Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Screw the Galaxy

“That’s just a building. We store junk there. I don’t even think when the station was first built it had any reference items. Belvaille library…” I shook my head at the concept.

Our talk got cut short, however, by an amplified voice from outside.

“You are surrounded. Come out with your hands on your heads and you won’t be killed.”

Oh, crap.

I moved to the window and peeked out and there were dozens of soldiers stationed behind their vehicles. How did they find us? Were they tracking me?

“What do we do?” Delovoa didn’t sound as panicked as I thought he should. I think he was almost happy to have company, no matter how unfriendly.

“If you go out there with a giant Dredel Led trailing you they are going to cut you down in a panic. If you stay in here and they see a Dredel Led next to you…same thing.”

“Can you explain the situation to them?” Delovoa asked, finally displaying an appropriate level of concern.

I glanced through the window again. The soldiers were getting restless and taking up advanced positions. I counted quite a few rockets among them. They meant business.

“If I had a week or so, sure.” I stopped, because I didn’t want to tell Delovoa he was doomed.

“Go out and stall them,” he said resolutely.

Then he walked over to ZR3 and began talking urgently in what I assumed was ancient Colmarian.

I took that as a good time to leave. I rose to my feet and with hands over my head, walked outside.

I counted quite a few more soldiers than I had originally seen. They were up and down the street. They indeed had the house surrounded.

“Funny story, guys,” I started as I walked towards them.

“Get on the ground!” the one with the amplified voice screamed. I got on the ground. I wasn’t sure if they could kill me or not, but that many rockets could at the very least put me in the hospital a good long time. And that was as good as killing me.

I saw some soldiers approaching me warily. As if I was going to jump to my feet from a prone position and pounce on them before they could act. As if I could pounce.

The soldiers stopped.

Then I heard a horrific twisting of metal behind me. There was the whistle and tweet of the soldiers communicating via their helmets.

Then a thud along with vibrations I felt through the road. Another thud .

The soldiers decided it best to back away. None of them were interested in me any longer.

Thud .

My breathing was heavy. I was prostrate on the ground and I knew what was happening. I saw twenty or more soldiers cowering en masse.

Thud .

I’m not sure if I’ve ever hyperventilated, but if I did, it was now.

Thud . ZR3 was right next to me. I didn’t know where it was going. What it was doing.

Thud . Another step forward. Its pillar of a leg was now even with my neck. Road debris, from ZR3’s tremendous weight, spilled onto me like water.

It walked past. It was most definitely headed in the general direction of the soldiers.

Thud .

They had nowhere to go. Not without running. They had their backs against the building across the street.

Thud .

Most of the soldiers got out of its immediate way. They had their guns halfheartedly pointing at it. This was a literal children’s nightmare come to life and standing right in front of them, in ground-shaking detail.

ZR3 paused in front of one soldier, who seemed to be trying his best to meld into the building.

There was no sound.

Then ZR3 spoke. In its sonorous, monotonous voice.

I couldn’t understand what it was saying and it seemed to be oh-so-bored with the actual enunciation itself. After a few moments, it was done, and all was quiet again.

Then fast as light, ZR3 took that column of an arm and spun it like a windmill, pounding the soldier a foot deep into the metal wall. The shower of gore must have sprayed half the block.

Every soldier there, steeped in discipline and coordination, reacted the same: they screamed and ran. I was only slightly behind them, because I had to get to my feet first and was tripping over their discarded weapons.

Delovoa went streaking past me a moment later, his legs much more nimble than my own.

I could hear ZR3 thundering around but I dared not look back to see what it was doing.

It was then that I truly understood the fear the Dredel Led caused. It wasn’t all the stories we’d heard so many decades ago in our youth, it was the fact that they didn’t care. You could hear it in its voice, even if we had no idea what it was saying. Delovoa had given it some kind of command, and to the machine, that order was no different than one to walk through doorways or sit underneath a tarp in someone’s basement for years. All things were equally unimportant.

What had Delovoa told it to do?

For the next few hours I kept moving. Not because I thought I could outpace ZR3, but because I was extremely frightened and felt it was a slightly better option than curling up in a ball with my head between my knees.

The Navy, instead of jamming teles, was now broadcasting a message for people to stay off the streets. But I had seen it tear up buildings and roads, an apartment would provide no safety.

“Hank,” I heard someone say. “Hank,” they repeated.

I turned and saw a man I didn’t know, crouched in the corner of the street next to a building.

“Follow me,” he said, and skulked off down an alley, staying close to the wall.

This wasn’t an invitation I would have normally thought about accepting, but from what I could tell, he wasn’t a soldier and he wasn’t ZR3, which made him okay by me.

We twisted through some streets until he finally stopped at an apartment building and went in. Inside were numerous armed guards. Not military, but with military-grade weapons. They seemed happy to see me. Some I knew. They’d worked for various bosses back when Belvaille wasn’t a day spa for Dredel Led and the Navy.

We moved into an adjacent apartment and a lot of talking quickly stopped.

“Where have you been?” Garm asked, annoyed.

Inside the room were at least a dozen bosses. There were guns everywhere along with maps and supplies.

“I take it, this is the resistance,” I said.

“Good to have you,” Rendrae said, pushing through the group like he had just come from an eight-year surface war with the Keilvin Kamigans.

“Thank the spirits,” Tamshius said as he clasped my hand. He looked much older.

“There might be other stuff you need to resist. Remember I told you about that other Dredel Led,” I began.

“What? What was that?” Rendrae bubbled, his reporter persona bursting its shackles.

“Yes…?” Garm asked, already knowing she wasn’t going to like what I had to say.

“It’s running around crushing people now,” I said, looking for some alcohol in this pirate’s den.

The commotion was pretty terrible. Dredel Led? Crushing? Blah blah.

“How did this happen?” Garm asked. “We saw the teles but thought it was a Navy cover for a counter-attack.”

“Delovoa,” I shrugged.

“I’m going to murder that fool,” she muttered.

“I wouldn’t recommend that. He seems to be able to speak to it. He got it to attack the soldiers.”

Rendrae perked up at this.

“Wait, it’s attacking soldiers?”

“Yeah.”

“A Dredel Led is attacking soldiers?” Rendrae asked joyfully. “This is perfect. It will further weaken the Navy and occupy their resources while we’re able to make our push. The scales are starting to balance out. It’ll take them a while to put down that robot. And even if they got Wallow, we got Hank.”