Nexus by Robert Boyczuk (best large ebook reader txt) 📕

“Three hours,” Hebuiza said.

The Facilitator broke the comm circuit; the dropship rotated until it faced north. It moved away, accelerating as it went, and dwindled rapidly. In a stumbling gait, Sav ran to the edge of the roof. He signalled frantically, cursing and shouting and begging, but the Facilitator didn’t respond.

When the dropship was a speck near the outskirts of the city, it began its descent into the jumble of buildings. Sav tried to mark its position, but at that moment sweat stung his eye and he blinked; when his vision cleared, the ship was gone, lost in the vast anonymity of the decaying city.

Sav stood with his hands locked into fists. His arms shook.

Calm down, he told himself. This is no time to lose it.

Breathing deeply, he uncurled his fingers. Three hours. He wouldn’t have said that if he didn’t intend to return. Right? Nevertheless, he wasn’t entirely convinced. Turning, he walked back to the glass doors.

Sav examined the doorway again. The gap between the panels was only about twenty centimeters wide; he’d need twice that, he estimated, to squeeze through. Now that the dropship was gone, and the lasers with it, he’d have to resort to brute strength. Standing next to the left panel, he gripped its edge with both hands; he lifted his foot and placed it against the edge of the right panel. He tugged, but the door remained immobile. Sucking in a big breath, he pulled again, holding the pressure steady until blood sang in his ears and the muscles in his shoulders trembled; metal on metal squealed and the narrow opening widened. He stepped back on unsteady legs, breathing raggedly, and surveyed the opening. The door had moved perhaps ten centimeters. Gripping the edge again, he pulled. This time, after an initial hesitation, the doors slid apart readily; he almost lost his balance. Turning sideways, he slipped between the panels and into the building.

The display over the elevator was dark; no buttons or other controls were visible. The doors to the elevator had been welded shut. Puzzled, Sav ran his finger along the strange seam, then shrugged. He turned and walked over to the grey door, pushing against it. It gave with a small click and sighed open to reveal a stairwell, an orange railing running along the edge of the stairs. Sav flicked on his helmet light and bent over the edge of the railing; his light tunnelled downwards into a spiral of receding stairs. He couldn’t see the bottom. Pushing away from the rail, he began his descent, his boots kicking up small clouds of dust.

The stairs switched back twice before he came to the first landing. Unlabelled barrels and crates had been stacked haphazardly next to a metal door. The words Physical Plant had been stencilled on the door in white letters. Sav tried the handle, but the door was locked. He continued his descent.

The next landing was clear; at its head was a pastel green door. Black numbers indicated it was the 23rd floor. A line of weak, grey light spilled out from under the bottom of the door. Sav gripped the handle and turned; the door creaked open.

He stood in a corridor that ran the length of the building. Dozens of gurneys lined both walls, leaving only a narrow aisle between. Across from him was a nurses’ station; to his left was the dead elevator, its door also welded shut. At the far end of the hallway a tattered sheet had been tacked up across a floor-to-ceiling window. The pane had been smashed out of the window, and brilliant slashes of light spilled through rips in the material, darting across the walls and floor each time the sheet snapped in the wind.

Sav stepped up to the closest gurney.

A stained sheet covered a skeleton. The skull, jaw agape, was visible above the sheet’s frayed yellow edge. Beside the gurney an IV-drip had been set up. A thin, clouded tube hung from an empty bag, and disappeared under the covering near the midpoint of the gurney. Sav pulled on the sheet where the tube snaked under it; the material disintegrated, collapsing around the skeleton. Underneath, the tube ran across the skeleton’s femur and into its pelvis; the cannula lay cradled in the white bones there, resting on the end of the spine. Sav pulled out his sample bag and laid it on the gurney. Carefully, he drew out the tube and coiled it. Then he unclipped the plasma bag from its drip rack and put them both in his sample sack.

Sav stared dejectedly at the few items he’d collected: two drip bags and tubing; four catheters; two syringes that were still in their wrappers; a roll of adhesive tape; one tube of antiseptic cream probably long expired; a handful of assorted bandages and gauze. He closed the sample bag. The dispensaries had yielded little of value, thirty year old capsules skittering across the floor in front of his boots as Sav had moved from one empty cabinet to another. Over his shoulder he’d slung the carrying strap for a small, grey case which contained an old blood pressure gauge and a stethoscope. He had found other larger pieces of equipment, including a wall mounted display panel whose purpose he couldn’t discern. But they were all dead.

The topmost floor of the hospital had been in the best shape; each floor below had become progressively worse. Four floors down, bones littered the hallways between the gurneys, skidding in the dust whenever Sav accidentally kicked them. The ward rooms had been cluttered with broken equipment and overturned beds, the supply cupboards torn from the walls. On the fifteenth floor, where Sav now stood, there were no gurneys or IVs, only a carpet of dirty hospital gowns and brittle bones that crunched sadly as he waded through the mess. The hallway itself was dim; the window at the far end of the hall was blocked by a mound of garbage.

Despite his doubts about finding anything of use, Sav methodically checked all the rooms on the floor, adding nothing to his meagre collection.

Surprisingly, the next two floors had been stripped of all furniture and equipment. And there were few skeletons here, perhaps a dozen, all in street clothes. Half of them lay in the midst of large, dark brown stains. When Sav bent to check more closely, he discovered their clothes had ragged tears or were punctured with neat, circular holes, beneath which the bones had been shattered-or burnt black.

On the eleventh floor landing, Sav discovered why the doors to the elevator had been welded shut on each of the floors above. It had been done for the same reason a makeshift barricade had been erected on the landing. Gurneys, shelving, chairs and other assorted pieces of furniture had been heaped in a pile that blocked the stairwell. Sections of it had been twisted into a blackened, impassable lump. The walls and ceiling near the barricade had been scored by the flat, dark smears of laser fire and cratered by projectile weapons. Perhaps those below had believed there was hope up here. But whoever had been on Sav’s side of the barricade appeared to have prevailed: placed along the barrier’s top, facing outward, were a dozen blackened and shattered skulls.

Hebuiza was right, Sav thought despondently. There’s nothing of value here.

He began the long climb back to the roof.

The sun was directly overhead, the sky cloudless. Bright light reflected off the empty rooftop landing pad. Sav adjusted the polarization on his visor; the world receded, becoming flat and washed out. At his feet, the tiny pile of equipment he’d scavenged seemed even smaller.

He scanned the horizon, but he could see no sign of the dropship. His suit display showed that three and a half hours had passed since Hebuiza had abandoned him; it also showed that his oxygen cartridge was running low. The spares had been in the dropship. He stepped back into a sliver of shade beside the glass doors to wait.

Staring at the grey expanse of the city, Sav’s senses dulled, fatigue settled on him like a thick, suffocating blanket. It had been nearly two days since he’d slept. And he’d been in this suit for sixteen out of the last seventeen hours, the only break being a brief stint on the Ea when he and Hebuiza had returned to collect supplies. Every time he turned his head he felt the stubble on his chin rub annoyingly against the base of his helmet; every breath he drew smelled of sweat and urine; every movement he made felt hampered, like his limbs were wrapped in wet towels. For what seemed the hundredth time that day, he had to fight back the urge to tear off his helmet and breathe fresh air. The thought of the skeletons below was the only thing that kept him from doing so.

He let himself slide down along the wall until he was sitting. Closing his eyes, he swallowed. No sense in getting excited.

There was nothing to do but wait.

Something jabbed him in the back; Sav felt himself being rolled over. The sun burned directly into his face, blinding him. Sav blinked, swallowing back his panic. A dark figure occluded the sun, crouched over him.

“Get up!”

Sav recognized Hebuiza’s deep voice, his oval helmet. He struggled to sit up. A dozen meters away the dropship rested in the centre of the landing pad. Through its open door Sav could see crates now crowded its interior.

Hebuiza nudged him with his foot. “Are you ill?”

“No,” Sav said, his voice a rough, croaking sound. He was astonished that he could have slept through the noisy return of the dropship. “I…I fell asleep. That’s all.”

Hebuiza looked at him, his eyes narrowed, head moving in small arcs, and Sav suddenly realised the Facilitator was measuring his response, listening carefully, searching for any signs of disorientation-or other symptoms of fever.

“Fuck you,” Sav said, struggling to his feet, trying to rekindle the rage he had felt at the moment the Facilitator had abandoned him. Only he found he was too weary, too tired for the effort required by that sort of anger. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Making the best of our time here. I have collected several things that we might find useful. Certainly more useful than what you have there.” Hebuiza nodded at the small pile of equipment stacked by the doors to the hospital.

Sav looked at the pathetic junk he’d collected. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.

“First we need to inspect your suit,” Hebuiza said. “After all, you have been rolling around on the ground.”

The anger that had eluded Sav a moment before now burned fiercely in his chest. The muscles in his shoulders bunched. He wanted to turn and launch himself at Hebuiza, to smash his mask and let the air the Facilitator so dreaded rush in to choke him. Instead, he made a concerted effort to relax, willing away the outward signs of his anger. It left him feeling weak and dizzy. He pulled in a deep breath. “Yeah.” His voice rasped. “You’re right.” Stretching out his arm, he began the routine they’d been taught so long ago to examine the material of his suit for abrasions and tears.

Sav had feared Hebuiza might challenge him for control of the dropship. But the Facilitator had obligingly left the pilot’s seat empty. Sav took the controls.

The city receded quickly, and in crossing the slow, muddy eddies of the river that marked its boundary, Sav experienced an unexpected moment of relief. He stared out the window as the few outlying houses gave way to farms, then eventually to wilderness. A brisk tail wind hurried them