A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (9 page)

Both men nodded.

Klane turned and bellowed at Jones. “Door open! Now!”

*****

Aboard the
Ulysses
, Miko Harvan sat uncomfortably in the Captain’s chair, watching the station grow ever larger on the viewscreen.

The plan, conceived by Rames and Hamilton, with Miko’s input, was to fly the ship up to the medical quarantine section and dock using the umbilical tunnel they typically used for boarding actions. Miko would take four of the Marines and would force an entrance if necessary and fight their way to the Captain. The other two would remain aboard
Ulysses
to protect the ship.

Once they had all rendezvoused, they would head back to the ship and be off. Where, Miko did not know. Everything beyond the point of escape depended on circumstances of which he had no knowledge.

He wasn’t exactly sure the captain was doing the right thing by throwing in his lot with that Hamilton character, but he had known Rames for quite a while. Long enough to trust his judgment anyway.

Time will tell.
He thought, fatalistically. Either he was helping to save humanity, or he was consigning himself to long-term imprisonment.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” He asked Private Torin, who clutched the controls for the ship with grim determination.

“Sure. I did a year in flight school, remember?” Torin replied. His voice betrayed the stress he was feeling.

“You told me it was six months!” Alvin muttered from where he sat at the sensor console. “Also, I have a feeling you should slow down a bit.”

“Who’s flying this thing! Me, or you?” Torin shot back.

“Just get us there in one piece.” Miko told him. “No rush. There haven’t been any formal alarms yet. Whatever the Captain and the others are doing, it hasn’t drawn any attention.”

“They may not have,” Corporal Malik stated from the comms console. “But we certainly have. Port Control is going apeshit about our rude departure and our current vectoring. I think Alvin may have a point, we need to slow down.”

“Alright! I’ll slow down! I just need to adjust our orientation to bring the thrusters to bear properly on our vector.” Alvin was sweating heavily. His hands darted over the controls, but there was a certain amount of hesitancy with each movement.

He’s struggling to remember what everything does
. Miko thought.
God help us!

*****

Hamilton and Johnson got to the reception area for Q-section just as the
Ulysses
port bow collided with the station two levels below them.

The sound of stressed and tortured metal echoed up through the station’s structure to them and there was the faintest of vibrations and physical movement beneath their feet. Tantalus Station outmassed by many thousands of times the seemingly insignificant gnat that was the
Ulysses
. It noticed the impact, but was relatively unimpressed by it. Shaken, but not stirred, as it were. Nonetheless, the station didn’t simply shrug off the impact harmlessly.

Two levels below the outer bulkhead bent in and split as the port bow of the customs vessel impacted and then slid upwards along the hull. Pressure differential sent air and small objects blasting out into space. As luck would have it, that section was given over to storage, so no people were among the pressure induced exodus.

The
Ulysses
scraped upwards, exacting a similar toll on the level above, mostly machinery and maintenance areas that were again devoid of life.

Then it reached the quarantine level.

*****

Klane and the others felt the initial impact. They had already seen the bulk of the
Ulysses
sliding up past the window for some seconds before the shock of the impact below came to them. The
Ulysses
might be tiny in comparison to the station, but it was massive compared to any of them.

“Got it!” Jones exclaimed as the door slid open.

“Everyone through!” Klane ordered, needlessly. No one had to be encouraged.

Klane turned to see Hamilton and Johnson at the other end of the corridor, both watching with horror as the customs vessel blotted out the starscape outside.

“Come on!” She yelled to them. “What the hell are you gawping at?”

The pair started along the corridor.

The
Ulysses
port bow reached their level. The flooring buckled up first, then one of the windows cracked from top to bottom under the pressure. A howling gale suddenly filled the corridor, blowing relentlessly towards the damaged window.

*****

Hamilton stopped and dragged Johnson back. There was no way they would get past the damaged section without being killed. The window had cracked, rather than shattered, because it was made of Steelglass, a material more akin to metal than glass.

The
Ulysses
continued its upward trajectory and the window crack became a huge rent. The Steelglass panel buckled and bent horribly. The howling gale became a hurricane of violence.

Hamilton and Johnson staggered back through the door into the reception area just as the door began to close automatically in response to the breach.

*****

At the other end of the corridor, everyone else stumbled through into the medical section as the door, so recently opened by Jones, also began to close automatically.

“Damn it!” Klane cursed.

“Hamilton?” Rames asked.

She shook her head. “Stuck back in Q-section. He’s on his own now.”

“Who the hell was flying that thing?” Veltin demanded.

“One of my Marines.” Rames admitted.

Veltin looked incredulous. “You gave a flight assignment to a jarhead! Are you crazy?”

“Ease up, Veltin!” Klane barked. “It was that, or we all go to prison!”

Veltin wandered away, muttering about idiots in command.

Puckett shook his head. “It could have been worse. We could have had him flying it!”

“What now?” LeGault asked.

Klane shrugged. “Carry on as planned. Assuming your flyboy can manage to dock that ship?”

Rames nodded. “He’ll dock it. I’m just wondering how many more dents he’ll put in it, first.”

“Let’s get on with it then.” Klane said, striding away.

*****

Aboard the
Ulysses
, Miko was chewing out Torin for his poor flying skills. For his part, Torin was on the defensive.

“Look! I had six months in flight school! I happen to think I’m doing an awesome job, considering!”

“Awesome? For all we know you’ve killed the people we’re trying to rescue!” Miko growled.

“I told you it was only six months.” Alvin pointed out.

“Enough chatter!” Miko was getting irritated. “Can you dock the ship?”

Torin nodded. “Yes. Now the velocity has been scrubbed off, I should be able to.”

Malik snorted from the comms console. “About that scrubbing off… Looks like Tantalus Control didn’t appreciate that. We’ve got about five minutes before the point defense craft are launched and get here. Also, it seems like a couple of the big ships are mobilizing for departure.”

“Which ones?” Miko asked.

“Seems like the
Triton
and the
Shiva
, as far as I can tell from the chatter.”

“Great.” Miko muttered. “That destroyer that ‘escorted’ us home and a cruiser. Get us docked Torin. Get us docked now!”

*****

Hamilton and Johnson picked themselves up from the floor and stared morosely at the sealed door in front of them.

“I guess were not leaving after all.” Johnson observed.

“Not that way, anyway.” Hamilton agreed, his mind racing. In a few minutes, at best, the area would be crawling with repair crews and medics. If the terrorist alert hadn’t yet propagated here they still had a slim chance.

“Can you act?” He asked the woman.

She frowned. “Can I what?”

“Act. Pretend. That sort of thing.”

“I guess. Depends on what you want me to act as.” She looked concerned.

Hamilton grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the reception area, back towards the lounge in Q-section. “Think you can pretend to have a collapsed lung?”

“What? I don’t know what that would be like!”

“Nor me.” Hamilton admitted. “Just wheeze a lot and gape like a fish! I think that should cover it.”

“Gape like a fish?” She gave him a hard stare as she ran alongside him.

They entered the lounge in time to see the access light above the main entrance begin to flash. Someone had activated the decontamination procedure in order to gain entrance to Q-section.

Hamilton gestured at the floor. “Lay down there and look hurt!”

Shaking her head she did as he asked, muttering. “This isn’t going to work!”

“Just do it!” Hamilton hissed.

Johnson lay back and began to pretend to be dying of asphyxiation. To Hamilton, who knelt down beside her and tried his best to look concerned, it wasn’t very convincing.

The access tunnel finished its decontamination cycle and the entry door hissed open. Men in pressure suits spilled out. Some were technicians, some guards and some medical personnel. The latter made a bee-line for the apparently injured couple.

“What happened?” The first medtech to reach them asked, his voice oddly modulated by his suit speaker.

Hamilton affected a panicked, fearful look. “My wife! The ship hit the station! I think she’s hurt real bad!” He grabbed at the man’s shoulders. “Please help her!”

The medic shrugged off Hamilton’s concerned hands. “Alright, let me look at her.”

“It’s alright honey!” Hamilton told Johnson. “The doctor will save you!”

“Hmmm.” The medic stated, begin a physical exam. Through his suit gloves, it was doubtful he’d be able to feel anything broken anyway. Hamilton had seen field medics in toxic, or low-pressure environments do exactly the same thing whilst wearing bulky suits. They weren’t feeling for injuries. They were looking for reactions.

When the medic’s gloves reached Johnson’s torso, Hamilton reached surreptitiously under Johnson’s right leg and pinched the back of her thigh viciously.

Johnson shot bolt upright with a shriek.

“Okay! Okay!” The medic stated, startled. Clearly he hadn’t expected that much of a reaction. Neither had Hamilton, to be honest. The medic pushed her back down and turned to two others stood nearby. “Get me a stretcher, now! Looks like some kind of abdominal injuries.”