Heart of the Nebula (17 page)

Outside, a soundless flash made Sara yelp.
It was an explosion—the Hameji were already shooting, probably at
every ship trying to flee the station.

“
Sterling, how are we doing
on those coordinates?”

“
Just a sec,” said
Sterling, his voice shaky and nervous. “The nav-computer is having
trouble loading the astrogation data. It’ll take a while
before—”

“
How long?”

“
I don’t know. Half a
minute, maybe?”

James swore under his
breath. They had almost reached the end of the station, with
nowhere safe to go once they were past it. Since the
Freedom Star
was a
civilian ship, it had no armor or shielding—one good hit was all it
would take to kill them.

As if in confirmation, one of the other
fleeing ships broke apart almost directly in their path. He pulled
up hard, swerving wildly to avoid the debris. Sara cried out and
Sterling gasped for breath, but they avoided the wreckage by the
narrowest of margins.

“
What the hell are you
doing with my ship?” Jarvis demanded. “Keep flying like that, and
you’re liable to get us all killed!”

We’re liable to get shot
if we don’t,
James thought angrily. He
kept the sentiment to himself, though—this was no time for an
argument.

“
Sir,” Sterling yelled. “We
have a drone swarm incoming!”

“
What
direction?”

“
Sixty—no, ninety degrees
bearing, uh—”

A horrible grating sound, like knives over
porcelain, cut him off. The bulkheads shook with the sound of
debris pattering against the hull. Outside, half a dozen tiny dark
vessels flew past the window, their engines glowing blue.

“
Hang
on,” James shouted. Without stopping to think, he nosed
the
Freedom Star
down toward the planet and fired the engines at
full throttle.

“
Are you crazy?” Sara
shouted from behind him. “We’ll burn up in the
atmosphere!”

The radar display on the
secondary screen showed the drone swarm spreading out in
preparations to converge on them again. Several warning lights were
flashing on the main screen—damage reports, no doubt. Without any
sort of armored plating, the
Freedom
Star
wouldn’t last long against another
assault.

James threw the ship into a barrel roll,
hoping to throw off the drones’ targeting sensors. The dampers
weren’t calibrated for rotational momentum, and the maneuver
knocked the wind out of all of them. Alarms sounded throughout the
bridge, but he ignored them and pushed on.

“
Stop!” Jarvis screamed.
“You’re going to kill us all!”

“
Almost there,” said
Sterling. Sweat dribbled down the sides of his face and fell back
to splatter against the rear of the cabin.

On the sensor display, the drone swarm began
to converge. James nosed up hard, fighting the urge to pass out,
then spun in a new direction and brought the ship down again. His
vision turned red as the blood rushed to his face. Sara let out an
ear-piercing scream, but the maneuver threw off the drones, at
least for a moment. They had new troubles, though: re-entry flames
were already beginning to dance across the forward window.

The crater-pocked
wasteland of the slagged planet loomed dangerously close. The
shattered ruins of a planetary dome stabbed upward like the ribcage
of a dead animal, while dark gray lava flows weaved in and out of
the craggy mountains. A vast sea of rust-red sand dunes repeated
the same wavy patterns across the devastated planetscape. Their
colors mingled with the orange flames as the
Freedom Star
plummeted toward the
surface.

“
We’re going to die!” Sara
screamed. “We’re all going to die!”

A half-dozen alarms sounded all across the
ship, and the cabin lights flashed red.

“
Now, Captain!
Now!”

James threw the switch to initiate jump. The
familiar nausea swept through his body, filling his mouth with the
taste of bile. Relief washed over him as the view outside the
window flashed into the familiar glow of the stars.

Chapter 9

Sara sighed in relief as the alarms in the
cabin died down one by one. The rust-red desert planetscape, which
only moments ago had loomed so close, was now replaced by the soft,
milky glow of countless stars.

She tried to stand up, but her legs gave out
and she fell to the floor. James knelt down to help her.

“
Are you all
right?”

“
Yeah,” she said, cheeks
turning red. “I’m fine.”

“
We’re okay,” he said,
helping her up. “We made it out—we’re alive.”

“
That might be true,” said
Captain Jarvis, “but that little stunt you pulled nearly wrecked my
ship. With the damage we’ve sustained, I’ll be surprised if we make
it back in one piece.”

“
Not a problem,” said
Sterling. “I’ll get on it right away.”

“
Speaking of making it
back,” James said, “where the hell are we?”

“
Triangulating position
now,” said Sterling, glancing back at his computer display. “Looks
like we’re exactly sixty light-hours above the orbital plane. We’re
safe, at least for now.”

Sixty light-hours,
Sara repeated to herself, her head still
spinning. In an instant, they’d traveled so far it would take the
Hameji fleet at Gaia Nova almost two days to determine where they’d
gone.

“
We’re not out of this
yet,” said James. “It won’t take them long to scramble a flight
group to chase us. In an hour, this whole region of space is going
to be peppered with jump beacons.”

“
But we’re not a military
target,” said Captain Jarvis. “As horrible as it was, the massacre
was meant to send a message. They might let us slip by just get
that message get out.”

“
Perhaps, but do you really
want to risk our lives on it?”

“
We won’t have to,” said
Sterling. “We still have nearly half charge on the second jump
drive. Give it a couple of hours, and we’ll be more than a
light-year away.”

“
Blessed Earth,” James
exclaimed, the relief evident on his face. “That’s the last thing
they’ll be expecting, too. All right, let’s set the
coordinates.”

As the three of them went to work, Sara
palmed open the door and slipped out. They were safe—that was all
she needed to know. Better to make herself scarce now, before—

“
Not so fast,” said James,
following her out. He laid a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.
She caught her breath and turned around to face him.

“
What is it,
Lieutenant?”

“
That man you were with
back at the station—the one who escorted you to the airlock and
disappeared. Who is he?”

Sara’s palms went clammy. “I don’t know what
you’re talking about.”

“
Oh, I
think you do. When the Hameji attacked, Lars and the rest of the
delegates were on board the
Freedom
Star—
and yet, you weren’t. In fact, you
left the ship without telling anyone where you were going.
Why?”

He’s not going to let me
get out of this,
Sara realized. She
glanced over her shoulder—the only way this could get worse was if
Lars got involved. She had to contain this as quickly as
possible.

“
Can we talk about this in
my quarters? I’d prefer to keep this off the record.”

“
I can’t promise that. And
if we’re going to take this anywhere, it’ll be my
quarters.”

“
But you’re holding the
stowaway there,” she pointed out.

James’s cheeks reddened. “Fine. But don’t
try anything funny.”

As they walked toward Sara’s quarters,
Nina’s voice chimed through the jewel in her ear. “Mistress, you
appear to be upset,” the AI said. “Is there any way I can be of
help?”

“
No,” Sara muttered. James
gave her a quizzical look, but she ignored it and palmed open the
door.

The messy state of the room instantly made
her regret her choice of meeting place. It wasn’t too bad, but
several clothes were strewn across the bed, including a couple of
pairs of underwear. Now it was her time to blush.

“
Sorry about that,” she
said, stuffing the clothes out of sight. James stood and watched by
the door. Thankfully, it hissed shut before anyone else walked
in.

“
Now, let’s get to
talking,” said James. “What exactly were you doing back there on
the station?”

Sara paused to consider her words. She took
a deep breath and resisted the urge to shoot back a snarky
response.

“
I had a meeting with… a
friend. It wasn’t very important, and the delegation hadn’t yet
gotten to business, so I didn’t think there would be any harm in
running off on my own.”

James folded his arms and gave her a look
that said he wasn’t buying it. “Oh, sure. And your ‘friend’ somehow
managed to sneak you into the spaceport terminal, even with the
Hameji swarming all over the place?”

“
Yes, he did.”

“
What’s his name? What
exactly is the nature of your relationship?”

“
It’s none of your
business,” she said flatly.

“
Frankly, I think it
is.”

“
What makes you say
that?”

“
I risked my life to save
you, Sara,” he said. “Don’t you think I deserve to know
why?”

“
Performing your duty
doesn’t entitle you to special treatment.”

“
And what would you know of
my duty?”

She folded her arms and looked him squarely
in the eye. “You’re not the only one who puts their life on the
line. I may not carry a weapon or fly a fancy gunboat, Lieutenant,
but I am just as ready to die as you are.”

Her words took him aback, but only for a
moment. His eyes narrowed as he returned her glare.

“
If you’re so patriotic,
then what are you hiding from me?”

“
I’m not at liberty to tell
you.”

“
Do you want me to launch a
formal investigation into your activities? Because if it’s
necessary, I will.”

Dammit, James!
she wanted to scream. Instead, she drew a sharp
breath and sat down on the bed, her hands shaking. For the sake of
her mission, she absolutely could not allow him to do
that.

“
All right,” she said. “You
caught me. I was hoping to smuggle some contraband goods out of
Gaia Nova—just some petty goods, I swear.”

“
Is that all?”

“
Yes.”

James’s eyes narrowed. “I think you’re
lying.”

“
Okay, so some of the
contraband is a bit more serious, but—”

“
No, I think the smuggling
story is a cover. Lars told me your father was sending you as his
personal envoy in some kind of political scheme. Tell me about
that.”

Sara’s legs went numb, but she took a deep
breath and did her best to feign ignorance.

“
I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

“
Don’t try to play me,
Sara.”

He’s not going to let me
go until I tell him everything,
she
realized with dismay.
And even then, that
might not be enough.

“
All right, all right,” she
said, her heart pounding. “I’ll tell you, but this conversation is
strictly off-the-record. You have to promise me that you won’t
share this with anyone.”

“
No promises. I’ll decide
who and who not to tell after I hear it.”

I was afraid you’d say
that,
she thought to herself. Since there
was nothing she could do about it, she sighed and pressed
on.

“
First of all, I want to
make it clear that this has nothing to do with my or my father’s
political career. It has everything to do with providing for the
security and welfare of the Colony.”

“
Oh, yeah?” said
James.

She ignored him and continued.

“
For the past few years, my
father’s advisors have closely watched the economic situation in
the Karduna system. The outlook is extremely grim. Without the
agricultural base at K-4, there simply isn’t enough food production
to sustain us. Piracy is on the rise, and the deteriorating
security situation has made it impossible to rebuild. Unless
something significant changes in the next six months, a complete
collapse is inevitable.”

“
So?”

“
So the only way to prevent
that is to change things. And the only way to do that is to reach
out to help beyond the Karduna system.”

“
You’re not telling me
anything new,” said James. “Who are you involved with? What’s going
on?”

“
It’s…
complicated.”

“
Complicated enough to
establish a centralist dictatorship? Consolidate power until the
General Assembly becomes irrelevant?”

“
Don’t be an ass. My father
could never do that even if he wanted to.”

“
So what does he want to
do, then?”

Sara glanced over her shoulder, more out of
reflex than anything else. “Listen, you’ve really got to
promise—”