Metal Boxes - Trapped Outside (10 page)

The Delta Platoon marine raced, not away from the crashing vehicle, but into the middle of the firestorm. She slashed into the enemy before they could gather what little wits they had. More of the enemy were blown apart, ripped to shreds, and broken to pieces around her as the fireteams moved into the crashed ship’s debris zone. He could see the HUD display of his marine as she watched the four-armed freaks pinwheel, screaming as they slammed into the ground. Her hands were steady as she fired her rifle at suited Hyrocanians dropping to the ground. In between each dead suited Hyrocanian, she blasted away at the three remaining shuttle parts, barely bothering to aim. Someone fired a shoulder mounted one-man anti-aircraft missile at a shuttle part. It exploded into a ball of fire.

The marine grabbed a rifle-fired grenade, slapping it onto the barrel of her weapon. A quick twist on the grenade and she fired it up. It exploded against the bottom flat side of another shuttle piece. Secondary explosions blew the shuttle part into ever smaller pieces. She fired another grenade into a cluster of gathering suited Hyrocanians sending globs of alien goo and parts of suits upward in a fountain of gore. Rather than continuing to fire into the mess, the marine raced forward, shooting at point blank range even before the first glops from the fountain plopped back to the ground.

Stone saw Hammermill give the woman a hearty thumbs up. She couldn’t see him, not realizing the marine officer was looking over her HUD shoulder. Hammermill looked up just as the woman looked up. She saw the remaining piece flip over, turning face down. Its weapons pods blasted into the ground, chewing up everything and everyone beneath it. Hyrocanians, suited or not, were blown to mush along with marines in the shower of bullets. The marine was at the edge of a sheet of explosions and rather than duck, run or hide, she followed along behind the sheet, shooting at everything Hyrocanian that moved, twitched or oozed more than she liked.

Hammermill let the marine’s HUD continue to play on his own HUD, as he focused elsewhere. Stone’s attention returned to the lieutenant’s HUD when he noticed Hammer had kicked off his camouflage and opened up his communications as half a dozen fireteams popped into existence around him. Having seen the shuttles break into fully functioning pieces, he changed his firing orders. Marines hustled to set up individual missile launchers and fire in a sequence to ensure they had missiles available to launch once the shuttle sections reconfigured.

Stone switched his HUD view back to the Delta Platoon fireteam, to the female marine watching a missile rising upward from the ground. It didn’t impact against the armored side of the shuttle piece, it arched over the top, impacting on the unarmored side of the reconfigured shuttle. The resulting explosion rippled across her armored face as she looked up, watching a huge chunk of shuttle blow free. The marine fired her rifle at the piece to no avail, it smashed into her, ending her HUD feed, leaving Stone with the vision of Hyrocanian shuttle debris a fraction of an inch from the woman’s faceplate.

He didn’t know if Hammermill’s suit automatically switched to another marine or the Lieutenant switched the view from the dead marine to someone else. Stone found himself watching a fireteam he hadn’t seen before. He’d only seen six teams with Hammermill and the two Delta Platoon teams. Charlie Platoon should have another six fireteams somewhere.

The hidden marines ambushed the front and right side diamond formation shuttles. They blasted away with wild abandon, matching Hammermill missile launch for missile launch. A sheet of fire blasted away at the targets. The Hyrocanian shuttle fired back before racing skyward to escape missile range. The right side shuttle reached a high altitude and unfolded. It reconfigured, each side of the pyramid linking with its other parts into the flat weapon’s platform. Suited Hyrocanians began pouring over the sides, protected by the sheets of fire raining down on Charlie Platoon’s position. Someone on the enemy’s side had reset their ground forces IFF. The shuttle’s weapons no longer fired indiscriminately at the ground. Their bullets showered around their own forces, concentrating on anyone firing upward. Stone watching through Hammermill’s HUD, saw a private standing next to his missile launcher, firing away in a controlled sequence even as he was torn to pieces. The last thing to die was the man’s trigger finger.

All the marines ceased fire. Camouflage kicked on and all signals, electronic twitches, and communication burps quit. Charlie Squad disengaged. Stone hoped they could melt away into the jungle, survive the dangers of Allie’s World, and join up with him south of the compound. Ordered to delay the Hyrocanians, they had accomplished that and more. Stone wasn’t sure how many of the four shuttle configurations survived. He had seen one damaged by Delta Platoon’s fireteam. To see more, he would have to analyze all the recorded bits of data from every suit. Everyone’s actions and their results were recorded. He powered down all of the HUD views, not wanting to draw attention to anyone. He left the compound cameras running.

Checking the time and direction on his personal assistant, he realized they were almost at the collection point and still had twenty minutes before the compound would self-destruct. He wished Charlie Platoon had delayed a few minutes longer, but he wouldn’t ever mention it. Wishing for something didn’t mean it was possible to do more than they had done.

His small group of stragglers and survivors from the initial bombing took longer to go one mile than he expected. He wasn’t a champion runner and had never run faster than a six-minute mile outside of his combat suit. Twenty-five minutes for this group to travel one mile was far too slow.

Stone kept moving south as he looked north again. The Hyrocanians were back there—somewhere. He hoped the compound wouldn’t self-destruct until the aliens were swarming over it.

Allie stepped around him, moving to the front of their small column. She reached up and patted nothing in mid air. She stepped around the nothing and moved from the forest into a small clearing. A face appeared as a marine popped up his faceplate and nodded at Stone.

He was surprised at the man’s appearance, managing to say, “Marine.”

“Right on target, sir. We are camped out just ahead.” His eyes raked around his group. “Doc Menendez could use some help with the more critically wounded, sir.” Everyone’s eyes flashed upward as a suited marine bounced past them, deposited a bloody body in the clearing and bounced out again.

Stone glanced at his dataport for the time. They only had a few minutes left before the compound self-destructed. He shivered as he stepped into the forest clearing. There were people scattered about under camouflaged tarps. He hoped it would be enough cover if the Hyrocanians did an overflight looking for them. He hoped they would think all of the humans died in the compound explosion or died in its defense. He hoped all of the Hyrocanians would get trapped in the compound and die there. He had too many things to hope for. He was supposed to be in charge and all he could think to do was to hide under one of the tarps.

The shuttles he’d seen didn’t come to Allie’s World on their own. There was a ship out there somewhere; a large, dangerous Hyrocanian ship. He didn’t know if their ship was part of their battle fleet or a transport ship. For all he knew, the unknown ship might be a commercial freighter or some faction of Hyrocanians humans had yet to encounter. As close as he had come to Hyrocanians in the past, he was a long way from being any kind of expert. All he knew was each time he ran into the aliens, they tried their best to capture or kill him. He didn’t expect this bunch to treat him any differently.

FIFTEEN

Whatever bothered him about being outside, didn’t bother Jay or Peebee in the least. They raced around the open meadow, chewing this bush, eating that one, ripping this one up for later, and tromping another one into twigs. Jay jumped and rolled in the grass with abandon. Peebee tried to join in, hopping slowly on three legs. Stone moved into a three-sided tent made from native poles holding up a hodgepodge of mismatched camouflage tarps shimmering as they made everything under them look as if it was an empty meadow. The tarps also blocked heat signatures should someone scan the area in infrared. They would work well protecting his ragged band of survivors from aerial scans. They wouldn’t work so well at the ground level because most of the tarps weren’t big enough to have sides. He tried imagining the thin walls surrounding him were thick metal walls with a real ceiling. He shivered nervously as his imagination failed.

Allie dismissed his small group’s suited marine guards with a bellow. Stone thought to contradict her, but before he could say anything, without a command, the suited marines bounced skyward, racing north to help save more wounded or stragglers. Unsuited marines clambered to their feet ringing the meadow, guns pointing outward, most wore bloody bandages of some sort.

Stone wanted to help hurry along stragglers and survivors. They only had a few minutes before the compound’s self-destruct went off. However, there wasn’t anything he could do. Allie had done all she could sending suited marines north to get everyone out of the blast zone. Numos had estimated one mile was the minimum safe distance. They should try moving farther away, but many who had reached the collection point barely managed to get this far. Anyone still between the collection point and the compound was in serious danger from the coming blast.

Ryte tapped him on the shoulder. He stared at her, unable to stop gawking. She was fully dressed, yet looked more naked than any dressed woman he had ever seen. Each curve, bulge, and dimple was clearly seen. He felt a huge presence behind him and knew Allie was there, but he still couldn’t look away. He could see the outline of Ryte’s—well everything. He had seen vids of nude women. Who hadn’t? However, this was a live vision.

Ryte waved a hand in front of his face. She pointed two fingers at his eyes and then back to hers. “Up here, cowboy.”

“Sorry, I’m, um—”

Ryte laughed. “Yeah, I should find something else to wear.”

Allie chuckled, “Even a fig leaf would help. I do have a few horny marines running around here.”

Ryte nodded and smiled, “That’s okay. I like horny marines, besides I thought that was what your Corporal Tuttle was for.”

“Yeah, Barb is a bit—”

Stone interrupted, “Ladies, can we change the subject, please? I already have a headache.”

Ryte nodded. She twisted a small band on her left wrist. Her body suit puffed away from her body, somehow filling out. From the knees up to the neck down she looked like a fat woman wearing baggy sweatpants and a thick sweatshirt emblazoned with the symbol for the United Loaders Soccer Team. “Back to the Emperor’s business then. Ensign Stone, I have found out who is leaking information to the Hyrocanians and who just got us bombed back to the Stone Age.”

SIXTEEN

Stone’s face flushed with anger. He hadn’t realized someone leaking information to the Hyrocanians would reveal their location, but it made sense. How else would they know about Allie’s World? The discovery of a new planet wasn’t a huge secret in human space, but it hadn’t been found so long ago that its location was common knowledge. Gossip spread fast among humans, but humanity covered a fair amount of space.

Ryte said, “My investigation led me to believe it was one of three individuals. Governor Stone, you can rest easy, I’ve cleared you.”

“What the frak! Me?”

Ryte shrugged, “You were the most logical suspect. You are the only one to come into close contact with the Hyrocanians and live. The classified information leaks were centered around Lazzaroni, where you were located. My investigation lead me to Allie’s World, that was why I had to wrangle a last minute re-assignment to come along with you. I’m sorry, did you think I was hanging around you because you’re irresistible to every woman in the galaxy?”

Stone shook his head, both confused and angry. “All right, dammit. I’m off the hook. Then we can send a message for the spy’s arrest as soon as we get off this planet.”

Allie said, “Assuming we can get off this planet.”

Ryte nodded. “There is that, but we don’t have to send a message. We can arrest her now. In fact, I insist on it for no other reason than to keep her away from any communications gear and giving away our location to her new friends, the Hyrocanians.”

Stone shouted, “Her! It’s a she and she is here? Oh, hell! I’ll shoot the bitch myself.”

Allie placed a hand on his shoulder, “Easy, Ensign Stone. Let’s maintain our gentlemanly composure.”

He didn’t want to keep his composure. He wanted to hurt someone the way he had been hurt. His head hurt. He’d been blown up, thrown across a room, sandwiched between a table and a wall, and buried under Jay and Peebee’s massive weights. His command was decimated: broken, dead, torn, wounded, and scattered about.

Stone was about to demand the woman’s name when a motion caught his eye. He whirled around, but there were only humans in the open meadow, most hidden by an increasing array of camouflage tarps, tents, and netting. Everyone carrying any camouflage material dug it out and strung it up wherever they could. He realized the motion hadn’t been in the meadow. There was movement on his dataport screen from inside their abandoned compound. A camera had caught the motion.

He waved everyone around him to quiet down. Expanding the screen size to about six-by-six feet, he locked it in place until it hovered a few feet above the ground under cover of the makeshift tent. He split the screen showing views from each operating camera in the compound. People crowded into the tent clustering around his screen. The front rows hunched down in the grass to give the people behind a clearer view. Viewers quickly ringed both sides of the screen.

A Hyrocanian shuttle in its pyramid form hovered a few feet above the missile crater at the compound’s northern end. It shifted as it broke apart from its pyramid shape. Each of the four sections rotated until it formed a protective square around the center shuttle. There were gasps of surprise from many of the gathering crowd. Stone realized none of these people had watched Charlie Platoon’s delaying action or the enemy’s shuttles in action. Less than a handful of people would have the command override codes to patch into Hammermill’s feeds. Most of them hadn’t seen a Hyrocanian in any form, because only a few humans had ever seen a live Hyrocanian up close and lived to tell about it.

A scientist on the other side of the vid display jumped up and started taking notes in her dataport, getting as close to the screen as she could. Her comrades dragged her back to the ground. Stone was glad his dataport was recording everything for later review. So was his personal assistant, but the dataport was navy property and he would have to share those images with anyone the Emperor deemed qualified. His personal assistant was his data to share or not.

The shuttle square lowered to almost ground level, hovering over the crater. The out-facing sides bristled with weapon pods. The camera was low enough to the ground, they could see the bottom side of the shuttle, giving them a view of combat suited Hyrocanians on its surface.

The aliens were running across the bottom face of the shuttle. They were upside down, a clear indication the shuttles had antigravity across their surfaces. The Hyrocanians jumped away from their shuttle, somersaulted in midair, switching from the shuttle’s artificial gravity to the planet’s natural force, dropping from the central shuttle into the crater. The shuttle’s gravity didn’t extend more than a few feet away from the flat surfaces. An alien soldier only had to jump hard enough to escape the shuttle’s hold. The jump would be easy in any style of combat suit or for a reasonably athletic six-year-old human child.

The Hyrocanian suits were not as huge as a marine suit, but they were about the size of the navy’s. The camera view was high resolution and Stone could zoom in to get a clear view of a suit. A few people sitting around wanted to zoom in, the most vocal were marines who wanted to see what they might have to fight. Any enhanced analysis would have to wait for a replay.

Stone controlled the dataport to get as broad a view as possible. Besides, he’d seen Hyrocanian suits up close. During the incident at Point Alpha-Beta, he’d seen them closer than he ever wanted to get. Seeing four-armed aliens dropping from the shuttle into the hole was as much a surprise to him as to those clustered around him.

A group of four aliens popped up out of the hole and raced into the compound, moving forward in a leapfrog motion, actually even bounding over their comrades. A rifle shot from the rubble of Baker Platoon’s second-floor area caught one of the aliens in mid-leap. The creature’s forward leap halted. It appeared to be yanked backward as if it had reached the end of a bungee cord. It didn’t settle to the ground with a thump, instead it floated like a leaf on the wind.

Stone froze at the sound of the rifle shot. “What the—”

Allie put a hand on his shoulder, interrupting him.

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Did we leave someone behind?” He’d left Numos in charge of the evacuation and Numos wouldn’t chance leaving anyone behind to be captured, nor would he leave anyone behind to die when the self-destruct went off. Allie shook her head, either not knowing what Numos had done or not wanting to comment on her superior’s decisions.

A second shot was fired from the same position, sending a second alien crashing backward. Stone wasn’t an expert in marine sniper protocol, but he knew enough to know that no sniper would stay in the same position to fire his second shot. A marine would shoot, move, and then fire again. A small rocket lanced out from a shuttle weapons pod, slamming into the location where the shots had originated from. A geyser of twisted metal and plasticrete fountained away from the explosion. There wasn’t any pink or reddish mist to indicate the remains of a non-functioning human sniper.

Two more alien teams leapfrogged out of the hole. Two rifles fired at them in such quick succession sounding almost like one shot. One of the rifles continued firing at its target. The Hyrocanian was blasted backward sending a dozen shots into the dead creature while its living compatriots ducked for cover. Two more rockets lanced into the firing positions scattering debris.

Allied said, “Unmanned robotic automatics.”

Stone nodded as understanding sank in, “Major Numos is trying to draw them in.”

A series of anti-aircraft missiles streaked upward from the compound rubble. Most of their targets were out of view, yet he could hear a series of explosions. That indicated more than one Hyrocanian shuttle had survived Charlie Platoon’s ambush. A couple missiles curved back toward the shuttle hovering over the north crater end. They slammed uselessly against the heavily armored outfacing weapons side.

A flood of suited Hyrocanians dropped from the central shuttle over the crater and swarmed up and out of the hole. Another camera caught a shuttle piece dropping to hover twenty feet above the ground. It disgorged a horde of suited aliens, dropping them onto the second story of the abandoned compound. They flowed over and into the buildings like water seeking lower ground. As many humans as there had been in the compound, such a force would have subdued them with little effort. Escaping had been the best of their bad options.

An unarmored shuttle component settled onto the ground in the middle of the compound. A mob of unsuited aliens raced out of the machine before the dust settled. The first few bunches held ropes and nets with the obvious intent of capturing humans. Four-armed freaks carrying scanners, recorders, and other equipment too bizarre to identify followed them.

This was the first sighting of live Hyrocanians most of the human watchers had ever seen. There were no gasps, exclamations, or curses at the sight. The humans around Stone were so silent they heard the babble of Hyrocanian voices picked up by the camera feed.

Hyrocanians were almost humanoid. They had facial features in approximately the same places on their head as humans have. However, their eyes were small and beady within thin, bare slits. Their ears were hinged, seeming to move on their own, swiveling about seeking noise like an antenna seeking a signal. Their noses were too big for their faces, at least from a human perspective, although Stone imagined that to a Hyrocanian, a human nose looked too small. Hyrocanian mouths were jammed with four full sets of teeth. The upper and lower sets chewed horizontally and the side sets chewed vertically.

The unsuited Hyrocanians were topless, wearing only knee high boots and the most hideously colored pants Stone had ever seen. Either their taste in clothing was as inhuman as their looks or they saw colors in a different spectrum from humans. Their upper torsos were, as far as Stone could tell, completely hairless with pasty skin oozing slick oil. The Hyrocanians came in a variety of sizes, but no more than a foot taller or shorter than Stone. They all massed much more than most humans of their approximate height. Most of their bulk was rolls of fat.

The most noticeable difference from humans was Hyrocanians had four arms. The second set grew out of the same shoulder socket as the first set. The first set of arms was jointed to grab forward just like humans. The second set was hinged to grab behind. It didn’t look as if they could swivel their heads around to see behind them, but the second set of arms held a variety of equipment and weapons that were passed to the front arms when needed.

A few particularly fat Hyrocanians with empty hands waddled from the shuttle and began shouting over the noise. No one appeared to be paying any attention to them, nevertheless a small pile of human technology began to collect near their feet. Whether they were scientists or military leaders was unsure, but they squatted down and began pawing through the pile, picking up this or that.

Stone saw one fat greasy alien mumble something and shout to another fat greasy alien as it fingered what any human would recognize as a common kitchen blender. It stuck a thick finger in to wiggle the cutting blades at the bottom.

One of the watching marines grunted with disgust. “Well, I’ll never make another margarita in my blender again.”

Boom.

The dataport beeped and blanked.

A bright flash lit up the sky to the north.

A second later, a roar washed over the area, numbing ears and boggling the mind. A second after that the ground rumbled and vibrated like an earthquake, followed by a hot blast threatening to rip down their camouflage tarps. Men and women leapt to their feet to grab corners and lash them tighter, pounding stakes deeper into the ground.

The sky was littered with flying creatures of all colors and descriptions, each racing to get away from the noise and heat. Ground creatures raced across the meadow, their feet generating a small thunder of hooves, claws, and talons ripping up the ground in their haste to get away from the explosion.

Numos raced into the meadow bracketed by three unsuited marines and a herd of what looked like scaled gazelles with corkscrew horns jutting from the top of their snakelike heads. The marines skidded to a halt. The gazelles continued through the meadow, bounding over obstacles, running through tarps, knocking down humans in a stampede going south. Humans began moving quickly around the compound. The gazelles were followed by a torrent of fauna, all running south in a panic.

Suited marines stood as barricades protecting wounded or injured personnel too hurt to quickly dance out of the way of stampeding creatures. Jay and Peebee crashed through the crowd surrounding Stone, pushing people out of the way to lay whimpering at his feet, huddling together, crouched as low to the ground as they could get. A trio of adult female drascos raced across the edge of the meadow, running fast, swiveling their heads, looking at the humans with eyes filled with curiosity before disappearing into the jungle again.

As his ears bled away the noise of the blast, he could hear the screech and roar of creatures racing away from the blast. Human voices joined the din, shouting to watch out, look out, and get the hell out of there. In the midst of the turmoil, Agent Tammie Ryte bent down to a pack at her feet. She pulled out a pair of what looked like small torpedoes. Twisting their tails, she threw them skyward. They raced north and disappeared before they were out of sight. He wondered why the navy didn’t have anything to camouflage something so small. With a flash of insight, he realized one Hyrocanian who had been shot in the compound didn’t fall to the ground, but floated. He wondered why the Empire didn’t have the same anti-gravity design on their suits.