Titanium Texicans (23 page)

He went back to the index, looking for a reference on chiamra spice. He found a small reference in the back mentioning the spice by name. It said the spice was not a food spice, but a proven aphrodisiac for a woman’s libido. He stopped reading the manual and looked up ‘aphrodisiac’ and ‘libido’ on the shipnet dictionary. He blushed bright red when he realized what he and his grandfather had been growing.

“Tasso Menzies,” a voice boomed out of his dataport. “Where are you?”

Tasso blushed again. He was sure someone had spotted his shipnet search and he was going to get in trouble for looking up naughty words. Grandpa always said if a word was not fit for use in mixed company, there was no reason for him to know it. There was certainly no reason for him to be looking up anything about a woman’s libido.

“I’m in the attic, sir.”

The voice came from his dataport, but also made a strange stereo sound. “This is Security Sergeant Rodriquez, Tasso. I know you’re in the attic, I’m tracking your locator, but I can’t find you.”

Tasso leaned over and looked into the aisles between the stacks of stored goods. The sergeant was only a few feet from him.

“Hi,” Tasso said.

“Boy howdy!” Rodriguez said. “This place is a maze. I don’t know how you find your way around.”

Tasso shrugged. “I grew up in a place that was mostly tall rocks and high canyon walls. I don’t know whether it’s something I learned to keep from getting lost or if I have some natural ability keeping me from getting lost. I don’t get lost often.” Tasso slid out of the operator’s seat. He reversed his earlier commands and the seat started to slide back into the machine. He was pleased to hear it slide in much quieter than when it came out. He decided it must’ve been creaking from disuse. It stopped halfway and slipped open again. “Gosh!” he cursed.

Rodriguez said with a laugh, “Such language, young man. Problem?”

“Sorry, sir, the seat should have retracted all the way. Anyway, what can I do for you, or are you here to arrest me for something else?”

Rodriguez laughed at Tasso’s honest curiosity, knowing the boy wasn’t concerned, sarcastic, or trying to be funny. Rodriguez said. “Well, I am lost. I came up here with a small crew to check out that cannon of yours.”

Tasso shook his head, “It isn’t my cannon, Sergeant. I just found it.”

“Finders keepers,” Rodriguez laughed. “Isn’t that what we said as kids?”

Tasso smiled, but shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard that before. I kind of gather my childhood wasn’t quite like a normal Texican. Anyway, where is your crew?”

“We couldn’t find the cannon, so I parked them by the front hatch. I thought I’d come and get you to show me where it’s located. I’m so lost right now that I couldn’t even find the hatch if I didn’t have a locator on my guys.”

“This is a fun place, isn’t it?” Tasso laughed again. “It’s kind of like hunting for hidden treasure.” He led the sergeant through a few aisles between crates stacked from deck to ceiling. They even went over a few stacks rather than take the time to go around them. It didn’t take long before they stood in front of a stack of crates with distinctive markings on them.

“The painted red stripe is what first caught my attention,” Tasso pointed out. “I hadn’t seen those markings before, so I stopped to check things out. Naturally, I went to the biggest crate. He pointed at a container the size of a flitter. “I pulled enough packing material away to see what was inside.” He recited from memory, “Cannon, Harboard Industries rotating A/A E/12 30mm SM, one each.” He tapped his dataport. It displayed a 3D image of the cannon for the sergeant.

“Sheep shit on a side saddle!” Rodriguez exclaimed. “I thought this was a cannon. I mean it is, but it’s more like a side-mounted gatling gun for a tank or an attack shuttle. The cannon spits out 30mm shells from twelve rotating barrels.”

Tasso nodded. “I don’t know anything about cannons, but I figure the ‘SM’ part of the name means it self-manufactures its own ammunition. My grandfather once had me read the manual for a Rumsfelt .55 caliber hand-held auto cannon that self-manufactures, too. I imagine a Rumsfelt has a smaller material chamber than this thing.”

Rodriguez nodded and looked around at the other red striped crates. “I hope so. I’d hate to think that some of these boxes have ammunition in them, that is … well, who knows how old? Do you think the cannon works?”

Tasso shook his head. “I doubt it. I haven’t found anything in this whole place that works. A few things take some minor repair, like the extruder in Cherry’s Lingerie Shop. Most things are scrap that I’ve been breaking down for component parts. We won’t know until we unpack it and check it out.”

Rodriguez said, “I can unpack it, but we can’t test fire a cannon inside the ship. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to open a hole to space. I’m a firm believer in continuing to breathe oxygen.”

“Do you think this cannon could blow a hole that far in the ship?”

“What do you mean that far?” Rodriguez asked. He pointed at the back wall. “That bulkhead butts up against the ship’s hull.”

Tasso thought for a second and asked, “You mean, I’ve been working back there and I’m only a few meters away from a vacuum.”

Rodriguez said, “That’s a greenhorn’s thought. You should never forget you’re only a few feet away from not being able to breathe.”

Tasso nodded, “If the cannon works, we should make sure the material chamber is empty, and we set it on dry fire only.”

“Do you know if it has that kind of setting?”

“No, but the Rumsfelt did. I suggest we read the manual completely before we do any more than unpack it.”

They heard a scrambling behind them.

“Next aisle over,” Rodriguez shouted. “My team is trying to find us by my locator signal.”

A voice floated back to them. “I know that much, Rodriguez. But every aisle leads off in the wrong direction.”

Tasso shouted, “So, climb over the top!”

General laughing and noise was followed by an avalanche of bodies as four men climbed over and down again. Tasso was disturbed to see the three crewmen and one trainee. He nodded at the men, but spoke to the trainee. “Hello, Ivan.”

Rodriguez smiled. “That’s right. You two trainee’s know each other.”

Ivan laughed, “Yes, Sergeant. We’re old acquaintances.” He slapped Tasso on the shoulder. “How ya doin’, buddy?”

Tasso hesitated, but replied, “I’m doing well. Thank you for asking. How’re you doing?”

Ivan said. “The captain gave me community service as punishment for our little dust up in the shower the other day.” All of the other men were looking around them when Ivan raised a middle finger at Tasso behind Rodriguez’s back and mouthed something at Tasso.

Tasso wasn’t sure he understood. It looked like Ivan said ‘vacuum’, but he could tell the other boy wasn’t being as pleasant as he was pretending. He didn’t know what community service was, but it certainly didn’t seem like punishment, it sounded more like something everyone should be doing anyway. But, he was really confused about dust in the shower. How could showers be dusty?

Ivan nodded. “And I lucked out. I only have to spend one day a week helping out in the Security Office for the next six months. If every day is as much fun as today, then you did me a favor.”

“Um, thanks.”

Rodriguez showed Tasso’s dataport image to his team. “This is the cannon Tasso found for us.” He slapped the large crate. “It’s in here. We’re going to unpack it and check it out. However, no one, and I mean no one, is to touch it until our expert says it’s okay.”

Tasso looked around. Not shooting a cannon by accident made sense since there was only a relatively thin shell of titanium between them and a vacuum. He wondered who the expert on the team was.

Rodriguez put a hand on Tasso’s shoulder. “Isn’t that right, Tasso?”

Tasso blanched when he realized Rodriguez thought of him as the expert.

Rodriguez continued. “According to Tasso’s initial report, this cannon may make its own ammo, so we don’t want any accidents. He checks it out before we do anything. It’s also his assessment that it may be damaged. So, we want to watch out for malfunctions. Anything else, Señor Expert?”

Tasso gulped, but managed to keep his voice normal, “Well, Sergeant Rodriguez. I wouldn’t actually uncrate it here. There isn’t much room to move around, plus you’d have to clean up and haul the packing material out.”

Ivan laughed with ill-disguised displeasure. “Hauling the trash out would’ve been my job. So, if I don’t have any clean up, then I don’t have anything to do, right?”

Rodriguez said, “Easy, boy. I’m sure we all have more to get done than we can do today. What do you have in mind, Tasso?”

Tasso looked around him at all of the red striped crates. “I’d haul all of this to an open space up by the front hatch. That’s the largest clear space in the attic. You should move all of the red striped stuff up there before you open any of it up. It’s my assumption the red strip means it’s military equipment. Red stripe means danger or caution, right? At least, all of this stuff is clustered together.”

One of the security men looked skeptical. “We can probably wrangle most of these boxes around if we have to, but we can’t drag them far. Plus some of the aisles in here are so tight we could barely squeeze our bodies through.”

Tasso nodded as he thought. “I have a small power sled here in the attic. It isn’t big, but it has enough lifting power to move anything I’ve found so far in here. It just doesn’t have a big enough platform for the cannon or most of these other crates.”

Rodriguez said, “We can center the crates on the sled and balance them as we work our way out.”

“I just unboxed an agricultural-processing plant. The side I opened is pretty big and heavy. It’s wood with metal banding. I say we get the sled and bolt the wooden piece onto the top. It should make a stable platform. We won’t go through the aisles, we’ll go over the top, and use the sled to float into a clear zone.

Ivan said, “Great! I won’t have to haul the packing material from here to the trash chute.”

Tasso said, “Oh no. We can’t throw anything away. I need the packing material for recycling. For that matter, any metal packing material would probably make good raw product for making 30mm shells. I’m sure I can use it in the agricultural-processing plant, if I can get it running and I know I can use it in the extruder down in Cherry’s shop. Well, the extruder doesn’t use the metal, but the cannon will use all of the scrap metal we can find, not that we want to load this right away.”

He checked his time.

Rodriguez said, “You have somewhere to be?”

Tasso nodded. “Soon, yes sir. Captain’s orders.” He couldn’t say why he didn’t want to announce where he had to go, but he didn’t want to let this crowd know he was meeting with Anisa. “Remember, Sergeant? From our meeting last Saturday?”

Rodriguez nodded. “That’s right. You were tasked with a few extra duties.”

Ivan said, “So you didn’t get off completely on our fight? I mean, I thought the captain let you skate for falling in the shower.”

Rodriguez shook his head. “Ivan, his punishments aren’t your concern, but that was for Friday night. It’s only Thursday.”

Everyone shook their heads, “No, it’s Friday.” “Today is Friday.” “Thursday was yesterday.”

Rodriguez turned pale. “No. That can’t be right. Friday is my wedding anniversary. Surely, I didn’t forget. Oh no, I thought today was Thursday. I was going to stop by Cherry’s Lingerie Shop on the way home and get something frilly for the wife.” He looked at Tasso.

Tasso shrugged, “Cherry’s isn’t open on Friday nights, Sergeant.”

“I am so screwed.”

Tasso shook his head. “No sir, I have the pass codes to the front door, we can stop by Cherry’s and you can pick something out. I’d like to leave soon so I can get cleaned up for later.”

Rodriguez nodded. “Okay. We’re done here for now. Everyone mark this location so you can find it next time. We meet back here Monday at eight a.m. Now everyone get out. Go have a weekend.”

Rodriguez’s team scattered in the general direction of the door.

Tasso checked his dataport and scanned for Tio Gabe’s locator. The man was out of the attic and in the galley two decks down. He nodded in satisfaction.

“Ready to go?” Rodriguez asked.

Instead of following the other men through the aisles, Tasso led Rodriguez up a pile of stacked crates in an easy stair-stepping climb. When they reached the top, he looked around and followed a more or less direct route to the main hatch. He ignored the aisles more often than not as they led in directions he wasn’t going. They reached the main hatch before any of the others. “We should wait to make sure they find their way out.”

“Very thoughtful. Speaking of being thoughtful, you don’t mind stopping by Cherry’s? Really?”

“No sir. I figure you’ve been more than kind to me. It’d only be appropriate for me to respond in kind.”

“You have a peculiar definition of kind. As I remember, I arrested you and put you in handcuffs.”

Tasso nodded, “Yes sir, but they didn’t hurt and you fed me when the time came.” Rodriguez would’ve obviously said more, but the security team interrupted them as they found the clear space and raced for the door. Rodriguez glanced around him. “You know, I see what you mean about bringing the crates here to work on. It certainly would make things easier to get around.” They followed the team out of the hatch.