Heart of the Nebula (2 page)

“
Lone Spear! Lone
Spear!”
came the commander’s voice over the
intercom. “Pull back and regroup at once! Do you copy?”

It’s too late now,
James thought to himself. At least this time, they
weren’t the ones who had shot first.

“
Twelve seconds to impact,”
said Sterling, his voice raw and full of fear. “We need to pull
up!”

“
Negative,
Ensign.”

“
But—but we’re going to
die!”

We all have to go sometime.

“
Just hang in there. Get
ready to release drones on my mark.”

Eight seconds. Seven. The high-pitched
squeal turned into a scream.

Come on,
James thought to himself. Sweat trickled down the
back of his neck.

Five, four—

“
Release fighter drones,”
he ordered.

A series of popping noises filled the cabin.
“Drones away!”

The cluster of red vector
lines branched out into eight wildly dancing strands. The
Lone Spear
shuddered, and
a sudden jolt nearly threw him off his chair.

“
The shields!
I—”

James released a barrage of plasma cluster
pods and banked hard to miss the last enemy craft. Alarms blared,
and even with the dampers, the sudden change in momentum
practically yanked his guts through the floor.

But they were still alive.

James closed his eyes and let out a breath
he didn’t know he’d been holding. The alarms continued to blare in
their ears, red lights flashing all around them. He switched them
off and wiped his sweaty forehead.

“
Sterling,” said James,
“how are you doing back there? Feeling all right?”

“
N-not really, sir,” he
said, shifting in his seat. “I feel sick.”

“
Just hang on. I’m going to
bring us around.”

“
Right,
Captain.”

On the main screen, the red
vector lines shortened to little stumps as the enemy ships pitched
and rolled unpredictably. The
Lone
Spear’s
automated fighter drones, much less
massive than the gunboat itself, had already decelerated to match
velocity with their targets and were now shooting them to pieces.
In just under a minute, they had taken out three of the attackers,
and the clusterpods had crippled two more. What was more
encouraging, the other gunboats had rallied and were now moving to
defend the convoy.

“
Let’s check the damage
report,” said James, toggling his main screen. “What’s this? Shield
projectors are offline?”

“
I’m sorry, sir. The
shields were dropping too fast, so I—”

“
You ejected them?” The
rest of the damage didn’t look so bad: a couple of autolasers were
smashed and the forward armor had taken a heavy beating, but hull
integrity was nominal and all the critical systems were still
online.

“
Yes,” said Sterling. “I’m
sorry, sir.”

“
Don’t apologize,” said
James. “You did the right thing. If the shields had blown back
there, we would have been killed. When we get back home, I’m going
to put your name in for a commendation.”

“
Really? Th-thank you,
sir.”

James slowly pulled back on
the stick, bringing their nose around 180 degrees. For a while, the
room seemed to spin, but much more gently than before. Their
momentum had already taken them almost fifty kilometers from the
battle, and would easily take them another twenty before they had
fully decelerated from combat speeds. That was all right,
though—the enemy had lost the initiative, and now found themselves
outnumbered and outgunned in a very hostile environment. Even as he
swung the
Lone Spear
back around, two more red dots flickered and winked out on the
main screen. Two more kills.

“
Sterling,” said James,
“plot a course to the
Trident
and get ready to retrieve the fighter
drones.”

“
Wait—it’s
over?”

“
For us, yes.”

The young ensign drew in a sharp breath.
“W-we’re alive,” he said, as if no other realization could be more
profound. “Stars of Earth, we made it!”

James grinned and watched the map as the
last three enemy ships disengaged and made a hard reversal, heading
back to the Lagrange settlements. In just a few hours, the convoy
would be in deep enough space that pirates shouldn’t be a threat.
With the engagement as good as over, there was nothing else to do
but switch to autopilot and settle in for the long ride back to the
convoy.

* * * * *

“
Have you ever killed a
man?”

Danica Nova stared at James with cold,
narrowed eyes. Her short black hair was pulled back, her dark eyes
piercing him with their unflinching gaze. Even in a sweat-stained
t-shirt, she commanded such a presence that he couldn’t help but
answer.

“
No. Of course
not.”

“
Do you think you ever
could?”

“
Yes,” he said, a little
too quickly. She stared him in the eye and frowned. “I mean,
maybe,” he stuttered. “I don’t know. I think I could.”

Danica folded her arms. “There are two kinds
of people in this universe,” she said. “Those who can kill without
hesitation, and those who cannot. Sheep and wolves, in other words.
You know what a sheep is?”

“
Yes,” said James. “They
had pastures for them in the agri-domes on Kardunash IV,
before—well, before the Hameji came.”
Before everything fell apart.

“
And you know what wolves
are, too?”

“
No,” he
admitted.

Danica took a deep breath
and stood with her hands clasped smartly behind her. “The Old Earth
Archives tell of a time, long before spaceflight, when humanity
lived off of primitive agriculture. According to these records,
most
of the Earth’s surface was unsettled,
roughly analogous to the Outer Reaches today. Wolves were untamed
beasts who lived off the land, eating sheep or men or whatever else
they could hunt down and kill.

“
In civilized society, most
people are like sheep. They live in large, comfortable communities
where they think they’re safe from those who would harm them. But
out on the fringes, you’ll find the wolves. Those are the people
who can—and will—kill without hesitation. Those are the ones who
fight and win wars. Those are the ones who have the power to
destroy civilization.”

James tensed as he thought of Kardunash IV,
the capitol world of his home star, slagged to oblivion by the
invading Hameji battle fleets. Billions of lives, all snuffed out
in only a matter of hours.

“
Those are the Hameji, you
mean?”

“
Yes,” said Danica. “Those
are the Hameji.”

“
So what do I do, then?” he
asked. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

“
If you want to fight a
wolf, you have to become one.”

James felt the blood drain from his cheeks.
“You mean, I have to become like the Hameji? A monster?”

“
No,” said Danica. “Because
you see, on Old Earth, there were two kinds of wolves: those who
lived in the wild, and those who were tamed by man. The tame wolves
became sheepdogs—protectors of the sheep. They used their killing
instincts to hunt down the wolves.

“
You see, Ensign, the only
reason civilized society isn’t overrun by barbarians and criminals
is because of the sheepdogs. We think of our soldiers and policemen
as great heroes, when really, they have more in common with
murderers than with the people they protect. Instead of becoming
monsters, however, they learn to channel their natures for good—to
serve and protect, rather than to kill and destroy.”

To serve and
protect,
James thought.
Even if it means becoming a wolf to do it.

He’d thought over that conversation many
times in the years since. The universe outside of his home was like
a dark, black forest, filled with ravenous wolves. Could he ever
kill a man? Now, he did that almost every time he climbed into the
cockpit of his gunboat. Of course, it was easy to kill someone who
was a blip on a holoscreen, a faceless target fed to him by a
computer. It was harder to kill someone who was standing right in
front of you. He’d done it before, though, and would probably do it
again. And at the rate at which the security situation in the
Karduna system was deteriorating, that day would probably come
sooner rather than later.

That was why he could never
afford to forget what he was fighting for. His home, his people,
the citizens of the Colony—that was why he put his life on the
line, every time he took command of the
Lone Spear.
The thrill of battle and
the exhilaration of victory were not sufficient to be ends in
themselves. He might be a killer, but he was not a wolf, and would
never allow himself to become one.

At least, he desperately hoped so.

* * * * *

James knew he was in
trouble even before he climbed out of his gunboat and set foot on
the launch deck of the
Trident One.
Even so, he didn’t expect the commander to
confront him there personally.

“
Lieutenant McCoy,” said
Fleet Commander Maxwell, his jowled cheeks red with anger. “What
possessed you to disregard my orders?”

“
Sir,” said James, trying
very hard to keep his temper. “The conditions in the
field—”

“
To hell with the
conditions!” shouted the commander. “I can’t have trigger-happy
gunboat captains ignoring direct orders. Thanks to your antics,
we’ve already exceeded our requisitioned fuel allotment. And what
if those ships were civilian transports instead of
pirates?”

Then they wouldn’t have attacked us, you
empty-headed fool.

“
I did what I felt I had
to, sir,” said James, struggling to keep his voice low. “If we
hadn’t moved to intercept them when we did, they would have easily
breached our formation and attacked the convoy.”

Commander Maxwell pursed his lips and
narrowed his eyes. His uniform fit him poorly, the buttons nearly
bursting around his oversized stomach. Like most of the superior
officers, he had been a prominent business-man before joining the
corps. His training had come from books and seminars, not from
real-life military experience.

Not like James.

“
I expect my subordinate
officers to be team players, Lieutenant,” Commander Maxwell
continued. “You are not a team player. If you were an employee in
my company, I’d fire you at once.”

“
With all due respect, sir,
the Civil Defense Corps is not a for-profit
corporation.”

Maxwell snorted in anger and drew himself up
to his full height, which still came just below James’s eye level.
“You have a problem with authority, Lieutenant, and I can’t allow
it. Because of your insubordination, I have no choice but to send
you to the brig until we put into port.”

James clenched his fists as the door hissed
open behind him. Footsteps came—the commander’s personal bodyguard,
no doubt, coming to take him away. Half of him wanted to lash out
and vent his frustration, but the other half—the smarter
half—forced him to remain calm. They had already passed the most
dangerous leg of the journey. Another pirate attack would have to
cross so much space that even Commander Maxwell would be able to
see it coming.

Hands clasped his shoulders from behind.
“Lieutenant?”

James looked the commander in the eye and
saluted. “Sir.” Maxwell blinked and hesitated for a moment before
returning the salute.

As the guards marched James
out the door and into the narrow hallway of the
Trident One,
they passed Ensign
Sterling near the bridge. The boyish officer looked at them in
bewilderment, his normally cheery face a picture of
confusion.

“
Captain? Where are they
taking you?”

“
Sorry, Sterling,” said
James. “Looks like you won’t be getting that commendation anytime
soon.” The guards marched him into a nearby elevator, and the doors
hissed shut behind him.

Chapter 2

Sara Galbraith-Dickson stepped into her cozy
apartment and dropped her workout bag on the fold-out couch set
into the nearest wall. As the door hissed shut behind her, she took
off her sweaty T-shirt and dropped it in the laundry hamper, noting
that she’d have to wash her clothes before long. That could wait,
though—she had other, more pressing things to do.

“
Welcome back,” came the
slightly monotone voice of her personal AI. “Did you have a good
training session at the dojo?”

“
Yes, thank you,” she said
as she unstrapped her wrist console and plugged it into the
computer terminal. The sidebar on the holoscreen displayed a few
news stories, but none of them stood out at a glance.

“
Excellent. I’m glad you
did.”

Sara knew that the AI didn’t really care how
she was doing—it was only programmed to say that so it could
determine her personality and adjust its responses accordingly.
Still, she didn’t mind the artificial companionship.

“
Did anyone leave a
message?” she asked as she keyed open the door to her bathroom. The
familiar smell of half a dozen hygiene products met her nose the
moment she stepped inside.