Hard Luck Hank Screw the Galaxy(16)

Garm was nervous. Sweating. Something had her stirred up and that got my attention. She played a video.

“Is that station check-in?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Garm chewed her fingernails absently. I put my bag down and focused on the video. People and cargo needed to check into Belvaille like anyplace else. Though we generally didn’t mind what they brought as long as it wasn’t too bizarre.

“Watch this guy coming up,” Garm said.

A man on the video approached the check. He was scanned. The scan showed—

“Is,” I began lamely, “that a robot?”

The guard at the checkpoint was confused too.

“Um,” he said. Then he got blasted to pieces. The robot had revealed some kind of heavy cannon held by or attached to its arm. An explosion of flame and smoke erupted and the video went dead.

“There are two of them. They flew away into the city. Some kind of jet packs.”

“Robots?” I asked again.

“We think. We don’t know. But they killed every single person at that checkpoint. Over twenty people, including three security personnel.”

“What would Dredel Led be doing here?”

“We don’t know who they are,” Garm said. “They’re robots and they killed a lot of people. That’s all we got.”

This was just totally unbelievable. I played back the video. He looked like a normal Colmarian, though that in itself was somewhat of an oxymoron.

The Dredel Led really were a scary concept, the bad guys for every work of fiction.

I’m not even sure what our real interaction was with their empire versus what was just hyperbole. I don’t think Colmarians had had any contact with them in millennia at least. Colmarian space adjoined theirs in some areas, but we adjoined just about everyone. And Belvaille was nowhere near them.

Real information on them was scant. They were robots. They had really advanced technology. They kept to themselves. Unlike the other races, you couldn’t say what a Dredel Led looked like. They could look like anything, right? I mean they were machines. Because of our wars with them ages ago, certain technology was now forbidden in the Colmarian Confederation.

“I’m hereby deputizing you, Hank,” Garm said.

“Uh, deputization denied,” I countered. “I’m not the military.”

“How many times did I offer you?”

“I don’t want to be in the military. And what can I possibly do to help? I can’t fight a flying robot.”

“Hank, I sent word we’ve been attacked. It will be a week before they even get that message. It will be at least a month before they can send anyone here. Are you willing to let those things run wild for a month? There are 100,000 people on this station.”

“A million.”

“What?”

“There’s a million people on Belvaille, right?” I asked.

Garm looked momentarily confused and annoyed.

“No. Where’d you get that idea? There are just under 100,000 here. But still, every one of them is in danger. Those things obviously don’t mind killing people.”

“You’ve got that big gun, can’t you use that?” I asked.

“That’s an artillery piece, it’s for knocking down buildings.”

“Then why do you have it?”

“For knocking down buildings! Look, if you can get one to stand still for thirty minutes while we set it up, we can use it, otherwise it’s no go.”

“You think my shotgun is going to do anything to that,” I said, pointing at the video.

“No, but your Ontakian pistol will.”

I stared at Garm, gobsmacked. It never occurred to me that she believed in it too.

“You’re kidding. I’ve never even fired this stupid thing,” I said, taking it out of its holster. “It probably hasn’t been shot in a thousand years. It’s either going to not do anything or blow off my face.”

“But at least it’s something.”

“You’re not getting it, I’ve never used it. I don’t know what it is. It’s just a green light. I scare people with it.”

“Well that’s like those robots. Don’t think of them as children’s stories, sneaking around at night or killing your parents and living in their skin. They’re just targets like anyone else you’ve fought.”

“No,” I said, disagreeing with her logic. “My pistol has never killed twenty people in one shot and flown through the sky. Those Dredel Led are exactly the same as the children’s stories.”

“Just try the pistol. We don’t have any other ideas.”

“It’s my great-great-great-grandfather’s and all I have left of my history.”