Metal Boxes - Rusty Hinges

by Alan Black

  Numos asked, “Are you sure they were officers?”

  Stone replied, “No, sir. Just that they were fat enough to be officers and their pants are so bloody garish they’re hard to look at. I’m not even sure Hammer would wear something that gaudy. Besides, who else on this ship would have the authority to fudge their warehouse database to keep a few tasty human morsels for their own enjoyment?”

  Numos said, “We’ve encountered a lot of workers crammed into barracks or shuffling cargo in warehouses. Fat, but not obese. You may have finished off the officers. What does Shorty say about the bridge?”

  Stone looked around. “Sorry, Major. I haven’t heard from him. I’ve tried calling but I don’t get an answer. We need to find a piglet in armor.” He looked at Tuttle with a raised eyebrow.

  She shook her head, “Not a chance, Ensign. I have no intention of leaving you to go find a communications link to the bridge.”

  Peebee was licking Jay’s cut. They looked at him expectantly. Stone said, “Jay, would you and Peebee please go find me an armored piglet and bring it back here?”

  Jay raced through the hatch followed quickly by her sister. Tuttle stood in the hatchway, her back to the cabin, weapons at the ready. An explosion caused her to duck back into the cabin. She stuck her head back into the corridor quickly, the muzzle of her rifle swinging back and forth looking for something to shoot.

  Stone turned back to the injured man. Dollish had most of the cuts bandaged, although the wrappings were quickly soaking through. “Sir, do you know how many other humans were on this ship?”

  The man shook his head. “We started with seventeen. Just us three now.”

  “How many were military?”

  The man looked surprised. “Military? No, sir. All seventeen were from the skiff we were on. We was out past Holliman’s Rift headed toward Epimides Four. They was three crew and fourteen of us refugees.”

  “You weren’t taken from a military ship? You were in deep space in a skiff?” He made a mental note to look up where Holliman’s Rift and Epimides Four were in human space, but it sounded like they were at the edge of human space; far enough out and off the normal space lanes that they hadn’t ever appeared on a Stone Freight Company manifest. He knew a skiff wasn’t designed as anything more than an intra-system runabout, most not even hyperspace capable, although smugglers often retrofit them. These three, and probably their whole ship’s company might never have appeared on the Hyrocanians ship’s warehouse logs.

  The man said, “These two girls are my daughters, sir. That’s all that’s left of my family now. I expected God’s saving hand before now, but His will be done. We was running from Edenside out beyond Holliman’s Rift. Had to. It was either deny our god or be slaughtered by the prophet. We surely never expect to be scooped up by alien devils.”

  Stone shook his head. “Wait. You were religious refugees before you were captured by Hyrocanians?”

  Religious freedom was one of the basic tenets of an individual’s full-rights as an Empire citizen. There were lots of reasons for citizens to become refugees, but religious oppression generally wasn’t one of them.

  The man nodded and pointed at the bodies of the four-armed freaks. “Hyrocanians is them things that been killing and eating us?” At Stone’s nod he continued. “Might as well stayed at home, even though the prophet’s men would have put us through the testimonies.”

  “I am sorry, sir,” Stone said. “The prophet? Testimonies?” He glanced around. Dollish and Tuttle shrugged, but Dollish didn’t stop trying to keep the man from bleeding to death and Tuttle never took her eyes off the corridor.

  “We sent word to the emperor for help, but he don’t care nothing for us poor folk far out at the edge of human space.” He let out a long sigh. “The prophet is the self-appointed leader of Edenside. Says he be appointed directly by his god and has a right to rule. He claims his obligation is to convert all of human space to worshipping his way. His testimonies are how he done gets folks to convert. I tell you many a person come out of the testimonies with their eyes poked out, missing fingers, toes, or a whole hand. He miraclizes some to replace an eye or a hand here and there. But some folks who refuse to give in, don’t come out at all. We-uns was running from that, but I guess we should of stayed; death by these animals or by the prophet be all one and the same, excepting the prophet wouldn’t have eaten the children first.”

  Stone started to speak, but the man had a faraway look in his eyes. “I don’t guess getting eaten would be much worse than being worked to a slow death in the prophet’s spaceship factories.”

  “Spaceship factories?”

  The man nodded, “The prophet and his men are building a huge fleet of ships. He says it’s to spread his gospel across human space, but he’s already built more ships than he has people to use them.” He looked thoughtful. “I don’t rightly know where all his extra ships go.”

  Stone spun around at a loud crash. January and al-Julier raced past the open hatchway, guns blazing. A medical corpsman trailed behind them. Tuttle grabbed the medic by the collar of her flak jacket and dragged her into the cabin, pushing her toward the rescued humans.

  The medic squeezed past Stone and shoved Dollish out of her way without regard to their rank. Dropping to her knees, she began working on the man’s wounds. She yanked Dollish’s first aid attempts away with disgust, spraying the cuts with anti-coagulant. Stone turned back to the hatch.

  January and al-Julier had returned. They bracketed the hatch to the corridor, each facing a different direction. Tuttle stood a few steps back from the hatch but no less alert.

  Stone opened his comms. “Stone here. I’m sending the three rescued humans back to the shuttle —”

  Numos’s voice interrupted. “Negative, Ensign. We aren’t secure yet.”

  Shorty’s gruff voice blared out. “We have the bridge, but our people can’t get into engineering. They’ve blocked us.”

  Stone marveled. The piglet must be a wizard with a keyboard. The voice translation was almost without hesitation.

  Numos said, “We’ve cleared or locked down almost everything else, but without engineering we’re at a standstill. I need all hands to help break through to engineering. Stone, lock your captives in for their safety, then get down here with your team.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” He turned to the medic. “Did you hear?”

  Not looking up from her work, the woman nodded. “Just lock the door behind you when you leave.”

  It only took a moment to slam the hatch behind them. January welded a quick tack of metal to seal the door as al-Julier used a spray can to make a huge note on the wall about humans being inside the cabin. Before any of them could draw a second breath, they had left the cabin behind them, sprinted down the corridor, and vaulted down a ladderway. Tuttle leaping to a point position, al-Julier and January following behind with Dollish right on Stone’s heels.

  After a few decks, Tuttle shouted a warning and Stone screeched to a halt, almost bumping into Jay and Peebee coming up the ladder. Jay held a squirming armored piglet in her arms.

  He started to wave them on to follow him, but stopped and called to his small band, “Wait.”

  Tuttle looked up through the ladder well. “One more deck, Ensign Stone. Come on.”

  Jay shouted, “No. Mama. Bad ones down below.”

  Peebee pulled up a virtual keyboard on her dataport translator and typed in a code. “Down.” Her simulated voice was barely a match for the one Stone was accustomed to hearing in his head.

  Dollish said, “You’re the boss, Ensign. You have a better idea?”

  Turning from the ladderway, Stone sprinted down a corridor past his team. They sped after him. Calling up the ship’s schematics, he verified he was headed the right way. The whole corridor displayed marks on the bulkheads. Each room had been cleared, sealed, and marked by marines or piglets. Stone smiled when he saw a pictograph of a drasco throwing a Hyrocanian. It was drawn at piglet height. He didn’t slow h
is sprint.

  He spotted a group of armored piglets. “Follow me,” he shouted. He continued running, not bothering to see if they obeyed him. He didn’t even know if they were part of the piglets who’d been around humans long enough to understand Empire Standard. He did notice that Jay turned loose of her armored piglet with reluctance, almost as if she were letting go of a contest prize.

  He skidded to a stop in front of a welded hatch and pounded on it. “In here. Get this hatch open.”

  Tuttle said, “Aye, aye, sir. We’re on the wrong floor, Ensign, but —” She didn’t get to finish her sentence as Jay and Peebee both grabbed the hatch and yanked. The hatch warped, but held.

  Stone reached a hand between his drascos. He grabbed a handle and pulled with all the might of the suit, managing to rip the handle away from the hatch.

  Tuttle pushed him out of the way. “Watch him,” she admonished her fellow marines. Flexing her gauntlet covered bio-mechanical hand, she punched a hole through the hatch. Grabbing the edges of the new hole, she wrenched the hatch from its hinges.

  As a group, they stormed through the hatch. Racing between their legs, dozens of armored piglets joined them. January and al-Julier stopped at the gaping hole where the hatch had been. The two marines spread wide as a large herd of unarmored piglets were herded into the room by a marine fireteam. The piglets were unarmed and without tools. Their eyes grew wide seeing others of their species in combat suits.

  Peebee’s dataport voice said, “The piglets from Rusty Hinges are telling these others that they’ve been rescued by you, Mama.”

  Stone listened with one ear as he scanned the deck plates around him. He took the time to reply. “We don’t have time to coddle them. Tell them we’ll get them to safety as soon as we can.”

  One of the armored piglets passed along his words. In a flash, the former captives began scouring the open bay, jerking a pipe lose from here, tugging a metal bar lose there, and wrenching a long staff from somewhere else. The way the piglets swung their improvised weapons, it left no doubt that they wouldn’t be recaptured without a fight.

  Stone jabbed a finger at a deck plate. “Here.” Without waiting for help, he dug his fingers into a tiny crack between the plates and pulled. The warehouse ship had not been subject to the same level of poor maintenance that Rusty Hinges had. Steel screws squealed and complained as the deck plate slowly gave way. An ever-widening gap gave Dollish room to squeeze in and get a grip. With a grunt, Dollish pulled, his suit adding strength to Stone’s. Tuttle shoved a long pipe into the gap. A pair of marines grabbed the end of the lever and pushed. The plate held. Stone dropped to his hands and knees under the pipe. Stiffening, he acted as a fulcrum with Tuttle shouting at the marines to push the end of the pipe down, not up. The thick deck plate rolled back as they worked their improvised prybar deeper and deeper into the gap. Stone grunted as a loud crack similar to weapons fire sounded when the deck plate finally peeled away.

  Jay shouted, forgetting her dataport, “Mama, I can smell them now. They’re below us.”

  Peebee used her comms and declared to the room, “Down. We go down now.”

  Stone glared at the hole. There were myriads of pipes, conduits, and wires running between the decks. “Engineering should be right below us. We have to get through this mess without tearing up something vital.”

  An armored piglet jumped into the hole. He pointed at his chest as his voice transmitter said, “Vent runner.” He grabbed a wire and pulled it free. He tossed the long wire piece to a second piglet. The second piglet used the wire and spliced into another wire in two places, cutting between the spices. The vent runner pointed at a pipe. “Cut.”

  Turning his welding torch to high, Stone slashed through the pipe. The metal melted away like water flowing downhill. Dollish leaped into the hole, yanking the pipe out of the way, throwing it to the side as Stone cut again where the piglet pointed. Point and cut. Point and cut.

  In a flash, Stone cut a wide gap. He ignored the sparking ends of live wires and dripping fluids from a couple of pipes. Grinning, he didn’t think he’d cut through anything important … this time. Doing a quick mental calculation, he twisted the knob on his wrist to reset the depth of his torch. Slicing a deep groove into the bottom deck plate, he hoped it would hold until he was ready to break through.

  “Stone here, Major Numos,” He glanced up. Seven marines and Dollish stared at him from the rim of the hole. Each had weapons ready. Each had fire in their eyes. Each gave him a thumbs up.

  A ring of armored piglets surrounded the marines. Behind them stood a thick crowd of unarmored piglets, each armed with a stick, a pipe, or a staff. A three fingered piglet gave a thumbs up. It was a little disconcerting since it looked like getting the finger, but Stone understood the message, they were ready.

  “Numos here, Ensign. What’s your status?”

  “Major, I’m ready to make ingress into engineering in five, four, three —”

  Numos shouted, “You’re what? Dammit, Ensign! Hammer, ready on the left. Allie, ready on the right.”

  “Two.” Stone leapt straight up. His suit piston muscles took him all the way to the ceiling above. He pushed off the upper deck ceiling, shoving as hard as he could. The extra thrust and the weight of the suit sent him hurling into the hole adding momentum to his weight.

  “One.” The final piece in the deck plate let go. Stone crashed through into engineering, his suit taking the thirty meter drop with no more jarring to his knees than if he’d just stood up from a perfectly designed chair.

  A nanosecond later, it was raining marines. Tuttle, January, and al-Julier with the other fireteam dropped beside him. Dollish crashed to the deck shortly thereafter, not getting to his feet fast enough to stay out from under Jay and Peebee as they followed the humans.

  Stone kept his voice calm. “January and al-Julier, please get those hatches open.” He jabbed fingers in the directions where Numos and the rest of the marines should be deployed.

  He looked at the four-man fireteam. Not knowing their names, he addressed them as a group, “Marines, try not to damage anything that might blow the ship up.”

  Without a word, the marines raced toward a knot of Hyrocanians. Most of the aliens were unarmored, but with or without protection, a fireteam of angry marines dropping into your midst was a death sentence. The Hyrocanians died quickly, though not exactly quietly.

  Stone spun in a circle as piglets began dropping from the ceiling. He pointed at various systems. Piglets raced where he pointed either singly or in groups. They killed any Hyrocanians they encountered and secured the equipment, engines, or whatever Stone pointed at.

  Making room for a homemade ladder and a swarm of piglets climbing down to assist, he moved away, followed by Dollish, Tuttle and his drascos. He noticed January and al-Julier were about to be pushed back from a hatch by a group of armored Hyrocanian defenders, when the marine fireteam hit the four-armed freaks in a bone crunching flanking movement, sweeping them away from the hatch before Stone could shout.

  Marines led by Numos, Vedrian and Hammermill boiled into engineering. Stone moved to the spot where he thought the anti-gravity spinning discs should be, but they weren’t there. Looking around the area, he spotted them across the huge bay. Before he could direct Numos to the discs, a group of Hyrocanians attacked his small group. The aliens were armed with a few hand tools and their kitchen knives. They must have been desperate.

  A Hyrocanian slammed into Stone, causing him to take a step backwards. Grabbing the enemy by the arms, he twisted sideways, using the creature’s own weight to throw it to Jay.

  Jay plucked the Hyrocanian out of the air by an ankle and slammed it to the deck with a bone-shattering thump. Peebee bellowed a deep-throated roar and leapt into the middle of the Hyrocanians. She threw one to her sister, knocked another to the ground, and drove her tail spike through a third.

  Stone couldn’t shoot. Even if Peebee wasn’t in the way, there were far and away too many delicate pi
eces of equipment that might get damaged by errant gunfire. He was about to follow Peebee into the middle of the Hyrocanian defenders when they were swept aside by a wave of marines. Hammermill led the charge, carrying the enemy away like litter on a light breeze.

  Stone climbed onto a tall piece of equipment to get a view of the engineering bay. He’d barely stood up when he heard Numos’s voice crackling over the comms.

  “Engineering secured, Captain Shorty. The ship is yours.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The cluster of people gathered around the bridge conference table couldn’t help but smile. They were still behind enemy lines with dozens of enemy ships surrounding them. Their way home wasn’t guaranteed. It was still a toss-up whether backtracking using the Hyrocanian database would get them back to Allie’s World.

  Slipping away from the system, the human shuttle carrying all their gathered information headed for the piglets home. Everyone was hopeful the piglets code would let them into their system and then out again.

  The good news outweighed the bad. They had successfully taken a second ship from the Hyrocanians. Admittedly, the ship was smaller than the Rusty Hinges and designed as a warehouse, but it was in the hands of an allied species. The alliance was unofficial, but Butcher and Shorty were happy with the arrangement. Several thousand of his people followed Captain Shorty, although the little piglet himself remained with the humans for the time being. A few hundred piglets remained on the Rusty Hinges. No one asked whether they were following the piglet pirate or feeling some sense of obligation toward their human rescuers.

  CDR Nessayette had taken charge of the rescued humans and piglets now aboard the Rusty Hinges. They had recovered eight additional humans and two hundred piglets not on the warehouse ship’s manifests. Apparently, the Hyrocanians were not above skimming a few profits or fudging their warehouse supply sheets for personal gain or amusement.