Heart of the Nebula (36 page)

“
Good. Let’s
go.”

They stepped out of the airlock together,
into the mass of prisoners waiting to be led to the colony ship.
“Listen up!” James shouted. “The Nabattans know we’re here. I want
everyone who can run to—”

Gunshots sounded down the station end of the
docking arm—their only exit. The women screamed, and a sickening
feeling grew in Sara’s stomach.

James cursed again and ran off towards the
shooting. Without thinking, she ran after him.

“
Where are you
going?”

“
To stop the soldiers,” he
said. “Keep the women from—”

The sound of bullets overhead made them duck
for cover. Through the far doorway, Nabattan soldiers began pouring
in, cutting them off.

Sara stared at them, knowing with a
gut-wrenching certainty that this was the end. Then as she watched,
they turned to face some unseen thing on the other side of the
partition—something that terrified them. Some turned to run, but
before they could get to cover a mag-rail train burst through the
massive docking arm airlock, shattering the door and spraying
shrapnel everywhere. Though the colonists were mostly safe, dozens
of soldiers near the door were smashed by the debris.

“
What the hell was
that?”

“
Nina,” said Sara, barely
believing it. “Nina 2.0.”

The freight crane on the mag-rail crane spun
wildly, smashing the soldiers against the walls and wreckage. James
lifted his gun and fired at the rest, finishing them off.

“
Let’s go,” James shouted,
motioning with his arm. “Everyone who can run, come with me. The
rest of you, into the shuttle!”

The women didn’t have to be told twice. With
James’s men supervising, about a dozen of them came forward—among
them, the stowaway girl, Kyla. Sara acknowledged her with a nod,
but both of them were in too much shock to say anything.

“
All right,” said James.
“Let’s
move
,
people!”

With the Nabattan soldiers dead or dying,
the freight crane went eerily dead. Sara ran over the wreckage and
bodies as quickly as she could, struggling to keep up.

“
Lead them on ahead,” said
James, stopping to let them pass. “I’ll spot them from the
back.”

“
But James, are
you—”

“
No one gets left behind.
Now
move
!”

* * * * *

He came back for
us,
Kyla thought as she sprinted down the
corridor.
He actually came
back.

There was no time for reflection, though—the
gunfire behind her was testament enough of that. She sprinted
through the dimly-lit corridor as fast as her legs could carry her,
passing the other girls along the way. As they rounded a corner,
three colonists fell into step alongside them, carrying hammers and
tools for weapons. The urgency in their eyes propelled her even
faster.

“
Into the airlock!” James
shouted from behind. “Go, go, go!”

They ran out into a wide
open space, not unlike the cargo hangar where Kyla had stowed away
on the
Freedom Star.
This one, however, was almost empty. A row of containers were
stacked on the far end near the freight airlock and a couple of
mag-lifts sat dormant in the center of the room, but there was a
long stretch of dangerously open space between her and the
colonists waiting by the airlock on the other side.

About halfway to the airlock, shots rang out
behind her. Kyla screamed and dove for the floor, covering her
head. She looked up and saw James taking cover behind the nearest
mag-lift, returning fire at an unseen enemy.

We aren’t going to make it!

Adrenaline coursed through
her veins as she scrambled desperately for someplace to hide, but
the
ratatat
of
gunfire made her duck and cover her head in terror. To her left,
one of the colonists spun and fell to the floor, blood streaming
from a wound in his neck. A girl screamed, and someone else fell
behind her.

“
Come on!” the patrician’s
daughter shouted. “We’re almost there, see? To the
airlock!”

Kyla tried to stand up, but
her legs wouldn’t move. Every part of her being screamed at her to
run, run,
run,
but
her body was frozen with fear. She was going to die here—she knew
that. All of them were going to die.

At that moment, a grinding metallic squeal
sounded from the ceiling. Kyla glanced up and saw the massive
loading cranes slowly come to life, reaching down like monstrous
claws. With a terrible groan, they swung at the pirates firing on
them and crashed into their midst. Screams of terror replaced the
sound of gunfire.

“
Get everyone to the ship!”
James shouted. “No one gets left behind!”

Someone lifted Kyla to her feet. That was
all she needed to break free and run. Bodies lay bloodied all
around her, but she ignored them in her mad dash for the airlock.
Once inside she made for a dark corner and curled up with her knees
against her chest.

James may have come for them, but that did
not make her feel safe. As the sound of gunfire outside the airlock
died down and people began to drag the dead and wounded into the
corridors of the ship, she curled up tighter and tried in vain to
shut it all out.

* * * * *

“
What’s our status?” James
asked as he barreled onto the bridge. Sterling was in the
engineer’s seat, with Lars at astrogation. The pilot’s chair was
empty.

“
We’re powered up and
ready, sir,” Sterling answered him. “Ship is fully operational,
though we don’t have enough fuel to—”

“
Punch it,” said James,
slipping into the pilot’s chair. “Get us the hell out of
here.”

Behind him, Sara took a seat at the comms
station, though of course there was little for her to do except
watch. The bulkheads rumbled as the engines came to life. James hit
a series of keys on his control panel and started the undocking
process.

“
Did you get them?” Lars
asked. His voice was unusually low.

“
We did,” said James. “All
hundred of them or so. The bastards kidnapped girls from every
colony ship.”

“
How many people died to
rescue them?”

The ship lurched ever so slightly as it
broke free of the docking restraints. The high-pitched groan of
metal on metal gave way to silence, and the starfield slowly began
to turn.

“
I don’t know,” James
admitted. “Ten, twenty—we’ll have time to count later.”

“
We’ve got a couple of
signals coming up on the rear sensors,” said Sterling. “Coming in
fast, sir—looks like gunboats.”

“
Damn!” James swore. “Do we
have any weapons? Anything we can—”

“
Look!” said Sara. She
pointed to the rear video feed, which showed the gunboats as they
closed in. In the foreground, a station turret swiveled and began
firing—at the Nabattans.

“‘
Atta girl, Nina!” said
James, pumping his fist. The nearest gunboat exploded into flame,
while the others broke off in confusion.

“
Nina?” said Lars. “Who’s
that?”

“
The AI we used to hack the
station,” said Sara. “She’s in full control of the place now, but
we should get out just in case.”

Lars frowned, then his eyes grew wide as
realization dawned on him. “My God,” he said. “You released a
super-intelligence.”

“
Where’s that shuttle?”
James asked. “Sterling, bring up the scanners. Sara, check the
comms.”

“
I can’t believe you would
stoop to this level,” Lars went on unheeded. “To think that
we—”

“
I’ve got an unarmed
shuttle bearing one-six-seven degrees and coming in fast,” said
Sterling. “No transponder signal, but we’ve got an incoming
message.”

“
Sara?” said James,
glancing at her over his shoulder.

“
Uh, just a second, I’m not
sure how these controls are supposed to work. Maybe if
I—”

“—
eady to dock! Repeat, we
are ready to dock!” came Alex’s frantic voice over the bridge
loudspeakers.

“
Copy,” said James. “I see
you. Head to the starboard docking node and—”

At that moment, an explosion flashed in the
rear video feed, in the direction of Alex’s shuttle. The
transmission became garbled, and a point on the scanners winked
out.

“
Alex? Alex, are you
there?”

“
He’s gone, Captain,” said
Sterling. “The shuttle… they must have…”

A horrible sinking feeling grew in the pit
of James’s stomach. How many of his people had tried to make it out
on that shuttle? Thirty? Fifty? His hands went clammy, and the
blood drained from his cheeks.

“
Who shot them?” he asked
softly. “Was it the pirates or the station?”

“
I don’t know, sir,” said
Sterling. “All we know is that they’re gone.”

James squeezed his hands into fists and
slammed them against the control panel. “No!” he wailed. “Why
did—why didn’t we—”

“
We’re not clear, sir!
We’ve got to keep going!”

Yes,
James thought, even as guilt and rage threatened to cloud his
mind.
There’s no time to mourn our
mistakes now. We have to get the others to safety.

“
Full power to the engines,
Sterling,” he said, his voice shaking. “There’s nothing for us
here.”

The colony ship accelerated, pushing them
all against the backs of their seats. A hand reached out and patted
James on the shoulder. It was Sara.

“
It’s okay,” she tried to
console him. “You did good back there, James. Real
good.”

But her words couldn’t bring back those he
had failed to save.

Chapter 18

“
Is that a person down
there? Hello?”

Kyla squeezed her knees against her chest
and pretended she couldn’t hear the man who was standing over her.
That didn’t make him go away, however. He squatted down in front of
her hiding place and put a hand on her arm.

“
Hey, are you all right?
It’s okay, you can come out now. You’re safe.”

I’m never safe,
Kyla thought to herself. Still, she did as the man
said and climbed out of her little niche.

“
Hey, I know you,” said the
man. “You’re that girl who’s with the McCoys, aren’t
you?”

Kyla nodded silently.

The man regarded her for a moment,
scratching his thick black beard. He was large and burly, with wide
shoulders and hands that were tough and calloused, but his eyes
were gentle enough to set her at ease somewhat. He didn’t have the
same look in his eyes that bad men had.

“
Here, come with me,” he
said. “I’ll take you to them.”

Kyla followed him through the winding
corridor of the colony ship. The walls and bulkheads were a drab
gray, the lights colorless and a little harsh. They flickered in
places, as if they were about to break down. It reminded her a bit
of the lower decks where she used to scavenge for food, except
there were no piles of garbage and the place didn’t smell of urine.
Still, the air was noticeably stale, even after breathing it for
several hours.

The corridor bent slightly to the right, so
that she could never see more than a few dozen feet in front of
her. That, more than anything else, set her on edge. She would hear
footsteps up ahead, and moments later the person would be right on
top of her. They passed several people this way, and each time,
Kyla had to suppress the urge to run.

Flashbacks from the rescue kept popping into
her mind. The rattling of a noisy ventilator sounded like gunfire,
the laughter of a small group of friends like the wailing of those
who were shot and wounded. She shut her eyes and could see the
loading cranes swinging like monstrous claws, smashing people left
and right. Above all else, she could hear James shout:

No one gets left behind!

“
Kyla?”

They’d arrived at the room on the ship where
James’s parents were staying. Jessica’s eyes lit up from the other
side of the doorway, and she rushed over to Kyla with open
arms.

“
Kyla, it’s you! Oh, thank
God—we thought we’d lost you!”

“
Found her hiding in an
empty EVA suit locker out by the main airlock,” said the man. “She
seems a bit shaken, but I think she’ll be all right.”

“
Thanks, Don,” said James’s
father. “We appreciate you looking out for us.”

“
Hey, we’ve all got to
watch out for each other now,” said the man. “After all, we’re on
the same starship.”

After a little more small talk, the man
parted ways and left the three of them alone. Jessica led Kyla into
their quarters, which were just as drab as the rest of the ship but
small enough to still feel cozy. The only piece of furniture in the
main room was a military cot in the corner. Kyla sat down on it and
curled up.

“
Are you all right, dear?”
Jessica asked as she sat down next to her. “We were worried about
you.”

“
Where’s James?” she
asked.

“
James is busy with his
command,” said Adam. “We probably won’t see him for a while. He’s
staying in separate quarters, too, up closer to the
bridge.”