Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy

by Steven Campbell

  Not only that, but he’s likely got wholesale connections so what I could buy for ten grand he could probably get for half that, so he just pocketed a whole lot of credits.

  As I was hunching my way down the street to the train with this bag on my back, Grever was practically blowing kisses to see me off. He’d held up his end I think as well as anyone could, I just wasn’t looking forward to speaking with Jyen.

  The train was empty. I think The News and general word about town had everyone thoroughly spooked. And to think just a few days back people were on edge about a possible gang war. Seemed like a decade ago and almost quaint in a twisted way.

  At home I had not even taken off my shoes when someone was at the door. I had been getting teles like mad for days, but I had been ignoring them.

  I figured someone had gotten up the nerve to come for a face-to-face about the Dredel Led. Though I couldn’t tell them anything that Rendrae hadn’t already printed.

  I opened the door and it was Jyen. All blue-skinned and big-eared and adorable.

  “Ah,” I said. “Come in.”

  I was still tired, but better to get this over with as soon as possible. I had some real concerns without this hanging over me.

  She remained outside.

  “Do you have what I asked you to get?”

  “Well, I have this giant rucksack of drugs, but the exact contents aren’t, you know, precisely what your list detailed.” I fumbled with my tele. “I’ve got the specifics here, I can transfer the info.”

  “Could you drop them off, please?”

  I knew I wasn’t in any place to argue, but some odd thing in me made me say: “Is this going to take long?”

  “No,” she said with a bright smile.

  I stepped back inside and heaved the drugs over my shoulder and headed out. Jyen seemed a bit startled when I came out.

  “That’s it?” she asked, pointing to the bag.

  It was one of those times again when we were on different wavelengths. I immediately thought she was asking essentially, “Is that small amount all that constitutes my drug purchase?” As if I should have come out dragging a transport ship. Or maybe a destroyer.

  “Yes. Yes, this is it,” I answered sarcastically.

  “Oh, it just seems like a lot. Can you carry that okay?”

  My attitude brightened. If she was expecting less, then maybe this won’t turn out so rotten. Maybe I can make up in quantity what I was lacking in everything else.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  She led the way and to my surprise, she literally entered the apartment building directly across the street from mine. I suppose that’s how she knew I was home. She must spend her time staring out the window, checking for her drugs.

  We headed up a few flights, mostly because I was following her. I normally would have taken the elevator. I don’t like stairs much. Going up stairs I’m positively glacial, especially when carrying an unwieldy storehouse of narcotics.

  We came to her place and she opened the door.

  The apartment was completely unfurnished. Looked unlived in. Except for the druggie sitting on the bare metal floor against the wall.

  “Hank, this is my brother,” Jyen said, pointing.

  I didn’t really care. Yeah it was unusual for someone who was maybe 5’2” with electric blue skin and practically tentacle-like ears to say she was related to a 6-foot lanky man with pale skin, an oddly misshapen face, and from what I could tell under an unkempt mass of scraggly hair, normal-sized ears. But it was simply none of my business.

  What was apparent, though, was that all these drugs were for him. If anyone on Belvaille was an addict, it was this guy. His fingernails were long and yellow and almost beastly, and they picked at his uneven face with an insect-like rhythm.

  “Where do you want this?” I asked, looking around. But there was no difference between here and there, as there was no furniture. So I just put it on the ground.

  The junkie immediately moved closer. He could probably tell what kind of drugs they were just from the sound they made when they were laid on the floor.

  “Jyonal, this is Hank. He’s the one who’s helping us,” Jyen said somewhat maternally.

  I wasn’t sure how much I was “helping” them, unless they had an incalculable fear of living long lives and being aware of their surroundings.

  “So,” I began uneasily, “I’ve got these notes on the drugs.”

  Jyonal scurried over and untied the sheets with his skinny fingers. He spread out the drugs and his mouth opened in what approximated awe. He brushed his hands over them, turning this and that, lifting some, smelling others. It was almost animalistic.

  He then grabbed one that particularly caught his eye. He looked at me and reached out and took my hand in his. I don’t have much of a sense of touch in my palms, but his skin felt rough and flaky. He then sprinted out of sight into one of the other rooms.

  “Yeah. So about the payment and such. I didn’t make the time we agreed on, I know. And I didn’t quite—”

  “Are there really Dredel Led on the station?” Jyen interrupted.

  “What? Uh, yes. I mean I didn’t see them personally, but I saw a video. We have people looking for them.”

  “Have they ever been here before?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I mean, I don’t think they’ve been anywhere in Colmarian space, right? Not for a long time. But about the drugs.”

  She looked down at the pile for the first time.

  “We said twenty thousand? Or was it thirty?”

  I didn’t know if she was testing me or was really this forgetful about money. But that seemed unlikely. No one is that absentminded. Not about credits.

  “It’s ten thousand. I didn’t get it to you in 24 hours. Not even sure if it was 48 hours, I’ve been on a weird schedule lately, what with the robots and all.”

  “Oh,” she said casually, like she was perfectly okay with giving me thirty grand for this mess of drugs she didn’t ask for.

  “So then ten thousand?” She walked to a neat little section of belongings at the other side of the room and took out her tele.

  “Actually, it’s just three thousand. I still have seven left over from buying.”

  I don’t know. Maybe she needs the money more than me. For upcoming funeral expenses if nothing else. Or to buy a chair for this apartment.

  Jyen looked back at me with an inscrutable expression. She started to beam me the credits when the building began to shake.

  This was a space station. With metal buildings. Protected by all manner of shielding and engineering wizardry. Nothing shook here. Ever.

  “Hey! Did you feel that?” I asked.

  It was a completely foreign sensation, like being incredibly drunk yet with a clear head. And then I looked at the walls and they were bending. Warping, but not shattering or cracking like logic said they should. Maybe I didn’t have a clear head.

  My first thought was that the Dredel Led were doing something. But when I saw the walls, I figured that some drugs must have somehow seeped into me or I had accidentally inhaled their fumes. Who knows what broke apart or came undone while I was carrying them? But I felt fine. I could see normally. My skull, when I shook it, did not feel clouded. I wished I had paid more attention to Grever’s drug talk so I could ascertain what I had absorbed.

  And just as abruptly as the swaying and shaking started, it was over. Completely. I patted the cold metal wall next to me and it was as solid as ever.

  I looked down at the drugs and they were still there. But Jyen was gone. Was I high? Had I simply imagined a blue lady, and if so, what was the psychological significance of me giving her such oversized ears?

  No, she was real. My tele registered the new three grand. I left the apartment and briefly considered the elevator, but decided on the stairs.

  CHAPTER 10

  I woke up to Garm at my front door. Sucks having a friend who doesn’t need to sleep.

  “What?” I asked, resting my
head against the door, my eyes shut.

  She pushed past me and came inside.

  “What do you mean, ‘what’? Didn’t you feel that this morning? It was like the whole station was going to break apart.”

  “You felt it too? I thought I was going crazy.”

  I went to my kitchen for something to eat. I found some packets of rations, a real space station staple from the early days. We had decent food now, but I had eaten rations for so many years I was used to them.

  As I chewed, Garm paced around, agitated.

  “They’re out there,” she said. “The Dredel Led. One of the techs, one of the old-timers, was looking through our computer systems and said someone broke in.”

  “Could it be one of the bosses snooping around?”

  “Why would a boss want access to our facilities? Besides, he could trace where the access point was. It was out west. No one’s going to be out there. Not with what was printed in The News. People are scared to walk outside, let alone the 220th block.”

  Western Belvaille had been dark for decades. It was just too much hassle keeping utilities functioning across a sparsely populated city. When people left the space station after the Portals were closed, those folks that remained were forced to move east.

  “I didn’t even know the street numbers went that high. Well, what do you want to do?” I asked.

  “I want to go out there. They must have done something to cause that shaking.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now. Do you want to wait a week? We might not be around that long. We tracked the breakin.”

  “Alright,” I said with little enthusiasm.

  A hot shower would have done me a world of good, but I changed my clothes, grabbed my guns, and walked to the door where Garm was waiting impatiently.

  Garm and I were in the back of one car with a driver up front. The rest of her soldiers were in a separate vehicle. The car was spacious, with tinted glass, had six wheels. I think Garm had “commandeered” it long ago from a gang boss for some made up fraction. The other car was more functional and about half the length. I continued to eat my rations as we drove past apartment buildings.

  “I wonder what parents tell their children in situations like this,” I said dreamily.

  “I told my son to sit tight and not let his daughter go to school.”

  I turned to stare at Garm.

  “You have a son? Belvaille has schools?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  This was like someone suddenly telling me that in actuality I was a twelve-year-old girl with pigtails and gap teeth.

  “Who’s he work for?” I asked.

  “Threezo-threez Finance. He’s an accounts payable clerk.”

  “Here?”

  I just couldn’t see any spawn of Garm being anything but some rough go-getter. I figured a junior gang leader at least.

  “Not everyone on the station does illegal work. We have plenty of decent folks.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” I said quickly.

  “My son is just a nice kid with a good family. Though I told him he could do a lot better. The pay is good.”

  “So you’re a grandmother too?”

  Garm was now aggravated, her lips pressed so tight I thought they might burst into flames.

  “Yes! Just because you’re anti-attachment…”

  “What are you talking about? I have attachments. I know half the people on this station.”

  “Half the felons, maybe. But as long as you’ve been here I bet there’s not more than a handful who even know where you came from.”

  The car moved smoothly along, the hum from its engine a constant.

  “I lost a daughter once, too. Bet you didn’t know that,” she said.

  She gave a small shrug, not dismissive or uncaring, just something to do with her shoulders as she gazed at the empty streets.

  This was a sorry topic of conversation. It never would have occurred to me in a million years she was a grandma with a sad past. Not that that carried any significance. It’s not like she wasn’t Garm because of it.

  But a clerk? Really?

  We came to the block that had been tracked and everyone got out of the cars. The soldiers were taut, their heads swiveling every which way as if they were trying to wrench them off their bodies. They had on bulky, padded armor connected by cords and topped with a hard shell. I’m sure it would protect great against rocks or debris hurled in a riot, but a Dredel Led seemed likely to laugh at it.

  While there were small red emergency lights here and there, and the latticework shed some light in this direction, it was fairly dark for the most part.

  I took the point and walked to the…I don’t know what you call it. I guess they’re all over the station, but it’s just one of those things you don’t pay any attention to. They’re maybe four foot tall cylinders a foot in diameter, spaced out along the sidewalk every few blocks.

  This one in particular had been opened. Inside it showed all kinds of circuitry and cabling. I looked closely at it as the soldiers made a perimeter around us.

  “This is where the Dredel Led tapped in,” Garm whispered.

  “Should I put the cover back on it?” I asked her, not having any better ideas.

  She made a series of hand gestures to her men. One squad headed off the way we came, guns at the ready. The rest fell in line behind me.

  She then pointed at me and then pointed down the road.

  I went to the center of the street and began to walk. It seemed fairly pointless to me since there was clearly no one around. Did she expect the robots to crack open the panel, do their tinkering, and then take a break up the street?

  We scouted for a good hour. I know, because I was checking my tele. I ate some of the leftover rations I had in my pocket. These things were so good. They didn’t even make you thirsty.

  “Okay, Hank, let’s call it,” Garm said finally.

  Everyone relaxed and we turned and headed back towards the cars. Just then I heard what sounded like a combination whistle and deep roiling. That wasn’t so unusual as much as its point of origin, which was above me.

  I looked up in time to see an object fall at what must have been fifty miles an hour right in front of me. It hit the ground, bent its knees and back to absorb the impact, and immediately stood up straight.

  It was a Dredel Led.

  I could tell it was a robot. Not because I recognized it from the video, but because there was something just not right about it. Colmarians can look pretty different in a lot of ways—clubfoots, clawed hands, faces of every imaginable type—but this thing was just off. Like how little kids draw people with coloring sticks. Eyes were uneven, hair was a scraggly mess, nose and mouth weren’t aligned. It had three joints in its left arm instead of a single elbow, and had way too many fingers on both hands. Its clothes were also off. It wore a big boot on one foot, a sandal on the other, bright shorts that hung past the knee and a puffy winter coat with fur trim cut off at the shoulders.

  “Hank!” I heard Garm say from somewhere behind me.

  I looked back and saw nothing. Where’d they all go?

  The robot was standing maybe ten feet ahead.

  “Eat suck, suckface!”

  I pulled out my shotgun and aimed. The gun has two triggers. The first one fires the top two barrels, left to right. The second fires the bottom the same way.

  I pulled both triggers at the same time, which was something I’d never done before. About 200 foot-pounds of recoil hit me and the gun twisted to the side, but I held on. I jerked it back and pulled both triggers again.

  So in a blink I launched eight ounces of metal at nearly 1,500 feet per second at this thing.

  Other than the smoke, the bangs, and the fact I’d ruined its jacket, there was no discernible evidence that I had done anything at all.

  Standing alone in the middle of the street facing a malevolent fairy tale…I ducked.

  The Dredel Led made some movement, I heard a n
oise, saw a brief light; then I saw the superstructure above, then I saw a building, then I saw the road, then I saw another building. And I thought: “This is weird.”

  Then I saw nothing and tasted blood. I was pretty sure it was mine.

  Your body is good at telling you stuff to do and most times you should listen. It tells you when to eat. It tells you when you should go to sleep. It tells you when you’re doing something painful and to quit it. It tells you when you’re afraid and you should run like hell.

  My body was telling me—screaming at me—to shut down and hope whatever unfortunate thing was going on would pass me by. I felt a dark cloud enveloping me. But it was a good cloud. It took away the pain and made me feel warm and pleasant.

  No.

  I didn’t want to feel warm and pleasant. I didn’t want to forget what was happening. I wanted to be neck deep in it. I’m too stupid to lie down. You’re going to have to make me!

  I climbed up out of the pit that was my mind and opened my eyes to a bright reality of anguish. I found myself on the ground, propped against the side of a building and the sidewalk, my arms and legs splayed outward. My whole body shrieked like grinding metal as I slowly righted myself and tried to comprehend my environment.

  There was gunfire. Lots of it. I couldn’t quite place who or what was firing and where they were. I heard some muffled, urgent noise and realized it was Garm yelling at me a foot away from my face.

  “Hank, get up,” she was saying.

  I somehow managed to climb to my feet and I took in what was going on.

  There were soldiers lying on the ground. Two were firing from the doorways of buildings. The robot hadn’t moved. Or at least not very far, I couldn’t be sure where we had started at this point.

  The Dredel Led looked over at one of the soldiers. It then used its legs to brace itself and raised its right arm, which most definitely had some kind of barrel on the side of it. It fired what I presume it had shot at me. A white blob of light sped out and exploded in the doorway. The impact was enough that I was sure the soldier was either gravely injured or dead.

  The cannon itself had a recoil and exhaust only a robot could withstand. You’d never put a weapon like that in the hands of something biological, it would kill you trying to wield it.