Metal Boxes - At the Edge Page 14

  The UEN had disabled the military nanites in Dollish’s system when he left the service. Stone Freight Company often gave its key employees the best civilian nanites that money could buy. There was some intense debate on whether the company or the UEN provided the better product. Dollish’s bloody nose had stopped leaking and the split lip was drying up as well. Stone would have to see about getting Hector some additional martial arts training and a few rounds of nanites.

  He stopped. It had been months since he left the UEN, discharged and disgraced. They had not taken him to BuPers for out-processing: no forms signed, no records review, not even a final update to his file. There was no trip to medical to attempt to disable his military grade nanites, not that it would have worked. His nanite system was so fouled up that trying to shut them down might make them more resistant, but standing regulations required the removal of all military grade nanites upon separation from the UEN. He had just been ushered out the back door and it had not occurred to him until now that there were more people involved in his court-martial and discharge than just the emperor and his grandfather.

  He looked at his wrist. The slight smell of sandalwood had returned. The pinhole caused by the ambassador’s needle was gone.

  Allie grabbed his hand, running her fingers over his wrist. “What the hell was that?”

  Before he could answer, an alarm rang through the shuttle cabin. The pilot’s voice came over the comm unit, calm and cold. “All dead stop, Boss. Marvin, too. Scanners are detecting foreign tech or biologicals aboard.”

  Allie said, “Exact location, pilot?”

  “It’s moving, Vedrian. Unable to stabilize the position. We are stuck here until we locate the intrusion. The captain’s orders are we come home clean or we don’t come back.”

  Allie shouted, “Everybody freeze. Quit moving around. Tuttle, grab some bodies and get some handheld scanners from the supply bins. We have bugs on board and I want them all found.”

  Dollish waved down the deckhands. “I got this, gentlemen.” He took a scanner from Tuttle, and they began crisscrossing the deck, checking every little beep emitted by the scanners.

  Tuttle’s machine beeped wildly as she passed Stone. She did a double take and scanned him carefully. Dollish joined her as they examined him carefully. Grabbing a small glass vacuum tube, she ran it along his arm and shoulder until their scanners said he was clean.

  Dollish continued sweeping his scanner around the room like he was wielding some magical weapon. The deckhands ignored him. The civilians cringed away from him.

  Tuttle grunted in surprise as she held the glass tube up to the light. She shook the tube and looked again, seeing nothing. “Minuscule bio-tech, Boss. Not nanite size, but smaller than human eyes can see.” She grinned at Stone. “I mean smaller than normal human eyes, Boss—not you and Vedrian’s bio-ocular device.”

  Allie glared into the glass tube. “Even cranked down to its maximum setting, I can’t see anything in here but a few specs of dirt.”

  Dollish said, “I got a bunch more readings on this woman.”

  Stone shook his head. “Agnes, would you stand up please?”

  Agnes sputtered, “I didn’t do anything. Honest.”

  Stone ignored her protestations. She was being honest. The spearmint scent of honesty was mixed with a lemony scent of concern. He could not detect any hostility coming from her toward anyone. He left her to Tuttle and Dollish’s ministrations. Smiling at Allie, he raised his hand and wiggled his fingers. She was still holding his hand.

  Unnecessarily, he said, “Someone is using tiny tech on Holliman’s Rift. Agnes infected me with it first, whether she knew she was or not. Her touch transferred the tech. Then the ambassador tried to inject me. I can only assume it was the same tech.”

  Allie nodded, “It looks like the same small dust particles that were on your wrist. I can’t see it clearly, but what I saw was odd. What was that all about anyway? It looked to me like this tiny tech attempted to invade your body through the needle hole. Their attack failed, and they tried to retreat. Even their retreat failed.”

  Stone nodded. “Saw that, did you? I think this is a new development. As I was getting arrested back on Lazzaroni, the hand restraints gave me a small cut.” He pointed at the place on the back of his wrist, but there was no sign of a scar. “The restraints were made of nanocarbon. As near as I can figure, my nanites managed to reach through the cut in my skin to subvert the nanocarbon nanites in the restraints, absorbing them—maybe feeding on them, I don’t know. Same thing happened here…I think?”

  Allie gave him a peculiar glare. “Your nanites are feeding on other tech?”

  Stone shrugged. “I don’t know. I ran some tests in the med bay once I came aboard the Pebble, but the machine couldn’t give me an answer.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Numos greeted the shuttles as they landed in the Platinum Pebble’s hangar deck. He looked pleased, grinning uncharacteristically. “I missed a real riot. You folks stirred up quite a ruckus on Holliman’s Rift.”

  Stone sputtered, “No, sir. We didn’t start it—”

  Numos actually laughed, “Oh, yes you did. You started it simply by being here—and going there.”

  Stone nodded. “I suppose I do have that effect on situations, Dash.”

  Numos pointed a finger at Bethy’s entourage departing the Marvin. He switched the pointed finger to make a gun-like gesture and cocked his thumb back, aiming at Bethy. “Oh, Signore Stone, we can’t discount your cousin’s efforts today. Did you know half of the people who watch her vidcasts do so because they can’t stand her?”

  Stone smiled back at Numos and said, “You know, that explains a lot about her popularity.”

  Numos slapped Vedrian gently on the back of her head. “You best get off the hangar deck, Allie before little Miss Boss-lady recognizes you. Besides, your wig is slipping.” He turned to Stone and stopped his hand inches from the back of Stone’s head. “I don’t suppose popping the boss in the back of the head will win me any year-end bonus points will it?”

  “What’d I do?”

  “Civilians, Signore Stone. You kidnapped civilians?”

  “Kidnap? We didn’t kidnap anyone. They…I think…well, I guess they got on the shuttle to get out of the way of the rioting.”

  “Well, get Dollish to make them comfortable until we can get them back down to the planet. News reports are that you swept up hostages. We deny that, of course, but you know the media; he who shouts the loudest and the most must be telling the truth.”

  Stone spotted Dollish explaining something to Hector. He shouted, “Tim.” He pointed a finger at the civilians and swirled his finger in the air. Dollish grabbed Hector by the arm and the young men began to rounding up the Holliman’s Rift civilians. Once Dollish started taking names and checking identification, Stone turned back to Numos.

  Numos nodded in satisfaction. “He’s a good man. Oh, Emmons is looking for you. She is fascinated—her word—just fascinated at how quickly that quiet crowd turned violent.” He made the word fascinated sound girly and giggly, definitely not the scientist-speak usually associated with Dr. Kat Emmons. “Speaking of violent, do you still have that needle the ambassador tried to jab you with?”

  “You know about that?”

  Numos answered, “Of course. I was watching over your shoulder. Everyone on our team had their P.A.s running. Your deckhands weren’t just lounging in the sun. They were getting vids of every angle they could get. We need to get that needle to the medical bay and run forensics on it.”

  Stone shouted, “Tuttle.” He held out the needle and waited while she crossed the three steps to him. Since she had been assigned to protect him back when they were trapped outside on Allie’s World, she was never more than a few steps away. “Take this needle and that micro tech to the med lab and get someone to start running some tests on it.”

  “Aye, aye, Boss.”

  Stone turned back to Numos to ask, “So what—”


  He was interrupted by a shout. Spinning around he saw Hector bellowing something unintelligible and racing across the hangar bay. He tackled Skeeter at a full run, driving the young man headfirst into Marvin’s ramp. Hector hit Skeeter three times before a couple of deckhands managed to pull him off.

  One of the deckhands held Hector’s head in an arm lock and marched him off the hangar deck, speaking softly in his ear the whole time. The other deckhand helped Skeeter to his feet, dusted him off, and checked him for a head wound. As soon as Skeeter nodded he was okay, the deckhand popped him hard in the mouth and walked away leaving him unconscious on the ramp.”

  Numos said, “You better find out what that was all about, Signore Stone.”

  “Me? It’s your deckhand.”

  Numos smiled, “No, Signore Stone. That was one of Vedrian’s deckhands, not mine. And that fat boy is one of your cousin’s people. Plus, and I shouldn’t have to keep telling you this, dammit, boy, it’s your ship.”

  “Oh no, Captain,” Stone emphasized the rank. “This is Grandpa’s ship and you work for him, right? Besides, I thought you were watching everything going on?”

  Numos laughed, “Okay, Boss. That’s a valid argument, but you do represent your grandfather. You do know that I can’t watch everything at once, right? I’m not the Prophet, you know. I wasn’t watching Bethy and her people. I was looking at you and the crowd.”

  “Speaking of the crowd, what happened down there? What set the crowd off like that?”

  Numos looked thoughtful. “I have a tendency to lean toward a new Emmons’s theory. The Prophet rules by fear and greed. Bad things happen to you if you don’t follow him. If you do follow him, you may become wealthy in this life and in the next—wealth beyond your wildest dreams. Hence, the plethora of lotteries we see advertised on all of their vidcasts. You and Bethy played right into that. You were his example of wealth in this lifetime, not just the next. He was telling his people to look at you and see how rich they could be if they listened to him. You were his vision of heaven before death. Then you didn’t want to show them the view they’d been promised. It was almost like you stole heaven from them.”

  “What was all the shouting about slackers and idlers?”

  “People who don’t work hard at becoming rich are looked down on here. Not just work hard to supply the needs of your family, but work to become wealthy beyond measure.”

  “That sounds crazy. I think it was because everyone was under an open sky in the hot sun without a decent ceiling overhead. Bad things happen when I go outside.”

  Numos laughed, “Now who’s talking crazy? Whatever the reason, the riot couldn’t have been better timed.”

  “Better? Captain Numos, people, got hurt down there! We barely got all of our people back on board.”

  Numos raised an eyebrow. “All our people? Are you sure everyone who went down, came back?”

  “What? Of cour—what do you mean?”

  Numos smiled, “It seems we have an errant communications tech who used that little spaceport dustup to slip away undetected, taking a couple of spare deckhands with her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Stone sat behind an enormous desk in the ship owner’s massive office. He had seen the room when he had first come aboard the Platinum Pebble but declared it gaudy and so overdone it was embarrassing. Styluses, laser pointers, chrome knick-knacks, crystal water pitcher with handcrafted goblets, and enough useless geegaws to keep a squadron of dust bunnies hidden for months, covered the desktop.

  Souvenirs of Stone’s navy career covered one whole bulkhead, items he thought were long lost. A Hyrocanian skull was the center piece. He had mixed feelings about keeping a body part from an intelligent species nailed to a wall, but this particular creature had tried to kill and eat him, or eat and then kill him, as Hyrocanians were known to do. It did set the tone for anyone entering the room expecting to meet with the usual office weenie. Scattered around the skull on the wall were pieces of ships, shrapnel, plaques, awards, decorations, a hunk of metal chewed by acid, an unexploded mine sitting on a shelf, and an obsolete, but apparently functional TDO-960A slug thrower rifle.

  Real artwork was screwed into the bulkheads, not video displays, but actual canvas and oil paintings. Most surprising among the artwork was a triplet of oils: portraits of Jay and Peebee in their marine armor bracketed the original painting of Barb Tuttle, the same one painted on the side of the ship. He smiled at the placement of three pictures. Tuttle’s portrait hung behind him, just over his head. Anyone standing facing his desk would have to stare directly at Tuttle’s half-naked body. Looking to the left or the right would offer a view of a stern and angry looking drasco.

  Turning away from the portraits of Jay and Peebee would not help, because there were two large patches of grass in the office. Jay lay stretched out on one and Peebee sprawled on the other.

  Stone was reviewing a medical report, ignoring the people seated waiting for him. The machines in medical did not know what to do with the bio-tech that Holliman’s Rift officials had tried to use to infect him. The machines were sure it was not mechanical tech, though their database was unable to determine if it was bio-manufactured or naturally occurring. The small particles were similar to common virions, measuring almost two hundred nanometers in size. They were living genetic virus particles that can insert themselves into a host, literally taking over the host’s functions. Most virion cells produce more viral cells when attached to a host, but these virions did not appear to replicate and they damaged their host beyond repair. These particular virions seemed to be programmed to Stone and were stimulated when they came into close proximity to him.

  He wondered how the virion’s programmers managed to get samples of his DNA and how someone could program a living virus. The medical devices on the Platinum Pebble had his DNA on file as a simple matter of medical expediency, but specific, personal DNA sequences were in secure databases.

  From almost every UEN commander who had called him into their office, Stone had learned the technique of ignoring someone by reading a report. This time he was not using the technique to frustrate a visitor, he really was interested in learning more about the virions. Someone was using biological nanotech to attack him.

  Sitting across the desk from him, Bethy harrumphed loudly to catch his attention, evidently tired of being ignored. She squirmed at the far side of the desk between Hector and Skeeter looking put out at having to stare at Tuttle’s picture instead of sitting next to her cousin on the other side of the desk. She initially tried to, but the thick overstuffed chairs were too heavy to drag around the office. The two young men looked so nervous they barely glanced at the pictures.

  Stone frowned, imitating the face of his first UEN supervisor, Lieutenant Vaarhoo. “Gentlemen, I have asked you here—”

  Bethy interrupted, “Can’t this wait, Trey? We do have a party to attend at the Prophet’s residence. The enclave thing that…that…that woman spoke about.”

  “That woman?” Stone asked.

  “You know, Agnes somebody. The one who started the riot that almost got us all killed.”

  “Yes, I remember the enclave and we’re still going, but—”

  “But nothing. Blackmon Perry Stone, you listen to me. We’ve been invited to the mansion of the ruler of a whole planet for the biggest bash they only have every couple of years. That riot caused me to miss my shopping spree this afternoon, but I still have tons of things to do to get ready for this festival. Refereeing two squabbling children is not helping.”

  Stone decided not to mention that both of the squabbling children were older than she was. “Beffie-pie, squabbling on a spaceship can have serious effects on a ship’s efficiency. Unless it’s stopped, it can escalate and cause rifts in the crew. These two men are your employees, you brought them aboard, so I require your presence at this hearing,” He pointed at his P.A. that was recording the proceedings. “Believe me, this hearing is formal.”

  Bethy waved
a dismissive hand. “Then, I fire them both. They don’t work for me. Now they’re your problem.” She got up and stomped across the office, only slowing when she had to walk between Jay and Peebee’s grass pads. She turned at the hatch. “I will expect you to be prompt on the hangar deck to escort me to the Prophet’s grand palace.”

  Stone shook his head. “I have business at the spaceport before the enclave. I’ll already be ground side. I’ll meet your shuttle when you come down to the planet.”

  In a huff, Bethy stomped out of the room. Knowing Bethy had less information about the Prophet than he did, he wondered how she went from the Prophet’s residence, to a mansion, and finally to a grand palace in the span of a few sentences. He was sure the place would be magnificently designed and appointed, but that did not mean it was a palace.

  He looked at the two men. “You have both been more problem than you’re worth from the first time I met you until now.”

  Skeeter whined, “He hit me.”

  Hector nodded his head, “I did, sir. I’ll say my sorries, not to him, but to you. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

  Stone said, “Why did you hit him?”

  Skeeter asked, “Why do it matter why he done hit me?”

  Stone answered, “It probably doesn’t matter to you since you’re the one who was hit, but it matters to me, and the punishment I mete out will be affected by his intentions and motivations.”

  Hector said, “My intention was to knock him down and keep on hittin’ him ‘til he couldn’t get up no more.”

  Stone smiled, realizing that a good chewing out session was a lot more fun on the chewer side of the desk than the chewee. “Why?”

  Hector said, “Because, he tripped me and run away on Holliman’s Rift.”