Heart of the Nebula (18 page)

“
Just tell me.”

“
All right. Fine.” She
sighed. “It’s an exodus.”

James frowned. “What?”

“
My father is planning for
a mass exodus from the Karduna system. The Colony won’t last much
longer under the occupation, so we’re going to leave
Hameji-controlled space and strike out on our own.”

“
But that’s crazy,” he
exclaimed. “Even if every ship at the Colony was equipped with a
jump drive, there simply wouldn't be enough to carry every man,
woman, and—”

“
And the Hameji would put a
stop to it the moment they found out what we were up to. That’s not
how we plan to do it.”

“
Then how?”

“
By jumping out the station
itself.”

James’s expression changed from puzzlement
to incredulity. “Jump the whole station? That’s impossible.”

“
Not at all. The
infrastructure is already in place: all we need is to—”

“
What do you mean, ‘the
infrastructure is already in place’? If that’s true, how come
nobody but the patrician knows about it?”

Sara took a deep breath. “Do you know the
War of Independence that we fought against the Gaians almost a
hundred years ago? How we joined forces with the rest of Karduna to
free our system from the Imperials?”

“
Of course. Every grade
school student knows about that.”

“
Well, that’s when the
infrastructure was built. Our grandparents, fearing an Imperial
victory in the war, secretly installed a massive jump drive on the
Colony itself. It’s a capital ship model, built for warships at
least as large as our station. When the Imperials backed down and
gave us our independence, they decided to keep the jump drive in
place. It’s been with us ever since.”

James’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re telling me
that all this time, the patrician has kept this knowledge
secret?”

“
Surely you understand the
importance of military secrets. If everyone knew about it, then our
enemies could find out and take measures to prevent us from using
it.”

“
And if we used it without
first putting it to a vote, it would undermine the fabric of our
democracy.”

“
Look, I’m not saying it’s
right. I’m just saying it’s the way things are.”

An awkward moment of silence passed. Sara
raised her hands as if to show that she was being honest, and James
responded with a slow, thoughtful nod.

“
Fair enough, but how does
this help us get away from the Hameji? They control everything
within a hundred light years of Karduna Prime—we’d have nowhere to
go.”

“
In settled space, maybe.
Not in unsettled space.”

“
Unsettled space?” he said,
frowning again. “What are you talking about?”

“
There’s an uninhabited
star system in the middle of the Good Hope Nebula,” she said,
leaning forward. “GH-122 is its Gaian catalog number. The ancients
called it ‘Chira.’”

“
The goddess of sleep,
cryonics, and the subconscious.”

Sara nodded, impressed. “When did you learn
the old pantheon?”

“
It’s a hobby I picked up
while running sublight convoys. On the long voyages, it’s hard not
to spend a lot of time gazing at the stars.”

“
Right. Well, according to
the surveys, there are a number of habitable planets in that
system, including a terrestrial world with signs of an oxygen-based
atmosphere. We don’t know much about it, since no one has ever sent
a scientific expedition, but the basic indicators show that it
could support life.”

“
Except for one thing,”
said James. “The Good Hope Nebula is too dense for us to travel
through safely.”

“
With FTL drives, perhaps,
but at sublight speeds we should be just fine.”

“
Sublight
speeds?”

“
The nebula works both
ways,” she explained. “It prevents us from using conventional jump
drives, but by that token it also keeps the Hameji out. Once we’re
in, they won’t be able to pursue us.”

“
And how do we get
in?”

Sara paused. James was becoming hard for her
to read, and she couldn’t tell what he’d do once she told him.
Still, she’d revealed too much to stop now.

“
Through my contacts,” she
said. “The delegates from Zeta Nabat.”

“
Isn’t that an old Imperial
penal colony?”

“
Right. The Imperials used
the system as a prison because of its location in a small spur of
the Good Hope Nebula. Until the starlanes were built, the only way
in or out was through old-style interstellar ramjets.”

“
Like the ones that brought
the ancient patriarchs from Earth to Gaia Nova.”

“
Exactly.”

James began to pace the narrow room. “So
your father wants to send us into the heart of the Good Hope
Nebula, using antiquated sublight transport ships bought from the
Zeta Nabattans?”

“
It’s not as crazy as it
seems. They still use the ships to get between Zeta Nabat and its
neutron binary. The technology is sound.”

“
For mid-scale mining
operations, perhaps. But this is an exodus we’re talking about—a
voyage of almost twenty parsecs into the heart of the nebula. At
sublight speeds, it’ll take over a hundred standard years to reach
the Chira system. How can we possibly do it?”

“
Simple,” she said. “We put
the majority of the population in cold storage and re-purpose the
transports as generation ships. When the fleet arrives a hundred or
so years later, our descendants thaw us out, and together we settle
the new world.”

James stopped pacing and glanced over at
her, his expression skeptical. “And the Zeta Nabattans claim they
have the right equipment for this?”

“
Yes,” Sara said, rising to
her feet. “I just struck a deal with them—that was my contact. All
we’ve got to do now is meet them at the rendezvous
point.”

She swallowed and held her breath as she
waited for his response. His gaze was so piercing, it felt as if he
were staring right through her.

“
Can you see now why we
have to keep this a secret?” she asked. “If our plans got out, the
Hameji could easily move to stop us. Our only hope is to jump out
before they know what’s going on.”

“
But you do plan to put
this through the General Assembly for a vote, right? You’re not
just going to throw this on the people by dictatorial
order?”

“
Yes, of
course.”
If we can.

He took a deep breath and went back to
pacing. After almost half a minute, he stopped and shook his head.
“It’s just—it goes so far against our democratic principles. So
many secrets…”

“
If there was another way
to save the Colony, we would do it. Believe me.”

Please believe me, James.

He looked at her again, the anger deflating
out of him. “You’re right.”

“
So you won’t go public
with this? You’ll keep it off the record?”

“
For now, yeah. But when we
get back to the Colony, I’m going to need some more
answers.”

“
You’ll get them,” she
promised, relief flooding over her. “You will.”

* * * * *

James’s feet felt heavy as
he walked out of Sara’s quarters down the lavishly furnished main
corridor of the
Freedom Star.
Now that he knew what she’d been hiding, the
secret weighed on him like a thousand astral tonnes. He could
understand why it was necessary to keep the existence of the
station’s jump drive from public knowledge, but that didn’t change
the way he felt about it.

He reached the end of the corridor and
descended the staircase to the observation room at the front of the
ship. Lars sat alone, staring out at the infinite starscape. The
faint, wispy tendrils of the Good Hope Nebula loomed in the
distance, reflecting the orange-yellow light of Auriga Nova and the
blue-white light of Belarius beyond.

As James reached the base of the stairs, the
view shifted ever so slightly, becoming more and more distant as
the walls began to shrink. He took hold of the banister and held
his breath as the rapid crescendo of nausea and disorientation
swept over him. Shortly after reaching its climax, however, the
sensation of jumpspace subsided and normalized.

Like a true spacefarer, Lars hadn’t even
flinched. He stared out at the milky-white starfield, his
expression unchanged.

“
Attention, passengers”
came Captain Jarvis’s voice over the ship-wide loudspeaker. “I
would like to thank you for your patience and understanding during
the last few maneuvers. Thanks to the brave efforts of our crew, as
well as those of Lieutenant McCoy and Ensign Jones, we have
successfully evaded Hameji pursuit. Our ship has sustained moderate
damage, but our FTL drives are still fully functional, and should
remain so for the duration of our voyage.”

A ragged cheer sounded through the
bulkheads, from the crew and other passengers alike. James was
about to add his own voice to the others, but when he saw that Lars
was silent, he held back.

“
Since we won’t be taking
the starlanes, our return voyage will take significantly longer.
Currently, we’re about one-point-one light years from Gaia Nova, in
the direction of Tajjur Prime. We don’t anticipate that the Hameji
will make any serious effort to interdict us, but as a precaution
against that, we will make a series of short micro-jumps in the
next twenty-four hours before redirecting our course for Karduna.
If all goes well, I expect that we will arrive in a little less
than four standard weeks. We may have to ration some of our stores,
but our food synthesizers are more than adequate to sustain
us.

“
On behalf of myself and
the rest of the crew, I thank you for your patience and
understanding during this crisis. We will do our best to provide
for your safety and comfort, and will keep you apprised of any new
developments as they occur.”

The loudspeakers switched off, and the sound
of applause trickled through the bulkheads. James joined in this
time, but Lars remained conspicuously silent.

“
You all right there? We’re
safe, now.”

Lars shook his head. “What does it matter,
when all our work has ended in failure? The Hameji, the
conference—we have nothing left to hope for.”

Of course,
James thought, mentally kicking himself. Lars had
staked everything on the outcome of the conference. The massacre
must have left him devastated.

“
At least we escaped with
our lives. You can’t win every battle, but that doesn’t mean you’ve
lost the war.”

Lars narrowed his eyes. “You’re not much of
a diplomat, are you? This isn’t like a military campaign, which you
can break up into discrete engagements. It’s more like a
construction project, where you build the framework and set it in
motion before attaching the modules. Today, the entire framework
that I’ve been building for the past five years has been utterly
swept away.”

“
But surely you can start
over.”

Lars shook his head. “This conference was
our one big chance to change things—not only for us, but for all
the occupied systems. We knew the risks, of course, and we did all
we could to mitigate them, but risks or no, we had to press
forward. And now, we’ve lost everything.”

Not everything,
James wanted to tell him.
The patrician has a plan—a good one, in fact.
As much as he wanted to let him in on it, though,
he knew that Lars would never keep it secret. In fact, he would
probably use it as grounds for an impeachment hearing, since the
secret deal with the Nabattans was a clear breach of executive
authority.

“
If it’s any consolation,
my sister did her best to prevent the massacre. It wasn’t Qasar who
gave the kill order—it was a rogue faction within the Hameji
ranks.”

“
But the Generals stood
aside and let them do it. Now, there’s no way we can save our
people.”

You’re wrong,
James wanted to tell him.
There is another way.
But if he told
Lars now, the patrician’s plans would all be ruined.

“
We’ll find a way—we always
have.”

“
Not after this,” said
Lars, shaking his head. “We’ve been through a lot, but I don’t
think our people can survive much longer.”

“
Cheer up,” said James,
patting him on the shoulder. “We’re not dead yet.”

Lars looked at him forlornly. “It’s not just
our people I’m mourning, James. It’s our way of life. The Colony
was an experiment in liberal democracy, and I fear that that
experiment has failed. If our way of life can’t survive the
occupation, then our dream of freedom will die with us.”

“
You
always were an idealist,” James said softly.
And that’s exactly why I can’t tell you what I
know.

Lars sighed. “The thing I fear most is that
my ideals will die before I do.”

“
They won’t, Lars—not if I
can do anything about it.”

“
And if you
can’t?”

James left the answer unsaid.

* * * * *

Kyla lay on the bed and stared out the
porthole window. The starfield was like an endless glittering
blanket, or perhaps a curtain, veiling the darkness with its soft,
milky light. She wondered how many people were looking out at the
same stars right now, and what they were thinking. But then she
realized that each star had its own set of worlds, and each world
had its own cities and domes and space colonies. If anything, it
was the stars looking out at her, not the other way around.