Heart of the Nebula

by Joe Vasicek

  “Uh, yeah,” she said, glancing sheepishly down at him. “Carlson wanted to put us in a couples unit, so that I could be available to help you with the transition. That is, if you’re okay with it…”

  James wondered what it would have been like if Sara were here. After spending so many nights in her arms, sharing a room with a stranger seemed almost wrong. Then again, Deirdre was one of the most guileless people he’d ever met. Her bright and eager cheerfulness helped ease the dark loneliness that threatened to engulf him over Sara’s loss. Having her around wouldn’t totally dispel that loneliness, he knew, but it might make the next few weeks a little easier.

  He got better at climbing on the next shaft, but by the time they approached the top, his arms were starting to ache. He paused for a while at the top to catch his breath.

  “Are you doing all right?” Deirdre asked him. “We can slow down if you’re getting tired.”

  “No, I’m fine.” He stepped off, this time only taking her hand.

  “You’re getting the hang of it,” she said, grinning. “Just two more levels, and we’re there.”

  A few heads turned as they finally reached their level and climbed out. After resting for a minute, Dierdre led him down the radial to the main hall. Rows of identical doors ringed the outside edge, but a colorful painted mural of green, fruit-bearing vines and blue skies covered the wall. Arabesque designs in the floor tiles complemented the artwork, giving the place a warm, lived-in feel.

  “Nice,” he said. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  Deirdre’s laughter rang honest and clear, not unlike Lars’s. “I’m glad you approve,” she said, giving him a playful look. For a moment, James wondered if she was flirting with him, but figured that was probably just her personality.

  “Here,” she said, opening a door with a mountain waterfall painted next to it. He followed her into a cozy room much like the one he’d shared with Sara. A wide bunk sat embedded in the wall on the right, with a retractable table on the opposite side. The computer terminal in the corner was gone, though, and the walls were painted in warm tones to give it a cozy feel.

  “You must be dying for a shower,” she said, pressing her thumb against a small black pad to make a compartment open in the wall. “We don’t have much time before the swing-shifters wake up, but if you hurry you can probably wash up before the rush.”

  “Swing-shifters?”

  “Sorry, the people who sleep on swing shift. We’re on a three shift system on this ship—made the switch when I was about five years old. Before that, it was just a mainday/alterday schedule.”

  James frowned. “Three shifts? How large is the current population?”

  “About three thousand or so.”

  His jaw dropped. “Three thousand? That’s—that’s more than three times the maximum capacity!”

  Deirdre grinned and held up her hands. “What can I say? We’ve been a little busy while you were gone.”

  That explains why I never feel like I’m alone in this place, James thought to himself. He glanced at the bunk—even his bed was not his own.

  “We’re lucky this unit is empty during this shift,” Deirdre continued, sorting through the open compartment. “The alter-shifters are nice, though—I met them just an hour ago. The husband’s an engineer, so we probably won’t see him much. Here, press your thumb on this pad.”

  James obeyed, and she keyed something on a nearby access panel. Another compartment opened, this one empty except for a few familiar datachips, some neatly folded sets of clothes, and an envelope much like the one he carried in his pocket.

  “This is your personal storage compartment,” she said. “To open it, pull on the handle while pressing your thumb against the pad. You’re the only one who has access to it, so don’t worry about anyone stealing anything.”

  “Thanks.” He opened his pocket and pulled out Sara’s contingency letter, placing it carefully next to the one in the compartment. He imagined Sara punching him after he read it to her, then laughing as they held each other, glad to be alive after over a hundred years of frozen sleep.

  His heart clenched, and a lump rose in his throat. That was the way he’d expected it to happen—he never thought it would turn out like this.

  “Here,” said Deirdre, “let me show you to the showers.”

  James took up a set of clean clothes and followed her back into the colorful hallway. About a hundred yards down, she led him through an open doorway on the inner side and into a long, narrow room with blue and white bathroom tiles lining the floor, walls, and ceiling. A long bench lined one side, while the other was divided into almost a dozen stalls, each with a cylindrical shower unit and a pair of swinging doors made of some kind of light, basket-like material. One of the shower units was running, but other than that the place was empty.

  “Are you, ah, supposed to be in here?” James asked. The way she’d followed him in, it was almost as if she expected to help him undress.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “Bathroom facilities are co-ed—that’s probably something you’re not used to.”

  “Co-ed bathrooms? On a level for married couples?”

  She shrugged. “It is what it is. On the couples levels, typically the men keep to one side while the woman keep to the other. Besides, all the shower units are compartmentalized, so it’s not like you’re going to see anything.”

  “Don’t you people have any concept of privacy?” he asked, more than a little exasperated.

  “Sorry. I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”

  “I guess I’ll have to,” he muttered.

  “Oh, one more thing,” said Deirdre. “Did you see that datapad near the front? When it’s rush time during the shift change, the stalls fill up pretty quickly, so you have to wait in line. Just press your thumb against the datapad, and you’ll be added to the queue.”

  She pointed to a screen on the wall that displayed numbered rows and three empty columns marked NAME, ARRIVAL TIME, and UNIT ASSIGNMENT.

  “Anyhow,” she continued, “bathrooms are on the other side, if you need to use them. You remember where the room is, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great! I’ll see you in a minute, then.”

  James waited until she was gone before stepping gingerly into one of the stalls. The swinging doors only went from his knees to his upper chest, and the stall was low enough that he could easily see over into the other ones. He looked at the long row of benches and wondered what this place was like when it was full—it would be hard not to accidentally see something.

  As if to confirm that, the shower unit on the far side of the room shut off, and a young woman stepped out. She wrapped her hair in a towel, slipped on a thin bathrobe, and stepped out of the stall, smiling at James as she passed by.

  Over three thousand people, James thought to himself, blinking in disbelief. That was almost the original size of the Colony itself. And if every colony ship had a population that large, then the people of this generation would easily be able to outvote his own. Lars’s words about forming a society that would never tolerate his leadership came back to him. Perhaps there was more truth to that threat than he’d thought.

  Chapter 22

  “Ah, Commander McCoy,” said Captain Carlson, saluting as James stepped off of the ladder. “It’s good to see you doing so well.”

  James nodded and returned the salute, pausing to catch his breath. His arm ached from the long climb to the topmost level of the ship.

  “Captain Carlson,” said James. “Deirdre’s told me about you.”

  “I’m sure she has. On behalf of the command crew and officers of the Chiran Spirit, welcome back, sir.”

  James nodded his thanks, a little taken aback at being called “sir” by a man who didn’t seem that much older than him. Judging from his trim build and clean-shaven face, Carlson was probably in his mid-thirties or so.

  “Deirdre told me that we’re still three weeks from Chira V,” James said. �
�Why did you decide to wake me now instead of waiting until arrival?”

  “Several reasons,” said Carlson, leading James down the corridor toward the bridge. “Since you’re going to take command once the other colonists are woken, we wanted to give you time to adjust. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, things have changed quite a bit since you went down.”

  “Yes,” James muttered. “Definitely.”

  They stepped into the lift that led to the bridge. It was a small, cylindrical room that looked much like an elevator chamber, except with large shoulder restraints that folded down from the ceiling like those in a low-gravity tram. Since the bridge faced forward, it lay perpendicular to the other decks. For that reason, they needed a special lift to orient them correctly relative to the artificial gravity field.

  The lift itself looked much as James remembered it, with only a few cosmetic changes to the walls and braces. When the door hissed open and he stepped onto the bridge, though, it seemed like a completely different place. The old, oversized chairs were replaced with new, economical ones. Four extra stations had been added along the edge. The walls and floor were painted white and blue instead of dark green, and the instrument panels looked remarkably new. It was as if James had gone into cryo on one ship and woken up in an entirely different one.

  Only one thing seemed strange, and that was the fact that there were no crew on duty.

  “You may have noticed a few changes since you were last in command,” Carlson said. “With the ship on autopilot, most of the functions are managed from control centers located throughout the ship. But for maneuvers, we do have stations for each post, so that the full command crew can be present simultaneously.”

  “So most of the time, no one’s here?” James asked.

  “That is correct.

  “They why did you bring me here?”

  “Because there is something we must discuss in private, Commander McCoy,” said Carlson. “Something pertinent to our decision to revive you three weeks early. Please, have a seat.”

  James frowned and did as Carlson instructed, sitting down in the captain’s chair. Carlson leaned forward and hit a number of keys on the captain’s control panel. The forward window darkened and turned into a large holoscreen, showing a map of a star system, with seven red points lined up along a series of parallel trajectories, all pointing to the inner planets.

  “This is the Chira system, with the current positions and trajectories of all seven colony ships that set out from Zeta Nabat,” Carlson explained. “Of—”

  “Wait a minute,” said James. “Seven ships? I thought there were nine.”

  “Excuse me,” said Carlson, toggling the screen. Two gray dots showed up on the far side of the system, moving at velocities that were clearly much faster than the other colony ships. “These two ships suffered a catastrophic collapse of some sort and failed to decelerate for the final approach with the rest of us. At this point, we must assume that the ships are derelict and that all on board perished.”

  “Perished? What about the colonists frozen in cryo?”

  “I’m sorry, Commander, but at this point there is nothing we can do for them.”

  A shiver ran down James’s spine. He imagined those still frozen in cryo, careening through space for all of eternity with no one to wake them. What had happened to cause this disaster? Had the engineers been unable to make those ships long-term livable, or had some sort of conflict torn the society apart? “Derelict” was not a sufficient word to describe them—those were ghost ships.

  “In any case,” Carlson continued, “of the six remaining colony ships, we have only been in regular contact with three.” He pointed them out and marked them in green. They lay mostly towards the back of the line, near the Chiran Spirit.

  “Only three ships?” asked James. “What about the others?”

  “For reasons that are not yet clear to us, they severed all contact with us.” Carlson marked the middle point in blue. “The last one to break contact with us was the Good Hope Flier.”

  “What happened?”

  Carlson sighed. “We don’t know, Commander. But we’ve analyzed the trajectories of the three ships that refused to communicate with us, and we’ve found that they’ve adjusted their course away from Chira V to the innermost planet, here.”

  He toggled the controls, and the trajectories extended into full capture orbits, three of them heading for the fifth planet in the system, and three heading for the first planet. James clenched his fists.

  “So we have a secession crisis.”

  “That would appear to be the case, Commander.”

  “Why, though?” James wondered aloud. “What would make them want to secede?”

  “You should know, Commander, that we have been retelling the story of your exploits at Zeta Nabat almost non-stop since you went into cryo. Almost fifty years ago, a studio on the Lady of Karduna put together a feature-length holo depicting your heroic rescue of the kidnapped girls. It’s still our most requested holo in the rec room.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. However, we have reason to believe that the other ships do not share the same view of your accomplishments.”

  James frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “One of our last communications from the Good Hope Flier included a lengthy piece from their historian refuting our account of the rescue and naming you a tyrant. It ignited a spirited debate and no small amount of backlash. Shortly after that, the Good Hope Flier broke off all communications with us and the three remaining ships.”

  Is that what this is about? James wondered. Are people using my rescue of those girls as a pretext for secession?

  “There’s got to be something else,” he said. “I can’t believe this is the only reason for the schism.”

  “Perhaps not, Commander. But it remains a possibility.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  Carlson took a deep breath. James sensed that they were finally getting to the crux of the issue.

  “With our imminent arrival at Chira,” Carlson explained, “the Lady of Karduna sent out a diplomatic mission to the Good Hope Flier to attempt to re-establish contact. The shuttle docked successfully, but never returned, and we haven’t heard from the mission since.”

  “What happened next?”

  Carlson sighed. “We’ve done everything we can to get the mission back, all to no avail. We’ve tried pleading, bargaining, even threatening, but nothing has worked. Frankly, some of us were considering open warfare before we decided to hand the situation over to you.”

  “Warfare?”

  “That’s right, Commander.”

  “You want me to lead you in a war against these people?”

  “Not if we can avoid it,” Carlson said quickly. “In the face of this crisis, we felt that we needed to turn to your leadership.”

  James sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Captain. The situation sounds very tricky. If we’re too aggressive, the rebels will hold the diplomats hostage as long as they can, in order to use them as a bargaining chip. On the other hand, if we’re too conciliatory, the rebels will interpret that as a sign of weakness and walk all over us as soon as we make planetfall. They may have given us the first provocation, but with only three weeks left, we’re not in a position to do anything but ride this out.”

  Carlson listened intently, a look of deep respect written across his face. Wow, James thought. He thinks I actually know what the hell I’m talking about.

  “Haven’t you thought all this through yet?” James asked. “You’re the captain, after all.”

  “I’ve tried, sir,” said Carlson, “but I’m afraid I just don’t have the same breadth of experience to draw from. Besides, in the political affairs of this ship, I have no power. I can only follow the orders that the General Assembly gives me.”

  So Lars did try to make it impossible for me to get anywhere with these people,” James thought to himself. Little did he know, that was no
way to kill a legend.

  “I’ll do what I can,” James promised. “And I’ll try to figure out a way to recover those hostages. But I can’t promise anything until we get the rebels to talk to us, and they’re probably not going to do that until after they’ve landed.”

  Carlson nodded. “That puts us in a very tricky position. Hopefully, with the others rallying to your leadership, that will be enough to avert a conflict.”

  Yeah, James thought. Hopefully.

  * * * * *

  Deirdre stayed on the master computer terminal in the library until well past the time for the main-shifters to return to their quarters. When she made the climb back up the ladder, she was so tired it was all she could do reach the top. She made almost a complete circle around level sixty-two before finally finding the right door in that unfamiliar place, and groggily palmed it open.

  To her surprise, the lights were still on inside. James lay on the bunk, but his eyes were open, staring listlessly at the ceiling the same way he had in the medical bay.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, stopping in the doorway. “I didn’t expect you to be up.”

  He grunted but made no other movement. The door hissed shut behind her, blocking out the noise in the hallway.

  “I brought you some food,” she said, folding out the nightstand and placing a small tray on it. “I picked it up during dinner at the lower mess hall.”

  “Thanks,” James mumbled. He sighed and made as if to stand up, but kept his eyes on the floor.

  Deirdre noticed little bits of white synthpaper scattered across the bedspread. She frowned; was that one of her books he’d torn up? But no, her compartment was still solidly locked. It would have had to have come from—

  The envelope.

  “Oh my,” she said, eyes widening. “Was that the letter? I hope you didn’t…”

  “What?” James asked, looking up. She motioned to the bits of torn paper, and he glanced over at them and back to her.

  “Was that Sara’s, uh…”