Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy

by Steven Campbell

  This wasn’t an invitation I would have normally thought about accepting, but from what I could tell, he wasn’t a soldier and he wasn’t ZR3, which made him okay by me.

  We twisted through some streets until he finally stopped at an apartment building and went in. Inside were numerous armed guards. Not military, but with military-grade weapons. They seemed happy to see me. Some I knew. They’d worked for various bosses back when Belvaille wasn’t a day spa for Dredel Led and the Navy.

  We moved into an adjacent apartment and a lot of talking quickly stopped.

  “Where have you been?” Garm asked, annoyed.

  Inside the room were at least a dozen bosses. There were guns everywhere along with maps and supplies.

  “I take it, this is the resistance,” I said.

  “Good to have you,” Rendrae said, pushing through the group like he had just come from an eight-year surface war with the Keilvin Kamigans.

  “Thank the spirits,” Tamshius said as he clasped my hand. He looked much older.

  “There might be other stuff you need to resist. Remember I told you about that other Dredel Led,” I began.

  “What? What was that?” Rendrae bubbled, his reporter persona bursting its shackles.

  “Yes…?” Garm asked, already knowing she wasn’t going to like what I had to say.

  “It’s running around crushing people now,” I said, looking for some alcohol in this pirate’s den.

  The commotion was pretty terrible. Dredel Led? Crushing? Blah blah.

  “How did this happen?” Garm asked. “We saw the teles but thought it was a Navy cover for a counter-attack.”

  “Delovoa,” I shrugged.

  “I’m going to murder that fool,” she muttered.

  “I wouldn’t recommend that. He seems to be able to speak to it. He got it to attack the soldiers.”

  Rendrae perked up at this.

  “Wait, it’s attacking soldiers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A Dredel Led is attacking soldiers?” Rendrae asked joyfully. “This is perfect. It will further weaken the Navy and occupy their resources while we’re able to make our push. The scales are starting to balance out. It’ll take them a while to put down that robot. And even if they got Wallow, we got Hank.”

  I nearly swallowed my own tongue.

  “I’m not Wallow,” I said.

  “You’ve beaten him before,” Rendrae said dismissively, as if I was merely being humble.

  Having a reputation can really be annoying sometimes.

  “Have you ever seen Wallow? Because if you did, there’s no way you could possibly think I ever beat him at anything.”

  “Hank,” Garm interrupted, “do you want to be briefed on what we’re doing? Then you can tell us more about this robot.”

  Everyone answered for me. Of course I did. Sure. I’m one of them. I rolled my eyes.

  “First, we’re trying to restore tele communication, but it’s the dreadnought that’s jamming us, unfortunately. The only things of value on this station, as far as I can figure, are those telescopic arrays. If we take out some of those, we might force them to negotiate with us.”

  All these eager, crooked faces were staring at me. As if I was somehow their salvation. Like I could take my sawed-off shotgun, put on a spacesuit, hop out an airlock, and shoo away a bunch of battlecruisers.

  I just didn’t see it. A year ago I could scarcely imagine the power of all the combined forces of Belvaille’s underworld, which were now assembled in front of me. But compared to the Navy?

  “Yeah,” I began uneasily.

  Someone handed me a rifle that had obviously been taken from the military.

  “What’s this?” I asked in horror.

  “You’ll need that to shoot through their body armor,” a guard said.

  I held it awkwardly.

  “I’m not a scientist. This thing has too many buttons,” I complained.

  “It has four,” Garm stated flatly.

  A thug came by and began trying to force my clumsy fingers into the proper places.

  Garm looked at me hard.

  “I want Hank to be our liaison with the military. To negotiate.”

  There was outrage at this suggestion.

  “We need Hank fighting,” someone said.

  “Yeah, those carbines won’t do anything to him,” someone else volunteered for my skin.

  “It’s a morale boost for the men having Hank on the front lines,” Big Moff said without a hint of sarcasm.

  Even I had to disagree with Garm.

  “I don’t think the Wardian particularly likes me. Besides, you’re Adjunct Overwatch. If anyone should deal with them it’s you.”

  “No, I used to be Adjunct. Now I’m simply a traitor. I know it’s a little hard to understand, but from a policy standpoint, I’m the last person on this station they would deal with.”

  “No, it makes Colmarian sense,” I agreed.

  “More to the point though, this is what you’ve been doing your whole life.”

  “How do you figure?” I asked, amused. “I bust heads for a living.”

  “No, you bust heads when you have to. If half the stuff in The News is true—”

  “Of course it’s true,” Rendrae said, offended.

  “You’ve been making compromises with parties that despise one another for a century. That’s all we want: a fair deal.”

  At that, the room grew reflective, myself included.

  “Can I get back to you guys tomorrow?” I said. “I don’t even know where to begin on this.”

  “We’re running out of time,” Rendrae warned.

  “Sure, Hank,” Garm said.

  No one patted my back or shook my hand as I left. I didn’t want to let them down, but the mythology of Hank wasn’t the same thing as the real me. Was I just going to barge into the Wardian’s office and start making terms?

  And “office.” That’s how provincial I was. I could only think in Belvaille nomenclature. Like his hundreds of thousands of troops were just an oversized gang.

  CHAPTER 38

  I realized it had been a bad idea to sleep in my apartment when I woke up to a soldier hitting me on the skull with a truncheon and my arms and legs were cuffed.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  “Hold him down!”

  “Get his legs.”

  “He’s moving.”

  “Hit him again!”

  They kept bouncing the club off my head, which wasn’t as comfortable as it sounds.

  More than a half-dozen soldiers then lifted me up, wobbling precariously, and carried me through my apartment as I attempted to twist out of their grip. Outside was what looked like a hundred soldiers or more.

  No one was coming to rescue me. Not against this militia.

  I was thrown in the back of a vehicle and we took off. One soldier sitting next to me doggedly continued to hit me on the head, as if it was a personal affront that I wasn’t unconscious.

  “What are you trying to do,” I said to him, annoyed, “because it’s not working.”

  Bonk. Bonk. Bonk.

  There were some squeaks passed between their helmets and finally the abusive soldier sheathed his truncheon and gave my brain a rest. To my small satisfaction, I saw the soldier’s arm was sore as he massaged it.

  I figured the whole Dredel Led thing had blown up. I wasn’t going to be able to use the “I can’t tell you” line on the Navy. They’d answer that by seeing how many grenades I could swallow.

  I guess I could tell them the truth. They likely already knew it was Delovoa anyway—assuming he wasn’t dead.

  To my surprise, I was transferred from the vehicle to the port.

  I was put onto a tiny shuttle and secured with about thirty straps and harnesses. It would probably take an hour just to untie me, assuming they ever did.

  The shuttle disembarked and I had an immediate panic attack. I actually hadn’t stepped foot off Belvaille in over a hundred years.

 
; I threw up.

  One of the soldiers cursed and reached for a tool on the side of the hull and vacuumed up my sick that floated around the cabin. Apparently this was common enough they had a handy device for it.

  I felt terrible, with lines of saliva spinning from my mouth. Through the windows, I could see space, and I could see the unbelievably vast array of ships around Belvaille anchored in total precision with one another.

  As we turned, the g-force slowly lolling my head, we angled on what could only be a dreadnought.

  My mouth was now truly open. What everyone said had been a pathetic under-exaggeration. While its sense of scale was hard to tell, it looked to be as large as the very city we had just disembarked from.

  I could feel us accelerating towards it, but it didn’t grow any larger. What I’d thought were windows or lights I realized were smaller ships flying around the dreadnought. Like flies pestering some enormous land animal.

  It took hours to actually get close enough to dock. I was hungry and tired by the time we disembarked.

  I was on a Colmarian Navy dreadnought, but they still didn’t untie me. I was surrounded by what must have been tens of thousands of soldiers, and they were pushing me along in a cart like I was a dangerous substance—or maybe sewage waste.

  I was so in awe of the ship I hardly noticed.

  We passed countless people on the way, all with varied uniforms. Here I was, being tugged along in a wagon with squeaky wheels, and they went about their business unconcerned. These were not your ordinary Colmarians. They were far too competent.

  It took another hour of walking and elevators and motion floors to reach the Wardian.

  The General and Wardian were in a private room. It was enormous—as big as a city block on Belvaille. The walls were too far away to see what was on them.

  The guards finally released my shackles, all of them coming off with a click simultaneously.

  The soldiers left, taking the wagon and chains with them.

  “Hi,” I said good-naturedly.

  The General wore his usual scowl, the Wardian had a beatific grin.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said, as if I had pondered my many choices.

  “Sure,” I answered.

  He turned his back and began striding across the massive room. I followed, with the General close behind me, his breath on the back of my neck.

  “Why is it you think we’re here, Hank?” the Wardian asked.

  I thought this would be a good time to broach the demands of the resistance.

  “Well, I guess the Dredel Led. And I suppose it has something to do with the…somewhat illegal activities on Belvaille,” I said delicately.

  The Wardian turned to face me and for the first time wore an expression of utter bewilderment.

  “What?” he asked, dumbstruck.

  I looked back at the General, whose face was so creased with frowns I was waiting for him to fold away into nothingness.

  “Er, well, you all came and made some arrests and—”

  The Wardian’s face showed no sign of recognition and he turned to the General.

  “Random screenings,” the General responded casually.

  The Wardian regarded me, surprised.

  “You think that this fleet,” he began, and he activated something in his hand. With that, the whole edge of the room, the wall and parts of the ceiling and floor, scrolled away, showing the immensity of the armada arrayed around us. It was quite jarring, as it looked like we were exposed directly to the void with nothing in between. “You think that,” he said, pointing, “is here because of…crime?”

  I rubbed my wrists where I had been handcuffed, thinking how to respond.

  “Maybe we could have hired some police instead? The fuel costs to deliver these ships here likely exceeds the entire economic output of your space station for the next thousand years.”

  “Hm,” I puffed, feeling not only stupid, but that I had no business speaking to a Wardian on a dreadnought about anything whatsoever.

  “No, we are here because of a ship we have been tracking for some time via your station’s telescopes. A vessel of the Boranjame.”

  “What?” I asked, shocked.

  “A convergence is happening in this area. Whether the Dredel Led made the Boranjame come investigate or the other way around, or if news of a level-ten mutant interested them, we don’t know. But we have to stand our ground.”

  So they knew about Jyonal, or maybe my own false classification. I didn’t ask him to clarify.

  “Our intercepted relays lead us to believe the Boranjame may use this opportunity to expand into our space. If they did, they would pass here on the way to some of our populated worlds.”

  The Boranjame were the big boys of the galaxy, literally and figuratively. They were the most powerful empire by far and rarely lost a war.

  Then it hit me.

  “You plan on fighting them?”

  Boranjame ships were literally planets. The race existed only in deep space. When they moved into a new region, they stripped apart all the local worlds for resources and made their ships even bigger—or built new ones. A dreadnought was as large as a metropolis, but it was a far cry from being planetoid.

  “You need to evacuate us,” I said urgently.

  “To where?” The General sneered. “Any place we take you would be their first stop. They won’t bother with this space station, it’s too small.”

  “They will if you’re standing here shooting at them.”

  “We have another ship just like this one ready to Portal in, as well as the entire 2nd and 8th fleets. We are just the tip of the spear.”

  “Look, I’m no Wardian, but can even fifty dreadnoughts take out a Boranjame ship?” I asked. “You can’t fight a planet.”

  “That’s a common misconception. Only their royalty have ships of that size,” the General said. “And they won’t dare send a royal vessel on an exploratory mission. Their other vessels are much smaller. Only fifteen to thirty times the size of this dreadnought.”

  “What are you going to do against that? Dent its hull?”

  The Wardian took a deep breath and turned to look out at space.

  “The Colmarian Confederation’s defense, Hank, is you. Mutants. It’s why we aren’t invaded more often. Any attacking species that attempts to occupy us knows they will have to deal with randomly dispersed mutations. Our Navy can’t remotely cover all our territory. Not even a fraction of it.”

  “So why use it all here?” I asked.

  “Because the Boranjame won’t ever land. They won’t set foot on our soil. Whether we have mutants or not is irrelevant to them. They can destroy our worlds from space and absorb them. Knowing we can’t resist, they’ll just feed on us. They won’t ever stop.”

  “We would not be the first empire they destroyed,” the General said, “merely the largest.”

  Holy crap. I stood there trying to process.

  “We need your help, Hank,” he said.

  I laughed. Though with somewhat of a hysterical shade.

  I’ve been in over my head before, seemingly a whole lot recently. But what in the Prison Planet’s Pleasure Dome could I possibly do to change this situation?

  “We need you to get this resistance under control.”

  “Aren’t they kind of insignificant?” I asked.

  “We’re going to be using this station to refuel and refit and repair. As well as for logistics support,” the General stated. “The telescopes need to be under our full control. They are vital.”

  “The communications systems here are some of the most advanced in the Confederation, believe it or not. Also, I understand there’s some other robot down there? Do you know anything about this?” the Wardian asked.

  Perspective. It’s a weird thing. A ferocious Dredel Led was “some robot” to him.

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “Can you handle that as well?”

  My eyes darted around as I thought.

&nbs
p; “I don’t see how. Not without a lot of help.”

  “It is a priority that it be neutralized,” the General said.

  “There’s some demands I have,” I said.

  Both men exchanged looks.

  “Excuse me?” the Wardian asked.

  “Nothing crazy. Just, maybe we could work out a deal.”

  “We can discuss these matters afterwards,” the Wardian said.

  “I’ll need something in writing,” I added. If he’s the tip of the spear, he’s going to die first and won’t be able to sign anything.

  They were staring at me, not sure if they’d heard correctly. This wasn’t going well. I decided to throw down my cards.

  “Without some guarantees I won’t be able to budge the resistance. And they were just about ready to attack those telescopes last I heard.”

  The Wardian flinched slightly.

  “I think we can work something out,” he said, with a weak smile.

  CHAPTER 39

  I stayed a bit longer with the Wardian working out details. I got the sense that for every minute he talked to me, millions of credits worth of “real” decisions weren’t being made.

  After a shuttle back to Belvaille, a military car dropped me off at my house, without the fuss of tying me up or anyone smacking me on the noodle. In fact, I was shown quite a deal of respect.

  Inside my apartment, Jyen and Jyonal were waiting in my kitchen.

  “Come in,” I said, somewhat annoyed. “No one bothers knocking nowadays anyhow.”

  “Your door doesn’t close,” Jyen explained. “We saw the soldiers take you away. Are you okay?”

  I had to be somewhat careful how I broached this subject. I looked at Jyonal, who seemed perfectly normal, which made me nervous.

  “Well…,” I began, uneasily. Then I smiled brightly and clapped my hands together. “It seems this was all a big misunderstanding between everyone and the Navy. They’re nice guys.”

  “Do they know about us?” Jyonal asked.

  I thought if there was some way I could linguistically deny that question.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to limit my responses.

  Jyonal caught what I was doing and his voice grew serious.

  “Hank, just tell us what’s going on.”

  Before I could answer, a soldier stepped inside carrying a box.