Heart of the Nebula (32 page)

“
I’m sorry. Am I
interrupting?”

“
Not at all, Miss
Galbraith-Dickson,” said Soner. “We were just talking about you.
Please, have a seat.”

We were talking about
getting our people to those colony ships,
James almost snapped, but he didn’t want to start an argument
while Sara was in the room. Instead, he glared at Soner, hoping
that the bald little man would get the hint.

“
Really?” Sara asked. “What
were you saying?”

“
We were talking about how
lovely you were at the conference, my dear,” said Soner, taking her
hand. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, making James
bristle. A sly glance from the corner of Soner’s eye made him
suspect the gesture was meant to irritate him.

“
Why, thank you,” said
Sara, smiling uncertainly.

James stepped up to her side and put an arm
possessively around her waist. “How soon will we be ready to
depart?”

“
You’re not trying to get
rid of me, are you?” Soner asked, acting as if he were hurt.
“Surely you wouldn’t deprive me of such a lovely young woman’s
company. We get so few female visitors out in these
parts.”

Keep creeping on her, and I’ll slug you so
hard you’ll feel like a meteor hit you square between the eyes.

“
Don’t be silly. I’m sure
James didn’t mean it that way,” said Sara, laughing to diffuse the
tension. “We’re just eager to get to our ships after such a long
and arduous voyage.”

“
Arduous,” said Soner,
licking his lips. “That’s an interesting way to describe it. And
I’m sure that the next phase of your journey will be even more—how
shall I say—
arduous
than the first.”

He grinned as if to insinuate something.
James again had to resist the urge to slug him.

“
Yes, well, all the more
reason to get us to those colony ships,” said Sara. Her laughter
had a tinge of nervousness to it.

“
Certainly, my dear,” said
Soner. “My men are loading your equipment and supplies as we speak.
They’ll go ahead of us to unload before you arrive, so that
everything will be ready to go when you get there.”

“
That’s very kind of you,”
said Sara.

“
Nabattan compliments, my
dear. Not that we’re eager to send a beautiful young woman such as
yourself away.”

“
That’s enough,” James
snapped, unable to hold back any longer. “The sooner we can be on
our way, the better.”

“
All work and no pleasure,
eh?” said Soner. When he failed to get another rise out of James,
his face fell, and he turned to the porthole.

“
We don’t have enough room
on our station to transfer you all to your ships at the same time.
Even if we did, our FTL fleet is understandably
limited.”

“
So what’s the solution?”
James asked.

“
The quickest way to get
you all to your ships is to stagger the crew transfers so that we
fill up each ship and have it launch while we go and get the crew
for the next one. We can transfer all the crew of a single colony
ship at a go, but they’ll have to leave before the next crew gets
there.”

James frowned. “So you’ll have to take us
out one ship at a time?”

“
It’s what we agreed to,”
said Sara. “We knew from the beginning that this was the only way
to get everyone to the ships, and we planned for it, didn’t
we?”

“
Indeed we did, my dear,”
said Soner.

Something about this
doesn’t feel right,
James thought to
himself. At the same time, though, it wasn’t like they had much of
a choice. With the Hameji at their backs and nowhere but the nebula
to flee for refuge, Soner held all the cards.

“
Very well. How quickly can
we do it?”

“
The fastest we can take
you out is one crew complement every six hours.”

“
At that rate, it’ll take
almost a week to get us all out,” James grumbled.

“
It’s okay,” said Sara,
rubbing his back. “We’ve come this far. What’s another few
days?”

“
Very well, but I want the
captains to choose which order we depart in. Is that clear,
Soner?”

“
Of course,” said Soner,
holding his hands palm up. “It makes no difference to us. Tell us
when you’re ready, and we’ll be more than happy to take you
out.”

“
Good,” said James. “And my
crew goes last.”

“
Why, pray
tell?”

“
To make sure you don’t try
anything.”

For several tense moments, he and Soner
stared each other down, neither one flinching. In those moments,
James saw something fierce in Soner’s smug eyes—something almost
feral. But then, Soner threw back his head and laughed.

“
To make sure we don’t try
anything! Very well, Commander, you shall have your wish, though I
hope the wait will not make you any more… unpleasant.”

“
If you think I’m
unpleasant now,” said James, his voice low, “just wait until you
see me in action.”

“
James!” Sara hissed.
“That’s enough.”

“
That’s all right, Miss
Galbraith-Dickson,” said Soner. “I know when I’m not welcome. We
all have our duties to attend to, as tedious as some of ours may
be. I will see you on the final run, Commander.”

It had better be the last
time we see each other, too,
James nearly
said aloud. But Sara was starting to glare at him, and he’d said
too much already.

* * * * *

The air felt chill as Sara entered her
father’s apartment. At first, she thought it was because he spent
most of his time at the office, but then she remembered that he’d
resigned his office midway to the rendezvous point. Was he trying
to conserve energy, then? It seemed odd that someone who had made a
career out of manipulating people would make such a personal
sacrifice, but even after all these years, her father could still
surprise her.

“
Ah, Sara,” he said,
ushering her in. “So glad you could make it. Please excuse the
mess.”

If you think this place is
a mess, you should see my apartment,
Sara
thought to herself. Except for a couple of packing crates in the
center of the room and a small pile of papers on the couch, her
father’s place was conspicuously empty.

“
I know you’re scheduled to
leave soon,” she began, her voice distant.

“
In about two hours,” he
said cheerfully. “We’ll be the third colony ship to go. But even at
our maximum cruising velocity, we still should be within a few
minutes of transmission range.”

“
But I guess this is our
last chance to say goodbye in-person.”

He stopped what he was doing and turned to
face her. “Indeed it is.”

She gave him a hug, which
he returned rather stiffly.
He thinks I’m
still upset with him,
she realized. Perhaps
she still was, but she wasn’t going to let that get in the way of
saying goodbye.

“
So how does it feel to see
all your plans come together?” she asked, more to break the ice
than anything else.

“
They haven’t come together
quite yet,” he said, “though it’s been gratifying to see how well
they’ve worked out so far.”

“
Oh, come on, Dad. In two
hours, you’ll be safely on your way.”

“
Yes, but it will still
take a few days before we can say the same thing about the rest of
the Colony.”

“
We’ll be fine,” she told
him. “James insisted that our ship go last, just to make sure that
everyone makes it out all right.”

Her father nodded approvingly. “I thought he
might do something like that. It’s good to see a man like him rise
to take the reins of leadership.”

He’s just being paranoid
if you ask me,
Sara thought to herself.
Still, she couldn’t blame him for not trusting the Nabattans,
particularly Soner. She’d be happy when that man was far, far
away.

“
Speaking of James,” her
father continued, “how are things going between you
two?”

“
Pretty well,” she said,
rubbing the back of her neck. “We’ve been so busy with our
preparations for the voyage that we’ve barely seen each other, but
we’re definitely a couple now.”

“
I’m glad to hear it. I
suppose you two will do whatever you want once we’re on our
respective ships, but if you do decide to marry him, you have my
blessing.”

Sara smiled. “Thanks, Dad. I’ll keep that in
mind.”

He spread out his arms, and she hugged him
again. This time, there was no stiffness in his embrace. They held
each other for a long time, knowing that this would be the last
they ever saw of each other.

“
I’ll miss you, Dad,” Sara
whispered.

“
I know, dear,” her father
said. “Be sure to message me before you go into cryo.”

“
I will.”

The rest of her visit passed in a blur. As
she stepped out the door and into the dimly-lit corridor, she felt
more alone than she could ever remember. But it wasn’t until her
father’s transport blinked into jumpspace that she allowed herself
to cry.

Chapter 16

James stared out the forward window of the
bridge of the Nabattan transport as they made the jump to Zeta
Nabat. Nearly a week had passed since the crew transfers had begun,
and the task was nearly complete. The only colonists left were the
ones under James’s command.

A sinking feeling grew in his gut as the
bulkheads began to hum, but still he kept his eyes open, fighting
the urge to blink. Perspective shifted, and for an instant the
stars seemed to swirl—or rather, his point of view switched in some
bizarre way that he couldn’t explain. It was as if he were
simultaneously looking at the same stars from multiple angles
across hundreds of parsecs of space.

That’s the last time in my life that I’ll
ever pass through jumpspace.

“
Jump complete,” said the
chief astrogator. Like all the Nabattan officers, he wore the
ubiquitous olive green fatigues with black epaulets.

“
Good work, men,” said
Soner from the captain’s seat at the front. “Let’s bring the ship
in to dock.”

James leaned forward to get a better view
out the window. Except for a slightly bluish haze, the Good Hope
Nebula was so close it was all but invisible. The nebula obscured
only the faintest, most distant stars, giving the view a slightly
granular quality.

“
That’s odd,” said Lars. “I
thought the nebula would look a lot brighter from here.”

“
Not this close,” said
Sterling, turning around to face him. “It’s counter-intuitive, but
the closer you get to the nebula, the dimmer it
appears.”

“
Why is that?”

“
Because of light
dispersal. From a distance, the nebula is just a point in the sky,
so the reflection from the stars is concentrated. But up close, all
that light is spread out across the whole sky, so in any one place
it appears much dimmer.”

Just a couple of klicks away, the ramjet
launch station appeared like a dull gray speck in the off-black
sky. Located at the edge of the termination shock, where the solar
wind condensed before hitting the interstellar medium, the station
was located almost twelve light hours from the nearest planet.
James wondered what a voyage from the inner system out to this
distant point would be like on one of his family’s small
freighters. At sublight speeds, it would easily take years.

“
Are those the other colony
ships?” Lars asked, pointing out the window. “That line of blue
lights—are those the engine boosters?”

“
That’s right,” said James.
As he peered at the little blue dots, though, his face fell and his
eyes narrowed. Something about them wasn’t right.

“
That’s odd,” said
Sterling. “Shouldn’t the line be more even? It looks almost…
jagged.”

“
Is something wrong?” Lars
asked. “I—”

Before he could finish, the bridge door
hissed open and half a dozen armed guards ran in, assault rifles
drawn. Sterling’s eyes widened, and James rose instantly to his
feet. He reached for his gun, but before he could draw it, he felt
something hard pressing against his side.

“
Now, now,” said Soner,
“let’s not do anything rash, shall we?”

James looked down and saw that Soner had
jammed a gun in his back. The soldiers quickly surrounded them,
yanking Lars and Sterling to their feet.

“
What’s going on?” James
asked, his voice low and dangerous.

“
Don’t worry, Commander,”
Soner answered casually as he confiscated James’s pistol. “You’ll
find out soon enough.”

The soldiers swiftly patted them down for
weapons and confiscated their wrist consoles. Without any way to
communicate, they had no way of knowing what was happening to the
other colonists. The Nabattans could be preparing a massacre for
all he knew.

Stay calm,
James told himself, resisting the urge to fight
back.
Don’t do anything stupid. Your life
isn’t the only one on the line.

Soner examined James’s pistol with a mixture
of curiosity and boredom. “A hand-crafted Gaian imperial model,
with a customized laser sight and fully self-loading action. I must
admit it is a fine artifact of a bygone era. Tell me, how long has
it been in your possession?”