Metal Boxes - Rusty Hinges (27 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Stone froze. His family was who Allie kept mentioning about meeting on Peach’s Rest. It should have been obvious, but somehow the thought hadn’t occurred to him. He should have expected it from his family. He hadn’t kept it a secret that he was going to take leave with Allie, but on the other hand, he hadn’t told them. They must have gotten word somehow and gone there to check up on him — or her — or both of them as a couple.

He tried to remember everything Allie had said about the people she’d met on leave, but her conversations had been all little hints and teases during a long and busy deployment. When they’d managed to find time together, talking about Peach’s Rest hadn’t been on the top of his list of things to do with Allie.

Had she liked his family? Had they liked her? Who was it? Just his parents, his parents and grandparents, or had she been subjected to a meeting of the whole clan? Without him there to intercede, his mother would have told all those embarrassing stories of him as a toddler. Dad would have boasted about all of the silly, minor victories he’d managed. Who knows what kind of crap his grandfather would have spouted.

He decided it was a good thing he wasn’t going to survive this attack. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to face Allie again. No, he wanted to see her again and the desire was more than an urgent interrogation about who said what to whom at some far away vacation spot.

Both her attack on the orbital weapons platform and his attack on the planetary base had good odds of success, but military mathematics said that adding good odds to good odds always decreased the odds for both sides. No plan, no matter how good, ever survived first contact with the enemy. Neither attack had great plans, just good plans that might work. No military attack was a sure thing, no matter what admirals and generals ever thought.

How could he not want to see Allie again? He loved her. He told her so more than once and she’d told him she loved him, too. Maybe he hadn’t said it often enough. Sure, he was young, but that didn’t mean his feelings were any less strong. Allie wasn’t young. Her feelings toward him were suspect by many. Was she just after his money? Stone didn’t believe that although he knew many people did. Could a relationship last when his own feelings were questioned? Even the ship’s behaviorist Doctor Kat Emmons had asked if he thought he was mature enough to commit to a single long-term relationship. He’d replied by pointing out that his Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim had married younger than he was and their marriage was an example of harmony, love, and longevity.

Stone looked up at the map again in time to see a piglet’s track suddenly speed up as if the tiny creature was bouncing forward at top speed. It had reached the halfway point through the mountains and skidded to a stop. The scout’s suit broadcast a video as the piglet turned in a slow circle. It was standing on the shore of a wide lake with tiny waves lapping at the rocky shore. There wasn’t any vegetation, but the long smooth slope the piglet had just ran down was repeated across the lake, sloping up again into the mountains.

Stone didn’t like lakes, rivers, ponds or streams. He’d seen enough creatures lurking in their watery depths to satisfy him for a lifetime. Allie’s World was replete with dangerous land creatures, but its waterways were even deadlier. They hadn’t seen any sign of life on the planet. Still, this was the first surface liquid they’d seen either from space or on the ground. Surface liquid and a breathable atmosphere usually meant life, if nothing more than plant life. He had to admit that he didn’t know what the liquid was, it could be anything from pure water all the way to hydrochloric acid. He just didn’t want to meet any creature who breathed chlorine and drank acid.

“Let’s move forward, Shorty.” Without waiting for a response, he bounced along the track leading to the side of the lake, his body aching to do something. He felt the pent up excitement and adrenalin pumping through him as he stretched his muscles inside the suit. Waiting was always the hardest. Even running a short way was going to help burn off some of his nervous energy.

He scanned the terrain as he ran. The scouts trail was exactly what they’d hoped for, relatively smooth and wide enough for the carts to squeeze through, although there were a few spots the carts would have to pass though in single file. There were a few minor crevasses that were easy for suits and drascos to jump over. The anti-gravity on the carts should keep them up, as long as they raced across at top speed.

Bouncing along at a sprint, it took almost an hour to reach the small group of piglets clustered by the edge of the wide lake. He stood at the back of the piglets. The diminutive creatures were standing way too close to the mountain lake’s edge for his taste. Stone reasoned he wasn’t afraid, but was using appropriate caution since he didn’t know what might be hiding in the deep liquid.

One of the piglets pointed at the lake and typed into its translator. “Water.” It typed much slower than Shorty.

Shorty slid to a stop next to Stone, his suit being slightly slower than Stone’s larger custom built suit. “He says the water has trace mineral elements, but nothing our suits can’t filter out. The chlorine in the atmosphere has dissolved in the water, but in minor concentrations, it’s no stronger than a strong disinfectant.”

Stone checked his HUD. The cart train was still a few kilometers back. The drascos were playing on and around the carts. Preventing eight drascos from jumping into the water to play was going to be a chore. He needed to find out if it was safe before Jay, Peebee, and the girls arrived.

The lake was too wide to bounce across and he couldn’t see either end using his suit optics. The water was only clear for a few feet, quickly succumbing to muddy murky depths. He couldn’t catch any odors coming from the lake, but that wasn’t a surprise as liquid often blocked telltale fragrances. His senses weren’t telling him anything.

The wind was whipping down the lake, squeezed between two high ridges of the mountain range. Here in the open, the wind was stronger than it had been when they were protected in the mountain passes or by the bulk of the shuttle. All small rocks, sand, and dust had long since blown away, leaving the shore of the lake covered in large rocks and boulders, nothing weighing less than a hundred kilograms.

Stone picked up a rock. The suit registered the weight at fifty-six kilograms. He gave the rock a little jiggle in his hand. Even in his suit, he wasn’t any good at throwing something in gravity and hitting anywhere close to what he was aiming at. Still, the lake was wide enough that he should be able to throw the rock somewhere close to the middle.

Tossing the rock, he glanced down at Shorty. The rock splashed, making a ripple that was lost in the wind whipped waves. He said, “Before we cross, I want to be certain we aren’t going to meet any local creatures who might pose a danger.”

Shorty had lived on Allie’s World long enough to understand the caution. He nodded and waved his people back from the shore. “Maybe we should try and go around?”

Stone tapped his chest and squeezed the appropriate finger. A bunker buster shot away from his chest. With exact precision, it hit halfway between the two shores. Sinking into the water, it exploded in a water gushing spout. The explosion surprised him. It hadn’t blown up where the bomb hit the water, but quite a few meters to the left. He wondered if some water creature had caught the bomb and started to drag it away, but there wasn’t any debris floating to the surface that he could see or smell.

Shorty said, “This is a river, not a lake. There must be a strong current under the surface. That eliminates going around it.”

Stone turned to watch the cart train sliding down the smooth slope to the riverbank. Though the train was visible in his HUD, turning to look was more a habit than checking his HUD. The drascos whooted as they stood balancing on the carts as the piglet drivers whipped the trains in wild abandon trying to unhorse the drascos. Bea and Charlotte took wild spills, rolling through the rocks. Both drascos leapt to their feet and raced toward the lake on foot faster than the carts could move.

Stone’s suit was capable of operating just as good under liquid as it did in a vacuum. He didn’t doubt that the piglets suits were just as capable, but he was loath to order Shorty to send his people into the river to check for danger. He leapt skyward following the track of his bunker buster bomb into the lake.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Faster than he could react, the weight of his suit drove his legs knee-deep into silt at the bottom of the river. Using enhanced optics, he spun the dial through all the various modes as he turned in a slow circle. Infrared, radiological, and x-ray didn’t reveal anything but water and silt as far as he could scan in any direction. He modified the magnification, looking for smaller and smaller creatures until he found a few ameba-sized life forms swirling in the muddy water.

He flexed his knees and bounded back to the shore, splattering Shorty with mud and water when he landed. The piglet looked at him though his faceplate in disgust. He flicked a few specks of mud off his suit and typed into his translator, “I see nothing in the water ate you.”

Stone smiled, “Nothing so far. Let’s take a break here and then cross after —”

He was interrupted by eight drascos racing past him, hitting the water with such force that anyone  within a dozen yards of the shore was drenched. They disappeared underwater and surfaced quickly, spouting water and spitting streams at each other.

Tee said,
“Like, this is cold, for sure.”

Anne giggled, “
Right? Not like the beach at home, you know?”

Tee said,
“Race to the other side. Last one there is a boogerbrain.”
Jay and Peebee even joined in the race.

Shorty looked up at Stone. “Boss, I suggest we take a break on the opposite shore.”

Stone nodded. “Ya think?” He looked around at the carts. Finding the number he was looking for, he shooed a pair of piglets off the top and popped it open. Searching through it , he located the correct bin and refilled the bunker buster feed chain, replacing the one he’d fired into the lake. He’d been in combat enough to know he wanted a full load of everything at all times — just in case.

Shorty asked, “Will these carts get across the river? It’s too far for our suits to bounce, but we can cross by walking on the bottom.”

Stone pointed at his knees. “The mud is this deep. That’ll put it halfway up your waist. I’m sure your suits can move through that muck, but it would be an unpleasant trip. The carts can cross this river easy, just keep their speed up. My suit can make crossing, so you ride and I’ll bounce.”

He waited until the first mini-train of carts built up velocity and hit the water at top speed. The anti-gravity dug a furrow in the water, frothing the waves, but it maintained its rate toward the other shore. Other piglets followed him in no particular order, with suited piglets clinging to the cart tops.

Stone didn’t bounce high. Keeping his jump flattened for distance, he slammed into the far shore ahead of the racing drascos. He used his external speakers to broadcast his cheers, urging them all to race faster. Waving his arms, he greeted Jay as the winner of the race with Peebee coming in a close second.

Emily snorted, coming in dead last,
“Not fair, our mothers are bigger, right?”

Ell laughed, “
You’re a boogerhead.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

Before they degenerated into a name calling brawl, Stone said, “Emily, you didn’t come in last. Look behind you.” The whole string of piglets on carts had barely reached the halfway point in the river. Most were puttering through the water without any difficulty. One cart train was having difficulties as the driver slowed to keep from being swamped by spray from other carts and the wind whipped waves. It slowed to a halt, the anti-gravity keeping it from sinking, but it didn’t have enough surface grip for forward motion.

Stone added, “Emily, I’ll bet you can swim back out there and push those carts to shore.”

Emily hit the water before he finished asking. Tee and Ell followed her. Charlotte and Anne jumped back into the water, but rather than swim toward the carts, they began jumping and rolling trying to push the other’s head under water. Bea plopped her butt on the rocky shore and watched her sisters. Jay and Peebee stood by Stone staring up at the mountains surrounding them.

“We have to go through there, Mama
?” Peebee asked.

Stone said, “Yes. Shorty and his people will find us a way through.”

Jay said,
“They got us this far. They have to find a way through or we can’t fight the Hyrocanians. Right, Mama?”

Peebee answered for Stone
, “That’s right. If we don’t stop the bad ones, a lot of marines will die for nothing and the bad ones may just blow up our ship and eat our daughters.”

Jay added,
“No ship. No way home.”

Stone didn’t want to think about it, but the drascos were right. The younger ones may think of this as a fun outing, but Jay and Peebee obviously understood the seriousness of this deployment. Like all such coordinated attacks, this one was timed to the nanosecond. His team needed to hit the planetary base at the same time the marines hit the orbital weapons platform. Too much deviance and either location would discover the attack and come to the aid of its sister base. He checked the time on his dataport. They were ahead of schedule having found a quick path through the first set of mountains.

Early was just as bad as too late. He signaled Shorty, letting him know they would hold here until the scouts found a way through the next mountain range. Most of the piglets had been riding. Stone couldn’t tell whether Shorty sent the same batch out to search or if he switched them for a fresh group.

Pulling up his map, he kept one eye on his drascos and one eye on the map as it filled in with data from the scouts racing ahead.

Shorty shook one of the legs on his suit. From the looks of the piglets on the riverbank, Shorty had said something, but he hadn’t typed anything into his translator. Piglets broke down laughing, slapping each other on their backs, and rolling on the ground.

Peebee said,
“I don’t know those words Shorty used, Mama.”

Jay added,
“Marines and navy sometimes talk that way, too.”

Stone had heard more than one human use certain words, but he wasn’t planning on giving his drascos a course in profanity. He just said,
“You just have to understand the gist of what someone is saying. When they talk like that you don’t need to know word for word.”

Shorty typed into his dataport translator, “You want to know what I said? Frakking new combat suit has started to malfunction. Stupid waste containment failed and is leaking down my leg.”

Stone tried not to laugh. “We can set up a sealed tent. Maybe you can get out of your suit and fix it.”

Shorty said, “Oh hell no! I’m going to give this thing back to the cretin who didn’t make it right. He’s going to clean it out, not me.”

Stone bent down to look at the piglet’s suit. It was a civilian made suit, but the systems were based on marine and navy suit capabilities. “This was originally a marine design, right?”

Shorty admitted, “Well, yeah! I’m a pribit — a pirate, remember? Stealing things is what I do.”

Smiling, Stone tapped a little hatch on the piglet’s left thigh. “Can you open this for me?”

“Huh?” The piglet was quiet for a moment as he looked for the appropriate control. “I didn’t even know that was there.” The little hatch popped open.

Stone waved at the piglet to follow him down to the river’s edge. Once there he tapped the left heel on Shorty’s suit. “Open this, too.” While he waited for Shorty to pop the little heel hatch open, he said, “Field testing equipment is one thing, but you should be more familiar with your suit before joining an operation like this.”

“Didn’t have much time. We’ll make do.”

Stone grabbed a hose from the left thigh hatch and stretched it into the water. Twisting a ring on the end of the hose, he waited for two seconds before dirty brown water began squirting out Shorty’s heel. He let the water flush through Shorty’s leg. He didn’t shut off the river siphon until the water pouring out was as clear as the river water.

He heard Peebee giggling and looked up. Piglets were rolling around on the shore in fits of laughter.

Jay said,
“Shorty is talking funny again.”

Shorty’s finger even stuttered on his translator keyboard, “C-c-cold.d.d.d!”

Stone smiled in sympathy as he snapped the hose back in place and shut the hatches on Shorty’s leg and heel. “Your suit will warm you fast enough. We just flushed your waste containment system and washed down your leg. You’ll be fine.”

Shorty shook his head and typed. “I wish you’d have prepared me for that. Still, it feels better, although I’m not sure what we just did to the ecology of this planet. Dumping piglet waste here might change the destiny of this planet.”

Stone laughed, “No one has ever proven that the human homeworld, Earth, didn’t flourish because some visiting alien took a dump in some primordial goop.”

Shorty grinned, “Blasphemy. Everyone knows we all grew from seeds spread by galactic winds from the first great garden in the sky.”

Stone didn’t want to step on another species religion, even though Shorty sounded like he was joking. He thought back to the humans he’d rescued from the Hyrocanian warehouse ship. They claimed to be religious refugees. According to the man, the emperor had ignored their requests for help, but that didn’t sound like the emperor he knew. Emperor Alberto Garza wasn’t like some leaders in the past who’d ignored individual rights. The emperor was a fanatic about protecting and encouraging individual rights and responsibilities. He might have encouraged complainants to stand up for themselves first, but he wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to coercion and torture.

The emperor didn’t profess any one religion. He might hold strong beliefs, but expressing his personal faith might have come across as an emperors endorsement for one religion over another. Humans had fought wars in centuries past over differing beliefs, some fights as silly as whether Adam and Eve had belly buttons or not. Humans were still not mature enough to stop fighting over such foolishness, but the emperor wouldn’t sanction one religion over another and neither would Stone.

If Shorty wanted to believe in heaven as a garden, then who was Stone to tell him different. For all Stone knew, heaven was a garden and all the planets were populated by seeds strewn about at random by some unknown race of aliens — or gods, depending on your point of view.

He did know planets held more life than humans had once thought possible. Plants covered many planets in the Goldilocks zone of most solar systems, but a higher percentage held some animal life than any odds maker could justify. The number of intelligent species humans had met far exceeded any proffered probability statistic since Enrico Fermi criticized the Drake Equation. The equation was the first attempt to calculate the potential for life on other planets.

Shorty pointed at the map. Their scouts were backtracking and starting over more often than they had on the first range of mountains. These mountains weren’t any higher than the first set, but they appeared smoother, older, more worn down. Hopefully that didn’t mean all of the canyons and gullies were filled in. There had to be some gaps between the remaining mountain peaks.

With a silent wave of his hand, Shorty sent another dozen piglets fanning out into the mountains, searching for a way through. Stone checked his time. They were no longer ahead of schedule. They still had time unless they couldn’t find a way through quickly.