Metal Boxes - At the Edge Page 3

  The lieutenant said, “These are old school ceramic titanium restraints. I don’t know what kind of magic tricks you pulled on the nanotech carbon handcuffs, but if you get out of these chains, I will shoot you myself. Got it?”

  Stone remained silent. Each clank of the chains binding him solidified his intent to keep his mouth shut.

  “Good,” the lieutenant said. “Keep it that way.”

  Stone shuffled one slow step at a time down the shuttle ramp into the hangar. He was not certain where he was. Looking, by force, at the ceiling, he almost grinned, at least he was still inside.

  Chapter Four

  He shuffled forward guided by the phalanx of LAD operatives. He tried to be angry with them, but they were only doing their jobs. They were not pleasant yet professional. Witnessing the breakdown of carbon nanites on two pairs of wrist restraints would make any enforcement officer nervous.

  The team shoved him against a bulkhead and rough hands removed the braces. They pushed him through a doorway and slammed the heavy steel hatch closed. The hatch locked with a solid thump. A clang rang through the small cell as a metal crossbar slammed into place.

  The cell was larger than his old BOQ quarters on Allie’s World, but there was no patio overlooking a parking lot. There was no window, either. He turned in a slow circle. A bunk, a table, and one chair furnished the room. Everything was bolted to the floor. A video monitor hung on one wall. A water spigot, a showerhead over a tiny grate in the floor, and a toilet occupied a corner. Three walls were gray plasticrete and the fourth wall appeared to be metal. There was nothing else to see.

  He was about to sit down when a small chime sounded. A small door in the metal wall opened. A food tray sat in the space. The meal did not look appetizing; certainly not what chef Tim Dollish used to serve, but Stone retrieved it and cleaned his plate. He was not hungry, but knew he needed to feed his system nanites, if nothing else.

  He turned on the video monitor. Startled, he looked back at himself. The picture was old, from some conference he attended as the governor of Allie’s World. An announcer was droning on about his storied career and his arrest. It may be news to the video viewers, but not something Stone cared to hear. Unfortunately, the vidscreen only had a power switch. Laying back on his bunk, he watched news segment after news segment about himself.

  After what seemed like an eternity, a different chime sounded, the view screen powered off and five minutes later the lights went out. Stone slipped his boots off and hung his gaudy flowered shirt on the back of the chair. Throwing the thin blanket to the side, he lay on the bunk in his gym shorts. Sleep was impossible.

  A third chime sounded as the lights came on. The view screen powered on again. The date time stamp usually seen in the bottom right corner was blacked out. Probably redacted. Without his military dataport or civilian personal assistant, he had no idea how long the lights had been out. It felt like hours and yet, only a few minutes.

  An announcer was droning on about Stone, dragging up every bit of news and non-news they could find about him. This talking head pictured him as a criminal caught after years of hiding in the shadows. He wondered how they managed to find a second grade math test he flunked. Not that he was surprised, he had always been bad at math. Having it broadcast across human space to every listening ear felt like an invasion of his privacy, like the announcer was digging through a pile of his used underwear.

  Another chime announced the arrival of a breakfast tray with a small toother mint. After eating, Stone exercised to the atonal, nasally voice of a female news anchor who had access to his midshipman records from the Ol’ Toothless. She refused to divulge her source, but drooled when she showed a vid of him brawling on the floor at a marine bash.

  Stone laughed out loud watching Hammermill and him fall to the floor. The replay repeated in a loop behind the announcer as if the viewers missed the action the first time through. Hammermill, who was drunk, stumbled over his own feet and pulled Stone to the floor with him. There was no sound, but the video continued forward showing Stone downing drink after drink at the bar while surrounded by female marines. The announcer made tsking noises as she tried to guess what was in each drink.

  Stone wondered where the video came from, but knew such recordings always surfaced at the most embarrassing time. Grandpa always said that if you wouldn’t do it in front of your mother, then don’t do it.

  Shivering, he grabbed the blanket off the bunk and wrapped it around him. The cell felt cold. A moment ago, it was hot and stuffy. A slight breeze blew across the room, though no air vents, grates or exposed ductwork were visible. His floral shirt, hanging on the back of the chair, would not provide much warmth. The thin blanket did little to keep him warm, so he began exercising.

  Another chime sounded and Stone looked around, surprised to see a lunch tray. He ate slowly, not because he was hungry, but it passed the time. Dressing for dinner later meant placing his shirt over his shoulders.

  He asked himself, “I wonder how long it will take me to figure out which chime means what?”

  After a week, he determined his keepers had an unlimited number of chimes. Unfortunately, the breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus never varied. He assumed a week had passed, as his only measure of time was meal delivery. Twenty-one meals equaled seven days, though many of the time spans between meals seemed oddly flexible. Some days the meals seemed to come back to back and other days he was hungry enough to eat the blanket on his bed before the next meal appeared.

  He tried to shower regularly, although he quickly determined there was no way to regulate the water temperature. It seemed hot when the room felt hot and cold when the room was chilly and breezy. The human body may be a horrible thermometer, but it did not keep him from being angry with his keepers for screwing with the temperature.

  Stone tried to be furious. Every day, he silently sought to work up hostility. He kept hearing his Grandpa saying that if he was angry with more than one person at a time, it wasn’t them, but him. Grandpa was wrong this time. It was them, not him. The requisite anger boiled, but never bubbled over. Realizing he could not stay angry at everybody all of the time, his anger subsided.

  He even tried to control his anger at Grandpa. Where were his grandparents? Where were Mom and Dad? The entire empire knew he had been arrested. The video monitor fed him a steady diet of newscasters either reveling in his capture or lamenting his unjustified incarceration. Everyone in the galaxy knew of his arrest.

  “Stand and face the back bulkhead. You have thirty seconds to comply.”

  Stone was startled by the voice, but his muscles reacted before he consciously formed the mental command to act. Facing the bulkhead, he heard the hatch unlock. Struggling not to fight back, his face was pushed into the plasticrete wall. Rough hands grabbed his wrists and cold ceramic titanium wrist restraints clamped his hands together. A neck restraint was jammed under his chin, forcing his face upward toward the ceiling.

  His handlers half-dragged him from the cell. Marching him down a long sterile corridor, he watched the ceiling flow past. He spotted steel hatch after steel hatch in his peripheral vision. No one spoke.

  Stone was jerked to a stop as a cold female voice snapped, “What is this? Unchain my client.”

  The lieutenant said, “No, ma’am. Ensign Stone resisted arrest.”

  The voice went from cold to frigid, “Blackmon Stone, are you resisting arrest?”

  Stone replied, “No. Not earlier and not now.” He almost added sir, signorina, or ma’am, but he held it back.

  “Unchain my client, spacer.”

  The LAD officer said, “I’m a lieutenant, ma’am, not a spacer.”

  “You won’t be a lieutenant much longer unless you get him out of that medieval torture rack you have him strapped to.”

  Stone closed his eyes, felling the chains being unsnapped and removed. Once free, he opened his eyes and looked down at the woman in front of him. His eyes became as cold as her voice. “Hello, Agent Ryte.”r />
  Chapter Five

  EMIS Agent Tammie Ryte looked back at him with unflinching eyes—no hint of recognition passed her face. She said, “That is Lawyer Tammie Tuttle to you, Signore Stone. Follow me and keep your mouth shut.”

  Stone expected the LAD officer to complain, but when he looked around, the team was gone. He was alone in a corridor with Agent Ryte…Lawyer Tammie Tuttle. He clamped his mouth shut with enough force that his teeth clashed. Ryte was using the same name as Marine Sergeant Barb Tuttle, a woman often assigned to him as part of a protective detail. Ryte knew Tuttle well. The name must be some sort of signal.

  Signal or not, this EMIS agent had investigated Missimaya’s charges and filed the documents that led to his arrest. He intended to say nothing to her. Not knowing when to keep his yap closed was one character flaw he hoped to repair someday. Maybe this was a good day to begin.

  Not only was she the person who filed the report, but she was not a lawyer. EMIS could impersonate any military rank or civilian profession they deemed necessary to track down criminals preying on the empire’s military. Previously, she had impersonated an oversexed, somewhat dimwitted petty officer third class. After pulling that stunt, pretending to be a lawyer should not be a big stretch for her.

  He paced her down a long corridor. Throwing open the carved wooden doors at the end, she ushered him into a suite of rooms, bustling with strangers. She shoved him toward a tall, leggy brunette. The woman caught him, spun him around, and before he could speak, stripped the shirt off his back.

  “Get into this suit. Now, Signore Stone,” the brunette ordered in a low, gravelly voice reminiscent of every media outlet news anchor for the past hundred years.

  The woman was as tall as Stone, but so twig-like he thought he could snap her in two with little effort. Still, he recognized an order when he heard one.

  Stone stripped and put on the suit laid out for him. He changed too fast to be embarrassed. The suit was nice, but a bit tight across his backside for his tastes. The brunette slid an approving hand across his bottom, tugged at the suit lapels and straightened the collar. The collar was snug, but not like the restraining collar the LAD team had previously clamped around his neck.

  The woman stuck a P.A. to the front of the suit, sticking it to the patch designed for just that purpose. Stone noticed it was his personal assistant, the upgraded one his grandparents gave him on his last birthday. His whole life was recorded and stored on the tiny machine. Getting it back was like having his identity returned.

  In a move reminiscent of his mother, the brunette licked her hand and slicked down his hair like he was a little boy. She turned him slowly in a circle, double-checking every inch of him.

  Stone noticed, the room had been transformed from a comfortable suite to a spacious conference room. One of the walls changed from a smooth painted surface with pictures of flowers to a paneled wall covered with photos of spaceships and starscapes, as he watched. The wall moved back half a dozen feet, closed off a doorway, and settled into place without a sound. He had worked with liquid metal walls more than once. He specifically remembered them from both the cadet academy and the warehouse floors and walls on the Periodontitis.

  The furniture had been replaced by a conference table and matching chairs. Seated around the table were four people in civilian garb. Behind each was a team of three assistants. Ryte sat behind the woman at the head of the table. She was all but buried behind a flurry of data displayed on a dozen open screens on her personal assistant. She was the only face he recognized.

  The woman at the head of the table said, “I’m Mrs. Boot with the law firm of Bruckner, Savage, Tisdale, and Boot. Sit, Signore Stone.”

  Stone sat. “Mrs. Boot, it is Ensign Stone. Not signore.”

  She sighed. “I am sorry to be the one to tell you, Signore Stone, but your days in the empire’s UEN will be over before you have to shave again.”

  Chapter Six

  Stone started to speak, but Boot ignored him.

  “Signore Stone, the law firm of Bruckner, Savage, Tisdale, and Boot has been hired by your grandfather to keep you out of prison or worse. Yes, worse. Should the military prove some of these charges against you, it is within their scope of power to order your banishment from all human space or execution.”

  Stone’s mind stumbled over the possibility of execution. Running through the list of charges, he remembered a phrase about murdering alien civilians. He had never killed any intelligent creature other than Hyrocanians and their only uniform was garish-colored pants. For all he knew, they were all civilians, except those few they had determined were admirals. Stopping to ask a Hyrocanian what their status was could get a person eaten. The charge was sheer lunacy. Surely the military knew that.

  Mrs. Boot’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “As the senior partner of this law firm, I am personally overseeing the trial and outcome. To that end, with our client’s express permission, I’ve engaged the Whole Source Public Relations firm to help guide public opinion.”

  Stone snorted, “This is a military trial, public opinion doesn’t matter.”

  Boot shook her head, “Public opinion always matters, young man. You would be best advised to keep your mouth shut and let the grownups talk.”

  Stone said, “Shut up? Hey! I’m the one on trial here.”

  “That is correct. You are on trial, but you are not the client. We were retained three months ago by your grandfather to oversee this mess.”

  Stone’s mind did a hiccup. “Three months? We were in Hyrocanian space behind enemy lines three months ago.”

  Boot spun in her chair and pointed at Ryte, “You! Tuttle. Have you located EMIS Agent Tammie Ryte, the investigator of this mess?”

  Ryte leaned around her open personal assistant apps, looking at her boss. Genuine concern showed on her face. “No, Mrs. Boot. I have just this moment received a message from regional EMIS headquarters here on Lazzaroni that says Agent T. Ryte is on an undercover operation and unavailable for comment.”

  Boot hissed, “Regional? Take it to the top, young lady. Do I have to tell you everything?”

  Ryte paled at the woman’s tone. “No, ma’am. I’ve already sent a request on to EMIS Headquarters at the palace. I’ve also sent a copy of the information to the offices of Stone Freight Company.”

  Boot glared at Ryte. “All contact with our client is to go through me. Is that understood?” Her angry stare froze everyone in their seats.

  Ryte said, “Yes, ma’am. I thought that if the Stones’ have any political influence they might be able to pull some strings to have this EMIS agent made available for a deposition if not actual cross-examination.” Before Boot could answer, she added, “I sent the memo under your name and title, ma’am.”

  Boot spun on Stone. “That goes for you too, young man. You are in our hands. We’ve been paid a retainer from your family, small as it is, to do all we can to protect you. We will do what we can. You will do what we say, when we say to do it. Do nothing more. Do nothing less. Do we understand each other?”

  Stone doubted the law firm had received a small retainer fee. Grandpa would not have hired a cheap firm. This woman claimed to be the senior partner. If so, she must have outlived Bruckner, Savage, and Tisdale.

  He shook his head, “Mrs. Boot, I understand you. But I’m as sure as I can be that you don’t understand me. I will comply with your orders…until I don’t.”

  “Now see here, young man—”

  Boot was interrupted by the door swinging open. It slammed against the wall and rebounded into a civilian security guard as he backed into the room. A UEN lieutenant senior grade put the flat of his hand against the man’s chest and shoved. Backpedalling, the man barely kept his feet.

  Boot stood and shouted, “This is a private conference. You can’t—”

  The deep growl in the lieutenant’s throat was a warning that even a civilian should understand. “You want private, enlist in the Marines. For those of you who don’t know me, I�
�m Lieutenant Grayson. Admiral Temple volunteered me to be this young man’s legal counsel.”

  Boot started to interrupt, but Grayson waved her silent. “Admiral Temple is the base commander and will be sitting in as chief justice at this young man’s court-martial. You shouldn’t have been granted access to Stone without my approval. And you’re lucky you’ve had him this long.” Tapping his dataport, he grabbed a digital document and threw it at the table. The table captured the file, automatically made copies, and transmitted them to everyone sitting at the table.“Did you submit this piece of crap motion?”

  Stone spun the document to re-orient it to his position. He tried to read it, but pertinent information was buried behind a long stream of whereases, whyfores, and to whits. The first sentence was almost ninety lines long.

  Boot grabbed the file and scanned it. She yanked another copy from the table and threw it toward an assistant behind her. He caught the file with his personal assistant and began reading with incredible speed. Boot tapped a finger against the conference table waiting for her assistant to review the document.

  The man nodded.

  Grayson all but shouted. “You sent this pile of gobbledygook to Admiral Temple?”

  Boot said, “It appears to be a standard request for a continuance until we have the opportunity to cross-examine the investigating officer.”

  Stone had been involved in enough military trials to find a bit of humor in the legal wrangling going on around him.