I looked up to see him falling.
“Come on,” I managed to grunt, right before he fell on top of me.
I definitely passed out. For how long I didn’t know. When I came to I wondered if we were winning yet.
With difficulty, I managed to twist myself to a nearly upright position and saw a big pile of Wallow on the ground, no longer on top of me, but oddly splayed across the street. The robot was chasing soldiers.
The cars were in shreds and burning.
Jyen was gone.
But I heard Delovoa still talking his crazy lingo as he darted around the street in a panic.
I was running out of options.
I struggled to rise and the searing pain made me think hard about playing dead. I mean, it’s a robot, right? It’s not going to check my pulse. It doesn’t even have hands.
But I saw ZR3 literally run over a soldier, breaking him to pieces, and I knew I had to do something.
“Hank, I can’t see it,” came the voice of Jyonal, whose pleasantly high manner was obscenely out of place in this carnage.
Holding on to the wreckage of the vehicle behind me, I pulled myself up to one leg. My other leg was twisted at a weird angle and it sickened me to look at it.
Unless I was going to rust it up with my blood, I really only had one outside hope.
I took my plasma pistol out of my jacket and powered it on, which is more than I thought it would do after having been sat on by a giant.
ZR3 seemed to sense its new priority, or realized the Oberhoffman wasn’t quite dead yet, and it turned to me.
To keep my balance on my one good leg, I clung to the car as the robot ran towards me.
“Eat thuck! Ow!” I grabbed my mouth, realizing my jaw must be broken.
I could tell right away my Ontakian pistol didn’t fire normally.
Mostly because it exploded.
The vehicle kept me upright, but I smelled my burnt flesh. The Dredel Led was a step away. I thrust myself at it with my last bit of energy and grabbed hold with both arms.
“Gona. I ’ave it! Can you gee me?”
CHAPTER 42
I heard some talking, as if from far away. Heard the word “inject” and then I woke up with a start. A group of medical technicians stood by my bed. But instead of fumbling with my intestines, they appeared to have matters under control. It was then I knew I wasn’t on Belvaille.
“Good evening, sir,” one of them said.
I looked around at the fantastic array of medical gear that was deployed. They were almost comical in their sophistication. Like a computer systems salesmen had taken out every model he had in hopes that at least one would be of interest. Their bleeping lights and sounds were like a little symphony.
“What ship am I on?” I asked.
“Medical Sloop J-B,” another answered.
I tried to look at my leg, but I couldn’t rise. I felt it there, but I knew that didn’t mean anything.
“How many pieces am I in?” I asked.
“You appear to be in perfect health, sir, though your physiology limits our ability to ascertain your precise disposition. However, your leg has reset itself somewhat irregularly at the knee.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“You may have some discomfort or off-gait in your left leg.”
“A limp? How long?”
“It would be permanent,” the technician said solemnly.
“So I’m going to be even slower?”
“There is a possibility that we could re-break your leg and see if it heals properly this time. We would need to construct some machines for the task.”
What an option.
“There’s one more thing,” one of the technicians said. “We weren’t able to correct this.”
And he handed me a mirror.
“Really?” I asked, not looking at it. “Do you really think you should say that and give a patient a mirror?”
I took a deep breath and gazed at myself.
I had three scars on my face. A small horizontal one above my right eyebrow, a longish one that went from the left side of my nose down to the corner of my mouth, and a sort of thick one that cut across my left cheek and joined the one at my nose. All three scars had a very light green tinge to them.
I’d never had scars before. My body just healed them away on the rare times I was injured. I actually thought I looked pretty cool.
“We believe there is some contaminant in the skin that is preventing its healing, though we couldn’t detect anything,” a technician stated. “We aren’t sure if they’re dangerous.”
“The scars?” I asked.
One of the technicians turned off the lights and in the mirror I could see the faintest emerald glow from the wounds on my face. Whoah. There were also a few nicks on my hand—presumably all this was from when my poor plasma pistol exploded.