“Heat? What are you talking about?” Rames demanded.
Veltin didn’t turn round this time. “Sorry, too busy to talk much anymore!”
“He’s intending to slingshot us around the planet, skimming the atmosphere to keep the Assault craft at bay.” Puckett explained.
“Is that even possible without proper preparations?” Rames asked Puckett.
Puckett shrugged. “He seems to think so.”
Rames looked surprisingly helpless in his role as captain. He looked pleadingly at Klane and Jones. “Is he always like this?”
“Actually,” Klane frowned. “I think he’s a little more manic than usual.”
“Probably the pilot equivalent of a sugar rush.” Jones added for good measure. “It must be all the flashing lights and hi-tech goodness that’s done it.”
“I don’t like it!” Rames scowled.
Klane shrugged fatalistically. “What’s to like? We either die at his hands or theirs. At least he’s trying to save us.”
Hamilton. Rames thought, sitting back helplessly in his chair. If I ever see you again…
*****
The object of Rames’ thoughts was approaching the berthing ring docking arm that led out to the Morebaeus. Behind him, the two women labored heavily. Moving in a suit, especially using fibergrip to keep your footing, was a tiring process. He was weary and the two women were about done in. Lewis in particular was moving very slowly. Much longer and they’d be carrying her.
The docking arm which held the Morebaeus was at least ninety meters long. The ship itself was docked at right angles to the arm at the very end. It looked huge in comparison to the arm itself, though most of that size was down to the cargo modules. The small tractor unit looked tiny by comparison. However, the three massive engine nacelles that sprouted from it were big, powerful drives. Even by modern standards they were potent units. The Morebaeus might be old, but it had been designed to haul large amounts of cargo out to colonies. A lot of that transport time was spent going to and from jump points within a system. The quicker that was accomplished, the faster the turnaround time for loads.
Hamilton waited for his companions to catch up to him. His air supply was getting low, so he assumed Johnson was in a similar position. The rebreather technology the suits used could only scrub the air so much and the oxygen renewal bottle was tiny. There was enough to get them to the ship, but not much else. Lewis, on the other hand, had a much better suit. Her supply would be fine.
“You guys need a break?” He said, as they reached him.
It was an honest offer, but Lewis glared at him. “I can make it!” She hissed.
“I could do with a minute or two if we can spare it.” Johnson replied.
Hamilton nodded. “”It’s not much farther to go. We can afford a minute or two.”
They stood about for a few moments before Johnson asked. “How are we going to fly the ship? Do you two know all that stuff?”
Hamilton nodded. “Both Lewis and I were in the Survey Corps. You get basic piloting and navigation training. We’ll do alright.”
“I’m probably…not going to be… much use to you.” Lewis gasped.
Hamilton bit back the reply that came immediately to mind and said. “You’ll be fine once you’ve actual got out of that suit and sat down for a few minutes. In any case, a jump point and hyper jump have already been calculated. All we, or I, have to do is fly the ship to the coordinates and the rest is automatic.”
It wasn’t quite as simple as he made out, but no sense in alarming the two women with unnecessary details. He’d attend to that once he got aboard. For a start, the power core was currently off-line, as if it was still damaged. That “damage” was easily rectified by simply reseating certain processor boards in the engineering section. The actual damaged components had been replaced and the faults replicated by simply pulling out certain control modules. To a casual inspection, which is all they hoped the ship would be subjected to, the damage would seem real enough.
Similarly, the hyper jump that had been pre-calculated was locked away in an encrypted file on a storage flake. He’d have to retrieve the flake, insert it into the navicomp and decrypt the file using a password he’d memorized. Only then would the ship be good to jump. They were precautionary measures taken to ensure any snooping would not show up the Morebaeus’ intended destination.
“What kind of a name is Morebaeus anyway?” Johnson asked.
Hamilton and Lewis looked at her but Lewis was too exhausted to answer.
“Ships have a couple of basic naming conventions.” Hamilton explained. “Military vessels tend to use mythological names. Gods, creatures, heroes of legend, that sort of thing. Civilian craft tend to be named after places or people. Morebaeus was the name of the man who invented the hyper jump drive. I don’t remember his first name.”
“Antoine.” Lewis whispered. “He was French, I think.”
“A smart man, then.” Johnson said.
Lewis snorted.
Hamilton shook his head. “Smart, but not wise. All the tests he performed over the years while perfecting the drive slowly destroyed his genetic structure. Remember the trouble we had with the Morebaeus drive? That’s why we had to go in the cryo tubes. Hyperspace isn’t very forgiving of human tissue – at least, not during the crossover from one realm to the other. Morebaeus himself was literally falling apart by the end of his project. Urban myth has it he died when the final test was completed successfully. He was hailed as a hero.”
“He was an idiot!” Lewis muttered.
“Maybe,” Hamilton allowed. “But without him we wouldn’t be about to make a daring escape.”
“Without him we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place!” Lewis grumbled.
Hamilton exchanged glances with Johnson. There was no point continuing the argument. Lewis would argue the point until the end of time. It was just her nature. Fortunately, Hamilton had a perfect way of shutting her up.
“Right then! Rest break is over. Let’s get this done!”
Lewis groaned, but followed the other two as they began walking out towards the Morebaeus.
*****
On the Ulysses viewscreen, all that could be seen was a maelstrom of gas streaming past. The hull was making sounds that no ship should ever make and on the bridge, Rames’ eyes were practically bulging from their sockets.
“Not too deep now baby!” Veltin cried happily. “We want to skim, not swim!”
And then the screen was clearing, and the howling of the upper atmosphere on the hull was fading to silence.
Rames looked surprised to be alive. He turned to Klane. “What’s our status?”
She scowled at the console. “It’ll take a few moments for the systems to come back online, if they ever do. They’re overheated and got an awful dose of…well…everything bad. Frankly, I’d be surprised if the sensors aren’t all ruined and melted stumps.”
“Oh good grief!” Veltin exclaimed. “I flew us past the planet dorsal side in! The sensors are all on the ventral surfaces. I couldn’t do any better than that. They’ll be fine.”
Rames snorted. “You call that ‘flying past’?”
Veltin deigned no response to that.
“Wait.” Klane said. “I’m getting something. Yeah. The systems are coming back up. There are a few holes in the coverage, but most of the arrays seem intact. Nice flying!”
Veltin grinned.
“So what’s the situation?” Rames asked. All eyes and ears turned to Klane.
“We’re past the planet, obviously. The Assault craft are all taking a wider trip around. We’ve stolen quite a lead on them. The Shiva is taking a wider angle again to get around. She’s got us in line of sight, but she’s way too far off to shoot at us.”
“What about the Triton, the destroyer?” Grimes asked. “I’m getting a lot of chatter between the cruiser and the Triton. It’s all encrypted, but they’re up to something.”
Klane adjusted her controls. �
��Hmmm. No sign of it. Must be still back the other side of the planet. I haven’t got a direct fix on it. Needless to say, Tantalus Station is rejecting the sensor panel’s calls for data feeds. But that’s my best guess.”
The Ulysses sped on out into space, away from the planet towards the jump point that had been preselected and calculated for.
Abruptly, Klane’s console bleated insistently. She glared at it angrily.
“What!” Rames was practically shouting.
“The Triton, she just Skipped to a point ahead of us!” Klane growled.
“Great!” Rames muttered. “Can we do a fly past without getting cooked?”
Klane shook her head. “Not a chance!”
Veltin was already changing course, away from the destroyer, which was already accelerating in towards them.
“It must have done a double-skip.” He stated with a certain amount of admiration in his voice. “Skipped from its position on the other side of the planet to a point far out, perhaps over the planet’s pole, then bounced back into its current position. Not too shoddy! The cruiser was feeding it sensor data on our trajectory. They are quite far ahead of us, though, so it could have been worse.”
“It is worse.” LeGault announced. “The destroyer just launched torpedoes. Guess what sort they are?”
“EMP’s?” Rames sighed.
LeGault nodded.
“They’re coming in at Forty gees!” Klane noted. “We can’t outrun them!”
Veltin frowned. “No wonder they Skipped that far ahead! Why does it always have to be faster or bigger with you people! What’s wrong with you all!”
There was a lurch and the star-field in the view screen whirled to show the planet again.
The dampening fields groaned as Veltin re-applied the engine thrust. Instead of speeding away from the planet, the Ulysses was now slowing its velocity away from the world.
“So,” Veltin said conversationally. “What’s the proximity trigger and blast radii of those torps? I’ll need that.”
Klane glanced at her console. “Standard settings are to set the trigger at five klicks and the blast is ten to twenty.”
Veltin smiled cheerily. “Good, good! A ten klick trigger would have been bad. But five….yeah, I can work with that!”
“Work what?” Rames asked.
“How about a miracle?” Veltin offered, his hands flying over the helm controls.
Puckett, glancing across, saw what he was up to. “You can’t be serious? You’ll get us all killed!”
Veltin stopped what he was doing and turned to his companion. “You know, for an apprentice, you’re not very trusting of your teacher!”
The pair began arguing loudly. Rames waded in with his own comments to the pair.
At the Tactical console, Klane and Jones exchanged glances.
“You know,” Jones pointed out. “This thing probably has escape pods. I bet we could get to them and be away before anyone noticed we were missing.”
“Nah, we’d miss all the fun.” She replied. “Besides, I have a curiosity to see which happens first - Veltin collapsing from exhaustion or the captain bursting a blood vessel.”
“My money’s on us all being blown to hell long before either of those.” Jones stated morosely.
“We must be sure and thank Hamilton for this wonderful adventure he dragged us both into.” Klane muttered darkly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hamilton, Johnson and Lewis reached the Morebaeus after an easy trek along the roof of the docking arm. Easy, of course, being relative when you were relying on fibergrip to keep you attached to the station. At the end of the arm, the docking umbilical provided the actual connection between station and ship.
Unfortunately for them, the umbilical tunnel had no fibergrip on its outside surface. They were forced to climb down the ladder that ran down past the end of the docking arm door and pull themselves along on the attached fabric loops that ran along the sides of the umbilical. There was nothing particularly drama-filled about the procedure, but in their tired state, the task was more serious and dramatic than it should have been.
Likewise, on reaching the Morebaeus, the old freighter had no fibergrip either. Since their target, the port-side airlock, was on the other side of the ship from them, they again had to pull themselves hand over hand along the hull of the freighter in order to get there.
We should have thought of this eventuality when we were planning. Hamilton thought. He and Rames had tried to envisage any eventuality, but space-walking to the Morebaeus had not been one of the scenarios they had thought about. The Morebaeus had been the fall-back option if they hadn’t been able to get to the Ulysses. Again, their planning had envisaged all of them heading to the Morebaeus, not just a few.
On the far side of the ship, the port-side lock opened easily. Traditional thinking had ships dock using the starboard lock in preference to the port-side lock, but all ships apart from the very smallest were equipped with two locks. The port-side lock, often going unused for months at a time, was oft thought of as the emergency lock. However, lack of regular use and maintenance sometimes meant that the lock itself became part of the emergency in a crisis, failing to open or cycle properly. The Ulysses tech boys had given it a thorough going over, just in case it was needed. After sitting unused for fifty years in deep space, it had most definitely benefitted from the attention.
Hamilton and his companions entered the lock and waited for it to cycle. As part of their maintenance, the tech boys had disabled the access alarms for both locks. As well as giving an alert as to when the locks were used, they were a security feature. Starships, even old ones like the Morebaeus, were very expensive vessels. Hamilton and his two cohorts weren’t the first people to try and steal a ship via a spacewalk. There would be no alerts being transmitted to the Port authorities. No sign that the ship was being tampered with at all.
Until we bring the power core online. Hamilton thought. Then they’ll know quick enough.
The lock was small, barely big enough for the three of them, so it cycled quickly. As the inner hatch opened they removed their helmets with a great sense of relief.
All three of them were soaked in sweat from their exertions. Lewis looked on the verge of collapse and leaned heavily against a bulkhead.
“You okay?” Hamilton frowned at her.
“What…do you…think?” She replied. In her current state, she couldn’t even muster the strength to inject any sarcasm into her tone.
They all leaned back, getting their breath back and enjoying the feeling of not being encased in a helmet.
“How come there’s gravity if the ship is shut down?” Johnson frowned, suddenly realizing that she wasn’t floating about.
“Power link to the station through the umbilical.” Hamilton explained. “Basic life-support is always maintained to any docked vessel. It’s SOP.”
They quickly helped each other out of the suits they had been wearing and stood shivering in the corridor. Their sweat had stained their clothes and the faint breeze from the air circulation was enough to make them shiver.
“Let’s get on with this!” Hamilton stated.
The three of them made their way to the tiny bridge. It was more of a cockpit than a bridge, with just two seats, for the pilot and navigator and not a lot of space other than that. Lewis flopped down in the navigator chair and began bringing the consoles online.
“Won’t the station detect this activity?” Johnson inquired.
“Nah. It’s all powered by the ship’s internal power cells. This is small fry.” Lewis said, for once not rendering an insult.
“I’ll go get the flake with the nav file on it.” Hamilton said and disappeared, leaving Johnson alone with Lewis.
“Is there anything I can do?” Johnson offered, somewhat nervously, expecting Lewis to bite her head off.
“Not really.” The planetologist sighed, still intent on powering everything up. “Unless…if there’s anything to eat in the mess…I’m st
arving. Those bastards wouldn’t give me anything to eat for days other than some liquid crap they pumped into me.”
“I’ll see what I can find.” Johnson offered. She turned and exited the cramped bridge.
Hamilton paused on his way back to the bridge to frown at her in the mess.
“Finding some food.” She said by way of explanation.
“Good idea. All this excitement’s made me hungry!” He smiled.
“There’s not much here.” She stated. “Most of the halfway decent food is down in the cargo modules. All that was brought up here is snack foods and survival bars, that sort of thing.”
Hamilton shrugged. “I’ve eaten far worse. Anything to stave off hunger.”
She nodded at the tiny piece of plastic he held. “Is that the data flake?”
He brandished it. “Absolutely! Hopefully we’ll be well out of here before they know what happened.”
So saying, he went forward to the cockpit.
Lewis had got the ship’s control and monitoring systems up and running. Hamilton plugged the flake into the nav console and typed in the decryption code. Obediently the nav comp began evaluating the preprogrammed course, rendering its opinion with a succession of lines of information on the screen followed by green ticks.
“Right.” Hamilton said. “I’m going to engineering to re-seat the control modules and get the core online. Is everything ready here?”
Lewis nodded wearily. “Just don’t take all day. I’m falling asleep as it is.”
He grinned. “When I bring the core up, Tantalus control will notice. You’ll have a few seconds at best to disconnect the umbilical before they try to override everything remotely. Stay alert!”
“Don’t worry. I’m good for that much. You’ll probably have to fly, though.” She sighed.
He nodded and left heading aft, past Johnson who had assembled some less than appetizing snack bars and junk food on a plate. He grabbed a food bar as he went by.
“Hey!” She smiled after him. “No snacking between meals!”
He laughed tiredly.
A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) Page 11