A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE

The Imperial customs cutter
Ulysses
hung several light-seconds away from the derelict ship. The glow from its main engines was a subdued orange, the powerful thrusters barely making any effort to keep up with the sluggish ship. At need they could propel the cutter at a far greater acceleration than most vessels could manage. Running down smugglers and catching pirates were part and parcel of its design philosophy and the Imperial coffers hadn’t stinted where construction costs were concerned.

Today, however, looked to be a boring mission.

The old freighter they’d been tasked to intercept had entered the Glendara star system at the extreme edge of the system’s sensor range. That was a long way out. Way beyond the farthest planet. Not only that, but it had emerged from hyperspace with such slowness that even the powerful sensors available to the core world of Timoran had barely registered its arrival.

Then it had refused to respond to hails, except to alter its course to head at an angle that would lead it nowhere in particular within the system, eventually to head out back into the depths of space.

It was all very suspicious.

Naturally, those charged with the protection of the citizens of Glendara were concerned. The ship’s activities suggested smugglers or other criminals trying to avoid notice and make an illicit rendezvous in deep space.

Accordingly, the
Ulysses
was given the order to investigate at once.

Normally, intercepting a ship at such extreme distance, even to a ship with engines as powerful as the
Ulysses
had, would have been impractical. Long before they could reach the vessel it would have time to react, fleeing or head out to a hyperspace jump point. Such a long range intercept was a waste of fuel and time.

However, the last few years had seen such vessels as the
Ulysses
outfitted with an upgrade to their hyperdrives. The drive unit was now capable of generating a micro-jump, likened by its inventors as
squeezing a wet bar of soap in your hand and having it squirt free
. This burst of energy lasted only a second or less, but gave the ship the ability to jump across systems in the blink of an eye. It had been nicknamed the Skip Drive. Piracy was no longer a matter of keeping ahead of the authorities, since the authorities could be right on you in an instant.

So the
Ulysses
had left Timoran’s huge orbital hub, Tantalus Station, and leapt across system with the speed and eagerness of a cat pouncing on a mouse.

Except
. Captain Donard Rames, thought
. This was more of an elephant than a mouse.

The vessel they had found out-massed them by a considerable factor. Had it been a heavily armed pirate vessel, they might well have met their match. Though the
Ulysses
was well equipped to deal with belligerent criminals, it was less than a quarter the size of the big freighter they had encountered.

The vessel was what was often referred to as a tug-hauler. A tractor unit at the front, pulling its cargo load behind it. In this case the tractor unit was mostly engines. Three of them, arranged at one hundred and twenty degree intervals around a ludicrously tiny crew module. The cargo section was a long thin spine to which were coupled three, equally long and enormous freight modules.

The design was archaic and Rames had concluded that the vessel was an old relic of the early days of space-flight. He wondered whether the modules had gravity plating. Back in the early days of colonization the exotic materials that allowed gravity generation were terribly expensive. Modern manufacturing techniques had remedied that and now everyone had gravity plating. But even so, if the modules on this freighter had even residual gravity then the modules themselves would have been an astronomical cost to manufacture back then.

The freighter appeared to be a derelict. In addition to the total lack of comms traffic, tactical was informing him it was completely unarmed and had minimal life-support aboard.

Someone had an accident with their hyperdrive
. Rames thought.

It was the most likely explanation for the freighter’s distant and slow emergence into Glendara space. An accident, malfunctioned drive, or some other mishap. That the ship had emerged from hyperspace at all was remarkable enough. Hyperspace accidents usually left the ship trapped within the hyper-realm, or smashed into sub-atomic particles and strewn across half a light-year of normal space.

Rames was old enough, though, to have heard of cases where the ship had escaped from hyperspace, but its crew had been less fortunate. The entry and exit from hyperspace exposed the vessel to radiation and odd dimensional effects that Rames didn’t even pretend to understand. But he’d heard the tales. People smeared like jam around the inside of their vessel, others half embedded in bulkheads and machinery. One report even had two people fused together into one, like some kind of reversed conjoined twin operation. Rumor even said, though he imagined this to be total star-myth, that the pair had even survived, at least for a time.

Either way, he was glad that it wasn’t him that had to go aboard and poke around. He had marines for that.

Glancing around the small bridge he spotted Grimes, his exo, at the shoulder of the sensor suite operator, Tyson.

“Anything number one?” He asked.

Grimes shook his head, peering uncertainly over Tyson shoulder at the display. “Nothing concrete. There are faint life-signs, perhaps indicative of people in cryo-capsules. But the readings are fluctuating a little, they’re not steady.”

“Cryo-capsules generally send a signal if they detect comms traffic, though. Might be just glitches.” Tyson added, helpfully.

“No more word on an ID?” Rames inquired, turning to his second officer, Michaels.

Michaels shook his head, peering at a console of his own. “Nothing yet. No transponder code, though. The database isn’t all that large. There should be something listed, but so far nada.”

Something prickled at the back of his mind, something about the ship scratched at his brain. Like he had seen it before….somewhere. But the information wouldn’t reveal itself, either to his mind’s eye, or Michaels’ electronic inquiries.

“Check right back to the start of the database. Whatever this is, it’s been out here a long time, by the looks of it.”

Michaels nodded and fiddled with his console some more.

Rames drew a deep breath, visions of two people fused together and frozen in a tube springing unwanted into his head. “Very well. Send the marines in.”

Grimes nodded and began issuing the order.

*****

Major Miko Harvan waited patiently as the lock cycled, allowing the access to the derelict. His armored space-suit was a dull green color, save for a flash of bright yellow where his rank insignia sat on his arm.

He stood at the front of his seven man squad, as always.

Lead from the front.
His old man had always advised him.
The men will respect you for it.

Miko wasn’t sure about that last bit. But being at the pointy-end was where his natural inclination told him to be. He hefted his standard issue stun pistol as the door began to open. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but for boarding actions it served well, with enough power to take down lightly armored foes, but not able to drill a hole through the hull or damage equipment. Not that lack of atmosphere would bother either him or his men. The suits saw to that. But it was a standard tactical doctrine adopted when man first felt the need to carry firearms of any sort into space. Only a complete idiot would field something capable of causing a hull breach.

The door slid open rather hesitantly. Miko knew the derelict had very little power at the moment, but the lock mechanism had drawn its power from the
Ulysses
via the umbilical tunnel they had crossed through.

Odd. The mechanism is either damaged or very old
. He thought.

Miko stepped through into the ship’s main corridor. The power feed from the
Ulysses
gave them minimal gravity. Enough to keep them on the floor, but not enough that you’d want to go doing acrobatics in it. To the right, he knew, lay the freighter’s bridge, tiny and cramped, more of a cockpit, really. Lining the corridor in which he stood were the crew quarters, toilet facilities and rec area/galley. To the left was the engine room.

That was all there was to the main habitation section. The bare minimum.

Silently, he motioned his men to split up and search the tractor section of the freighter. He could have just told them, via the suit radios, but he liked to practice non-verbal commands. You never knew when it might come in handy.

In truth, there were too many of them for the cramped ship. As they set about searching, they got in each other’s way, which was not to his liking.

The larger of the cabins had seen quite a bit of use, much more so than the rest. Likewise the galley was heavily abused, meal-wrappers strewn everywhere. All of it was ancient looking stuff, as if whoever had used it last had not used it for years.

The search did not take long. It was a small space, after all. No signs of life.

Miko formally relayed the findings back to the
Ulysses
. They already knew everything he told them, but it was procedure. They were, no doubt, following every step via video link.

“Move through and check the cargo modules.” Rames told them over the radio.

Miko acknowledged the order and gestured to his men. They made their way aft towards the hatch to the cargo spine.

The artificial gravity in the spine was as weak as it was in the rest of the ship, but the circular corridor which was the spine had gravity plating around its entire circumference, allowing a person to simply walk up the curved sides of the spine and seemingly stand on the ceiling. The reason for this were the three large elevator plates sat at equidistant points around the tunnel circumference. The elevators were designed to take their passengers safely
down
to the
bottom
of each cargo module. Up and down, top and bottom, it was all relative in space.

Miko split his men into two pairs and a group of three, and then joined one of the pairs at random. The elevators operated obediently at their touch and soon the three teams were each heading down to the bottom of a cargo module.

When the elevator doors opened, Miko and his two companions were surprised by what they saw.

The module was vast by modern standards. At least one hundred meters long, thirty across and twenty high. It was like a warehouse.

A warehouse packed with goods
. Miko thought.

Shipping containers, chests and boxes of every conceivable size and shape filled the space almost from roof to ceiling. A catwalk ran around the edge of the module, ten meters up, with a cross-walk reaching from one side of the module to the other every twenty meters along the length of the structure.

There has to be thousands of tons of goods here
. Miko realized in awe.
And there are two other modules just like it!

It was the immediate foreground, though, which caught the attention of the three Marines. The area around the elevator had been turned into a makeshift living area complete with tables, chairs, beds and a kitchen area. Free-standing partitions helped to separate areas and beds and give an illusion of privacy. Judging from the number of beds, at least ten people had made this place a temporary home.