam kept a spot on the Gandrine that jiggled around as my hand moved, and as I labored to breathe. But still there was no effect.
As I held the trigger, the beam grew brighter. The rumbling from the crystal grew louder.
The Gandrine was standing now and all I was doing was shining a little light on it.
I kept holding the trigger because I had nothing more I could do. The light was getting intense. I had to squint. I could feel heat on my face from the beam. My hand hurt from the vibration.
The Gandrine charged me again.
The noise of the Ontakian pistol became unbearable and the light was so bright I had to shut my eyes and turn away.
I was waiting to get stepped on, but nothing happened.
Suddenly, the vibration, the light, the heat, all cut out.
Well that was a stupid way for me to die.
I wasn’t dead, because I sneezed. My arm hair had been roasted-off.
It took a long time for my vision to clear. I had a purple splotch seared into my retinas. I hoped it wasn’t permanent. I blinked it away and saw the Gandrine was about ten feet from me.
Half of it was, anyway. Its upper half had been vaporized.
Okay. Now I can pass out.
CHAPTER 78
I was awoken by my stomach. Old reliable.
Surveying the damage, my body had managed to snap itself back into place at least partially, and I had avoided getting stuck between the toes of any Therezians.
All in all, things looked up.
But looking up, I saw lots of Therezians grazing around.
Getting our platoon of soldiers past them had been a major issue, which was why we had taken the latticework, but now I just had to sneak by alone.
I crawled over to the half-corpse of the Gandrine and used its rocky body to pull myself up.
My arms were sore, but a lot better. I walked on the sides of my feet because that hurt less. My ribs were clearly broken and my breathing anguished.
I walked over to one of the spent parachutes in the middle of the road. Turning the fabric inside-out, I felt it was a pretty close match to the universal gray-silver color of Belvaille’s buildings and sidewalks.
I tore the parachute with my hands. It was sturdy stuff, I had to rip it with my teeth to get it going.
I put the shroud over me and stood next to buildings as I inched along the sidewalks. Most of the Therezians seemed to be about fifty feet tall and almost never looked down. From that height, I hoped I would be camouflaged. But knowing my luck they all had telescopic vision and could smell broken bones.
When a Therezian got too close I stopped moving.
I was almost stepped on several times but I think that was due to them not looking, or caring, where they walked. I may have stopped a galactic civil war, but sooner rather than later, this whole city was going to get trampled. As strong as Belvaille’s buildings were, maybe a quarter of them in this area were twisted scraps of metal due to some Therezian brushing past.
It was with great relief when I finally reached a train station the Therezians hadn’t inadvertently destroyed and I could get the hell out of there by means other than tiptoeing.
I checked myself directly into the hospital.
They told me Garm had left earlier that day. Which sucked, I was hoping for a bunkmate for once.
“You have a sunburn,” Garm said.
Delovoa, Garm, and the General were all visiting me as I recovered.
“I do? Oh, probably from the plasma pistol.”
“The Portal is neutralized?” the General asked.
“And the Gandrine,” I confirmed.
“Still have the clones,” Delovoa reminded. “They’re back to shooting each other and blowing up bars.”
“Did you get the device?” I asked the General.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he sneered.
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to get out of paying me or didn’t want to talk about it in front of Delovoa and Garm—even though they both knew all about it. I didn’t care, frankly.
“So how do we get rid of the soldiers and Therezians?” I asked.
“You have already requested aid from the Colmarian Confederation. We have sent emergency communications but it will take some time to gather a response team,” the General said.
“Are we supposed to let them destroy our infrastructure until then?” Garm demanded.
“What can we do about it?” I asked her.
She seemed mad that I was “siding” with the General.
“What about the freighters, those are probably all filled with weapons of some sort,” Delovoa said.
“You avoided paying importation fees on them. They will be reclaimed,” the General declared.
“Just a minute,” Garm shouted, “you know as well as I do that those contents are worth billions of credits. It wasn’t our oversight they got here, it was yours. I think we should be reimbursed for their value.”
The General was incensed that the traitor, former Adjunct Overwatch, dared to address him directly.
“How about we work something out?” I suggested. “Like determine fair market value and we offer a…half-off discount?”
“Thirty percent,” Garm countered.
“Ninety,” the General said.
“We need to move everyone,” Delovoa said. “We don’t have the means of fighting Therezians and corporations. We have to get out of their way until the Navy gets here.”
The General and Garm were still haggling over rates.
I was getting hungry and tired listening to these people.
“Mrah mrah. I need to get some sleep. Can I get feeding tubes hooked up?”
Everyone looked at me, seeming to remember I was a great hero. Or at least here.
“We’ll come back later. And I’ll post guards outside,” Garm said. “You did good.”
“I know,” I said. “You still look terrible.”
“Not everyone heals as fast as you, fatty.”
She gave me a light slap on the cheek which I heard but didn’t feel. She also leaned over and kissed my broken nose, which I also didn’t feel.
But I smelled her.
I drifted to sleep with her fragrance of orchids and pain.
CHAPTER 79
Aaooooggaaa!
I almost fell out of my bed. What a terrible alarm clock. As my mind chased away my slumber I realized:
“I know that sound.�
�
That was the city-wide catastrophic warning system.
Belvaille was a space station. Other than the surface of a star or a black hole there was no more inhospitable place to put a city than deep space. Every second of every day the environment was trying to kill us.
There were a dozen or more absolutely vital systems whose failure meant instant death for every occupant of the entire city.
So every five years, no matter what gang fights were going on, or what drama was cooking, we all took a temporary break and did a few days of emergency tests. And everyone, without exception, took part.
Space stations failed. They were not a perfect science. And while the number of people who died every year from common sickness in the Colmarian Confederation greatly dwarfed the death toll from space station disasters, that wasn’t reassuring if you lived on one.
Moreover, Belvaille was at the very edge of the Colmarian Confederation. Even with working Portals it took rescue ships weeks at the earliest to receive word and respond—when your lifespan was measured in seconds in case of an accident.
Aaooooggaaa!
They had not bothered to put me in hospital clothes so I carefully turned myself on the bed. I didn’t want to fall flat on the floor and not be able to get up. I put my legs over and pushed myself off, landing well enough that I could stand.
I hustled to the hospital exit and saw the city in a panic. This wasn’t a test.
There were 150 shelters across the city. Places you were supposed to take refuge in case of one of these events. They housed emergency supplies and power and air.
On the street I saw hundreds of citizens running in terror, screaming.
I knew the closest shelter was City Hall, but you had to navigate stairs to get to it and I was too slow on them. Also, everyone would try and go there and it might not hold them.
I decided to head slightly northwest.
Aaooooggaaa!
I ran down the street and people flew past me like I was standing still.
“Run, Hank!” Someone shouted.
“The latticework is shutting down!” Another yelled.
Huff huff huff.
“Run! Get to the shelter!” Another said.
The streets were thinning. Old people, women carrying their children, and me, were the last bit left.
“Hank, run!” Someone said, as they shot by.
“Shut up!” I replied, getting tired of people thinking I wasn’t actually running. Like I was too cool to panic or something.
Aaooooggaaa!
It was just me on the street now. I looked up and the lights were fading on the latticework.
With no one around, the only sounds were my feet tromping along in between sirens. I found it actually helped if I didn’t pump my arms. I couldn’t swing them fast enough or in rhythm to my feet and they just threw me off balance.
My lungs were burning and my legs were burning and my feet hurt. I still had quite a ways to go. Why hadn’t I gone to City Hall? I could have rolled down the stairs.
The lights were almost completely out now.
I took a step and flew like five feet in the air! I windmilled my arms and landed, thankfully, on my knees.
The artificial gravity was failing.
I got up and kept going.
Life can kind of suck sometimes. Especially when you’re getting older and your universe was changing and your place in it was getting less and less valuable and Therezians and soldiers had taken over your home.
But by damn, I wanted to live!
Aaooooahhhh.
The siren died with croak. Even it was failing.
I had just a few blocks to go.
I passed a cross street and spotted two Therezians standing practically back-to-back looking up at the latticework.
They noticed they were about to die. They didn’t seem to care.
I saw the shelter.
The door was still open. It was about ten feet wide to accommodate a doomed city. People were at the entrance calling to me and waving.
“Come on!”
“Hurry!”
I saw the door was sliding shut.
If that door closes, I’m dead. But if it closes and I get caught in it, everyone inside will die as well as me. There was no such thing as partial shelter on a space station.
It was going to be close. The people had moved away from the door and they were no longer urging me onward.
If I was selfless and the champion I wanted to be, I would stop now. I would trade my life for theirs.
But screw that noise.
The door was nearly shut and I did the most improbable, useless thing I could do.
I jumped towards it.
I don’t know if gravity cut out then or I suddenly learned how to jump, but I sailed through the air. My head passed the door and I realized, “I’m not going to make it.”
A pessimist to the end.
I slammed into four people who had been waiting on the other side and the door closed behind me. I had safely made it inside.
I heard them gurgle and groan underneath me.
“Get off!” They complained.
“I can’t,” I said, back in artificial gravity.
It took everyone in the shelter to pull me off the poor people I crushed. They were not happy, but their injuries weren’t life-threatening.
The lighting was dim in here. Designed to last weeks. You couldn’t even see the floor.
Everyone was silent. Not even crying. It was like we held our breaths, either waiting for what would happen next, or afraid to use our precious oxygen.
We took stock of our supplies. Everything seemed to be there.
I had guessed right in that this shelter was well under capacity. There were less than two hundred people here. But I ate a lot.
People who had taken the training more seriously knew all the steps. They contacted the other shelters, confirmed statuses, conditions, and emergency messages were sent. While messages had already been sent to the Colmarian Navy, these were going to rescue services within the state of Ginland itself and they would be a lot faster responding.
Hopefully.
Some of the technicians in other shelters said we were completely losing power on the station. The reason was unknown.
As we settled in for the long haul and the adrenaline was wearing off, I felt a familiar sensation.
A tremendous force pulled on me almost like a hand had grabbed hold of my stomach and was trying to yank it out of my mouth. I fell to my knees and nearly fainted.
Drooling on the ground, I slowly rose to a sitting position.
People began screaming.
“What was that?” a person asked.
“Someone give me your tele!” I yelled.
No one answered, so I simply grabbed the guy next to me and squeezed.
“Give me your tele!”
He gave it.
I called Delovoa and Garm. Please be alive. Please be there.
Delovoa answered.
“Hello, this is Delovoa.”
“Hey, it’s me,” I said.
Garm answered once she saw Delovoa was on the line. Then saw me too.
“What was that?” she asked.
“That was a Portal,” I said.
“All the Portals are disabled and Belvaille is way too large to fit through one,” Garm said.
“It wasn’t a Portal,” Delovoa gasped. “It was an a-drive! The corporation must have installed an a-drive on Belvaille. They moved the whole city!”
“The shield just collapsed,” Garm said.
CHAPTER 80
We were expecting to have to weather inside our shelters for weeks at the least.
It was only a handful of hours before we were in widespread tele communication. Not with the Navy, but with nearby ships.
The Colmarian Confederation had five capital planets, with a sixth one disputed. Belvaille had been transported to the solar system Ceredus.
The system was adjacent
to one of the capitals, Capital 3. It was so named even though it was the second capital. One of the previous capitals decided it no longer wanted the designation or responsibility.
Ceredus had the most Portals of any system in the Colmarian Confederation. It was almost exactly in the center of the empire.
I had assumed killing Naked Guy, destroying the Portal, and the Gandrine, would stop his schemes to start a civil war. But it did nothing of the sort.
We only knew a small piece of what was planned and nothing about how it was to be implemented.
Naked Guy had said he was going to give these weapons to warring groups within the Colmarian Confederation. And so he did.
But not by sending out transport ships loaded with goods, but by taking all of Belvaille and transporting it, along with the attached freighters.
When the shield and gravity were deactivated, the Therezians were free from the confines of the station. Space, while death for a Colmarian, did not pose the same danger for the giants. They could survive unprotected in outer space for hours. But they didn’t need that long because they were picked up by waiting ships—other corporate vessels that Naked Guy had prepared months or years in advance.
The freighters full of weapons were split off and separated, their goods transferred to other craft.
The ships then used the vast array of Portals in Ceredus to spread out instantly across the empire.
The Navy, who was only regionally aware of a disturbance in the distant state of Ginland, was not prepared for an entire space station to a-drive in, unload its cargo, and split in a thousand different directions.
No space station had ever portaled before, let alone a-drived. Besides, there was nothing they could have done. They didn’t know what they saw was the catalyst for a galactic civil war.
I had failed.
The immortal Naked Guy had known us and what our responses would be. He had given the exact push needed to get racial, religious, and political conflicts to finally erupt.
He chose his targets perfectly.
Within weeks there were battles raging all over the empire.
We were a Confederation that had always been tenuously held together. But those ties were coming apart fast.
Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap Page 29
