Metal Boxes - Rusty Hinges

by Alan Black

  He never noticed before how noisy it was just walking across the floor. Trying to be quiet and alert at the same time wasn’t something he practiced. He made a quick mental note to add that practice to his training schedule. He was about to begin another exercise set — squat thrusts this time — when a delicate hatch chime interrupted his thoughts.

  Stone rushed to the hatch, trying to avoid someone ringing the doorbell twice. He hit the manual hatch release button, braced to attention and nodded stiffly to the higher ranking officer and his companions, but didn’t move out of the hatchway. His intention was clearly to deny them entry to the captain’s office.

  Stone said, “Lieutenant Missimaya. Gentlemen.” He didn’t acknowledge the two officers with Missimaya by name, but he did speak to them as navy tradition required.

  Missimaya said, “Ensign Stone, we are here to see the captain. Please step aside.”

  “Captain Butcher is not available and has asked not to be disturbed.” He knew both statements were not exactly the truth, but he didn’t care. The man hadn’t been off the bridge in two days and needed sleep. Disturbing him while the ship was technically at general quarters just to talk to the officer in charge of the human waste systems wasn’t a career enhancing move — not for him, nor the three officers demanding admittance the captain’s office, or even for a captain away from the bridge during GQ.

  Stone was more than familiar with Lieutenant Missimaya, a self-important, self-righteous xenophobe. He was slightly surprised to see Ensign Tander. The man was older than Stone, but something of a nerd and easily persuaded to try just about anything. Stone recognized the third officer, but he couldn’t remember his name. Though Rusty Hinges was big and its officer compliment wasn’t comparable to its size, Stone hadn’t interacted with each member of her officer corps.

  Missimaya said, “We know he’s here, Ensign.” The man managed to sneer the rank like an insult. “We were told that he left the bridge a few moments ago and was seen entering this very hatch. Are you telling me he isn’t here? Are you honestly going to stand there and lie to me in front of our fellow officers?”

  Stone said, “Sir, perhaps you misunderstood me. I didn’t say he wasn’t here. I said he was unavailable.”

  “Don’t play semantics with me, Stone.”

  “It’s Ensign Stone, if you please, sir.”

  “All right, Ensign. Did Commander Butcher, as captain, tell you specifically that he wasn’t to be disturbed and to turn his officers away from his hatch?”

  “No, sir. He did not. However, I believe his intention was quite clear. If this is an emergency, you should report to the third watch commander Major Numos, who has the con.”

  Missimaya glared at Stone. “I will not take ship’s business to a trumped up marine who has no business on the bridge of any of the emperor’s ships.” He put a hand on Stone’s shoulder as if to push him out of the way.

  Stone didn’t budge. He shrugged his shoulder with enough force the lieutenant took a step back to maintain his balance. Missimaya hadn’t pushed hard, or hard enough to move him at any rate, but any contact was a breach of protocol, no matter how light the contact. Stone was unconcerned about the physical contact. He’d been pushed harder by better. Psychologically, he was set on not moving. The push increased Stone’s resolve. He wouldn’t move out of the way now, no matter what Missimaya said.

  “Let me pass, Ensign.” The hatch was wide enough that Missimaya and his two cohorts could squeeze past Stone on either side, but it appeared the man wanted to bluster his way in to bolster his own sense of self-importance.

  “No, sir.” He said quietly over his shoulder, “Ell.”

  “This is an order, Ensign Stone. Move out of my —”

  Stone sensed a shadow at his back and glanced over his shoulder. Ell was rising onto her hind legs filling the entryway. She spread her wings heaving her chest, but remained eerily quiet. The overhead light made her metal armor shine and flash silently.

  Missimaya gave a slight shiver. His bluster cooled. “Ensign Stone, we believe Captain Butcher is under the control of alien creatures. He is a danger to himself, his crew, and this good ship. The fact that you, as an agent of these aliens, are keeping me from the captain is proof enough that this belief is valid. You will move or I will call security and have you moved.” Stone could see the man rise up on the balls of his feet and clench his fists into tight knots.

  Ell flattened low and her tail shot over her head. The chrome-capped bone tip slowly creeped forward until it was a fraction of an inch from Missimaya’s chest. The man took a step back. Ell’s tail stretched forward further, staying within inches of the lieutenant’s body.

  Missimaya said, “Call off your dog, Ensign. You can’t threaten me this way.”

  Stone pushed Ell’s tail to the side. “You are correct, Lieutenant. I apologize for the drasco. She’s tasked with protecting me and she must have mistakenly sensed a danger to me.”

  Missimaya looked at his fists and with evident force, relaxed them. “I’ve ordered you to let us pass. Are you refusing an order from a superior officer in time of war?”

  Stone nodded, “Yes, sir. I believe interrupting the captain at this point just to talk to the officer in charge of toilets is contrary to his orders, especially when said officer per navy regulations, is supposed to be at his general quarters station.”

  “This isn’t over, Ensign Stone.” The man stormed away, followed by the other officer whose name Stone still couldn’t place.

  Stone was too tired to make a snappy retort. He would eventually think of something even if it was nothing more than mentioning unusual items stuck in unusual body cavities, but it would be hours too late.

  Ensign Tander dithered, apparently not knowing if he should follow Missimaya or run the other way.

  Stone said, “Tander, you need to find a different class of friends to hang with.”

  Tander glanced at Missimaya’s retreating back. “He has some convincing arguments.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Whether he does or not, do you think you should be questioning the captain when we’re at general quarters deep within the heart of enemy territory?”

  Tander shook his head. “No. But what if Lieutenant Missimaya is right?”

  Stone said, “Make an appointment to see the captain. Go through Master Chief Thomas. He’s Commander Butcher’s chief of staff. Talk to the captain, but I don’t suggest doing that when you should be at your station.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  They were no longer at general quarters and the captain had changed the normal duty shift from eight hours to sixteen hours on and eight hours off to reduce crew tension. It left enough free time to sleep and shower. It didn’t leave much time to get into any trouble. It also didn’t leave time for socializing. Stone hadn’t seen Allie in the three weeks since they jumped into the Hyrocanian system.

  His duty station was at the conference table on the bridge and was limited to giving advice to the captain and bridge crew. Sitting on his butt doing nothing but staring at a monitor and a 3D holographic system display hovering over the table was so boring it was beginning to grate on his nerves.

  “What do you think, Ensign Stone?” Numos asked.

  “I think that Hyrocanian ship looks just like every other Hyrocanian ship we’ve casually wandered by and scanned since we started slowly meandering around the system.”

  Numos asked, “Do you think we’re wasting our time trying to get a close up survey of every ship in the system?”

  “No, sir. Not at all. This survey is not only within the letter of our orders, but clearly within the spirit they were given and dropping off a camouflaged repulsar mine at every known jump point is positively sneaky.”

  Butcher was sitting nearby in his captain’s chair. “Well, I’m glad I have a sound endorsement of my orders from Ensign Stone.” The words were acerbic, but a thick overtone of humor spread across the sarcasm.

  “Sir, no disrespect meant. I’m just beginni
ng to envy Dollish in the kitchen. At least he has something to do all of the time.”

  Butcher said, “You’re doing an excellent job, Stone. But, if you really want something to do, I can have you swap places with Lieutenant Missimaya. I hear the toilets are starting to back up and cause him some concern.”

  “No, sir. On second thought, I like it here just fine. It’s just that we spend hours slowly meandering around the system from one enemy ship to the next and one jump point to the next. It’s mind numbing hours of waiting, then a few minutes of furious activity, then nothing again as we wander on to the next location.”

  Numos nodded. “That’s the life of a marine. It isn’t all combat and whorehouses, you know. We spend months — many times years — in training and preparing for war. Combat is only a few brief flashes of action in a long career. Some marines train their entire career to meet the enemy and never get closer to combat than a simulated exercise against other marines.”

  Wyznewski said, “Scans are complete, Captain.” The scientist grinned, leaning back in his chair. “We’ve hacked into another ship’s comms. We’ve cloned everything and can hear everything they say, both internal and external messages. This ship didn’t have security set on any of its systems. We also duplicated all their data files. I think we can even empty the personal bank accounts of every crew member — assuming they have bank accounts.”

  Butcher said, “Good work, Whizzer. Can you spoof comms on this one?”

  “Spoof? Oh, Captain My Captain, we can send a Dear John letter to the lowest ranking deck hand from his wife and send a sext message with nude photos from their captain to the fleet flagship. This is the most open communications system we’ve found yet, and that’s saying something since the whole Hyrocanian fleet seems to think that because they’re in one of their own sectors of space they’re secure.”

  Butcher nodded. “Comms, are we getting any hales from the ship?”

  “Comms, sir. No challenges. Nav has us under fifty kilometers — hull to hull. That’s so close we’ve had to shut off our collision alarms. We’re still creeping closer, though.”

  “Nav, we aren’t on a collision course?”

  “Nav, sir. Negative. We should be at barnacle scraping distance of less than six kilometers on our present course. They’re still stationary, no movement from the targeted ship.”

  Stone said, “Captain, I was wrong. This ship doesn’t look like every other ship we’ve slipped past.” He grabbed the 3D image from the hologram dancing over the conference table. He pushed the rest of the display over to the side and flexed his fingers outward. The image of the ship he’d captured in his fist expanded in the space vacated by the systemwide display. Pinching the edges of the image, he yanked it wider apart. “Whizzer, how good is the computer’s extrapolation of the far side?”

  Wyznewski shrugged. “Do you want me to call the mapping team and get an estimate? It’s a best guess at any rate. Why?”

  Stone said, “This is an ovoid craft, just like some of the others we’ve seen, even the Rusty Hinges is this basic shape. I mean, there doesn’t seem to be any consistent size or shape in the Hyrocanian fleet. This egg shape is common, as we’ve seen half a dozen of this design. Look at this hatch.” He pointed at the image. A square hatch was in the same place all other warships had shuttle bay hatches. “It looks normal right?”

  Numos leaned in to stare at the indicated hatch. Butcher left his command chair to stand behind the major, glaring at the image as if daring it to keep its secrets. Wyznewski pulled up a second image and overlaid it against the one Stone had enlarged.

  Wyznewski said, “The hatch looks the same to me.”

  Numos added, “It looks just like the one you blew away on the Rusty Hinges with your acid sludge gun.”

  Stone removed Wyznewski’s image. “That’s what I thought. It looks the same. But what is that hatch there? And that one? And what is that other hatch near the front of the ship? Rusty Hinges has one, just one, shuttle hatch. If our computers are right, this ship has six hatches and none of them are the same size or shape.”

  Butcher shouted over his shoulder, “Helm, all stop. Prepare to get us the hell out of dodge on my command. Tactical, weapons and shields on standby. Keep your finger on the trigger, Duke.” He leaned his fists on the table, alternately staring at the ship’s image and glaring at Stone. “Okay, we haven’t seen this before. I’m thinking this may be a carrier for some kind of fast attack craft that we haven’t seen yet.”

  Numos asked, “Fast attack craft?”

  Butcher nodded, “FAC for short. They were small craft long before our time. Back when humans used them, they were about a quarter of the size of a current marine shuttle. They had a crew of one or two pilots. They were all engines and weapons, able to swarm an enemy ship from all directions at the same time.”

  Stone didn’t remember reading about FACs in any of his military history classes, but it sounded dangerous. Tiny ships in space would be more deadly to their own crew than against a huge enemy ship. Admiral Temple’s carrier was loaded with cruisers and corvettes, full sized fighting ships with complete compliments of officers and crew.

  Butcher evidently agreed. “They went the way of the dinosaurs when shield technology was perfected. They were too small to breech the shields of a big ship and big ships flicked them away like mosquitoes.”

  Stone didn’t know what dinosaurs or mosquitoes were, but made a mental note to look them up later. He was getting good at making mental notes and actually remembering them. Still, he understood the captain’s meaning from the context. The extra hatches could be additional shuttle bay openings. But he doubted it.

  “Sir, I realize it may be a guess on my part, but the Hyrocanians are weird.”

  “That’s your guess?”

  “This style of Hyrocanian ship is round…er, rather oval, kind of egg shaped. The ones we’ve seen have square hatches and tetrahedron shaped shuttles. That’s weird enough, but each of these extra hatches is a different shape. That one’s round.” He pointed at the front of the ship. “This one is more rectangle, but much smaller than the shuttle hatch on Rusty Hinges. See, they’re all different shapes.”

  “Weird. Okay, Stone. Different hatches for different fast attack craft. Humans had a hundred different FAC configurations.”

  Stone pointed at the round hatch. “What is that, sir? Can we get a closer look?”

  Someone in mapping enlarged the view of the indicated area. The bridge was small enough that everyone could listen to the conversation. Tensions were high, but they’d scanned dozens of Hyrocanian ships and this was the first time anyone noticed this configuration. Different was a change. Different was exciting.

  Stone said, “Those are external docking clamps, Captain. Look at those.” He pointed at a long row of metal contraptions braced along the outside of the ship. Spinning the image, he saw dozens of other rows. Many of the contraptions were hidden behind a bristling forest of odd shaped boxes. “Those look a little different that human clamps, but those are external storage pod clamps. And those metal boxes are freight containers.”

  Everyone was looking at him. “Sir, I grew up on freighters. Many of the ships owned by the Stone Freight Company are little more than tractors pulling trains of trailers. We clamp external storage pods to the outside. Suppose someone on the planet Risa orders a huge shipment of two thousand thread count sheets from Egypt for their hotel rooms. Egypt puts all of the sheets in one container. We pick up the container, clamp it to the outside of a Stone Freight Company ship and tow it to Risa. We may reroute the container through a dozen other ships. No one has to handle the freight, the container is passed from ship to ship until it reaches a ship heading to Risa. Our freight companies have standardized all shipping containers into rectangular shaped boxes for easy stacking and stringing together in long trains.”

  Wyznewski said, “The metal boxes on that ship are all different sizes and shapes. They wouldn’t be able to string them together.” />
  Stone shrugged, “That’s what I mean by weird. What would you expect from a species that makes a square hatch on an ovoid ship for a tetrahedron shaped shuttle?” He looked around the table. “Sirs, I think this is a warehouse supply ship.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Butcher asked, “Whizzer, does our computer hack go deep enough to find out what cargo they’re carrying?”

  Stone said, “Captain, that’s why they use containers capable of attaching to the outside. If cargo doesn’t need atmosphere or gravity, it can be clamped to the outside. A ship like this could carry anything, but since it’s almost as big as the Rusty Hinges, the inside — with gravity, air, heat, and light — they could carry everything.”

  Wyznewski said, “We’ve duplicated their entire database. It might take us a while —”

  Shorty interrupted and Charlotte interpreted for Stone, “They might have some of my people in there.”

  Numos nodded at the thought. “We need to find out. If so, we should attempt a rescue.”

  Shorty said, “Not attempt — succeed or destroy it.”

  Butcher said, “Let’s not jump the gun, people. Whizzer, see if you can get a complete translation on their stores.” He called across the room, “Helm, hold our position here, but keep your finger on the button for a hasty get away.”

  Wyznewski said, “Captain. We have a lot of the Hyrocanian vocabulary on file, but it could take weeks or even months to get a complete breakdown. There may be words we can’t translate without actually looking at an item to see what it is, and even then the word on their inventory manifest may not give us any clue.”

  Butcher asked, “Ensign Stone?”

  “Whizzer is right, Captain. When I worked third shift in the warehouse on the Ol’ Toothless we had a load of — if I remember correctly — missile parts for a TADD16XL munitions retrofit.” He remembered correctly because he’d had to testify about those parts dozens of times and write twice as many reports because when they opened the container of missile parts, they’d found rocks. “A long part number on a manifest didn’t tell me anything and a matching part number on the manufacturer’s packing box wouldn’t tell me anything either. And that was on a UEN ship. I doubt if the Hyrocanian’s mark everything as clearly as “bottom sheet, fitted, one each”, like UEN supplies.”