Steven Campbell - Suck My Cosmos

Garm was reaching around in one of her pockets and held something out to me.

“What’s this? Credits? You owe me a lot more than—” I started.

But it wasn’t credits or a wallet or a clasp. It was a small, shiny rectangle. It took me a moment to realize it was a mirror.

I saw the room behind me, vast in its dimensions.

And there was me.

I think.

My veins were blue and prominent all over my face. I could even see them on my nose. My eyes were bugged-out and staring and the pupils which filled them were gigantic.

Then there was my mouth, which was locked as wide as it could possibly go.

And it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t having a logical conversation with Garm.

I was shrieking.

And while I was doing that I was shaking Garm vigorously.

I let go and she fell to the floor.

The floor. Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something with the floor? Or the wall? What was I doing here?

I heard distant voices but they were too faint to be of any concern.

There was something I had to figure out but I couldn’t remember what it was.

Something about my parents.

What was it?

“Hank,” Garm said, from what seemed like a long way off.

I couldn’t even see her. Where the hell was I?

“Hank,” she said again.

I heard a gun. I think she shot me.

“Hank! Belvaille is going to be destroyed!” She yelled.

It was like ice water poured on my back.

“Belvaille,” I said hazily.

“Yes, where you’ve lived your whole life.”

“Belvaille. That place…sucks,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s home,” she said.

Then it all clicked. That was my city. Mine.

“What do I do?” I asked her.

“Destroy the controls,” she said, pointing.

I hopped over to them and began pounding.

It was pretty monotonous but I was pretty high so I didn’t mind. I tried to destroy each new machine differently.

Some I ripped from the wall and smashed into the next one. A lot of them I kicked. Some I threw. I got smart and realized I could pull out the whole wall and turn it over on a few dozen at a time.

Of course, there were a lot of controls.

Level after level after level. They could fill a skyscraper. Or a dreadnaught.

My hands and arms and knees and feet were raw meat.

I tried using a metal railing as a weapon to whack them, but it only lasted for maybe a hundred consoles and then it got too bent to use.

I don’t know how long I did this, but I was quite content to keep doing it forever. I was making good progress when I kept hearing a noise. I ignored it and kept at my work.

“—have to leave,” I heard.

I glanced around and saw Garm pleading with me. Man, she looked terrible. But I think this formula gave me heightened vision. I could see the individual pores on her skin from ten feet away. And no one looks good at the pore-level—especially when they’ve been punched in the face by a grouchy Ontakian who was tripping on strength soup.

“Hank, we have to leave now!” she repeated.

She threatened and slapped me and even cried.

Her tears shocked just enough sobriety into me that I allowed myself to be pulled away, back to reality.

I had to carry Garm on my back.

After some time we got to corridors with a lot of panicked people running.

I don’t know if the Ontakians breaking the engine, me breaking the controls, or the imminent impact with Belvaille had set off the ship’s alarms, but alarms there were. Alarms in general were pretty alarming, but you got the sense that these particular ones were the “hey, you’re all about to die, so you might want to start rethinking your religious options” kind of alarms.

Garm told me to follow the running people and that seemed a pretty good idea. They were heading to the ship’s dock and fleeing in any shuttle or escape pod they could find.

It took a while but we located Zzzho in his cab. Garm had threatened via tele that if Zzzho tried to leave before we got there, the Quadrad would hunt him down and do whatever it took to kill a Keilvin Kamigan painfully.

Which was a pretty solid threat.

The formula was wearing off and I started to get a really bad headache and began to feel the pain in my…everywhere. Probably all the bones in my arms and hands were broken and a sizeable number in my legs.

That was some scary soup.

When our taxi disembarked, we could see Shelter was trying to slow itself with its huge array of forward retro rockets. But it was still headed right for Belvaille.

“Get away from Shelter,” Garm said.

“Like you have to tell me that!” Zzzho answered.

The Belvaille System had no star. It was black as night except for the ships that dotted it.

But suddenly the entire System turned to daylight as a third of the Portals opened simultaneously and stayed open. They usually only blinked for a split second as ships instantly passed through. This was completely unheard of.

We felt the taxi shudder and get tossed.

“What the hell is that?” Zzzho asked.

“The Portals,” Garm said.

We were like a soap bubble spinning in an open drain. Those Portals had enough energy to move Shelter, however slightly. Our little taxi was in danger of being pulled to pieces. Or more likely:

“We’re going to hit Shelter,” Garm said.

Various screeches and buzzes came from Zzzho’s speakers and I got the impression he was fighting with the controls.

I sat there like a very tired and broken barnacle.

We hit something or something hit us and then the lights went out and it was dark again.

“Angle on Belvaille,” Garm commanded.

Our ship rotated slowly and the space station was brought into view.

Shelter was just moments away from impacting Belvaille!

It was like the two big kids of the neighborhood were slugging it out to see who was top dog. They seemed so close but it was taking forever. Had they already hit?

We sat there for silent minutes until it became clear.

“Shelter is turning,” Zzzho said.

“No. That’s a collision,” Garm answered.

Shelter was not only moving up, but Belvaille was moving down and away.

It all seemed to be happening so slowly.

But as the front of Shelter seemed to bounce up, the rest of it continued almost straight.

“It’s breaking in half,” I said breathlessly.

From our perspective, it looked like Belvaille was being pushed downward and turning after the impact. I stared at it intently, trying to determine if it suffered the same fate as Shelter, which was clearly splitting apart.

“There’s no way Belvaille remained undamaged after that,” Garm said, seeming to guess my concern.

Shelter had lots of lights on it, but as it fractured, all those went out. With no major illumination in the System, it looked like the enormous ship was simply vanishing like a chalk line being erased.

“I need to dock somewhere. There’s going to be debris flying all over after that,” Zzzho said.

“Can you make it to Belvaille?” I asked.

“Are you nuts? That area is going to be filled with broken dreadnaught chunks. We’ll never make it through. I’m a taxi driver and this isn’t a Navy battleship,” he said.

“He’s right,” Garm said.

“Well, dock in Food Sector. I’m really hungry,” I answered.

The next week was pretty stressful.

At least that’s what they told me. I was unconscious for most of it.

Even with my healing enhanced from the formula, I was not going to be winning any speed walking contests any time soon. Or be walking at all.

Tele communication had been suspended across the System. They simply turned off all the satellites.