Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

Garm got all her equipment ready.

I finished vacuuming up my sick.

“Are you ready?” she asked me.

“To walk after them? I think so.”

When we disembarked our shuttle, we were back under artificial gravity as we entered the freighter’s decontamination chamber.

“This is a big ship. How are we going to find them?” I asked.

The door opened and the pale sisters stood in front of us waiting, with weapons out.

If the sisters had been expecting wussy corporate soldiers, the Navy, or us, I couldn’t tell. They immediately attacked and all I saw was flashes of hair and skin.

I sighed and stuck my arms out straight in front of me.

“Rar!” I yelled halfheartedly.

Our fight took place in a hallway to the bridge of the ship. It was only about ten feet wide, but plenty long. It was almost impossible to tell what was going on. I merely walked in circles clenching and unclenching my fingers in the ridiculous attempt to catch hold of something.

I couldn’t even anticipate where they were going.

Everyone was a lot more vocal than they were the first time they fought in my apartment. Lots of grunts and screams and snarls. It seemed clear to all involved that the loser was going to die.

After some time, there were discarded and broken weapons all over the ground. I assumed Garm brought most of them.

I walked forward and a pale sister smacked into the wall right in front of me. I tried to grab her, her eyes went wide, and she cartwheeled away.

Hey, maybe I was helping a bit.

Everyone was slowing down. They were cut and bruised and pummeled. The possibility of me catching one was real. Well, as opposed to impossible.

“Hank, stay in the middle,” Garm said.

Alright.

I got in the middle of the fight as best I could and when it moved, I followed.

It gave me a chance to rest up. Not that I was flipping off walls or anything, but even moving my head to try and keep up with these damn women was tiring.

“Hank!” Garm yelled.

“Yeah?”

I heard Garm grunt and a pale sister flew at me and hit me square in the stomach and fell to her knees. I think she must have been thrown or kicked as she didn’t land gracefully at all.

It was all I could do to reach down and grab her by the shoulders before she could get away.

I hauled her to her feet and then past, lifting her into the air. Her hair was probably the heaviest thing on her.

“Kill her!” Garm yelled.

Kill her? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. A foot or fist or something hit me in the face, but it did nothing. It’s not that I’m a very moral person. And these are hardly defenseless women. And they weren’t my employers anymore since that job was done.

“Hank!” Garm yelled.

Was it a pretty bias? Was I having difficulty because they were so attractive? If they were ugly pale sisters would I just bear hug her to death? Was I that shallow?

I turned the pale sister around so she faced me. She was awful pretty.

She hissed and stuck her metal-coated thumbnails into my eyeballs.

“Ack!”

It wasn’t going to kill me, but it wasn’t pleasant. More to the point, it reminded me who I was dealing with.

I had her by the shoulders and squeezed. I felt both her collarbones snap under my fingers. I squeezed more until she went limp with pain. I dropped her to the ground.

I heard a blood-curdling scream and the remaining pale sister launched an attack at me.

“Hank, look out!” Garm yelled, worried.

Fists, kicks, elbows, palms hit me in a blur. All I could think was: this was bad. I’ve got one of the best assassins in the galaxy beating on me and if I closed my eyes I wouldn’t have noticed. I couldn’t feel a thing. It couldn’t be healthy that my skin was so thick. She had lost her weapons so she was no threat to me at all.

I just stood there taking it. I felt warmness in my nose and realized she must have jammed her finger up there.

I hummed to myself as she continued to work me over. She was so mad about what I did to her sister, she let Garm blindside her. I didn’t see exactly what Garm did because it was too swift, but I heard a crack and the pale sister screamed in agony and crumpled to the ground clutching her leg.

There was a gang legend that taking certain drugs could make you unstoppable. And that even a bullet to the heart wouldn’t down you. But we’re just machines. You break the machine and it doesn’t matter how angry you are, how crazy you are, or what drugs you got in your system. If your leg was broken, it’s broken.

Garm delivered a dozen more blows to the prostrate woman.

“Whoa,” I said.

Garm was bleeding and exhausted. She went over to the pale sister I had injured, picking up a shattered blade on the way.

The pale sister looked defiant as the blade was pressed against her throat.

Tanks!

There were an awful lot of tanks inside the freighter’s hold. Hundreds of them. They were stacked on top of each other, bumper to bumper—assuming tanks had bumpers.

There was an immense parking system that kept them all apart, made possible by the fact that the artificial gravity was lessened in the hold. Even I could jump around like a caffeinated puppy.

“Where is the disintegrator?” Garm asked the pale sister.

I was carrying the woman so she didn’t try and run. Her shoulders might be hurt, but her legs weren’t.

The woman flashed some info to Garm in their Quadrad dialogue.

“They were going to drive a tank through the Portal, so one of the closer ones, I would guess.”

“How did you know they were going to do that?” Garm asked suspiciously.

I shrugged. I wasn’t able to give away Tamshius’s secret after all the gonging and candles.

We found the Portal in the hold. It was relatively small compared to the one on Belvaille. They were only bringing tanks through here, not Therezians. The sister indicated which tank to check.

I couldn’t fit inside so I let Garm do it while I played in low gravity, jumping around while holding on to a scowling Quadrad.

“Weeee.”

After some time, Garm came out with a metal box.

“Is this it?” she asked me. “It’s warm.”

The box was not the a-drive, but it might be inside. I traded with Garm. She guarded the sister and I moved away with the box, which I opened.

“That’s it,” I said. I couldn’t feel it was warm. I could be wearing a-drive curlers in my hair and not know it. But I recognized the device.

“Who brought through all these tanks, you think? The Gandrine?” Garm asked.

“Not sure. I’m more interested in where they’re going.”

“Where are they going?” Garm asked the sister, who didn’t answer.

I closed up the box and we headed out. We went to the deck of the ship and brought the two pale sisters. Garm tied them down.

After about forty-five minutes of Garm negotiating with the Quadrad, she turned to me.

“Okay, untie them.”

“What? Why?”

“I have a new agreement.”

I looked at the women, who were battered and appeared exceedingly angry.

“You sure?”

“Yes. Now let’s go. We have to return to Belvaille.”

It was a hell of an awkward trip back, sandwiched between two pale sisters.

“I figured it out,” Delovoa said.

“About time.”

Since we had recovered the device, the Navy had conducted another raid on the corporation and a raid on the Portal.

There wasn’t much Navy left.

However, there were over a hundred Therezians walking around all of western Belvaille. I had to move apartments again, because I was afraid a giant was going to sit on my building while I was sleeping.