A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence)

by Robert Taylor

  “Must be some sort of maintenance work.” Jones muttered.

  “At this time of night?” Johnson frowned.

  “Best time for it,” Jones told her. “Late at night, no one around. Take it down, upgrade it, put it back up again before the boss returns in the morning.”

  “I don’t like it!” Klane growled. “It’s too convenient. The soldiers, the alarms…What are the odds…?”

  Hamilton was asking himself the same question and not liking the answers he came up with. But the security outage was beneficial to them and he wasn’t going to waste it.

  “Enough chatter. Klane, take point. Down to the next level. Everyone remember your training. Move as a unit, don’t bunch up.”

  Klane moved off down the stairwell, adding. “Remember, you have stunners. So shoot first and ask questions later if there are any surprises waiting for us.”

  The top floor of the Institute was, as they already knew, given over to research. As they entered the corridor outside the stairwell, it was obvious someone was still there and working. The corridor lighting was subdued, as if the building had a night-cycle routine that ran in tandem with Mars’ own day-night cycle. So it was easy to see the light coming from under a door twenty feet further down the hallway.

  Hamilton and Klane quietly took up station outside the door, on either side whilst the rest hung back a little.

  “Gap’s too narrow for the optical probe.” Klane noted, with irritation.

  “Then we’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. On three…One, two, three!”

  Hamilton wrenched the doorknob and threw the door wide. Klane leapt through, gun at the ready, yelling at someone to get their hands up.

  Hamilton jumped right after her, his own gun leveled and ready.

  Inside, the room was what anyone would imagine a research lab to be. Machines lined the walls, each tailored to a specific task. Benches ran down the center of the room, lined with assorted chemical apparatus. There was plenty of light, plenty of scientific gear and a feel of “work in progress” about the place.

  Other than Klane and Hamilton there was but a single occupant of the lab. He was an old man, perhaps into his eighties. It was difficult to tell age reliably, Hamilton knew. There were so many ways available to make one look whatever age you wanted to, these days. But given humanity’s still present vanity about appearance, few went out of their way to look older than they actually were. So the man was probably at least as old as he appeared.

  His hair was thinning and almost white and his wrinkled face had more than its share of marks and spots consistent with advancing years. He was dressed casually. There was no lab-coat for this fellow. But he sat at the far end of the room, next to a molecular scanner, the bed of which contained a non-descript brown lump.

  At Klane’s intrusion, he had turned around and put his hands up. But the thing that struck Hamilton when he entered the room and saw the man was just how calm he seemed to be.

  “Keep those hands where I can see them!” Klane warned the old man.

  He nodded. “I assure you, I will do nothing foolish.” His voice was deeper than might have been expected and just as calm as his demeanor.

  “Who are you?” Hamilton asked him. Behind him, the others cautiously entered the room, fanning out in good order. Carl stayed by the door, watching the corridor.

  So, some of the training stuck, after all. Hamilton noted with pleasure. His little group was hardly a crack commando unit, but they were doing a pretty good impression of one.

  “I am Walner Tane.” The man smiled. “As I’m sure you are aware.”

  “What do you do here, Walner?” Klane asked.

  Tane frowned. “I am one of the senior researchers here. But why keep up this farce? Is it to be summary execution? Or am I to be apprehended for interrogation and a show trial?”

  Hamilton and Klane exchanged glances. There was something not right here.

  “Why would we execute you?” Johnson said, from off to one side.

  Tane glanced over at her, a frown creasing his own already wrinkled face. “Why would you not? An assault team bursts into my lab in the middle of the night….I have to assume my borrowed time has run out.”

  “Borrowed time?” Hamilton scowled inside his helmet. “Borrowed from what? Who are you? What is it you’ve done that makes you think we’re here to kill you?”

  Tane’s expression was one of confusion now. “I… If you haven’t come here for me… then what are you here for?”

  “We’re looking for a scientist, it’s true.” Hamilton told him. “But not anyone specific. Someone well versed in Humal knowledge. You just happened to be the first person we’ve come across.”

  Tane bore a look of relief. “I assumed…but no. I see now I was in error. When the security went off, I thought the worst. It’s never done that before. So I thought…”

  “You thought we were coming for you, because of something you’ve done.” Hamilton finished. “Something in the past. You were hiding here?”

  Tane’s expression had turned from resignation to one of calmness again. “I feel that, to say more would incriminate myself. So I must decline to answer further. You may not be here for me, but you are still Imperial Marines. No doubt you will make a report. It’s not in my interest to say anything else.”

  “Well, Walner.” Hamilton told him. “We’re not here for you and we could care less about what it is that’s making you hide from the Imperials. All we need is an expert on Humal history, culture and so on. If you can point us in the right direction, we’ll stun you unconscious and be on our way and you can go back to being in hiding.”

  Tane frowned. “Why would Marines need an expert on Humal history?”

  Hamilton sighed, then reached up to remove his helmet. “I’m not a Marine. None of us are. We’re….privateers…you might say.”

  Tane’s eye’s widened. “I know you! I’ve seen you on the news! You’re terrorists!”

  “Hardly!” Klane muttered.

  “Rumors of our atrocities have been greatly exaggerated.” Hamilton stated. “As someone in hiding from the Empire, you of all people should appreciate how that can work out.”

  “I don’t believe I said I was hiding. You said that.” Tane replied.

  “Well, hiding or not, you sure picked an odd place to lay low.” Klane observed.

  “I am where I need to be, logically.” Tane answered.

  Hamilton was tired of the cryptic nonsense already. “Look, Walner. Here’s the deal. Believe it or not, we are not terrorists. Nor are we here to kill you. We came looking for a scientist to help us with…shall we say, a matter of an alien nature. But, because the Empire has us marked as terrorists, we’ve had a hard time getting to this point. We’re tired, we’re on the run and we are most definitely irritable! So, like I said, if you can point us at the relevant person, we’ll be on our way.”

  “I’m afraid I’m the only person working tonight. The others don’t have quite the same level of devotion that I do. In the morning, maybe, or perhaps I could help with your alien problem. I am well-versed in Humal knowledge.”

  “No offense.” Hamilton said. “But you seem a little old and frail for our needs.”

  “Indeed!” Tane scowled. “Is that how it seems? By the way, is that some sort of gas I smell?” Tane made a sniffing motion and then his eyelids drooped and he slumped in his chair.

  Abruptly, Hamilton did smell the gas, or whatever it was. He began to order everyone out, fearing a sneak attack, but it was already too late. He dropped to his knees, hearing the others collapse around him.

  Wait. He thought. They have their helmets still on. How is it they are being gassed?

  There was something else, as well. Something in his head, like a rat scratching around in his brain. The events of the last few years of his life spooled past his mind’s eye in an instant. Then the rat was gone, but the lethargy of the gas remained.

  For a while, the feeling remained then, as suddenl
y as it had overwhelmed him, it was gone, leaving him as he had been before.

  No. He realized. I feel better than before. Less tired, refreshed, almost.

  He looked up to find Tane watching him from his seat by the bench still.

  “What did you do?” He growled. Around him, the others were still in a seeming drugged stupor.

  “Relax. I have done you and your friends no harm. You must forgive me for the mental intrusion, however. Given who I am, and who I thought you might be, it seemed simpler to do a mental reading than continue our conversation which was, frankly, getting tedious.” Tane explained.

  “My life…” Hamilton began.

  Tane nodded. “I know everything that you know. Well, not everything. It’s not perfect and it’s only the last few years. But I get the gist of it. So, aliens are among us after all. Those crazy loons were right all along.”

  “Not really.” Hamilton shook his head. “It’s only the last few years that they’ve been here. But you seem to know more about me than I do about you. That makes me a little nervous.” He hefted the stunner for emphasis.

  Tane smiled. “You don’t seriously think you’d ever pull the trigger on me, do you? But you are right. I do have you at a disadvantage.”

  “I go by the name Walner Tane now, but I have had many over the years. Decades, I suppose I should say. Being on the run does that to you. Every so often you have to disappear and reappear as someone else. I began my life as Marind Rell, a name that has mostly been expunged from common knowledge by the Empire.”

  Hamilton had more than the typical educational background due to his wealthy family’s resources, so he knew the name, all right.

  “The Mindstealer?” He scowled.

  Tane sighed. “Such a childish title, designed to promote fear and loathing. That was never what I was about.”

  “What you were about was civil war!” Hamilton pointed out.

  “I wanted change, that was all.”

  “How many people died in that war?” Hamilton asked.

  “Too many.” Tane nodded. “But all we wanted was to secede from the Empire, nothing more. I suppose I was naïve to hope it would happen bloodlessly. But I was also very young and idealistic in those days. If I had it to do over again, I would do things differently.”

  Hamilton scowled. “You mean, you’d mentally control more people!”

  Tane shook his head. “Do you know the saying about history, Mr. Hamilton? That it is written by the victors? I never mentally coerced any of my followers. That was all propaganda by the Imperials. The truth is, you can’t make people do things that are against their nature. I may be a psion, and a powerful one, but the abilities I have are nowhere near as god-like as the Empire would have you believe.”

  “I’m supposed to take your word at that?”

  “I suppose you’ll have to.” Tane answered. “I lack the ability to provide the reciprocal information exchange that I used on you. I can read minds quite well, but I am unable to do the reverse, I’m afraid.”

  “So what’s the Empire’s most wanted psion doing here? And weren’t you supposed to have died in the war?”

  “I remind you again about history and the victors. But I have been many places, used many names. This is just the latest, though in truth I have an ulterior motive to being here.”

  “I suppose you don’t care to share that motive?” Hamilton asked.

  “Perhaps.” Tane allowed. “I suspect my fate is bound up with yours, now. It would be churlish to not reveal the rest.”

  “Yes.” A new voice, female, from the doorway stated. “Do tell us all about it, Rell. Or do you prefer Tane, these days?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Both men were startled. The speaker was a woman in an ImpSec coverall. She held an unpleasant looking heavy-duty laze pistol on them. Behind her, stood two more ImpSec agents, weapons drawn.

  “Drop the stunner.” She ordered Hamilton. He glanced around at his companions, but they were still under the influence of whatever Tane had done to them all. Sighing, he dropped the weapon.

  “Good boy Hamilton.” The woman smirked. “Looks like I’ll get that promotion after all. The Empire’s most wanted man of all time and the Empire’s currently most wanted terrorist.” She glanced down at the others. “Plus associated cohorts. Yes, I can see my career skyrocketing!”

  “We’re not who you think we are..” Hamilton began, stalling.

  “Oh please!” She sneered. “Do you think I was …..”

  Her face abruptly went blank, as if she had fallen asleep in mid-sentence, though her eyes remained open. Hamilton did not wait. She was blocking the door, preventing her companions from entering or firing easily. He bent down to snatch up the stunner.

  The laze bolt blew the weapon to pieces, several of which ended up embedded in his hand. Angrily, he snatched his hand back and glared at the woman.

  Except, it was not the woman anymore. Rather, it was someone else entirely. She looked exactly the same, but her entire posture and bearing had changed in the blink of an eye. Hamilton hardly needed to see the self-satisfied, smug look on her face to know who it was. Whom he had know it would be all along.

  “Walsh!”

  The woman smiled and inclined her head. “I must really work on my tells if you can spot me that easily Hamilton!”

  “Walsh?” Tane frowned. “The alien leader?”

  “I’d say ‘In the flesh’,” the female Walsh said. “But that wouldn’t really be appropriate, I think.”

  So who’s this poor sap?” Hamilton indicated the woman Walsh was possessing.

  Walsh shrugged. “Who cares? Some fool who one of my associates decided would make a good drone.”

  “I wonder what her companions might think of that?” Hamilton said, looking at the other two agents.

  “Not much.” Walsh replied. “They’re drones too.”

  “How are you doing that? Are you actually in the woman’s mind?” Tane actually looked horrified at the thought.

  “No, of course not! For one thing, why risk myself like that? No. I’m safely very far away. I’m just using this creature’s body as a communications medium.”

  “But how?” Hamilton fished. He knew Walsh’s kind had communications far beyond anything humanity had, but he didn’t know how it was done.

  “How am I communicating across the gulf of space?” Walsh smiled. “Simple, really. Quantum entanglement. Much like your own StellarNet, but a lot more reliable and compact. Instantaneous, too.”

  “And to what do we owe the pleasure of this almost personal visit?” Hamilton frowned.

  Walsh smiled. “Actually, I’m not exclusively here for you, Hamilton. I know that might come as a shock to you, but there you are. I dealt with you and your people on Tantalus. So you managed to escape, big deal! It’s not like you’re much more than a nuisance. I knew you’d come here, I had that freighter of yours bugged just in case you managed to get away somehow, which you did. Bravo! I know all your schemes, Hamilton! But primarily I’m here for him.” The woman indicated Tane. “Catching you both here was just a matter of good timing in my part.”

  “What do you want with me?” Tane frowned.

  “Let’s review your file, Mr. Tane. Is it Tane? Or do you prefer Rell? I think I’ll call you Rell. You have no idea how much security footage and data I had to go through to trace back your various identities all the way to the beginning. Years’ worth of footage! Mostly it’s irrelevant, since I’m concerned with what you did in this persona, not any of the previous ones. But the effort was considerable, so I think I’ll call you Rell. It makes the research seem worthwhile, then!”

  Hamilton shook his head and pulled a piece of plastic out of his hand. Walsh was settling in for another of his self-satisfied lectures.

  “So, Walner Tane, aka Marind Rell. You’ve been here a number of years. Twelve, in fact. However, what interests me most is that about four years ago, Mr. Rell here orchestrated the theft and disposal of a Hum
al artifact from the Institute. A very unusual artifact, isn’t that right?”

  Tane’s expression darkened. “How did you know about that? It never got out.”

  Walsh smirked. “It never got out ‘officially’. But there are always secret reports. Well, secret to most people, not me, obviously.”

  Hamilton looked confused. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Walsh rolled his/her eyes. “Hamilton, what did I tell you when we last spoke? About trying to find out what happened in the war between my people and the Humals?”

  “You think this artifact had something to do with it?” Hamilton scowled.

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s any kind of doomsday weapon, or anything like that. But the preliminary report on it, before it went missing, described it as “A glass-like dodecahedron, emitting telepathic resonances and most likely some sort of information storage or retrieval device.” I felt it was worth looking into, so I did some background checks on all the employees working here at the time. Imagine my surprise when I discovered Mr. Rell here. A bona-fide psion, hiding here under an assumed identity. The Empire’s most wanted criminal – though only those in the highest positions knew he didn’t die, as was reported. I like to believe in coincidences as much as the next person, but that was too much.”

  Tane merely glared at the ImpSec woman.

  “So, we can discuss what it was and what you did with it here, or we can do it….elsewhere. Your choice?” Walsh grinned.

  “I don’t think I’ll be telling you anything.” Tane stated.

  “Well, I should point out, perhaps, that your much vaunted mental powers won’t work through the quantum entanglement link. So about all you could possibly do is fry this poor woman’s brain by trying to wrest control of her from me. My associates here might have something to say about that. Plus, we all know I have people everywhere and can communicate instantly, so even if you did dispose of her and my companions you wouldn’t get very far before you were apprehended. All those soldiers outside, too. So why not bow down to the inevitable?”