Metal Boxes (32 page)

“I told you I could do it
,” Melanie shouted. “I rode Peebee and she let me.”

Stone leapt through the door and slid to a stop. Jay was hissing and holding Peebee down to the
deck. Peebee was lying there with her belly up. Jay’s tail spike was pointed at Peebee’s head. Peebee lay there unmoving pinned to the deck by Jay’s bulk. Peebee was wonking softly. Oliver was howling and running circles around them.

Uncle Jim knocked
Stone aside as he and Maggot burst into the hanger. Jim pointed a high-powered carbine at Jay’s head. Maggot held a two-fisted semi-automatic pistol. He pointed the muzzle first at Jay then at Peebee and then back at Jay.

Jay raised her tail spike preparing to strike Peebee. Peebee rolled her eyes and looked pleadingly at Stone.

“Stop!” Stone shouted. “Everybody just stop.” He was surprised when everybody stopped except Oliver who continued his howling race around the drascos.

The frozen tableau was broken when Melanie raced back into the hanger.

“It is my fault. Ow! Don’t hurt Peebee. She didn’t do anything. Ow! I fell off on my own. Ow!” Each ‘ow’ of pain was the punctuation as Ruth tried to drag her daughter out of the hanger. “Quit it, Ma. My arm already hurts and you aren’t helping.”

Stone stepped up to Jay. He put
his hand on her tail spike and pushed it to the side. The drasco did not fight him. He grabbed her head and pushed it away from Peebee. Jay allowed herself to be pushed away letting her sister up off the deck. Without seeming to look Jay grabbed Oliver in mid-race and cuddled the dog to her chest.

Peebee rolled from her back to her stomach
flattening herself to the deck and crept forward toward Melanie. Both James and Maggot kept their guns pointed at Peebee as they backed away. Peebee had a mangled saddle twisted around her back with a cinch wrapped under her front legs.

Stone said
, “Everyone relax-”

“What do you mean relax!? That creature tried to kill my baby
,” Ruth shrieked.

“No she didn’t
,” Melanie shouted. “It was my fault.”

Peebee slid closer to Melanie. She raised her head and blew air on Melanie’s arm. She gently took Melanie’s elbow in her mouth.

James stiffened took a step forward and slid his finger onto the trigger of his carbine.

Stone stepped between his uncle and Peebee. “Please, Uncle Ji-”

“Please nothing. Get out of my way,” James pushed Stone. “That thing is eating my daughter.”

“No
, Uncle Jim,” Stone shouted and pushed back, “that is the way drascos heal a hurt. They hold it in their mouths until the pain goes away. Please?”

“Don’t hurt Peebee
,” Melanie pleaded. “It was my fault. She let me saddle her and we were riding around. Look, the leather held up and she doesn’t mind. I just turned to shoo Oliver away and my foot slipped out of the stirrup and I fell to the deck. She didn’t hurt me.”

“What about Jay?
” Stone asked. “What was she angry about?”

Melanie shrugged and then winced at the pain in her arm. “I don’t know. I think they thought they were babysitting me instead of the other way around and Jay just got mad
because Peebee let me get hurt.”

Stone
turned to Commander Wright. “Please Commander, I know that you are not a people doctor, but can you help with Melanie?”

“Of cours
e-”

“Get out of my way everybody
,” Brenda interrupted as she rushed into the hanger. “I have the medkit and scanner.” She placed a palm on Peebee’s head and pushed it away from Melanie’s arm. She ran a scanner across the younger girl’s elbow. While the scanner was reading she looked around the room frowning at her father and Maggot. “Just like boys. Melanie is hurt and you think with your guns. If you weren’t my dad and if you weren’t a guest I would call you both idiots.”

Brenda looked at the scanner. “Shattered elbow…again. Sis, isn’t this the same elbow you broke last year trying to slide down the transfer shoot in the cargo loft?”

Melanie nodded and grimaced. “Can you fix it?”

Brenda s
hook her head. “Nope, but I can help a bit.” She grabbed a medical pen from her kit and depressed the end against Melanie’s arm. She waited until Melanie’s face smoothed a bit and then jammed a second medical pen against the skin and depressed the plunger.

Brenda looked at Stone
, “No offense to…whichever one that is…but the pain killer in this pen will work on an internal broken bone better than animal spit. The second pen is a bone knitter. It should start to pack and draw the breaks back together.” She looked at her mother. “But Mom, Mel shattered this elbow before. It is going to take a real doctor to make sure the bones fit right or she might lose some mobility in her elbow. She needs better nanites than we carry on board.”

“Thank you, Bren
,” Ruth said. The relief was evident in her voice. “It is a good thing we are close to a station. Hey! We are too close to station to leave the bridge unattended.” She turned to race off, but Brenda stopped her.

“Don’t worry, Mom. We are on autopilot and Jim
bo is keeping an eye on things.”

James rolled his eyes. “J
im Junior isn’t on the cargo container section either?”

Brenda spat, “Ha! You don’t think you really raised us to run and hide did you?”

“Um, I know this is kind of self-serving, but can we use this as a medical emergency to cause a distraction at the docks?” Maggot asked.

Ruth nodded. “Oh, you can bet I am going to be raising a ruckus as soon as we clear hatches.
”

Jimbo’s voice came through communications. “We are ready to head into
a hanger. Unless someone else gets up here I am going to park the Ruby Rock all by myself.”

James and Ruth both blanched
. They spun about, racing out of the hanger and up the corridor.

Brenda said, “Hunh! Well, little
sis, what say you and I go wait out docking in the forward entry hallway. That way we can get you out the hatch and to a doctor mo-ricky-tic.”

“Whatever
,” Melanie grinned. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Stone grabbed Oliver from Jay. “Hey
cinco, take this thing with you.” He handed the dog to Brenda. He watched as Brenda called Melanie a dozen names she would not repeat with her parents in the room, but she cradled her younger sister gently.

Maggot
turned to Stone and Wright. “Okay, team. We need to get ourselves together and get down to the deck e hatchway.”

“You corral the girls, Mister Stone
,” Wright said. “I will try to see if Melanie got those containers filled with drasco food. I don’t have anything else I need to take with me. My old uniform is so torn it leaves me more out of uniform than this thing.” She turned and walked up the ramp to the pod.

Stone put Jay’s face in his hands and blew into her open mouth. He stared into one eye and then the other. He wrapped his arm around her neck and gave her a gentle squeeze. He
took Peebee’s face in his hands and repeated the process. He hoped they would understand he was not mad at either of them. While he held Peebee’s neck in a hug, Jay laid her head at Peebee’s feet and blew air across her sister’s toes.

Stone reached around and unbuckled the saddle from Peebee’s back. The und
erside was scored and scratched but it had held for a while. There were still a few straps and the reins still wrapped around Peebee’s shoulders, waist and neck. Stone reached up to remove them. Peebee wonked softly and backed up. The drasco’s hands patted at the straps and straightened them. She dropped the reins to the ground and shook her shoulders as if to seat the leather straps. Peebee wonked delightedly.

“You want to keep them? It is okay with me
,” Stone said. He turned to see Jay pick up some discarded leather straps and drop them over her head. They slid to the deck.

Stone looked around. Maggot was gone and Wright was still inside the pod.
He turned back to Jay. “You too?” He picked up a strap. He made a loop in each end. He slid the loops around her front legs and over her back. He tightened it and looped an extra piece around her neck.

“Looks like a harness
,” Wright said from the top of the ramp.

Stone shook his head
, “Looks like leather jewelry to me.”

“That gives me an idea
,” Wright said. “Melanie only needed two containers to get all of the drasco’s stuff loaded up. The red and blue balls are in the first container. Strange that you and I are the humans and we have no baggage whatsoever but your pet’s stuff takes two containers. Can you get both of these containers plus Jay and Peebee down to where we meet Maggot?”

Stone cleared his throat. “Um Commander Wright, did you forget you outrank me?”

Wright laughed and slapped her forehead. “That I did, Mister Stone. This is an order. Get these containers and your pets down to Echo Deck e hatchway. I will meet you there.”

“
Aye, aye, Commander.”

Stone walked up the ramp into the pod.
The containers were the standard model used by every ship in the Stone Freight Company. Their interior space was 2.5 meters long by 1.25 meters wide by 1.25 meters deep. Grandpa has said it was designed to lay a 4 by 8 sheet of plywood flat in the bottom. Stone was not sure why anything was called a “4 by 8” when it was 1.25 meters by 2.5 meters, but since he did not even know what plywood was he would not worry about it. He just made a mental note to look it up.

“Or rather
,” he said to himself with a chuckle, “another mental note.” Knowing this was not the first time the question had popped into his head. Suddenly, he wondered why the containers were not made with the same malleable metal they used on the interior of many ships. That way the containers could be conformed to whatever shape you needed. Once set to a shape it could be hardened at the touch of a button.

He shrugged. “
We probably don’t do it because it is a cost thing.” He rapped his knuckles against the side of the container. Like most containers they used, it was hard and made of air foam. They would take a lot of mishandling. You could bang them around and they would not even be scratched, but when torn down for recycling they melted away to practically nothing. They weighed next to nothing of themselves. Their weight was all along the bottom built into the hover mechanisms and the controls.

He popped open the
control panel cover and ran a cord from one to the other. He had once asked his dad why they still used cords when it would have been so easy to be wireless. His dad had explained that any cord would connect to any other container. If they were wireless, you would have to program each connection so your wireless signals did not send commands to containers everywhere within wavelength distance.

Stone hopped on top of the first container and guided it in a slide down the ramp.
The second container followed along the exact path the first had taken. He curbed the desire to see if he could reach top speed in the mostly empty hanger. He eased up next to Jay and Peebee in a hover. He stood up on the container scanning the hanger deck. There were no drasco piles.

Both Jay and Peebee
were not housebroken because there was nowhere to take them outside when you are in space. But they had gotten used to using Oliver’s little patch of grass in the hydroponics garden room near the galley on Alpha Deck.

“Okay,
girls. Follow along and behave yourselves and there is a piece of ooze when we get down to Echo.”

He was tempted to take the cargo chute and drop the three decks to
Echo, but he was not sure how the drascos would react to a null-gravity tube. He was sure they would follow him in if he said to follow, but he was not as confident that they would not panic when they lost all sense of up or down. He chose to use the freight elevators at the end of the corridor.

Even if he had
not been wandering the Ruby Rock for the past week he would not have had any trouble finding Echo Deck hatch. It was where they always put them on this model of freighters, right between Delta Deck and Foxtrot Deck. He eased to a stop in the open cargo area. No one else was there so he took a piece of ooze from his pocket and cut two large chunks off for the drascos.

Like normal
, Peebee chewed hers into mush and swallowed it rapidly. She lay down and fell asleep. Jay, like normal, held her chunk in her hands and sucked on it until it melted away. She dropped on top of Peebee and fell asleep. Stone stretched out on top of the container. He stared at the ceiling and waited.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Get on your feet, Mister.”

The gruff voice startled Stone. He twisted sideways and slid to attention next to the container.

“Oh man. You should see your face
,” Jimbo laughed. His cousin was guiding a handcart and leading Commander Wright.

“You just startled me is all.”

“Taking a nap, Mister Stone?” Wright asked.

“No
, just resting my eyes, Commander,” Stone replied.

Jimbo laughed
, “And the snoring is just the way you clear your throat as you rest your eyes?”

“I don’t snore
,” Stone retorted.

Jimbo wiped the laugh tears from his eyes. “How do you know you don’t snore,
couz? You’re never awake to find out.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mister Stone
,” Wright said coming to his rescue. “It was a good time to take a nap. It took me a bit longer to get this stuff together than I thought it would but young James came to my aid.”

“What have you go
t, Commander?” Stone asked.

“Presents for
your drascos,” Wright replied with a grin.

Jimbo started laughing again. “Wait until you see what the Commander and I made,
Trey. You are gonna love this stuff.” He began pulling pieces of metal and leather straps from his hand cart. He tossed a piece to Stone.

Stone missed the catch and the metal piece clanged to the deck. Stone picked it up. It must have weighted thirty pounds.
It was polished chrome over steel with an inlaid red flame design across the front. It had a long black strap decorated with spikes and polished metal barbs spaced along the strap with a huge red metal buckle.

“That is a breastplate for Peebee
,” Wright said.

“A what
? Um Commander, sorry,” Stone said.

“Never mind the rank. We have been through enough together…” She stopped when she saw Stone shaking his head.

“No sir. We have been through a lot. And we are friends or at least I hope we are but we can’t forget the rank. We are navy and as long as we are navy our ranks matter.”

“I stand corrected, Mister Stone. That thing you are holding is a breastplate. Strap it around Peebee’s shoulders so the metal part goes over her chest.”

“Aye, aye, Commander.” Both of the drascos were sitting up and awake. They seemed to be oblivious to the humans until Stone stepped up to Peebee and held up the shiny metal plate against Peebee’s chest.

Both drascos wonked excitedly as Stone strapped it on. Peebee shrugged her shoulders. It was apparent the weight was
not a factor. She seemed to like the way it flashed in the overhead lights.

“It flops a bit at the bottom.
, Wright said. “We really don’t want it banging around.”

“I got it covered
,” Jimbo said. He pulled out another strap. He directed Stone to clamp it to the bottom of the plate and then loop around Peebee’s front legs.

Wright pulled a second breastplate from the hand cart. This one was cut in the same shape but instead of
red flames it was covered in blue filigree with a blue buckle. She held it up to Jay’s chest.

Jay backed up and started to hiss.

“Stop it, Jay,” Stone said. He took the breastplate from Wright. “If Jay doesn’t want to wear it, that is fine.”

Jay marched up to Stone and stood in front of him.

“It looks like she wants it,” Wright said. “I think she just wants you to give it to her. Don’t worry, Mister Stone. I won’t take it personally.”

Jimbo and Wright continued to pull straps and bits of metal from the hand cart, explaining what each item was and where to strap it on.
In addition to the breastplate each drasco was outfitted with matching shoulder guards, shin plates for their front legs, face shields, wrist bracelets extending up their arms to their first elbow just below the arm flap knuckle, and a chromed tail spike cap. Stone pulled off the mismatched leather straps from Melanie’s old saddle, but the drascos were so enamored with their new jewelry they did not notice.

The drascos were prancing about showing each other bits of odd metal and various spikes that caught their attention.

“I didn’t sleep for that long. How did you do this that quickly?” Stone asked.

Jimbo snorted
, “Mom got onto an arts and crafts kick a few years back. She put together a whole room full of machines and fabricators to do all sorts of spangley stuff. It was just a matter of punching the right buttons and putting in the right raw material. Dani has a weird imagination about this stuff.”

Wright shrugged with a
self-conscious smile. “I used to read a lot as a kid. I read of lot of wizards and dragons kind of stuff. I-”

“Holy cats!” Maggot interrupted. He had come up on them unseen
while they were busy watching the drascos. He backed away slightly when Jay trotted up to him. “These things are scary enough. You made them look like something out of my worst nightmares.” He looked as if he was torn between pulling his pistol and running headlong from the room.

“Steady, Maggot
,” Stone said. “Jay is just trying to show you her new pretties. They may not be very mean but they sure look the part.”

“I should guess so
,” Maggot said. “I was worried about someone spotting you two, but with Jay and Peebee looking like this there isn’t a chance anyone is going to be looking at anything else.”

Ruth’s voice filtered down from a speaker high overhead. “You folks ready? James says we have two minutes to hatch opening. Junior, you make sure they are clear in th
e corridor before you shut that hatch, hear?”

“Got it, Ma.”

“Okay, everyone stay close,” Maggot said.

Stone reached out and grabbed his cousin by the shoulders. He
pulled him and hugged Jimbo close for a while. Neither boy said a word. Stone turned and grabbed the controller to the containers.

“I am ready, Commander Wright. Agent Storovitch, at your command.”

Jimbo pulled out his p.a. and broadcast a video of the main hatch. Everyone could see Ruth, Brenda and Melanie waiting there. Melanie was bandaged from neck to waist, her arm in a pressure cast held straight out from her body. Her face was streaked with tear tracks, her hair was greasy and flopped about in every direction. She looked like a victim of a serious industrial accident, never-the-less she was laughing at something Brenda said.

It was only seconds
, but it seemed like an eternity until the hatch slid open. The massive freight hatch made it appear the whole bulkhead was moving to the side. The matching hatch to the station corridor opened at the same time. The corridor was wide enough to handle a huge volume of freight traveling in both directions. It looked empty.

There were squeals of pain, crying and moaning, overlaid with calls for help. Everyone’s eyes looked at the video hologram of Ruth and Brenda guiding Melanie into the
personnel corridor on Bravo Deck. All three women were shouting and yelling at the few people within sight. They were causing such a ruckus that all activity on the business corridor halted to watch them pass by.

Jimbo grinned. “That’s my family.
They may not be great actors, but they are loud.” He stepped into the freight corridor and looked both ways. He spread his arms wide and waved them about. “We are in the middle of third watch. So unless some freighter captain is in a rush to meet a deadline I doubt if anybody is moving cargo at this time of the day. Everyone awake must be watching the show upstairs. Best get a move on, ya’ll. You’ve got a ways to go without getting caught so be careful.”

“What about security cameras?” Wright asked.

Maggot held up a small device. “Video camera jammer; it really just freezes a frame. It is all we need in an empty corridor like this.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Wright asked.

“Not for agents of the Emperor with a writ to serve,” Maggot replied. “And I have that writ.”

Stone followed Wright and
Maggot into the corridor. He tried to work the container controls and herd his drascos at the same time, but he kept bumping into one or the other of the drascos with the containers. The huge containers banging into Jay and Peebee did not seem to bother them. It just made it difficult to keep moving in a straight direction.

Stone
switched to using the second container’s controller. He jumped up on the top of the container sitting on the front edge. Jay and Peebee pranced around the containers. Stone had to work to keep them from running between the two containers and snagging the connector cord. It was hard to keep them from racing ahead or running off some side corridor.

Finally he called to Peebee. He slapped the top of the container he was sitting on. “Up here,
girl. Jump up, Peebee. Come here, jump up here.”

It took a while
, but Peebee leaped up on top of the container, her feet scrabbling across the smooth top. Her claws did not find anything to grip so she slid across and off the other side crashing to the deck. The hover mechanism kept the container stable without even a slight dip at the weight changes. They continued to move at the brisk walking pace set by Maggot and Wright.

Peebee
wonked excitedly; she leapt completely over the container and landed softly on the deck.

“No
,” Stone said patiently. “Up here.” He kept slapping the top of the container. “Here. Jump here.”

Peebee wonked
again and made a leap almost straight up. She came down on the top of the container. Her slight sideways momentum started a slide. She sat down with a plunk and stuck. She covered most of the top of the container spread out with her feet splayed apart. The drasco had a look of triumph on her face.

Stone reached back with his free hand and wrapped an arm around Peebee’s neck. He gave her a squeeze and blew his breath across her face. He inched the second container closer to the first. He reached across and patted the
other container top.

“Jay
, let’s see if you can do what your sister did. Up. Come on, Jay. Jump up.” He slapped the top of the first container for emphasis.

Jay
did not leap. She walked along the first container for a few steps. She turned sideways and walked along beside it. Her double-jointed knees allowed her to walk forward while her body twisted sideways. She placed both hands on top of the container, rose up on her hind legs and while still shuffling forward put her front feet on the container top. With a push from her haunches she slid on top of the container, splayed out.

Peebee wonked in encouragement.

Jay slid around to face their direction of travel. She sat up with her tail trailing down between the two containers.

Stone eased the second container back so he
would not be slapped by an inadvertent twitch of her tail. He was sure their tails shot over their heads as weapons when they were angry, but he was not sure how much control they had over them. The rough hide made any slap by a drasco tail painful. Their spike was bone hard and sharp. The flashing chromed spike cover tied on with black leather straps studded with silver spikes made their tails look deadly.

Jay
turned her head so she was facing backwards with her body facing forward. She wonked happily as the corridor slid past them. She balanced carefully and stood up on her hind legs. She stretched her neck upward not even coming close to the high ceiling. She flapped her arms about and wonked loudly.

Wright finally interrupted her conversation with
Maggot long enough to glance behind her. She came to a dead stop when she saw both drascos on top of the containers. Peebee was sitting regally as if she were surveying her domain. Jay was standing and wonking loudly.

“So much for not drawing attention to ourselves
,” Maggot said. “I guess you four can’t go anywhere quietly, can you?”

Stone shrugged
, “Sorry, Maggot. I figure we stand a better chance of not getting noticed if we get where we are going a bit quicker, so if you both pardon the impertinence, git yer backsides up here and let’s get a move on.”

Maggot nodded. “Okay. I have never ridden a cargo container
, but what the heck. Move over, Jay and give me room.”

Jay dropped her head and hissed.

“Jay. No,” Stone said. “Sorry, Maggot. Well crap!” He glanced around. “There.” He pointed at a junction slightly ahead. He guided his containers around Wright and Maggot and sped toward the junction. He put the containers into a stable hover and jumped off.

Stone grabbed a freight cart. It was the same type of mover as his containers but it was configured in a flat arrangement without sides or a top. It was for moving casual freight around the station. There were a dozen such carts available with various freight company names sten
ciled on their base. He grabbed a cart stenciled ‘Tamvor Station’. He used the universal cord from the cart’s rear controller and hooked it to the front of Jay’s container. He then hopped back up on the rear container with Peebee.