A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (17 page)

“Definitely, interesting, interesting.” He said. “I’ve never met anyone quite like you.”

“You mean, someone from the past?”

He nodded. “It makes you unique. You haven’t been brought up amid all this crap that I take for granted. It’s all fresh and new to you.”

She looked thoughtful. “I suppose so. I do feel out of my depth most of the time. I don’t feel like I’ve contributed much to our efforts to date.”

He chuckled. “Like you said, there’s a time and a place for everything. So come on! Why me?”

“None of the others are my type. Too highly strung, or too muscley, or too loud. You seemed to be the most approachable. Plus, I kind of scare people off because of when I’m from.”

He frowned. “Really?”

She nodded. “It’s like a phobia of some sort, I guess. People are happy to get to know me, right up until I spit out that little detail about when I’m from. Then they make their excuses and leave.”

“You just must have not met the right people.” He said.

“Maybe.” She allowed. “But since they thawed me out every guy I ever got interested in dropped me like a hot potato when he found out I’m from the past. Even people who knew me on a casual basis were distant, kept me at arm’s length.”

There was a bitterness in her voice as she spoke, an anger at those who had pre-judged her.

“I guess you’d have pegged me for one of those, too. If I hadn’t come down to the shower.”

She shrugged. “At least I’d have known not to waste my time on you anymore.”

“I guess I should feel honored you wanted to waste your time on me at all!” He smiled gently.

“Well, like I said, you were interesting.”

He grinned. “If only I’d known all I had to do to get a girl interested in me was pinch her ass painfully…”

She laughed. “It wasn’t that. You talked to me. On the Hope’s Breath. About things other than the mission. About me. Even after you knew I was a … a rebreather. You were still interested.” The term ‘rebreather’ was distasteful to her, from her tone.

“I’ve never let things like looks or where someone is from, or when, sway my judgment. I learned a long time ago to make my own assessment of people, based on getting to know them. I am judgmental, but I don’t pre-judge.”

She looked up at him, suddenly vulnerable. “What happens next?”

He was silent for a moment. She wasn’t talking about the bigger picture. “What do you want to happen?”

“I don’t know. I’m long out of practice at this stuff. Not that I was ever any good at it anyway.” She said.

“Well, that makes two of us.” He said.

A silence fell between them, awkward and unwelcome.

Hamilton knew that it was unwise to even think of getting into any kind of personal situation with anyone, but despite his cautious thoughts his mouth had other ideas.

“I mean, I’d like to get to know you better. Just because we seem to be in constant danger of death doesn’t mean we can’t see where this all leads.”

It was not his most erudite of speeches, but it seemed to do something right. Johnson’s eyes filled with unshed tears.

“I’d like that too.” She said. “I…. I’ve been alone for so long that… So alone!”

The tears spilled over to run down her face. Hamilton took her head in his hands and kissed her tenderly.

They lay holding one another for a long time before they fell asleep.

*****

Their journey through hyperspace was mostly uneventful. There was little to do aboard the
Morebaeus
. The automated systems kept the ship on course and monitored the hyperspace field, ship’s environment, life support and all the other essentials. During their earlier stay aboard the
Morebaeus
, when they had repaired the ship sufficiently so that it could get them home, they had explored all the nooks and crannies that the vessel had to offer, so there was little to explore.

For Hamilton and Johnson that meant they could spend the time getting to know one another better.

For Lewis, it was a week-long hell of boredom, punctuated only by amused comments at the new couple’s expense and bouts of self-induced unconsciousness due to sedative abuse.

To be fair to her, Lewis wasn’t being too hard on the pair. Hamilton and Johnson both knew how nasty she could be if she put her mind to it. She seemed to find the pair’s finding of one another to be hilarious but for the most part her jibes and quips were not mean-spirited. Mostly she seemed self-occupied with her own condition.

The psi-testing had left her weakened and nervous. That first day, she had slept for thirty six hours straight once they had put her in the cabin. When she woke she ate what seemed like equivalent of four meals and then went back and slept for another seven hours.

Over the course of a week she regained her strength and mobility, but the gold ports that had been inserted in her head itched abominably, leading to her ransacking the medical supplies for antihistamine cream. The itch was worse when she tried to sleep, which caused her to add sedatives to her self-prescribed medications. Mostly she kept to herself, though and left the other two alone.

Hamilton and Johnson were fine with that. The more time they spent with each other the better, as far as they were concerned.

Privately, Hamilton still had doubts about the wisdom of embarking on any kind of relationship. The situation they were all in made it likely that they’d end up imprisoned, or dead, before too very long. On the other hand, such a danger of imminent death made it all the more imperative to enjoy whatever time they did have available to them.

CHAPTER NINE

Nine days later, all three of them crowded into the small bridge area of the
Morebaeus
as the nav console counted down the minutes to their emergence from hyperspace. All the systems told them that everything had gone smoothly and that they’d emerge right where they expected to. Even so, they still crowded around, Hamilton and Lewis fussing over the instruments, checking and re-checking needlessly.

As the count reached zero and the grey-green murk of hyperspace dissolved into stars they let out a collective sigh of relief.

“We made it!” Johnson grinned.

“Let’s just hope we’re where we think we are.” Lewis muttered, turning to the nav console to check their location. She had taken to wearing a scarf tied over her head to hide the golden additions to her scalp.

With their emergence from hyperspace, their initial entry velocity was restored. Since they had been hurtling along when they entered hyperspace, they were now hurtling along having exited it.

Hamilton had never understood that particular quirk of physics. Ironically, it was Johnson herself, the physicist from the past, who had tried to explain it to him using simple terms he understood, such as conservation of momentum and the like. Despite her best efforts at simplification, she quickly lost him with the theory. He nodded politely and told her he sort of got it, but he didn’t really. Nor did he really need to know the details. All he really needed to know was that whatever velocity you had going in, you retained on coming out.

Having assured himself that they weren’t speeding towards anything remotely solid, he re-activated the main engines and began to slow the
Morebaeus
down gently.

“Well, we’re at the right co-ordinates.” Lewis stated, turning back from the nav console. “The edge of an uninhabited system beyond the Rim Territories, designation C-137.”

Hamilton frowned at the sensor panel. “No sign of the
Ulysses
.”

“We couldn’t have got here first, could we?” Johnson asked.

Lewis shook her head. “Not a chance. The hyperdrive on this bucket is just about as old a design as you can get. What took us nine days probably took them less than four.”

Hamilton frowned and flipped the comms broadcast switch. “
Ulysses
,
Ulysses
, this is
Morebaeus
, respond, over.”

Static greeted his call. He frowned and leaned closer to the console to check the comms settings. All seemed in order. He was just about to call again when the reply came through.

“
Morebaeus
, this is
Ulysses
. Glad you could finally join us!” It was Jones’ voice.

Hamilton drew a relieved breath. “Yeah well, tortoise and the hare, and all that. Looks like we caught you napping.”

“Nah. We saw you arrive. Waited for your comms call, that’s all, to make sure it was you. What the hell is a tortoise and a hare, anyway?”

Hamilton looked round at Johnson, who rolled her eyes. “Never mind. Just glad to see you guys made it. Where are you, anyway?”

Jones sounded puzzled. “You can’t see us? Oh no, wait! We’ve been on sneak mode since we got here. You’ll see us in a bit.”

“Sneak mode?”

“Sure. Apparently the
Ulysses
is sometimes called upon to lurk in one place, waiting for bad guys to show up. So it has a lot of stealth properties when it’s just drifting.”

“Makes sense.” Hamilton said. “Plus, the
Morebaeus
doesn’t have the most sophisticated sensor suite, anyway.”

As if on cue, the sensors emitted a beep as they located a new object. The
Ulysses
.

There was a pause, then. “I’m being told to tell you to maintain your heading and deceleration curve. We’ll come to you. The captain wants a conference.”

I bet he does
. Hamilton thought.

“Roger that. Maintaining course and deceleration.” He said.

Now all they had to do was figure out what to do next.

*****

The cargo module had, despite its size, always seemed a little crowded to Hamilton when he and the other refugees from the Hope’s Breath had been living in it. With the crew of the
Ulysses
also present, Hamilton felt a little claustrophobic.

The cutter had quickly closed and matched course and velocity with the freighter, at which point Hamilton had cut the engines and allowed the ship to drift on at its current speed. The
Ulysses
had docked starboard to starboard, as was traditional, the cutter’s engines pointing forward. A new umbilical tunnel had been attached to the lock to replace the one that had been ripped free during the escape from Tantalus Station and the crew had come aboard.

The reuniting of the two groups was cause for much back-slapping and congratulations. Hamilton had to endure another of Klane’s hugs though this time, thanks to her relatively normal prosthetic arm replacement, he was in no danger of cracking any ribs.

There was less warmth shown towards Lewis, at least by those who had been aboard the Hope’s Breath and knew her. She looked like she’d rather not be the center of attention and once Hamilton had related the tale of their escape and what Lewis had endured there was a certain amount of distance afforded her by the crew. She was a psion of unknown talent and strength, and that made people nervous.

The story of the
Ulysses
own flight was related by a chuckling Rames but Hamilton detected a forced humor to the man’s laughter, especially when it came to relating his pilot’s exploits. Veltin, for his part, pleaded modesty as to his exploits, whilst obviously basking in the glory of his achievement.

Hamilton was a little wary of the pilot’s skills. He’d read his file, after all. But sometimes when you were in a crazy situation, it called for even crazier people. And Veltin was definitely that.

Once the pleasantries were out of the way and they had finished congratulating each other on their daring escapes, Rames got straight down to business.

“So what do we do next?” His comment was seemingly aired generally, but Hamilton flinched as if he had been struck by an arrow.

I got them into this mess
. He thought.
Now
I have to find us a way out of it
.

Slowly he moved to stand alone, stepping up onto a box so that they could all see him. He started by re-iterating the situation, as much to get things straight in his own head as to remind them of the facts.

“An alien species has infiltrated the Empire of Man. By their own admission, they are some ten thousand individuals. They have infiltrated computer systems, ships, anything with sufficient storage capacity. They have taken possession of an unknown number of humans and also control additional humans through implants. We cannot know who these individuals are at the present time, but we can assume they are likely to be individuals with real influence and power in the Empire.

“We few are the only ones that know of their existence. They have threatened that, at any moment, they could trigger violence that would destroy the Empire, and perhaps wipe out all of humanity. They have threatened to do this if we try to go public with the information. Our enemy has labeled us as terrorists and set our own kind against us, so even if we did go public, I doubt anyone would believe us.

“Essentially, they have the Empire by the short hairs!”

The crowd’s relief and happiness at the joint escape was fading fast, replaced by the bleakness of their situation.

“We must decide what, if anything, we can do about this situation.” Hamilton continued. “I’ll share my thoughts on the matter with you. I’ll tell you what I think we should do. Then I’ll be more than happy to entertain alternative ideas.”

“Firstly, we know almost nothing about these aliens other than the fact that they fought the Humals centuries ago. As you’re all aware, the Humals are extinct as a species. It is possible that these aliens wiped out the Humals in their war but, equally, the Humals may have beaten the aliens and imprisoned them. The aliens are, as far as I know, some sort of data entity. They have no physicality, no substance. As such, they can move into any storage medium sufficiently large to contain them. Once there, they can access the system’ own functions, effectively gaining control over it. As I’ve mentioned, this can be an inanimate system, like a computer, or a human being. Animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic. It make no difference. If it stores data, they can occupy it.

“Secondly, these aliens seem to want to wipe us out. Yet they haven’t done so yet. Something is giving them pause. Their leader told us that he doesn’t know what happened in their war with the Humals. That fact is making him cautious. It may be that the Humals won, then died out for some other reason. Or it may be that they fought each other into extinction. Either way, his hesitation gives us time to try to find a way to defeat them. Whilst he’s searching for answers, we will search for answers.

“So what do I think we should do?” Hamilton paused to look around at the expectant faces. “We need to find one of these aliens in a human host and interrogate it. Find out what it knows. Scan it, probe it, do whatever it takes to find out how it occupies a person, find out how we can detect such possessions at a distance and, ultimately, how to kill it.”

There was a rustle of unease amid the assembled people. One of the Marines put up a hand and Hamilton nodded at him. “Yes Corporal.”

The Marine looked momentarily surprised that Hamilton had been able to read his rank insignia but recovered quickly. “Won’t killing it involve killing the host, too?”

Hamilton drew a long, slow breath. “Possibly. I’m hoping we can find a way to flush the alien out which, hopefully, will allow the original personality to return. But it is possible the host might die in the process, yes. Even if we succeed in finding a way to evict the alien, there might be nothing left of the original person to return. We might be left with nothing more than a brain-dead body.

“But, until we can catch one, and experiment, then our options are limited to putting bullets in their heads anyway, assuming we can learn to recognize them on sight. We catch one, we learn what we can. If necessary, we catch another, and another, until we have the information we need.”

Another Marine raised a hand. Hamilton nodded at him. “Private?”

“Sir! I may be out of line here, but from what I saw on the recording, that Walsh character seemed to have comms beyond anything we have available. I mean, he knew you were there, was able to get to you. If we go anywhere near any of these things, aren’t they going to know at once?”

“What’s this recording you mentioned?” Hamilton was puzzled.

Klane piped up. “Mine.” She tapped the side of her head near her cybernetic eye. “I can record up to an hour of footage and sound.” She noticed Hamilton’s surprise. “Well, you really didn’t think I’d have an eye that could just ‘see’, did you?”

Hamilton snorted and returned to the Marine. “They do seem to have their tendrils into every important part of the Imperial network. It’s true that, if we show our faces anywhere near a camera, the aliens will know about it in short order. Our own systems have automatic facial recognition software to alert authorities to known criminals. If the aliens don’t come after us, then we can be damn sure our own kind will.”

Rames frowned. “So how are we going to get anywhere near to abducting one of these aliens? We don’t even know
who
to abduct!”

“We know the identity of one of them. The one calling itself Walsh. Whoever’s body it is inhabiting, there will be records of. We can find out who that was, where he lives and works, and plan accordingly.”