A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) Read Online Free PDF Page A

amount of time.
    “Tell me,” He began. “What’s the state of the Empire?”
    Rames looked puzzled. “Same as it always has been. Bureaucracy and red-tape. Slow expansion. Over taxation. All the usual bullshit.”
    “Nothing…weird, going on?”
    “Define weird.”
    Hamilton’s brow furrowed. “Weird as in, I don’t know… people going missing, or acting strange. Anything unexplained, disappearances, odd events. That sort of thing.”
    Rames thought about it for a moment. “Not that I’m aware of. But then, I’m out here on the edge of the frontier, thanks to your previous efforts. I don’t keep up with events in the core systems.”
    “There must be something.” Hamilton persevered. “Anything odd in the last five years.”
    Rames shrugged. “Worst thing I can recall is some terrorist bio-plague that wiped out a city on Sepharim Prime. Other than that it’s been a quiet few years.”
    “Bio-plague?”
    Rames nodded. “You’re better off asking Anderton the details, it’s more his thing. All I know is some new terrorist group sprang up, got hold of some virulent bio-weapon, and dumped it on some big city. They put it in the water supply, if I recall correctly. Killed tens of thousands.”
    Hamilton mulled it over. It didn’t sound like anything Walsh might be involved with. Walsh seemed more like the sort to rely on good old fashioned military means to wipe out his enemies. Besides, when you could take over your opponents mind and body, there was little point in killing them like that. But five years was more than long enough for Walsh to have built a replacement for the Hope’s Breath and returned to the Humal world to reclaim the rest of his kind.
    It was possible, of course, that Walsh had not survived the transmission from the Humal world into human space. There might well, in fact, be nothing at all to worry about.
    So why do I feel like everything is about to go pear-shaped? Hamilton wondered.
    “So.” Rames persisted. “Why not tell me what you’ve been up to?”
    Hamilton sighed. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt. The others, in the freezers, all know the truth. I guess it won’t hurt to tell you.”
    So Hamilton told him the whole story from his initial contact with Vogerian, all the way through to the last conversation he had with Walsh whilst his escape pod plummeted towards the Humal World.
    Rames listened without interruption, though his facial expressions gave a good indication of his thoughts at various points during the tale. A mixture of incredulity and astonishment, for the most part.
    Hamilton finished off the telling with the group’s exodus from the planet and its escape back to human space using the jury-rigged Morebaeus .
    “You didn’t jury-rig it very well.” Rames observed.
    Hamilton nodded. “Evidently. McDonald assured us it would work, though.”
    “Was it McDonald that rigged the cryo-capsule to wake him up after a short period of time?” Rames inquired.
    Hamilton nodded.
    “Well, there’s your answer. He wasn’t all that good an engineer.” Rames explained. “He bungled his safety override procedure. That’s why he never woke up, even when his power cell failed. It’s a fairly safe bet he didn’t know as much about engineering as he made out.”
    “He’s dead?”
    Rames nodded. “Dead and rotted in his capsule, poor bastard. Incredibly, the rest of you survived his engine modifications.”
    The two men were silent for a time before Rames asked. “So, you think this Walsh creature and his buddies made it back here into Imperial territory? That’s what you’re worried about?”
    “Basically.” Hamilton agreed. “If he made it back, there’s no telling who, or what, he and his people could have infected.”
    “It’s a pretty far-fetched story.” Rames told him. “Not many people are going to believe it. I’m not sure I should believe it. For all I know it’s just bullshit to keep me from looking elsewhere.”
    “I know. It’s difficult to