Metal Boxes (45 page)

He switched to low light vision hoping the weak beam from the headlamp would give him something to see. He switched to thermal imaging just as Jay began hissing and screeching behind him. The thermal view showed there were a lot of bodies out there. The smaller ones were showing very high heat signatures. The larger ones were hardly visible.
Neither the large ones nor the small ones were human unless humans had grown an extra set of arms in the week he had been gone. He couldn’t be certain, but the silhouettes of the smaller ones matched the silhouettes of the Hyrocanians he had seen in intelligence briefings.

Stone hit the view-shield covers. The metal plates slammed shut. He
set his vision controls to automatic. It would cycle through the various protocols until it found the best possible sight picture for human parameters.

Jay’s screeching became almost frantic.

He turned around. She was facing the back hatch ramp. Normally, Jay tried puffing herself up to look bigger, but this time she was hunkered low to the deck. Her tail was arched over her head. The chromed, steel tip of her tail spike hovered along the hatch seal.

Peebee rushed past him to match her sister’s stance.
She squeezed to Jay’s left. Her tail spike stretched over her head and she began tapping harder and harder against the steel hatch. Jay’s tail spike began to beat a matching tattoo. Both drascos were beating at the door, faster and faster, harder and harder.

Stone felt like he was moving through waist deep liquid lead as he moved up to stand between Jay and Peebee. There was barely room
for the two drascos to stand shoulder to shoulder, but he wriggled in tight. He pulled his rifle from the shoulder holster and he ran his gauntleted hands over the smooth weapon. It did not lend him any comfort, as if it too knew what was coming and had no comfort to spare.

The rifle
was an old recycled TDO-960A, obsolete before the start of the Alarii Wars. Allie had stripped it bare, cleaned every part and declared it usable. Stone had never imagined having to use it. He had chosen this weapon because it had a much larger ammunition capacity than any other hand held weapon on board. It would fire on full automatic without jamming or melting down. He knew he could not hit anything he deliberately targeted, so he wanted something to spray a lot of slugs and hope he might hit something if he did have to shoot. It certainly looked as if he was going to get the chance to try.

Contact with the enemy
started slowly. His suit registered the atmospheric pressure change first. The cabin pressure was rising as if air was leaking in. Then, he could see a small crack of light in the upper corner of the hatch. It stretched out and grew brighter. A rush of air whistled as the pressure between the shuttle pod and the hanger tried to equalize. Stone was sure the Hyrocanians breathed a comparable oxygen mix. They would not have attacked and tried to take over human colonies if they had not had close to the same physiology, with the same needs for oxygen, water and gravity.

Stone would be protected whether they were compatible or not, but the drascos were
not encased in combat suits designed to handle vacuum. They were tough creatures, but they still needed something to breathe.

A hook slid into the crack. It clamped tight against the hatch and the frame. Jay’s tail spike jabbed at the light. It connected with the hook, shattering the chrome cover on the steel tip, but it snapped the hook off cleanly. She bellowed. It was a noise Stone had only heard once before
, in a clearing on Allie’s World when the huge male drasco ripped through the trees in anger.

Stone shrugged to himself
; no one would have seen it inside the suit. He reached forward with the butt of his gun and slammed it against the emergency hatch release. A series of explosions ripped along the hatch frame, misfiring wherever the Hyrocanians had breached the seal. The explosions were followed by a secondary explosion that blew the hatch free at the top and sides.

Stone grinned. The three metric ton hatch had slammed down to become a ramp, mercilessly crushing whatever or whoever
was trying to peel it open. Along the edge of the ramp he could see mashed body parts, wiggling body parts, and parts that had become independent of their original owners.

A cluster of Hyrocanians were gathered at the foot of the ramp
holding ropes and nets, obviously intent of taking anyone in the shuttle alive. Melendez had shown him enough video footage for Stone to know that being taken alive was not the preferable course of action.

The Hyrocanians were vaguely humanoid. They had eyes
, ears, a nose and a mouth all in the right places, except the eyes were too small, the ears were hinged, the nose was too big and the mouth was jammed full with four sets of teeth. The upper and lower sets chewed horizontally and the side sets chewed vertically. Their bodies were, as far as Stone could tell, completely hairless and they were covered in slick oil that oozed from their pasty skin.

It was hard to tell the size of the Hyrocanians in combat armor, but the rest were naked
to the waist and no more than a foot taller or shorter than Stone. But they all massed much more than he did. Most of their bulk appeared to be roll upon roll of fat. He could not tell whether they were male or female.

Stone shook his head and said out loud. “No thank you
, I don’t want to know if you are male or female.”

The most noticeable difference
between them was that the Hyrocanians had four arms. The second set grew out of the same shoulder socket as the first set. The first set of arms was jointed to grab forward just like humans, but the second set was hinged to grab behind.

The small cluster of Hyrocanians at the foot of the ramp must have been all that was left of the plan to take Stone alive. There was a second group forming a semi-circle behind the first group. The second group was encased in the Hyrocanian version of combat armor
and was armed with hand-to-hand and shoulder fired weapons. Either they were under orders to take Stone alive or the first group was in their way. Whatever the reason, they did not immediately bring their guns to bear.

Without waiting for an invitation, Stone squeezed the trigger on the TDO-960A.
He sprayed the armored group with the blood of the unarmored Hyrocanians. Where he missed flesh the bullets spanged off the Hyrocanian armor, ricocheting across the hanger.

Jay and Peebee screeched challenges and roared in anger, but stood their ground beside Stone. A couple of armored Hyrocanian
s, oblivious to Stone’s hail of bullets, reached down and picked up blood splattered ropes and nets from the pile of bodies at their feet and began to moving slowly up the ramp.

Stone took his finger off the trigger.
The bullets were not having any affect on the Hyrocanian armor.

A three fingered han
d grasped the side of the hatchway. A half naked Hyrocanian levered itself onto the ramp with surprising agility for a body covered in rolling fat. Peebee’s tail spike shot forward like a pike and speared the creature through an arm. Blood spurted startling the young drasco. She screeched and whipped her tail back and forth trying to shake the Hyrocanian loose.

Jay stretched her neck across Stone and clamped her jaws on a flailing Hyrocanian
wrist. She yanked up and backward trying to free her sister. Peebee twisted her tail to the side. Pulling in opposite directions didn’t dislodge the Hyrocanian; instead it hung across the opening, stretched out as it dangled with its feet off the deck.

Stone put the sole of a boot in the middle of the Hyrocanian
and pushed with the enhanced power of the combat suit. The greasy, fat creature flew backwards crashing into the two armored Hyrocanians moving slowly up the ramp.

Jay spit out the Hyrocanian hand and bellowed a challenge. She leapt forward, slamming between two suits sending them
smashing into other suited figures. She landed with all four feet on the chest of a third armored figure.

Stone recognized the move. It was a tackling move Jay employed when playing against suited
marines and navy when she was trying to recover her ball. The suits might be strong, but the angry drasco shoved the Hyrocanian to the deck. She stomped. Hard.

Peebee still had a Hyrocanian arm dangling from her tail spike. She bellowed in
rage. She charged after her sister, but instead of leaping, she whipped her tail. It connected hip high on a suit sending the creature careening into another suited figure and they crashed to the deck. She grabbed a suit encased Hyrocanian with her arms, held it over her body and shook.

No matter how protected a suit was, they were not equipped with inertial dampeners. The creature inside the armor rattled back and forth
. In very short order, it quit flailing about.

Peebee tossed it aside and grabbed another.

Two suited figures got between the drascos and trudged up the ramp, moving side by side, stretching a net between them. Stone swung a clenched fist. He connected with the side of a Hyrocanian helmet, but the creature grabbed his arm, trying to wrap him in netting. Stone did not want to fire with Jay and Peebee so close, but he was out of options. He put the muzzle against the chest of the Hyrocanian suit and pulled the trigger. The slugs bounced back, caromed off Stone’s suit and ricocheted off into the distance.

Stone saw Jay still standing on a suited
figure, drive her tail like a jackhammer against the armor of a Hyrocanian trying to grapple with her. The spike was slamming hard enough to keep the thing away from her, but not hard enough to pierce the armor. The spike skidded and slid upward, then Jay jabbed her tail spike through the face shield, shattering the visor. She yanked it free with a screech that was either metal and bone on glass or a dying Hyrocanian.

Stone
dropped the rifle and felt it snap back into the shoulder holster. He twisted the band around the suit’s left forearm triggering the cutting torch function. He jammed the blue hot flame against a Hyrocanian face plate. He could see the Hyrocanian face behind the visor. The little eyes grew larger as Stone melted a small hole shattering the visor and sizzling into the face behind it. He turned to the second Hyrocanian, lengthened the flame and burned it’s visor.

Stone
snapped off the torch and unholstered his rifle again. He glanced upward at the ceiling and said, “Crap! Well, at least it ain’t outside.” He advanced slowly down the shuttle ramp.

Two of the suited things had finally grabbed Jay and were working to tie her hands. One of them looked up in time to catch a small
burst of bullets from Stone through the visor.

Jay threw the remaining Hyrocanian to the deck and impaled it
, shattering the faceplate.

The enemy broke and ran. Stone fired at their retreating backs
. He knew it was useless, but it felt good.

A second set of suited figures
raced toward them across the hanger deck.

“Crap!” Stone shouted. “These guys look like they don’t mean to take us alive. Stay close,
girls.” He dropped to one knee, hoping to steady his aim. Peebee shot past him before he could squeeze the trigger. “No, Peebee. Get back!” He was not much of a combat veteran, but he knew if they separated they would be cut down one at a time.

Peebee raced past the first
of the advancing figures and leaped at an armored suit. She hit it with such force it was knocked off its feet. She landed on its chest and whipped her head down. If Stone had not known better he thought it looked like she was trying to eat the creature’s face.

Stone shifted his aim and almost squeezed the trigger when he heard a voice.

“Peebee! Get off me.”

“Hammer?” Stone shouted. He realized th
en that these suits only had one set of arms. “Marines!”

“O
ooyah!” a dozen voices roared back.

“So much for radio silence, you mutts
,” Allie shouted, her voice echoing across comms. “Hammer, get off your can, quit playing with Peebee. Grab your packages and let’s get out of Dodge.” She spun and ran toward the closed hanger hatch.

There were a dozen voices laughing as they grabbed their crotches, shouting back. “I got my package, Lu.”

Stone was not sure what a dodge looked like, but if it bore any resemblance to the inside of a Hyrocanian spacecraft hanger he as all for getting out. He also wasn’t sure who Lu was, but if she was leading the way out, then he was going to follow.

Two
marines grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him away from the shuttle and half carried him toward the hanger hatch. They dropped him next to Allie. She looked at him through a clear visor. She did not smile, but she winked.

Stone
saw two other marines tossing what looked like backpacks into the shuttle.

Four
other marines laid strips of explosive cord in a wide loop on the hanger door. Allie held a remote detonator in her hand, her finger twitching over the button.

“Let’s go
, people. We are burning daylight here,” Allie said.

Stone shouted. “Don’t blow the doors! Jay and Peebee can’t breathe vacuum.”

“I can’t get ‘em in their boxes,” Hammermill spoke calmly.