Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy
Page 15
“Technically, I’m a certified Colmarian Armorer because I supply the police here with weapons and gear. A lot cheaper than shipping it in.”
I picked up an odd-looking gun.
“Yeah, but this stuff can’t all be legal.”
Delovoa laughed.
“Nothing is legal. In all the empire. I was wondering the same thing you were, so I tried to get a list of what was banned and there was something like a half-million different sets of regulations. If they want to arrest me, I’m sure they can.”
“Laws. Now that will be an unusual concept to deal with,” I said.
“Yeah. Did you really kill Ddewn?”
“I guess,” I said, still looking over his merchandise.
“Well, I suppose he had it coming,” Delovoa said indifferently. “Hey, you thinking about selling your pistol?”
“It’s busted.” Delovoa seemed more upset than I was. All three of his eyes drooping.
“No. How?”
“Dredel Led.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll still buy it. Same price. It’s no good broken, right?”
“What are you going to do with it? It doesn’t even turn on anymore.”
“I’ll take it apart. Try and learn from it.”
“It’ll blow up!” I shouted, putting down a small machine gun.
“That’s an old wives’ tale. Things don’t just blow up.”
On top of all our problems, I didn’t need him tinkering with alien guns.
“No thanks,” I answered.
“Hey, come take a look at this,” he said, smiling. He led me to a long, broad table with a sheet on it. He waited for me to get close by and, still wearing that goofy grin, he whipped the sheet off.
“Ah.” I jumped back as fast as I could.
“Haha. You’re the fourth person that’s done that,” he said, truly enjoying himself.
It was the Dredel Led. What was left of it. Delovoa had put all the pieces back in the rough approximation of where they were originally, before Wallow had dismantled it. It was just so much loose scrap.
“Take a look at this,” he said, getting a tool in place above the heap of junk.
“I’m not getting anywhere near that,” I protested. “I didn’t know they kept it.”
“Of course. Garm had me collect it all. You think they were going to throw it in the trash? The Navy is coming to examine it. Just come here and look. It can’t hurt you.”
I warily eased my way around the table and looked. I peered through a magnification lens at a piece of the robot.
“This is ten times magnification. This is thirty. This is 200. This is 550. Sorry, some dust from the sheet.”
Each click it seemed like we were looking at a little city. And you’d think that was as small as it could get and then it just kept getting smaller. Little cities inside cities.
“What is that?” I asked, amazed.
“I have some theories,” he said vaguely.
“Do you know how this thing works?”
“Some. I mean, I know what metal this is. It’s really strong and there are no imperfections at all, but as for what’s inside it, I doubt any Colmarian could tell you.”
Even though it was in pieces, I couldn’t suppress a chill seeing it. As if one of those arm fragments was going to reach out and grab me.
Delovoa was a real brain. No one else would have nerve enough to pick up all that debris, let alone store the damn thing in their house.
“Hey,” I said, remembering one of the reasons why I was here. “Could you get rid of some delfiblinium?”
He gently replaced the sheet and gave me an odd look, his several brows furrowing.
“You have some?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, other than blowing it up, you might try storing it. I’m building these shielded cabinets for Garm to hide stuff in. Should block most scanners, though no one can really scan for delfiblinium. What, did someone give you a few micrograms?”
“Something like that. You know how explosive it is by any chance?”
“That stuff is celestial. I think the government uses it to nudge comets around on their orbits, you know, to clear Portals. No person could really do anything with it. You probably don’t have delfiblinium. People say all kinds of things. I could take a look at it for you.”
“That’s okay,” I said, trying not to sweat. “I think it’s nothing.”
“So you need anything else? I’m kind of having a fire sale.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear. I want two guns. Hidden in my boots. Just one shot is fine.”
“The shotgun I made you is pretty compact,” he said.
I took it out in demonstration.
“This is snub, but it’s huge. You can’t even carry it in a pistol holster let alone in a boot. I just need something for close range. A few feet.”
The near-fight with Ddewn had got me thinking. I’d never carried knives or anything before. I’m too slow to use them properly. But if I start grappling with multiple people and I lose my shotgun, I want a way to buy some more time. And everyone knows I’ve got that shotgun. If I get some pistols, that’ll be my secret until I need them.
“Anything hidden won’t stand up to a scanner,” he said.
“I know. I don’t plan on going through any.”
“Oh,” Delovoa said, brightening. “I have the perfect thing.”
He ran off into the depths of his lab. I checked out the different guns arrayed nearby. It was good to keep abreast of all this stuff, as it started in labs like this and ended up in fights soon enough, though I wasn’t sure how that would work with the military coming. Did they really expect us to be unarmed?
“Do you know what the policy is for weapons in real Colmarian cities?” I yelled to Delovoa.
“I think each one is different,” he yelled back.
Figures.
He returned with a long, rust-colored tube with some valves on one end.
“Try this. Point it that way, hold your arm out, and press this.” He handed it to me and got well away.
It felt big, far too big for my boots unless I made some very adventurous fashion changes to them.
I tried to press how he indicated and nothing happened.
“Like this?” I asked, turning slightly toward Delovoa to demonstrate. He practically dove into the next room.
“Watch where you’re pointing that,” he snapped. “You got to push the two together.”
I tried, nothing happened.
“Is it broken?”
“No. Or I can’t remember, maybe you have to push one then the other,” he said, from a safe distance.
“Well there’s three,” I began. Then whoosh. A four-foot ribbon of orange flame shot out of the end of the tube.
I had not been expecting that and my vision was momentarily spotted. When I blinked my eyes clear, I noticed the cuff on my jacket was melted.
“Hey,” I said.
“Pretty cool, huh?” Delovoa answered proudly. “I’ll sell it to you for a grand. And I’ll fill the first ten uses for free.”
“This stupid thing melted my jacket,” I said, showing him the proof.
“It’s hardly singed. But yeah, I couldn’t stop it from venting some gas out the rear.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have burnt my hand off.” I checked and my right hand did indeed have some chemical residue on it.
“Nah. I mean it would hurt my hand, but you fought a Dredel Led.”
“And you want to sell this for a thousand? No way. I’m the only person who could possibly use it on the whole station. I’ll give you a hundred if you cut this barrel three inches.”
“It’ll burn your hand even more. And it won’t be as narrow a flame. I’d recommend only taking off an inch. But 250 and you got a deal.”
We shook.
“I want some other guns, too. In case this doesn’t work out. I’m sure you got some little pistols.”
“Sure. I got guns like thi
s big,” he said, holding his fingers up.
“What am I going to do with that?” I said. “I’d be better off throwing it.”
“I’m just telling you what I got. If you want power it’s going to be big and it’s going to be noticeable. But let me go grab some of my smaller stuff and we’ll see what we can do.”
He hurried off into his lab while I poked at my wrecked jacket. It was getting hard to find clothes with the Portal embargo. I’d soon have to start going to some tailors and get custom fit.
As I fretted about the state of my clothes, I saw another sheet covering a large upright rectangle in the far corner. It was maybe eight feet tall, four feet wide, and three feet deep. I wondered if this was one of the cabinets Delovoa talked about earlier.
I pulled on the sheet to see what was underneath. I tilted my head and stepped back to try and make sense of what I was seeing. Then I screamed.
Delovoa ran back, carrying a tray full of pistols.
“What?” he asked, alarmed.
I had my back against the wall, directly across from the thing in front of me. I couldn’t even point.
Delovoa turned.
“Oh, don’t worry. It’s old,” he said, indicating the giant robot standing in front of me.
It was a Dredel Led. But unlike the others, it was massive and not remotely designed to appear like us. Its arms were square pillars that hung below its knees and ended abruptly with no hands. Similarly, its legs were thick rectangles with jointed knees and flaps at the bottom, representing some kind of feet and/or toes. It didn’t have a head or neck at all, but the front of it bulged and a dark hole in the center was reminiscent of an eye. The whole of it was gleaming white and there were no noticeable rivets or bolts or seams. In simple, yet large black letters on its right front was stenciled “ZR3.”
I couldn’t even respond. This thing was at least three times the size of the Dredel Led that had knocked me stupid across Belvaille.
“No, look,” Delovoa said. And he walked up to the massive robot and rapped his knuckles on its hull. It didn’t make a sound, other than Delovoa’s flesh, it was too solid. “It’s inert. I’ve had it for twenty years.”
“You,” I began softly, “own a Dredel Led?”
“It’s not a Dredel Led, I think. It was probably from when Colmarians used robots. It’s ancient.”
“Why would you have such a thing?”
“I wanted to take it apart. Learn from it. Maybe sell some of the technology, you know. I think we have way too many rules regarding what can’t be owned.”
“It’s a Dredel Led!” I yelled. How was it that Delovoa didn’t see the insanity of owning this? Did he somehow grow up with different folk stories as a child?
“No, it’s not. Why would Dredel Led write Colmarian letters on the front of one of their people?” he asked, indicating the ZR3.
Delovoa had his arms crossed, his hip cocked. He spoke to me like I was being irrational even though in the very same room sat the shattered pieces of a Dredel Led which had casually taken so many lives.
“You jerk, this could have been the reason why those other two came. They might have been looking for it.”
“It’s been sitting down here gathering dust for years.”
“It could have taken them that long to get here. You don’t know. It might have radioed for help.” I was starting to doubt how intelligent Delovoa really was.
“If it was operational, it would have killed me long ago. I’ve taken every kind of saw, torch, beam, and hammer to it I could. I could never get it open.”
“You’ve been sitting down here banging on it?”
“I did, but that was a while ago.” He moved over and peeked into its front eye-thing. “I was going to access it from here. If I could extend my torch, I might be able to slice out some parts. But I never got around to it.”
Delovoa was clearly insane. I was in a room with two Dredel Led and I was apparently the only one concerned.
“What,” I started, trying to keep myself calm, “are you going to do with it?”
“Nothing.”
“The military is going to want to see it!” I screamed.
“It’s not a Dredel Led, Hank. They’re not going to care.”
“Not going to care? So you think they’re going to walk down here, take a look at this broken one, notice that one standing there, and not ask you anything? Do you really believe that?”
“No. I’m not going to show them. I’ll hide it.”
“You’re not going to hide it,” I said forcefully.
“It’s just an antique. It’s like your pistol. There’s all kinds of stuff like this around. It’s not evil. It’s just scrap.”
“Then you don’t mind losing it.”
“No. I paid a lot for it. It’s not going to attack anyone. Watch.” He took a small hammer from a table and began beating on the Dredel Led all over. It made me extremely nervous.
“Quit it. You don’t know what that thing is or what it can do.”
“It was probably some heavy mover of some kind. It doesn’t have hands, so I figure its forearms went into sockets and it pushed or pulled or carried something.”
“That’s silly. Why not use a tractor instead?”
“No Dredel Led is going to write on itself,” he repeated.
“So you feel safe just because it says ‘ZR3’?”
“Yes.”
The voice was languid. Almost sleepy. It was deep. Slow. And it came from the mountainous white Dredel Led standing against the wall.
CHAPTER 19
Delovoa and I stood in front of his statue of a robot for an hour, scared witless. But the Dredel Led didn’t move. We finally got up the courage to try and ask it questions, but it didn’t answer. The only sign that it wasn’t carved from inert metal was that when someone said “ZR3,” it would answer.
At the very least, it didn’t sound menacing. It didn’t answer with attitude. Each time it seemed as if it was being roused from a deep sleep.
Another hour of that and we decided there was nothing we could do. Well, I decided that. Delovoa wanted me to stay, but I’d had my fill of robots already. If every tool he owned had failed to scratch the thing, what was I supposed to do?
So I left for home and went to sleep.
I woke up and briefly everything was fine. Then the sleepiness wore off and I realized the sheer number of ways that I could die. My cube of delfiblinium could blow a hole in our space station; Delovoa’s Dredel Led could come to life and smash us all; the Navy could blast us from space; angry gang members could choke me to death; Jyonal could get a headache and melt all our faces by accident.
I never used to think about dying. Never. Not once in a century. Other than the occasional, “I wonder when I’ll croak.” Now the possibilities were so varied I could hardly keep track of them.
I used the bathroom and did my morning rituals. I then crossed into my living room for some breakfast when I noticed Garm was sitting on my couch. She was working on her tele.
“Hey Garm. What are you doing here?” I asked. I figured she had heard about Ddewn or ZR3 and was probably going to shoot me again.
“Just letting you get some sleep,” she said, not looking up.
“I was going to get some rations, you want any?” I asked warily.
“No, thank you.”
I got my food and sat down to eat, facing her. She was definitely up to something.
“So,” I began, “you heard about Ddewn?”
“Yeah,” she answered, disinterested.
I kept eating, nearly choking on my food.
“And?” I prompted.
“And what?” she said, finally looking up.
“About Ddewn,” I pushed.
“I suppose he had it coming,” she shrugged. “You done eating?”
“No,” I said hastily, opening another packet of rations. Was this my last meal? Did she figure out all the things I was juggling and was going to artillery my apartment?
I picked up my Ontakian pistol and really wished it was working. I clicked it on sadly and to my amazement, it came to life. The green glow. The deep rumble.
“Hey, Garm. Check it out, my pistol is working again,” I said, as happy as I had been in ages.
“Gah. Put that damn thing away,” she said, shielding her face from it.
Wow, I couldn’t believe it. My pistol worked. I powered it off and put it in my holster.
“Right, so I came here because I have a job for you. First off, do you have everything…under control? No citywide catatonia?” she asked.
There wasn’t really anything under control. We could dump ZR3 in space, but what if it decided not to go while we were moving it? My delfiblinium was dangerous anywhere you put it. And Jyonal and Jyen I had no idea what to do with.
“Yeah, everything is as good as it can be,” I said.
“Alright,” Garm said, clearly not liking to be in the dark, “I’ve got some rats I need taken care of.”
“Some what?”
“Not everyone who works for me has been happy with the way I run things here. They’ve sent all kinds of messages reporting me to the authorities, highlighting my various mismanagements and so-called dirty dealings.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“No. But the funny thing is they know we work at a communications station and I’m a Military Intelligence officer, yet they thought I couldn’t intercept their messages.”
“They just sent these?”
“Oh, no, it’s been going on for years. They didn’t seem to care they weren’t getting any replies.”
“Why didn’t you bring it up earlier with them?” I asked.
“Because it didn’t matter. And because they had jobs to do. But now with battlecruisers coming, it’s going to matter if they start talking.”
“You want me to kill your soldiers?” I asked, surprised.
“They aren’t soldiers. They’re just professionals. We can’t kill them all, I figure we can get by with two out of the five. So when they ask where all the employees are”—Garm shrugged in mock confusion—“it’s not statistically significant.”