Metal Boxes - Rusty Hinges

by Alan Black

  Knocking on the captain’s door, he was quickly ushered into the room by the master chief. Thomas wasn’t the ogre he’d appeared to be back when Stone was a lowly ensign junior grade. Now that he was an ensign senior grade, Thomas was downright friendly — usually. Not today.

  Thomas pointed at a chair with a thick finger. “Park it, sir.”

  Stone slid into the indicated chair. He nodded at LTJG Barnes as he followed him into the room, plopping down on the chair next to him. The rest of the congregants continued gathering in ascending rank order as tradition required.

  Barnes gave off an odor of boiled cabbage. His odor of curiosity was mixed with lime’s caution scent and a hint of licorice. The licorice fragrance was a clear indication he was hiding some information from someone. The odor could mean anything from hiding a secret sexual fetish to his really having blonde hair instead of today’s bright pink. Whatever he was hiding it wasn’t his main concern as the odor was so light he obviously didn’t expect to be questioned about his secret.

  Stone nodded to Missimaya as required by naval etiquette. Not liking the man, he would much rather have ignored him, but rules were rules. He nodded to half a dozen others, just as he’d received nods from EJG Tander and two midshipmen. The only officer who smiled while nodding was his old boss Vega, the weapons officer. He almost laughed out loud at what they all looked like, nodding and bobbing their heads in coordinated unison. Set to music, they would easily appear to be enjoying a rather raucous neo-tempo dance bop.

  Master Chief Thomas shouted, “Room ‘ten-hut!”

  Captain Butcher, XO Gupta, and chief engineer Zuvela marched into the room. They sat in the three chairs at the front of the room, their backs to Butcher’s desk space. All three immediately opened reports in front of them, blanking out the backside so the assembled officers couldn’t see the data. Butcher didn’t appear pleased. Zuvela made an obvious show of turning on her recorder. Watching someone turn on a recorder had long since stopped surprising Stone. He always recorded everything per his grandfather’s edict, but realized many people valued their personal privacy over the caution of having a record of everything. Still, Zuvela’s movements indicated an official and formal tone, a warning to everyone in the room.

  Butcher commanded, “As you were. Take your seats, people. Dammit, let’s get this moving.”

  Everyone’s head jerked around as if they were on strings when the master chief slammed the hatch closed as he left the room. Stone felt his back side sphincter tighten up. He didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but this meeting couldn’t be anything less than an investigative hearing. Wracking his brain at this point, imagining a litany of horrors, he clamped his jaw shut to await his fate. He didn’t have long to wait.

  Butcher said, “Ensign Senior Grade Stone, front.”

  Stone snapped to attention in his chair. Standing stiffly, he squared his shoulders and every corner in his march stopping to stand at attention in front of the three most senior officers on the ship. “Sir, Ensign Senior Grade Blackmon Perry Stone reports as ordered.” He held his stance, staring at a blank spot on the far distant wall.

  Zuvela snapped. “At ease, Ensign. I have been led to believe that you, against all common sense, record everything. Is that right?”

  “Yes, Commander. My grandfather insisted doing so was CYA.”

  “You’re in the navy, Ensign, not at your grandfather’s knee.”

  Stone nodded stiffly. “Yes, Commander, but that doesn’t make Grandpa any less wise.”

  “Indeed.” She shuffled through a few reports on her data recorder leaving Stone standing.

  He wondered if he’d recorded something he shouldn’t have. He was always careful to never record classified information and to purge certain conversations quickly. He’d even learned that much of his alone time with Allie shouldn’t be recorded, no matter how much he wanted to video them as souvenirs, how private he thought he could keep them, and no matter what Grandpa said. But aboard ship, his data recorder or his civilian personal assistant could have picked up something he shouldn’t have.

  Butcher said, “Come on, people. We have better things to do than this bull. Let’s get it moving. Stone, you were the first officer at the main hatch after the recent methane explosion, correct?”

  Stone nodded stiffly. A thin cold trickle of sweat slipped down behind an ear, although the room was actually cooler than Butcher usually kept it. It didn’t matter how close he was to the three officers. He could judge their mood by their fragrance from a hundred yards away, but they weren’t evidencing any hint about their feelings toward him, although all three were angry about something. “Sir, XO Gupta sent me to the main hatch to investigate for damage control.”

  Gupta nodded. “Yes, Captain.” He pointed at a report hanging in the air two feet in front of the trio. “Ensign Stone didn’t get there as fast as I would have liked, but that was his assignment.”

  Butcher said, “Stone, did you deviate from your path?”

  Stone had a brief flash of cadet training where he’d taken the most direct path from one deck to the one below by tearing a hole in the deck. He could have done that here, but tearing holes in a ship in space sounded like a way to get in more trouble than he was already in. “Captain, I took the most direct route I know. It involves going down a few decks, cutting across the ship, then back up and along another long corridor.” Saying it aloud made him realize he should have cut through from one deck to the next.

  Zuvela snorted. “Someday I hope to come face-to-face with the cretin who designed this piece of crap ship. That is the fastest way I know of to go from the bridge to the main hatch.” She managed to mutter a few more curses while Butcher spoke.

  “Do you recall seeing anything unusual between the bridge and the main hatch? No? Play your recording, Ensign Stone.”

  Stone popped open a monitor from his dataport. Grabbing the edges of the view, he pulled it apart until it was a large window hanging in the air. Quickly scanning through the dates, he pulled up that day, slipping along at a high speed until he reached the point where Gupta ordered him to the main hatch. The assembled officers viewed the monitor watching him run. As always, it felt eerie watching himself doing something from his own point of view.

  Occasionally, Butcher, Gupta, or Zuvela ordered him to slow down as they made notes about people or things he ran past. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t imagine what he’d done wrong to be called in front of this assembly.

  He’d run much faster than he thought possible. Watching himself, he realized the resulting mixture of military nanites and drasco DNA made him so fast the bulkheads were almost a blur as he ran. Gupta caught his breath and hissed slightly when Stone managed to squeeze past a group of spacers in emergency EVA suits. He’d slipped by them without slowing his pace, although he’d had to vault over one of them and slip sideways between two others.

  Watching him push through the last set of hatches, he realized now why he’d slid so far on the human waste. He’d been moving at an incredible rate of speed. Stopping hadn’t been easy.

  Gupta said, “Slow the recording down, Ensign. Let’s try eyeball speed for this next section.”

  Stone slid a finger along the playback buttons, dragging the speed slower and slower until it looked like normal speed. He watched himself pull the dataport off his chest and slowly record the mess. He saw his arm stretch forth as he kneeled down next to the twisted deck plates near the hole caused by the explosion.

  A gasp from the crowd behind him made him glance at his forearm. In the video, he’d dragged his arm across a sharp piece of jagged metal that should have sliced him to the bone. His arm wasn’t even scratched. His thickened skin wasn’t a surprise to Stone, Butcher, or the medical staff, but the average officer wasn’t privy to his bodily changes.

  Zuvela said, “Slower yet, Ensign Stone. I’m going to copy this part of the damage.” Together they watched as the recorder showed each twisted pipe and tube. Many were color cod
ed for easy recognition. The coding must have been done during the navy retrofit, because Stone recognized the standard coloring for various functions.

  Butcher and Zuvela chuckled when the replay broadcast Gupta’s voice as he asked, “Ensign, are you asking me if the ship has a butthole near the main hatch?”

  Zuvela shouted at the display, “Stop. No. Back it up. There.” She stood up and moved closer to the display. Not satisfied, she looked at Stone and asked, “May I?” She pointed at the controls for his display.

  “Yes, Commander. Of course.” She hadn’t needed to ask as it was the navy’s dataport, not his civilian personal assistant. “Dammit! I can’t see from this angle.”

  Stone shook his head. “I may have a way to enhance this, if I may?”

  Zuvela glared at him. “So you don’t think I know how to use dataport controls?”

  “No, Commander. I mean, that’s not what I mean.” He pulled his personal assistant off its normal place on his collar tab. “Can I use this?” At Butcher’s nod, he pulled up the same date time group. He overlaid the p.a.’s recording over the dataport’s. Tapping a few controls, the view snapped to a lifesized 3D representation of the damage. For all the normal eye could tell, he and Zuvela were standing inside the twisted metal hole in the deck.

  Zuvela spun in a circle and pointed. “There. That’s it.” She waved her hands in front of her, trying to move the 3D images so she could see the captain and the XO. Stone easily saw through the hologram image, but tapped the controls until they were hazy. The chief engineer continued, “The accumulated waste in this piping is purely the result of bad design, allowing leakage from the main waste recycling system. That valve is another bad design. It’s an automatic butterfly valve designed to allow excess methane buildup to be expelled into space out of a sphincter near the main hatch.” She glared at XO Gupta, “Yes, the ship is designed to fart. But that valve is closed and will remain closed during a methane buildup. The only way that can happen is if someone shuts it off from the waste system console a dozen decks down.”

  Butcher said, “Shutting this valve has what effect?”

  Zuvela looked around Stone to glare at Lieutenant Missimaya. “If the methane builds up high enough and the wrong switch is thrown, a heated pressure wave will travel along this tube. Normally, it will just scrub the piping clean as it goes and blow heat out the ship’s butthole. But if this valve is closed, the accumulated methane will explode.”

  “Sir.” All heads swiveled as Missimaya jumped to his feet. “Regardless of how this happened, the damage to the ship’s waste recycling system is serious. I submit that we must abandon our mission, return to human space and file our reports. The information we have gathered is too valuable to trust to a damaged ship.”

  Butcher nodded. “I will take that under advisement, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir —”

  “Advisement, Lieutenant,” Butcher interrupted. “Zuvela, how long will it take to get that system operational again?”

  Zuvela shook her head. “With the equipment we have here? Who knows? We may have to rip up miles of decking and bulkheads, surveying and replacing pipe, we —”

  Stone shook his head, then realized contradicting the chief engineer in front of the captain was a stupid thing to do, but he’d done it without thinking. He clamped his jaw shut, swearing not to say anything and hoped no one had seen him shake his head.

  Butcher sighed as Zuvela stopped her damage repair litany. All three officers stared at Stone. Finally, the captain said, “Okay, Stone. Out with it.”

  “Sir. I spoke with Shorty this morning. He said they’ll have all systems back to normal by this afternoon. They’ve replaced all piping that appeared to be stressed and they put a new butterfly valve in that will activate in the event of a gas build up.”

  Zuvela said, “How could they fix it? I mean, okay, they’re small enough to crawl through the spaces without tearing up the decking, but…okay. I guess, but why didn’t he tell me?”

  Stone shrugged. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. Did you ask any of the piglets to help?

  Zuvela shook her head. “No. Well, wait. I did ask one of them if he thought he could crawl through and check the pipes for damage control. Dammit, he can’t answer me back, so how do I know whether he could or not?”

  Stone said, “They do respond, we just can’t hear them. I’ve been around them long enough to know that even the slightest indication that they thought you wanted something done would cause them to go ahead and do it. Besides, I think Dotty, I mean, Lieutenant Commander Dorothy Nessayette from the Roanoake has been working with them.”

  “Dotty?” Butcher asked.

  Stone said, “Well, she is pleased that we rescued her, sir. She offered to have my children as a way to say thanks.”

  Butcher laughed. “She does seem a bit overly grateful. I imagine your girlfriend didn’t take to that offer too well.”

  Stone shrugged. “Allie said she understood, but after a brief conversation with Dotty the offer was rescinded, sir.”

  “Well, Commander Nessayette has requested a personal meeting with me, so maybe I’ll take her up on her offer before I’m too old to enjoy my great-grandchildren.”

  Stone laughed with Butcher, but their laughter died when they realized the rest of the officers were staring at them as if they’d been caught dropping rabbit turds in the raisin bowl.

  Butcher grunted, “It was a joke, people.” He looked up and noticed that Missimaya was still standing. “Lieutenant Missimaya, Rusty Hinges will not be turning around and heading for home space. However, you do make a logical point. We have collected the data we were sent to find and more. I propose we send one of our shuttles — the human built ones — back to Allie’s World taking all collected data with them. It might be a rough trip for such a small —”

  Missimaya snapped to attention, “Sir, I volunteer to pilot that shuttle.”

  Butcher pointed a finger at the man. “You will not be going anywhere until we find out whether the methane explosion at the main deck hatch was an accident or deliberate sabotage. I will say, if it was an accident due to your oversight, you will be just as screwed as you will be if I find out you deliberately threw that switch causing the explosion. Sit down and shut up, Lieutenant. Guilty or not, you’re relieved from human waste disposal officer duty.” He looked at the gathered officers. “Ensign Junior Grade Zisk Tander?”

  Tander shot to his feet, “Sir, I do not know if Lieutenant Missimaya deliberately —”

  “Shut up, Tander.” Missimaya growled.

  Butcher said, “No, Tander, please go on.”

  “Sir, he asked me if I knew of any systems we could damage that wouldn’t put us in serious jeopardy, but would be bad enough that we had to go home.”

  Missimaya was red in the face, but didn’t say anything.

  Tander said, “Sir, Barnes was there. Ask him.”

  Barnes shot to his feet. “Captain, I do not recall any such conversation.” He sat back down with a thump.

  Butcher looked at Stone.

  Stone, with an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders, said, “In my opinion, he’s lying.”

  Butcher said, “I think we have enough reasonable evidence to order a court-martial for Lieutenant Missimaya. Since such an event requires higher ranking officers than we have present, I am relieving the lieutenant of his duties. Young man, you will confine yourself to your quarters and have no contact with any member of this crew, human or alien, except at posted meal times. And just so you don’t think that I don’t know what is going on aboard my own ship, Lieutenant Barnes will immediately vacate Lieutenant Missimaya’s quarters and move back to his assigned cabin.”

  Barnes grew red in the face, jumped to his feet and said, “Captain, there isn’t any regulation against my relationship with —”

  “Sit down, Barnes.” Butcher said, “I don’t care if you’ve slept with every officer and half the piglets on this ship. I …” He looked at Stone and grinned. “Good ni
ght, nurse. I do think I’ve been hanging around Corporal Tuttle too long. I really don’t care.” He looked back at Barnes and Missimaya. “He is under house arrest and is under orders not to have any contact with fellow officers. He can’t do that with you in the room.”

  XO Gupta said, “Done, sir? Okay, meeting dismissed.”

  Stone turned to shut off his dataport and personal assistant. He found Zuvela trying to access his personal assistant. “Chief Engineer?”

  “Dammit, Stone. I need that 3D app you have. Tell this blessed thing to give it up.”

  He made a quick copy of the app and tossed it to her. Closing down his devices, he was about to join the line of officers exiting through the hatch when the officers were pushed aside. Two dozen piglets in armor with two dozen unarmored piglets jammed through the space. They were followed by Jay, Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Shorty was leading the gaggle.

  Master Chief Thomas rushed into the room waving his arms. “Sorry, Captain. They came out of nowhere and I couldn’t stop them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Shorty walked to the front. With a wave of his hand, his armored friends spread out around the captain’s office. He held a dataport in his hand. Stone hadn’t realized Shorty had one of his own. He made a mental note to ask Dollish where the piglet had gotten a standard issue navy dataport.

  The piglet tapped the dataport, causing a virtual keyboard to float in the air in front of him. Stone was close enough to see Shorty type in a quick command in Empire Standard and pull up a digital clock, displaying it to the officers in the bay. The clock was counting the seconds up, clearly using human standard time.

  Butcher said, “What the —”

  Shorty waved an arm. He typed in a short dataport command on his virtual keyboard and a gruff voice broadcast, “Wait one, please.” The sentence was longer than the short command he had typed, so Stone concluded it was a preset response. He wondered if Wyznewski or Emmons had helped him design the communicator.