Metal Boxes (44 page)

“I don’t know, Goobie. Make sure you detail that as best you can for a report to the
Admiralty. Also, make sure you get the identification of every ship that hailed us for your report. We will wait at Point Beta for ship escaping containment and render what aid we can at that time.”

“No
,” Stone said. “We can’t sit and wait.”

Melendez spun on him. “I have been as nice as I can, but now is not the time for us to have a boy playing
captain.”

“No
, Commander. This is exactly my time. You can disobey me if you want, but we are going to at least try to save the fleet. This is exactly what I want done and how we are going to do it.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY SIX

Stone tightened the clamps on his combat suit’s gauntlets. He left the visor up for now. It was quiet on the escape pod ramp. The hanger area on the tower six docks was deserted and dark. It was just him and his two drascos. He glanced around the hanger. There were piles of containers stacked from the deck to the overhead, bulkhead to bulkhead.

He ha
d wanted to leave Jay and Peebee behind, but they refused to leave his side. Commander Wright insisted they were still just babies and would not survive without their surrogate mother. She insisted that meant he should not be allowed to go on this mission because he would be endangering their lives, not just his.

Stone said he was going.

Maggot insisted that he not take on this task. He claimed it was another violation of the Emperor’s Writ, as captain he had to stay on board and get the ship back to Lazzaroni Station.

Stone said it was his idea
, so the task was his and he was going.

Melendez had insisted
Stone not go. He was the captain and his place was on the ship, even if he was a captain in name only.

Stone said that as
captain it was his right to take the tough tasks for himself and he was going.

Lieutenant
Hammermill insisted Stone should not go because this was a job for a marine. Hammermill volunteered to take this job every day for six days in a row.

Stone thanked him every day for
six days, but said it was a navy ship and he was going

Allie did
not say anything. She just took his hand and held it.

On the seventh day
, the Periodontitis came out of hyperspace at Point Beta. It had not taken any time at all to separate tower six from the rest of the massive warehouse ship with a week’s preparation behind them in hyperspace. Everyone had evacuated the tower except Stone, his drascos and a small crew of three volunteers to operate the tower six bridge.

They had t
aken tower six and jumped back into hyperspace in less than an hour. The Periodontitis under the command of Melendez would jump to follow them in exactly one hour later.

Stone spent most of the seven day jump back to the fleet in quiet solitude with Jay and Peebee. The bridge crew played poker, passing money back and forth as if it no longer held any meaning for
them. Perhaps it did not. Stone knew his plan placed the crew of tower six in serious danger, but they would survive…maybe.

In his time frame
, they had jumped away from the fleet two weeks ago. But, in the fleet’s time frame the Ol’ Toothless had only been gone for an hour. That might have been a long and costly hour with the pounding they were taking.

A v
oice in his ear startled him “Mister Stone, we are going to exit hyperspace in fifteen minutes. Seal up your pod. And good luck, Captain.”

“Good luck to you
,” Stone said. “I’ll see you for a beer after this is done.”

The voice did
not answer as if it did not believe there would be an after. Stone was not sure he disagreed. He hit the button to close the hatch to the pod. It was a much smaller unit than he and Commander Wright had been in on their trip to Allie’s World. This pod was only designed for four or five people, and there was no bulkhead between the control console and the rest of the pod.

“Well,
girls. This might be a bit of a rough ride.” Every system was shut down and cold. The command console had only one small light blinking slowly. Stone knew it was running on shielded battery power. The Hyrocanians would have to be looking directly at the pod to see it. It was as close to running dark as the navy could make it. Life support was off, gravity was off, and shields were at such a minimum that they hugged the hull like a second skin. The inertial dampeners were on, but were set to do little more than keep him from being crushed.

A maintenance crew
had taken power hammers to the pod’s hull. They beat it to an unrecognizable blob of twisted metal. If the Hyrocanians did look directly at the pod it was going to look like a tumbling piece of space junk shot away from a ship during the battle.

He adjusted Jay’s breastplate and patted her between the shoulders with an armored fist.

“You like getting petted there? Yeah, you do. What about you Peebee? You want to get your back scratched?” He slapped each of the drascos. They wiggled happily.

“I hope you two are still happy when
tower six spits us out their back end and sends us tumbling toward the Hyrocanian fleet. Jay, you hang on here, like I showed you. Peebee, you grab on to those bars and try to hold on.” He wrapped a packing strap around each of the drascos to help hold them in place. He sat in the command chair and strapped down tight just as an explosion blew away the entire dock area of tower six. The pod was thrown clear by the explosion.

The pod
traveled in a gentle spiral without much of a wobble. Stone slammed his fist on the console shutting the inertial dampeners off. The explosion and his expulsion from tower six was their biggest inertia concern.

He lowered his visor
dialing up the magnification and stared through the front view-screen. He could see tower six belching atmosphere out of the aft end. The huge sixteen kilometer bulk dwarfed the two Hyrocanian war ships bearing down on it.

“Hey Jay, what do you think? Are those the same two ships that chased the Ol’ Toothless out of this system? I can’t tell, they all look alike to me.” He glanced at Peebee. “I know you are confused about the whole time thing.
You just have to remember that there isn’t any time in hyperspace, got it? Sure you do. So we spend a week relative time in hyperspace and jump out at Point Beta at the exact time we jumped into hyperspace. Understand?

“No, I can see by your expression you’re
still confused. We spend less than an hour at Point Beta in real time and another seven days in relative time in hyperspace. So from the time perspective of the Hyrocanians and our own fleet, we just barely left, about an hour ago. Got it?”

Both of the drascos just looked at him.

“Yeah, I know it doesn’t sound right to me. However the time paradox works, it is about time for tower six to explode. We should have a pretty good seat for that.”

Tower
six had been trailing debris since the explosion. An almost steady stream of flotsam was being ejected into space. Small explosions rocked the tower, sending sprays of debris shooting away from the ship. Suddenly, the visor on Stone’s combat suit polarized as a massive explosion ripped the length of the tower, spilling its guts into space.

“I do hope that was enough fireworks to let the bridge crew get away without being seen.
They did have a much nicer pod than this beat up old thing. Plus, they have to just go dark and not put up with this tumbling about.”

He
tried to judge the angle of the debris field but was unable to calculate any actual angles. Most of the debris was far too small to see even with the visor magnification cranked to full, but large chunks of the tower seemed to be on a collision course with the Hyrocanian containment force. The two warships that had been chasing tower six had just about reached the debris field.

“Well, th
is is about as close as we can get.” Stone stretched one finger out and flicked a toggle switch on the bridge console. “That should activate the tower six mines.”

One of the warships seemed to shudder
. It went dark and a violent explosion blew it sideways. Its sister ship simply seemed to shut down.

Stone glanced at the containment fleet. There was
not any apparent change. They continued to race around the fleet, shooting streams of mines and missiles at the overlapping wall of shields. The debris field was near the enemy fleet’s shield range.

“Hold on,
girls,” Stone said. “Let’s see what we can do to distract these critters.” He flipped another switch on the console and the debris field rippled with explosions as small charges blew apart the larger fragments, spilling more debris into the cloud.

In the blink of an eye
, the Hyrocanians had an untold number of the Empire’s mines impacting on its shields. The enemy’s guns were facing toward the fleet, so the mines grabbed on to the enemy’s magnetic signatures in bunches and exploded. They flooded ship after ship with their deadly E.M.P. pulses. Several ships went dead, their systems irretrievably fouled. Other ships exploded as the pulse hit some vital system or over heated something volatile.

“Look at that
, Jay!” Stone shouted. “You can see we are making gaps in their containment bubble.” The whirling enemy ships kept driving fresh ships through the swirling navy mine field, causing damage to more and more enemy ships.

“There goes a ship that still has engines, but its shields must be gone
,” Stone said. “Okay. Hold tight, we are about to pass through enemy lines. We have to get inside their bubble. If they-”

He was jolted sideways as his pod impacted a ship
’s shield. The pod bounced off hard enough to rattle his teeth, then the pod spun away from the collision. Without inertial dampeners they tumbled out of control. The glancing contact had pushed the pod the rest of the way through the enemy’s containment bubble.

Stone whooped. “
It worked. We got inside their bubble. Okay, girls. Let’s see how much a genius Goobie really is.” He flicked a third switch on the dash, sending the signal turning the Hyrocanian mines IFF codes against their own fleet. He wanted to watch and see if he could see what was happening, but the tumble and spin was too much. Trying to watch out the view-screen was making him queasy.

He closed his eyes
, willing his stomach to settle down.

“Jay, I hope you and your sister aren’t subject to motion sickness.
I am not cleaning it up if either of you lose your lunch. Are you okay Peebee?”

He squinted with one eye open. The atmospher
ic readings on his suit showed they had not lost air containment. Things had been happening fast. Tower six exited hyperspace forty-five minutes ago, and if everything was on schedule the Ol’ Toothless would be coming out of jump in another fifteen minutes. All he had to do was put up with this spin until someone could find him.

He had been
sealed in the combat suit for an hour. He gripped some overhead struts and pulled himself to his feet. He braced against the spin and worked his way back to Jay. He turned on the small helmet light and shined it across her face. She looked fine, but it was hard to tell with drascos. He held up a port on the side of his suit to Jay’s face. He blasted her with half of the CO
2
his suit had scrubbed from his breathing. He reached across to Peebee and drained the excess CO
2
into her mouth.

“Okay
, girls. I’ve got to go sit down again before I fall down.” He managed to get himself back into the command chair. He looked at the time. The Periodontitis should have exited hyperspace moments before. He reached forward and toggled the final switch, turning on a locator, the search and rescue beacon for his shuttle pod.

“That should do it. We either broke the enemy’s containment bubble or we
didn’t. We either turned their own mines against them, or we didn’t. If we did, then someone will pick up this homing signal and come get us. If we didn’t…well, we put on a pretty good show anyway. It was fine fireworks while it lasted.”

He closed his eyes
again and refused to look out the view-screen. He thought about Allie. Of everything he could imagine he was going to miss, he was going to miss her the most. He was not sure why, most of the time they were arguing or not even speaking to each other, but he knew he was happier when she was around than when she was not.

His eyes shot open as the pod took an unexpected jolt. The tumbl
ing and spinning stopped abruptly. Stone could not see anything through the view-screen except black. There were no stars or ships. He realized he must have been pulled inside the hanger of some spacecraft because he could feel gravity returning. Even inside the suit he could tell the gravity was not holding steady. He tried peering into the darkness beyond the view-screen by shining the lamp on his helmet through it, but the screen was either diffusing the light or there was nothing to see.

With gravity returning he
moved to unstrap Jay and Peebee. There was not much room to move around in the small cabin, but the two drascos still jostled each other. They almost knocked Stone down with their playing.

Stone thought he saw movement out the corner of his eye through the view-screen. He played his headlamp around the darkness
again. He wished he had external lights to flick on, but the little shuttle pod was stripped down to not much more than a bare metal box. He swore as he thought he caught sight of something in the lamp’s beam, but he could not identify more than a dark shadow in a dark room

Suddenly, Peebee was beside him. She was hissing and clawing at the view-screen. She screeched lou
der than he had ever heard her. The suit’s helmet automatically dampened to protect his hearing. Stone would have slapped himself in the forehead if he could have felt it through the helmet. The automatic hearing change reminded him that he had other visual functions available through the helmet sensors.