A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (24 page)

Hamilton had worried about his own family. The last time he’d spoken to any of them had been years before. They weren’t exactly approving of his lifestyle. He had even been disowned. Back before embarking on the expedition with Vogerian, an earthquake had struck the region of Poldori where they had lived. He had tried to make contact then, but the earthquake had destroyed local comms nets. He had meant to chase things up when he returned, but Walsh, and five years in a cryo capsule had put paid to that. Now he dared not try to get in touch. They were undoubtedly being watched by both the aliens and Imperial agents.

The best he had managed was to look them up in the
Ulysses
database. They had all apparently survived the earthquake five years previously and had gone on with their lives. There was no mention of the state of their business interests, or their properties. Knowing his father, however, things would be just fine. Malcolm Hamilton might have lacked a lot of things in his personality, but business sense was not one of them. He would have had some sort of contingency plan for disaster, an emergency fund, or some other clever way of ensuring that, no matter what happened, the money would keep rolling in.

Hamilton idly wondered if he’d ever get to see any of them ever again. He and his family hadn’t seen eye-to-eye on a lot of things. He was the proverbial black sheep of the family, even before he’d been branded a terrorist. Now…he could almost hear his father ranting at the news, cursing him as he paced back and forth in front of the huge old fireplace, imported from Earth for authenticity. It almost made him smile. Almost

Who would I be now?
He wondered.
If I had simply followed in the family footsteps and become a businessman?

Not the same person he had become, that was for sure. There had been no room for getting your hands dirty in the Hamilton family. That was what servants were for. Servants and common people. The memories rankled him, even now. His family had servants! Good grief! It seemed like a lifetime ago to him now. They all seemed so superficial now.

I probably wouldn’t get along with any of them
. He realized.
Too much has changed
.

It was really only then that he understood the truth in the old saying.

Sometimes you can’t go back.

*****

LeGault Skipped the maintenance craft out towards the drone where the
Ulysses
lurked as soon as he was clear of the gravitational effects of Aurica Three. After that, there was nothing left to do but wait for the best part of a day whilst the craft coasted through hyperspace to its inevitable exit.

In their wake, the crazy flight paths of the shuttles and pods behind them continued unabated. Of particular concern to the authorities were the assault shuttles.

Equipped with functioning Skip Drives, the interceptor craft were almost impossible to track. A Skip made a lot of noise when initiated, but exiting the jump was virtually undetectable. It was all the Navy could do to keep track of where the craft had been, let alone where they were.

Additionally, every so often, one of the assault shuttles vanished, never to reappear. Now and again one Skipped into the atmosphere of one of the planets and was destroyed in a spectacular light show. Slowly, their numbers dwindled. Eventually, only eight of the twenty or so that had started on their proving flights remained, hopping about all over the system. Six had vanished and the other six had hit planets or asteroids.

The ‘malfunction’ was turning out to be a costly affair for the military.

*****

The Assault shuttles had somewhat better Skip Drives than the maintenance craft had been equipped with. Whereas it took the vessel Hamilton and the others were on a whole day to Skip from the heart of the Aurica Naval Base out to the extreme edge of the system, it took the shuttles less than six hours.

As each of the six shuttles arrived, between two and three hours apart, they shut down their drives and waited.

The sensor drone ignored them completely. Before they had left, Marten and Williams had reprogrammed the drone to ignore all ship traffic and unusual activity and simply transmit an ‘all clear’ signal at regular intervals back to the Naval base. With six shuttles and the
Ulysses
on station, that was a lot of vessels for it to ignore.

Whilst they waited for Hamilton and the others to arrive, the
Ulysses
uploaded a new Skip course to the waiting shuttles. It was the same course that the
Ulysses
itself had waiting in its navigation computer, ready to activate as soon as the maintenance craft returned.

When Hamilton and the others arrived all was in readiness.

All six shuttles, the
Ulysses
and the maintenance craft all Skipped out into the depths of space beyond the edge of the system at almost exactly the same moment.

The neutrino and tachyon burst that the eight craft generated was huge, almost the equivalent of that generated by a capital ship. The Naval forces could not fail to notice, nor could they afford not to investigate.

However, all that the light cruiser
Loki
discovered on arrival, eight hours later, was a sensor drone that appeared to have self-destructed.

*****

Far out in deep space, the
Morebaeus
concluded loading the Assault shuttles into its three big loading locks, two vessels to each module’s lock. The craft were flown in remotely by Veltin and LeGault without incident. The maintenance craft managed to squeeze in alongside two of them in one of the modules.

Where there had been nine vessels, now there were just two. The
Ulysses
once again came alongside the
Morebaeus
and the umbilical was extended so that the crews could mingle.

“I have to admit,” Rames told Hamilton. “I didn’t think you’d pull it off. My money was on you all being captured.”

They were in the main module that Hamilton’s people were using for accommodation.

Hamilton shrugged. “The military relies on procedures and protocols. It’s not designed to defend against an enemy on the inside. That’s why Walsh and his kind are doing just fine. It’s not in the mindset to admit that anything could get that close.”

 “What’s that for?” Rames asked, pointing at where a big display panel was being attached to the bulkhead by Carl and Klane.

“Operations planning. I intend to run through the missions later. Everyone has to know what they’re doing and when, or we’ll end up screwing everything up.”

Rames frowned. “Still going with your idea of two separate missions at the same time?”

Hamilton nodded. “Our shopping expedition was bad enough. For all we know, one or more of Walsh’s alien buddies was in Aurica. In fact, it’s almost certain. They may not know what happened yet, but they will eventually. They’ll figure out what we want to do with the shuttles and munitions we stole, or at least, be able to hazard a good guess. The sooner we get on with this, the better.”

“Do I even want to know who gets to fly into the lion’s den?”

Hamilton smiled. “Would that be the alien lion’s den, or the Imperial lion’s den?”

Rames sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t make much difference, at that.”

“Not really.” Hamilton agreed. “Both missions are going to be hard enough.”

Rames frowned. “Why both at the same time? I mean, I get that we don’t want to tip our hand to Walsh. But there are few enough of us as it is. We stand a better chance of success if we stick together, surely?”

Hamilton drew a deep breath. “It’s true either mission would stand a better chance of success if we did them one at a time. But the increase in success rate is offset by the risks of failure. If one or other of the missions fail and we are all involved, then everything goes down the toilet. If one mission fails and only half the people are involved, some of us live to fight another day. Doing both missions simultaneously means we get to do both missions. If we do them consecutively, the second mission is a bust if anyone gets caught during the first one.”

Rames digested this. “I guess. Though I doubt anyone would crack that easily under interrogation.”

“It’s not Imperial questioning methods I worry about. It’s if one of us falls into Walsh’s clutches that things go to pieces.” Hamilton said.

Rames nodded. “I suppose you’re right. Well, like you say, if one mission fails at least the others live to fight another day.”

“I’ll be ready to give the briefing in an hour or two.”

*****

An hour or two turned into three before Hamilton felt ready to step in front of the assembled crews and begin his operational briefing. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he was going to say, more that he wanted to go over the briefing mentally and try and guess at the questions that would come his way.

Last minute preparation.
He told himself.
Don’t want to get caught out and look like a fool.

The crowd of people had arranged themselves around the display panel that had been set up on the wall. A few had helped themselves to drinks, but no one was drunk. They all watched him expectantly, and rather curiously, as he shuffled the papers in his hand – printouts from the database for the most part. Almost nobody used actual paper anymore, but fifty years ago, when the
Morebaeus
had flown on its ill-fated colonial supply mission, it was still more common than the ubiquitous data panes that were everywhere today. Hamilton’s rich kid upbringing had exposed him to all sorts of things that most folk would regard as decadence. Some of them, like his appetite for meat had stuck.

The paper, along with the printer to make use of it, he had found amidst the
Morebaeus
’ supplies intended for Alpha Centauri. Williams had rigged up a quick interface lead and the result were the sheaves of paper he now held in his hand.

Paper just feels nicer
. He thought, leafing through the prints.

But of course, the printouts wouldn’t be much use for outlining the missions. That was what the panel on the wall behind him was for. He drew a deep breath and stood at parade rest, looking out over the sea of faces.

“Everybody here? Anyone missing?” He asked generally. People looked around themselves, looking for missing faces.

“Everyone’s here.” Rames replied.

“Alright then.”

Hamilton pressed the remote control he held in his hand. From the glow he knew that the first of many images had appeared on the screen behind him.

“This is our enemy, people. He seems to like the name Walsh, which was the name of the person whose body he possessed when I knew him. The body you can see now belongs to one Joel Amyson.

“Joel was a senior engineering technician on a project apparently funded by wealthy billionaire, Paul Vogerian.” Hamilton clicked the remote to show the old man’s face. “Paul was himself under the direct control of our friend Walsh. If Vogerian ever wondered at why he had a sudden interest in tachyon beam transmission, he never let on. Perhaps he thought he was getting senile and pretended to know what was going on. More likely is that, whilst under the direct control of Walsh, he had no knowledge of what he did.

“Either way, he funded the construction of something called the Tachyon Listening Post Project. Ostensibly an array designed to detect tachyon bursts and transmissions from deep space. In effect, watching the skies for signs of alien activity. In reality, the array was part of Walsh’s plan to send his fellow aliens back into human space. The array featured a large data storage network that would have been more than large enough to house thousands of aliens.