Steven Campbell - Suck My Cosmos

Garm cupped her hand to my ear and whispered.

“Wait for me to get down and then we’ll do diagram E4 with oil.”

I didn’t get a chance to answer before she did a backflip off the ledge we were standing on.

I looked over expecting to see her crumpled form on the floor below, but she was somehow clinging to the wall and scaling down.

Well, wasn’t that nice for her? But how did I get down?

There was nothing but this ledge and the way we came, which led back up.

I checked my pockets and my tool case hurriedly for, like, a grappling hook I didn’t remember bringing. But there was nothing.

The fall wouldn’t kill me, but it’s not what I wanted to do before facing the Ontakians. And I was carrying a tank full of ship-cutter fuel. I’d feel awful stupid if I jumped off and that thing exploded.

Garm was at the bottom and she looked up at me.

I shrugged at her.

Garm was concealing her presence from the Ontakians so she wasn’t going to make any big movements, but she flicked a metal pellet that hit me on the right ear. It didn’t hurt, but I got the sense that she wasn’t happy with my hesitation.

I took a few steps and jumped off.

I landed on my feet but my momentum made me fall on my stomach and slide. My tools went clattering across the floor, probably the damn length of the room.

“Oof!” I said.

I turned to Garm who wore an expression that was a mix of horrified and exasperated.

She pointed backwards. I followed her gesture and noticed a ladder next to the platform I had jumped from. It was recessed into and kind of the same color as the wall, which was why I didn’t notice it.

The Ontakians were facing us, and if they were concerned, they hid it well. They were probably more confused.

“Why did you jump?” Garm hissed, as she helped me to my feet.

“I didn’t see the ladder,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter now. We’ll use B1. Ready? Go!” She said.

And she immediately sprinted off straight ahead! It wasn’t directly toward the Ontakians, more perpendicular to them.

Now, I vaguely remembered B1, but I couldn’t reconcile the little diagram with this enormous engine room. In my doubt, I walked slowly forward. Kind of at an angle in between the Ontakians and the direction Garm was headed so I could hedge my bets.

I got the torch situated after my fall and made the valves ready for the mixture. I wasn’t sure what plan Garm was implementing, but I knew it had to involve the torch as there was little else I could do to the Ontakians.

Garm began picking up speed and then yelled:

“Green!”

Hmm. That meant something. I was supposed to respond, but I didn’t know what. I couldn’t ask her because then they would know, so I kept moving forward, but I picked up my pace.

I saw Garm make a complicated series of twists and turns and cartwheels and rolls.

It was misdirection.

She hit both Ontakians with truss mines right at their legs. Those were the grenades MTB had used to entangle me when I first went soup-crazy.

A mine ensnared each of their legs together and then a third bound the two sets of wire in between. It was so horrendously accurate you would have thought metal sculptors had woven the fibers in perfect symmetry over months.

They both fell forward, their lower bodies entwined.

I then remembered that the “green” command meant I should be a lot closer than I was so I could pound on the prostrate Ontakians.

I tried to hurry over as quick as I could, but that wasn’t quick to begin with and with the torch it was even less so.

It was then I saw their upper bodies were still free and they were…drinking.

Oh, man.

I stopped and mixed the fuel on the torch, readying it for combustion.

“Move in,” Garm yelled.

“No, Garm, wait,” I said.

I had dialed one chemical too high and had to adjust. I was staring at these dumb gauges trying to ensure they didn’t explode when I heard the Ontakians screaming.

Garm began shooting and throwing stuff and there were little explosions and laser lights as she closed in.

“Come on. Come on,” I said to the torch. Delovoa was right. This thing must be a thousand years old, because it was temperamental as hell and I couldn’t get the needles stabilized.

Garm went into a whirlwind of motion, flinging weapons and bullets and presumably all manner of death.

But then the Ontakians stopped screaming.

In a single motion, one of the bald men ripped through the restraints binding him, stood up, and jumped. He just sailed through space like he had been shot from a rocket.

He landed right in front of Garm.

She tried to dodge but he snaked out a hand and grabbed her. A jab to the head almost too fast to see knocked her loopy, and then with casual disdain, he threw her at me.

I saw her flying through the air and I tried to decide whether I should rush out to catch her. I mean, I wasn’t exactly a soft cushion. And I wasn’t good at catching people. Maybe hitting the floor was better because at least it wasn’t a vertical surface.

As I pondered all this, she hit the ground and rolled toward me, bumping to a halt against my shins.

“Garm!” I said, crouching down.

I turned her over on her back and she grimaced in pain. I guess I should have done that a little more gently.

I was about to say more but I saw a light on the nozzle of my torch. It was reaching dangerous pressure levels.

I stood up and carefully stepped over Garm.

I kept dialing the valves and walking forward, trying to get away from Garm in case the torch ruptured.

Finally, finally , it reached equilibrium. I actually waited a second to see if it was going to swerve.

“Brothers,” I started, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to: Eat suck, suckface!”

I pressed the button to ignite.

ZZZZOOOOM!

The giant orange beam of light shot forward and I realized a little late that I hadn’t actually been aiming at anything in particular.

This thing really was a spaceship torch. It cut through the floor like gelatin.

I swung the beam toward the Ontakian that had thrown Garm but it was such an intense light and heat, I couldn’t tell if I came anywhere near him. I had both eyes squinted and I felt the skin on my face and hands peeling. How had Delovoa ever fired this?

I aimed the nozzle toward the other Ontakian and as it was moving over, I was reassured to see him running in panic.

I was melting a chunk of the floor as I moved the beam back and forth between the hazy dots that I knew to be the Ontakians.

The beam suddenly went red and lost half its length.

Then it flared out wide and I had to drop it because it was burning my whole body. The torch was bouncing sheets of flame twenty feet into the air and along the ground.

My instinct was to run away, but the last smart corner of my brain told me that would just drag it around behind me because the fuel canister was still attached to my back.

I turned my head and disconnected all the straps and buckles as quick as I could and then jumped away.

It took a good ten more seconds, but the nozzle finally sputtered out and died.

The Ontakians stood fifty feet away looking pissed.

I could tell I hit them because their clothes were in pretty bad shape.

Take that, wardrobe!

So I was all burnt up, probably as bad as they were, still recovering from my escape from the Governor’s mansion, and outnumbered two to one against Tamshius-fueled guys I couldn’t fight at my prime.

“I will accept your surrenders,” I said.

One of the Ontakians started screaming.

Then the other one did.

I started screaming too. Hey, it couldn’t hurt.