Metal Boxes - At the Edge Read online

  Metal Boxes - At the Edge

  Alan Black

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Metal Boxes - At the Edge

  Published by arrangement with the author.

  Copyright @ 2016 by Alan Black

  Cover Layout and Design: The Cover Collection at

  http://www.thecovercollection.com/

  Cover Art by Willard (Bill Wright)

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or digital form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Copyright registration: 1-3862055351

  ISBN-13: 978-1535576376

  ISBN-10: 1535576375

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Legalese

  TOC

  Synopsis of Metal Boxes so far…

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Dedication and Acknowledgement

  Author Bio

  Other Books

  Praise for other books

  A brief synopsis of earlier books.

  Metal Boxes

  Stone’s first assignment as a newly minted midshipman is on a massive warehouse ship supplying the Empire’s fleet with everything from bullets, to bandages, to food during the Hyrocanian War. He becomes friends with the officers of the marine contingent: Numos, Hammermill, Heller, and Vedrian. Full Commander Danielle Elizabeth Wright, the officer in charge of the vast ship’s farms, mentors him as he struggles with United Empire Navy (UEN) life, his duties, and his budding relationship to 1LT Allie Vedrian.

  Stone uncovers a ring of thieves lining their pockets at the expense of the military and the emperor. Before he can report the theft, he and CDR Wright are kidnapped, thrown into an escape pod, and jettisoned into hyperspace—a certain death sentence.

  Stone reconfigures the pod engines and makes a safe landing on an unknown hostile planet. Stone and Wright struggle to survive the harsh environment while making repairs to the pod to return to human space. Stone happens to be present at the birth of native creatures that look like a cross between a dragon and a scorpion. Two babies imprint on him after their mortally injured mother dies. He calls them drascos and gives each of them a name. Wright determines their relative location in space and studies the flora and fauna of the previously undiscovered planet. Stone names the planet Allie’s World after his girlfriend.

  Rather than die as their would-be killers planned, they manage to get the pod’s engines repaired and refueled. Taking the baby drascos with them, Stone and Wright return to human space where they proceed to the local Empire Military Investigative Service (EMIS) office to report their status among the living. They soon find themselves pressed into helping an EMIS agent take control of the warehouse ship to investigate the attempted murders and possible theft. When the ship’s admiral is found complicit, the EMIS agent places Stone in command of the ship with orders to plot a course for the nearest space station. The ship is on course to a combat zone to resupply the fleet fighting a desperate battle against the Hyrocanians. Stone struggles with the orders he has been given and must determine to do what is right for the UEN.

  Stone risks his life and the lives of his drascos to save the fleet. His actions damage the fleet warehouse ship beyond repair. Expecting to die at the hands of humanity’s enemy, he is rescued by his girlfriend, 1LT Vedrian. His unusual problem-solving solutions save the remnant of the Empire’s heavily battered fleet. The Hyrocanian fleet is soundly defeated and Stone is declared a hero.

  Metal Boxes - Trapped Outside

  Ensign Stone feels trapped on Lazzaroni Base while the legal issues surrounding his escape from the Hyrocanians and rescue of the Empire’s fleet whirl around him for months on end. Meanwhile, his marine friends are transferred to systems unknown, taking Allie with them.

  The medical corps continues probing, prodding, and poking him. They discover that his close association with alien drascos is affecting his DNA and they can’t explain the changes in his body, but as of yet, none appear dangerous. The drascos are classified as pets although their level of intelligence has been recognized by many.

  In a fit of the emperor’s humor, his next assignment returns him and his drascos to Allie’s World as the appointed planetary governor and military commander of a mismatched group of military, medical, and civilian personnel including his marine friends and girlfriend, Allie.

  Before the military can adequately secure their small headquarters area, the compound is heavily bombed. The battered survivors desperately struggle to vacate the compound ahead of a Hyrocanian ground assault. While running and hiding from the Hyrocanians, the small band of survivors finds the local fauna as dangerous as the aliens hunting them.

  A massive, rampaging male drasco attacks their ragged camp. Barely able to kill the beast while attempting to save Allie, Stone is infected with drasco bodily fluids, resulting in a massive growth spurt, thickening of his skin, and a heightening of his senses, including the ability to smell emotions.

  The desperate attack on the Hyrocanian base camp turns to victory as Stone manages to commandeer an alien shuttle. The humans know little about Hyrocanian physiology, language, society, culture, or even why they started the war. During the battle for Allie’s World, they learn the Hyrocanians prefer eating living flesh. Stone rescues a group of creatures from the Hyrocanians who were attempting to catch and eat them, oblivious to the fighting surrounding them. The intelligent, diminutive creatures resemble Old Earth piglets.

  Bolstered by civilians, drascos, and a cluster of pig
lets, the military personnel succeed in a do-or-die attack to capture the alien spaceship orbiting Allie’s World.

  Metal Boxes - Rusty Hinges

  Ensign Stone is finally relieved of his duties as governor of Allie’s World and Captain Butcher offers him the chance to volunteer for a mission aboard the Rusty Hinges. Not knowing what the mission is, he gladly takes the assignment when he learns he can take his drascos with him.

  Jay and Peebee each have three daughters and eight drascos take up a lot of room. Following him on his Rusty Hinges assignment are Shorty and Sissy along with a huge contingent of their piglet friends and relatives.

  The Rusty Hinges mission is to enter the navigation point the Hyrocanians came through to attack Allie’s World. Disguised as a Hyrocanian ship, the UEN orders Rusty Hinges to sneak in behind enemy lines, gather information on the enemy, and cause damage and destruction to their war effort.

  At their first jump out of hyperspace, Rusty Hinges is thrown back into hyperspace by an unknown species using unknown technology. They exit into an uncharted part of the galaxy. Meeting the new species, they quickly become allies.

  Rusty Hinges jumps through a navigation point to infiltrate Hyrocanian space. Finding themselves surrounded by the enemy, the scientists aboard Rusty Hinges become computer hackers, gathering information on humanity’s enemies.

  The mission is not without its troubles as human incompetence or deliberate sabotage by the third watch commander Missimaya endangers their mission and their lives. Missimaya threatens to ruin Stone’s life and career for his part in getting him demoted from third watch to officer in charge of human waste.

  As their mission ends, Captain Butcher decides to leave the Hyrocanian system with a bang, trying to put a dent in the enemy’s war effort. Stone volunteers to lead a ground-based attack on a planetary missile base while Allie, Numos, and Hammer lead a space-based attack on an orbiting weapons platform.

  Stone’s team is a mixture of his eight drascos and a large contingent of armored piglets led by the piglet, Shorty. Succeeding in destroying the base, Stone and his troops escape the planet to rendezvous with the Rusty Hinges. Butcher decides to fight against the remaining Hyrocanian ships.

  Barely escaping through a navigation point, Rusty Hinges returns to human space as heroes.

  Chapter One

  Stone was struggling to read the United Empire Navy manual on his dataport. The massive file was the most boring, repetitious piece of required reading he had ever been given. His eyes sagged, threatening to rebel. A nap was only moments away. He shook his head, trying to wake up, mumbling to himself, “Maybe this isn’t the best place to read something like this.”

  Seated on a comfortable chaise lounge on his cabana’s veranda, a cold drink glistened on the wicker table next to him, the ice tinkling softly as it melted and shifted position in the glass. Overhead fans had long since lost the war against the artificial warm zephyr blowing across Rusty Hinges’s expansive deck sixteen gardens. His piglet-designed housing looked like a beach house set in a tropical forest.

  The trip back from the piglet’s homeworld and the recent action against the Hyrocanians were only a few weeks old. Many of the military personnel were on leave and the Rusty Hinges retrofit was barely underway at Lazzaroni Base. The marines, First Lieutenant Allie Vedrian, his fiancée, and his friends Major Numos and First Lieutenant Hammermill were still being debriefed at the new marine barracks on Brickman’s Station. They would soon follow him to Lazzaroni.

  A knock at the bungalow door woke Stone from daydreams of vacationing with Allie. They were planning a furlough together.

  Starting to turn to the door, he hesitated. Through the open veranda doors, he spotted a squad of UEN combat suits in camouflaged mode circling between his bungalow and a row of fruit trees out back. His mixture of drasco DNA and malfunctioning military nanites enabled him to see the suits as wiggly dark outlines against the tropical background.

  “I wonder what idiot is running combat training scenarios in the hydroponics area.” The thought tickled the back of his mind. While Rusty Hinges was tied up at Lazzaroni’s dockyards for the retrofit, his duties as consultant to the captain took less time than he spent eating breakfast. His involvement in deciding who could do what aboard the ship was minimal.

  Jay and Peebee rolled to their feet in alarm. The scents of lemon and lime wafted in on the artificial breeze. Lemon indicated a touch of concern and the strong lime fragrance was evidence of caution. Stone was not alarmed as a thick edge of spearmint wrapped the caution and concern in a blanket of honesty.

  Peebee raised herself up to her full height, stretching her neck to scan the UEN squad. She quietly wonked, snuffled to clear her nostrils, took a deep breath, and roared a warning as a pair of combat suits edged too close to the patio. The suits froze in place, then backed away a few steps.

  Jay hunkered low to the floor, her tail scorpioning over her head. The bone spike pointed at the door, holding steady, prepared to strike. She wonked.

  “Easy, girls,” Stone said. “Security would have stopped any real danger before it exited a shuttle on the hangar deck.”

  Ignoring the text-to-speech dataport strapped to her wrist, Jay hissed, “Be careful, Mama. It smells like something it’s not.”

  Stone pushed her tail out of the way and opened the door. A tall lieutenant junior grade UEN officer stood at parade rest before the hatchway. Two chief petty officers standing at attention flanked him, both wore heavy side arms. All three were in full dress uniform. Weapons were normally not something to worry about. What concerned him were the combat suits circling his bungalow!

  Jay bolted past him before he could react. Leaping over the UEN personnel, she streaked toward the line of combat-suited warriors. Wonking in anger, she thrust between two of them, sending them flying in different directions. Alarmed at the drasco’s sudden attack, Stone started to shout a recall. He was interrupted by Peebee’s bellow as she vaulted off the back patio.

  Spinning quickly, he saw Peebee grab a combat suit and throw him into another. The toss was not hard enough to do serious damage to either person. The first suit bounced off the second and ricocheted into a third, knocking all three to the deck.

  Half a dozen piglets in combat suits barreled into the UEN spacers, startling Stone. He had not realized the piglets stored their suits close to his quarters or that they could get into them so quickly. They must have been warned that something was up even before the lieutenant knocked on his door.

  A pair of piglets dropped a spacer to the deck using the old crouch behind the knees and push from the front trick. The man fell to the deck with a thump. Both piglets were on him before he could recover. Wrapping the spacer in coiled steel cables, the piglets trussed him up like a calf for branding. Leaving him to struggle in vain against his restraints, they raced to help another piglet fighting a spacer alone.

  The lone piglet had dropped from a tree, landing on top of the spacer. The spacer tried to shake the piglet off by spinning and twisting a dozen different ways but to no avail. The spacer went down when the two extra piglets slammed into his legs.

  Stone heard the clack and whine of a weapon charging. “Hold your fire. Hold your fire. Hold your fire,” he shouted.

  The lieutenant raised his arm with a closed fist.

  Jay spun, sending a spacer flying away from the piglet he was holding at gunpoint to the ground with a flick of her tail. The spacer’s weapon flew out of his hands, causing an errant shot to spang off the ceiling with a whine.

  Stone shouted again, “Cease hostilities. Stop it!”

  A pair of piglets, ducking the swinging fists of a spacer, each grabbed an ankle and yanked. The spacer thumped to the deck. The piglets tried to wrap the spacer up in cable, but he swung an armored foot, knocking one piglet backward a dozen feet before slamming into the thick trunk of a shade tree. Before the spacer could kick the other piglet, Jay leaped between them placing a heavy foot in the center of the spacer’s chest.


  Stone could see that Jay was pressing hard, but not hard enough to damage the combat armor. A pair of spacers raced to aid their trapped compatriot, but Jay flicked her tail, sending both suits flying. They would be rattled and bruised, but not seriously damaged.

  Peebee’s bellow made Stone spin around. She was holding two spacers to the deck with her feet while pressing a third against the side of the bungalow with the point of her tail.

  Stone bellowed. “Stand down now. Freeze, dammit.”

  Everyone froze.

  Stone snapped to attention. Despite the fact he was wearing gym shorts and a garish floral shirt, he rendered a salute to the lieutenant. The return salute was training-manual perfect.

  “At ease, Ensign Stone.” His escorts snapped to an at ease position a microsecond after Stone shifted.

  “Thank you, sir.” Stone smelled no hint of duplicity. The man looked bored and the petty officers looked amused by the activity around them. It was evident by the noise that the drascos and piglets were having their way with the combat suited spacers.

  Stone used his calmest voice, “Jay and Peebee, come here now.”

  Jay said, “Yes, Mama.”

  Peebee responded through her TTS dataport, “But, they were ready to attack you.”

  Stone said, “Ready is one thing girls, actually attacking, is altogether different.”

  Jay said, “They were actually going to shoot the piglets.”

  Stone looked at the lieutenant. “Sir, were your men going to use weapons?”

  The lieutenant nodded, “Certainly.”

  A piglet marched up to Stone and flipped up its faceplate. Looking eye-to-eye at a piglet was a bit disconcerting. They were normally only half his size, but in a combat armor suit, they stood almost six feet tall.

  Stone recognized the piglet, more from the dings and scratches in his suit, than his face. He still had trouble identifying individual piglets. “Frank, what’s going on?”

  Frank said, “Human or not, these spacers were evidencing hostility toward you. That can’t be tolerated, Boss.” His speech was a bit halted as he typed into the TTS dataport built into his suit.