Hard Luck Hank: Basketful of Crap (23 page)

As I lay punctured with shrapnel, I
could hear the bustle of civil war preparations going on around me.

There wasn’t much I could do. It
seemed the high-explosive shell had lodged enough metal into my muscles that I
was lacerated like an insect in a collection case.

I tried to move my left hand to get
my tele. The splinters dug into me with each twitch and I gave up. Just lying
here wasn’t incredibly painful as long as I didn’t move and took shallow
breaths. Maybe they would sweep me out with a broom after a while.

My feet seemed to be fine. I could
wiggle my toes without pain. That was a slight triumph since it proved my new
boots worked. The center of my chest, which had been blocked by my autocannon,
also mostly escaped injury. I had turned my face down when I fired so my chin
and nose were cut up as well as the top of my head.

It felt like I lay there for an
hour, though I doubt it was that long. I reached the conclusion that the
soldiers weren’t going to do anything about me. Why should they, I wasn’t
exactly a threat. I was going to have to use my tele.

I carefully shifted my hand to my
pocket. I could feel the shrapnel cutting me.

Finally I had my tele out and
dropped it on the ground beside me.

Now what?

I swiped around with my finger. I
think I accessed every application in the galaxy before I finally got someone.

“Hank?” I heard a voice answer.
They could tell it was me based on my tele.

“Hroo dis?” I said as best as I
could.

“What?”

“Who you?”

They hung up.

I realized my tele was facing the
ceiling and having a face full of shrapnel sounded an awful lot like being
drunk.

I got three more people, all of
whom I couldn’t convince to talk to me for more than a few excruciating
sentences.”

Finally I got one of Garm’s offices
and had them transfer me to her tele.

“What?” she answered.

“Hoshpial!” I gargled.

“You’re at the hospital?”

“No. Dake me.”

“Where are you?”

“Dono.”

I did my best to tilt the tele
around.

“Are you standing on your head or
something?”

She’s making jokes!

“Hoshpial!” I yelled again.

“Hank, where are you?”

“Sou’eash.”

“That doesn’t tell me much.”

“Aye See,” I said in my best “Y
Street” interpretation.

I took the tele in my hand, and
while screaming, lifted it up to my face and held it in my mouth. I figured
from that angle it had a view of the front door I came through.

I dropped my arm back down and tried
to relax despite the pain.

“I’m coming! It’s going to take us
a while to find you, though. Are you west of Teazshole?”

I had my tele in my mouth and
couldn’t respond if I wanted to. And if I could I would have cussed her out.

“Alright, we’re coming,” she said,
then hung up.

My tele tasted kind of gross. I
guess that was a good sign I wasn’t about to die. Or who knows, maybe
everything tasted gross when you were at death’s door.

I dwelled on that a moment. Would
it taste good? Would your brain override your tongue and tell you the glob of
mud you swallowed on the battlefield as you lay dying tasted like sweet
custard? I was getting morbid, but I had good reason.

As I waited for Garm to go
door-to-door looking for me, I thought about what Naked Guy had said. How was
he going to get all these Therezians out of here? The Navy would never let them
be shipped.

Not sure how long I lay there, long
enough that I did some thinking about life and death. No great insights came to
me other than realizing high-explosive rounds were things to be avoided.

“What happened to you?” I finally
heard Garm gasp.

I felt my autocannon and I were
growing apart as people.

This came to me as I lay in the
hospital and they tried to chisel all the metal fragments out of my body. What
was it, maybe half the time I fired the gun I ended up here. There had to be a
less efficient way of visiting the hospital.

“I hung-y,” I said.

Devus Sorsha, the worst medical
technician in the galaxy, was again attending me.

“If we feed you, my concern is that
your epidermis will heal over the wounds and we will not be able to remove
them.”

“I hung-y,” I said louder.

Garm stepped in.

“I saw him eat a whole restaurant.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to let him get too hungry.”

“We could restrain him to the
table,” Devus Sorsha offered.

“That would probably be a good
idea.”

“It’s wounds like this that are
most dangerous for you, Hank,” the medical technician said helpfully. “They’re
eventually going to take their toll.”

“Shu’ up.”

“Shouldn’t he have drugs?” Garm
asked.

Devus Sorsha cleared his throat.

“We seem to have misplaced our
supply of anesthesia.”

This place sucked so bad.

As they went about their work, I
felt I was being quite the trooper given the circumstances. Not only were a
half dozen people “operating” on me with power tools, but I was starving and
chained to a metal table without any pain relief.

Delovoa came in presently.

“What did you do to my autocannon?”
he asked, annoyed.

“Shu’ up.”

“Why would you use an HE round at
close range?” Delovoa asked. “The canister wouldn’t have hurt you at all. I
told you not to use it.”

“What did you shoot?” Garm asked.

I tried to tilt my head and felt
the chains tug and the shrapnel cut. Garm saw me wince and heard me grunt.

“We’ll be back later, Hank. Get some
rest.”

It seemed very unlikely I was going
to get any rest until I was a few pounds lighter.

“Can you get in contact with your
sisters?” I asked Garm.

I was swathed head-to-toe in
bandages. I wasn’t bleeding but the technicians had created a mess digging for
metal in my skin. To “be on the safe side,” they slathered me with antibiotics
and wrapped me up. I suspected they were trying to literally cover up their
incompetence.

I had been slamming hard liquor for
days trying to get enough of a buzz to dull the pain, but my body converted
everything to fuel my healing. I might as well have been drinking bread.

“My sisters?” she asked.

“He means the Quadrad,” Delovoa said.

I had gotten them both up to speed
on my encounter with Naked Guy. I left out a lot because frankly I didn’t know
how to explain it and I worried they would think I was insane.

“What do they matter?” Garm asked
testily.

“I believe they can help.”

“They aren’t permitted to do
anything,” she replied.

“Oh, will you drop that? No one
cares if this is your ‘territory’! There’s eight Therezians over there who say
this is their city now. And what are you going to do about it? Pout?”

“They work for the corporation
though, right? Or that naked guy?” Delovoa asked.

“I don’t know. He said he was going
to use them.”

“And this person you met can’t be
reasoned with or bribed?” Garm asked.

I indicated my bandages.

“Does it look like it?”

“You look stupid, by the way,” she said.

“
You
look stupid. I’ve just
been shot to hell, remember?”

“You shot yourself.”

I was about to respond when she got
a tele. She put her ear to it.

“What? How? I’ll be right there.”

“What was that?” I asked, seeing
her expression.

“The Navy has remotely taken
control of our port. They’re bringing in ships.”

“Yeah, he said he was.”

“Who? When?” she demanded.

“The General. He said sometime this
week they would land troops.”

“Why didn’t you say this?”

“Honestly, I forgot. There was a
lot going on.”

We went to City Hall to monitor the
situation. Garm was concerned the Navy could hijack important Belvaille
systems. If they could seize the port, what else could they do? Could they turn
off life support if we appeared to be a big enough threat?

I looked around for the jerk that
denied my trash pick-up but didn’t see him.

We huddled by some screens that
bleeped and beeped and displayed lots of numbers. A skinny operator with bad
skin sat in front of it.

“Here they come,” he said. “It
looks like three ships. Transports or shuttles.”

“How many could those hold?” Garm
asked.

“Ung uh,” he replied sagely,
shrugging.

“Look,” Delovoa said, pointing to
the screen.

I saw a pile of digits floating
around.

“Those must be supply ships. There
is a lot of traffic between Belvaille’s freighters,” the operator claimed.

“Those aren’t ships,” Delovoa
countered. Then he gave a lengthy description why, which clearly no one in the
room understood.

“Hey!” Someone yelled from across
the floor. “The Portals are down.”

Garm looked at me like I had an
inkling of what was going on. I was bandaged and without a gun. I was just a
really big door stop at this point.

But Delovoa was clear.

“Those freighters are armed! They
just took out the Portals!”

“With what?” I asked.

“Look. Look. Scan the Navy ships.”

The operator was lost.

“Which ones?”

“By the Portals.”

The operator fumbled with the
controls.

“Stop!” Delovoa yelled and pressed
his three eyes to the screen as if he could use it to peer directly into space.

“It’s moving,” the operator said.

“The Portal?” Garm asked.

“No, the battleship.”

“See all these?” Delovoa said,
indicating gibberish. “Those are missiles slamming into that battleship. All
those freighters are firing weapons.”

I looked up to the sky. I don’t
know why I always do that. I saw the ceiling. It just felt like I should be
hearing or seeing something that big and it not just be numbers on a tiny
screen. Besides, I didn’t even know what their orientation was. They could be
beneath me for all I knew.

“If they disabled the Portals,” Garm
said, “we are stuck here.”

“Stuck where?” I asked, thinking
she meant City Hall.

“At the edge of the galaxy.”

Garm was not happy going to the
port to meet the Navy transports that had escaped the attack.

I felt we should give our welcomes
so they didn’t get any wrong ideas. Such as thinking we had anything to do with
the corporation that had launched a ton of missiles at them.

When we arrived, the Navy was
already in place, peeking around corners. Pointing guns. Shouting.

“Freeze! Get your hands up!”

Delovoa’s hands shot up like he was
trying to touch the latticework—I think he was even standing on his tippy toes.
Garm slowly put her hands about equal to her head. I just stood there. Eating.

My body still ached and I was
hungry and their guns weren’t that impressive.

“I am an administrator of this
Independent Protectorate,” Garm said with gusto. “I demand you explain your
presence.”

The General walked forward along with
about fifty other soldiers.

“General,” I exclaimed. I had not
been expecting him.

The soldiers surrounded us. I could
see many more in the distance unpacking gear.

The General ignored Garm and
Delovoa and spoke to me.

“Where can we set up a base of
operations? I understand many of the warehouses are compromised. Are the
telescopes under surveillance?”

“The telescopes are—” Garm started.

“You are the Surrogate under
Article 7 section 5,” he interrupted, pointing to me.

Garm was stewing.

“What? What’s that mean? What did I
do?”

“You’re our representative,” Garm
said through clenched teeth.

“I need a condition report on the
station,” he continued.

“Well…it’s pretty crappy,” I said
learnedly.

I heard a familiar rumbling and
looked back and saw a corporate APC approaching the port.

“Those are the bad guys!” I
shouted.

The General barked some orders and
the Navy fanned out in defensive positions.

Garm grabbed Delovoa and hurried
him down the street into one of the nearby buildings. I wasn’t going to be able
to reach the door in time, so I used my Surrogate intellect and covered my head
and lay flat on the ground.

I just got out of the hospital. I
was still in, if not agony, body-wide hurting. I didn’t want to get in a
firefight so soon. And I had nothing to fight with. I couldn’t even throw a
rock because Belvaille had no rocks—and I couldn’t throw.

Hearing a million guns firing from
the ground was a different experience. It wasn’t terrible. In fact it wasn’t
bad at all, because for once no one was shooting at me.

Some Navy soldiers stepped on my
back to move to new positions, but other than that, it’s like I wasn’t there.

“Hank, come on!” I heard Garm yell
behind me.

No, thank you. I wasn’t going to
move until the gunfire stopped. I didn’t peek. I didn’t move my arms. I didn’t
move at all. If it’s working, don’t fix it. And so far I hadn’t been shot once.

All in all, it was done relatively
quickly.

When you’re actually
in
a
fight, you tend to lose track of time. But I didn’t have a whole lot to do. I
would guess from start to finish, explosions and all, it was less than five
minutes.

There were only a handful of
weapons firing now, but a lot of yelling. I was about to lift my head, when
something told me to wait for every single shot to be silent.

“You can get up now, Mr. Brave,” Garm
said.

I pushed up on my arms and tried to
get my leg under me and I pitched forward and landed on my stomach.

Garm laughed but I panicked.

I couldn’t stand!

I rolled on my side but I couldn’t
get my legs under me. My knees hardly bent.

“You’re kidding me,” Garm said
seriously.

“It might be the bandages,” Delovoa
suggested.

Both of them stared at me with
perverted interest as I spun around on the ground like a broken toy.

“Help,” I finally said, humiliation
overcoming pride

Garm pulled on one arm and Delovoa
the other, but it was like two fish trying to tow a lake. When I used them to
help me up, I simply pulled them to the ground.

“Go to the wall,” Delovoa said.

I was really starting to get
scared.

The General returned with a number
of his men, one of them dragging the corpse of a corporate soldier.

“Is this the uniform of the group
that is using the Portal?” he asked.

I was trying to climb the wall. It
wasn’t working. My hands just weren’t sticky enough and the walls were too
smooth with nothing to grab. I couldn’t bend my knees or lift my legs. What Devus
Sorsha had said was true. I was becoming too thick to move properly.

“Well…” I started.

Then I slid to the ground on my
side, my face to the building. I spun around on my butt so I could at least
face the General.

If he thought my actions were odd,
he didn’t show it as he maintained his usual glower.

“There is only one corporation. Run
by one man. I told you that.”

I guess he didn’t believe me. Or was
confirming. Or whatever.

“You should be careful with that
body,” Delovoa said, “it is biologically engineered.”

The General’s face creased even
further.

“I have 250 men who need a base.”

“City Hall,” I said immediately.

“No,” Garm corrected.

“Not even the corporation will
attack it. They can’t risk damaging the vital systems.”

“Right, so his men shouldn’t hide there.
That puts us all in danger.”

“We already are,” I said.

“How do we reach City Hall?” the
General asked.

“Take the train.”

“We’re not riding public
transportation in a war zone!”

“Then you’re walking across the
city in a war zone. It’s kind of that way,” I said, pointing over my shoulder.
“And can you guys help me stand up?”

On the way to the train we saw the
carnage that was the leftover remains of the corporate soldiers. Those flesh
bags had beaten 800 or so of Belvaille’s best and sort of brightest and 250
Navy commandos came down and shot them to hell in five minutes.

It was embarrassing.

Admittedly, there were no tanks and
a lot less corporate soldiers, but still, not one Navy soldier had been killed
in the exchange.

“Excuse me. Pardon me. Pardon me,”
I said, as I pushed to the front of the crowded train to see the General.

“So what happened on the
battleship?” I asked him.

“We’re not discussing tactical
situations in transit.”

I looked around the train, which
was wall-to-wall with commandos.

“I’m pretty sure there’s no one
here except us.”

Garm remained seated in the rear,
frowning, her arms crossed. But Delovoa was next to me.

“Our ships are destroyed. Or at
least incapacitated enough they can’t respond to communications.”

“Isn’t a battleship the second biggest
vessel? How did you not scan that many missiles?”

“Fourth largest,” the General amended.
“The weapons didn’t show up on scan until they were en route and it was far too
late. Our transports had just disembarked. We believe that is what triggered
the attack.”

“What do you plan on doing?” I
asked.

“Apprehending the leader of this
station and installing interim Navy control.”

“What do you plan on doing besides
that? Because that’s not going to happen.”

“We will require your assistance in
our push to their base,” the General said.

“I’m happy to be your
Surrogate—which is a weird name, by the way—but I’m not getting anywhere near
them. I don’t have a gun, for one thing.”

“I can fix the barrel on your
autocannon. It will be louder and less accurate, though,” Delovoa offered.

“I’m not firing that thing anymore.
It will knock me down and then I can’t get up.”

The General handed me his plasma
pistol!

Just like that.

“Wow,” Delovoa said, his eyes
gleaming. “Let me see.”

He reached for it and I pulled it
away.

“Thanks and all, but I didn’t tell
you about this guy. I shot him at point blank range with a high-explosive shell
and it did nothing. He’s like…thousands of years old,” I didn’t want to say
billions because I didn’t think they would believe me. “He’s trying to start a
galactic wide civil war.”

The soldiers all looked at me
briefly. These were hard guys. Like Belvaille thugs, but not criminals. They
probably dreamed of someone trying to start a galactic civil war.

“At our headquarters you’ll need to
give a report,” he said.

“It’s not your headquarters,”
Garm’s voice came from the back of the train.