A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (10 page)

“She said she was having trouble breathing!” Hamilton added for good measure as one of the other two medics disappeared back into the decontamination tunnel, returning moments later with a flimsy looking stretcher.

The rest of the emergency crew – the technicians, guards and a few other medical personnel – had fanned out and were going through the rooms.          

With care, the stretcher bearer and his associate got Johnson onto the stretcher, then lifted it between them.

“What about you sir?” The original medic asked Hamilton.

“I..I’m alright! I can walk. I don’t want to be separated from my wife! In case…” Hamilton managed a truly awful fake choked off sob.

“That’s okay. You seem relatively uninjured. Go with the orderlies. They’ll take you both to the infirmary.”

The orderlies began to leave at once and Hamilton followed them quickly, expecting at any moment for someone to call out to him to stop. But no one did.

The decontamination tunnel was about thirty feet long, with two additional doors between Q-section and Tantalus Station proper. All three of the sections thus formed were lined with various means of killing bugs and germs. Although the rescue crews had endured its cycle on the way in, someone had clearly overridden most of the protocols. There was an ultraviolet burster and various clouds of chemicals sprayed on them as they went through the sections, but nothing like the full treatment.

As the final door to the station slid open, Hamilton breathed a small sigh of relief. They were out of Q-section, at least. Their chance of escape had improved dramatically.

“This way.” One of the suit-clad orderlies told him.

Outside of the access corridor to Q-section, a wide corridor stretched left and right. Directly opposite the door they emerged from was a large elevator. The medics huffed over to it – any kind of physical exercise in a suit was an order of magnitude more exhausting than it should be – and called the elevator using his pass card.

Medical emergency override
. Hamilton thought.
Interesting
.

The elevator cab arrived in just a few moments, doors opening and startled passengers flooding out without protest. Hamilton presumed that some sort of automated announcement had warned them of the medical emergency. A few of them looked irritated – expressions that changed to concern and even a little fear at the sight of the suit-clad orderlies – but none complained.

Hamilton and the two orderlies got in the elevator. As soon as the doors closed Hamilton went into action.

Standing between the two men at the side of his ‘wife’, it was an easy matter to chop one in the throat. The man dropped his end of the stretcher and clutched at his throat, choking. When the second orderly looked around to find out why his companion had dropped the stretcher, Hamilton did the same to him.

Johnson squeaked in panic as she fell headfirst when the first orderly dropped the stretcher. She hit the ground with a solid thud and a curse that was anything but lady-like. As Hamilton knocked out the guards properly, she got to her feet, swearing and rubbing the back of her thigh.

“Jesus Christ! Did you have to pinch me so hard?” She glared at him.

“I needed a genuine reaction!”

She punched him hard on the arm. “How about that for a genuine reaction!”

Hamilton grinned. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“You could have warned me!”

“Then it wouldn’t have been genuine, though.” Hamilton argued.

“Well, your ‘wife’ nearly slapped you across the face! That wouldn’t have looked particularly convincing, now would it?” She scowled.

“Sorry. It seemed like a good move at the time.”

She continued to scowl at him, still rubbing her leg. “Now what?”

Hamilton reached over and pressed the stop button. The elevator had two such buttons. One was marked
emergency stop
, the other just
stop.
The emergency stop button worked for anybody, but set off an alarm with the station’s maintenance staff. The stop button only worked for certain, high-level users using over-ride cards. Medical staff in an emergency recovery situation, for example. No alarm was forthcoming.

“Now, we find somewhere quiet to get rid of these two.” He said.

Hamilton looked at the level display panel on the elevator wall. A nice graphic showed a side-view of Tantalus Station, its levels, the elevator’s position and their intended destination. All of the levels were helpfully numbered. He quickly found what he hoped would be a mostly deserted level between the elevator’s current position and its destination. He punched the corresponding number on the pad and the elevator resumed its motion.

“When you say ‘get rid of’…I mean…are they…” Johnson looked nervously at the unconscious medics.

“Dead?” Hamilton frowned. She nodded. He shook his head. “No, they’re just out cold. We’ll dump them on this maintenance level and take their suits. It’ll be easier for us to avoid attention if no one can see our faces.”

She looked unconvinced. “Easier to avoid attention? Wearing a space-suit?”

“Trust me. I got us out of Q-section, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but I still don’t know what’s going on or why we’re running.”

Hamilton sighed and quickly filled her in on events.

“So…everyone will think we’re terrorists?” She said, shaking her head.

Hamilton nodded. “Basically. If we hang around, we’ll get imprisoned. Our only hope is to escape.”

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. The maintenance level was quiet. Normally, the elevator wouldn’t have even shown this level as a valid destination. Only the fact they were riding on a medical pass card made it accessible.

Hamilton began dragging the first of the orderlies out of the elevator cab. Johnson grabbed a leg of the other man and did the same.

“So, what happens once – if – we manage to get away? What about the others? How do we find them?”

Hamilton dumped the first man behind a console, out of sight of the elevator. “Well, Rames and I had a separation contingency plan. Basically a set of coordinates to meet up at if we had to split up at all. But that requires us getting a ship, assuming we’re too late to meet up with the others before they leave. After that, however, things are a little more open. There’s only so far you can plan ahead.”

She dragged the second man behind the console. “So, basically, you have no idea what we’ll do, right?”

“I have plenty of ideas.” Hamilton protested. “Just not fully fleshed-out ones.”

He bent down and began to strip the suit from the first man. Johnson did likewise, watching him for clues as to how to get the suits undone.

“Care to share any of those ideas?” She asked. “Because, from where I’m standing right now, things look pretty bleak. I could do with even the slightest glimmer of hope.”

Hamilton glanced across at her. “Yeah. Sorry. I guess I forget that you’re not from around these times. I guess it’s been hard enough for you to adjust to living in the future as it is, without the threat of that future suddenly evaporating around you.”

She didn’t look up at him, but he saw her throat working as she swallowed back her emotions.

“Well,” He continued. “We need to get away from here, find ourselves some base of operations where we won’t be discovered. From there we need to work out a way to detect these aliens, either in people, or computers. Then we need to find a way to purge them from people or machines. Once we’ve done that, and maybe we have an alien prisoner or two, we might be able to approach the government and enlist their help, or at least parts of the government. Not knowing who’s good and who’s bad is always a hindrance, though.”

“You think you can find a way to detect them?”

“I don’t see why not. They’re essentially data, so in machines maybe they hog a large amount of system memory that could be detected. In humans, I’m guessing the possession of the mind alters brain waves and patterns significantly. Those things should also be detectable. We’ll need to capture one of them for study, and find people to do the experiments, or testing and so forth. But it should be achievable.” He told her.

She was silent for a time. “Being fugitives from the Empire will make things more difficult, I imagine.”

She continued stripping the orderly of his suit, but her tone told him she was desperately trying to find a positive amid what seemed to her a mountain of impossibility. He supposed it did seem almost an insurmountable task they had set themselves. Saving humanity. Arrayed against them the whole of humanity and an alien presence of unknown potential. Not the best of odds, even he had to admit.

“It will make it harder, and easier, all at the same time.”

That piqued her interest. “How so?” She looked up.

“Well. Being outside the law – officially, no less – may open up certain avenues and resources that would otherwise be closed to us. On the other hand, having the agents of the Empire on our case will make it difficult for us to operate in most places.”

“So,” She summarized. “We spend the rest of our lives on some barely habitable rock in the middle of nowhere, trying to find a way to defeat these aliens, all the while hoping an Imperial warship isn’t going to turn up to arrest or annihilate us.”

Hamilton looked over at her. She couldn’t meet his gaze.

Does she blame me for all this?
He wondered.

“Look, Cass. I’m sorry you got roped into all this. I suppose it may end up as you put it, with us on some rock beyond the outer territories. But if Walsh was certain of victory, he would’ve acted by now. This business with what happened between his kind and the Humals has got him rattled a bit. So long as it keeps him distracted, we have time to work against him.”

She nodded, looking anything but convinced. “Let’s just concentrate on getting out of here first, shall we?”

He smiled and nodded, pulling the orderly free of his suit at last. He then moved to help Johnson finish getting her suit free. When they had the two suits off the orderlies they quickly donned them, each helping the other to check seals. The suits were fully spaceworthy, being completely sealable and capable of being pressurized. But the built-in air supply was based around re-breather technology and had a very limited supply. For emergency use, and trolling around the station as a medic, they were fine however. More importantly for them, the visor was adjustably opaque. It sported a photo-chromatic layer that responded to electrical impulses to darken the face-plate. Electrical impulses that the user could select.

With the visors suitably darkened they returned to the elevator.

“What now?” She asked.

“Now,” Hamilton said. “We see if we can catch the others.”

CHAPTER SIX

In the medical section, Klane and the others went through the individual patient rooms looking for the rest of Rames’ crew and Lewis. There was no sign of any of them, however.

“What have they done with my people?” Rames growled.

“Possibly they let slip something they shouldn’t have.” Klane stated. “In which case they probably got taken away for further ‘questioning’.”

Rames shook his head. “They didn’t know anything, though. That’s the thing. Very few of them even knew I had Hamilton on board.”

Klane shrugged. “Perhaps they were offered some sort of deal. The interview panel knew we were lying, after all. They couldn’t prove it, though.”

“I’d like to believe my own crew wouldn’t sell me out!”

“I’d like to believe this is all a horrible nightmare I’m soon going to wake up from.” Jones added softly.

“Either way, they’re not here.” Klane stated. “Let’s move on.”

The medical section was not only devoid of missing crewmen, it was fairly empty of staff and personnel, too. Those few they did encounter variously tried to question them imperiously, or run away. The end result was the same. They all ended up locked in one of the patient cells. Even Carl’s reception area clerk had ended up in one of them.

“Looks like we’ve been lucky.” Grimes observed. “Not many staff about.”

“There are no patients for them anymore.” Klane pointed out. “No reason for them to be here.”

“True.” He admitted.

The medical section was fairly expansive, considering it was only designed for emergency quarantine procedures. Klane found herself wondering how big the station’s main medical center was.

The main patient intake lock had a large staging area adjacent to it. The lock itself was massive, designed to accommodate a large influx of people at the same time. Beyond the observation ports to one side, they could see the bulk of the
Ulysses
hovering.

“Looks like your flyboy Marine managed to stop the ship.” Puckett muttered.

Veltin craned his head around to look sidewise out of the port. “They’ve extended a flexible connector to the lock. I can even see people moving inside it!”

“Standard boarding procedure.” Rames told them. “Extend the umbilical as a tunnel. No direct physical connection between the vessels.”

As if on cue, the activity light above the big lock door began to flash.

“Why not dock direct?” Carl asked.

“Direct connection opens the
Ulysses
up to cyber-attacks through the ship-to-ship links.” Rames explained. “All vessels automatically perform a kind of handshaking procedure once a physical dock is established. It would leave us too open to viruses and malware and the like.”

Jones frowned. “So the Port authorities could seize control of the ship?”

Rames nodded. “Potentially.
Ulysses
is hardened against such attacks. Most Imperial ships are. But until you know the ship you’re docking with is a friendly, it’s a given that you don’t take chances.”

“So you’re saying your Marines do actually have some intelligence, then.” Veltin grinned.

Rames frowned. “I wouldn’t say that to any of them, if I were you.” He advised.

Veltin grinned even more. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t planning on signing my own death-warrant!”

“At least they got the ship here.” Klane pointed out.

Veltin nodded, looking out the port again. “Mostly intact, too. Some nice err…battle scars..in the process.”

Rames pushed his way through to look out the port.

The
Ulysses
sported a number of dents and scratches and gouges from its run-in with Tantalus Station, but the armoring on the cutter’s hull had fared a lot better than the station itself.

Rames hissed in irritation at the damage.

Veltin clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry! It’s not like they’ll take it out of your pay. You’re a fugitive now. You don’t have any pay!”

Rames glared at him silently whilst they waited for the lock to finish cycling.

*****

On the
Ulysses
, Miko listened to the comments of his Marines as they waited in the huge medical lock for it to pressurize.

Over the past few days he’d talked with all of his men. They were understandably concerned with the turn of events that led to them being in the position of turning against the Empire. Mostly they were concerned about repercussions for their families. None of his men, himself included, were married, but all had kin. All that Miko had been able to tell them was that the captain thought this was the right thing to do, and that there was some kind of covert invasion of the Empire going on.

He took it as a measure of their trust in him as their commander that none of them voiced more than a passing doubt about the wisdom of their choice of allegiance. As far as they were concerned, they followed him and he followed the captain. That was all they needed.

If it had been blind, mindless loyalty then he would have been worried. But, despite the eternal jokes about soldiers and Marines being dumb, it was no longer really true, especially regarding Marines. All of them, Miko included, had been ground-pounders at some point. Whilst there were some less-than-intelligent soldiers out there, none of them ever became Marines. The selection process weeded out those with serious emotional, psychological or intellectual problems.

Miko knew the personnel files of all his men, few that they were, off by heart. There wasn’t a one of them that he wouldn’t trust to guard his back. If there had been, then that one would have been shipped off somewhere else quickly enough. Miko, though relatively friendly as far as commanding officers went, didn’t let that friendliness compromise the safety of his men or his duty.

On the station, the lock finished its pressurization routine and his men entered Tantalus Station proper. Considering his unauthorized undocking and the short, dangerous flight, Miko wondered if the
Ulysses
and everyone on it were now considered as hostiles. If so, it was going to make their getaway very interesting indeed.

“How are we looking?” He asked Malik, at comms.

Malik shook his head. “About a minute until the PDC’s get here. Tantalus is now demanding our surrender.”

“What about the warships?”

Malik sighed. “Best I can tell,
Triton
is about to undock.
Shiva
is still minutes away from being ready to depart.”

Miko nodded. “Put me through to Collins.” He told Malik. The Corporal nodded and adjusted a switch, then pointed at Miko in an unmistakable ‘you’re on!’ gesture.

“Collins! How’s it look in there?”

Collins voice came back a moment later. “Yeah, we’re good, most of the crew seem to be here. A few missing. Got the Cap and most of the bridge crew, plus all those freezer cases, as far as I can tell. We’re getting them into the lock now. I’ve got Vilen sealing the staging area doors so we don’t have any last minute party-crashers.”

“How long until they’re all aboard?”

“The lock cycle plus about a minute to traverse the umbilical, would be my guess. Say two minutes, tops.”

Miko glanced at Alvin on sensors. “Alvin?”

“That’s gonna be a minute or so too late. PDC’s are almost on us.”

“They won’t fire, though, right?” Torin said from the helm.

“Not this close to the station.” Miko told him. “But the minute we move off….”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. They all knew they were in for a rough time of it.

*****

Elsewhere, Hamilton was scowling at the elevator controls. They’d used the medical override card to summon the elevator. There had been no one aboard when it arrived. However, when they tried to use the card to send them back up to the level above the quarantine section, the elevator had other ideas. The light for the main medical center had lit up and the elevator had set off. Despite repeated swipes of his card, and the one that Johnson had, the elevator had stoically ignored any attempt to divert its course.

“Why won’t it work?” Johnson frowned.

Hamilton shrugged. “Someone more important must have summoned it to medical.” He guessed.

“What do we do?”

“Just go with it. We are medical staff, after all. Just get out, wait until whoever gets in has gone, then summon it again. Hopefully it won’t be much of a delay.”

She nodded and the pair of them waited as the cab descended into the bowels of Tantalus Station.

When the doors opened, they were confronted by a small crowd of frightened looking tech and admin types. The most important of them, naturally, stood closest to the doors and held his pass card in one hand as if he could use it to smite evil. He looked startled to see anyone in the elevator.

“Oh! Get out! This is an emergency!”

“What’s going on?” Hamilton asked as he and Johnson shuffled out of the elevator.

“Patient’s gone crazy!” One of the techs told him. “Threatening to blow out one of the window panels and vent the level to space!”

That was all that Hamilton got, information-wise. The group crowded into the elevator and were gone.

Hamilton and Johnson exchanged bemused glances through their darkened faceplates.

“Don’t doors close automatically when there’s a breach?” Johnson asked.

“Sure.” Hamilton agreed. “But they’re techies and admin types. They should be smart enough to know that, but the threat of instant death often makes people act dumbly.”

The area in front of the elevators was a large reception area. Corridors led off in several directions. From one came the sound of a woman shrieking and cursing, threatening to ‘kill them all!’ Though muffled and slightly distorted by the suit pickups, Hamilton found something familiar in the tone.

“Come on!” He said, setting off down the corridor.

“We’re not waiting for the elevator?” Johnson asked.

“Change of plan.” Hamilton told her.

“Great!” She muttered, hurrying after him.

*****

Since they were surrounded by the point-defense craft well before the Captain and the others were aboard, Miko saw no point in rushing to action once the regular crew were finally aboard. Instead, he had Torin hold position, with the umbilical extended, to make it look like they weren’t finished.

Malik, on comms, had finally relented and replied to Tantalus Control, stalling them with talk of crazed crewmen gone mad and how they were ‘still securing the vessel’. None of it sounded convincing in the slightest but Malik looked to be having fun with his fiction.

When Rames finally entered the bridge and demanded a report, Miko filled him in as quickly as he could. Behind the captain, the rest of the crew quickly resumed their places on the bridge. However, helm and navigation were conspicuous by the empty chairs.