Nemesis: End of the Line

And so it ended.

Twenty years, we'd been running and fighting our own government. Twenty years, I'd had to watch people – good people, friends – die in a war we'd never started. Most of us had been fighting to survive for so long that our regular lives with homes and families seemed nothing more than a vague dream.

Now, just like that, it was over, and all because of a letter. One...damn...lousy...letter, written by Colonel Brooks, the guy who'd been in command of the Nemesis before he'd a) rescued us and b) somehow activated a new kind of technology that he shouldn't have and teleported himself and his crew to some far flung asteroid, leaving us behind. We'd been in protective custody (read: the brig) at the time and I guess that was too far down to be affected.

Anyway, we'd wound up alone on this ship, and the government had somehow got wind of this and put out an emergency broadcast saying we were terrorists who had killed Brooks and his crew.

Brooks had been dying of some kind of space virus, but he'd written a letter, sealed it in an emergency contact pod and fired it off into space. It had been mostly along the lines of hey, we picked up a thousand or so school kids from a doomed shuttle bus and locked 'em up to stop them seeing anything they shouldn't, but if you find them, they could do with rescuing at some point.

And if it had arrived twenty damn years ago like it was supposed to, nine out of ten shrines in the Memorial Hall wouldn't be there. We could have gone on with our lives and maybe met up every five years to reminisce about old times.

The other problem was that the government had somehow found out not long after the incident that we were innocent. The top politicians couldn't bring themselves to admit they'd made a mistake (long story) and so they'd kept up the pretense that we were the bad guys.

Then Brooks' letter had been picked up by someone who had gone straight to the papers with it, and now the government had had no choice but to agree we were innocent. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that they'd known that for almost twenty years, but hey, nobody's perfect, right?

Right.

Which was all very well, but it didn't change the fact that nearly half of the Nemesis' original teenage crew were dead.

I pushed the Talk button on the intercom.

"This is Cy."

I paused, then clicked the intercom off again. For the first time in my life, I had no idea what to say.

Seconds passed, then I turned it back on. "You know about the letter. You know we've been found innocent. The government want us – no, expect us – to hand over the Nemesis and walk away."

I ran my hand through my hair and glanced up, meeting James' eyes. The guy was a rich kid from Mercury (kid? He was thirty seven now, same as I was) and as sheltered as you like when I met him, but he'd always stood by me. I think he knew what I was going to say next and so I turned on the intercom and said it.

"I'm not going to." I paused, expecting yells of protest to come over the intercom. Instead there was only silence. "But I'm not going to go public with this until the last of you have been dropped off on any planet or moon you want either. Anyone who wants to stay can stay, anyone who doesn't, no blame will be attached." I closed my eyes, suddenly feeling tired. "We finally got what we wanted, and it's been a very long time coming. Of course, we may get lucky and the government may decide to let us stay here anyway – make the Nemesis into a kind of mobile space station – but I doubt it."

Twenty years ago, I knew every single person – with maybe a couple exceptions – would have stampeded for the door. Now, though...things were more complicated. There was another generation on board the Nemesis, kids who were now as old as we'd been when we wound up in control of it and who didn't know any other life.

And I thought about the names in the Memorial Hall, on the Roster of the Dead. Dennis Newman, died a hero aged thirteen. Paige Kerr, battered to death aged fifteen. Rachel Matheson, one half of the Cyber Girls, shot aged seventeen. Teresa Carpenter, KIA aged fourteen.

There were others as well – so many others – but those three were the ones that stood out in my mind the most, even now.

One final message. I clicked on the intercom. "Those of you who want to leave, make your way to the bridge and register there. One way or another, I doubt the Nemesis will be making a second trip to your home planet, so if you miss your stop, you miss it for good."

I turned it off and leaned back, closing my eyes. Even without looking, I could feel James watching me, could 'see' his sympathetic expression.

Nobody came up to the bridge that day, or the next. The letter had been found, it had been taken to the right people and so the whole solar system now knew we were innocent, but it was too late to be of much use to the four hundred and fifty odd who had already died. And it was too late for us too; too late to leave the Nemesis and go our separate ways, too late to settle into normal, regular lives after all we'd been through here.

Too late, Colonel, I told Brooks silently, bitterly as I sat down in my chair and stared unseeing out the windshield. Twenty goddamn years too late.