Metal Boxes - At the Edge Read online

  Hector grabbed him, “You’re okay?”

  Dollish said, “Yeah, these suits are tough. Not to worry. Physics knocked me down. The suit absorbed most of the force, but the rest of it had to go somewhere.”

  Stone said, “School lessons later, gentlemen. We have work to do. Jay? What do you smell?” He could smell roses dipped in maple syrup. The odor was thick and fresh, not the stale, fading odor coming from the dead in the main hatch area or in the corridor.

  Jay said, “Lots of Eaters here.” Responding with her TTS, she used the piglet term for the Hyrocanians. “They smell ugly, not like the ones in suits.” She had dropped the chain gun and unholstered a quad-barreled mortar tube. He hoped she had loaded it with rounds that did not turn the inside of the ship into an outside space compartment.

  Stone said, “I concur. I think we surprised them and put a big dent in their ground troops, but there are a lot more Hyrocanians on this ship. Our job is to clear this ship, but no one realized it was a fully functioning, staffed warship. The five of us may not be able to clear it. Sergeant Tuttle?”

  Tuttle nodded, “Boss, there isn’t any way we can do it.”

  Stone said, “Jay, you were a marine NCO. What do you say?”

  “Not a chance of success, Mama. Even for me. There are too many enemies on board.”

  Dollish said, “But we’re going to do it anyway, right?”

  Jay wonked, “Of course.”

  Tuttle snorted, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Stone said, “I can just imagine what my grandma would say if I turned away from a fight just because there was a good chance that I wouldn’t win.”

  Hector said, “You guys are crazy.”

  Stone asked, “Do you want to hang back and cover the hatch?”

  Hector laughed. “Not a chance, Boss. I’ve been training for this for weeks and I think I’ve got the hang of it now. Got me some killin’ to do.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Following Jay, Stone stepped lightly down the corridor filled with Hyrocanian bodies. “Slow and steady, people. We check each cabin, weld hatches behind us, and mark every wall so any follow-on troops get regular updates.”

  Jay stopped at a closed hatch, sniffed at the edges and shook her head indicating the cabin was empty. Stone pulled his TDO-960A, slapped the hatch button open, and stepped into the room. Stacked neatly around the walls were piles of shipping containers in a dozen different configurations. Rolling his HUD through the various spectrums, he verified the room was devoid of any life forms.

  Backing out of the room, he gave a passing thought to his recent court-martial. How was he to know if a Hyrocanian was surrendering? Every one he met tried to kill and eat him…or eat and then kill him. They seemed to attack humans like they were nothing more than mobile smorgasbords of protein. He had no idea if they hated humans or just not considered people intelligent enough to not dine on them.

  He slapped the warehouse door closed, deciding that if some Monday morning analyst wanted to second guess killing during a firefight, that was fine. The situation here could not be mulled over, diagrammed, and investigated from every angle before taking action. During firefights a shooter had split seconds to decide to pull the trigger or not. Most of the time, initial shots were fired by muscle memory and training, not conscious thought. If a shooter did not pull the trigger first or fast enough, they or their buddies might be dead.

  He tapped the warehouse door. “Hector, weld this shut.” He took a spray marker and wrote on the wall that the cabin beyond was a warehouse—contents unknown—no life forms.

  Dollish covered their rear as Hector threw a quick weld around the hatch. Jay crouched low to the deck, her tail over her head, armored bone spike flicking back and forth, seeking something to impale. Stone and Tuttle paced side-by-side just behind the drasco.

  Jay stopped at the next hatch, shaking her head signaling the cabin smelled empty. Tuttle slapped the hatch open button to scan the room. A pair of large handguns swept the room following the movement of her eyes. She stepped back into the corridor to mark the wall. Hector moved up to weld the door as Dollish walked backward, the muzzle of his heavy assault rifle never resting. They cleared a dozen cabins and warehouses along this corridor using the same procedure until Jay wonked in alert at a hatch.

  Jay shook her head, “Too many, Mama. They smell bad—angry and…wrong. It smells like the Prophet.”

  The hatch was on Stone’s side of the corridor. He faced the room and triggered his suit to shoot a bunker buster at the hatch. It hit the hatch with a splat and stuck. A second later it blew a fist-sized hole through the hatch allowing the second bomb to blast into the room, exploding in a violent rush of heat and flame.

  Stone turned his head as flames backwashed out of the hole in the hatch. His suit handled the heat and blast, but his reaction was human, like ducking when you hear a gunshot. It would be too late to get out of the way of the bullet once you hear the shot, but it was just what people did.

  The heard a roar and felt a rumble as a series of explosions rippled through the room. Stone felt the vibration in his feet as the hatch bulged outward, the bulkheads swelled and the corridor deck tilted. The ship seemed to shiver a little and settle back with a sigh.

  Stone thought again about the Monday morning analyst. He had not bothered to look for hostages or ask for their surrender. He had just fired and killed them, stopping whatever they were trying to do. Jay smelled something wrong and he trusted her judgment. Opening the hatch to verify that nothing in the room wanted to quit and go home was a sure way to get killed. The explosion he set off was violent, but he was much happier with this outcome than being sent back home as a dehydrated cube in a body bag.

  Tuttle laughed, “Damn, Boss. Go in for overkill much?”

  Stone snorted, “I just like fireworks and loud noises, Barb. What’s your excuse?” He leaned down and looked through the hole in the hatch.

  Tuttle continued laughing, “Horny and frustrated—not getting laid enough.”

  Hector stepped up to the hatch with a grunt. “Come on, Tuttle. It wasn’t that long ago.” He began running a weld around the hatch, although it would take a torch to cut get it open again.

  Tuttle laughed “That was hours and hours ago.”

  Hector said, “Well, we’re busy right now, so keep your pants on.”

  Stone let the verbal byplay pass as he marked the bulkhead listing its contents as unknown.

  Dollish, still keeping his back to the team, said, “Do you two need to stop and get a room?”

  Tuttle nodded, “Yeah. That would be great if you don’t mind waiting, Tim?”

  Hector snorted a quick laugh. “Not a chance, Barb. You’re fun, but not that fun.”

  Stone glanced at Tuttle. From the look of her eyes, Hector had hit the right note with her. Somehow the young man was acting willing but unimpressed. She was used to teasing, taunting, and controlling the resulting encounters. Hector acted unconcerned—not uncaring, just not infatuated. Tuttle was smitten, probably for the first time in a long time…if ever.

  Jay wonked, “You humans!”

  Moving forward, she paced slowly until Stone shouted. “Hold up a minute.” He tapped a bulkhead. “Tuttle, what the heck is this?”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Switch your HUD to multi-spectral.”

  Tuttle said, “I’ll be a three headed toad! I’ve never seen that on a Hyrocanian ship.”

  Stone agreed. “I’ve seen enough written Hyrocanian on Rusty Hinges to know this isn’t written by them. I doubt they can even see it.” He looked closely at the ship diagram pinpointing their location on the ship, a you are here map. “I don’t recognize any of these symbols.” He ran a finger over the map. “It looks like this is the bridge, three decks up. This looks like engineering, just below it.”

  Tuttle studied the map. “This ship isn’t human or Hyrocanian built. Whoever put this ship together may have put this here for thei
r own convenience during construction.”

  Stone danced his fingers over the diagram. “Unless I miss my guess, this is a warehouse ship. I’ve been on enough of them to recognize familiar patterns. Look: warehouse deck, warehouse deck, warehouse deck, crew quarters, gun emplacement, gun emplacement, and more warehouse spaces.”

  Tuttle said, “This ship is almost as big as the Platinum Pebble, though it’s designed as a weird five-sided cube-like thing. It’ll take us days to check every hatch. So, what’s first, Boss? Bridge or engineering?”

  He would like to take both significant ship points out at the same time, but his force was far too small to split up. Engineering was between them and the bridge. He snapped a quick video of the ship diagram, adding it to an info dump for Gordy and Kat Emmons.

  “Engineering. We bypass everything between here and there. Everybody stay on your toes. This could get a bit dangerous.”

  Tuttle laughed, “You mean, compared to the tea party we’ve been having so far?”

  “Yeah. That.” He did a quick check of Gordy’s collected and collated data. Hammermill reported they had almost cleared ship sixteen. They managed to find a few hundred slave laborers and were sweeping the ship from top to bottom.

  Allie reported that seventeen was Hyrocanian free, but they were finding pockets of humans hiding in every nook and cranny on the ship. The workers were frightened and getting progressively harder to dig out. When they did convince them they were safe and free, the Galactic Marshals deputies were struggling to keep them from attacking their human overlords.

  Numos reported his civilians had their hands full shuttling freed slaves down the corridor away from potential firefights. Many of the ex-workers were confused, most having already given up the hope of ever escaping their slavery. They had a tendency to either turn violent or stumble around numbly.

  Gordy had also received an update from Emmons. With Peebee’s help, they had managed to track the Prophet, still inhabiting Riley Lowther’s body, to the ship at ramp number three. The drasco was literally sitting on the virion nest until a trio of piglets could make the clear plasticrete cage escape proof. Emmons reported it was all she could do to keep the creature from being killed by his ex-converts.

  Stone ordered his team forward. Relief showed in his face at the report that Allie was not injured. He was more than pleased his grandfather had sent the new suits for everyone. Their surprise spacedock attack could only carry them so far, but the new suit configurations were much stronger and tougher than the Hyrocanians expected from humans.

  They passed by many other hatches and smaller corridors as they moved along the wide corridor. Leaving possible hostiles behind them and on their flanks was the height of foolishness, but in ship boarding actions, the bridge and engineering were two of the three primary objectives, rating higher than an armory, the third primary objective. Stone remembered a training mission at the academy where he had been tasked to protect the armory and it brought a smile to his face.

  Most human ship designs spread armories around the ship, denying possible boarders a single access point for exploitation or destruction. Other species did not necessarily copy human engineering or logic. Stone had not been able to read all the designations on the wall map so he could not determine if there was an armory on the ship. There were weapons along the hull, but nothing indicated to him where the munitions were stored.

  He still had not formulated a plan to attack engineering before they got there. The hatch was open and inviting, a clear security violation on any human ship, civilian or military, but the Hyrocanians were not sticklers for following human rules. Stone peeked around the open hatch into the engineering compartment. He saw no workers, Hyrocanian or otherwise.

  Lights flashed, machines hummed and some sort of engine was cranking out power. Stone did not see the human designed spinning metal discs that provided shields, antigravity, life support, and other power to a ship. He was not an engineer, but he had a sound understanding of human designed ship systems and how they worked. Nothing in the room looked like it should.

  He was more than a little surprised that with the fighting raging up and down the docks, and the massive explosion rocking the ship just a few decks down, no one had thought to secure engineering. Perhaps the remaining Hyrocanians were waiting on their now deceased admiral to give those orders.

  He signaled Hector and Tuttle to move into the room. “Watch your angle of fire. We don’t want to damage the wrong thing in here.”

  Hector was not more than a few steps into the room when a pair of Hyrocanians wobbled into sight from around the corner of a stall stack of machines. Both creatures growled something incomprehensible, yanked kitchen knives from the waistbands of their garish trousers and raced at the two humans.

  Tuttle sprinted toward the pair. Jumping between them, she stiff-armed one of the Hyrocanians and clotheslined the other. She did more than push the four-armed freak backward, her palm crushed bones shoving its jaws down its own throat. Her clothesline move did not connect correctly. The big Hyrocanian rolled to its feet. It leaped at Hector holding knives in all of its four hands, whirling and jabbing at him. The knives were no match for a bullet-resistant suit, but Stone knew how disconcerting it was to have an alien creature wrap its legs around your waist and lean into your faceplate with all four rows of teeth chomping and gnashing to get at your flesh. He reached around Hector and plucked the four-armed freak off the young man. Unconcerned about the creature, he tossed it carelessly over his shoulder. Jay caught it in mid air and dispatched it to whatever hell its kind believed in.

  Three other Hyrocanians were attracted by the noise. Rather than attack, the three threw open a hatch on the other side of the engineering bay and raced away. Looking through the open hatch, Stone recognized a Hyrocanian cafeteria filled with pens and screeching animals.

  Hector pointed an arm at the fleeing Hyrocanians and stitched a row of bullets across their backs. Stone approved of his action no matter what the court-martial ruling said about surrendering or civilian Hyrocanians. The young man raced through the hatch into the room and stopped just inside the chamber. Stone was sure Hector was stunned by what he saw. Hearing about Hyrocanians eating their meals by cutting flesh from living creatures was vastly different than seeing where it happened. The cafeteria would bring Hyrocanian evil habits crashing into reality for the young man.

  Stone bounced to the ceiling, scanning the engineering room with infrared. There were multiple hot spots, but none indicating other living creatures. Pointing at Dollish, he said, “Mark the bulkhead in the corridor so our backup knows this is engineering, then weld that hatch shut.” He pointed at another hatch. “Tuttle, let’s get this room locked down. Weld that third hatch closed. I don’t care what’s on the other side, just secure it.”

  Jay walked delicately between the various machines in engineering careful not to touch anything. Moving into the cafeteria, she passed by Hector, patting him gently on the shoulder.

  Stone watched her walk past him, craning her neck up over the various pen walls, looking at the captured creatures. He wanted to check as well but was afraid of what he would find. Finding drascos was not probable. Rescuing piglets was not likely. Finding humans was almost a surety. Two types of people would be sent here—troublemakers and those too old, too sick, too young, or too hurt to work.

  He marked the bulkhead on the outside wall of engineering, should any of their backup come at the compartment from that direction. Waiting until Tuttle and Dollish joined him, he turned and welded the last hatch closed.

  Stone spun around at Jay’s bellow of rage. She vaulted over a high pen wall. Before he could move, pieces of Hyrocanians fountained back over the wall followed quickly by Jay. She bent down and spit on what remained of their bodies. He had tried explaining to the girls that spitting was not ladylike in human society, but knowing how drascos got pregnant and what spitting meant to drascos, his lecture fell on deaf ears. Jay’s action was equivalent to telling t
he spittle recipient that they should engage in involuntary coitus using unusual and non-traditional orifices. It may not be ladylike, but he certainly agreed with the sentiment.

  Jay murmured to him, “Mama, you better come here.”

  Stone knew what she wanted and dreaded the thought. He was of two minds. Rescuing humans was a part of what they did, but seeing their suffering and pain was difficult to bear. The numb hopeless looks of captives he had previously saved haunted his dreams longer than any discomfort he felt over killing an intelligent, but evil creature.

  Dollish jumped up on the wall, pacing along it like Stone had done the first time they encountered a Hyrocanian cafeteria. He didn’t give any indication he recognized the creatures they passed. Tuttle stayed with Hector, everyone giving the young man a moment to recover from the sight of such a massive abattoir, filled with all manner of animals.

  Jay had stopped checking the pens. She kept her head well below the top of the wall, not wanting to startle the creatures on the other side who might not recognize a drasco. Three pens in a row had a crisscrossed series of steel bars over the top. Whatever creatures the Hyrocanians kept inside could climb, fly, or jump high enough to escape.

  Stone knew what he would find. Jay would not have called him for anything else. He unlatched his helmet and prepared to let it fall back.

  Before it fell, Dollish said, “Watch it, Boss. We haven’t cleared this room yet.”

  Stone said, “Jay can watch our backs. Barb and Hector. Enough now, we still have work to do.” With his helmet hanging down his back, he jumped to the top of the pen wall and walked along it until he could see into the pen.

  A voice said, “What the—Who…?”

  Stone looked down at a man. He was well-muscled and healthy looking, much like those in the marines or navy, but he did not seem to have a military bearing. He looked like every thug in every fictional video Stone had ever seen. Even a poorly healed scar parted the man’s hair from his brow to the base of his neck. He stood with his fists balled up, flanked by two men only slightly less bulky. They formed a thin barrier between the pen’s gate and two old men, one frail woman, and a pair of children. There was no doubt in Stone’s mind that all three men would have attacked the next Hyrocanian through the gate with bare hands and bared teeth.