Metal Boxes - At the Edge Read online

  Jay slammed the second cage door shut. Stone ducked to clear the hatch as Peebee fairly flew through the opening over his head. Hitting the hatch button, Stone slammed it shut, shouting, “Pilot, clear air. Get us up into space.”

  Stone turned to look at patient zero. He expected the Prophet to protest. The man was smiling and waving like this was all a part of his plan.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Stone said, “Pilot, halt in clear space until we—”

  Allie interrupted, “Are you trying to teach me my job, Stone?”

  “Allie? What are you—”

  “What? You know I’m qualified to fly these things, right? Besides, who else can I trust to pull your navy butt out of the fire—again.”

  Stone said, “Well, you stay sealed up in there until we clear—”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Allie interrupted. “It’s not like I’m a rookie here. I know decontamination protocols, Loverboy. You do your job back there and I’ll sit here. I brought a pile of travel brochures to read through. I’m thinking about a couple of weeks backpacking across Galaides Five and—”

  “No,” Stone said.

  “No what?”

  “Not Galaides Five,” Stone said. “They have snake-like creatures there. Besides, the whole planet is outside, no real buildings at all.”

  “Right. We have to get you back outside some more. The fresh air will do you good.”

  The Prophet chuckled, interrupting them. “Lover’s quarrel, Signore Stone?”

  Stone glanced at the man. “Conversation is all. You know me?”

  The Prophet laughed outright, “Of course, Signore Stone, or can I call you Trey? How could I not know you and your lovely fiancée, Captain Allison Vedrian, late of the Empire’s Marines and now, well, I believe she is part of the Galactic Marshals.”

  Stone started to say something, but the Prophet continued, “Oh, I know. It’s all very hush-hush. Don’t worry. I can keep a secret, you know. That is more than I can say for the two Galactic Marshals deputies we…um, interviewed. Sorry, we missed catching your Agent Ryte. She is slippery, that one. I would really like to have a conversation with her. Ah, well—there is still time as the future is never gone.”

  Stone stared at the man in the cage. His drasco had just kidnapped the head of a planetary government during the man’s inaugural celebration. They had assaulted more than one citizen of Holliman’s Rift. They had damaged a lot of personal property in the parking lot. All of this and the Prophet was smiling and conversing as if the assault on his person was a lark.

  Stone grabbed a small hand-held sniffer from a cabinet and began sweeping the room. He waved the sniffer’s wand into every nook and cranny of the shuttle well after the on-board systems signaled all clear. There were no virions present. Neither his hand-held sniffer or the shuttle contamination system read anything inside the plasticrete boxes. The smell of sandalwood was gone.

  Stone rapped his knuckles on the wall of the cage holding Gonzo. Gonzo lay sprawled on the floor.

  The man looked up at Stone with bleary eyes, like he was fighting the great grandmother of all hangovers. Shaking his head slowly, Gonzo shrugged. His hands brushed at the dampness on his trousers and he grimaced at his wet hands. His hands reached for his camera as if he was on autopilot. Stopping himself, he left it lying on the floor of the cage beside him.

  Gonzo asked, “Why’d you drag me out of there? There was a good chance that I’d win. Then I could quit this crappy job and produce real movies.”

  Stone answered, “We had to go. Our ride showed up.”

  The Prophet laughed, “You really could have waited. I wasn’t in any rush and I would have come along willingly. All you had to do was ask.”

  Stone was about to speak, but Allie interrupted. “Decon complete. Proceeding to the Pebble now.”

  “She is something, isn’t she?” The Prophet asked. “You know, I could fix that scar for her, if you want.”

  Stone silently looked at the man.

  “No?” The Prophet asked. “It would only take a few moments. I won’t even need to go in there myself. Just a few of me would be all it takes.”

  Stone shook his head. “A few of you?”

  “My, my, my. I guess you don’t know yet.” The Prophet smiled. “That’s all right, my son. I’m just as baffled about you as you are about me. You aren’t human, are you?”

  “I’m not…I was…never mind about me.” Stone stammered. “Who—what are you?”

  “I’m just a man, as you can see.” The Prophet held his hands out, stretching them wide showing he had nothing to hide. “But you—well, I can sense you and your drascos have more in common than you let on.”

  Stone smiled in turn, “Your senses? Is that what you call your virions?”

  “Ah, you know about them, do you? I was hoping to keep that a secret for a little while longer. Now you…?” He let the question hang.

  Allie spoke excitedly. “Enough blathering on, Stone. We’ve got a problem up here. If our guest is sealed up, I need you at tactical right now.”

  The Prophet looked surprised. “Tactical? Your shuttles have weapons? My, my, my, you are a hostile warlike race, aren’t you?” He smiled.

  Stone jabbed a finger at him, “Jay and Peebee, keep that thing locked up tight. Gonzo, too, until we can get him decontaminated.” He turned and slapped a flat hand on the bulkhead between the passenger cabin and the flight deck. The liquid metal reformed to open a doorway. It flowed back into place once he stepped through the opening.

  He froze staring at the view screen. A dozen spacecraft blocked their way to the Platinum Pebble. They were an odd mishmash of shuttles, runabouts, and small intrasystem spacecraft. A babble of voices rattled from the speakers. More ships were racing up from the planet below to intercept them.

  Allie said, “We took too long for decon. Our guest’s rescue fleet has arrived.”

  Stone slid into the tactical officer’s chair. He flipped on a dozen switches, calling up a variety of weapons. The shuttle was designed after a marine combat unit, enhanced with modifications that could only be justified by Grandpa’s pocketbook. Rotating various screens, he realized he could turn their whole fleet to space dust faster than a hot fart dissipates in a warm wind, with a few simple commands.

  Most private spacecraft had shields designed to intercept space trash: rocks, comets, a floating screwdriver, and the odd bit of solar radiation. Most were not designed to stand up to a combat assault vehicle. Stone’s shuttle had shields that could stand up to anything and everything this cluster of civilian goobers could throw at them. Nothing in Holliman’s Rift orbit or at their spaceport could even scratch the fresh paint job.

  Rather than shoot, Stone reached over and tapped the communications unit. “May I help you with something?” He waved a hand at the shouting voices on his monitor. Seeing a face that he recognized, he pointed at the man, “You. Charles. Please speak for everyone.”

  Charles’s thin face was florid with anger. “You bastard! You’ve kidnapped our Prophet. Give him back or we will—”

  Stone waved his hands in surrender. “Hold up there, Charles. Let’s not start throwing around threats, please. Whatever the problem seems to be, I’m sure we can resolve it peacefully.”

  Calming himself with apparent difficulty, Charles said. “You’ve kidnapped our Prophet.”

  Stone looked at Allie and shrugged. Turning back the monitor, he said, “No I didn’t.”

  Charles looked baffled. “Yes, you did. I saw you carry him out of the building myself.”

  Stone nodded, “Yes. Of course, you did. He was tired from all of the excitement. He asked me to carry him back to his residence to rest.”

  Charles shook his head. “He would have told me he was leaving.”

  Stone mimicked Charles’s headshake, “He told Agnes. Ask her.

  Charles looked baffled. “Agnes won a lottery and went to Heaven.”

  “So find her and ask her. You shouldn’t be making fa
lse accusations about a guest invited by the Prophet himself.”

  “No. Agnes would have told me.”

  “Would you think of it if you had just won a free ticket to Heaven? I don’t believe so.”

  “No. No. No. You took him.”

  “No. I didn't.”

  “Did too.”

  “Did not.”

  Allie laughed, muting the outbound sound. “Is that all the diplomatic skill you learned while governor of Allie’s World? You sound like two children arguing over who took the last piece of candy.”

  Stone smiled. “I was governor, but I never got the hang of being a politician.” He unmuted the sound and interrupted Charles’s tirade. “Charles, did you check his residence?”

  Charles looked over his shoulder. Whatever response he received did not please him. His gesture to the side apparently meant, “Well, send someone to go check.” His shaking hands appeared to curl as if around an invisible neck like adding dammit to the end of his non-verbal command. He glared at Stone through the monitor. “Whether we checked or not, isn’t the issue. You’re in Holliman’s Rift space. We have a right to stop and search your vessel for…for…for smuggling.” He looked pleased with himself for coming up with a valid reason to board their shuttle.

  Stone muted the sound again. “Can we get around them?”

  Allie said, “There are enough of them that they can move to block any move we make. But, I don’t like being threatened. When I’m the big shark in the pool, I don’t like being chased around by minnows, Stone.”

  “Nor do I, but I would rather not hurt innocent civilians.” This was not the first time his fiancée had used the minnow-shark metaphor. She was fond of being thought of as a shark, a stobor, or a cobra.

  “If they try to board us without my permission, they won’t be innocent.” The tone of her voice left nothing to Stone’s imagination. Allie was not opening up the shuttle for inspection without a fight. Not that fighting was his first inclination, but he wanted it to be and admired it more than his own inclination to discuss and logically review a situation before striking.

  “Understood, Captain Vedrian.” Turning back to Charles, he turned on the sound.

  Before he could speak, Stone was interrupted by Captain Numos over the system-wide comms push. His face did not appear on visuals. “Signore Stone, you are aboard a Stone Freight Company vessel chartered under the emperor’s seal. Smuggling charges are reprehensible and will not be tolerated. To the ships now surrounding my shuttle: stand down and move away. No further warning will be issued.”

  Stone asked, “Captain Numos, is our other shuttle back from the planet.”

  Numos said, “Yes, Signore Stone. Communications Tech Ryte says all are present except her two assistants and the six individuals on your shuttle. I cannot tolerate a Stone Freight Company high official being interrogated and delayed by such a minor functionary.”

  Stone nodded. Mentioning Ryte told him Tammie was back aboard the Platinum Pebble. “Captain Numos, does the Platinum Pebble have the firepower to break this impromptu civilian barricade?” He knew the answer. The shuttle he was in could do the same thing to the thin tin cans surrounding them, but he wanted Charles and his cohort to hear the response.

  Numos snorted. “There won’t even be enough scrap metal left to bother with salvage. Preacher Mary’s finger is itching on the trigger and she assures me that you will be clear to proceed to dock in less than fifteen seconds.”

  Stone looked at Allie. With a resolute sigh, he said, “Weapons tight, everyone, please. Let’s try not to shoot everyone in sight. Captain Vedrian, shields on high. Let’s just ignore these craft. Captain Numos, there will undoubtedly be civilian ship damage. Please prepare to assist in search and rescue operations, should we be called upon to render SAR assistance.”

  He pointed a finger at the Platinum Pebble in the distance, the sun glinting off her exterior, looking like a bright star in the noonday sun. He remembered the predicament he and Commander Wright faced, in the shuttle after he had reconfigured the engines for jump drive, when they were unsure of which way to go. He said, “As Goatgirl once said, ‘go that way’.”

  Allie grinned and engaged the engine throttles. The shuttle shot forward. The only motion Stone sensed was his imagination as the screen showed them advancing on the civilian barricade. The inertial dampeners eliminated all real sense of movement. She aimed for a small gap between three opposing ships. There was more than enough room for the shuttle to squeeze through if she creeped forward at a glacial pace with the shields set at a bare minimum distance from the hull. She could set the shuttle’s shields for any distance short of overlapping each other, so creeping through would only work with civilian cooperation. Charles had made it clear they were not feeling the least bit cooperative.

  Shields were set on high, extending them to the maximum distance. Allie slammed into the small space. Their shields impacted the shields of the other spacecraft. One of the monitors showed their shield impacting a small in-system freighter’s shield. The result sent the freighter caroming off another ship and bouncing into a third. The other ships were thrown aside, one speeding off toward the sun in a violent spin. Another ship was pushed backward by the shield impact, the pilot allowing his shield to take the brunt of the force. Having set his shields on maximum, they collapsed inward without damaging the ship itself, although it did move him away from Stone’s shuttle.

  The pilot of Charles’s craft spotted their movement and tried to block the hole. The small runabout succeeded in taking the full force of the shuttle’s shields on the nose. His shields must have been set for a minimal distance, or were of poor quality, because they crumbled like a stale potato chip stuck in thick bean dip, imploding the runabout in a flurry of pieces. Charles’s face on the monitor screamed silently as his critically damaged runabout automatically closed hatches and sealed bulkheads.

  Allie spun the screen view to see the damage their collision had caused while keeping their shuttle aimed toward the Platinum Pebble. The civilian ships not bouncing off each other like billiard balls on black felt were closing in on the damaged ships. Each ship was broadcasting alarms, warnings and conflicting commands in their uncoordinated rescue attempt.

  Stone glanced at a forward facing monitor. The five hundred foot painting of Barb Tuttle beckoned them into her docking port. He grinned at Allie.

  She said, “Don’t get any ideas, Stone.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Stone opened the door to the shuttle and stepped back, letting Jay and Peebee bound down the ramp.

  “We’ll see you at your house, Mama,” Jay shouted over her shoulder. “We gotta go pee real bad.” He was glad the days of scooping up piles of drasco poop were long gone.

  Captain Numos, Doctor Emmons, and a med tech greeted him and Allie. Waving them into the shuttle, he rapped on the side of the transparent plasticrete cage containing the Prophet. The Prophet was sitting in a corner, his back against a wall. He smiled and waved.

  The med tech said, “He is patient zero?”

  Stone said, “Not exactly.”

  Numos looked confused. “I thought that was why you grabbed him?”

  Stone said, “First, it’s not a he. It’s an it.”

  The Prophet laughed. “Ow! That is painfully rude, young man. We are not an it. We are we.”

  Stone continued as if uninterrupted. “Second, he isn’t patient zero. I witnessed it sending a cluster of nanites or rather, virions, into civilians pretending to heal them.”

  The Prophet stood and said, “Now that isn’t quite right, Trey. We did heal them. It’s true that we may have caused the illness to begin with, but that doesn’t mean the cure wasn’t real.”

  Stone said, “It must have infected a man with its virions causing him to go blind, then sent in more virions to cure him. I saw it send a cluster of virions into a young girl, not healing her arm, but blocking the pain.”

  The Prophet shrugged. “Her broken arm had been r
eset. We just alleviated her pain. Is that wrong?”

  Stone ignored his question. “I saw a huge migration of virions leave an old man and enter into this body. I can only assume it is a nest of some sort.”

  Emmons looked thoughtful. “Intelligent when in a cluster?”

  The Prophet smiled, “We are the only intelligence.”

  Stone said, “It doesn’t seem to mind that I grabbed it.”

  The Prophet smiled benevolently, “Of course not. My, my, my, we may be ahead of schedule, but we are where we planned on being all along. We understand if you are fearful in your ignorance of us and wish to keep us locked up for the time being. We must caution you that this body does require fluids and nutrition to remain healthy. Oh, should you be curious, we do not need fluids, sustenance, or even this body.”

  Stone said, “It has been manipulating and controlling Holliman’s Rift’s population by stimulating certain emotional centers of the human brain.”

  Allie said, “Kill it.”

  The med tech said, “Easy peasy, Captain Vedrian.” She grabbed a kit and began digging into its contents.

  The Prophet laughed, “That is fine. We are still we. Even if this nest doesn’t survive, our plan will succeed.”

  Emmons said, “Wait a minute.”

  Vedrian waved the med tech off. “Hold a minute. What have you got in mind, Kat?”

  Emmons shrugged. “We don’t know enough about what is obviously an intelligent creature to just end it. This virion nest should be kept alive for shipment and study at the Emperor’s College. Even after centuries, we don’t understand everything about the human brain. This virion nest may teach us more.”

  The Prophet shrugged. “Your brains are no more complicated than any other lower species that we’ve encountered—actually less than most. We do not control your minds, we just prod a few readily found hot spots. For example, when we first encountered your species, we stimulated the lust and love centers of your brain. That was the easiest to find and the most accessible to prod, simple chemical production.”