Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Fifty-Nine - The Full Stop Does Not Stop

Chapter Fifty-Nine - The Full Stop Does Not Stop

"While we try very hard to keep inflation at a steady rate--because such a steady rate allows for steady, controllable growth across all sectors--we firmly believe that the currency inflationary rates for foodstuffs might be too elevated.

500% yearly increases would mean a very real risk of starvation amongst the workforce, a workforce that we've yet to automate. Not to mention, this same workforce makes up a vast majority of our customer base."

--Letter from the Union of Corporate Interests of NA, 2042

***

"Here goes nothing," I said as I gently tapped the fire button. My hair stood on end, the room trembled slightly, and the shell was off.

At the moment, it was somewhere in the mid-afternoon, and I couldn't help but feel like that was subtly wrong.

We had just fired what might be the final blow. It was meant to be momentous, something big and important, a moment that would go down in the history books... and all I could think about was how I was a little hungry.

"Could really go for a snack right about now," I said.

"Ouien," the kid said. "J'ai un, uh... catalogue for poutine."

"Wait, just poutine, or is it like, a food catalogue?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Just that. It was cheaper."

Huh. I knew that catalogues were cheaper the more narrow their scope, but I'd never thought to apply that to food, specifically. "Alright. Is it good, at least?"

"Eh," he made a so-so gesture. "La petit place au coin d'ma rue en fait une bonne aussi."

I squinted and translated that one all on my own. The local place made a good one too. "Well, I'd give it a try, I guess."

"Cool! Tiens," he said, and then just like that, a styrofoam bowl with a little plastic cover appeared in his hand. It was warm, and instantly filled the room with a greasy, fatty smell. I took it from him and peeled off the cover revealing... cheese curds, fries, and lots of brownish sauce.

Somehow this felt like a step down from the usual Protector food I ordered.

Gros Baton handed me a plastic fork, and I shrugged before digging in. It tasted as healthy as it looked. Salty and greasy. The cheese squeaked and the fries crunched. It was pretty good, to be honest, but I just knew this was going straight to the love handles.

We watched the progress of the Full Stop on the main monitor while we ate. The little shell was racing ahead right towards Phobos. A smaller status screen showed the Tesla Collider warming up for its next big shot, and the Keiretsu had a small army of drones on a collision course with Phobos as well, all timed to arrive about two minutes after the Collider did its thing.

"Oh, it's gonna impact," I said as I pointed to the screen with my fork.

"Mhm," Gros Baton agreed before wiping some gravy from his chin. "Fuck 'em up, tabarnak!"

"Yeah! Tabarnak all the way!" I cheered. I had to hand it to the kid, he'd make for a good drinking buddy. Maybe if I was into sports or something I'd invite him over to watch the game and he'd show up with booze and snacks.

The Full Stop shell... stopped about a minute later. It went from moving at fuck-you-fast speeds to being completely still in a blip. Though... I wasn't so sure. Things were still moving around it. It just looked like it had suddenly changed directions?

"What's it doing?" I asked.

It has stopped. The motion you see now is the relative motion of the sensor equipment and Phobos, but the shell itself is locked in place.

"Locked in place relative to where?" I asked.

Don't you worry about that.

I felt like it was probably something I should worry about when Myalis said something like that, but I wasn't going to have time for the whole explanation when Phobos and the shell were just about to collide.

I leaned forwards and switched the main monitor to a camera view from one of the spy drones keeping pace with Phobos.

The Full Stop was too small to be visible at the distances we were looking at. Phobos, on the other hand, was a zoomed-in mass of rock covered in a lot more craters than it had had a few days ago. Huge sections of its surface were blackened by soot and char, and there were cracked canyons running across it like the shell of a dropped egg.

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A few mountains had been flattened, and chunks of the moon were just outright missing now.

And then Phobos ran into the Full Stop.

It struck the moon dead centre. Or maybe the moon struck it? In any case, there was an immediate reaction. A cratering ripple that ran across the moon's surface like a splash in a still puddle. Phobos didn't slow down against the backdrop of stars, exactly, but it looked like the entire moon had flinched.

And then it was through, and a scattering of rock and debris came pouring out of the back of the moon like guts out of some schmuck that got blasted by a shotgun.

"Nice," I said. The integrity counter ticked up from nine percent to twelve. That was a pretty big jump, all things considered.

And then the Tesla Collider came online once more.

Arcs of electricity the size of skyscrapers raced across the moon's surface, illuminating its dark side in bright blues and pure whites. Nothing happened, and I was worried when the integrity counter didn't move. Was it a dud?

Then the moon heaved. It was like Phobos had just taken a deep breath

Chunks that had to be the size of islands slowly moved up and away. The cracks running across the moon's surface widened. I was expecting Phobos to simply explode apart, but it wasn't quite so violent. At least, not from the very long-ranged view we had.

Instead, Phobos broke apart like a diagram of one of those cool blueprint things where every part was shown individually.

"Whoa," I said as the moon continued to expand outwards. It was twice as big as it had been at the start now, parts still connected by long twisting trails of lightning.

The Tesla Collider stopped, and the steady, neat separation of the moon gave up.

Chunks collided into each other, others went tumbling out into empty space. The moon scattered.

I might have called it a total destruction, except that Phobos was alive, and it wasn't happy to be split apart like it had been. Long tendrils reached out, crashed into the bigger parts of the moon, and tethered them in place. It looked like the middle of the moon was a many-tentacled sea-urchin desperate to keep itself together.

That thing, to scale, had to be bigger than New Montreal. I wasn't sure if it was a single model or thousands of them working together, and I was even less sure if the difference mattered at all.

The Keiretsu arrived a minute later. A swarm of drones, larger than any of those they'd sent before. They burned hard in the empty void. A thousand candle flames visible in the dark. Retrothrusters? I wasn't sure and didn't know enough to guess beyond that.

Whatever rockets they used were jettisoned to crash into the semi-disassembled Phobos. Then the drones themselves moved in. It looked like they weren't doing much at first, except that there were occasional explosions of rock and debris across the inside of Phobos' expanded shell.

Gros Baton did something, I think turning on some sort of thermal vision, and then the lasers those drones were firing became visible. Each was like an angry disco ball, sweeping lines of hot fire through the antithesis meat.

Smaller models were launched by the thousands, then by the tens of thousands. They scattered, some flinging themselves across space, others had their own ways of moving through space.

Drones started to die, but never without exploding violently on death.

I glanced over to the integrity ticker. Thirty four percent. Had we really just taken off a third of Phobos' mass just like that?

"Look," Gros Baton said.

I turned my attention back to the screen, poutine entirely forgotten as a swarm was unleashed.

There had to be millions of them. Tiny black specs that shot out of Phobos, opened large wings, then farted their way forwards even as they twisted and flapped into a swarm that expanded outwards ahead of the moon.

It looked like Phobos was tired of waiting. It was sending its own vanguard our way.

"I'm betting that's not a good thing," I said.

"No shit," Gros Baton said. "My AI says we have a day."

"Great," I said. "Think they'll know where we are, specifically, or do you think they'll just land wherever the fuck they want?"

"Yeah, non, I'm not gambling on that one."

"Yeah, I figured," I said.

Well, it was time to call up the others and let them know that shit was being flung at the fan again.

***

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