Metal Boxes - Rusty Hinges (22 page)

Stone shook his head, then realized contradicting the chief engineer in front of the captain was a stupid thing to do, but he’d done it without thinking. He clamped his jaw shut, swearing not to say anything and hoped no one had seen him shake his head.

Butcher sighed as Zuvela stopped her damage repair litany. All three officers stared at Stone. Finally, the captain said, “Okay, Stone. Out with it.”

“Sir. I spoke with Shorty this morning. He said they’ll have all systems back to normal by this afternoon. They’ve replaced all piping that appeared to be stressed and they put a new butterfly valve in that will activate in the event of a gas build up.”

Zuvela said, “How could they fix it? I mean, okay, they’re small enough to crawl through the spaces without tearing up the decking, but…okay. I guess, but why didn’t he tell me?”

Stone shrugged. “I don’t know, Lieutenant. Did you ask any of the piglets to help?

Zuvela shook her head. “No. Well, wait. I did ask one of them if he thought he could crawl through and check the pipes for damage control. Dammit, he can’t answer me back, so how do I know whether he could or not?”

Stone said, “They do respond, we just can’t hear them. I’ve been around them long enough to know that even the slightest indication that they thought you wanted something done would cause them to go ahead and do it. Besides, I think Dotty, I mean, Lieutenant Commander Dorothy Nessayette from the Roanoake has been working with them.”

“Dotty?” Butcher asked.

Stone said, “Well, she is pleased that we rescued her, sir. She offered to have my children as a way to say thanks.”

Butcher laughed. “She does seem a bit overly grateful. I imagine your girlfriend didn’t take to that offer too well.”

Stone shrugged. “Allie said she understood, but after a brief conversation with Dotty the offer was rescinded, sir.”

“Well, Commander Nessayette has requested a personal meeting with me, so maybe I’ll take her up on her offer before I’m too old to enjoy my great-grandchildren.”

Stone laughed with Butcher, but their laughter died when they realized the rest of the officers were staring at them as if they’d been caught dropping rabbit turds in the raisin bowl.

Butcher grunted, “It was a joke, people.” He looked up and noticed that Missimaya was still standing. “Lieutenant Missimaya, Rusty Hinges will not be turning around and heading for home space. However, you do make a logical point. We have collected the data we were sent to find and more. I propose we send one of our shuttles — the human built ones — back to Allie’s World taking all collected data with them. It might be a rough trip for such a small —”

Missimaya snapped to attention, “Sir, I volunteer to pilot that shuttle.”

Butcher pointed a finger at the man. “You will not be going anywhere until we find out whether the methane explosion at the main deck hatch was an accident or deliberate sabotage. I will say, if it was an accident due to your oversight, you will be just as screwed as you will be if I find out you deliberately threw that switch causing the explosion. Sit down and shut up, Lieutenant. Guilty or not, you’re relieved from human waste disposal officer duty.” He looked at the gathered officers. “Ensign Junior Grade Zisk Tander?”

Tander shot to his feet, “Sir, I do not know if Lieutenant Missimaya deliberately —”

“Shut up, Tander.” Missimaya growled.

Butcher said, “No, Tander, please go on.”

“Sir, he asked me if I knew of any systems we could damage that wouldn’t put us in serious jeopardy, but would be bad enough that we had to go home.”

Missimaya was red in the face, but didn’t say anything.

Tander said, “Sir, Barnes was there. Ask him.”

Barnes shot to his feet. “Captain, I do not recall any such conversation.” He sat back down with a thump.

Butcher looked at Stone.

Stone, with an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders, said, “In my opinion, he’s lying.”

Butcher said, “I think we have enough reasonable evidence to order a court-martial for Lieutenant Missimaya. Since such an event requires higher ranking officers than we have present, I am relieving the lieutenant of his duties. Young man, you will confine yourself to your quarters and have no contact with any member of this crew, human or alien, except at posted meal times. And just so you don’t think that I don’t know what is going on aboard my own ship, Lieutenant Barnes will immediately vacate Lieutenant Missimaya’s quarters and move back to his assigned cabin.”

Barnes grew red in the face, jumped to his feet and said, “Captain, there isn’t any regulation against my relationship with —”

“Sit down, Barnes.” Butcher said, “I don’t care if you’ve slept with every officer and half the piglets on this ship. I …” He looked at Stone and grinned. “Good night, nurse. I do think I’ve been hanging around Corporal Tuttle too long. I really don’t care.” He looked back at Barnes and Missimaya. “He is under house arrest and is under orders not to have any contact with fellow officers. He can’t do that with you in the room.”

XO Gupta said, “Done, sir? Okay, meeting dismissed.”

Stone turned to shut off his dataport and personal assistant. He found Zuvela trying to access his personal assistant. “Chief Engineer?”

“Dammit, Stone. I need that 3D app you have. Tell this blessed thing to give it up.”

He made a quick copy of the app and tossed it to her. Closing down his devices, he was about to join the line of officers exiting through the hatch when the officers were pushed aside. Two dozen piglets in armor with two dozen unarmored piglets jammed through the space. They were followed by Jay, Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Shorty was leading the gaggle.

Master Chief Thomas rushed into the room waving his arms. “Sorry, Captain. They came out of nowhere and I couldn’t stop them.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Shorty walked to the front. With a wave of his hand, his armored friends spread out around the captain’s office. He held a dataport in his hand. Stone hadn’t realized Shorty had one of his own. He made a mental note to ask Dollish where the piglet had gotten a standard issue navy dataport.

The piglet tapped the dataport, causing a virtual keyboard to float in the air in front of him. Stone was close enough to see Shorty type in a quick command in Empire Standard and pull up a digital clock, displaying it to the officers in the bay. The clock was counting the seconds up, clearly using human standard time.

Butcher said, “What the —”

Shorty waved an arm. He typed in a short dataport command on his virtual keyboard and a gruff voice broadcast, “Wait one, please.” The sentence was longer than the short command he had typed, so Stone concluded it was a preset response. He wondered if Wyznewski or Emmons had helped him design the communicator.

The unarmored piglets, each holding an engineer’s grease pencil used for marking pipes and bulkheads, walked around the room. Calmly and without haste, they marked a big X on everyone’s chest.

Butcher said, “Master Chief Thomas?”

Thomas shrugged, “Sorry, sir. I don’t know. I’ve already broadcast a Situation C.” Situation C meant the captain was in danger. Armed navy security forces and armored marines would come boiling to the bay in short order.

Butcher looked at the assembled piglets. “Are you sure? They don’t appear armed, Master Chief?”

Thomas said, “Armored is armed, sir. Those suits are small, but they could tear through us like wet tissue.”

Stone asked, “Shorty? What are you doing?”

Shorty just pointed a tiny piglet finger at the rapidly ascending clock.

Stone looked at Jay for a response.

Jay answered,
“Mama, he asked me to translate, but he isn’t saying anything. He insisted that my girls come along, but even they won’t talk to me now. Look, they have their own communicators.”

Stone hadn’t noticed that all the unarmored piglets and Jay’s daughters had tiny dataports strapped to their wrists. Each dataport had virtual keyboard floating nearby that gave the drascos and piglets the ability to type in a few words for voice translation. He’d had the thought back on Allie’s World about doing just this thing, but regulations had prohibited him from following up. He was surprised the piglets and his drascos picked up the concept of typing, not that punching buttons was hard, but it involved learning to read and write Empire Standard.

Jay and Peebee could read because he’d been reading to them and teaching them to read since they discovered they could talk to each other. Jay’s favorite book was Jane Eyre, a book that made Peebee grimace, she preferred reading science fiction. He remembered Tim Dollish mentioning the piglets on Allie’s World reading an oven manual when learning to make their own sunglasses, so he shouldn’t be surprised that the piglets read and write.

Everyone stared at the clock. Instead of the numbers racing by with eye blurring speed, they seemed to slow to a speed reminiscent of a metronome set at its slowest speed.

Jay said
, “Shorty just said that Sissie has taken control of the bridge. I don’t think he wanted me to translate that, but he was telling his own people.”

Stone repeated the statement to the startled group of officers. “Shorty? What —”

Shorty interrupted by tapping the edge of the clock. The frame turned a bright pulsing red.

A shout of “Ooo-rah” filled the air. The hatch flew open and a fire team of four armored marines crashed into the room, weapons at the ready, fingers on the triggers. Their camouflage was in full operation, but Stone easily saw their outlines. A flood of nearly invisible marines boiled through the room, spreading out to cover everyone and everything in the captain’s office. Though Stone could see the marines in camouflage mode, he couldn’t see name tags, dents, scrapes, or unrepaired combat damage that he usually used to identify who was who. He saw only a faint outline, not unlike a child’s coloring book line drawing. He saw their weapons. He saw their fingers on the triggers. No one else in the room could see that much.

Shorty tapped the clock again stopping it. Every piglet in the room and Jay’s daughters stood still. Each raised their hands in surrender. No one fired. Stone was thankful for that. Most marine weapons were designed to do one thing. Kill.

Friendly fire and dead hostages were events the military worked to avoid, but such regrettable consequences of live fire in tight spaces was often unavoidable. Scientists had tried for centuries to develop bullets that could tell the difference between a hostile combatant and an innocent bystander. So far, everyone had failed.

Stone felt a huge presence at his back followed by a heavy weight resting on his shoulder. Glancing back, he saw a camouflaged gauntlet laying there. The gauntlet was attached to a giant marine combat suit, but in their gilley setting, he couldn’t tell whether this was Tuttle, Hammermill, or any specific one of the two hundred fifty six marines on board. The hand gave a gentle squeeze. This marine was 1LT Allison Vedrian, his girlfriend.

A heavy weight rested on his other shoulder. A huge handgun was using his body as a support, it’s barrel pointed directly at Shorty. Even though the piglets had signaled surrender, the gun’s bore didn’t waiver a fraction of an inch and the marines remained in camo mode.

Shorty tapped a few commands on his keyboard. The gruff voice said, “Three minutes and twelve seconds response time, Captain.” He pointed at the Xs already fading on the officers stain proof uniforms. “Each X represents a dead officer. You’re dead. You’ve lost your executive officer and your chief engineer. I will admit we mistimed our attack and only managed simulated kills on seven additional junior officers. However, Sissie reports that you lost every officer on the bridge except for Major Numos. We were unable to surprise him, but we did manage to capture him and get him tied up. Boy is he pissed!”

Shorty glanced around the room, unable to see the camouflaged marines, but everyone knew they were in the room and more were gathering every moment. “I hope you all give me time to apologize and explain.”

Butcher said, “I’m giving you leeway because you’ve been an asset to me and this ship, but I’ll admit that I’m baffled, curious and a little bit pissed myself.”

Shorty said, “It took me and a small group of my people a little over three minutes to take your ship. Oh, Sissie reports that —”

Butcher’s dataport comms blared. “Numos here. We were invaded by armored piglets. They took the bridge, didn’t say anything — well, anything I could hear. They were here for two minutes and then they just left. No injuries on our side, although a few of the piglets may need some medical attention. Damn things attacked me and —”

Butcher interrupted, “Sorry to cut you off, Major. We’ve had much the same thing in my office. As long as you’re good for now, get the marines on guard, in armor and lock the dammed door.”

Shorty said, “Captain, you humans reacted slow to our invasion. Three minutes is too long. But, you responded twice as fast as a Hyrocanian would react. I know. I’ve studied them for years.”

“And?” Butcher asked.

“And in all of those years as their captive, I didn’t have the equipment I needed to do what I needed to do. Now I do.”

“And?”

“You know what my people call me, right? I’m a pirate. I don’t deny it. I’m proud of it. I want to use one of the captured shuttles. Some of my people and these three young drascos want to take that warehouse ship away from the Hyrocanians.”