A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (18 page)

“You mean to kidnap Walsh himself?” Rames was incredulous.

Hamilton shook his head. “Not really. But if we find him, I bet we find where some of the others are. We can cross-reference it with the name Paul Vogerian, since it seems highly likely the old man unwittingly funded the entirety of Walsh’s first expedition. That should give us plenty of leads to pursue.”

There was silence as they digested this news. It wasn’t much, but they had a belief that there was something they could do, some direction they could work towards to make a difference. The mood in the cargo module brightened.

Jones, of course, had to go and darken it. “But, if Walsh is as smart as he thinks he is, won’t he anticipate us doing this?”

Hamilton smiled . “I’m almost certain he will. Look at it this way, we’ve escaped his little trap for us. Instead of being packed off to prison for the rest of our lives, we’re on the loose. Right now I expect he’s wondering why he didn’t just nuke the entire station whilst we were on it. He’s thinking that, whilst we are at large, we might cause him trouble. He’ll be thinking of ways to trap us again, or just kill us outright. He’s almost certainly realized we’ll run his face through the database and see who he’s inhabiting. Now, if I were him, and didn’t want any trouble from us, I’d just erase that face from the database along with all its records. We’ve seen that he has the ability to tamper with Imperial files, so that should have been easy for him. In fact, I’d have done it before I talked to us.

“However, if we run the search and he’s still on the database, then that means he’s put himself on the grid to deliberately lead us on.”

“So it’ll be a trap, then?” Klane stated.

Hamilton nodded. “I would guess the face would lead us to a small system, well out of the way, mostly uninhabited. Maybe a research station or scientific outpost. Somewhere that looks plausible for a secret lair! He’ll expect us to turn up and try to abduct or kill him. He’ll be waiting. Not him personally, of course. But some of his people. My gut feeling is he’ll use Imperial assets, led by his kind, or perhaps a few controlled humans. We’ll show up, and be set upon when we least expect it and blown to pieces.”

“So you’re thinking to turn the tables somehow?” Rames frowned.

Hamilton nodded. “We make it look like we’ve blundered into his trap, but in reality, we lure them into a trap of our making.”

“How do we manage that?” Rames asked. “We don’t exactly have a lot to work with ourselves, you know.”

“I know. But bear with me. Once we’ve found out where he’s supposed to be, we’ll be able to formulate a plan. For now, I see it as our main line of opportunity.”

Rames snorted. “Our only opportunity, I think.”

Hamilton shook his head. “Not necessarily.”

“How do you mean? There’s something else?”

“It’s tenuous, at best. But we might as well look into it.” Hamilton stated. He had their attentions again.

“We know that Walsh is worried by what happened during his kind’s war with the Humals. He fears the Humals did something that ended the war and defeated his kind. For all we know that’s exactly what happened. Either way, the Humals were a lot more advanced, technically, than we are. We’ve found barely a handful of their sites and artifacts. Yet that tech has advanced us immeasurably. It’s given us artificial gravity, hyperdrive and all manner of other improvements.

“I don’t know if the Humals had some secret weapon that they employed against the aliens, or not. But they fought them. We do know that. If Walsh is to be believed they fought for a long time. Even if they failed, they may have gained valuable information on the aliens that we could make use of. I think it’s worth looking into.”

Klane scowled. “None of us are xenoarchaeologists, Hamilton. Where do you suggest we start looking for that sort of intel?”

“You’re right. None of us are experts. So we need to find someone who is. Someone who understands everything there is to know about the Humals, which, admittedly probably won’t be much. But there are artifacts that have been found which remain undeciphered. Maybe one of those could help us.”

“Hmm.” Rames frowned. “You’re right. It is tenuous.”

“I don’t think any scientist we wandered up to would be very willing to help a bunch of terrorists.” Grimes added.

“I know.” Hamilton said.

“Do you even have someone in mind for this? An expert on the Humals, I mean.” Rames asked.

“Not by name, no. But I know a place where such people work. I’m guessing some research will turn up suitable names.” Hamilton said.

“Kidnap?” Rames scowled. “I don’t like the idea of that.”

Hamilton shrugged. “Desperate times, desperate measures.”

There was a brief silence as everyone digested that.

“So where do you think we can find this egg-head of yours?” Klane inquired.

“That’s the awkward part. When I was small, my parents, who were quite well-off financially, took me on a pilgrimage to Earth. I remember it as a grimy, smelly, overpopulated place that I wasn’t very happy visiting. But, I was young, and my folks thought it would be inspiring for me to see it. About all it did was inspire me to never go back there!

“Anyway, towards the end of our trip we made an excursion to Mars, to the first non-Terra colony ever set-up by man, Olympus. I’d like to say it was a lot better than Earth, but truth is, we’ve managed to ruin Mars almost as badly as we ruined Earth.

“Part of our visit there was a trip to the Martian Scientific Institute, a massive building in the middle of the city, set inside the original colony dome. As a kid I remember it being full of wonders and far more inspirational than either Earth or Mars themselves.

“Part of the tour we were on showed us how the Institute was the leading research center for Humal culture and technology. In particular, I remember one comment that the Institute was primarily interested in discovering what happened to the Humals to make them extinct.”

He fell silent, letting it all sink in.

Klane blew out her cheeks. “So you want us to just fly in to the most secure system in the Empire, head to the second most populated planet in the Empire, get past all the security and defenses and then waltz back out again with a scientist or three tucked under our arms?”

“I didn’t say it would be easy.” Hamilton observed.

Klane burst out laughing.

“Man, that’s crazy even for you.” Jones added.

“Do I have to remind you again how low on resources we are?” Rames seemed to have set his face in a permanent scowl. “We have two ships, one of them a freighter, the other a lightly armed customs vessel. We have less than thirty people, all told and only a half dozen of them are Marines! Do you really expect we can do any of this given such limits?”

Silence fell again at the captain’s words.

Time for the stirring speech
. Hamilton thought to himself.

“Look. I know it seems that what I’ve suggested is far-fetched and unrealistic. As the captain pointed out, we have very little to work with and what seems like a mountain to climb. I’ve outlined two goals that we can work towards – capturing an alien, and obtaining specialist knowledge. Right now, at this very moment, they seem impossible goals, I know. But just as every journey begins with a single step, no matter how long, so every mission begins with planning. We have little now, but we can acquire more. We can secure the assets we need to carry out these missions successfully. Think of what we’ve accomplished already, with what we had. We’ve escaped a lifetime of false imprisonment, broken out of a secure holding area, stolen two starships and escaped from the best the military could throw at us. We did all that with nothing more than we have right now.

“I won’t lie to you and say that things will be easy from here on in. Because they won’t be. Chances are that, even if we succeed in the two tasks I’ve outlined, not all of us will live to celebrate the fact. We might all die. That is the reality of our situation.

“I know many of you have families and friends out there right now who, thanks to these aliens, are being informed that you are all traitors. I have family myself. They’re being told that if they see you, or hear from you, they should inform the authorities at once. I’m sure that many of them won’t believe these lies about you. But a few may. In the proverbial blink of an eye, we’ve all become outcasts. Pariahs. Criminals. Scum.

“The aliens have done this, not because they are vindictive, but because they fear us being on the loose. Seven, or eight thousand of them, against thirty of us. Yet still they sought to get rid of us. Why? Because, on some level, they fear that we are a threat. They fear that we will find a way to deal with them, to dispose of them. To kill them.

“The only alternatives we have to fighting are to run away and hide, or turn ourselves in. Either way, we hand victory to Walsh and his aliens. Victory, and perhaps the annihilation of our entire species.

“It may be that they keep a few alive, to provide them with physical hosts and servants. But they will be little more than puppets, dancing to an alien tune. No freedom. Perhaps, if they are lucky, not even any awareness. Empty shells of the people they once were.

“Your loved ones face a threat that they don’t even know is there. The first they might know about it is when the nukes start falling. When the aliens tire of keeping humanity alive and decide to glass all our worlds.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not prepared to let that happen without a fight. But the choice, in the end, is up to you.”

Hamilton stepped down off his box and walked quietly away down towards the end of the cargo module. Behind him he heard people muttering amongst themselves, the volume increasing as he got further away, out of presumed earshot.

For a while he wandered amongst the containers, glancing at labels and generally just wasting time. Everyone needed time to think about what he’d said, to digest it, to talk with one another. He felt a little guilty at dropping in comments about relatives and family. It was a cheap shot, designed to elicit an emotional response. Now all he had to do was wait.

He found a small crate and sat down on it amusing himself by playing with a length of strapping that had come off some crate or other. He was still fiddling with it when Johnson found him.

“There you are.” She said.

He smiled at her. “Are you following me?” He meant it as a light-hearted comment about stalking, but she misinterpreted the meaning.

“I am, of course. But I’m not so sure about the others.” She frowned. “Oh wait! I see…” Her face colored.

He dismissed it casually. “My bad. I sometimes don’t take things as seriously as I should. It’s a character flaw.”

She came and sat next to him. “Well, everyone else is taking it seriously.”

“What’s the general feeling?”

She sighed. “Mixed. Some of them are ready to follow your lead on this without question. Some are in favor of turning themselves in, of trying to convince the authorities they’re innocent and that the threat is real. A few question whether this Walsh guy and the alien menace is actually real at all! There’s a lot of confusion. When I left, Carl was telling them about Vogerian going crazy on the bridge of the Hope’s Breath, shooting people. The part where he had to punch the old man several times to knock him out drew a few surprised looks. I expect Klane and the others will tell a few stories, too, maybe show Klane’s video of the conversation again, that sort of thing.”

Hamilton nodded. They’d all traded stories already, but the reiteration of them was no bad thing. A lot of people had died on the Hope’s Breath during Walsh’s expedition to find his alien friends. Having someone other than Hamilton himself talk about it all might help those still wavering to believe a bit more.

“Some of them,” She continued. “Even talked about getting their families and friends and taking off, like you suggested, and starting anew someplace else.”