Metal Boxes - At the Edge

by Alan Black

  The recording blinked off. Grandfather was much more succinct than normal.

  Stone was of two minds about the ship. The ship was already old by the time he was born. He had no memories of the Platinum Pebble since his parents transferred to the Golden Boulder when he was a toddler. His parents often talked about how shabby the ship was. Still, they discussed moving back to it when Mom officially abdicated her number two position in the family hierarchy.

  “Signore, do you know where the Platinum Pebble is docked?”

  Manny looked up from his box digging. With a long-suffering sigh, he said, “What do I look like, your servant?” He jammed a finger skyward. “She’s docked in orbit. Your shuttle is parked in quadrant PP1.” He snickered. “Appropriate, huh? PP1 for Platinum Pebble? Dang if that shuttle control tower doesn’t have a sense of humor.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the spaceport’s tarmac.

  Stone said, “Well, thank you both. Melanie. Manny. It was nice meeting you.”

  Melanie continued staring at him, star struck and speechless.

  Manny sighed heavily. “Wait a minute. Dang. My daughters’ll kill me if I don’t get your autograph on your book.” He held out a reader for Stone to sign.

  A quick look assured Stone he was not being offered a contract to give away his first-born child. He signed it, shaking his head. If this was what it was like being a celebrity, he wanted nothing to do with it.

  He watched Melanie watching him leave the office. She did not abandon the doorway to Lowther Expediting, but she stood in the open doorway watching him walk away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The tarmac was a broad plasticrete expanse. Ships and shuttles were parked a long way from the huddle of buildings near the entrance. A faded awning covered an extensive patio at the tarmac entry where one man sat in the shade, thumbing through a reader. He yawned, stretched, and pointed at a small powered cart parked nearby when he spotted Stone approaching. Standing, he ambled to the driver’s seat.

  The man asked, “Where to, Signore Stone?”

  Stone looked surprised, “You know my name?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t rightly care what the navy does one way, or another. However, your cousin Bethy Stone is a hottie. I saw you two looking all cozy and friendly-like on her show last night.”

  Stone said, “I need to catch a shuttle at PP1.” He slid onto the front seat next to the man. There were no doors or safety restraints, but it had a thick canopy overhead to block out the sun. Hoping the driver would keep the cart close to the ground, he gripped a hand strut.

  The man noticed and grinned. “You don’t worry none. I ain’t lost a sober passenger yet.” He pointed a careless hand off in the distance, indicating nothing. “PP1 is way back on the backsides. You be looking for the Marvin or the Vance? One or t’other been sitting on that pad for the past couple weeks. Normally, I’d be hauling crew and passengers back and forth from there, but ain’t nary a one gone anywheres. I see’d a couple huge shippin’ containers hauled aboard a couple of days ago, but nothin’ coming off.”

  Stone took the information in stride. Naming the ship’s shuttles after his cousins who died on company business over Allie’s World was appropriate. If this ship was waiting for him to arrive before heading out to the edge of human space, a new crew wouldn’t need to take crew rest.

  “I would appreciate the ride, but I don’t have any coin to pay unless you can take credit from my P.A.”

  The man smiled. He pulled his P.A. out of a pocket and snapped a quick picture. Opening a display of the picture, he said, “You just sign that image, Signore Stone. I can sell it right quick while you’re still famous, or I might hold it ‘til you and Bethy get hitched, I bet I could get twice as much then.”

  Stone decided there were some perks to being a minor celebrity, even if it was temporary. He said, “I’m grateful for the ride. However, I don’t think Beffie-pie and I are going to get married, so you better sell that picture quick.”

  The man snickered, “That ain’t what Bethy says. Beffie-pie! That’s too cute for words. Anyway, those promos for Bethy’s next show all say how you two are set to tie the knot already.”

  Stone decided to let the news pass. He would be aboard the ship and long gone before Beffie-pie realized he was gone. Being a celebrity was one thing, but he did not like his troubles broadcast to everyone in the galaxy. He hoped Allie would not hear about Beffie-pie’s plans for the two of them. Allie was not a big fan of popular reality vid programs, but just like Grandpa says: bad news always seems to find its way to the people least likely to hear it and the one person most likely to be upset.

  Stone stared at the bizarre mixture of spacecraft they passed. Military craft looked different even though they were all the same. He had studied them since joining the UEN. There were similarities between battlewagons, just as the features on corvettes were the same. Anyone who studied them could tell one ship from another. His study was a waste of time now that the UEN had cast him adrift.

  Civilian spacecraft were unique, like their designers were competing to build something weird. Flanges and angles that had nothing to do with engineering or livable interior space abounded. Many had view bubbles and actual windows. He spotted one in the distance that looked like a giant dog—a beagle if he remembered correctly. He smiled, recalling a history lesson about an Old Earth explorer naming his wet water sailing vessel, the Beagle.

  The driver provided a rambling monolog about every ship they passed. This ship came from here and was going there. That one came from there and was going on to some other place. The ship over there used to be named such and so. That shuttle is from the something or other. The crew from that shuttle always departed drunk, but come back sober. The crew from that ship will rob you blind.

  Stone recognized the Vance before the man pointed it out. It was huge for a shuttle, larger than some of the spacecraft docked nearby, but nowhere near the size of a Hyrocanian shuttle. Those were ships in their own right, just without jump engines. He was sure the Vance and the Marvin were outfitted with engines capable of converting from intrasystem drives to jump engines and back again since Stone Freight Company owned the patents on the design and the factory that built them.

  Grandpa preferred function over form and required his ships and shuttles built the same way. This company shuttle was not exactly square, but it looked sturdy without any strange designs or bulges. It was painted a solid utilitarian gunmetal gray. The only color was the splash on its name: Vance, Platinum Pebble, Stone Freight Company.

  The cart driver was gone almost before Stone got his feet under him. He wondered if the man was anxious to get back to his reader or to try selling the autographed picture before Stone’s celebrity wore off.

  The shuttle ramp was down. Stone raced up the ramp, expecting to be greeted at the top, but the entry was unlocked and empty. Once inside, he sighed deeply. His agoraphobia was foolish. He tried to rationalize it, but it was not rational. His feelings were not logical, they just were. He had spent years enjoying the outside on Allie’s world. It was true that most of the time he was outside bad things happened, but bad things happened just as often inside. Still, being inside the large shuttle felt comforting, almost like the ship was wrapping itself around him.

  The passenger compartment was beyond plush. Stone recognized his mother’s hand in the decoration. He wondered how she had gotten the decor past Grandpa’s austerity streak. The man may not have put in hard plasticrete benches or web seats, but he would never have approved natural leather, deeply overstuffed chairs. Instead of artwork flashing on the walls, original paintings were bolted directly to the bulkheads. The fully stocked snack and liquor bar was enticing. The only thing missing were uniformed attendants. Stone had not eaten since supper last night and should be hungry, but his stomach was in turmoil. Not a surprise considering his arrest and the intervening days.

  He did not see any comm units to the pilot or crew. “Trey Stone reports aboard as ordered,�
�� he said into thin air. There was no answer.

  He sat down in one of the chairs and decided to wait for the crew. The shuttle ramp closed almost as soon as his backside sank into the overstuffed chair. A slight vibration through the floor told Stone the engines were spinning up. The shuttle shot skyward before Stone could snap on the safety restraints. Whoever was piloting the craft was smooth.

  He nodded. That was only right. Grandpa would have hired the best.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Stone’s P.A. automatically connected to the shuttle’s sensor suite and beeped when sync was complete. He tapped it open to a vid display of the receding planet, then spun the screen to catch sight of the surrounding star field and the ships in orbit. Most ships were too small to see with the naked eye, he smiled—for the normal naked eye. His enhanced eyesight enabled him to see dozens of ships parked in a dizzying array of orbits.

  He caught sight of the military side of Lazzaroni Station, but his civilian P.A. showed a black stripe covering the UEN dock and parked ships. Real-time redaction blacked out squares as military vessel movement was classified during wartime.

  Stone could not remember when the human race was not at war with someone somewhere, even if just themselves. Someday maybe he would look through historical records to see if there was ever a time of peace for humanity. He doubted it. Wars and rumors of wars abounded.

  He spun the view back to the civilian orbital parking areas. Most of the ships in orbit were the tractor-type like his grandparent’s Golden Boulder or his Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim’s, Ruby Rock. The forward tractor section contained living quarters and half a dozen medium-sized warehouse bays filled the rest of the area. The tractor could clamp onto a series of sealed shipping containers forming a long train. Tractors came in various sizes with some capable of pulling two or three trains of shipping containers. Corporate names blazed across the sides of tractors. Stone spotted quite a few owned by Stone Freight Company.

  He tried to guess which sparkling dot on the black backdrop of space was their target, but the shuttle driver was not maintaining a straight course. He dove forward and jinked sideways or backward like he was dodging incoming fire or trying to throw off a following tail. The driver must have had the inertial dampers dialed up to full to keep the ride smooth and comfortable for his passenger.

  Scanning the parked spacecraft as they approached, Stone noticed there was a mixture of civilian and commercial vessels. The civilian spacecraft were not the fancy ships that could afford planetside parking. They were smaller family vessels owned by travelers, retired or semi-retired folks with itchy feet, who would park for a while, using skiffs and runabouts to visit the planet, and then move on to somewhere else.

  He recognized a few builder’s brands by their distinctive shapes and outlines. He saw a couple of the “rent me” craft that some companies leased to part-time spacers with no more piloting skills than it took to sit in the back seat of an auto cab. Stone shuddered at the thought of how many of those rental spacecraft went missing every year. Rental companies said they were stolen, of course, but most people believed the ships continued to float somewhere in the black of space or in the nothingness of the gray—lost along with their unfortunate renters.

  Commercial luxury liners rarely stopped at Lazzaroni. Typically such huge craft jammed with ten thousand happy travelers in tiny cabins, docked at vacation-worthy resort planets like Peach’s Rest and Risa. Their exteriors were gaudy with bright logos and lights of every color strung along their superstructure. These floating party ships parked as close to a station as they could get, using their launches to shuttle sightseers, shoppers, and activity junkies down to the planet.

  Stone spotted one such ship parked far away from the commercial ships, as if the tractor drivers were embarrassed to park near such a garish outfit. He had mistaken the massive ship for a luxury liner sitting at the far edge of the orbital band. As he approached, he noticed it carried his company’s logo in a glittering self-lit display like a dazzling, tasteless billboard, five hundred-feet tall. Painted on the side in bright colors was a woman standing with her legs shoulder width apart. She wore flaming red micro shorts and knee-high leather boots and was naked to the waist, her arms strategically covering her nipples. Her cupped hands were carefully placed between her legs holding the Stone Freight Company logo like an offering. Grandma would laugh at the sight, but Grandpa would have a stroke.

  The Platinum Pebble was a monster sized ship. From what he could see, even a rookie rental pilot could park a ship the size of Aunt Ruth’s Ruby Rock in one of the two dozen docking bays. The trailer clamps could pull six, no, seven shipping container trains. His P.A. displayed its specifications as he expanded the view of the ship. Each of the twenty-four decks was a bay three kilometers by three kilometers and hundreds of meters high. Each warehouse bay could hold as many shipping containers as one train.

  The shuttle driver began a bizarre corkscrew maneuver while closing on the side of the Platinum Pebble. Stone was sure they were going to crash into the broad superstructure until a hangar door opened at the junction of the woman’s legs.

  His eyes snapped back to the half-naked female logo.

  “What the—!” he snapped.

  The logo was clearly modeled after marine sergeant Barb Tuttle. The shuttle slid through the gap between her legs.

  Chapter Fifteen.

  Something was not right. Grandpa would never agree to such a logo display, nor would he let Barb Tuttle pose for it. The whole thing looked like some circus outfit come to town.

  The shuttle slid into the docking hangar, but the bay was so large the Vance barely made a speck in the available space. Stone waited impatiently for the shuttle ramp to drop down. The ramp was so slow he almost hit the emergency escape command to blow it clear. Barely containing himself, he started to take a step toward the hatch when a pair of drascos thundered up the ramp, knocking him to the shuttle’s deck.

  “Mama. Mama. Mama.” Peebee danced around him, stomping dimples in the deep pile carpet, missing Stone by a fraction of an inch.

  “I missed you, Mama,” Jay shouted as she breathed chocolate and mint fragrances at his face. “This is our new home, Mama. Isn’t it pretty?”

  Stone grunted and pushed his way to his feet. His thickened skin protected him from losing more than he could afford to lose in the onslaught. At the top of his to-do list was finding them and getting them released from the UEN before he followed his grandfather’s orders to seek out new shipping lanes at the edge of human space. Rubbing both girl’s heads, he was shocked to find the drascos already aboard.

  Jay said, “Come on, Mama. Everybody is waiting for you.”

  “Everybody?”

  Peebee gave a drasco-like chuckle. “You’ll see.”

  Stone began following the drascos down the ramp. Glancing up, he was right about the size of the shuttle hangar. The whole space was big enough to park a military frigate inside and still have room for a dozen soccer games at the same time.

  He froze at the bottom of the ramp. Lined up in neat military rows was his new crew. The rows were military precise, but their clothing was a bizarre mixture of casual civilian attire. Dozens of familiar faces grinned at him.

  No one called the rows to attention, but retired Major Dashel Numos marched up to the ramp. He did not salute, but he stuck his hand out for a civilian handshake. The man gave Stone a rare grin and winked at him, squeezing his hand gently before giving it back.

  “Welcome home, Signore Stone.”

  “What’s going on, Major?”

  Numos shook his head. “I’m retired, don’t call me major anymore. I’m the captain of this floating menagerie. It seems the owner thought my being a third watch commander on a combat vessel would qualify me to fly this five-star playboy bachelor runabout.”

  “But, Major—”

  “No, Signore Stone. We’re both civilians now. You can call me Captain, or Numos, but I would prefer you just make it Dash.”


  “Um, yes, sir…Captain Dash.”

  Numos chuckled. “One or the other, Signore Stone. Putting them together sounds like something from a graphic novel. Besides, we have a few people here who want—”

  Numos was shoved out of the way as Allie wrapped her arms around Stone. Planting a long wet kiss on his lips, Stone was almost overwhelmed by the wet, dark chocolate fragrance of his fiancée. He returned her kisses with a furor only quelled when Hammermill yanked them apart and swung him around like a rag doll.

  Allie shouted, “Give me my boyfriend back, you moron.”

  Hammermill laughed. “Not likely. You’re just trying to butter up the boss.”

  Allie grabbed Hammermill by the ears, yanking him backward. “That’s enough spinning him around, Hammer.” When Hammermill laughed and refused to comply, she shouted. “That is sufficient, First Lieutenant Hammermill.”

  Hammermill put Stone back on his feet. He smiled at Stone, but said “Aye, aye, Captain Vedrian.”

  Allie kissed Stone quickly and spun him back around to face Numos. He should be dizzy from being spun around by Hammermill, but he already was so confused he did not know what was going on.

  Stone all but shouted, “Wait! Captain?” He pointed at Numos. “And Captain?” He looked at Allie.

  Numos smiled, “Confusing, isn’t it? I don’t have a uniform to go with my civilian rank, but somewhere I have a beautiful sport coat that came with the job. It has a lovely Stone Freight Company logo on the pocket.”

  Stone asked, “All Stone Freight Company ship’s officers get those. I hope it’s just the corporate logo and not that monstrosity someone painted on the side of this ship?”

  Tuttle’s voice coming from the crew ranks interrupted him. “Hey! I like that painting, Boss.”