A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (29 page)

Since the maintenance craft was designed for a crew of four and had only pairs of bunks in two compartments, they had bought extra bedding. It was Carl and Klane who lost out on a proper bed, since she was too tall and he too wide to fit comfortably in the bunks. Instead they made a place for themselves in the mess area. LeGault and Jones shared one compartment, leaving Hamilton and Johnson the other one. There wasn’t a lot of room for one person, let alone two, in the bunks and in the end they pulled the flimsy mattresses out of the bunks and put them side by side on the floor and slept on that.

The two days turned into three before the carrier finished taking on its load. Even then, once the loading had ceased, it took several more hours before the loading tubes, one by one, disconnected from the massive vessel.

Finally, however, the carrier was free of the refinery and slowly moving away into space. Although it was a massive vessel, it was nowhere near as heavily engineered as its smaller cousin, that they had recently piggy-backed on. It had no need to venture into the debris field amid the asteroid belt. Plus, most of its journey time was spent in hyperspace courtesy of its Skip Drive and, in hyperspace, there truly was nothing to hit. No dust, no particles, no atoms. Nothing at all. People thought of space as a vacuum but the truth was that hyperspace was the real vacuum.

“Well.” Hamilton told them as the ship got under way. “This is where the fun really begins. We’ve had a smooth run so far. From here, we’ll have to make it up as we go along.”

“How long will it take us to Skip to Mars?” Jones asked, looking at LeGault.

The pilot shrugged. “Best part of a day, I guess. Maybe longer with a ship this huge.”

Jones didn’t look too happy with the non-committal answers.

“We’ll get there when we get there.” Klane told them. “In the meantime, I suggest everyone check and rechecks the equipment they have. We’re likely to need it soon.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

As LeGault had predicted, the Skip from the asteroid belt refinery to Mars took more than a day. The carrier was massive and its Skip Drive only just powerful enough to propel it into hyperspace.

In fact it was the best part of two days later that the familiar starfield of Earth reappeared to replace the grayish nothingness of hyperspace.

All six of them wore their body armor underneath their normal clothing. Over the top of that they wore the suits that the Marines on
Ulysses
had given to them from their armory. The suits were military-issue, obviously, and packed with the latest tech that the Empire could afford to give to its soldiers.

These particular suits were classified as “light” use, meaning that they were intended for non-combat purposes. There was no armoring integral to the suits that was intended to stop weapon’s fire. They were strictly intended for peaceful duties.

That said, the suits were robust and easily as tough as any normal, civilian, equivalent. Where they outshined the more normal, commercially available space wear was in the tech they contained.

The suits had a much more advanced rebreather arrangement, allowing the wearer to stay inside them for days so long as exertion was kept to a minimum. Likewise the comms and visual display gear incorporated into the helmet was military grade and the suit incorporated all the equipment necessary for a Marine to evaluate his surrounding and environment fully.

In case of suit punctures or tears, they had a pocketful of slap on patches of various sizes and shapes. The patches had a tear-off membrane on one side. You simply tore off the membrane and pressed the patch over the damaged area. The material actually bonded at the molecular level with the suit, sealing the hole and becoming a part of the suit itself.

The six of them had practiced donning the suits quickly and had been wearing them during the journey so far when needed. So they were all fairly used to the data displays that were projected onto the inside of the visor and how to manipulate them. Each of them had their own suit, that they had taken time to tailor to their needs.

However, with the exception of Klane and Hamilton, they were now wearing them with a certain amount of nervousness. Because now, they were wearing them for real. The air on the maintenance craft had been pumped out into the storage tanks and the suits were the only thing keeping them alive.

The precaution had been taken by Hamilton after the carrier had emerged from its Skip jump.

Mars orbit was rife with activity. There were so many orbital facilities, satellites and vessels moving about that any notion of simply having the maintenance craft slip free of the carrier and head planetwards was doomed to failure.

Likewise, having the craft transfer to another vessel, or shuttle was equally impractical. The Martian orbit was thick with sensor scans of all sorts. Even on minimal power, using the thrusters only, their craft would be spotted almost as soon as it moved. Spotted, challenged and, when no transponder response was forthcoming, set upon. The only upside to all the activity was that they were able to do a quick scan of their own without it being noticed amid the general free-for-all of sensor-mania.

For Hamilton, it was obvious that their time aboard the maintenance craft was at an end. It could take them no further and certainly not down to the Martian surface. If they wanted to get planetside, they’d have to jump ship onto something that wouldn’t get blown to bits.

So he had ordered everyone into their gear and had LeGault shut the craft’s power down entirely. The last scan they had performed had revealed the carrier headed towards an enormous freight-handling terminal. Much like the refinery, most of the terminal was automated. Ships docked, their cargoes were unloaded by robots and then loaded onto smaller vessels bound for other facilities in orbit, or down to the planet below.

As the big carrier closed in on the terminal, they filed out of the wide open airlock and out onto the hull of the carrier.

“Won’t they be able to detect us crawling around out here?” Jones wondered aloud through the suit’s secure comms channel. He was looking a little awkward in the suit. Of them all, only Hamilton, Klane and LeGault had spent much time in a suit. Johnson had, recently, of course, but Carl and Jones looked far out of their comfort zone.

“The suits mask most of that. Enough so that it won’t trigger alarm bells.” Klane told him.

“I’m more concerned about that EMP warhead we’ve left behind.” Hamilton muttered. “It stands out more than we do, right now.”

Bringing the EMP along had seemed like a good idea. An emergency use only device that might have given them a fighting chance of escape had they been detected.

Just roll it out the bay and set it off in your wake
. He had thought. Now, it was a millstone waiting to drag them down.
It just takes one operator to do a weapons scan…

But there was no need for anyone to do such a scan on the big carrier. It was unarmed and entirely automated. It wasn’t like it was a ship coming in from another system, with unknown intent and capability. The carrier was a known quantity. Why would anyone scan it specifically?

So far it seemed that nobody was much interested in it. It received general sweeps but they were mostly aimed at triggering its transponder and making sure it was heading on the right course and speed. No one was interested in what it carried.

Unlike Tantalus Station, the carrier was not equipped with the fibergrip matting that enabled people to get around easily on its surface. The carrier was too big for that and, being unmanned, there was no need for it. Any repair or maintenance on the vessel would be carried out by people in small repair pods, essentially miniature spacecraft.

So Hamilton, Klane and LeGault were left to shepherd the others carefully as they made their way from one point to another on the giant hull. Hamilton went first, trailing a monofilament fiber from a spool at his belt. When he reached a point where he could attach it, he did so using an instant set glue from a small dispensing gun. The rest then clipped on to the incredibly strong fiber and pulled themselves along, guided by LeGault and Klane.

It was a slow and painstaking business for those not used to a zero-gee environment. Jones, in particular, not being very fit, suffered. Carl, with his Enjun physiology, was not too badly off and Johnson commented that it was a lot easier than using the fibergrip mats and socks.

By repeating the technique they slowly made their way to the port side of the vessel where the loading locks were located. The journey took them the best part of an hour. The carrier, though huge, hadn’t seemed quite so enormous from inside a spacecraft. The reality of its bulk, on a human scale, was staggering.

If the carrier seemed endless to them, the freight terminal might as well have been a planet in its own right. The carrier seemed to have a dedicated series of loading locks on the terminal, but as it closed in on the terminal they could see countless other vessels docked and either loading or unloading cargo. The terminal was a vast hub of activity, with ships coming and going constantly. All docking and undocking was done remotely, by the terminals computers. All scheduled approaches and departures likewise maintained automatically. Even the cargo vessels that had crews had to surrender control of their vessel to the terminal at some point. It was a triumph of engineering and automation.

Hamilton hoped that the automation would mean few, if any, actual people aboard the terminal. As with the refinery, he hoped that a skeleton staff would be present mostly to coordinate maintenance and resolve glitches. If so, he and the others could slip aboard, find a ship bound for the Martian surface and get aboard that. If that ship itself was automated, then so much the better.

The reality was not quite so simple, of course.

Firstly, their slow progress across the outer hull of the carrier put paid to any thought of entering via the loading locks. By the time they reached it, the carrier had completed its docking procedures and the loading locks were sealed to the terminal’s own loading arms. Hamilton and Klane scouted around, but there was no sign of any human scale airlocks on either the carrier or the terminal’s loading arms. They were simply not designed for human access.

Which meant further travel, this time along the terminal arms to the terminal itself. The terminal arms were a good two hundred meters long with few convenient handholds. Without the spool of monofiber and the glue gun, it would have been an almost impossible journey even for the three of them that were experienced in zero-gee activities. As it was, by the time they reached the bulk of the terminal proper, Hamilton had gone through his spool, Klane’s and was working on LeGault’s.

The biometric readouts in his helmet told Hamilton that Jones was especially the worse for wear. Breathing, heart-rate and temperature were all up. Jones was definitely not a natural spacer. His suit was doing its best to keep his environment pleasant for him, but even it was beginning to struggle against the load he was placing on it. He was using his supply of oxygen at an increased rate, too. Carl and Johnson, by contrast, were coping far better, though it looked like they were beginning to feel the effort as well.

Hamilton called a break at the juncture of the arm and the terminal and went to see how Jones was. Klane had already commented, on a private channel, to him about the black man’s worsening condition. They all had the same information available to them, so Jones’ state was visible to anyone that cared to call up the biometric display.

Jones had slumped in the angle between the arm and terminal hull, holding on with one hand to a reinforcing stanchion that was bigger than he was. Hamilton crouched down beside him and called him up on Jones’ private suit channel.

“How are you doing, buddy?” Hamilton asked, keeping his tone light.

It was a few moments before Jones answered, probably trying to figure out the comms system properly. “Not so good. I didn’t realize I was this unfit.”

“Hmm.” Hamilton murmured. “I don’t think fitness is the issue here, is it?”

“Well,” Jones replied. “I’m not enjoying being out here, that’s for sure.”

There was a forced levity in Jones’ tone that Hamilton had heard before, in similar circumstances.

“You seemed okay in the ship, looking out into space.” Hamilton noted.

Jones nodded, the motion barely perceptible in the suit. “Yeah. It just feels different. More personal, now that I’m out here. I’m not sure what to make of it. But I’ll be glad when we’re inside somewhere, anywhere, again.”

“You managing to hold it together? Not going to do anything stupid?” Hamilton asked.

Jones let out a chuckle. “You mean like take my helmet off for a breath of fresh air? I may be stressed, but I’m not irrational! However, I would appreciate this space-walk to end soon, if you can possibly manage that.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Hamilton promised. “You and the others stay here, whilst LeGault and I look for a way in. Think you can handle that?”

Jones nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. Go do what you gotta.”

Hamilton got up and switched to Klane’s channel, apprising her of Jones’ situation.

“I’ll keep an eye on him.” She promised.

“No stories about explosive decompression, okay?” Hamilton warned her.

She was uncharacteristically serious in her reply. “I’ve only seen that once and, trust me, it’s not something I want to talk about.”

Hamilton had no reply to that, so he simply switched back to the general channel and told everyone what was happening, leaving out Jones’ condition, of course.

It took Hamilton and LeGault about twenty minutes to locate a suitable entry point. It was another loading lock, this one much more modest in scale than the ones the carrier was connected to but still five meters across. It was about two hundred meters ‘above’ the carrier, though obviously, up and down were relative in space and mostly meaningless.