Metal Boxes (25 page)

He looked at Wright. “Ready to disembark, Commander?”

“Yes, Mister Stone. Let’s go see what we can see.”

Stone pushed the console button lower
ing the back ramp. “Yes, sir. Let’s go see and be seen.” They stepped into the main cabin followed by the drascos.

“I am not sure about being seen
,” Wright said. “I am not all that vain, but I am not sure I want to be seen while I look this way. It is hard enough to appear attractive, but I have let myself go the last few weeks and this ratty old uniform is all I have to wear.”

“Nonsense, Dani. You are as lovely as ever. And some of
your uniform tears are quite strategically placed. And your hair has that…um…slept in, wild look.”

“Ha! You mean my hair looks like I went at it with a chainsaw and a kitchen fork. We are definitely going to draw stares when we leave this hanger.”

“I mean it,” Stone laughed. “You are a pretty woman. A few weeks on a dangerous unexplored planet isn’t going to change that. I think we want stares, the more people see us the better. That way we can’t be made to disappear again quite as easily. Besides, I think Jay and Peebee are going to get a lot more stares than we will ever get.”

The ramp clanked down to the deck. Jay was standing quietly next to Stone her head just inches from his hand. Peebee
ran to the top of the ramp dancing with excitement, ready to race off, but she waited for Stone.

“I don’t guess you two can get into too much trouble in a locked down hanger. Go on outside if you want.” Before he finished speaking Peebee raced down the ramp and ran off. Jay grabbed
Stone’s hand in her mouth and passed his hand to her hand. She gave it a gentle squeeze let go and streaked across the main cabin.

He looked at his hand and back at Wright. “I wonder where she picked that up
.”

“I wish I knew. My scans on them are inconclusive. They may be smarter than we think or they may be very good at imitating. Young creatures are very adept at imitating their parent
’s habits.”

“By parents you mean…?”

“I mean you. You are their mother and father. I am just another member of your pack, I think. They definitely see you as in charge.”

Peebee
had raced across the hanger and was running back. She stopped, squatted and relieved herself in the middle of the hanger deck. Jay raced up, sniffed Peebee’s excrement and added more drasco waste to the pile.

Stone shook his head. “Well, at least they waited until they were outside the pod.
Now I am going to have to go all the way over there to clean up that mess.”

“Or pay for a hanger crew to do it
,” Wright said.

“No, Commander.
Whether we are rich or not, I will clean up after myself and my own. Grandpa always says it sets a bad example to pay for something we can do ourselves. I’ll clean it up. I have to clean the pod’s main cabin anyway.”

“
Yes you do but later, Mister Stone. We need to sign in on the guest registry and I want to check station services. Maybe we can pick up some info on the EMIS office from the service menu.”

The
y walked around to the front of the pod and stepped up to the console. Wright tapped on the guest registry. It flashed alive at the first touch.

She glanced at Stone. “I am guessing from how we introduced ourselves it would be best if we registered without using our military titles. That was the Stone
-Wright Partnership.” She spoke their names into the registry, listing the pod as owned by their partnership. When prompted she said the length of their stay was undetermined.

Jay and Peebee raced up
. Jay grabbed Stone’s hand and sat next to him. Peebee rose up on her hind legs propped her front feet on the bulkhead next to the registry display and cranked her neck around to watch the screen. She reached out to touch the screen with a finger.

Wright pushed Peebee’s hand away.

Peebee started to hiss but Stone slapped her outstretched hand. The hiss died quickly.

“No
,” Stone said. “We don’t hiss at Commander Wright.” He slipped his hand out of Jay’s grasp and clasped Peebee’s head in both hands. He wrestled her head around to face his. “I am not mad at you, but you don’t hiss at Dani. Okay?” He blew his breath into Peebee’s open mouth.

Peebee wonked and sat on the deck plates.

Stone reached around and grabbed Jay’s hand again and he grabbed Peebee’s hand in his other hand. He looked at both of the drascos, getting their attention.

“Listen u
p, you two. We are going to go out there where there are many other creatures that look like Commander Wright and like me. Some are friends and some aren’t. You two behave yourselves, okay? No running off; stay with me or Commander Wright.”

“Look at this, Mister Stone
,” Wright said as she pointed at the screen. “I found a listing for the EMIS. Unfortunately it only lists one agent. There aren’t any other military listings on the station as permanent personnel. There is a listing for an armed forces recruiter, but it looks to be a planetary address.”

“Maybe we can poke around a bit before we report in to
EMIS. See if we can pick up any hints about the agent.”

Wright shook her head. “No. Looking like we do
, everyone on this station is going to hear about us ten minutes after we hit the corridors. Drascos are not quite like poodles or house cats. And these tatters we are wearing obviously are or were uniforms. No. Whatever we do this agent is going to know we are here before we get the chance to report in.”

Stone said, “Maybe.”

“No maybe about it. I know our regulations well enough to know that we have to report into the EMIS before we can do anything else. We may be listed as dead, but we know we really aren’t. If we don’t report in at our first opportunity then we are AWOL. In fact…” She spoke into the interface calling up the EMIS office.

“You have reached the Emperor’s Military
Investigative Service offices on Brickman’s Station in the New Wheatfield system. Our offices are closed for lunch. We will return by 1400 hours. Please leave a message and we will get back to you as soon as we return. If this is an emergency, please state the word ‘emergency’ and you will be routed to the agent’s mobile communications. Leave your message after the beep.”

Beep.

Wright spoke clearly. “This is Full Commander Danielle E. Wright and with me is Midshipman Blackmon…”

“Perry
,” Stone supplied.

Wright continued, “Perry Stone, both formerly attached to the U
.E.N.S. Periodontitis. We were involuntarily separated from our assigned station. We are reporting in as required by navy regulations. We will call back before the end of your business day for further instructions. End message.”

“Well, Commander. That will do it. We either reported in or we just drew targets on our backs.”

“Do you have any suggestions or do you just want to wander around for a while?”

He
spoke into the registry screen’s audio pickup. “Station: are there any Stone Freight Company ships currently docked on Brickman’s station?”

A pleasant voice came back. “Yes,
signore. The Ruby Rock is docked at hangar seven.”

“Great!
” Stone said with a huge smile at Wright. “The Ruby Rock is Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim. Aunt Ruth is Mom’s younger sister. You are going to like them.

He turned back to the display, “Station, show me a map of the hangers and plot a course from
this hanger to hanger seven. Look, Commander, we only have to move clockwise around the outer corridor and we can get to my family.”

“Can you trust them?” Wright asked.

“Trust them?” Stone looked shocked. “They are Stones. They are family. Of course I trust them.” He almost shouted. He felt the drascos tense up in his hands.

“I am sorry. I apologize. You started me on th
is paranoid kick. They aren’t my family. I know the Stones have a lot of money and whoever is in control runs the family fortune, right?”

“It doesn’t work that way. I mean sure Grandpa is
Numbero Uno. Mom is Deuce. I am Trey. Aunt Ruth is Quad. My cousins Brenda, Jimmy and Melanie are five, six and seven. But, it is not like we are squabbling to see who gets to be in charge.”

“
All I know from rich families is what I see on the entertainment vids. More times than not they stab each other in the back over who gets to be on top.”

“That is crap…well, some families
maybe, but not the Stones. Look, Mom is two, but she is only there until I get old enough to take over from Grandpa, then she is stepping aside. She doesn’t want to be in charge. I am not sure I want the headaches either.”

Wright said, “Okay, but-”

“But nothing,” Stone interrupted. “If Aunt Ruth wanted the job she could have it. I think she is only staying at Quad until the family sees if I can cut it or not. Both Mom and Aunt Ruth could run the family very well, but that doesn’t mean they want to or have to be in charge. There is a lot more squabbling about trying to get out of the way of being in charge. How do you think a sixteen year old gets this close to running a family corporation unless all of the adults ducked out so fast they generated vacuum!

Wright said
, “Yes, but-”

“No buts about it
,” Stone interrupted. “I mean, think about it: would you rather be rich and have to work for it or would you just rather be rich? Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim run the Ruby Rock because they want to. They could be doing anything from running a small dairy farm on a back water planet to taking control of one of our major corporations or doing nothing at all. Not that there are that many Stones that do nothing.”

Wright said “I see, but-”

“Is that ‘but’ a conjunction or are you calling me names?” Stone interrupted again. “I know my family. You will see when you meet them. I am not saying there isn’t ambition in the family. I guess I am as ambitious as anybody. I wouldn’t have agreed to join the navy as a training tool for running the family if all I wanted to do was captain a family freighter. All things considered, the family is not blind about our own. We recognize the overly ambitious and we move them to places where they can use their ambition to grow. Besides, running the family isn’t so much as being in charge as it is more like being a ringmaster in a circus. Everybody does what they want to do. Grandpa just sees that we don’t bump into each other and that everybody profits.”

“Everybody profits like your putting your share of ownership in Allie’s World as a family asset?
” Wright said with a nod.

“Exactly
, I may not have anything to do with exploiting the planet, but Grandpa will see that everyone benefits.”

“Okay. I am chastised
,” Wright acknowledged. “I guess I would trust them if it were my family. And I trust you, so let’s go see your Aunt Ruth and Uncle…”

Stone
said, “Jim. Uncle Jim.” He turned back to the display. “Station: connect this terminal with the Ruby Rock. Let them know Blackmon Stone is calling.”

After a brief
silence, the station replied. “Call rejected. No Blackmon Stone on the approved call list.”

Wright said, “Well, we are dead.”

“Station: place the call. Reference code BP277*/S,” Stone said.

“Code inactive
; the Ruby Rock has placed hacker protection overrides and contacted the local authorities.”

“Yes, Commander
,” Stone sighed. “We are dead. You know, that means I am not Trey anymore. Hunh, you know it feels like a relief. I guess I am not sure I want to be in charge of managing the family fortunes.”

“Fortune
,” Wright corrected him. “You shouldn’t use the plural.”

Stone waved a hand. “No. I am pretty sure it is big enough to be plural. Anyway, we will need to do this the hard way.”

He said, “Station: lock this hanger. Do not allow anyone in except the two humans Wright and Stone that are registered and the two pet drascos Jay and Peebee. Please scan and place the hanger under bio-lockout.”

“Why are we locking this up?
” Wright asked. “That pod is the only thing in here and without a working engine it isn’t worth the scrap to haul it out of here.”

“
The diagrams I have on the engine room bulkhead matched to the data in your p.a. contain enough data to engineer a conversion of a sub-light engine to a hyperspace jump engine. I think that information alone is worth more than this whole station. Anyway, until I find out different, I don’t want that data shared with any station maintenance crew or even any casual thieves looking for anything to steal. Plus, Allie’s World data is on the pod’s navigation computer and that information is worth more than the station and the engine conversion data combined.”

“I bow to your greater wisdom
,” Wright said. “I may be a few years older than you, but you have spent more time on stations than I have. I do think the station manager was too curious about our appearance out of nowhere. So, now what? You said we have to do this the hard way?”