Hard Luck Hank Screw the Galaxy(88)

“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.”

I nearly swallowed my own tongue.

“I’m not Wallow,” I said.

“You’ve beaten him before,” Rendrae said dismissively, as if I was merely being humble.

Having a reputation can really be annoying sometimes.

“Have you ever seen Wallow? Because if you did, there’s no way you could possibly think I ever beat him at anything.”

“Hank,” Garm interrupted, “do you want to be briefed on what we’re doing? Then you can tell us more about this robot.”

Everyone answered for me. Of course I did. Sure. I’m one of them. I rolled my eyes.

“First, we’re trying to restore tele communication, but it’s the dreadnought that’s jamming us, unfortunately. The only things of value on this station, as far as I can figure, are those telescopic arrays. If we take out some of those, we might force them to negotiate with us.”

All these eager, crooked faces were staring at me. As if I was somehow their salvation. Like I could take my sawed-off shotgun, put on a spacesuit, hop out an airlock, and shoo away a bunch of battlecruisers.

I just didn’t see it. A year ago I could scarcely imagine the power of all the combined forces of Belvaille’s underworld, which were now assembled in front of me. But compared to the Navy?

“Yeah,” I began uneasily.

Someone handed me a rifle that had obviously been taken from the military.

“What’s this?” I asked in horror.

“You’ll need that to shoot through their body armor,” a guard said.

I held it awkwardly.

“I’m not a scientist. This thing has too many buttons,” I complained.

“It has four,” Garm stated flatly.

A thug came by and began trying to force my clumsy fingers into the proper places.

Garm looked at me hard.

“I want Hank to be our liaison with the military. To negotiate.”

There was outrage at this suggestion.

“We need Hank fighting,” someone said.

“Yeah, those carbines won’t do anything to him,” someone else volunteered for my skin.

“It’s a morale boost for the men having Hank on the front lines,” Big Moff said without a hint of sarcasm.

Even I had to disagree with Garm.

“I don’t think the Wardian particularly likes me. Besides, you’re Adjunct Overwatch. If anyone should deal with them it’s you.”