Heart of the Nebula

by Joe Vasicek

  “Good.” He turned to the rest of the room.

  “All right, men, listen up: I want to form a chain running along this mag-rail from the main freight yard to the passenger arm. The weak points will be here—” he said, pointing to the junction just below the terminal, “—and here,” pointing to the inner airlock just below the connecting passageway to the barracks. “I want armed guards posted at these points, as well as watchers along the corridors leading to the freight yard. We’ll run the chain through the corridors rather than straight through the mag-rail line, to keep out of open spaces as much as possible. If you see any soldiers, make for the colony ship and warn everyone else along the way. Got it?”

  The men nodded. James stood up straight.

  “Let’s go.”

  * * * * *

  Sara followed James down the maintenance catwalk along the freight mag-rail, staying low with her back to the wall. Up ahead, the inner airlock separated them from the docking arm, but a small door next to the main lock showed that the catwalk continued on the other side. She hoped it wasn’t locked.

  James stopped and motioned for the others to be still. A small hatchway opened to a flight of tall, narrow stairs leading up. According to the map, the barracks weren’t far—only two levels above their current position. In the silence, the sound of distant laughter filtered through the ventilation shafts, making her shiver.

  Very carefully, James swung the door until the hatch was almost closed. Before he could close it, however, the door groaned on its hinges, making him stop. Sara’s heart skipped a beat—in the near silence, the groan sounded like a bomb blast. Those with rifles pointed them at the hatchway, their hands shaking.

  No one came down. Apparently, the pirates hadn’t heard the noise.

  “Let’s go,” James whispered, motioning to the door. Without a word, Sara and the others followed.

  The door was unlocked, and it hissed open when they palmed the access panel. James tinkered with it for a moment to make sure it would stay open—they couldn’t risk making any more noise than they had to. When he was finished, they stepped briskly through.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked as Sara walked up beside him. “It’ll be much safer on the—”

  “I’ll be fine, thanks.”

  He nodded, and they slowed to a stop in the center of the docking arm. Mid-sized freight airlocks poked off from the docking nodes on all sides like apartments on a hallway for giants, with the mag-rail line running down the middle. The arm was relatively short, perhaps five hundred meters, but the eerie silence of the place made it feel much larger. Sara’s stomach flipped, probably from the weakened gravity this far out from the station. That, and her own nerves as well.

  “Now we just need to figure out which port they’re docked at,” James wondered aloud. “If only we had our wrist consoles.”

  A grinding noise only a couple nodes down signaled the arrival of a ship. James raised his rifle and crept forward. The airlock hissed open, and Alex leaned out.

  “Are you ready? Let’s go!”

  James stepped quickly into the shuttle’s cargo bay, Sara and the others following close behind. Alex led them up a steep stairwell, through a hatchway, and down the narrow aisle of the passenger cabin to the main passenger airlock. They stopped, and James motioned for the men with rifles to join him at the door. Sara leaned over the faded blue seats to let them pass.

  “On three,” said James. The men pointed their guns at the door, while Sara ducked behind the nearest row of seats.

  “One,” James counted. “Two. Three!”

  The door hissed open, and the three men rushed in. A few women screamed, but no gunshots were fired, and the noise soon quieted. Sara rose up and followed the others through to the other side.

  The sight on the other side made her gasp. Torn mattresses and dirty blankets covered the mag-rail tracks and catwalks, and the place smelled thick of urine and human waste. Packed all up and down the hall were almost a hundred women, some half-naked, almost all of them battered and bruised.

  “Sol, Earth, and Luna,” she whispered, glancing across the room. The women stared back, some of them frightened, others too far gone to care.

  James lowered his gun and raised his hand. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, his voice barely loud enough to carry. “We’re here to rescue you.”

  A rumble of hushed conversation spread through the crowd of prisoners, while the young men glanced about uncertainly. James turned to Sara.

  “Can we fit them all on the ship?” he whispered.

  “I—I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “The maximum capacity was eight hundred, but there’s almost—”

  “We’ll make it work.” He turned to his men. “All right, let’s lead them out in groups of five—one leader for every five women. Move as quickly as you can, but try to keep quiet, and don’t crowd the corridors. Got it?”

  His men nodded. Those with guns gripped them tightly.

  “All right, then, let’s move!”

  The next few minutes were a blur of activity. James decided to move all the women to the lower arm, to put some distance between them and the soldiers—not to mention the stench that permeated the upper docking arm. Sara went around helping the ones who had been victimized the worst. What she saw absolutely horrified her. Some were so battered they could barely walk, while others huddled with their knees hugged up against their chests, only getting up after several long minutes of cajoling. Time blurred, and she soon lost track of how many she’d helped.

  Many of them were people she recognized—friends of friends, former academy classmates, and other familiar faces from home. Most of them were from the other colony ships, telling her that the Nabattans had done the same thing to all the colonists.

  As she helped coax the last prisoner to the airlock, a noise sounded at the far end of the empty docking arm. It sounded like someone at the—

  “James!”

  The door hissed open just in time for James to catch the first pirate in the chest with a crack shot. The man went down with a grunt, while the sound of muffled shouts carried into the empty docking arm.

  “Get inside!” James shouted, waving at her. She grabbed the nearest prisoner and practically dragged her into the shuttle as gunshots echoed throughout the long hall. One of James’s men slipped past her and fired at the pirates from the open airlock, the ratatat of the bullets beating a grim rhythm. Sara turned, adrenaline pushing her forward, but hesitated at the open doorway, not sure what to do. Fortunately, James came running in a few moments later.

  “Shut it! Lock it down!” His men quickly complied, ending the gunfight.

  “What’s going on?” asked Alex. His eyes were wide, his face pale.

  “We’ve got to get back to the ship,” said James, rushing past him to the lower airlock. “How many are left?”

  “About forty, maybe fifty.”

  He stopped and cursed just as Sara caught up with him. “That’s too many to take down the corridor—how many can you take in the shuttle?”

  “I don’t know—twenty, maybe,” said Alex. “But—”

  “Cram them in—we’ll take the others through the station. Sara?”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  “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 threaten
ed 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.