It wasn’t a threat. But when it comes from the sister of a guy who can earthquake an entire space station at will, it pretty much becomes a threat.
CHAPTER 12
Outside the building I felt good. I hadn’t realized I’d previously felt bad, but the specter of an entire species gunning for me had apparently weighed on my mind. Now it was just a matter of getting Jyen and Jyonal off Belvaille.
It might be hard without clueing Garm in, especially since she had closed the port when the Dredel Led showed up. Would she buy that it was for the greater good? Probably not. I had to convince Jyen to let Garm in on their secret.
I was thinking of people to get in touch with first when I heard a familiar noise. I looked back just in time to see a figure streak by, followed by a hard landing not five feet behind me.
“Son of a bitch.”
The Dredel Led was not looking at me, however. It faced the apartment building I had just exited.
I pulled my plasma pistol out with my left hand, tossed it about one foot to my right hand, so I could aim better. This was a terribly dangerous thing to do, but I did it without thinking. I caught it, raised it, powered it on with my thumb.
“Eat suck, suckface!”
Click.
Click.
Click.
I looked at my Ontakian pistol. There was no green glow. There was no abdomen-throbbing hum. It was absolutely inert even after flipping it on and off multiple times.
The robot turned around to face me and I knew I was going to die, really going to die. This was a new sensation for me: fear. Real, “there’s a poisonous spider in my pants” fear. I had to do something drastic.
I lunged forward and could tell the robot was the one from the video. Its right arm rose, attempting to become level with my chest. On the other robot, that same arm had owned a cannon that sent me cartwheeling through the air like the last chip on a gambling binge.
But I was at it. Toe-to-toe. I knew it could fly, and if it got away, got some range between us, it would just blast me until I was chunks. My theory was that, no matter what metal this thing was made out of, it was still metal. If it fired at this range it would kill the both of us. And hopefully it didn’t hate me more than it liked itself.
I had to incapacitate it or it would just move away, and there was no way my slow ass would stop it. I put my arms around it, wrapped my legs around its legs.
Now what?
The robot’s face was really a poor imitation of a Colmarian. I actually noticed the small gizmos just inside its eyes that controlled the movement of its lids and such. And its expressions in general seemed to be random as opposed to being tied to any action it was doing. Like it smiled briefly. Then it twitched. Then it crinkled its nose. Its features were all mismatched and unaligned. It was truly ugly and disturbing.
But its face wasn’t my concern. It had put its left hand under my right arm and was trying to break free of my bear hug. It was stronger than me. I could feel it in its grip alone. I wasn’t going to be able to hold onto it. But as we stumbled around, one thing became obvious: I outweighed it.
I heaved forward as hard as I could, keeping one leg behind it so it couldn’t easily reposition itself. We tumbled over and fell onto the sidewalk.
It then went into overdrive. It was hitting me and kicking and twisting its legs and moving every single piece of its frame independently, trying to get out from underneath. I was desperately trying to keep it pinned down.
I took a huge risk and with my left arm I reached into my coat and fumbled for my shotgun. I took blow after blow from the Dredel Led, and while they weren’t incredibly painful I became dizzy. He would start causing organ damage to me soon, no matter how hard my bones and exterior were.
I had my shotgun out in one hand and I pulled both triggers. The gun flew from my grasp because of the recoil. The face of the Dredel Led was gone. The outer material was gone. The features were gone. The little motors were gone. But the head, as it were, was still there. Underneath that cheap material was simply a knob. A silver metal bulb of sorts with no distinguishing features at all.
The robot did not vary one iota in its resistance.
I’d screwed up and assumed it was a Colmarian and that its vitals would be in its head. But why would they be? This was a robot—it could have its brain, or equivalent, in its elbow. Or two brains. Or no brain. How was I going to kill this thing?
I felt myself losing the fight. I got tired and it did not. I could try and take it up to Jyonal and let him turn this stupid thing inside out after he ingested some drugs, but I was not confident he could do it in a timely manner.
I similarly wasn’t confident I could stop the robot from murdering Jyen and Jyonal, despite each of their mutations. And I was very worried what Jyonal would do under pressure. It wouldn’t do much good if he destroyed Belvaille while trying to kill the robot. No good for me, anyway.
So I thought about what was the most dangerous thing on this adversary. It was that energy cannon. If it didn’t have that, at least I’d have a chance.
The Dredel Led’s arms were moving so quickly and were so powerful it was hard to even get hold of one. But I finally took hold of its right arm. I could vaguely feel an extra bulge outside its forearm that I guessed was a barrel.
In a desperate move, I let go of its body and both my hands secured its arm. Using all my weight, I banged the cannon against the ground over and over, trying to damage the weapon.
The robot had not been prepared for such a sudden shift. It was fighting to get me off its whole body, not protect one limb. But then the robot used its free arm to push me off and got to its feet.
I was lying on the ground. If it was going to make a move, this would be it. Two things had to be true for me to live. The cannon had to operate like a traditional firearm, and I had to have somehow dented or otherwise compromised that barrel.
If you take an extremely high-powered weapon, like that energy cannon, and bend the barrel, anyone who fires it is in for a world of hurt. Because if the obstruction provides enough resistance, the projectile is going to explode the gun itself. Of course, that’s just how Colmarian weapons work, not necessarily things carried by Dredel Led.
I didn’t even try and get to my feet. It would be pointless if he was just going to fly back a few steps and shoot me. Yeah, that’s how lazy I am.
The Dredel Led faced me, though it was kind of hard to tell since it didn’t actually have a face, then it kicked me in the jaw!
Thank the Colmarian Congress’s sticky floors.
I actually smiled as it walked over and clamped its insanely strong hands on my neck. The idea of dying wasn’t so bad, it was dying without even a chance of fighting back that bothered me. It punched me and kicked me and I took it like a trooper.
As little as we knew about Dredel Led, they obviously didn’t know anything about us either. It hit me in some pretty useless locations. Like my upper shoulder. Or square in the chest.
It was, however, smart enough to stay out of my reach. It knew once I had it in my grip I could get it on the ground. But whether its rocket pack had been damaged like its cannon or it didn’t feel I was worth the fuel, it stayed relatively close as it pummeled me and I did my best to protect myself.
After some minutes of this, I had lost the good spirit that originally came from finding it wasn’t using its cannon. I was just as useless fighting it hand-to-hand as I’d be if it were hurling exploding light at me from a safe distance. This way was just taking longer.
My pistol seemed broken, so my guaranteed way of killing it was now gone. My shotgun didn’t do anything except mar its aesthetics. And the robot was too quick for me to get a hold of.
I just didn’t see a whole lot of options.
Maybe I could slowly make my way upstairs while yelling, to give Jyen and Jyonal time to prepare. But if it was here on the station to kill Jyonal, it seemed like a bad idea for me to bring it to him.
I needed something that coul
d hurt it. Then I got an idea. A really bad idea.
I would have to go many blocks away. And how would I keep it with me that whole time? And how did I know it would even work?
I had no other choice.
I knew one way to make the Dredel Led move was to walk towards it. Pretty simple. It would then step back, smack me a few times, and return to being comfortably out of my reach.
With arms outstretched, I stomped forward as fast as I could. Pow, kick, jab, it hit me. It then hopped backwards. Ha hah. I’d successfully moved it four feet after taking three punishing blows. I only had to do that like a million more times.
After I had moved it an entire half block, I was wondering if its limbs would hold out forever. Even machines break, right? They break all the time around here. Why should its arms be any different? That was the mantra I kept repeating to myself as I got my torso hammered over and over.
As we moved, I tried to put what street we were on out of my head as it was depressing. But people noticed us as our fight—that being a generous term—carried us onward.
The battle had now been going on for hours, I was sure of it. People were calling out to me, but I didn’t exactly have the chance to speak to them. My ears were bleeding. I think my whole body was. I could tell it wasn’t sweat because it was hot.
I knew there were a lot of people around now. Just normal citizens who were watching me die to a Dredel Led. I could see that being interesting.
I kept pushing it forward. Occasionally I would manage to grasp its wrist or arm briefly, but it always pulled back with such force I couldn’t hold on. But it gave me hope that it was doing the Dredel Led equivalent of getting tired.
My sense of place was nearly gone. I wasn’t thinking much more than of pushing this thing back as my lungs heaved and I dragged my legs.
Then I heard a very distinct voice.
“Hank. Move.”
It was Garm, and her voice was amplified. I looked around and saw no people, the streets clear of spectators. I took a few hits during this time and covered myself. I looked up the street and saw it:
Garm had her artillery piece out, pulled by a car. It was aimed in my general direction.
I tried to say “no,” but nothing came out.
I couldn’t distance myself from the Dredel Led. I was waving Garm down with one hand while trying to fend off the robot. She wouldn’t shoot that at me, it was for buildings, right?
BOOM!
I was on the ground and so was the robot. I looked back and sure enough, that gun was designed to knock down buildings.
A five-story office structure behind us was missing about half its side. I scrambled to my feet as the top part of the building began to bend in an ear-piercing cacophony.
The Dredel Led was not amused. Or maybe it was, I couldn’t tell. But finally. Thankfully. It was limping. An artillery shell and a ripped building had given it a sore ankle apparently.
It was like a race between two mountains, their movements measured in geological terms, as I hobbled to get ahead. I was no longer chasing him, it was after me. I tried to get my bearings and realized I was only a block away from my destination.
The architecture of course all looked the same, but the decorations were different. The street was deserted.
Suddenly I got worried. What if he wasn’t here? What if—
“Hank!” Wallow was standing right in front of me.
I sighed. Glancing back, I saw the Dredel Led had not yet entered the street. I tried to collect myself as I looked up at Wallow. If this monstrosity could not kill the Dredel Led, I doubted anything on the station could. Or in the state of Ginland. The slight problem was convincing him to try.
“I’ve come here to settle the score, Wallow. I’m going to bust you up.”
Wallow’s face contorted into rage and that gigantic arm lifted back to smear me into the road. I have to work on my wording.
“Wait! Not me. I’m not going to fight you. My buddy is. He’s tougher than me and I hired him and he says you’re weak and stupid and-and ugly and fat,” I said, hoping at least one of those would register as an insult.
“Where is he?” Wallow barked in a challenge. His arm thankfully returned to his side, though it still ended in a clenched fist.
“He’s coming. Be here in a second. Gray jacket. Green pants. Kind of…no head.” I looked back up the street, as did Wallow.
I saw no silhouettes, heard no footsteps approaching.
“Yup. He should be coming really soon. Just up that street. Ready to fight you,” I sniffed a bit and absently dabbed at my contusions.
“He might have stopped for something to eat. He’s kind of—”
There was a sickening crunch and I saw blackness. I was on the ground and truly broken. My forehead rested against the road and I think I was on my stomach. I could feel my teeth were shattered but I couldn’t even purse my lips to spit out the debris.
There was blood everywhere. I could only keep one eye open and that one only barely. I could not tell you how many broken bones I had because I was unaware of how many existed in my body, but it was pretty close to a 1:1 correlation.
I could not take in more than the shallowest of breaths without acute pain, mildly coughing as blood gushed out of my mouth and nose.
Is there really such a thing as a good way to be murdered? I hadn’t thought about it before. But my one thought was that this wasn’t it.
Over what seemed like the unbelievably loud noise of me dying, I could remotely hear Wallow yelling about something. Probably how I had stained his knuckle with my viscera. This had not been, in retrospect, a good idea.
With every ounce of effort I had left, I turned my head to the side, mostly because I was tired of my broken nose mashing into the street.
In the distance. What seemed like a million miles away. I saw it. It was the Dredel Led. I think it had paused in its movement. Probably because it just spotted a pissed-off Therezian.
I would have given the last unbroken bone in my foot to know what that robot was thinking. I mean it was probably some gobbledygook that didn’t make any sense, but I could just see it going, “Wasn’t I just fighting someone a lot smaller?” Who would have thought the most useless space station at the edge of the most useless empire’s territory could put up such opposition?
Then I saw Wallow running towards the Dredel Led. I had never seen him run before. No wonder he got around so fast. Three steps and he had crossed the length of the block.
I wanted to move, to get the crap out of there. The battlefield of the gods was no place for a jaywalker. But I couldn’t. I was done. A little child could come by and poke me in the eye until I died and I wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing.
Worst of all, my body tormented me with consciousness. This time, I was absolutely happy to go to sleep. Even go to sleep and not wake up. But no. My body was like, “You didn’t listen to me before, so now you get to experience the joy of being a sack of wrecked meat.”
I couldn’t even close my eye, because then it just made me more aware of the pain. So I lay there like a bloody barnacle only semi-conscious of the battle in the distance.
I kind of hoped Wallow won.
But not entirely.
CHAPTER 13
I woke up at the hospital at one point and tasted wires. There were at least a dozen small ones in my mouth. So many I could barely move my tongue. There were several up my nose. I think there was one in my ear. I was literally plugged in.
The room had three technicians in it buzzing around. I turned my eyes and saw the medical machines were literally suspended from each other in mid-air. Interconnected cords ran through boxes of blinking lights and dials and buttons which were slanted and stacked in defiance of gravity. A tech was cursing at one when he saw my eyes open.
“Hank. Oh, we had to trick the instruments into thinking you were alive. This one—”
Good, I’m dead. Won’t have to put up with any more crap. I closed my eyes again and le
t the bastards have my carcass. Fat lot of use they’ll get out of it.
Much later I saw a light. It grew brighter and brighter.
Then it turned blue. I awoke and saw Jyen smiling at me in a chair beside my bed.
“Told you he was coming around,” a male voice said from somewhere. But I was still staring at Jyen, who I now noticed was holding my hand.
“What are you doing here?” I croaked past the tubes in my mouth.
“She said she was with you. Or worked with you. Or something,” an obviously annoyed Garm interjected from the other side of the bed.
But that’s not what I meant.
“No, what are you doing here? Why haven’t you left?”
Jyen’s beatific smile slightly faded and she looked at Garm.
“We can talk about that later, Hank. You need to rest.”
All I could think was, if she hasn’t left, then her brother hasn’t. That means there could be ten more Dredel Led on the way.
I started to move, but then thought better of it. There must have been a hundred cables attached to me. Pretty sure they were in my nether regions as well. That’s not going to be pretty.
“How long,” I began, then fumbled on the wires in my mouth.
“You’ve been here for almost a month,” Garm said. “A lot has happened.”
I reached up gingerly to feel for my beard, but none was there. Someone had been shaving me. Which was kind of creepy.
“Everyone knows what you did, Hank. You’re our protector,” Jyen bubbled.
“She’s not lying. I suppose there were some people who kind of doubted Rendrae’s original story in The News and the first Dredel Led. But there were like a thousand eyewitnesses to you punching it out with this last one in the middle of the street. Probably the bravest, dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Garm said with mixed emotions.
I could think of one thing dumber.
“Why…did you shoot me with that damn…artillery piece?”
“Because you waved for me to!”
“Why…would I do that?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I couldn’t figure out. But we aimed behind you.”
Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy Page 9
