Metal Boxes - Rusty Hinges (28 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Stone looked at the crevasse. The wide gap was the last hurdle in this mountain range before his force reached the valley floor. His suit could make the jump across with less effort than walking up a stairstep and the piglets could easily span the distance in their smaller suits. The gap wasn’t so wide his drascos couldn’t leap across. However, it was too deep for the cargo carts to get across. They were only luggage carts after all, not designed to float across a hundred foot drop.

They were emptying carts faster than he’d planned. Many of the carts were filled with foolish expendables like drinking water and food. His suit could sustain him for a long duration by recycling his own waste supplemented with vitamins and nutrients. The piglet suits could do much the same for them, but moving through these mountains ate through their supplies at a prodigious rate. Bodies — human, piglet, and drasco — required extra fuel to operate in hard terrain under suboptimal conditions.

Once they started forward, he hadn’t left any carts behind. Not that he was worried about leaving such common human technology behind for non-human scavengers, but the piglets and drascos were all taking turns riding on the carts, resting and sleeping as they wound their way through pass after pass. Sleeping, scouting and driving had pushed them to the edge of the valley where the planetary base was located.

Stone hated being outside for so long. His agoraphobia had subsided — mostly because he was wrapped inside a combat suit that was little more than a fancy mobile metal box. The ceiling over his head was just inches above, but it was there. That presented a new problem for him. Everything inside the suit felt used and reused. The air tasted flat and stale. The water — by now mostly filtered water — had a scummy feel on his tongue. He really couldn’t smell anything, but he felt like the odor from his suit’s waste recycling system was wafting up to his nose. He knew several marines who had spent days on end inside their suits without complaint. He was trying not to complain to himself, but this trip was more difficult than he imagined it would be. It took a conscious effort not to open his faceplate, even knowing the chlorine-filled air would make him feel worse than he already felt.

After days inside the suit he was beginning to feel numb, not thinking straight. He should have taken his turn on a cart to nap, but he hadn’t. This was his operation. These were his people. He felt responsible and that kept him from sleeping. His suit provided him with enhanced nutrients and stimulants that kept him moving forward, but he had not taken the sleep aid his suit offered him. He didn’t want to sleep until this mountain range was behind him.

Stone stared stupidly down at the deep hole. Obviously, the deep crevasse had Shorty stumped; it must have looked insurmountable to him. Stone had been at the rear, more sleepwalking than riding drag until Shorty called him forward.

They’d made up ground and were six hours ahead of schedule again. If they had to backtrack and find another way around because of this crevasse, they might miss their attack time all together. Allie’s life was on the line — not keeping their schedule wasn’t an option.

Stone said, “Float the empty carts up here.”

Though the ledge they were following was slender, there was room for the empty carts to squeeze past the others. Taking the controls of the first cart, Stone set it at the edge of the crevasse with the long edge facing the gap.

“The anti-gravity on these things works both ways. Sometimes a lumper will want to lock the cart in place when loading or unloading cargo.” He pushed a switch on the bottom of the controller panel. The cart settled onto the rock ledge and stuck there.

Kicking it with his boot, the cart didn’t budge even though Stone put a deep dent in the side. The cart was securely clamped to the ledge. Taking the next empty cart’s controller from the piglet driver, he moved the cart sideways up over the first one. Just at the tipping point before it fell, he hit the switch. The bottom of the second cart clamped onto the side of the first cart. The second cart now hung out over the crevasse held in place by the first cart.

The carts were the standard 4x4x8 configuration. Stone had long ago researched 4x8 and found it to be a building material standard. The carts were designed to hold a flat four feet by eight feet sheet of plywood, sheetrock, or plasticrete. Both military and civilian designs were all four feet deep with lids.

Floating a third cart across the first two, he turned it sideways and slipped it over the side of the second cart, flipping the anti-gravity switch so it locked into place on the side of the second cart. Building a bridge this way was slow work, expanding the length only four feet at a time. Stone moved out of the way, allowing a piglet to move the next cart into place.

He was amazed — once again — at how fast piglets adapted to technology once they’d seen it work. Coming from an agrarian society it seemed improbable, except he’d seen the trio of piglet spaceships confronting the Rusty Hinges upon entering the piglet’s home world system. Those spaceships were a match for almost all UEN ships.

Shorty said, “We aren’t going to have enough empties.”

Stone nodded. “Let’s try condensing material from one to another.” He went to the numbered cart that held the expendables for his suit. His suit could manage much more weight without slowing him down, but extra bullets, bandages and food supplements were bulky. Still, he wrapped all the supplies up into a pack and strapped it to his suit.

Though he didn’t require the extra firepower, he strapped on his old familiar TDO-960A slug thrower rifle. It wasn’t fancy, but the weapon was as comfortable as an old friend. Taking his gear didn’t empty the container.

“Jay and Peebee. Come here, please.”

The drascos were negotiating the mountain ledge with ease while maintaining a single file configuration at the rear of the line of march. Peebee kept glancing nervously over the edge, but the younger girls dancing along the rim, throwing rocks over the side, and even relieving themselves over the edge. Peebee tried to caution her daughters, obviously nervous about the long drop, but the girls continued to act like young children with a new toy.

Jay reached him first. Peebee standing behind her.
“Mama?”

Stone pointed to the remaining gear in the container. “The marines taught you and your girls to fight and to shoot an assortment of weapons. These are for you. Grab one and hand the rest out.” He’d barely finished speaking before Jay and Peebee started scooping the weapons up, strapping them on, checking magazine loads, and double checking safeties. Even though the holsters and rigging were designed for military personnel, the drascos had found places to tie them on their massive bodies.

Peebee grabbed extras and passed them to the younger drascos. From her selection of who got what weapon, Stone was sure she handed them out in order of individual skills and preferences. Happy whooting echoed across the mountains. Stone thought to say something about being careful, but the younger ones handled the big guns with as much proficiency as he would have.

“Move it, human.”

A piglet pressed past Stone, taking control of the now empty cart and driving it forward to complete their bridge. Stone said, “Jay and Peebee, we’re getting close to the enemy base. We just have to get across this crevasse and then down the rest of the mountain. The base is in the middle of the next valley. You and your daughters might as well put your armor on.”

A few moments ago the younger drascos were acting like children on a picnic outing. Once their armor was strapped on, they fell into line, hushing their hooting. This armor surprised him, but he recognized the marine fabrication style. It wasn’t their normal chrome-covered titanium, it was made of some light, flexible, bulletproof resin. The shine was gone, replaced with a non-reflective flat black. They each retained their signature blues and reds, but the colors were muted. Instead of parade ground flash and jewelry twinkle, this armor was designed with a deadly purpose. The drascos looked ready for war. Even their eyes became stern and cold like marines heading into combat.

Stone smelled their minty odor blossom into an almost overpowering peppermint fragrance. His suit had long since managed to filter out all but a hint of the chlorine odor. The drascos were ready. He was ready. He hoped the piglets were.

His comm unit beeped. It decoded a burst transmission. “Orbital assault team is a go.”

The marines were aboard a shuttle pretending to be a resupply run to gain access to the weapons platform. For Allie, Numos and Hammer, it would be a long twenty-four hours creeping through space at a pace mocking the Hyrocanians lazy attitude.

The plan was the marines would hit the platform at the exact moment Stone’s team assaulted the planetary base.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Stone sent a vis-aid bubble up to hover above the gully rim. It sent back a clear view of the base. This close to the weapons base he didn’t broadcast the signal just in case the Hyrocanians were more alert than any he’d encountered previously and were scanning their surroundings for errant signals. Signal intelligence and communications security were standard UEN operational procedures, but he wasn’t sure the Hyrocanians did anything with logical thought aside from following their drive to eat.

He assumed they had an equivalent drive to breed, but so far he hadn’t seen any evidence of that, although Wyznewski and Emmons had given in to fits of laughter over some video files they’d found. Vids they’d not shared with him. Hyrocanian pornography didn’t sound like something he wanted to see anyway.

The vis-aid showed him the area surrounding the back door of the base. Piles of trash and waste littered the whole area. Stone didn’t need the vid to confirm Hyrocanians used their back door as a garbage dump. He could smell it. Even his suit filters couldn’t override the stench. The odor was so bad the drascos eyes were watering as they tried not to sneeze.

Hyrocanians were the ultimate conspicuous consumers. They attempted no recycling efforts beyond simple life support filtration. Stone noticed a wide variety of recyclable materials mixed with bodily waste and animal bones.

When he spotted a skull in a pile it took no little effort to control his stomach. The skull was about the size of a piglet. He wasn’t sure what piglet bone structure looked like, but he didn’t want to point it out to Shorty. Wondering if he really should tell Shorty, his suit flashed an alert informing him it wasn’t a piglet skull.

The bone was human.

The size indicated it was a small human. A very small human. A toddler about two or three years old. Teeth marks were evident on the bone.

Stone clamped his jaw shut against the bile rising from his stomach. He closed his eyes for a second. Killing Hyrocanians was now his first priority. The opportunity couldn’t come fast enough.

A glance at his dataport confirmed they still had a few minutes before their attack was to begin. Winding their way across the valley floor through gullies and washes had been easier than a long sprint across the open ground. They were as close as they could get to the base without exposing themselves. Hunkered down out of the wind they hid behind high hard-packed dirt walls of a deep gully. They only had a hundred yards of open ground to cross before reaching the closest hatch.

He configured his dataport display to show Shorty, Jay and Peebee the vis-aid view. A cluster of piglets gathered around staring at their target.

Shorty leaned in close and said, “That’s a wide hatch.”

Stone nodded. “Looks more like a garage door than a personnel hatch.”

“Good. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to cycle through a small airlock a few at a time.”

“This might get us all in at one entry point without damaging air containment.”

Shorty looked at Jay and Peebee. “Big enough for drascos.” He obviously hadn’t seen drascos squeeze through a hole smaller than their massive bodies. Drasco triplets could fit through a lot of small hatches, but Jay and Peebee had grown too large to squeeze into many airlocks, even one at a time.

Stone’s preference would have been to sneak up and put breaching charges all over the base. That should blow huge holes in the life support system allowing the planet’s chlorine atmosphere to swamp the base. He rejected that plan of attack because he didn’t know if human or piglet foodstuffs were on the base. The presence of a human skull didn’t confirm there were humans to rescue, just that there had been once.

His current plan was to sneak in the back door, spread out, do what damage they could, and rescue any intelligent species they could find. Primarily, they had to shut down the enemy’s ability to fire their weapons at spacecraft or the orbital weapons platform. Once the base was under their control or destroyed, they could call their shuttle in for pick up assuming one of the allied controlled ships in the system was still available to extract them.

He pointed a finger at Shorty, gesturing in a wide circle to the left, ending at the base’s back hatch. He turned without waiting to see if the piglet complied. He kept low, moving up and over the lip of the gully, circling around to the right. Any motion detector would easily spot the movement and send an alert to a base security monitor. He doubted anyone was watching. Out of the gulley, the whipping wind pulled at him, his suit easily compensated. The wind picked up various pieces of garbage, swirling trash and detritus strewing it across the open valley floor. A garish piece of cloth blew past Stone. Anyone watching security monitors would constantly hear an alert from motion sensors.

Some of the piles of trash were as tall as he was. Keeping low, he reached the back wall of the base. Sliding along the wall, he made every effort not to touch anything that might alert the Hyrocanians to his position.

A fireteam of piglets waved at him from the other side of the back hatch.

He waved back.

He couldn’t see anyone or anything back at the gulley even using his suit’s enhanced optics. Even the body heat his drascos generated whisked away in the high wind before it rose above the lip of the gully.

The plan was to rush through the back hatch as soon as they could gain access.

Stone held a breaching charge in his hand. Once set and exploded, he and the piglet fireteam would race inside. One piglet would repair the breach with an emergency quick-set fix-it kit. One piglet would open the hatch for the rest of their assault troops. A pair of piglets would provide cover fire for the repairman and the doorman.

Stone was along because Grandpa had always said that a real leader leads from the front. That was his excuse for being first inside the base. The real reason was that if he didn’t do something soon, pent up nervous energy would eat a hole through his stomach.

Stone checked his dataport, watching the time stamp countdown to zero. He tapped open his comms and sent a coded, burst transmission. “Planetary team is a go.”

The assault had started days ago when the Rusty Hinges and the Freedom Wagon had launched timed volleys of missiles and mines at Hyrocanian ships all around the system. Anticipating where each enemy ship would be at this exact moment had been a challenge. Since most ships were stationary, the Q-Ship flooded those locations, hoping to catch the Hyrocanians with their shields down. Those mines and missiles should be reaching their targets now.

He felt the ground vibrate before he could press the activate button on the breaching charge. Waving a warning to the piglets, he flattened himself against the base wall as the hatch began rumbling up. Puffs of air blew swirls of dust. The Hyrocanians hadn’t completely equalized pressure or fully cycled their air systems before opening the wide hatch.

A pair of suited Hyrocanians followed a floating platform out of the opening before the hatch was completely open. Their suits were simple worker EVA configurations. The platform was stacked with piles and bags of garbage. Strong winds tugged at the trash, pulling pieces away, sending it flying across the valley floor, littering the landscape with odd pieces of waste.

The Hyrocanians trudged behind the cart, not bothering to look at the platform, their surroundings, or each other. They stopped a dozen feet from the hatch. Each grabbed a bag of trash, throwing it skyward, to let the wind take it where it willed.

Stone re-clamped the unexploded breaching charge to his thigh and pulled his TDO-960A rifle into firing position. His built-in suit weapons would have been faster, but they were definitely overkill. Two quick trigger pulls and the Hyrocanians were as useless as their trash. Stone didn’t look at his victims. The slugs ignored the light EVA suits, punching small holes in the back of the Hyrocanians heads. Their hydrostatic charge blew the aliens faces off.

He stepped through the open hatch. His rifle snapped back into its holster while his suit readied every weapon. The open space beyond the massive hatch was a hangar, mostly empty except for half a dozen flitters and skiffs parked haphazardly across the wide floor.

Waving his arms at the piglet fireteam, he waited until they sprinted across the deck to cover the far hatch. Like most automatics, the interior hatch wouldn’t open until the outer hatch was sealed and the atmospherics reset to interior normal. The piglets pointed their weapons at the hatch.

Stone remembered wondering back on Lazzaroni Base, it seemed like years ago, why an officer and an NCO were required to be present when the exterior hatches were opened to the outside. Now he knew. An alarm would already be ringing if the Hyrocanians had someone watching the hatch. His suit confirmed that no alarm was ringing.

He sent a burst message to Shorty, “Come on.”

Piglets and drascos bubbled up and out of the gully. Climbing up, running, and bouncing forward, they raced into the hangar bay. Stone was amazed. The piglets charged forward en masse exactly like an old vid of pirates boarding a ship, waving weapons like they were swords and clubs. He was sure they were shouting “Arrrggg!” — except he couldn’t hear them and none of them took the time to type their battle cry into their dataport translators.

Many of the piglets were riding the luggage carts. Considering their shorter legs, Stone wasn’t surprised they were riding in and on the carts. The carts wouldn’t provide any protection, as they were constructed of little more than air and foam. Most were now empty, drained of excess consumables and some had their lids ripped off, giving the piglets floating boxes to travel in.

The drascos maintained a tight formation even at the full run. Leapfrogging like a pair of marine fireteams, they covered the others advance while one swept her weapon behind them to cover their six. Jay’s blue team sprinted into the hangar, weapon muzzles covering every possible ambush point. Peebee and her daughters covered the blue team. Bea in her muted blood red armor was actually running backwards as the last one in the door.

Stone hit the external hatch button with a button pushing skill he’d long since mastered. The hatch rumbled, clanking along like a rusty chain. It stopped about halfway to the deck and froze. Stone hit the button again, but nothing happened. He slammed his fist next to the hatch access panel and the hatch relented, creeping down to seal against the deck.

A piglet across the hangar bay waved when a colored light turned white. On a UEN ship, one light would be red and one would be green. He didn’t know what colors the piglets used. The change was enough to signal that the air pressure had equalized with a Hyrocanian breathable atmosphere.

Shorty said, “Open or breach?”

Stone said, “We might get deeper into the base if we open the hatch quietly.”

“We’ve got to announce our presence sometime.”

“True, Shorty, but, let’s see if we can get your people into the vents to shut —”

The interior hatch started to rise, interrupting him.

“Cover!” he shouted. He twisted toward the moving hatch, prepared to send a bunker buster through it. The weapon wouldn’t explode until it was through the hatch, then it would blow up in the corridor or cabin beyond.

Instead, Anne stepped forward.
“I got this, like, for sure.”
She squeezed the trigger on her weapon. Stone almost ducked. An anti-armor shell roared from the end of her shoulder-mounted cannon. The shell hit the hatch with a thump and a roar. The metal peeled back with a screech. A second shell, set free when the outer shell exploded, blasted through the hole. A bright flare washed back through the opening, followed by a wall of flame pushing crispy bits of Hyrocanians along its gust front.

Before anyone else could move, Emily and Charlotte bracketed the opening. The shockwave from Anne’s shell rattled their armor as they squeezed the triggers on their weapons. Emily’s mini-gun spat round after round down a long corridor. Charlotte’s weapon, a tripod mounted anti-aircraft gun, chuffed a dozen rounds down the corridor in the opposite direction.

Jay shouted,
“Now.”

Peebee and her daughters raced forward on the heels of blue team’s last shots. Paired up, they squeezed into the corridor, facing both directions. Their weapons were at the ready, but there wasn’t anything to shoot.

“Clear,”
Peebee shouted.

Stone said, “Shorty. I think the Hyrocanians know we’re here. Your team is up. Let’s shut this place down.”

“Aye, aye, Boss.”

His reply was so fast, Stone was sure Shorty had speed-dial, hot-buttons for some responses. Piglets raced forward, flowing over and around the drascos. They disappeared into vents, hatchways and behind grates. More than one team raced down the blackened twisted corridor riding in luggage carts, weapons bristling in every direction.

“Jay, advance and destroy.”

“Yes, Mama. Let’s go, girls”

“Peebee, let’s see if we can find their kitchens.” Finding the kitchens quickly might save any sentient species stored there. Stone hoped there weren’t any humans on this base. He was certain there had been, but he was sick at heart at the misery he’d already seen.

Before leaving the hangar, he glanced at the bulkhead and spotted what looked like a skiff or floater charging port. He wondered how an alien species built a ship and a base with components that so closely resembled human military or civilian ships. He dismissed the thought. Everyone knew Hyrocanians were good at stealing tech.