Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy

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 noise, 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.

The robot then twisted itself and fired at the last soldier, hitting the wall in front of where he’d been hiding.

And then the Dredel Led began walking towards Garm and me.

Garm fired with her pistol, the gun booming with each shot, but other than some dull pangs from the impacts, it had no effect.

My brain was still trying to get in gear after being slammed against the side of my cranium. I was standing there dazed as the robot moved closer. I saw the soldiers had shot off much of the ugly prosthetics that had once been its body, revealing a bright silver material underneath.

Dumbly. Out of habit, if nothing else, I reached into my jacket, found my Ontakian pistol was still there, pulled it out, and powered it on. I was going to blow myself up before I let this robot do it.

And whoosh . He took off into the sky.

I looked up, waiting for him to land behind me. Or land on me. But I could see his contrail streaking off into the distance where the darkness swallowed it.

“Huh?” I said astutely.

“See? They’re scared of that gun,” Garm said. Then she ran off to check on her men.

I stared at my pistol. I was too numb from adrenaline to feel its hum vibrating my innards, but its piercing green glow felt like a gentle fireplace providing shelter.

Garm was communicating with her base and I was looking around for a good place to take a nap when she rushed over.

“We got a bead on it. A building a mile from here was accessed and nothing has come out. It’s in the direction that thing flew. Let’s go.”

“What?” I looked around at the carnage. I couldn’t believe she wanted to repeat this, except with fewer people.

“We have the upper hand now, Hank.”

“How so?”

I could see she was exasperated at my slowness.

“It ran from your pistol. It’s afraid of it. So that means you can kill it.”

“Or. It ran because it was bored. Or because it knew my pistol would explode if I fired it. Which is what happened when anyone else tried to use Ontakian guns.”

“How do you know? Were you some Ontakian weapon scientist before you came to Belvaille?”

“No. I-I heard it somewhere,” I said unconvincingly.

“Come on!” she yelled, pulling my arm.

I was far too heavy to be pushed or pulled around, but I allowed myself to be taken to the car. Two soldiers were injured, unable to help us. The two on the ground were dead.

Before I got into the car, I threw up. I paused a moment looking down at my sick. There were my rations mixed with blood. Now I was hungry again.

Putting me in the car was probably a bad idea. I was comfortable. My head immediately drooped to my chest and I was 100% ready to go to sleep.

Garm kept berating me and hitting me and otherwise being an effective alarm clock.