Heart of the Nebula (28 page)

“
Done what?”

“
Wrapped you around my
finger, so that you’d do everything I wanted. He wanted me to
seduce you, so that we could use you to accomplish our
plans.”

James’s arms tensed, and a chill ran down
his back. He edged away from her, as if she’d just turned into a
monster before his eyes. In some ways, perhaps she had.

“
James—please, don’t be
upset with me. I’m telling you this because I don’t want to do
that.”

“
But your father
does.”

“
My father wants a lot from
me,” she said with a snarl. “I doubt I’ll ever live up to all of
his expectations—and now, I no longer want to.”

What’s going on?

“
Uh, Sara? Are you
okay?”

“
Yeah,” she said, taking a
deep breath. “I’m sorry, you probably didn’t need to hear that. But
before we get dragged any further into this mess, I just… I wanted
to be honest. You understand, don’t you? Please tell me you
understand.”

She gave him such a pleading look that his
heart couldn’t help but go out to her. He searched her eyes for any
sign of deception, but saw none. Whatever else she was after, she
was being sincere.

“
I think so, yeah,” he told
her. “Thanks for coming clean.”

“
You mean that?”

“
Of course. But your
father—”

“
Let’s not talk about my
father right now. What are you going to do, now that you know his
plans for you?”

He thought for a second. “I don’t know. Are
you sure he has the right idea? I mean, I’m not exactly top brass
material.”

“
The people won’t follow
you because of your rank, they’ll follow you because of what you’ve
done for them. And I know you, James—you won’t let them
down.”

She put an encouraging hand on his shoulder,
and gave him an unexpected hug. He savored the feeling, rubbing her
back as he returned the embrace. An idea suddenly struck him, and
he leaped to his feet.

“
Lars—where’s
Lars?”

Sara frowned. “Lars Stewart? What do you
want with him?”

“
I need to reconcile things
with him. Will my parents be safe if I leave them?”

“
Yes, but—”

Before she could finish her thought, he left
the bedroom and hurried to the entry hall. The patter of her feet
told him that she was close behind.

“
Are you going somewhere,
dear?” his mother asked.

“
Sorry, Mom,” he said as he
hastily put on his shoes. “I’ll be back again soon. I
promise.”

“
Son—”

But before anyone else could protest, he was
already out the door, with Sara close behind.

* * * * *

“
James, can we stop to
think this through?” Sara pleaded as she struggled to keep up with
him. The corridor was still deserted from the curfew, but
unfortunately, none of the soldiers were here to stop
him.

“
No,” he said, not even
glancing over his shoulder at her. “This is something I need to
take care of immediately.”

They stopped at a door on the far end of the
hallway. James palmed the access panel, and a chime sounded on the
other side.

“
But James, Lars has more
connections than anyone but my father. If you show him your
hand—”

“
Lars is my friend. He
won’t betray me.”

Sara swallowed.
I very much doubt that.

She tried not to imagine
how the news organizations were going to spin this.
Rogue Commander Confronts Prominent Statesman in
his Home. Alleged Savior of Colony Ambushes Former Best
Friend.
How was she going to put a positive
spin on all the fallout? She didn’t think she could—

The door hissed open, cutting off her
panicked thoughts. Lars stared out at them, a look of undisguised
hostility written on his face.

“
James.”

“
Mind if we come
in?”

Lars’s eyes narrowed as he glanced from
James to Sara and back again.

“
Lars, we need to
talk.”

“
Yes,” Lars said flatly.
“Yes, we do.”

For a moment, Sara thought he would shut the
door in her face, but instead he stepped aside and let them both
in. She followed close behind James, trying her best not to look
too conspicuous. If ever there were a time she wanted to be
invisible, it was now.

The apartment was little more than a
bachelor pad. A pile of dirty clothes lay on the floor next to the
bed, while unwashed pans were stacked on the stove-top in the
kitchenette. An old, threadbare couch lay on the wall opposite a
computer terminal, with sticky notes lined up along the bottom of
the holoscreen.

“
You’ve been busy, I see,”
said James. He plopped down on the couch and spread his arms along
the back. Sara joined him a bit reluctantly, sitting on the edge,
while Lars sat across from them on a collapsible wall
chair.

“
All of us seem to be busy
these days,” said Lars, with a pointed look in Sara’s direction.
Sara cringed, but she had no idea what to say to diffuse the
tension.

“
Have you read the latest
news?” James asked.

“
As a matter of fact, no,”
said Lars. “The main power came back on only three minutes before
you arrived. Before that, it seems that all the broadcast channels
were, shall we say,
appropriated
.”

“
My father is doing
everything he can to return the situation to normal,” said
Sara.

“
And he plans to do that by
locking us up in our apartments and cutting us all off from each
other?”

“
What have you heard?”
James asked.

Lars sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“Far too little. All I know is that someone jumped the entire
Colony out into deep space. I suppose you’re here to fill me in on
the rest.”

“
It was me, Lars. I was the
one who did it.”

Sara’s gut clenched.
Did you really have to lead with that?

“
What are you talking
about?” Lars asked, frowning.

“
It was me who jumped the
Colony into deep space. I did it because the Hameji had just sent a
battle fleet to wipe us all out. We didn’t have a chance of
defending ourselves against that, so I took the initiative and
saved us.”

“
But—but how? With what? A
jump drive powerful enough to jump a whole station would be
impossible to hide, unless—”

“
Unless it was always
there,” said James, finishing his sentence. “You remember how you
told me that the patrician was up to something? Well, this was
it.”

Lars’s frown contorted into a look of shock
and horror. If James had told him that a nuclear device was about
to detonate and kill them all, Sara doubted that he would have
looked any different.

“
Are you
serious?”

“
I’m serious, Lars. The
jump drive was secretly installed during the War of Independence,
to give us a way to escape if things went bad. After the war, the
drive remained a secret.”

“
And you came to know this…
how?”

James swallowed and took a
deep breath.
This is when he tells Lars
that he switched sides,
Sara realized. She
thought of what her father had said about the people needing a bad
guy, and knew what she had to do.

“
James knows about this
because my father and I recruited him,” she said. “He’s part of a
secret council that we organized to plan an exodus from
Hameji-occupied space.”

Lars’s expression turned from shock to
righteous anger. “You organized a secret council? To plan a—an
exodus?”

“
Yes,” said James. “The
plan is to take our people into the Good Hope Nebula, to the Chira
system, where the Hameji can’t get to us. We’ll trade the Colony
for a fleet of sublight ramjets, which we’ll re-purpose as
generation ships. Once we arrive, we’ll colonize the system and
make it our home.”

From the ambivalent expression on Lars’s
face, Sara could tell that he wasn’t sold on the idea.

“
Holy stars of Earth,
James. The patrician’s secret council planned all that out without
bringing it to a vote?”

“
Yes. But Lars, it’s not as
bad as you think it is.”

“
Oh no, James. It’s
worse.”

Lars narrowed his eyes and leaned against
the wall, his arms folded as he stared at them both. Like an old
star at the end of its life, he seemed ready to explode.

“
I know you think I
betrayed you,” James said. “And in some ways, maybe I
did.”

“
Not just me—the whole damn
colony. How long were you in the know?”

“
Not long. Sara didn’t tell
me about the patrician’s plans until after the conference. She
convinced me it was better to keep it secret—but I swear, we were
just about to go public with everything.”

“
Yeah,” said Lars, rolling
his eyes. “But not until it was too late for any of us to opt
out.”

“
There was nothing we could
do about the Hameji attack. We’re lucky that the jump drive was
charged at all.”

“
And who made that decision
without consulting the General Assembly?”

“
James just saved your
life,” said Sara, unable to hold back any longer. “He saved all of
our lives. And if you’re looking for someone to blame, why don’t
you ask yourself why the Hameji attacked us in the first place? If
the conference—”

“
That’s enough,” James
snapped at her. “I won’t have you attack my friend.”

The strength of his reaction surprised her
so much that she didn’t know what to say. For a second, she felt as
if he’d turned on her. If nothing else, he was protective of his
friends.

“
The fact remains that our
democracy has been profoundly violated,” said Lars. “If we’re going
to preserve our democratic values, how can we possibly let this
stand?”

James sighed. “I know it looks bad,” he
said, “but if we’d left this decision up to the people, half of the
political action groups would have ripped the plan to shreds, and
every minute detail would have gone to committee. It would have
taken years to work out the details, and by then, we would have all
starved to death.”

“
So you no longer trust the
people? You think we should give up our democratic freedoms and
turn the Colony into a dictatorship?”

“
No!” said James. “Not at
all. Democracy is important, but—”

“
But what?”

James paused, choosing his words
carefully.

This isn’t working,
Sara thought to herself.
Lars isn’t going to buy this.
Her
mind raced as she tried to figure how to do damage
control.

“
Lars,” James continued,
“we’re in the middle of the worst crisis the Colony has ever seen.
We can’t afford to fight about this—we need to come to an
agreement. If we don’t, how are we going to get through
this?”

“
An agreement?” Lars
sneered. “Is that what you call what we’re working
towards?”

“
Well, you have to admit,
our choices are—”

“
Yeah. Either you can spend
the rest of your life on a rickety generation ship, or you can
surrender to the Hameji and hope that they have mercy on you.
Thanks, but where I’m from, we call that blackmail.”

“
Lars, I’m sorry—I really
am.”

“
Tell that to the people.
Or do you plan to tell them that you saved them?”

James’s cheeks burned with anger, but he
remained stoically silent for several uncomfortable moments. Sara
shifted nervously, waiting for his response.

“
Lars,” he said at length,
“I never meant to betray you—I never meant to betray anybody. All I
wanted was to do what’s right.”

Lars stared at him long and hard. Sara
opened her mouth to speak, but realized it was better for her to
wait. James had made his play, and the ball was in Lar’s court
now.

“
Denying our basic
democratic principles is not ‘right,’” said Lars, his voice low.
“What possessed you to think it was?”

“
I haven’t denied our
principles,” said James. “I’m trying to save them.”

“
Save them?
How?”

“
By—look, I know you think
the patrician is setting himself up to be a dictator, and that by
colluding with him I’m no better. But that’s not true. I’m not
trying to usurp power—I’m just trying to serve and
protect.”

“
Like a
sheepdog?”

“
Exactly!” said James,
brightening at once. “Like a sheepdog.”

Sara frowned.
A sheepdog?

“
You think that the people
are like sheep,” said Lars, pointing an accusatory finger at him.
“You think that they need people like you to protect them from all
the wolves. Well, you’re wrong, James. Your analogy is flawed. The
people aren’t sheep to be herded. They’re free agents, capable of
ruling themselves.”

“
When the Hameji attacked,
did we have time to call for a vote?” James asked.