Hard Luck Hank: Screw the Galaxy by Steven Campbell Page A

thinking…I don’t know, you wanted me to take on
the Colmarian military or something. You came to the right place for
forgeries.” I was quite relieved.
    Jyen jumped up and buried her face in my chest,
her arms around me. Which was considerably more pleasant than being hit with an
electric jolt.
    “Thank you. Thank you,” she bubbled.
    I was back in my native environment. Sort of.
    “Documentation, egress, ingress, orange stamps,
R.O.M.s, no problem. We can also book some fake passage for your existing
identity and place it in some other part of the empire while you guys move.
We’ll have to think of a good place for you to migrate.”
    Jyen held her hands clasped and the tiniest
squeal of joy escaped her. When she wasn’t blasting people or wearing sexy
clothes she really seemed like a little girl.
    “Let me make some calls. I’ll get back to you
tomorrow, okay?”
    “That’s perfect.”
    As I was about to leave, trying my best to
ignore the smeared metal walls, Jyen reminded me:
    “Please do not say anything of what you saw
here.”
    It wasn’t a threat. But when it comes from the
sister of a guy who can earthquake an entire space station at will, it pretty
much becomes a threat.

CHAPTER
12

    Outside the building I felt good. I hadn’t
realized I’d previously felt bad, but the specter of an entire species gunning
for me had apparently weighed on my mind. Now it was just a matter of getting Jyen
and Jyonal off Belvaille.
    It might be hard without clueing Garm in,
especially since she had closed the port when the Dredel Led showed up. Would
she buy that it was for the greater good? Probably not. I had to convince Jyen
to let Garm in on their secret.
    I was thinking of people to get in touch with
first when I heard a familiar noise. I looked back just in time to see a figure
streak by, followed by a hard landing not five feet behind me.
    “Son of a bitch.”
    The Dredel Led was not looking at me, however.
It faced the apartment building I had just exited.
    I pulled my plasma pistol out with my left
hand, tossed it about one foot to my right hand, so I could aim better. This
was a terribly dangerous thing to do, but I did it without thinking. I caught
it, raised it, powered it on with my thumb.
    “Eat suck, suckface!”
    Click.
    Click.
    Click.
    I looked at my Ontakian pistol. There was no
green glow. There was no abdomen-throbbing hum. It was absolutely inert even
after flipping it on and off multiple times.
    The robot turned around to face me and I knew I
was going to die, really going to die. This was a new sensation for me: fear.
Real, “there’s a poisonous spider in my pants” fear. I had to do something
drastic.
    I lunged forward and could tell the robot was
the one from the video. Its right arm rose, attempting to become level with my
chest. On the other robot, that same arm had owned a cannon that sent me
cartwheeling through the air like the last chip on a gambling binge.
    But I was at it. Toe-to-toe. I knew it could
fly, and if it got away, got some range between us, it would just blast me
until I was chunks. My theory was that, no matter what metal this thing was
made out of, it was still metal. If it fired at this range it would kill the
both of us. And hopefully it didn’t hate me more than it liked itself.
    I had to incapacitate it or it would just move
away, and there was no way my slow ass would stop it. I put my arms around it,
wrapped my legs around its legs.
    Now what?
    The robot’s face was really a poor imitation of
a Colmarian. I actually noticed the small gizmos just inside its eyes that
controlled the movement of its lids and such. And its expressions in general
seemed to be random as opposed to being tied to any action it was doing. Like
it smiled briefly. Then it twitched. Then it crinkled its nose. Its features
were all mismatched and unaligned. It was truly ugly and disturbing.
    But its face wasn’t my concern. It had put its
left hand under my right arm and was trying to