Heart of the Nebula (21 page)

“
Commander
McCoy?”

“
Yes,” James
answered.

“
Please follow me,” said
the secretary, smiling as she rose from her seat.

She led him down a short hallway to a
magnificent, wood-paneled conference room. A number of people had
already gathered around the long table, leaning back in their
luxuriously wide chairs. Most of them were middle-aged businessmen,
though a couple were civilian ship captains, judging from their
clothes. None of them were with the military—at least, none that
James recognized.

As he glanced around the room, he saw Sara
near the front, dressed in a light blouse and a tan vest. Her
father wasn’t present, but he assumed that the chair at the head of
the table was for him. Whether by design or serendipity, the only
other empty chair at the table was next to her.

“
Hello, James,” she said as
he sat down next to her. “Glad to see you could make
it.”

“
I’m glad, too,” he said,
keeping his voice low so only she could hear him. “What is this
about?”

“
We’re about to be briefed
on the next stage of the mission,” she said. “The real mission, if
you know what I mean.”

“
Then who are all these
people?”

Before she could answer, the door hissed
open and the patrician stepped into the conference room. He went
around the table shaking hands.

“
Stanis, Lorena, thanks for
coming. Jeppe, it’s a pleasure as always. Ah, Commander McCoy,” he
said, arriving at James. “So good to see you.”

“
Thank you,
sir.”

“
Allow me to introduce the
others. This is Ståle Anderson, administrator of the Colony
steelworks.”

James nodded to the gray haired man, who
nodded back.

“
And this over here is
Stanis McIntyre, Chief Executive Officer of the port authority’s
warehousing complex.”

“
Sir.”

“
And this,” said the
patrician, pointing to a man in crisp business attire, “is Jeppe
Hanson, President of the dockworkers’ union.”

The man offered his hand,
and James shook it, albeit with a little unease.
What are a corporate boss, a union president, and
a factory owner doing at the same table?

The patrician continued to introduce men and
women of similarly high stature. Just as conspicuous, however, was
the absence of anyone overtly active in the political arena. The
military wasn’t represented either, though one of the younger men
was an “intelligence contractor.” James had never heard of him.

This is the heart of the
lion’s den,
he told himself.
The shadow government that Lars warned me
about.
He would have to be on his
toes.

“
And now, my friends,” said
the patrician, “let’s get down to business.”

Only after he moved to take his seat did
everyone around the table do the same. James followed suit, but
Sara remained standing. She cleared her throat.

“
It will be my pleasure to
report on my recent assignment,” she said, addressing, the room,
“but first, allow me to formally introduce Commander James McCoy.
You may recognize him as the brother of Stella McCoy, whose
intervention with the Hameji helped us to survive the humanitarian
crisis at the start of the occupation.”

James smiled. As every eye in the room
turned on him, he realized that not everyone welcomed his presence.
He shifted uneasily under the combined weight of their stares.

“
Not to be rude,” said a
pudgy middle-aged man near the center, “but whose interests does he
represent, exactly?”

“
Commander McCoy is with
the Civil Defense Corps,” said the patrician, “and as the newest
commander in that organization, he has the proper rank in that
organization to justify his seat at this table.”

So that’s why he gave us
our promotions at the spaceport,
James
thought. Still, if this was a shadow government, why would they be
concerned about rank? That would only make sense if—

They don’t want me to
represent the Corp’s interest at this council,
he realized with a start.
They want
me to represent the interests of this council to the
Corps.

“
It’s about time we had
someone halfway competent from the military on our side,” said
Ståle.

“
Certainly,” said Sara.
“Now, if you will please turn to your screens.”

She hit a series of keys on the control
panel in front of her, and the wallscreen behind her lit up with
the first slide of her presentation. James glanced down at the
smaller display in front of his seat and saw that the images were
the same.

“
Before traveling to Gaia
Nova, I was briefed by the inspection team sent to Zeta Nabat six
months ago. Their report on the ramjet fleet was quite extensive.
After confirming the key points of the report with our Nabattan
contact, we were able to negotiate an agreement for the purchase of
the fleet.”

She hit a key on the control panel, and the
presentation proceeded to the next slide, which displayed
schematics for an unusual type of starship. It was shaped like a
short cylinder, with the center hollowed out like a doughnut. A
large funnel on the forward end was connected to a spherical
reactor, with magnetic field projectors wrapped around it. On the
back end, a massive shield protected the rest of the ship from what
looked like a rocket.

“
These are the schematics
for the twelve sublight ramjets that the Nabattans have offered to
sell to us. They are rated for interstellar travel within particle
dense regions such as nebulae and molecular clouds that are
inaccessible via conventional jump drives, and have a maximum
velocity of about seventeen percent the speed of light.”

“
Where are the hab units?”
someone asked. “All I see are cargo modules.”

“
The ships were originally
designed for transferring cargo to the prison world at Zeta Nabat.
Prisoners were frozen in cryo, while the captain and crew spent
most of the voyage in stasis as well. However, the Nabattans have
modified the cargo modules to allow conversion into self-sufficient
hab units capable of supporting several hundred people.”

“
Several hundred? But the
population of the Colony numbers in the thousands. If the voyage to
Chira is going to last more than a hundred years, how do you expect
us to live in such a cramped space?”

“
That’s a very good point,”
said Sara. “Fortunately, each ramjet comes equipped with enough
working cryotanks for us to put up to eighty percent of the
population into stasis. That should leave more than enough room for
the remainder to live comfortably until we arrive at our new
home.”

So it’s a combination
generation ship and cryosleep transport,
James thought to himself.
That’s
certainly one way to colonize the heart of the nebula.

“
Why do we even need the
hab units?” one of the engineers asked. “If we have enough space to
support a living population, then why not put everyone into
cryo?”

“
Because it was cheaper for
the Nabattans to modify the existing design than to fabricate more
cryotanks,” Sara answered. “Besides, with the reduced population,
it shouldn’t be difficult for us to make these hab units
self-sustaining for the long voyage. The Colony itself is capable
of supporting us for long periods of time without outside
help.”

That’s only because we
were forced to after the Hameji slagged Kardunash IV,
James thought.
Without
those convoys, this station would have been reduced to a derelict
years ago.

“
How are we going to get
our people to these colony ships?” someone at the far end of the
table asked.

“
That’s a good question,”
said Sara. She moved on to the next slide, which showed a
two-dimensional rendering of a starmap, with Karduna on one side
and Zeta Nabat on the other.

“
Zeta Nabat is located
about one light-year within the nebula itself, and is therefore
inaccessible to us. The starlane that runs through the nebula will
be patrolled by the Hameji, but the Nabattan smugglers have a
secret starlane that they use to get to the edge of the nebula,
here.”

She pointed to a point on the map marked
RENDEZVOUS, where the clouds of the nebula met the emptiness of
interstellar space.

“
The Nabattans have agreed
to meet us there and ferry us to our ships. They’ve assured me that
they have enough transports for us all.”

A low murmur of approval went up around the
table. James could tell that the people liked what they were
hearing.

“
How difficult will the
voyage be?” someone asked.

“
Not too difficult, from
what I understand,” Sara answered. “While the Colony is traveling
through space, it will continue to operate normally.”

“
That’s not exactly true,”
said one of the engineers. He was one of the younger men at the
table. “Most of the civilian infrastructure on the Colony itself
runs on solar power, not on the NOVA reactors that will power the
station’s jump drive.”

“
I thought you engineers
were supposed to get on that problem?” someone else
interjected.

“
And we have, but it’s
still going to require a significant sacrifice from the people. We
can’t power all that infrastructure and still get this station to
Zeta Nabat.”

“
Will we have enough power
to care for the people’s basic needs while we’re in transit?” the
patrician asked.

“
Yes,” said the engineer,
“though not much more than that.”

“
Then that will have to
do.”

“
If you’ll pardon my
asking,” interjected another man at the far end of the table, “how
much will the operation cost?”

Sara took a deep breath. “To be blunt, the
costs will be quite high.” Several men grunted, their eyes glued to
their screens. “However, as you can see in this next slide, they
lie well within the parameters established by this council. The
station itself will go to the Nabattans, of course, along with all
of our heavy equipment. In addition, they require almost half of
our total GDP in steel.”

A low murmur arose across the table. “That’s
quite a lot of production,” said Ståle. “Our refineries are
currently able to run only at half-capacity, so even in a best case
scenario, it would take us at least a standard year to put all that
together.”

“
The Nabattans said they
would also be willing to accept one hundred and fifty cargo haulers
and sublight freighters in lieu of the steel quota.”

The table practically erupted with
protest.

“
One hundred and fifty?
That’s almost the entire civilian fleet!”

“
There’ll be an outcry if
we try to seize those assets from the private sector.”

“
What are we going to use
for transport when we arrive at the Chira system?”

“
We can’t do
it.”

“
I’m afraid that we’re in
no position to negotiate better terms,” said the patrician. “The
unexpected massacre at the conference raises the specter of a
Hameji reprisal. For security reasons, we must prepare to depart
for Zeta Nabat as soon as possible.”

“
That’s right,” said James,
unable to sit by silently any longer. “There’s a major power shift
happening within the Hameji command. If they can trace the
organizers of the conference back to us, it’s not going to be
good.”

All the heads around the table turned to
face him. He suddenly wondered if he’d spoke out of turn.

“
What evidence do you have
of that?” someone asked.

“
I met with my sister just
before the massacre,” James answered. “She told me that a faction
of hardliners led by a general named Tagatai has been taking over
the ranks, and sees any attempt to put limitations on their power
as a threat. We can expect them to clamp down as hard as they
can.”

A low murmur rippled around the table. The
people began to look anxiously at one another.

“
In that case,” said the
patrician, “we need to go public with these plans at
once.”

“
But what about the General
Assembly?” came a voice further down the table. “The opposition is
going to have a field day with this.”

The murmurs around the table rose in
pitch.

“
I agree,” said the
patrician, “which is all the more reason why we must go public as
soon as possible. I know it’s a hard sell, but we must move this
decision through the General Assembly as quickly as we can. The
stakes are high and the issues are complex, so it’s going to take a
coordinated effort to push it through. We don’t want anything to
blow up in our faces.”

Such as the existence of
this shadow government?
James thought to
himself. He could just imagine the look of disgust and horror on
Lars’s face when he found out the rumors were true.

“
Just a minute,” said a
grizzled old man near the front. “What do you mean, ‘reprisals’?
What do you expect they’ll do?”

“
In the worst case
scenario,” Sara answered, “they’ll send a battle fleet to
exterminate us.”