Metal Boxes

by Alan Black

  Maggot grinned and nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  Stone stared at Shalako, “You mean you really did order Vaarhoo to kill me?”

  “Of course I didn’t tell him to kill you,” Shalako snorted in reply. “You are a young pup and none to bright at that. No one would listen to you anyway. All I meant was for Vaarhoo to take care of you, to wipe your recordings, to plant evidence to implicate you, to blackmail you, or anything to shut you up. The idiot decided I meant to kill you. So, there you have it.” He looked at Maggot. “Someone have their p.a. recording?”

  Maggot nodded. “Yes Admiral, Vaarhoo had his personal assistant recording your conversations. He said he was recording just to cover his rear end. He said he was just following your orders. I really think he was recording so he could blackmail you later. Either way, you are implicated in murder and attempted murder. Plus, Bob here tells me he has already locked in evidence proving you are guilty of theft as well.”

  “Speaking of that,” Stone said. “Bob, what is that gizmo you keep fiddling with?”

  Bob patted the machine in front of him. “This is a Mark Nineteen Stroke Alpha Gamma Dot Thirty-Two Investigator and Forensic Accountant. It can seek out, record and analyze data. It can also communicate with any E.M.I.S. office on any space station independent from the ship’s systems, when we are in normal space that is. It is shielded from intrusion, tampering and has its own power supply, also it is completely independent of the ship’s systems.”

  Jake spoke up for the first time. “We can, in fact, download all relevant ship’s records and intercept personal assistant data from anyone on board we choose. Of course, assuming we have legal reason to suspect the individual has been acting in a criminal manner within the scope of the Emperor’s Writ. For example, we have the admiral’s signature on a disposal form for an empty container that we can prove was not actually empty at the time of said disposal, and that the admiral knew it was empty. Since said action is within the scope of the Writ we can strip all information from his p.a. as well as all of the data from the ship’s recorders related to his activities.”

  Bob said, “We also found information where Admiral Shalako was involved in a sexual relationship with a subordinate, an enlisted rating, against said rating’s expressed will. That information is not within the scope of our writ, however it was found within the confines of a legal investigation and as such it will be part and parcel of an ancillary investigation.”

  Melendez spat, “Admiral, you did what!?”

  Bob cleared his throat, “Commander Melendez, please do not jump to conclusions about the admiral.”

  Shalako was staring at the table. He would not meet Melendez’s glare.

  “All we know at this point is that it was a sexual relationship with a subordinate enlisted rating against the rating’s stated will,” Bob said. “The Mark Nineteen is still collating related data. However, the original crimes take precedence, so we haven’t polled the enlisted rating’s p.a. as yet. Until we do so we cannot state for sure whether it was simple harassment or rape.”

  Melendez shouted, “Shalako, you old bastard! Who was she?”

  “Um, Commander Melendez, at this stage that question is entirely inappropriate,” Jake said. “The rating in question is a victim as far as we can tell. As a victim, his identity will be kept confidential until we can verify whether he felt pressured, whether he felt forced, or whether he was just playing hard to get.”

  Bob nodded, “We are having some difficulty with the original charges. Our starting point is Captain Stone’s allegations and the data provided by his p.a. But the Mark 19 is coming up against a blank bulkhead. We assume the data on his p.a. was damaged when the admiral ordered Lieutenant Vaarhoo to wipe the data.”

  Stone shook his head. “This is way off the topic I wanted to discuss, but let’s clear the air since the admiral brought it up.”

  He swiveled his chair to face Maggot, “Agent Storovitch, this is your investigation. Please let Commander Melendez or Major Numos know if you need anything to further the investigation.”

  Maggot said. “I need to go to Lazzaroni Station and lock this vessel down.”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” Stone said.

  “And that places you in violation of the Emperor’s Writ,” Maggot said. “This is an attempted murder case. Hindering this investigation makes you an accessory after the fact in the conspiracy to commit murder. That is punishable by death, just as if you did the killing yourself.”

  Stone grinned. “Cool! I get to be guilty of conspiracy for trying to murder myself and then I get put to death for it.”

  “This isn’t a joke, young man,” Maggot said.

  Stone laughed, “No, it is not. On the other hand, I would be in violation of navy orders if I do not take the Ol’ Toothless to the front.”

  Commander Melendez nodded, “Yes Captain, I would see to it you were tried and found guilty for deserting your post in time of war. That is a clear violation of the Emperor’s directives and also carries a penalty of death. This is quite a conundrum for such a young midshipman.”

  “A what, sir?” Stone asked.

  “A conundrum is two completely true, but completely opposite statements or courses of action,” Melendez answered.

  The admiral laughed. “Hanged if you do and hanged if you don’t. Sorry Agent, but even I see the joke in Mister Stone’s predicament. Well son, I will see you on the gallows.”

  Stone laughed and shrugged. “Maybe and maybe not, Admiral, we will just have to see. Or I can just explain it to the Emperor the next time I see him.”

  The admiral laughed. “See him? The Emperor wouldn’t deign to see my case on appeal, much less some puissant little midshipman.”

  Stone shrugged. “I don’t know about that. He did tell me the last time I was there that I should come back the next time our ship was close. I think he was just being polite since Grandpa is his godfather. Whether he does or not-”

  “Your grandfather?” Shalako sputtered. “Who are you, Mister Stone?”

  Before he could answer, Maggot said, “Admiral Shalako, you and your lackeys just tried to kill the next head of the Stone Freight Company, the largest privately owned corporation in human space.”

  Stone shook his head. “That doesn’t matter, or it shouldn’t matter, whether I come from a rich family or a poor family from some backwater farming planet. It is true Grandpa might have the resources to hunt you down wherever you went to hide and a poor family might not, but that doesn’t make the murder any more bad, um, worse, or worser. Crap! You know what I mean!”

  “Murder is murder,” Numos nodded.

  “Exactly,” Stone said. “And as such I expect Agent Storovitch and his team will investigate my attempted murder very strenuously regardless of my family ties. So Bob, what kind of bulkhead has your Mark Nineteen come up against?”

  “For starters all of the containers in every disposal location have been taken off ship. Those locations are completely empty,” Bob said.

  “Of course they are,” Shalako said. “Why would we haul trash when we are going into a combat zone? It was disposed of back at Tamvor Station through proper channels. You don’t have any physical evidence?”

  “We don’t need the actual evidence,” Maggot replied with a shrug. “It would have helped, but we can convict you on the data alone.”

  “Still,” Stone said, “would it help to have a storeroom full of the crap they were passing off as navy goods?”

  Bob and Jake both nodded as if their heads were on strings.

  Stone typed a few commands into his p.a. He looked at Bob. “Try this location.”

  “Wait,” Jake said, “that isn’t even a valid storeroom number. It isn’t on any of the ship’s manifests.”

  “No,” Stone grinned. “When I found these containers I had them sent to a special storeroom I threw together. You know the warehouse bulkheads are malleable metal, right? We can have the ship change the size and shape of each
storeroom to fit the contents. I had the ship build a storeroom, put the stuff in there and then I removed all of the doors and hatches. I hid the location with a personal pass code so no one would know it was there. Even the crew I used to put it there didn’t know where it was, and without any hatches, even if they went looking for it they wouldn’t find anything, just blank bulkheads.”

  Bob looked thrilled. “This is great stuff. You even released documents that had been erased from the ship’s database.” He glanced at the admiral, “Oh, the Mark Nineteen would have recovered the erased data in time. But this makes recovery so much easier. Nothing can be erased permanently when a Mark Nineteen is on the job.”

  Melendez nodded, “That is why we have thermite charges built into our database cases. If we are about to get captured by the Hyrocanian we can do a meltdown to keep the information out of their hands.”

  “Captured?” Stone asked.

  “Yes, Captain,” Melendez replied. “Capture is to be avoided at all costs. No prisoner has ever been retaken.”

  “Not alive,” Numos said. “They have some very persuasive and rather unpleasant information extraction methods.”

  Stone took a deep breath in the silence following the marine’s statement.

  “That brings me to the real reason we are here. I am sure Commander Melendez is doing everything possible to get the Ol’ Toothless ready for a combat zone jump, but I have never done this and I would like to know what to expect.”

  Shalako said, “I have made more combat insertions than this whole crowd put together. You only have three options. First, we jump into a combat zone and no enemy combatants are in the area. We use sub-light engines to move into place to resupply our ships. We use shuttles if there are planetary engagements to consider.

  “Second possible outcome, we jump into a combat zone and all of the enemy combatants are contained by our ships. We stand off and allow our ships to come to us a few at a time for resupply.

  “Third, we jump into a combat zone and there are only enemy ships or our ships are contained. We then leave the area and report back at the nearest navy base.”

  Stone said, “We can’t help our ships if they are…what did you call it…contained?”

  Shalako snorted, “What do you think this old warehouse pile of junk can do if our top of the line battle units are being overwhelmed by superior forces?

  “We run?” Stone asked.

  Melendez nodded in agreement with Shalako, “There isn’t anything else we can do, Mister Stone. No one wants to leave. I can guarantee there isn’t an officer on the bridge who wouldn’t try, but it is just not possible if the enemy has achieved containment.”

  “What is containment?” Stone asked. He sat quietly and listened as Melendez explained modern space warfare.

  Spacecraft shields had made the Emperor’s navy virtually unstoppable. They had rolled over the Alarii without breaking a sweat. The same shields that protected human designed spacecraft from collision and cosmic radiation also protected them from missiles, lasers, masers, grazers, sticks and rocks. The shields and the inertial dampeners were a byproduct of the anti-gravity engines. Their spinning discs of liquid metal generated an impenetrable barrier encompassing the ship.

  None of the Alarii’s weapons had made any impression on the navy. The shields were unidirectional. The navy could fire out, but nothing could get through from outside the shields. The navy was free to fire back or to fire anti-missiles, but normal policy had been to let the Alarii throw everything at them they could and then ask for their surrender.

  Planetary actions against the Alarii had been very bloody. With the navy ships intact humans could threaten to rain destruction from above. The Alarii ground troops often fought anyway.

  The war with the Hyrocanian started the same way. But a short time into the war the Hyrocanians developed shields of their own. It was assumed the Hyrocanians had learned how to make shields from prisoners or information captured in ground action. The warfare ground to a halt, a clear stalemate, with neither side holding the advantage. Both sides could expend their weapons storage and no damage would be inflicted.

  Human engineers developed a space mine that could work against Hyrocanian shields. Mines were attracted to all spacecraft, but they had IFF signals that would let the mine identify friend and foe. One on one, a mine could not get past a ship’s shielding.

  Shields were expandable to thousands of kilometers beyond the ship itself, but the farther a shield expanded the weaker it became. The mine design, seeking out enemy ships from thousands of kilometers away, was to stick in clusters to shields. The enemy could keep the mines from their shields by firing through their shields, but the mines were so simple and cheap to make that humans could flood an enemy ship until its guns ran dry.

  The mines would explode in sequence when enough of them finally stuck to the enemy shields with their blasts aimed in the direction of the ship that had captured their magnetic interest. The first couple of mines wasted themselves against the shielding, but they emitted an electro-magnetic pulse that weakened the shields just enough for the fourth, fifth or twelfth mine to blast into the ship. The E.M.P. would not seriously injure living creatures or damage much of the ship. It did emit a cone of sub-component pulses generally called E1, E2 and E3.

  An exploding mine generated a super-high amplitude E1 pulse, a flood of gamma rays. It did not use the fission of the old fashioned nuclear explosions to produce gamma rays, but used a smoother channeled explosion to release a spray of x-rays. The shipward-directed cone of gamma rays soon collided with electrons in the spacecraft’s internal atmosphere and they transferred their energy to those electrons. The supercharged electrons were blasted away from their parent molecules, colliding with other electrons in a massive cascade within the blast cone.

  The E1 blast cone melted electrical systems, but outside the cone it was easily defended against with electrostatic shielding or even common surge protectors. The E.M.P. blast cone would spread wider the farther away the mine exploded from the ship. The Hyrocanians soon learned to keep their shields in close to their ships, keeping them as strong as possible and preventing the blast cones from spreading before cutting through the ship’s internal systems. But if the navy used enough mines it would not matter.

  The low amperage E2 pulse generated a force that wiped electronic equipment. It coupled with any device by acting like an antenna and funneling excessive charges of amps into the equipment shorting them out completely and melting their components. The E2 pulse was attracted to any conductive material. Since spacecraft were made of conductive material wrapped in ceramics, the E2 was able to travel the length of the ship.

  The E1 and the E2 pulse were minor inconveniences to the Hyrocanians. Blown circuits and disabled toasters did not stop any warship.

  The very low amperage E3 pulse was the killer of the three pulses. It was super conductive, travelling the length of the ship in a nanosecond. It combined with and expelled magnetic forces. It caused a voltage collapse with a resultant overheat shut down. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue with any ship system as E.M.P. shielding protected all of the critical systems, except one.

  The anti-gravity engine design was completely dependent upon spinning, magnetic discs of liquid metal. Placing E3 blast shields around these engines rendered them useless. Any space craft could do without gravity for a while, but these engines also provided the inertial dampeners necessary to keep the crew from being buffeted about into jelly. They also generated the ship’s shields.

  The first E3 blast caused catastrophic shield failure as the anti-gravity discs solidified and welded together. Without shielding, the Hyrocanian ships were as vulnerable as the Alarii had been. But they still refused to surrender. They ran away when they could run. They used a tactic of clustering their ships together into a small ball if they could not escape. They were able to overlap anti-mine fire coverage and supplement each ship’s protective umbrella with fire from its neighbor. However, in f
orming a defensive ball they lost all the forward momentum that was so necessary to generate a hyperspace bubble.

  The navy began to contain the enemy’s clusters by completely encircling the ball of ships and pounding at it from every direction. They threw mines at the Hyrocanian clusters from large tubes that looked like nothing more than giant shotguns. They threw load after load of mines until the enemy’s supply of anti-mine munitions was depleted.

  When a Hyrocanian ship finally lost its shielding, it skittered behind the shielding of another ship. Eventually, the trapped ships would try a futile rush, trying to break free of the containment. Most tried to build up enough speed to make a hyperspace jump out of the combat zone. Few ever got free.

  Then suddenly, things changed when the Hyrocanians developed their own mines.

  Engagements devolved to what warfare experts called the General George Meade effect: the win went to the side that got there the firstest with the mostest. The side with the most ships invariably contained the smaller force. It was then a battle of attrition. If you had more munitions than your opponent, you won. If not, you tried to run or hyperspace out before you were trapped in containment.

  Melendez explained that if the Emperor’s ships were trapped in containment, the Ol’ Toothless could try and supply them and possibly break the containment with greater supplies. They had no hope of breaking through the Hyrocanian encircling ships to reach their comrades. If the Periodontitis jumped into a combat zone with the navy contained, they jumped away as fast as they could.

  “No one likes it,” Melendez added. “It would just be futile to try to save them.”

  “That is why the admiralty builds bigger and bigger fleets,” Shalako said.

  Stone asked, “Do we have a lot of mines on board?”

  Melendez nodded. “Tower six.”

  “The whole tower?” Stone stared at the man.