Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

“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.