Metal Boxes - Trapped Outside (6 page)

He would mention it to Butcher. Having the Vasco de Gama in stationary orbit above the planet would allow anyone to sneak in on the backside of the planet, even more so if that someone had found another navigation point into the solar system. Even if the navy was tasked with base overwatch, they still should be able to send some of their shuttles on survey orbits checking for the source of an unknown signal.

Stone sent a message back to Thomas asking him to follow up with Ryte for additional signal traces. He glanced up just as Numos strode into the room. The major grinned at Stone, not the least bit confused that the planetary governor had beat him to the table. Butcher’s hologram didn’t appear. The man himself followed the marine major into the room. He wasn’t grinning. His frown was a permanent feature, not even cracking as he greeted Thomas like an old friend. Numos and Butcher seated themselves on Stone’s left.

Stone hadn’t expected Butcher to drop to the planet. He preferred the man stay aboard his ship. Wanting the man to stay away was petty, Stone felt like Butcher watched his every move, trying to find fault in everything he did. Having MCPO Thomas babysitting him was bad enough, but having a lieutenant commander as a subordinate, watching his every misstep made him stumble more often than he would have if they’d left him alone.

He wished 1LT Vedrian was at his back. Allie was a marine, second in command of the marine forces, and she was still his girlfriend, even if they were unable to do anything about it. He was technically in command of Maj Numos and Allie reported to the major. Since they were in the same chain of command, they couldn’t have any relationship beyond casual friends. Anything else was against regulations. Having her close by was frustrating, yet not having her around was worse. He was sure she could suppress any gossip about a relationship between them, just as she stomped out jokes about being assigned to a planet named after her. However, as long as he was the planetary governor, Grandpa and Numos had been clear how any relationship between them was inappropriate. That was something else he held against the Emperor.

Numos didn’t care about Stone’s rank, but Butcher couldn’t look at Stone without seething. Whether the Emperor thought the situation was funny or he was making it a point that next time Stone discovered a habitable planet, he’d better not stick the Emperor with a paltry ten percent ownership, Stone was in charge, whether Butcher liked it or not.

Stone left the solar system image hovering over the table and copied everyone with his reply to PO3 Ryte’s signal find. He expanded the image until Allie’s World hovered in the air before him. He spun the planet on its equator, looking behind it. The continents were mapped enough for large rivers, lakes, and mountain ranges to be visible, but there weren’t any signs of roads or settlements. He didn’t expect there to be any changes since the last time he looked, as the planet’s image would only be updated by mapping orbits and there hadn’t been any in a while. There weren’t any indications of spacecraft in orbit around the planet, but there wouldn’t be with the Vasco de Gama using only line of sight scanning.

He glanced at the time. As usual, Mohamed ran on CPT. Civilian Personnel Time invariably meant the man and his assistant would be late. To be polite, he should signal them to see how much longer they would be and then wait patiently until they showed up. Stone wasn’t feeling particularly polite or patient. He hoped the man would be embarrassed when he finally deigned to show up and find the meeting started without him. He doubted it, Mohamed rarely showed any sense of embarrassment at the actions of the creatures around him, creatures he deemed less worthy than himself.

Stone cleared his throat and said, “Let’s get to it, shall we?”

A small chime sounded on Butcher’s comm. “Sorry. We are expecting the Iridium Rock any time now. I wanted to personally be here to help expedite their infusion into the planetary operation.” The man made it obvious he wanted to take a more military role, leaving the civilian ship the duty of supplying the planetary base. He listened into his earbud. “The Vasco de Gama has the Stone’s ship hyperspace transition wake and is receiving their signal.” He pointed at the Allie’s World image still hovering over the table. A small green caret popped into place near the even smaller blue caret marking the location of the Vasco de Gama. “They’re early. They—”

A screaming alarm interrupted Butcher. The ear-splitting wail was broadcasting from every speaker in the compound. Accompanying the nerve-jangling screech were three missile tracks curving from around the backside of the planet on the planetary image in front of them. From the track, it looked like they had been launched from the surface and were gaining in altitude with each passing nanosecond. The image marked the missile tracks in bright red, glowing brighter the closer they came.

Curving upward, boosting to hypersonic, two missiles slammed into the Vasco de Gama and the Iridium Rock. There were no massive explosions, bright flashes or rumbling of distant booms. Both ships simply disappeared from the hologram image. The third missile continued on an atmospheric track curving toward the base.

Stone pushed back from the conference table, tipping his chair over onto the floor. Thomas hit Menendez with a bone-crunching tackle, driving her to the hard deck. Numos ducked, grabbed the conference table, and heaved upwards. The table slammed into the wall completely covering the window. Numos gripped the bottom of the table with both hands and pressed his shoulder against the thick table base.

Stone and Butcher hit the table at the same time. Stone leaned his back against the table, bracing his feet against Thomas’s back. Butcher braced both hands against the table, pressing against it with flexed knees. Menendez struggled to get up from under Thomas, but the combined weight of the master chief and Stone’s pressing legs held her down.

Even through the plexiglass, conference table wood, and the prefab walls, Stone could hear a hissing and thumping. Everyone was shouting and commands blared out of all communications units and personal assistants in the room.

Without warning, Stone found himself flying across the room, smacking face first into the opposite wall. The top side of the heavy conference table slammed into his back, sandwiching him so hard he imagined he looked like mayonnaise oozing out between two pieces of bread, but it didn’t hurt. There was no noise or bright flash of an explosion. He didn’t even hear the table as gravity dragged it back to the floor, nor did he feel the slightest pain as the sandwich fell apart and he crashed down beside the table.

Stone rolled to his hands and knees. Rough hands grabbed him. Someone grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked his face upward. Numos pulled, brutally twisting his arms and legs. Stone wanted to object. He didn’t feel a thing and, although he could see Numos screaming at him, he couldn’t hear a thing.

Over Numos’s shoulder, Stone saw Thomas leap to his feet and yank Menendez up. He pointed at Butcher laying crumpled along the same wall near Stone and Numos. Menendez shook her head, waving empty hands at Thomas. The pair was shouted at each other, but Stone was deaf as a rock. The dust was thick and he thought he could read Thomas’s lips as the man shouted something about not giving a fudge and literally threw the doctor at Butcher. He couldn’t understand why the master chief wouldn’t share candy even if he had some. Besides he knew Allie liked fudge, maybe Thomas would give him some.

“Allie,” Stone said. There was something about Allie, yet he couldn’t think what he was supposed to do. He supposed she would tell him the next time he saw her.

Numos waved a bloody hand in front of Stone’s face and shouted at him. Even inches away, all Stone heard was a mumble of jumbled words, not making sense. Of course, if Numos was hurt in the explosion, especially if he had a head injury, then he might not be making sense. The man must be hurt to be covered in so much blood.

Stone shook his head. “Explosion.” was all that came out when he tried to speak. He had to get up. His base had been hit by a missile and Allie might be hurt. Butcher was injured. Menendez and Thomas were both hovering over him. Stone tried to stand and Numos pushed him back on his butt.

Numos waved both hands over his ears.

Stone thought, “
Well, at least I am not the only one who can’t hear.”

Numos raised a bloody hand and offered Stone a thumbs up, giving it a little waggle making the hand gesture a question.

Stone nodded trying to return the thumbs up, but two fingers on his hand were bent at odd angles. They didn’t hurt. He looked at the twisted fingers with odd curiosity. He nodded, more to himself than Numos, thinking he must be in shock. A normal human would be screaming and crying in pain. Then it dawned on him. His military nanites had already begun repairing the injury, numbing the pain. They couldn’t reset the broken fingers, but they would anesthetize the damage so he could continue to function.

Numos grabbed his hand and snapped the fingers back into place. Stone screamed in surprise. He stopped when he realized that it hadn’t hurt. He wiggled all of his fingers. They worked. He flashed Numos a thumbs up.

Numos turned and without a word, vaulted through the open space in the wall where the window used to be. He disappeared into the smoke and dust wafting through the courtyard.

Something about the courtyard tickled Stone’s brain. Had he seen Allie in the courtyard? No. Jay and Peebee were there. He pushed to his knees and then to his feet. Thomas glanced up from Butcher with a questioning look on his face. Stone gave him a thumbs up. It had made Numos go away and he hoped it would have the same effect on Thomas, making the man leave him alone. It must have worked because Thomas nodded and turned back to help the doctor with Butcher.

His ears popped. He heard a painful screeching and a distant wonking. He stumbled toward the corridor. The door was open, but the hallway beyond was jammed with what looked like second story rubble. He turned to the window, planning to follow Numos.

He didn’t want to go outside, even into the courtyard, if bombs might still be falling. He couldn’t hear any explosions, but he could feel thumping vibrations through the floor. Outside was dangerous enough without someone trying to blow a person up. The courtyard was enclosed everywhere except overhead. It didn’t have a ceiling, but Allie, Jay, and Peebee were out there and they may be hurt.

Stumbling over chairs, he was amazed to see a small single flower sitting on the floor, upright in its base, completely undamaged. Just as he reached the window, alien hands grabbed the window lip. A thick spike jammed through the wall. Stone shook his head in wonder. The walls of the compound were heavy titanium ceramic composite that should have stood up to most conventional weapons, not the size of the missile they were bombed with, but strong enough to deflect any breaching tool.

The wall bowed out and with a shriek pulled away from the building. Stone grabbed a table leg as the closest weapon. Numos has been wearing a side arm. Butcher and Thomas were wearing hand weapons. He wondered why he only had a table leg. He heard screaming.

A loud pop made his vision go blurry. He grabbed his knees to steady himself upright and realized he was doing the screaming. He stopped, picked up his table leg again and braced his feet as the wall gave way. Jay wonked at him, leaned a long neck into the room, huffed breath into his face, spun about and raced away. He could hear Peebee crying in the distance. He’d never heard the drascos cry, but there wasn’t any other way he could describe the noise. Clenching his teeth, Stone followed Jay out into the courtyard.

ELEVEN

The smooth parade ground was gone. The dirt was furrowed like an ocean during a storm. The north side of the compound wasn’t there. It hadn’t just disappeared, it’d been shredded, twisted, and torn apart leaving behind a deep ragged hole. He could see pieces and chunks of metal chewed up and tossed into the distant forest. The east and west sides of the compound were damaged, the second stories collapsing down into the first. The south side looked relatively undamaged except there weren’t any unbroken windows.

Stone scrambled up a dirt mound and down the other side, following Jay. He was worried about his drascos, yet he was more concerned about the people. He was having difficulty remembering which marine platoon was in what triangle. He remembered Numos was in the east barracks near the conference room and Stone’s office. Alpha Platoon was housed in the marine east barracks in the triangle. Allie’s Bravo Platoon was west. He would have to check soon, for now he wasn’t sure he wanted to know whether Hammermill’s Charlie Platoon or Heller’s Delta Platoon was in the north barracks. Whoever had been there was now gone.

He hoped the loss of life wasn’t as bad as it looked. He stopped and wretched. Lying in the dirt was a chunk of human leg. It wasn’t a simple ankle and foot, or even the lower part laying on the ground. The chunk was a piece of an upper thigh, jagged thick bones poking out each end, blood still oozing from the raw meat. This was a female thigh, the skin smooth and sleek without the heavy muscle of a marine. Who the piece belonged to would have to be determined by DNA testing, assuming they had anyone in medical or on the science staff alive who could run the test.

He felt bad about checking on his pets before checking on injured people, however, he followed Jay. He found Peebee lying in the dirt, Jay holding one of her sister’s front legs in her mouth. The moment he appeared, Jay let go of Peebee and pounced on him. She knocked him to the ground and snuffled his body, sniffing here and there. He tried to push her away, but she wouldn’t go. Looking, he realized the blood on Numos’s hands back in the conference room hadn’t been the major’s. The blood was his.

Scrambling back to his feet, he saw scrapes and cuts crisscrossing his arms and hands. His uniform was in good shape, the cloth was designed to be tear-proof, but it wasn’t indestructible. His first visit to Allie’s World had shredded an unshreddable uniform. He slipped a hand up to his face, almost afraid to touch himself, not wanting to know if he was seriously hurt. A hand came away bloody from his right ear. It felt like the ear lobe was dangling farther down than it usually did.

He didn’t try to push Jay away. He maneuvered around her until he reached Peebee. She lay on the ground, a deep gash cut across one of her front legs. Her leg didn’t look mangled, yet the cut was ragged and looked painful. Jay reached around him, wrapping her mouth around her sister’s leg. All doctors since Commander Wright had noted the analgesic properties of drasco spit. It would be helpful if Jay didn’t do anything more than clean the dirt and debris from the wound. Peebee quit whimpering, as if she was more concerned about him than her own pain, as Stone patted her head.

Neither drasco was wearing their fancy chrome armor, though Stone thought they had been wearing it when he saw them from the conference room window. He could see some slight scratches across their hides where the power of the blast may have blown the heavy metal armor off. Neither drasco appeared concerned.

“Okay, girls. I’m banged up a bit, but I think I’m doing all right. You stay here for right now. I need to go find Allie and help with any injured.” Turning to leave, the drascos flanked him in the blink of an eye. Peebee looked determined to follow him, still favoring her injured leg.

He looked around. Spotting a piece of cloth in the dirt, he pulled it free. A short while ago, the cloth had been a civilian shirt. Now it was a shroud covering some mangled unidentified piece of human. Stone shook the body part free. He rolled the shirt into a tight twist. Wrapping it around Peebee’s leg, he tied it into a knot, hoping to close the bleeding gash on her leg. He didn’t know if human blood and guts would hurt the drasco if it oozed into her bloodstream. He’d worry about infection later. Their spit hadn’t hurt him and he hoped the reverse would hold true.

Jay and Peebee continued to flank him as he scrambled to the top of a dirt ridge. North was a smoking pit—east and west were jumbled piles of half-demolished buildings. People were stampeding out of the south building, spreading out seeking injured, rendering aid, marking bodies and scattered remains with small white flags. 1LT Hammermill stood at the entrance to the first floor south offices. Sans uniform, in nothing more than small white skivvies, he was bellowing commands; shouting at this person to do this, that person to go there. He turned every other marine back into their barracks, directing them to get suited up and armored.

Jay wonked loudly. It caught Hammer’s attention and he turned. Stone shouted, “Where’re Numos and Allie?”

Hammermill shouted, “West barracks, helping pull wounded from the wreckage.” He started to turn back, but Stone waved at him to keep his attention.

“Get cover up,” Stone shouted. He wanted Hammer to get marines in armor up on the parapets to protect the now open parade ground. Hammer must have misunderstood because he grabbed a marine and thrust the man toward their hangar and the marine shuttle.

Stone looked at his drascos. “Jay, find Major Numos. Peebee, you stay with me and we’ll go find Allie.” The trio started toward the west side of the compound. Before they got to the double doors usually opening onto the parade ground, Jay veered off to the right and raced up to a blank wall. She whined and danced in front of the wall. With a bellow, she shot her tail spike over her head, jamming it into the wall, hooking it. She pulled, her feet skidding on the loose dirt.

Peebee raced over in a three-legged hobble next to her sister. Scrunching low to the ground, she scorpioned her tail over her head, stinging the side of the building, hooking the wall.

Stone raced over and shouted. “Pull, girls. Tear it up.” He heard an audible “ooo-rah” from inside the building and the wall vibrated as something inside smashed hard against the metal. Jay and Peebee grunted and yanked against the wall, jerking in unison. Voices again shouted “ooh-rah”. Crash. The wall shuddered but held. “Ooh-rah!” The wall collapsed as four massive marines hit the wall at the same time Jay and Peebee jerked.

Lance Corporal Barbara Tuttle and three other marines were hurtled to the ground as the drascos tossed the wall to the side. The marines rolled to their feet as if they hadn’t done anything more than step over a throw pillow instead of helping two aliens tear down a wall designed not to be torn down.

“What the hell, sir?” Tuttle shouted. “We got injured marines in … ” Her voice faded as she took in the devastation around the compound.

Stone said, “Medical was in the north section. Get anyone with first aid training helping with the wounded. Doctor Menendez is in the east section. Get the seriously wounded together for her to help as she can. Everybody else help Major Numos clear these buildings and look for survi—”

A hiss from overhead caused him to duck. The bright streak from a small missile shot across the open sky at treetop level. The marine shuttle from the south shuttle bay had barely struggled into the air. The pilot turned it upside down, jammed out a stream of flares and ECM pods, jinking away from the little missile. The missile missed, raced down range, and turned, coming back. The pilot corkscrewed trying to gain speed and altitude.

Stone shouted, “Get under cover.” He knew if this was the same type of missile that hit the north end of their compound, it would obliterate anyone caught in the open. He dove into the dirt, trying to dig a deep hole. He grunted as Tuttle landed on top of him with Jay and Peebee dropping next to him.

The drascos made an effective wall. They pulled their feet under them, belly down, curling their tails over Tuttle and Stone. Tucking their heads down, the only exposed part of them was their thick rusted-pig-iron hide.

Covered as he was, Stone still had a small view of the sky. The marine shuttle veered sideways and lit off another stream of flares. This time, he wasn’t trying to avoid the missile, instead, calling it to him. He raced away from the compound. The pilot had to know, just as Stone knew, a second missile on the compound wouldn’t leave any human alive.

Stone saw the shuttle roll and crash to the ground followed closely by the missile. He heard the explosion this time. The noise wasn’t as deafening as before, yet the ground heaved and roiled. Jay was pushed off her defensive huddle and rolled on top of Tuttle adding her weight to the corporal’s weight on Stone. He wanted to grunt, but he was being crushed by those trying to save him.