Steven Campbell - Suck My Cosmos

I heard the chute door close behind me and I was in absolute darkness. I still hadn’t moved much and it would be a small matter for the sniper to walk down the hall, open the chute, and put his rifle against my head. Well, he probably couldn’t reach my head, but he could shoot his way to it from below and I’d be unable to prevent him.

I was taking little half-breaths because I was incapable of breathing deeply. I was light-headed.

I wanted to call Cliston and tell him he was fired but I was incapable of moving more than a finger.

I heard the tell-tale sound of the chute door opening and I knew this was it.

I was going to die in a trash can.

But then I heard a distant banging. And then the door closing again. Then more banging, more, more.

And then I was hit by a high velocity barrel of trash.

Whatever condition of stuck I had been in was instantly erased as I went screaming down the chute.

I could feel the air whipping at my face I was going so fast.

Then I encountered what Cliston must have referred to as the baffles. They were just rubber obstructions across the chute that I smacked into and I suppose were designed to slow the progress of the trash bins.

They worked, at the cost of running into hard rubber roadblocks again and again.

I had just enough time to wonder where I was going and where this would end when my shoulder hit a hard metal bar and I stopped completely.

“Ow,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it.

My head poked out of the bottom of the chute and I saw a massive pile of trash maybe ten feet beneath me.

The trash bin that had been following me now decided to hit my feet again and I was rammed out of the chute and landed on the heap of garbage.

The bin above, locked onto the metal bar, swung, dumped its trash on me, and then with its last momentum, spun off into a pile of similar bins to the side.

I curled up on the garbage with the idea of going to sleep. Or passing out. What was the difference, really?

“Sir?” I heard a voice call to me. I didn’t recognize it and didn’t see where it came from. But this room, wherever I was, was fairly dark.

It seemed foolish to answer.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m your driver,” the man said.

I had just been hit in the head a lot of times in the very recent past and I assumed he meant like, something that drives you. Inspiration.

“Huh?” I asked, confused.

“I’m Eathion.”

“Yeah?” I said. I didn’t know the name and it confirmed I shouldn’t have answered him to begin with. But presumably he saw me sitting here, so me not answering wouldn’t really do much. It’s not like ignoring him would make me invisible.

“Eathion, sir. I’m your driver,” he repeated.

“Driver for what?” I asked, annoyed. This guy was keeping me awake now.

“Your car. One of your drivers, in any case. I work for Cliston, sir. I’ve driven you for the last three months.”

“Oh! My limo driver. I thought…never mind. What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Cliston sent me to get you.”

“In my car? They’ll never let us out.”

“I have a Central Authority vehicle. I believe MTB provided it. You can hide in the trunk.”

“Well…yeah. Then that’s fine,” I said, trying to climb off of the garbage pile.

I really didn’t feel like walking, but whatshisname couldn’t carry me. He had a Central Officer uniform and everything.

I fell into the trunk without problem, but it took quite a lot of effort to get me situated enough where we could close it.

I felt the car pull away and I drifted to sleep to the rhythm of the tires.

I supposed I wouldn’t be firing Cliston after all.

“Wake up!” Garm yelled.

I was still in the trunk of the Central Authority car. Cliston, the driver, and Garm were tugging at me to try and get me out and into my home. They would probably have an easier time pushing my house on top of me.

“Cliston, food,” I ordered.

“Put it in the back seat. Maybe he’ll eat his way out,” Garm said.

“Has the Governor really been murdered?” Cliston asked.

“Yup.”

“You saw it with your own eyes?” Garm asked.

“No, I borrowed someone else’s,” I said, upset that she was yanking on my shoulders despite a trunkful of blood.

“Did the Ontakians kill him?” she asked.

“I don’t think Maris-To knows about the Ontakians,” I said.

“So who killed Vorrin-Gortail? Don’t tell me you did,” Garm said.

“No. Maris-To. With a spoon.”

“That’s impossible. The Governor was a level-eight mutant,” she said.

“Didn’t save him,” I said.

“Who is running the System?” Cliston asked.

“I’ve been sitting in a trunk and a very tight trash chute, Cliston , how should I know?”

“Delovoa said he doesn’t want to scan the dreadnaught. It’s the same size as Belvaille and if we waste all our cycles on it we won’t have time to scan the city,” Garm said.

“I don’t care. Tell him to scan Shelter. Maris-To is restoring it,” I said.

“Sir, you need to come inside. We can’t stand in the street talking to you in the back of a Central Authority vehicle,” Cliston stated.

“Why not?” I challenged.

But I let them drag me out and helped as much as I could.

“Why are you always naked and bloody?” Garm asked.

“I’m a militant nudist.”

I fell on the ground and my front door seemed miles away. But I managed to crawl inside, where Cliston made me comfortable, bandaged me, and brought me food.

Garm was in contact with MTB, Malla, and Delovoa.

Malla reported there was definitely something in the air at the Festival. People were nervous and kept their security details close. When we told her the Governor was dead, she wasn’t surprised. Hints of it, if not the actual specifics, must have leaked all through the party.

“I think the Festival is going to break up early and they might move to reclaim the telescopes,” Malla said.

“We’ll be here a few hours after the last people leave. If Malla can hold a big enough group near us, we’ll be forced to keep the telescopes closed,” MTB said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Malla replied.

I was lying in bed eating when Garm came in.

“What’s Maris-To going to do with Shelter?”

“I doubt he’s going to turn it into a farm colony. What else can you do with it except blow up ships?”

“It has an a-drive. The only remaining ship with one,” Garm said.

“Oh, yeah. He mentioned something about that.”

“See? That’s kind of important, Hank. What else did he say?”

“I can’t remember. Look at my head. I’m lucky I’m still able to form complete sentences.”

“What hit you?”

“Something big.”

“No, seriously. If we’re going to fight the other Ontakians, I want to know what they are resistant to.”

“It was either a really accurate recoilless rifle or an anti-materiel sniper rifle. Those are my guesses.”

Garm slumped.

“I’m going to have to redraw some of our attack diagrams if that’s true.”

“Why? Are you carrying a recoilless rifle?”

“Hey, Shelter is active,” Delovoa said on the tele.

“I told you that,” I said.

“No, you didn’t. You said scan it,” he replied.

“What’s active? We knew people were living there,” Garm said.

“The engines. You don’t need engines and the power core if you just want to turn it into a habitat,” Delovoa stated.

“What about the weapons?” Garm asked.

“It doesn’t look like it, but I can’t be certain,” he said.