Heart of the Nebula (44 page)

He turned away and bit his lip. Deirdre
scooted close to him and gently massaged his neck. The tension in
his body slowly leaked out under her touch.

“
You’re not as careless as
you think you are,” she said. “Do you remember a girl named Kyla
Stewart?”

James frowned. “You mean Kyla Jeppson?”

“
Jeppson? Oh, her maiden
name. Of course that’s how you’d remember her.”

“
Lars married that stowaway
girl?”

Deirdre laughed. “That’s probably how you’d
remember her too. After you went into cryo, she married Lars and
became like a mother to the new generation of colonists. Almost
every family has some story about her. And guess who she had
stories about.”

“
I can’t believe it,” said
James. The shock on his face made her wonder how much he’d
heard

“
Well,” said Deirdre, “if
you think that’s weird, consider this: I’m her great
granddaughter.”

James’s jaw dropped, and his eyes went wide.
“Are you serious?”

“
That’s right. And if it
weren’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be here right now.”

For a long while, neither of them said
anything. James blinked a few times, but couldn’t bring himself to
say anything until he rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

“
This is too
weird.”

At that, Deirdre couldn’t help but
laugh.

“
I’m sorry,” she said
quickly. “It’s just—”

“
No, you’re fine. I
probably look like an idiot right now.”

“
Hey,” she said, putting an
arm on his shoulder. “Go easy on yourself, James. There’s no sense
in beating yourself up.”

He sighed and shook his head. “I just wish I
could go back and fix things. Set right the things that I did
wrong.”

That’s exactly the sort of
thing I’d expect you to say,
Deirdre
thought quietly to herself. She felt just as drawn to him in the
flesh as she had in the pages of Kyla’s journal—perhaps even more
so.

“
What was Sara like?” she
asked impulsively. The question surprised her almost as much as it
surprised James.

“
She was gorgeous,” said
James. “Gorgeous and smart, with a mind as sharp as a laser-blade.
She always seemed so far above me, I’m still kind of shocked that I
had her at all.”

“
She saw a lot of good in
you,” Dierdre remarked.

“
I don’t know. To be
honest, I never had much experience with women until her. The
Hameji conquests happened when I was fifteen, and I spent the next
five years after that with the military in one capacity or
another.”

“
So she was your first
really serious relationship?” Dierdre asked. It felt a bit like
prying, but her curiosity was so strong that she couldn’t help but
ask. Besides, talking about it seemed to help him.

“
Yes,” James answered. “And
it happened so quickly, it almost feels like a dream now. If I
could have that time back…”

She sensed that his thoughts were becoming
destructive again.

“
How did you two get
together?” she asked.

To her surprise, James chuckled. “You know
how many times I’ve asked myself that question? I honestly don’t
know. She always had such poise and grace—it always seemed that a
guy like me didn’t have a chance.”

“
Is that what drew you to
her?”

“
I don’t know,” he said.
For a second it looked as if he were going to say something, then
he sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

It doesn’t sound like they
were together for very long,
Deirdre
couldn’t help but think.
He’s obviously
still torn up about his feelings for her, but it’s not like he’ll
never get over the loss.

Her eyes strayed to the envelope with the
contingency letter—the one that Sara had written for him.

“
Have you read the letter
she left for you?” Deirdre asked.

James shook his head. “No. Not yet.”

“
Why not? It’s right
there.”

His cheeks paled ever so slightly. “I can’t.
Not now—not so soon.”

His wounds will never heal until he reads
that letter.

“
Well, sometime later then,
hopefully,” she said, offering him a smile. “Though not too much
later—I mean, I hope you can bring yourself to read it
soon.”

Why did she have to be so awkward? He
probably thought she was an idiot—not at all like this Sara.

“
Captain Carlson briefed me
on the situation with the
Good Hope
Flier
today,” James said as he picked at
the tray of food. “There’s a lot of work to be done. I doubt I’ll
get a chance to read Sara’s letter until then.”

“
Right,” said Deirdre.
“Well, I’ll set up my hammock and get ready for bed. Shift’s almost
over.”

“
Three shifts,” James
muttered to himself as she pulled out the hammock. “I’ll never get
used to that.”

Not much longer and you
won’t have to,
Deirdre thought. But whether
things would be any easier for him once they arrived—that was
something she very much doubted.

* * * * *

James lay awake, listening Deirdre’s soft,
rhythmic breathing in the darkness. It felt odd to have her sleep
in the same quarters as him, but he appreciated the company.

She was a smart girl—as smart as he expected
one of Lars’s descendants to be. She knew exactly how much to
explain to him to give him a clear picture of what was going on
without overwhelming him. When he’d complained about the tightness
of their shared quarters and the strictness of the schedule that
required them to vacate the room for someone else, she’d told him
about the debates that the second generation had about population
control, and why they’d ultimately opted not to impose any hard
limits—that it had essentially come down to the fact that they
weren’t going to be on the ship for more than a few generations.
Everything that she said made sense, and she was careful not to try
and explain everything all at once, which James appreciated.

More than that, though, it felt like she
genuinely understood him. When he needed help, he often didn’t have
to ask because she’d see the need first, sometimes even before he
did. While there was still some of the hero worship in her—he could
see it in the way her eyes sometimes gleamed—they were still able
to talk with each other as equals. In the darker moments, when his
regrets threatened to consume him, that was crucial. It could get
very lonely, being the legend that everyone looked up to.

He sighed and stared up at the starlit
ceiling. If he tried, he could almost imagine that she were
Sara—but no, that would be a mistake. Deirdre was her own woman,
not a substitute version of Sara. And pretending otherwise would
only make things worse.

His thoughts strayed to
what she’d said about Sara’s contingency letter.
I hope you can bring yourself to read it
soon.
Was it really that obvious to her
that the only thing holding him back was the pain? She’d been
rather timid in her attempt to encourage him to read it, but he
could tell that she considered it important that he read it. And he
would, eventually. But not now.

I’ll read it when the pain
is gone,
he told himself as he rolled onto
his side.
That way, her last words won’t
hurt so much.
Though inwardly, he feared
that the pain would never go away.

Chapter 23

“
Sir, we’re receiving a
transmission from the
Freedom’s
Flame,
” said the officer at the bridge’s
comm station, a twenty-something girl by the name of Mary.
“Analyzing. It appears to be text-only.”

“
Bring it up,” said Captain
Carlson.

James looked at the bridge’s main display,
which showed the transmission in yellow words on a black
background.

ACKNOWLEDGED RECEIPT OF PREVIOUS MESSAGE, it
read. ASSEMBLY VOTES OVERWHELMINGLY TO RECOGNIZE CMDR MCCOY’S
LEADERSHIP. NO ONE LEFT BEHIND HERE.

Applause filled the bridge
even as the weight of command grew heavier on James’s shoulders.
The
Freedom’s Flame
was the last of the three friendly ships to formally declare
allegiance to him as leader of the colonization mission. Of course,
that was the easy part—the problem would be the rebels.

“
Any more sign of
communication between the three rebel ships?” Carlson
asked.

“
No, sir,” Mary answered.
“Only silence.”

Carlson sighed and looked down. There was a
brief moment of silence before he turned to James.

“
Well, Commander, the
mission is yours. What are your orders?”

James rose to his feet and surveyed the
room. All of the officers were present; every chair on the bridge
was filled. They looked at him as if he had some idea or insight
that would solve the crisis instantaneously.

I don’t.

“
Let’s discuss our
strategy,” he began, putting his self-doubts out of his mind. “As I
understand it, we have three rebel colony ships that broke off
communication with the rest of us decades ago. Have they been
communicating with each other?”

“
Yes,” Carlson answered.
“Though their transmissions are encrypted well enough that we can’t
crack them.”

“
Then it’s fair to assume
that the secessionists are unified. The fact that they’ve all
altered course to one of the inner planets would seem to confirm
that. Am I missing anything so far?”

No one answered. Outside the forward window,
the nebula gave the starfield an eerie glow.

“
The crux of this crisis
isn’t the secessionists, though—it’s the fact that they’re holding
the diplomats from the
Lady of
Karduna
hostage. That’s why you woke me,
isn’t it? To figure out how to rescue these hostages?”

“
No one gets left behind,
sir.” James didn’t see who had said it, but it might as well have
been any of them.

“
All right, then. Let’s
start by mapping out possible scenarios, starting with the best
case and moving on to the worst. What’s the best way this could
turn out?”

There was silence for a few moments as the
officers considered. One of the women raised her hand.

“
Wouldn’t the best case
scenario be that the rebels decide to come back?”

“
Let’s assume that the
rebels are going to secede and that there’s nothing we can do to
convince them otherwise,” said James. “Can we stop them? Do we have
that capability?”

“
Unfortunately, no,” said
Carlson. “None of the colony ships are equipped with any sort of
weaponry, and we haven’t detected any modifications on the rebel
ships that would change that.”

“
So we can’t shoot them,
and they can’t shoot us.”
Yet.

“
Well,” said one of the
officers, “if they’re going to secede anyway, the best case
scenario would be that they release the hostages.” He was a heavy
man with a thick red beard. James recognized him as the chief
engineer.

“
Good,” said James. “We’ll
stick with that as our best case scenario: that the rebels release
the hostages and continue on their course. Now, what’s the
nightmare scenario? What are we working to avoid?”

For several moments, no one spoke. A few of
the officers glanced nervously at each other, clearly disturbed by
the fears that were left unspoken.

“
Anyone? Come on, let’s
have it out. We can’t avoid this thing by ignoring it.”

“
The worst case scenario
would be that the rebels keep the hostages and refuse to open
contact,” Carlson said. “That appears to be the scenario that’s
currently underway.”

“
So what happens after
that?” James asked. “What about that scenario makes this so
bad?”

“
Well, if they take the
diplomats hostage, that’s an act of war,” said the chief engineer.
“We can’t ignore something like that. We’d become two colonies,
each one working to destroy or subdue the other.”

James nodded. “If the rebels do that,
they’ll probably combine it with a pre-emptive attack to attempt to
cripple us.”

“
Wait,” said Mary. “I
thought we agreed that they don’t have any weapons?”

“
You don’t need guns to
launch an attack,” said James. “When we rescued the girls from the
Nabattan pirates, we used simple tools to club the guards outside
the airlock. What’s to stop the rebels from launching a rocket full
of scrap metal into our trajectory?”

“
If they tried anything
like that, we could stop it,” said the chief engineer. “All we’d
have to do is find a way to clear the debris field.”

“
Good—let’s get a team on
that. I’m assigning it to you.”

The chief engineer nodded and scribbled
something hastily on his notepad. The other officers, clearly
shaken by the thought that the rebels might strike first, sat in
uncomfortable silence.

“
If I may, Commander,” said
Carlson. “What if the rebels detect our preparations and consider
it an act of aggression? Wouldn’t it precipitate the nightmare
scenario we’ve discussed?”

“
I agree,” said Mary. “What
if we tried to find a diplomatic solution first?”