by Joe Vasicek
“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 prote
ct.”
“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.
“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, anticipa
ting 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?”