Steven Campbell - Suck My Cosmos

The space station Belvaille was a democracy full of stupid and greedy citizens. Stupid and greedy citizens elect stupid and greedy politicians.

Or at least that’s what I liked to tell myself. Years ago I had been Governor and Secretary of City of Belvaille. Now I was nothing. I had been voted out of office by the people whose lives I’d saved countless times over countless years.

I was currently sitting in a restaurant, hoping to find evidence of a City Councilman doing something especially stupid and greedy.

I had been hired by his wife.

She came into my office about two weeks ago.

I owned a five-story structure on Belvaille. It was the only way I could afford to live on the space station. I leased out the top three floors, lived on the first, and had my office on the second. The money I got from renters was just about enough for me to make ends meet.

Just about.

I was scanning through the newspapers looking for employment. My last job had been to help a nobleman locate his missing daughter. I found she had eloped to her boyfriend’s place off-station. I was then hired to beat up said boyfriend and return the daughter.

That was typical work for me.

The Colmarian civil war had rewritten the galaxy, and in the shadow of all the destruction, it had also caused a vast consolidation of wealth. Only the rich lived on Belvaille now. Not like gang boss rich, but more like, I own a planet rich.

Belvaille charged fees for everything. They charged for water. They charged for gravity. They charged if you had a door on your house. They charged if you didn’t have a door. They charged you for breathing. If you got shot, they charged you a fee for bleeding on the sidewalk—I’m not even making that up.

It’s not as if the station was hurting for cash. The avalanche of fees was used to keep out everyone except the most affluent of citizens. I was barely able to cling on.

I only worked for rich people now. I wasn’t a snob, but they were the only ones who could pay enough to make a dent in my expenses.

Normally, I went to meet them or they sent a servant, but occasionally, a client would do me the great honor of stopping by in person.

She came in through the front door while I had my feet up on my desk and my shoes off.

People didn’t come here by mistake. I had a sign on the building that said, “Hank Services Limited.” I didn’t know what the “Limited” meant. I thought it sounded good. Maybe it was in reference to my capabilities. Underneath that was a neon sign shaped like a fist with the knuckles facing toward the viewer.

I immediately noticed the woman’s thick fur coat that dropped straight to the floor. It was from a notasta ferret. A tiny little beast of a creature that could squeeze out of any trap, could climb, fly, swim, and was faster than a greased bullet. It was said the best trappers could farm a mere handful a year and that was enough to live well, because the pelts were so highly valued.

This woman was wearing about twenty-five years’ worth of ferret fur to make a coat that length.

She was super wealthy.

On one hand, I liked wealthy people. I could bill them for my expenses and made-up expenses and the expense of making up my expenses. But on the other hand, wealthy people didn’t understand money. They didn’t comprehend you had bills, and that bills needed to be paid. Or when you gave them an invoice, it wasn’t just a suggestion or some pretty piece of paper with too many numbers and no plot.

I didn’t see any heraldry on the woman.

All the nobles had heraldry. That’s what classified them as nobles. Of course, “noble” wasn’t an official designation since Belvaille was a democracy. Heraldry indicated your family. Very few people could afford to live on Belvaille without being in a wealthy family or in the employment of one. Heraldry was simply a sign of our class system.

Some men wore their sigils plastered across their chests. Others would have a flunky walk behind them carrying it on a flag. At the very least it would be on rings or bracelets or medallions. Even household servants wore them.

Women tended to use them less since they could be a bit clunky.

Counterfeiting heraldry was a major crime. I couldn’t dream of affording my own seal. Not even if I sold all my possessions ten times over. And you had to pay every year on the nose to maintain it in the registry.

“Hello?” the woman called, carrying herself with that uptight air of superiority that only a noble could manage. “The door was open.”

I put my legs down and hopped up, pulling on some shoes as quick as I could.

“Sorry, my secretary is out running errands,” I said, neglecting to mention that I could only afford to keep my secretary part time. So “errands” likely meant searching for a better employer.

“You only have one?” the woman asked, confused.

Nobles were big on servants. Huge. Even I employed a butler and a maid. I had to or nobles wouldn’t take me seriously. That’s also why I had an office and why I had to wear fancy clothes that were uncomfortable.

I walked closer to the woman and got to see her features better.

She was both attractive and young. She had black hair with straight bangs that came to the very tops of her eyes. She had sharp cheekbones and a tiny chin which made her whole face look like it was smiling even though her lips were level. Her eyes were a pale blue and if they had been jewels, they would have been expensive. Her skin was almost porcelain smooth. There was a lot of good cosmetic surgery around, but I could still spot the phonies. She was for real. Her fur coat had a fuzzy half-hood that covered the top of her head and framed her face, so it was tough to make out much more detail.

“Yes, just one secretary. I like to keep things personal,” I said. “I work with sensitive information and don’t want to have too many employees hanging around.”

She nodded politely. Nobles were, if nothing else, polite. On my last job, when that father had paid me to rough up his daughter’s boyfriend, he gave me an inlaid apology note to send along.

“What can I help you with?” I asked.

I walked over to close the front door. As I neared it, I saw a half-dozen servants standing in my stairwell below. They were waiting patiently for their mistress to be done with me.

“I would like you to help me get a divorce,” she said.

Ah, relationship stuff. Easy money. I practically rubbed my hands together thinking about being able to pay my delinquent oxygen bill.

“Okay,” I said. “From whom?”

“Ray’Ziel,” she said simply.

I stood there staring at her to see if she was going to add anything. Like, “Haha, wouldn’t that be something to make you crap your pants?” Those words weren’t forthcoming, unfortunately.

“The City Councilman?” I asked.

“Yes. He is my husband,” she answered.

“Hmm,” I said, just to make noise.

This lady, if she sold her coat, her damn coat , could hire enough people to kill me, invent a device to bring me back to life, then kill me again. Her husband was one of the six most powerful people on Belvaille. He had whole solar systems at his disposal.

I could barely afford food.

“I just realized I have a lot of work right now,” I said, looking back at my desk as if some work would suddenly jump up waving its arms and give me undisputed proof.