Heart of the Nebula (29 page)

“
No,” Lars admitted. “I
suppose not.”

James grinned. “Trust me, Lars. This is my
game.”

What are you doing?
Sara wanted to scream.
How do you expect him to take a comment like that?

To her immense surprise, a smile spread
across Lar’s face.

“
You’re one hell of a
bastard, James, for throwing us into this predicament.”

“
What can I say? I learned
from the best.”

“
Fair enough. And I have to
admit, it makes me feel a lot better to know that you’re in on
this.”

“
Better the devil you know
than the devil you don’t, eh?”

“
That’s the first rule of
politics: choose your enemies wisely.”

“
Enemies, and
friends.”

They stood up and embraced each other. The
sight made Sara’s jaw drop.

“
Can I count on your
support, then?” James asked.

“
If by ‘support,’ you mean
someone to keep you in check, then yes. But I won’t sabotage your
plan.”

“
Even without seeing it
first?”

“
What can I say?” said
Lars. “At this point, we don’t have much of a choice. Just no more
keeping secrets, okay?”

James didn’t come here to
get Lars into his camp,
she thought to
herself.
He didn’t even come to get his
support, though he got it anyway. He came for the same reason I
came to him—to be as honest as possible. And somehow, it worked
better than anything else he could have done.

While she mused on that, James said goodbye
and headed to the door. Soon, they were both out in the corridor
again.

“
You really meant it,
didn’t you?” she asked as they stepped onto the
elevator.

“
About what?” he
said.

“
About coming to set things
right.”

The elevator doors hissed shut on the empty
corridor. With the curfew still in force, they were completely
alone.

“
Well, of course,” said
James. “Lars is my friend.”

“
There wasn’t anything else
you were after? Any other purpose you had in mind?”

He frowned. “You mean like something
political? No, Sara. That’s not how I treat my friends.”

He really means it,
she told herself.
He’s
not like my father at all.

On impulse, she took him by the shoulders
and kissed him. He stiffened at first, but as she pressed her lips
against his, he all but turned to putty in her hands. His hands
gravitated to her waist, and he held onto her gently until she
pulled away.

“
Wh-what was that?” he
stammered.

Sara hardly knew how to answer. It wasn’t
clear what had come over her, but it felt right to her somehow. In
fact, it felt like the most righteous thing she’d done in
weeks.

“
You’re a good man, James.
The people are lucky to have you.”

And so am I,
she added silently.

Chapter 14

James’s legs went weak as he walked down the
hallway to Sara’s apartment. Two dayshifts had passed since she’d
kissed him in the elevator, but he remembered it as if it had
happened just a few hours ago. Everything that had happened since
then seemed to merge into one indistinct blur, but the moment when
her lips had touched his was as sharp and as clear as anything he
could remember.

Stop it,
he told himself.
You’re
not paying her a social visit, you’re joining her on Colony
business. Stay focused.

Her father had called a meeting of the inner
circle, but due to the sensitivities of the political situation,
they were forced to meet over a private channel instead of
in-person. James had nowhere he could go to log in to the
conference, so Sara had invited him to join her at her
apartment.

As he neared her door, James couldn’t help
but notice how different her deck was from the other residential
decks. The light fixtures were more decorative, the walls painted
with a colorful geometric design that ran along the floorboards.
Here and there, little potted plants added to the decoration. Every
other light was turned off to conserve electricity, but still, the
place felt much more upscale than most residential areas of the
station.

At length, he reached her door. He paused
for a moment to gather himself and calm his nerves before
activating the door chime. Just as his hand reached for the access
panel, though, the door slid open.

“
Hello, James,” said Sara,
smiling on the other side of the doorway. “Come in.”

James’s breath caught in
his throat. She was wearing the same red dress from their dinner
aboard the
Freedom Star,
with a black cardigan that barely came down to her
waist. The dress fit her figure so perfectly that his eyes were
instantly drawn to her curves.

“
How did you know I was,
uh…?”

“
That you were coming?
Check your wrist console.”

He glanced down at his
wrist and noticed that he’d forgotten to change his privacy
settings.
Damn!
he
swore to himself as he hurried to shut the device off.

“
It’s okay,” said Sara.
“Since it’s just the two of us, I doubt your visit will attract
much attention.” She turned and walked back toward the couch, her
hips swaying with each step.

“
Sorry,” said James,
palming the door shut. “I’m such an idiot.”

She laughed, and he realized that she was
just as nervous as he was—and more than capable of keeping that
hidden from him. The fact that she hadn’t spoke volumes.

“
Why are you so dressed
up?” he asked.

“
No particular reason,” she
answered, leaning over to enter her password into the apartment’s
computer terminal. “I just wanted to look good. What do you
think?”

“
I think you look
fantastic.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder and
smiled. “Thanks.”

So much for staying
focused,
James thought to himself. He began
to doubt the meeting was the only reason she’d invited him
over.

“
How have you been these
past couple of days?” he asked as he sat down on the
couch.

“
Better,” she said,
standing back up.

Better than what?
James wondered. It didn’t seem right to ask,
though. She sat down on the couch next to him, close enough that
their legs almost touched.

“
Nina, activate wallscreen
and connect to secure channel 22a.”

James frowned. “Who’s—”

“
Yes, mistress,” an
automated female voice replied from overhead. The wall opposite the
couch flickered and turned into a screen with a loading
bar.

“
You have a personal AI?”
James asked.

“
I do, indeed.”

“
Do you have any idea how
expensive these things are?”

Sara shrugged. “The kernel for this gestalt
was copied from an older model that belonged to my mother. It’s not
as expensive as you think.”

“
What about the safeguards?
If the AI was patched from—”

“
James,” said Sara, putting
a hand on his arm to silence him. “It’s okay. The gestalt is
stable—Nina’s not going to evolve into a super-intelligence anytime
soon.”

But it could if someone
tampered with the safeguards.
And since the
AI had been patched together from various disparate sources, the
safeguards were far from tamper-proof. Before the Hameji invasion,
the market for artificial intelligences had been highly regulated,
with strict registration and licensing guidelines for independent
contractors. James didn’t doubt that Sara’s home-built AI would
have been illegal before the occupation—just another reminder that
the patrician played by a different set of rules.

“
Nina’s not just a toy,”
Sara said, anticipating his concerns. “She’s a tool. Without her, I
wouldn’t have been able to fulfill my mission at the
conference.”

“
But you’re not above
keeping it for your own personal use.”

“
What can I say? This job
has its perks.”

Before he could respond, the wallscreen
flashed on, showing the patrician sitting at a desk. Along either
side, smaller images showed the other members of the patrician’s
inner circle.

“—
ntinue to coordinate
that,” the patrician was saying. He looked straight at the screen
and nodded. “Sara, Commander McCoy. Glad that you could make
it.”

“
Did we miss anything?”
Sara asked.

“
Only the preliminaries. It
appears that I’m about to be impeached, so this will likely be our
last meeting.”

He said it so nonchalantly that it took a
moment for the words to sink into James’s mind. The patrician,
impeached? James had thought the General Assembly would at least
wait until after the exodus plans had been finalized.

“
If we may continue, sir, I
have a report on the current security situation,” said one of the
other members of the circle. The main screen switched from the
patrician to him.

“
Very well,” said the
patrician.

“
Thank you, sir. We’ve had
three incidents on the lower decks in the past twenty-four hours,
but the rest of the station is calm. Businesses opened this upshift
as normal, and we had no reported break-ins or other acts of
violence.”

“
That’s very good,” said
the patrician. “How is the backup power holding?”

“
Not very well,” said one
of the engineers. “We’ll need to impose another twenty percent cut
in station-wide energy consumption to avoid any further
blackouts—that, or reduce the charge rate of the jump
drive.”

“
Commander McCoy, have we
managed to evade the Hameji?”

That’s me,
James realized. He sat up straight and cleared his
throat.

“
It appears that we have,
sir. We’re more than a full parsec from Karduna now, and the Hameji
haven’t interdicted us yet. It seems they were expecting us to head
for the galactic south, towards the remnants of the New Gaian
Empire.”

“
That’s very good news,
Commander,” said the patrician. “In your estimation, is it safe to
divert energy from the jump drives to the civilian
infrastructure?”

James thought about it for a couple moments.
“I’m not sure, sir. I’d at least like to put another light-year
behind us.”

“
Duly noted. We’ll give you
another twenty-four hours.”

It seemed strange to attend a meeting while
sitting on a couch in Sara’s apartment. James glanced over at her
and saw that she had pulled out a tablet to take notes. He wasn’t
sure whether to feel embarrassed that he didn’t have one as
well.

“
Now that we’ve reviewed
the reports,” said the patrician, “let’s get down to business. We
have only four or five weeks before we arrive at the rendezvous
point outside of Zeta Nabat. We not only need to make sure that we
can provide for the basic needs of our citizens during the voyage,
but that we have the necessary resources to outfit the ramjets for
the exodus. Do we have enough supplies on hand to follow through
with the original designs?”

“
Unfortunately, no,” said
one of the engineers. “When the Hameji attacked us, we were
expecting a convoy carrying critical components. Without them, we
won’t be able to build nano-smelters for industrial chemical
synthesis, and our aquaponics units might take longer to bring
online.”

“
How will that affect
us?”

“
I don’t exactly know, sir,
but—”

“
Then prepare a detailed
report. The General Assembly should decide on colony ship captains
within the week, so you can answer to them if I’m no longer in
office. But the designs need to be finalized before we
arrive.”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
What a mess,” James
muttered under his breath. Sara looked up at him quizzically, but
he didn’t want to interrupt, so he pointed back at the
screen.

“
How are our food stores?”
the patrician asked. “Does anyone have an inventory?”

“
I do,” said a young woman
wearing a warehouse worker’s uniform. “We have enough to
comfortably feed the population for the next two months, but after
that, our stores will probably start to run out.”

“
Two months!” someone
interjected. “How did our food supplies get so low?”

The woman held up her hands apologetically.
“We were supposed to get more on that convoy.”

“
Then we’ll have to stretch
it out,” said the patrician, the video feed returning to him as he
retook control of the conversation. “As soon as we arrive, we
should put as many people into cryostasis as possible. Towards that
end, we’ll need to identify every citizen who is healthy enough to
go into stasis, and distribute the population evenly for every
ship.”

“
That’s something we can
hand off to the General Assembly,” said Sara.

“
True,” said her father,
“but we only have a few weeks until our plans need to be
implemented. We need to prepare our recommendations now so that the
General Assembly can consider each issue in a swift and orderly
fashion.”