Bringing Stella Home (2 page)

The small sublight merchant
freighter, christened the
Llewellyn
after James’s grandmother,
had only one corridor on the upper deck. It ran the length of
the ship, but was so narrow that two grown men had to turn sideways
in order to pass each other. The ship’s compact living quarters fit
into the twenty yards between the bridge at the bow and the lounge
at the stern: two bedrooms, a bathroom, a tiny mess hall, and some
very limited personal storage. James wanted to get away from his
brother, but the only place far enough was the bridge, and he
didn’t want to go there just yet—no doubt his father would rope him
into some menial task. He didn’t want to get to work any sooner
than he had to.

Instead, he walked to the
middle of the corridor and stared out the large windows on either
side. From here, he had a magnificent view of the spindly station
where they were docked, as well as the planet,
Kardunash IV
. White clouds swirled
over the blue oceans and verdant continents, perfectly clear in the
vacuum of space. Ship and station orbited dreamily over the
coastlines and mountains, passing the yellow-brown deserts and
enormous black domed arcologies several hundred miles in diameter.
By squinting his eyes, James could see the twinkling reflections of
the shuttle ferries coming to and from the spaceports on the
surface, the scramjet powered vehicles accelerating to orbital
velocity while others glowed orange and pink as they made reentry.
Where the blue haze of the planet’s atmosphere met the black void
of space, dozens of spaceships, satellites, and stations glittered
as they danced in orbit over the jeweled landscape.

As James stared at the magnificent
view, footsteps sounded behind him. He tensed and stepped away from
the window, preparing himself for another fight. It wasn’t Ben who
had come to talk with him, however—it was Stella.

“
Hey, James,” she said,
gently touching his arm. “I’m really, really sorry about all the
trouble with Ben. I didn’t mean to make you guys fight.”

James shrugged. “It would have
happened anyway.” That was true enough, considering how long they’d
been cooped up on the same ship. Any longer, and they’d be at each
others’ throats.

She glanced to either side and pulled
back her hand, obviously working herself up to say something. “If
you want,” she began, “I can, uh—”

“
No, that’s all right,”
said James, shaking his head. “You go on ahead. I know how much it
means to you.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
Yeah,” said James. “Don’t
worry about me—it’s nothing.”

“
All right,” said Stella.
“But really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“
Will you stop worrying
about us and go enjoy yourself?” He grinned to show her it wasn’t
such a big deal. “I think you’ve got a shuttle to
catch.”

Her face lit up in a girlish smile,
and she gave him a warm hug. “Thanks so much,” she said. “I love
you, James!” With that, she ran back down the corridor, her short,
brown hair bobbing up and down as she returned to her
room.

“
Take care of yourself,”
James muttered as he watched her go.

Behind him, the door to the bridge
hissed open. “James,” said a deep voice behind him. He immediately
spun around to find himself face to face with his father, Captain
Adam McCoy.

“
What is it,
Dad?”

James’s father wore a crisp, gray vest
over his white jumpsuit. His beard was neatly trimmed in
preparation for their arrival at Kardunash IV, and the expression
on his face was as imposing as ever.

“
Go back to the lounge
while I get your brother and sister.”

“
Why? What’s going
on?”

“
The immigration bill.
Voting is about to start any minute, and I don’t want any of you to
miss it.”

James groaned as he made his way down
the corridor. It was just like his father to push their civic
duties on them at the most inconvenient moment possible. Would it
really be such a bad thing if they skipped out this once? It wasn’t
as if their votes were going to tip the outcome—not with over eight
thousand citizens registered in the databanks of the Colony’s
General Assembly. Not that it really mattered to him, though—he
wasn’t the one in a hurry to catch the next shuttle.

While his father got Ben
and Stella, James brought up the holovid table in the lounge and
opened its face to reveal the computer terminal inside. He
deactivated the holographic projector and unfolded the miniature
flatscreen, accessing the ship’s communications array. His father
had already connected the
Llewellyn’s
master computer with the
Colony’s servers; that would make things go faster, at
least.

The main page for the General Assembly
of Citizens loaded on the screen, the familiar clasped hands and
starship logo prominent on a banner at the top of the page. He
scrolled down to the section marked “Today’s Votes” and clicked on
a link that said: “Bill 0923H149: Interstellar Refugee Moratorium.”
The screen flashed gray and a loading bar appeared, signifying that
the data for that page wasn’t on the uplink yet. James sighed—with
the Colony’s servers currently on the other side of the sun, it
would take some time before the page loaded.

Stella walked in first, pouting as she
took her seat next to James. Ben came in next, the scowl on his
face making it clear he wasn’t too thrilled about the delay. Their
father came in last, and stood in the doorway while everyone took
their seats.

“
I’ve just received word
that voting on the fast-track immigration bill has begun,” he said.
“Since the voting window is less than twenty-four hours, none of us
will leave this ship until we’ve transmitted our votes.”

“
Dad!” Stella cried
out.

“
I know it’s inconvenient,
but as citizens of the Colony, our civic duties come
first.”

“
But Dad,” said Ben, “the
ferry shuttle leaves in less than twenty minutes, and the next one
after that doesn’t leave for another six hours.”

“
Please don’t make us miss
this shuttle,” Stella begged.

“
You can wait another six
hours,” said their father, not an ounce of pity on his face. “In
fact, if you need something to keep you busy, you can stay and help
unload the ship.”

For his part, James only folded his
arms and slouched in his seat. With server delays, the vote was a
pain, but he wasn’t in much of a hurry to go anywhere. Still, for
Stella’s sake, he hoped she didn’t miss the shuttle.

“
Dad,” said Ben, his voice
rising a little, “please be reasonable. Two votes aren’t going to
decide—”

“
When I raised you
children, I taught you to base your choices on principle, not on
convenience,” said their father, cutting Ben off. “Our freedoms are
a matter of principle. Democracy is a matter of principle. If every
citizen at the Colony were to act on convenience instead of
principle, what would happen? Our government would become as
irresponsible as its voters, and evil and conspiring men would rise
to positions of power. Eventually, we would lose the rights and
freedoms we so often take for granted.”

A beeping noise interrupted his
spontaneous lecture. James glanced down at the screen—the page had
loaded. A prompt in the center of the screen asked for his citizen
ID and password.

“
What is it,
Son?”

“
Voting’s opened,” said
James. Ben and Stella immediately leaped to their feet.

“
Let us go first,” said
Ben, muscling his way forward. “We’ve got a shuttle to
catch.”

“
All right, all right,”
said James, standing up. He purposefully got in Ben’s way to allow
Stella to slip in first. Ben scowled, but with their father
watching, he couldn’t do anything but stand back and wait his turn.
James smiled, savoring the sweet justice.

He didn’t mean to look, but out of the
corner of his eye he saw that Stella had voted “nay.” As she rose
to her feet and glanced over at him, her eyes widened and her
cheeks grew red.

“
I won’t tell,” he
whispered as they passed. She sighed in relief, soft enough that
their father wouldn’t notice.

It wasn’t as if their father would
punish her for her vote—they had voted contrary to him on other
measures before—it was just that this particular bill was so
important to him personally. With so many refugees from the Hameji
conquests flooding into the Karduna system on their way to the
Gaian Empire, storage space at the Colony was rapidly being
converted to temporary housing, raising premiums at the warehouse.
Naturally, this was bad business for merchant families such as
their own, and their father was one of the foremost activists for
immigration reform. As much as he talked about acting on principle,
they all knew it would upset him to see his own children take a
contrary position on a cause for which he’d fought so
hard.

As Stella and Ben hurried out of the
room to catch their shuttle, James opened the ballot, quickly
scanned the measure, and hit “yea.” With that done, he made room
for his father to cast his vote and transmit the ballots to their
home, over one hundred million kilometers away.

* * * * *

Twenty minutes later, James
watched from the bridge as the ferry shuttle undocked and left the
station, carrying Ben and Stella with it. The gray hull of the
small, winged craft shimmered in the sunlight as it drifted away,
suspended peacefully above the clouds and plains of
Kardunash IV. As he watched, the spacecraft
fired
its engines and took off toward the
glow of the curved horizon.

James sighed and returned his
attention to the array in front of him. He knew every instrument,
screen, panel, and keyboard at his station—all too well. His main
screen displayed the live video feed from the cargo bays, where his
father operated the unloading arm.

The bay door, which
stretched almost the whole length of the underside of the ship, lay
wide open, revealing a stunning vista of the world below. The
cargo—massive cylindrical drums of processed, refined steel—hung
from berths on the ceiling. With the bay open, it seemed as if they
were in danger of falling down to the world, but James knew that
wasn’t the case. While the upper decks on the Llewellyn had full
artificial gravity, the cargo bays did not. For that reason, the
steel drums had to be maneuvered one by one out of the hold by
the
Lewellyn’s
unloading claw—a painfully tedious process. Once out of the
ship, automated tugboats from the station would pick them up.
Because of the massive inertial resistance of each drum, maximum
unloading speed was an excruciating quarter meter per minute. At
that rate, it was an open question whether James would finish in
time. Even if the job was done before the next shuttle left, his
father certainly wouldn’t let him go early.

James leaned back in his chair and
stared out the forward window at the planet, glancing only
occasionally at the indicators on his screen. A robot could do his
job more effectively—if their family could afford a robot. Even
then, his father would probably make him work just to ‘build his
character.’ He could hear him now: “When your grandfather was your
age, the Colony was corporate-owned and the Karduna system was
still under the mandate of the New Gaian Empire…”

In an attempt to fight his growing
boredom, he opened a browser on one of the side monitors and
brought up the latest news updates from the K-4 planetnet. He’d
already viewed all the newscasts on the war situation out on the
frontier, so that left nothing but local news. Gubernatorial
elections were ongoing in one of the central arcologies, and a
labor dispute had temporarily shut down one of the minor
spaceports. Most of the news wasn’t too interesting, though. He
skimmed the major sites for any updates from the Colony, but other
than trade reports and economic indicators, he found
nothing.

Of course, he could always access the
servers at Kardunash III directly—but the long distance from the
planet would kill the load time. He didn’t feel like waiting five
minutes every time he clicked a link, so he didn’t even
try.

He had just found an update on Gaian
Imperial military operations in the New Pleiades when an unusual
beeping noise sounded to his right. An alarm was signaling an
urgent transmission from the port authority over the public
channel. Curious, he closed his browser and brought it
up.

“
Hey, Son?” came his
father’s voice, garbled slightly over the cheap headset. “My
console shows that you just received an urgent message from the
port authority?”

“
Yeah,” said James. “I’m
opening it now.”

It was an emergency broadcast. The
message was only two lines, repeated indefinitely across the
screen. James frowned as he read it.

Attention: A Hameji battle
fleet has entered the system. KDF personnel preparing to engage.
Starlane closure imminent. All civilian stations ordered to
evacuate.

Another beeping noise came
from the astrogation monitor. James held his breath as he brought
up the latest data from the
Llewellyn’s
scanners.