Metal Boxes - Trapped Outside (21 page)

TWENTY-SIX

Stone woke in darkness, not at all like earlier in the unlit darkness of the cave, but night had settled over him. There were a few fires scattered about the canyon and dataport screens twinkled across their hideout like stars on a moonless night. He had seen pictures of stars in the night sky and didn’t want to see them in real life. When trapped on Allie’s World for the first time, he always managed to be inside their escape shuttle before night fell. He glanced upward in hesitation. The camouflage tarps were still in place, blocking his view of the night sky.

The darkness was lighter for some unknown reason. He’d experienced many dark nights on Allie’s World, enough to know nights were normally darker, at least they were when viewed through a shuttle viewscreen. He was able to see almost as well as he did during the daytime. There seemed to be fewer shadows and the existing shadows blended and flowed together with lesser shadows.

Listening to quiet murmurs of conversations, light tinkling laughter, and muted dataport sounds was like trying to make sense of the wind moving through the trees and bushes. He could pick up snippets of conversations if he concentrated, most of what he could hear were personal conversations of the “put on something else” or “and then he said—” variety.

There was a small cluster of scientists around Whizzer. Their conversation was easy to hear but difficult to understand. They were using words with more syllables than Stone was used to using. Their dataport sound was dialed down to a quiet whisper, but loud enough the whine of multiple frequencies set Stone’s molars to complaining. Most of the civilians were sleeping wherever they had stopped to rest. Stone smelled mint wafting in the air, along with a sharp rancid grease odor mixed with a light hint of pepperoni and jalapeno pizza. He smiled. Triplett was still directing a load of hostility in his direction, but Private Melanie Tighe was nearby, though he thought the marine might be sleeping as her scent was faint and regular.

Someone had dropped a blanket over him while he slept. The night air was too warm and he kicked it away. Allie was also gone. He listened but couldn’t hear her or catch her wet, dark chocolate scent, so she must be too far away. He was propped up against Peebee. She wasn’t asleep but lying much more still than normal. Her neck was twisted around her other knee resting on one of Jay’s knees, she was staring at him. Jay was snuggled in close, resting her own head on her other knee. She was sound asleep.

Peebee said, “
Mama sleep more?”

Stone shook his head, “No, Peebee. I’m awake now.” It didn’t feel strange speaking to his drascos, he’d been talking to them since they were babies. It did feel strange having them talk back. In his study of humans and their pets he’d read numerous reports of people becoming so attached to their non-human companions they believed they could communicate. Studies and experiments had tried to teach, train, or enhance dozens of animals to speak. They had all failed with varying degrees of disappointment. Yet, no matter how many scientific studies proved pets didn’t talk, many pet owners swore their pets could communicate, non-verbally if not by telepathic means.

He wondered, did he hear Peebee in a different frequency than humans could hear? There wasn’t any use denying his hearing had changed somehow along with his sense of smell. Maybe Peebee was talking to him through thought transference, putting the words directly into his mind. If that was the case, he could receive her thoughts, but not transmit out. Snorting, he realized the most probable conclusion was that he was insane or in some drug addled coma and the whole thing was a dream.

It couldn’t be a dream. There was a rock under his butt, sharp enough to feel discomfort, just not enough to hurt. Reaching up, he patted Peebee on the head, realizing his skin still felt thick, tougher, almost like he was calloused from head to toe, not just on his hands. Peebee’s gnarled, rusted pig-iron, sandpaper hide didn’t scrape his hands as he petted her along her head and neck.

“
Mama, I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry. It’s night and not safe to go out to the forest. Aren’t there any bushes inside this canyon for you to eat? What about that bush right there?”

“
Humans like that bush to hide
.”

Chewing on Peebee’s response made him wonder more about being insane. Wouldn’t he make sense to himself if he was really crazy and just talking to himself? Did she mean someone wanted the bush as a privacy screen? There didn’t appear to be much in the way of any place to get away from other people.

“What are they hiding from?”

Peebee said, “
Humans not like us, not like me and sister Jay with Mama. Always together. Humans hide from each other, but not want to be alone.
”

Stone nodded, “Humans are always alone in their heads. They always want to be alone, but never to be left alone.”

Jay rumbled and whoofed as she woke up. “
I have to poop.
”

Stone sighed. He might as well take them for a walk. He stood up slowly. Still feeling uncomfortable with his new height, he stretched, picked up the blanket, shook it out, folded it carefully with sharp military precision, and set it on the top of a nearby rock. He did it without thinking how his short time in the military had changed his habits. A few short years ago, when crawling out of bed on the Golden Boulder, he wouldn’t have bothered to pull the covers up, much less make the bed with any sort of attention to detail.

“Peebee, do you have to poop, too?”

Peebee wonked. “
Eat first, poop later.
”

Stone said, “Well, let’s go see if we can go outside. I can’t promise, but we can see what the marines on guard duty say.” He led the girls down the slight slope to the wall. He could see the marines on watch, studiously watching the forest and the canyon rim above them. They didn’t pace back and forth like marines did on guard duty in entertainment vids.

“Excuse me.” He spoke quietly, because it didn’t seem to a wise thing to sneak up on an armed marine and startle him.

The marine in well-used armor spun about and said, “Sir? I am Sergeant Li. What can I do for you?”

“How is the forest, Sergeant Li?”

“Quiet and clear, sir. It seems the local critters are slow to move back into an area stripped clear by those crab-things.”

“That would make sense. There isn’t anything left for the carnivores to eat and the first few herbivores would be easy pickings.”

“That is the prevailing theory here on the wall, sir.”

“Are the latrines open for use?”

“The Major’s orders close them at sundown, sir. If you can’t hold it,” the tone of his voice implied that real men can control their own bowels, “there is a bucket or two down behind those bushes off to the side.”

Stone nodded at the thought of bushes to hide behind. “Well, Sergeant Li, forgive me if I am wrong, but I don’t remember you from the Ol’ Toothless or Lazzaroni Base.”

“No, sir.”

“Well, it isn’t me that needs to use the latrines, my drascos need to go. Have you ever been around drasco poop?”

The marine chuckled, “Is it that bad, sir?”

“No, Sergeant. The fragrance isn’t bad. Your two buckets won’t be enough for one of my girls.”

Sergeant Li’s response was interrupted by Corporal Tuttle bouncing up to them. She skidded to a stop in a small shower of pebbles and dust. Her faceplate popped open. “Ensign Stone, you can’t go wandering around in the dark without letting me know. Lieutenant Vedrian would take my other hand if I let something happen to you.” She waved the stump of her missing hand in his face as proof of Allie’s vengeance.

Stone said, “I’m sorry, Barb. I need to take the girls out for a walk.”

Tuttle replied, “No sir. Major Numos said we stay behind the wall after dark. Safety first.”

“Barb, not only am I the governor, but I own this whole planet. I think I can take a chance with two drascos and a wall full of alert marines, I’ll be safe.” He looked up on the wall. “Sergeant Li, you’re scanning with your suit’s full capabilities, right?”

“Right, sir.”

“And you will be able to see me and my drascos if we don’t go too far into the trees, right?

“Yes, sir. Farther into the trees than you would imagine.”

“Good, then I’m taking Jay and Peebee out to poop and get a midnight snack. You are to give me warning if I’m in danger, but you are not to come after me, understand? You too, Barb.”

Tuttle snorted, “Like frak, Ensign Stone. Lieutenant Vedrian said I’m your shadow and even wounded, she’s still a hell of a lot scarier than you’ve ever been. I’ll disobey you long before I disobey her, sir.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Watching Jay and Peebee strip trees and bushes started an ache in the deep, empty pit of Stone’s guts. He didn’t want to rush them, but he didn’t give them time to dawdle and play. Eating, pooping, and eating some more was enough. When they started to wrestle each other, throwing ten-foot logs at each other, wonking, jumping, and rolling in the dirt, he shouted at them and turned toward the safety of the wall, followed closely by an alert and armed Corporal Tuttle.

He wasn’t as worried about safety as much as he was starving. The hunger was more than the usual peckish feeling, or “yeah, I could eat something” type of hunger. If he didn’t eat something soon it felt like his belly button was going to be rubbed raw against his backbone. It didn’t matter how late the hour was, he planned to hunt down Spacer Dollish. He was getting desperate enough to eat a survival nutrition bar, if there were any left at this point. He’d barely stopped himself from sniffing and chowing down on the same leaves his drascos shoveled into their open mouths with such wild abandon.

He was halfway back to the wall when Jay and Peebee raced past him. They didn’t run to the small gap used as a door by the humans, Jay leaped over the wall wonking excitedly. Peebee hit the wall at a full on run. It shivered, but held. She scrambled up and over the wall, her claws digging divots in the rock giving her hand and footholds. Her tail spike snagged a small gap between two stones and ripped a section of the wall down around the sentries’ feet. The drascos flopped down at the base of the wall and sat waiting for Stone to join them.

Stone’s entry was more sedate as he scrambled up to the gap.

Sergeant Li met him at the top. Rather than allow Stone to climb through, the marine’s massive gloved hand grabbed him by the collar, yanking him up onto the parapet. “Welcome back, sir.” Tuttle vaulted over the top, landing with a grunt of pain.

Stone nodded wanting to go look for Dollish, however, Li had his faceplate up and obviously had something else he wanted to say. The man smelled of spearmint with a touch of lemon. Stone could tell Li wanted to be honest, yet he was concerned how he might be perceived.

“Permission to speak freely, Governor Stone?”

Stone nodded, but held up a finger. “Corporal Tuttle, what was that?”

Tuttle said, “What was what, Ensign Stone?”

Stone shook his head. “You know what, Barb. A jump up this wall shouldn’t have given you more trouble than taking a second deep breath.”

Tuttle nodded. “Small jump, yes sir.”

“Then why the grunt when you landed?”

Tuttle shrugged. “Just landed a little odd—”

Sergeant Li interrupted. “Nonsense, Corporal. When did we start telling lies to our officers? Governor Stone, all of the uninjured marines in suits stripped out our on-board medical supplies and gave them to Doc Menendez for the seriously wounded.”

Stone smiled. “That sounds like something marines would do.”

“Ooo-rah, sir. Corporal Tuttle dialed back her own meds to the bare minimum to keep infection away from her severed hand and to keep the pain manageable—barely. She gave the rest to the medical corps.”

Tuttle started to respond, Stone waved her quiet. “And I have you wandering around at all hours of the night? Okay, Corporal Tuttle. This is a direct order, whether you want it from an ensign, the planetary governor, or just a friend: go get some rest. Jay and Peebee can watch over me for a while.”

She nodded and bound away.

Stone looked back at Li. “Okay, Sergeant. You have something you want to say?”

Li hesitated but said, “Please don’t go outside after dark again. I mean, you let us know what kind of leaves your drascos eat and we will bring them to you. I can even find a few privates to clean up piles of drasco poop if it comes to that, sir.”

“You had my six, Sergeant. I wasn’t worried.”

“That’s the point, sir. You aren’t worried, but I’m the one who is supposed to keep you from getting killed. If something happened, you’d be safely dead, but I’d still be here to catch the flak for letting you die. I’ve lost officers before and I ain’t so worried about that. We’re a combat command, losing officers and men is a part of doing what we do. I’ve never been this close to a planetary governor and I sure as hell have never had a governor I was supposed to be protecting eaten alive by alien creatures. I’m right sure that would have an effect on my next promotion.”

Stone nodded as his stomach growled. Jay and Peebee wonked in fits of giggles at the noise. He pointed at the dammed section of the small stream and the pond. “You girls go get something to drink and go swimming for a bit.”

Jay said, “
But we are watching you because you sent Barb away
.”

Peebee grunted in agreement, drawing herself up into a strange, cartoonish imitation of her own fighting stance. She wonked, giggled, and suddenly belched, falling over to rub her own belly.

Stone said, “You two go play. Sergeant Li will watch me for a minute or two.” Jay raced away to splash in the pond, hitting it at a full run, rolling in the water. Peebee was only a step behind, her leg still healing. She launched herself into a cannonball that almost emptied the pond.

Li laughed, “When I was a kid, I had a pair of yellow labs that went to water just like those two.”

“Yellow labs?” Stone asked.

“Labrador retrievers, sir, kind of yellow in color. They were hunting dogs, really loved the water, and ducks.”

Stone wondered how the man could be speaking standard while so many of the words didn’t make sense. He got the dog part so they must be some type of breed. “They loved ducks?”

Li smiled, “They loved hunting ducks, sir. Oh, um, on my home world, ducks are a waterfowl that flies from water to water. We sit up on a pond or a lake and hunt them. It’s only sporting to shoot them out of the air. The dogs go into the water and retrieve them for us. There ain’t any better meal than roast duck with cranberry stuffing.”

The mention of food, even something he’d never heard of before, started his stomach to rumbling again. He didn’t care about the time of night, Dollish would have to get up and fix him something even if all the man fixed was a pot of boiled rocks. He pointed at the gap Peebee had torn in the wall. “Sorry about that Sergeant Li. I promise to not go outside after dark again, if I can help it. It looks like you are going to have to fix the wall.”

“Fix? If we’re going to stay here long, we’re going to have build it higher, thicker, and stronger. Your drascos laughed at it.”

Stone wondered about staying in the canyon for a long time as he wandered off looking for Spacer Dollish. How long could they stay here? They certainly weren’t far enough away from the Hyrocanian settlement for comfort. He wasn’t sure he could feel comfortable being on the far side of the planet from them. He glanced over his shoulder at Jay and Peebee splashing in the pond. He let them play.

He tried to see if he could catch a scent of Dollish, but wasn’t able to pick him out of the jumble of odors swirling around in the still night air. He did catch the scent of smoke mixed with something cooking. Letting the scent guide him, he followed a path from boulder to boulder, moving upward away from the central stream.

He found Dollish sleeping beside a cooking fire. A huge pot sat next to the fire. The warm odor of food curled up from inside the pot. Stone wondered where the huge pot had come from. Surely, no one would have bothered to carry such a thing from their abandoned compound. He looked closer and realized the pot wasn’t metal. Someone had taken five crab-like shells and stuck them together in a pot-like configuration. Whatever glue and tape they used seemed impervious to the heat.

A small stack of flat wooden boards and hand carved utensils was stacked on the ground. Stone found a relatively clean plate and a spoon that wasn’t too oddly shaped and returned to the pot. There was barely anything left inside; scraping along the sides and bottom rewarded him with a stew of meat and tubers.

Not bothering to wonder what the meat was or what type of tubers were in the pot, he sat, shoveling the food into his mouth. He’d expected it to taste much like every meal he and Danielle Wright had made on Allie’s World, but it didn’t. After the first few bites, he realized the stew was quite flavorful.

He glanced up and noticed Dollish was awake and staring at him. “Sorry, Spacer. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Dollish sat up and gave him an unmilitary shrug. “It’s only sleep, sir.”

Stone realized he had been looking at Dollish as a young spacer, but they were probably the same age. The only difference between the two was Stone had a rich family with connections to get him into the officer’s academy and Dollish probably came from the working class or lower. Stone knew his grandfather and his parents worked hard trying to maintain the illusion they were part of the working class. Dollish hadn’t appeared to be particularly bright, but most likely, that was also an illusion. As an officer, he could look up his records, they were on his dataport, and check the man’s intelligence level, but he wouldn’t. Stone wasn’t a super genius himself; he was well above average, except with math. Dollish might or might not have greater native intelligence than Stone. The differences between the two were education, training, position, influence, and money.

He smiled at Dollish and gestured with his plate. “This is good. What did you do with it?”

Dollish grinned. “Lesson two at the navy cooking school was salt. I managed to snag a ten-pound bag of salt when we bugged out of the compound. Human’s gotta have salt, sir.”

Chewing thoughtfully, tasting a few bites, he said. “You must have grabbed some other spices, too.”

Dollish shook his head and looked embarrassed, “No, sir. I wanted to, but I just didn’t want to take the time to get the other stuff. I was scared stupid, I guess. I just wanted to get out and not get blowed up. Besides, I haven’t been out of cook school long enough to be a high enough rank to qualify for getting access to anything other than salt.”

“I taste other spices in here other than salt.”

“Yes, sir. I borrowed a scanner from Doc Menendez. She uses one to check all of the meat the marines bring back from hunting, to make sure it isn’t poisonous and won’t kill us. She said we’d starve if we waited for the science-types to make up their minds.”

Stone smiled. “Checking the meat is a reasonable precaution, I think.”

Dollish grinned. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway, I used that scanner to check on all of the plants and stuff growing in this canyon. I found some we could eat and some we couldn’t.”

“How did you find out what would make good spices?”

Dollish looked at him as if he was an idiot to ask such a question. “Well dang, sir. I just tasted it. I found some leaves up high on the canyon wall that kind of taste like sage and back in one of those little caves, I found some moss that tingled my tongue kind of like a Serrano pepper. I just used what tasted right to me. I guess a few leaves did make me throw up, but I did point out a combination of two bushes whose leaves made me kind of sleepy, so if you want some tea to help you rest?”

Stone said, “You sound like you’ve been busy, Dollish.”

“Mostly just trying to stay out of the way. The Doc was happy about the tea leaves though.” He pointed at Stone’s empty plate. “If you’re still hungry, I’ll see if I can get out and find you something else.”

Stone said, “No, thanks. I’m quite full.”

“Yeah, I found some tubers under a thorn bush that kind of acts like a sponge. I figure the pieces hit your stomach and expand some, making you feel more full than you really are. I think when it rains, the thing soaks up water and squeezes it back out to the plant in the dry times. The thorn bush thanks the tuber for the water by protecting it from being dug up and eaten by wild animals.”

“You figured out how to find and harvest them?”

“I ain’t a wild animal, sir. I’m a navy-trained cook and I had hungry people to feed.”

“Well, Dollish, you make a wonderful stew.”

“Thanks. You just toss the plate over here and I’ll go wash it up. I been trying to wash things where the stream runs out below the wall. I need to get some hot water and scrub the pot Whizzer made for me, but the marines down on the wall said they don’t want a big fire near where they’re on guard duty. I don’t rightly have anything else to carry water in.”

“I’ll talk with Major Numos in the morning and see if we can figure something else out. We’re going to have to upgrade our sanitation requirements if we’re going to be here for any length of time.”

Stone lay back in a grassy patch as Dollish took the plate and spoon, trudging downhill toward the stream. He wondered how long they really could stay here. He hoped if anyone survived from Hammermill’s platoon, they could find them before the Hyrocanians did. He also hoped the Hyrocanians never found them, but that wasn’t likely. It didn’t make sense they weren’t searching, or if they were, the analysis on Ryte’s drone video didn’t show any evidence of a concerted attempt to find the humans.

If he were a Hyrocanian, he wouldn’t see any need to rush. The planet might kill all of the humans and fix the problem. The humans weren’t going anywhere, so why rush? However, if they wanted them alive, they would have to find them to capture them. So, why the delay? Any delay would increase the odds of additional human spacecraft coming to look for them. It might be weeks or months, but someone would start to wonder why there weren’t any progress reports flowing back through Brickman’s Station. Maybe the Hyrocanians were waiting until they had enough defenses in the system to protect any size of incursion. Additional ships and mining the jump point could easily lock humans out of this system and the Hyrocanians would gain a valuable foothold deep inside human space. There must be a jump point in the solar system leading back toward Hyrocanian space, such a valuable jump point would give them access to a protected supply line.