Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Basketful of Crap

Delovoa had created a flimsy control panel with a tiny screen and a dozen buttons, none of which were labeled. I pressed buttons erratically, checking my tele now and then.

The chances of me getting out of here alive were growing very small.

As I was standing away from the device, tapping my tele against the wall, I saw a bright light from behind me.

I turned around and immediately fell on my face.

“What?” I asked. I had been pulled forward. All the soldiers in the room were in a pile in the center of the floor, trying to untangle themselves.

I looked up and Naked Guy was the only one of us still on his feet. The cables that had been attached to him had completely disappeared. The white cream that had been on his body was gone.

He held his hand in front of his face.

“What a cruel, cruel joke,” he said with the only bit of emotion I had ever heard him utter.

His hand looked like it was smoking. Then I saw it on his torso. Was he on fire? Or smoldering?

As I watched, he began to dissolve. Like a cube of colored sugar dropped into water.

In mere moments he was completely gone!

“It worked,” I said mostly to myself.

But the soldiers heard it too. And with Naked Guy gone, they no longer seemed to care I was wearing a diaper.

I didn’t hesitate and started crawling as fast as I could to the door.

This was not very fast.

I looked back to see the soldiers had recovered their weapons and were aiming at me. I had just enough time to cover my head.

There were two loud explosions that lifted me into the air and flung me against the doorframe. I landed on the floor outside of the room. I kept crawling, looking for something sturdy enough to help me stand up.

I put my weight on an office chair and it bent and broke. I then grabbed hold of a large computer bay and hauled myself up using that.

Turning around, I expected to see the soldiers rushing out, but there was nothing but smoke wafting from the conference room.

I hurried over to where I had dropped my autocannon and strapped it on. I loaded a canister round and inched back to where the disintegrator was. I couldn’t just leave it here.

Peeking around the corner I saw the room was destroyed. The soldiers had killed themselves firing their weapons in the close quarters. Half a brain.

I hurriedly looked for the a-drive, but couldn’t find it. All the chairs and tables had been obliterated. You would need an archeologist to discover anything in here.

While I believed I should be safe alone in the building, I didn’t feel it.

I wanted to get out of here. I just disintegrated my first multi-billion year old Naked Guy. I felt that was a significant enough accomplishment for the day.

I made note of what building it occurred in. I could tell the Navy to come and search for the disintegrator and I could collect my million credits.

I left the facility and almost got my head taken off.

A tank fired a shell that hit a structure down the street, but I was sure I heard it zip past.

In the street there were two “corporations” facing each other, fighting.

“What?” I said to no one.

Hadn’t this charade been put to rest?

Soldiers were dying on both sides as I stood there watching. But every once in a while, one of them would clearly aim at me, fire, and then go back to shooting the other corporation.

This was what they had been doing when they got everyone to flee the station.

Did killing Naked Guy somehow reset their patterns?

They clearly weren’t aiming well. Normally folks wouldn’t have noticed this stuff because they would be busy running for their lives. But I could stand here and watch them relatively safely. They were either the worst shots in the galaxy or they were not trying to kill one another.

And since I knew they were all the same group, clearly it was the latter.

I moved through the street fight so I could get to safety. I was shot a few more times. Once at point blank range by a guy who had, a moment before, been crouching and firing ninety degrees in another direction.

They weren’t even subtle about it.

“Did it work?” Delovoa asked. He was wearing a bathrobe, slippers, and had some kind of gel smeared on his face.

“What… race are you, Delovoa? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”

“I’m Colmarian. I’m a mutant like you.”

I went in his house to see he had a meal prepared and was eating breakfast. I sat down and helped myself. My stomach was demanding food.

“Well?” he asked.

“Yeah, took a while, but I guess he’s disintegrated.”

“What did it look like? How did it happen? Where is the device?”

“I left it there. I couldn’t find it.”

“What? Do you know how valuable it’s worth?”

“A million credits.”

“More than that. Just an a-drive core alone costs hundreds of millions.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never bought one.”

I frowned at him, but kept eating.

“The corporations are attacking each other again,” I said, after satisfying my hunger.

“I wonder why.”

“I think killing the guy might have broken them.”

“Maybe. In any case, with him gone the next step is to take out the Portal. There are really a lot of Therezians now. I think they are accelerating their transfers,” Delovoa said.

“Or they’ve gotten better at it. How are we going to take out a Portal?”

“That,” Delovoa said, pointing to my autocannon. “Load an HE shell and shoot it.”

“I thought you said not to use those.”

“Not in a close fight. But you can shoot it at a Portal.”

“How am I going to get past all the Therezians? Even if they aren’t actively guarding the Portal, they’ll step on me by accident.”

“I talked to Garm about it and she has a solution.”

Looking down was not something I recommended.

I was climbing the latticework with most of the remaining Navy forces, to a location above the Portal. An elevator had gotten us up here, but we had to walk the rest of the way along the roof of the city.

We were currently thousands of feet above Belvaille, amongst the lights, ventilation, and other noisy life support systems. The only means of travel was a little one-foot wide metal footpath with a railing to the side.

Each of us was equipped with parachutes and our plan was to jump down from above so as to avoid the attention of the Therezians. The General was not with us as he had taken a handful of his troops to secure the disintegrator.

Looking up was also not something I would recommend because you saw space. Space was actually fairly bright without any lights or atmosphere in the way. You couldn’t read by it, but it was enough to be impressive and a bit dizzying.

I had my autocannon with me and the General had let me continue borrowing his Ontakian pistol. I had my doubts about whether I was going to get my million credits for the disintegrator, so it was good to keep the pistol as a bargaining chip.

One of the soldiers came back to talk to me. Most of them were already well out of sight.

“Hey,” the soldier said.

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to go ahead and jump when we reach the point.”

“I thought we were supposed to go together.”

“You’re too slow. It’s going to take you all day to get there at this rate and we just confirmed we need to put the Portal out of commission as soon as possible.”

My tele still didn’t work so they must have talked to the General themselves.

“Well, do I turn around?”

“No, you’ll be the second wave in case we fail.” He left to rejoin his team.