Metal Boxes - Trapped Outside (29 page)

Dollish shouted, “We have another leaker. Shit! This stuff is mixing with the other stuff. Watch out, Ensign!” The spacer reared back and whacked the ammo belt with his long breaker bar. The acid splashed onto the bar, melting one end. The cook dropped the bar and ran to the far side of the compartment. He stopped and turned, planning on rushing back, whether to return to his duties or to drag Stone out of the way was unclear.

Stone waved him back, watching the dripping chemical, inert by itself, mix with the previous chemical to create the burning sludge. He edged to the side of the gunner seat, while continuing to squeeze the triggers.

Dollish shouted into his dataport. “Corporal Tuttle, help! Code Stupid! Ensign Stone is doing something stupid!”

Stone first heard Tuttle bellow from a nearby gun emplacement, then the sound of heavy suited boots slamming onto the floor at a run. He shook his head in defeat. His worry wasn’t about Tuttle, but the acid that might drip across his shoulders. He hadn’t been splashed by the first leaker and he didn’t want any of the second to get close to him.

With a grin, he pulled a strip of duct tape from his pocket. Wrapping it around the triggers, he jumped out of the way, narrowly escaping the acid splatter. The gun continued to fire. The ammo belt crawled forward inch-by-inch until it dropped ammo into the gun’s chamber hurling bulb after bulb of acid sludge into the Hyrocanian mothership. The leaking bulb splashed chemicals across the gunner’s chair, disappeared into the firing chamber, shot across the ever-shrinking space, and disappeared into the mothership.

He waved Tuttle away when she came running into the room, shouting. “Take Spacer Dollish with you. Get the hell out, now!” He reached forward and inched the gun’s targeting mechanism to the right.

He heard Numos’s voice from his dataport. “Excellent, Ensign Stone. Aim higher, if you can.”

Stone felt Tuttle wrap her uninjured arm around his waist. He leaned forward and slapped the gun’s traverse knob, raising the barrel to its upper reach, slamming the barrel to a stop against another metal shuttle frame. The gun continued to fire as Tuttle carried him from the room to the gun emplacement in the next compartment.

She dropped him beside the gun next to MCPO Thomas, who was blasting away at the mothership, firing long bursts of metal-jacketed inert hull-breaching shells. Stone looked over the man’s shoulder, but his targeting display didn’t give him a view of what his acid shells were hitting.

Tuttle grunted as she dropped another bin of shells into Thomas’s ammo feed chamber. Dollish grunted with effort as he picked up one loose shell that had missed the feed chamber. He tossed it in with the rest of them, trusting the gun to sort and straighten the shells on their way to the breech.

Since Tuttle and Dollish weren’t paying attention to him any more, he rushed back to his acid sludge gun. Dripping acid was eating through everything in the compartment. He smelled melting metal and heard Tuttle shouting at him from behind. Leaping across the room, he yanked the duct tape away from the triggers, allowing the gun to fall silent. Before Tuttle could grab him again, he slammed his hand onto a huge mushroom shaped button on the gun’s console. He heard a hissing and smelled, more than saw, streams of foam bury everything in the chamber with white, breath-choking goop.

THIRTY-NINE

Without any effort on his part, Stone was yanked out of the gun chamber. Tuttle dropped him unceremoniously on the deck before rushing back to feed Thomas’s gun. Dollish slammed the hatch between the compartments closed. Stone coughed and wheezed, clearing his lungs from the chemical stench. Even through that odor, he smelled peppermint oozing from Dollish, his loyalty and friendship clear.

Stone spoke into his dataport, “Major Numos. Ensign Stone reports his gun emplacement is out of commission and non-functional. Spacer Dollish is going to lend a hand to Master Chief Thomas.”

Numos said, “I’m getting reports Jay and Peebee are about ready to tear the door off the compartment we have them in. You’d best go check on them.” Everyone’s dataport loudly broadcast his next command. “All guns cease fire. We can’t kill this big bitch with the guns we have. We just can’t shoot deep enough. Prepare for boarding: search and destroy engines and command consoles.”

Stone said, “Dollish. Master Chief Thomas’s leg is still injured from trying to help Lieutenant Commander Butcher get to the safety of the canyon. Please help him get to the command center. Tuttle, please come with me.” Not waiting for anyone to respond, he raced out of the room, running down the corridor toward the room where Jay and Peebee were located. He shouted at them until he could hear them answer.

“
Mama
,” Jay called. He could hear her clearly in his head.

“Take it easy, girls. I’m all right, I’m coming to you now.”

Peebee hissed, “
Bad non-human and non-us. They want to hurt Mama.
”

Jay wonked, “
Hurt them first. We hurt them worse. Like last time.
”

Peebee shouted. “
We were babies last time. We hurt them more now. They want to eat our babies.
”

Stone shouted as he turned a corner, “That’s enough, you two.” He yanked the hatch open and was knocked to the deck by Jay as she ran from the room. Long gone were the days when his drascos could fit through a door at the same time. They could barely squeeze through this hatch one at a time. Peebee followed Jay into the corridor. Both were shouting so loud he couldn’t make out what either of them said as they danced around in the corridor, anxious and excited. Stone had once been introduced to a small dog called a Chihuahua that acted exactly the same way when asked if it wanted to go for a walk.

He glanced up at Tuttle and struggled to his feet. “Stupid or not, I can’t just stand here.”

“I didn’t think so.” She replied with a smile and pointed at Dollish as the spacer raced up to them. He carried a load of weapons, dragging one behind him, followed closely by Agent Ryte. Handing Stone his TDO-960A rifle, he pushed the long handle of what looked like a homemade battle-axe toward Tuttle. The weapon was so heavy the spacer couldn’t even lift the axe head. Tuttle picked it up and swung it one-handed with ease, testing the blade by sinking it inches deep into the bulkhead. Dollish held what looked like a large serrated-edge machete and a crab shell as a shield. The giant knife was crude as if fashioned by a combat suit’s cutting torch function and hammered into submission with a gloved fist. Agent Ryte’s outfit was slinky gray blending in with the decks and bulkheads around them, leaving little to Stone’s imagination about the well-formed body underneath. She checked her pistol’s chamber as Dollish openly gawked.

Stone asked, “Spacer Dollish. Did you get Master Chief Thomas to the command center?”

Dollish shook his head. “Master Chief said he was fine where he was and I was to follow you.”

Stone said, “But—”

“But nothing, Ensign, sir,” Dollish interrupted. “I’ve been around long enough to know I’ll disobey an ensign junior grade long before I don’t listen to a master chief, sir.”

Stone hefted his rifle and said, “Stupid or not, I’m going across to the Hyrocanian ship and do what I can to help stop them.”

Dollish said, “I know, sir. Where you go, I go.” Ryte nodded in agreement.

Jay and Peebee’s bone spiked tails beat a tattoo on the metal deck in anticipation. Unheard by anyone except Stone, Jay said, “
Peebee and I have trained with marines since we were babies. We fight for real now, like last time, Mama. We hurt the bad ones.
”

Tuttle said, “Sir, I suggest we stay behind the marines, we can provide mop up duty.” Stone turned to go, but she stopped him. “One last thing, Ensign Stone. If anyone asks, especially Lieutenant Vedrian, this whole thing was your idea.”

Stone grinned, “On my orders. Let’s go see if we can cause some havoc.” He raced up two ladders, followed closely by what looked like the strangest assault force in history. A young, wet-behind-the-ears ensign was leading a pot washer no older than himself, a large marine in damaged armor missing a hand, an EMIS agent, and two excited but angry drascos.

Reaching the uppermost deck, he ran up a ramp, through a dilating hatch and popped onto the surface of the shuttle. It felt weird to be on the hull of a ship in space without any suit. Tuttle was fully wrapped in her combat suit, faceplate down and sealed, but he, Dollish, Ryte, and his girls didn’t have any protective armor. Hyrocanian technology, stolen or not, provided them with gravity on the surface and a thin layer of atmosphere. Though Stone felt like he was upright, the giant Hyrocanian mothership hung over his head like a ceiling.

Glancing up, Stone thought he could almost reach up and touch the mothership. Butcher was aiming the pyramid point of their shuttle at the hole he had made with the acid sludge. He could see the edges of the gaping hole and into the shuttle hangar beyond. He glanced up and saw a gash on the hatch in line with Major Numos’s order for him to aim higher. Suddenly, the hatch door imploded along the gash. Involuntarily, he ducked. The hatch didn’t blow out as he expected. It imploded, curling in on itself.

Stone saw marines already deploying on the mothership’s hull, leaping backward away from their breaching charges. As quickly as the hatch blew, the marines slapped down on the hull and jumped back, diving into the hole. He recognized Sergeant Li by his suit’s dents and scratches. The man vaulted into the mothership with unrestrained enthusiasm, ready for some payback. Privates al-Julier and January followed him. The trio threw hand cut stars, knives, and discs using suit enhanced muscles, the metal weapons flashing in the light as they zipped toward unseen targets. A dozen marines followed them into the gap, some expending what ammo they had left, others throwing everything from rocks to grenades.

Lieutenant Hammermill stood on the shuttle’s surface with the remaining suited marines. Every man and woman was prepared to leap onto the mothership. Their suits were closed and faceplates down. At some unheard command from Hammermill, Sergeant Janson and a dozen marines leapt up, the gravity of the shuttle’s surface letting them go. They spun around orienting themselves in the ever closing gap between the shuttle and the mothership before dropping into the shuttle bay. They crashed into a knot of combat suited Hyrocanians who were threatening to overwhelm Sergeant Li’s team. Some of Janson’s marines were close enough to the four-armed freaks their stronger suits enabled them to rip weapons away from their enemy, turning them on their previous owners. Others used their cutting torch function to gut the enemy’s suits and the Hyrocanians inside. Still others simply used their more powerful suits to rip the enemy into pieces.

Tuttle bellowed a war cry, swinging her battle-axe over her head. She stood waiting near Stone, although the shuttle was close enough for her to jump across the distance. Jay and Peebee screeched. They were hunched down on the hull, their legs dancing in anticipation and their tails over their heads, with their bone spikes quivering, waiting to strike. Stone bunched his legs preparing to vault into the approaching gap. Ryte put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

She said, “Not yet, Governor.” Jutting a finger toward the edge of their atmosphere, she pointed, showing him that the thin atmospheric layers between the shuttle and the mothership hadn’t connected yet. The air was visible only because two of Allie’s World’s three moons washed the whole area with their pale light, flecks of trapped dust twinkled in the thin air. As they watched, a small bubble of atmosphere bulged from the open hangar hatch. It silently popped and settled into a smooth layer, still too far away for unsuited humans to jump. Stone was sure he could jump far enough, but there was that annoying lack of air in the vacuum between the two ships.

Hammermill waved his arms at the remaining suited marines around him and pointed at the mothership. A full company of two hundred and fifty suited Hyrocanians popped up on the hull. They weren’t using dilating hatches, but pouring through openings as hatches were thrown open. Stone wondered about the different technologies. If the Hyrocanians stole their tech, they might have a wild hodgepodge of systems.

Lieutenant Hammermill almost jumped, but stopped and stooped low to the shuttle’s hull. Marines around him followed suit. Tuttle, enclosed in her suit, broadcast through her speakers, “Duck!” She knocked Stone down and held him flat with one arm, the damaged one. He could only wiggle and not enough to break free. Everyone around them hunched down as low as they could get.

Stone could feel a vibration through the hull and heard a noise that sounded like a dozen Velcro closures being ripped open at the same time. A stream of bullets passed over their heads, digging a tunnel through the twinkling dust in the atmosphere. The bullets slammed into the company of suited Hyrocanians, shredding them like a block of cheddar dropped into a power grinder, splattering pieces in all directions. Secondary explosions blew gaps in their number as the shells impacted something critical. Undeterred by striking such delicate targets, the full metal-jacketed hull-breaching projectiles did exactly as the Hyrocanians originally planned. They continued on through the hull, although Stone doubted the Hyrocanians planned on their own ammunition being used against their own ship.

A whine reverberated through the metal hull as the gun ran dry. Tuttle said, as she lifted Stone to his feet, “Master Chief Thomas has emptied his gun.”

Stone glanced around him. Dozens of unsuited men and women were gathering around him. They each held some sort of homemade weapon, some held nothing more than a length of heavy metal pipe. Most were uninjured, but here and there were a few walking wounded, grim determination on their faces. More and more people were gathering behind him waiting for the atmosphere gaps to close.

Major Numos and Lieutenant Vedrian popped up on the surface through a dilating hatch. Both still had ammunition for their sidearms. Numos was uninjured and Allie stood without help despite her damaged back. One look at her face was enough for anyone who knew better to not ask whether she should be here or not. The black bandage across her eye made her look like an angry pirate.

Numos said, “Butcher is at the controls. He sends his regrets, Governor, his injuries will not allow him to join us, but he promises to jam this shuttle so far up the Hyrocanians ass they’ll taste shuttle when they floss.

Without a command, Hammermill vaulted across the space, landing feet first on the mothership’s hull. The remaining suited marines followed him. Instead of jumping into the gaping shuttle bay hatch, they landed in the middle of what remained of the Hyrocanians on the hull. Even though Hammermill’s team and the Hyrocanians were almost equal in number, the fight was short. Some Hyrocanians were simply picked up and thrown into space. A scant few of the four-armed freaks landed on the surface of the shuttle and were dispatched by the gathering crowd.

Stone grunted as the point of their pyramid slipped into the shuttle hangar. With the hangar hatches gone, the shuttle fit inside the bay easily. The atmospheres merged with a sizzle and Stone’s ears popped as the pressures equalized. The gravities fought against each other until the shuttle’s gravity relented; releasing everyone from its grip. The shuttle engines continued to shove it deeper into the hangar.

The hangar deck was only a dozen feet below Stone as he fell. He tried to turn while falling so he would land on his feet, but he wasn’t as acrobatic as he hoped and landed on his butt. People fell from the shuttle surface landing in disarray onto the hangar deck. Most had been on a section of the shuttle that was now reoriented as the bottom of their pyramid sliding along just above the deck. Personnel on the other shuttle sections would have a long way to fall. Most were ducking back into the shuttle, racing along a corridor to emerge along the bottom and drop to the hangar deck near Stone. Others slid along the slope and dropped off the shuttle’s edge.

Stone’s first thought was Allie. Even a short drop could hurt her, but Tuttle had grabbed Allie and jumped with her to the deck. He rolled to his feet, catching sight of his drascos, “Jay and Peebee, come with me, girls. Come on.”

Both drascos made the short drop with their usual catlike grace. Peebee’s hurt leg must have taken a jolt as she was limping more than before. They raced to Stone’s side, staying low. The shuttle was barely over their heads, and standing up, both drascos would have been able to touch the shuttle as it slid overhead.

Jay said, “
Now, Mama? Bad ones that way.
” Jay gestured with her arm, the vestigial wing snapping in excitement.

Stone could smell a thick odor of rancid grease with overtones of cinnamon. The odor of rancid grease smelled like hostility while the cinnamon odor told his brain there was danger near. He wasn’t sure what a Hyrocanian should smell like, but the indication was as good as any. He pointed in the direction Jay indicated.