A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (14 page)

“Antoine.” Lewis whispered. “He was French, I think.”

“A smart man, then.” Johnson said.

Lewis snorted.

Hamilton shook his head. “Smart, but not wise. All the tests he performed over the years while perfecting the drive slowly destroyed his genetic structure. Remember the trouble we had with the
Morebaeus
drive? That’s why we had to go in the cryo tubes. Hyperspace isn’t very forgiving of human tissue – at least, not during the crossover from one realm to the other.
Morebaeus
himself was literally falling apart by the end of his project. Urban myth has it he died when the final test was completed successfully. He was hailed as a hero.”

“He was an idiot!” Lewis muttered.

“Maybe,” Hamilton allowed. “But without him we wouldn’t be about to make a daring escape.”

“Without him we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place!” Lewis grumbled.

Hamilton exchanged glances with Johnson. There was no point continuing the argument. Lewis would argue the point until the end of time. It was just her nature. Fortunately, Hamilton had a perfect way of shutting her up.

“Right then! Rest break is over. Let’s get this done!”

Lewis groaned, but followed the other two as they began walking out towards the
Morebaeus
.

*****

On the
Ulysses
viewscreen, all that could be seen was a maelstrom of gas streaming past. The hull was making sounds that no ship should ever make and on the bridge, Rames’ eyes were practically bulging from their sockets.

“Not too deep now baby!” Veltin cried happily. “We want to skim, not swim!”

And then the screen was clearing, and the howling of the upper atmosphere on the hull was fading to silence.

Rames looked surprised to be alive. He turned to Klane. “What’s our status?”

She scowled at the console. “It’ll take a few moments for the systems to come back online, if they ever do. They’re overheated and got an awful dose of…well…everything bad. Frankly, I’d be surprised if the sensors aren’t all ruined and melted stumps.”

“Oh good grief!” Veltin exclaimed. “I flew us past the planet dorsal side in! The sensors are all on the ventral surfaces. I couldn’t do any better than that. They’ll be fine.”

Rames snorted. “You call that ‘flying past’?”

Veltin deigned no response to that.

“Wait.” Klane said. “I’m getting something. Yeah. The systems are coming back up. There are a few holes in the coverage, but most of the arrays seem intact. Nice flying!”

Veltin grinned.

“So what’s the situation?” Rames asked. All eyes and ears turned to Klane.

“We’re past the planet, obviously. The Assault craft are all taking a wider trip around. We’ve stolen quite a lead on them. The
Shiva
is taking a wider angle again to get around. She’s got us in line of sight, but she’s way too far off to shoot at us.”

“What about the
Triton
, the destroyer?” Grimes asked. “I’m getting a lot of chatter between the cruiser and the
Triton
. It’s all encrypted, but they’re up to something.”

Klane adjusted her controls. “Hmmm. No sign of it. Must be still back the other side of the planet. I haven’t got a direct fix on it. Needless to say, Tantalus Station is rejecting the sensor panel’s calls for data feeds. But that’s my best guess.”

The
Ulysses
sped on out into space, away from the planet towards the jump point that had been preselected and calculated for.

Abruptly, Klane’s console bleated insistently. She glared at it angrily.

“What!” Rames was practically shouting.

“The
Triton
, she just Skipped to a point ahead of us!” Klane growled.

“Great!” Rames muttered. “Can we do a fly past without getting cooked?”

Klane shook her head. “Not a chance!”

Veltin was already changing course, away from the destroyer, which was already accelerating in towards them.

“It must have done a double-skip.” He stated with a certain amount of admiration in his voice. “Skipped from its position on the other side of the planet to a point far out, perhaps over the planet’s pole, then bounced back into its current position. Not too shoddy! The cruiser was feeding it sensor data on our trajectory. They are quite far ahead of us, though, so it could have been worse.”

“It is worse.” LeGault announced. “The destroyer just launched torpedoes. Guess what sort they are?”

“EMP’s?” Rames sighed.

LeGault nodded.

“They’re coming in at Forty gees!” Klane noted. “We can’t outrun them!”

Veltin frowned. “No wonder they Skipped that far ahead! Why does it always have to be faster or bigger with you people! What’s wrong with you all!”

There was a lurch and the star-field in the view screen whirled to show the planet again.

The dampening fields groaned as Veltin re-applied the engine thrust. Instead of speeding away from the planet, the
Ulysses
was now slowing its velocity away from the world.

“So,” Veltin said conversationally. “What’s the proximity trigger and blast radii of those torps? I’ll need that.”

Klane glanced at her console. “Standard settings are to set the trigger at five klicks and the blast is ten to twenty.”

Veltin smiled cheerily. “Good, good! A ten klick trigger would have been bad. But five….yeah, I can work with that!”

“Work what?” Rames asked.

“How about a miracle?” Veltin offered, his hands flying over the helm controls.

Puckett, glancing across, saw what he was up to. “You can’t be serious? You’ll get us all killed!”

Veltin stopped what he was doing and turned to his companion. “You know, for an apprentice, you’re not very trusting of your teacher!”

The pair began arguing loudly. Rames waded in with his own comments to the pair.

At the Tactical console, Klane and Jones exchanged glances.

“You know,” Jones pointed out. “This thing probably has escape pods. I bet we could get to them and be away before anyone noticed we were missing.”

“Nah, we’d miss all the fun.” She replied. “Besides, I have a curiosity to see which happens first - Veltin collapsing from exhaustion or the captain bursting a blood vessel.”

“My money’s on us all being blown to hell long before either of those.” Jones stated morosely.

“We must be sure and thank Hamilton for this wonderful adventure he dragged us both into.” Klane muttered darkly.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hamilton, Johnson and Lewis reached the
Morebaeus
after an easy trek along the roof of the docking arm. Easy, of course, being relative when you were relying on fibergrip to keep you attached to the station. At the end of the arm, the docking umbilical provided the actual connection between station and ship.

Unfortunately for them, the umbilical tunnel had no fibergrip on its outside surface. They were forced to climb down the ladder that ran down past the end of the docking arm door and pull themselves along on the attached fabric loops that ran along the sides of the umbilical. There was nothing particularly drama-filled about the procedure, but in their tired state, the task was more serious and dramatic than it should have been.

Likewise, on reaching the
Morebaeus
, the old freighter had no fibergrip either. Since their target, the port-side airlock, was on the other side of the ship from them, they again had to pull themselves hand over hand along the hull of the freighter in order to get there.

We should have thought of this eventuality when we were planning
. Hamilton thought. He and Rames had tried to envisage any eventuality, but space-walking to the
Morebaeus
had not been one of the scenarios they had thought about. The
Morebaeus
had been the fall-back option if they hadn’t been able to get to the
Ulysses
. Again, their planning had envisaged all of them heading to the
Morebaeus
, not just a few.

On the far side of the ship, the port-side lock opened easily. Traditional thinking had ships dock using the starboard lock in preference to the port-side lock, but all ships apart from the very smallest were equipped with two locks. The port-side lock, often going unused for months at a time, was oft thought of as the emergency lock. However, lack of regular use and maintenance sometimes meant that the lock itself became part of the emergency in a crisis, failing to open or cycle properly. The
Ulysses
tech boys had given it a thorough going over, just in case it was needed. After sitting unused for fifty years in deep space, it had most definitely benefitted from the attention.

Hamilton and his companions entered the lock and waited for it to cycle. As part of their maintenance, the tech boys had disabled the access alarms for both locks. As well as giving an alert as to when the locks were used, they were a security feature. Starships, even old ones like the
Morebaeus
, were very expensive vessels. Hamilton and his two cohorts weren’t the first people to try and steal a ship via a spacewalk. There would be no alerts being transmitted to the Port authorities. No sign that the ship was being tampered with at all.

Until we bring the power core online
. Hamilton thought.
Then they’ll know quick enough
.

The lock was small, barely big enough for the three of them, so it cycled quickly. As the inner hatch opened they removed their helmets with a great sense of relief.

All three of them were soaked in sweat from their exertions. Lewis looked on the verge of collapse and leaned heavily against a bulkhead.

“You okay?” Hamilton frowned at her.

“What…do you…think?” She replied. In her current state, she couldn’t even muster the strength to inject any sarcasm into her tone.

They all leaned back, getting their breath back and enjoying the feeling of not being encased in a helmet.

“How come there’s gravity if the ship is shut down?” Johnson frowned, suddenly realizing that she wasn’t floating about.

“Power link to the station through the umbilical.” Hamilton explained. “Basic life-support is always maintained to any docked vessel. It’s SOP.”

They quickly helped each other out of the suits they had been wearing and stood shivering in the corridor. Their sweat had stained their clothes and the faint breeze from the air circulation was enough to make them shiver.

“Let’s get on with this!” Hamilton stated.

The three of them made their way to the tiny bridge. It was more of a cockpit than a bridge, with just two seats, for the pilot and navigator and not a lot of space other than that. Lewis flopped down in the navigator chair and began bringing the consoles online.

“Won’t the station detect this activity?” Johnson inquired.

“Nah. It’s all powered by the ship’s internal power cells. This is small fry.” Lewis said, for once not rendering an insult.

“I’ll go get the flake with the nav file on it.” Hamilton said and disappeared, leaving Johnson alone with Lewis.

“Is there anything I can do?” Johnson offered, somewhat nervously, expecting Lewis to bite her head off.

“Not really.” The planetologist sighed, still intent on powering everything up. “Unless…if there’s anything to eat in the mess…I’m starving. Those bastards wouldn’t give me anything to eat for days other than some liquid crap they pumped into me.”

“I’ll see what I can find.” Johnson offered. She turned and exited the cramped bridge.

Hamilton paused on his way back to the bridge to frown at her in the mess.

“Finding some food.” She said by way of explanation.

“Good idea. All this excitement’s made me hungry!” He smiled.

“There’s not much here.” She stated. “Most of the halfway decent food is down in the cargo modules. All that was brought up here is snack foods and survival bars, that sort of thing.”

Hamilton shrugged. “I’ve eaten far worse. Anything to stave off hunger.”

She nodded at the tiny piece of plastic he held. “Is that the data flake?”

He brandished it. “Absolutely! Hopefully we’ll be well out of here before they know what happened.”

So saying, he went forward to the cockpit.

Lewis had got the ship’s control and monitoring systems up and running. Hamilton plugged the flake into the nav console and typed in the decryption code. Obediently the nav comp began evaluating the preprogrammed course, rendering its opinion with a succession of lines of information on the screen followed by green ticks.

“Right.” Hamilton said. “I’m going to engineering to re-seat the control modules and get the core online. Is everything ready here?”

Lewis nodded wearily. “Just don’t take all day. I’m falling asleep as it is.”

He grinned. “When I bring the core up, Tantalus control will notice. You’ll have a few seconds at best to disconnect the umbilical before they try to override everything remotely. Stay alert!”

“Don’t worry. I’m good for that much. You’ll probably have to fly, though.” She sighed.

He nodded and left heading aft, past Johnson who had assembled some less than appetizing snack bars and junk food on a plate. He grabbed a food bar as he went by.

“Hey!” She smiled after him. “No snacking between meals!”

He laughed tiredly.

To say we’re in deep crap, and exhausted
. He thought.
We’re actually in pretty good spirits!

Part of the reason, he suspected, lay in simply the fact that they were doing something at last, rather than stuck waiting for events to catch them up. Being in control of your own fate, even if that fate seemed bleak indeed, gave you courage and enthusiasm.

The engineering area was probably the largest room on the
Morebaeus
. However, it was so full of engineering that little space actually remained for the humans aboard to fit in. Hamilton quickly located the panels behind which the loosened control boards resided. It was the work of a few minutes to find and re-seat everything properly. After that he moved to the main engineering console and triggered the internal comms.

“Lewis. I’m ready to start the core. As soon as you have power, get that umbilical away.”

“I’m ready.” She snapped. “Just get on with it!”

Here goes nothing
. He thought.

It surprised him how easy it was. Switch on all the sub-systems, fuel feed, magnetic containment, pumps and so on. The order was ingrained in his head from his Corp days. Everyone did basic fight and basic engineering as part of their training. Corp team members were expected to be able to perform any task on a ship to a basic standard. Some went on to specialize as pilot, navigators or engineers, but most made do with the basic training they received at the start. Any specialties were likely to be things associated with their surveying – biology, analysis, planetology and so on. In the Corp, getting there was taken as read. You had to be useful once you had arrived more so than during the journey.

With a flip of a switch, the fuel began feeding into the core; the familiar whine of a core starting up began to pervade the engineering area. Hamilton watched the progress on the simplistic gauges that lined the room. There was a modern, if fifty years out of date, console with a display screen he could have monitored the progress from, but he’d always appreciated the way the gauges and lights around an engineering area seemed to come to life as a core was powered up. It was as if a sleeping giant was slowly stirring itself.

“I’m getting power up here.” Lewis told him. “Disengaging the umbilical now.”

There was a clunk from somewhere else as the umbilical detached. A brief feeling of motion as Lewis used the starboard thrusters to push the big freighter away from the docking arm.

Hamilton tore open the food bar and munched on it contentedly. Rames’ techies had done a good job on the ship. Everything seemed to be in the green. Walking over to the main console he adjusted the settings and ramped the core up to full power steadily.

Another procedure that violates regulations!
He thought cheerfully. A ship was supposed to keep its core at low power until it was well clear of its berthing point, in case of mishaps with containment fields.

“Hold on to something.” Johnson called, obviously back on the bridge. “Lewis says she’s about to go full thrust!”

Hamilton muttered and wedged himself in the angle between the console and the wall. Seconds later the ship lurched violently and Hamilton was pressed back against the console heavily. He gritted his teeth.

Old though she might be, the
Morebaeus
had three huge engines. She sailed away from her mooring as if she didn’t have the three massive cargo modules in tow at all.

“Hamilton!” Johnson’s voice was a little alarmed. “I think Lewis has passed out!”

“Great! Pull the throttles back to half way and I’ll be up in a moment. They’ll probably be the levers she has a death-grip on!” He advised her.

There was silence, then the tremendous acceleration eased considerably.

Hamilton looked over the console once more to assure himself that the core, and the engines themselves, had dealt with the sudden acceleration, then put the console into automatic mode and staggered back along to the bridge.

Lewis was sat in the pilot’s seat, unconscious. The acceleration had finally done what all the psi testing and maltreatment she had received could not do. It had shut her up. One hand still rested on the throttles, the other clutched a half-eaten snack bar.

“She just fainted.” Johnson explained.

“Best thing for her.” Hamilton noted, not unkindly. He grabbed her by the armpits and dragged her free of the seat, laying her down in the corridor behind them. Then he took her place in the pilot’s chair.

Lewis had thrust them well clear of the Tantalus Station. She had passed out before putting them on course for the jump point, however, so Hamilton did a rough calculation in his head and adjusted the ship’s vector to head them that way.