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

Sav experienced a sudden surge of anger at the Facilitator, and all his kind. They had destroyed Bh’Haret. A decision had been made, and in that moment the future, his future, had been extinguished. Sav attempted to stoke this anger into a rage, to direct it at the lanky figure back on the Ea. But Hebuiza’s last taunt returned to sap Sav’s anger, to fill him with an enervating shame.

The Facilitator had been right.

Sav knew he would have flown the mission even if he’d been aware of its true purpose. He would kept his mouth shut, have taken the money and been grateful for it. And perhaps have felt a small pride in his world’s defiance of Nexus. He stared out the windscreen as the thin crescent of dawn crawled up the horizon. The windscreen darkened to compensate.

Yes, he would have done it.

And so would the others he had crewed with over the years. None of them would have balked at the possible consequences, he was certain. Longhaulers were always of a type. It’s what made them willing to do this job. Most were attempting to run away from pasts they couldn’t bear; a few were searching for better futures. But all, finally, were loners. People who’d willing severed their ties with everything and everyone they had known. People like Liis and Hebuiza. And me, Sav thought.

Among them, Josua had been the only exception. Sav had encountered others like him in the past, one-timers, in it for his career, for the political capital. Invariably, they had someone waiting for them at the other end of their time. It was what distinguished them from the regular hands. It gave them hope, made them impatient to return home.

Home.

His only home was a longhaul ship. Images of other ships he’d worked came back to him. Gazing through the windscreen he could almost see them ahead of him in orbit around Bh’Haret, reflected sunlight beating brightly on their hulls….

Other ships. Sav’s heart quickened. There are still longhaulers out there. Missions like ours, launched before the plague struck. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

Sav leaned forward, stabbed a button on the navigation panel. A map appeared on the screen, replacing the flight path display. Half a dozen green circles marked ground-based spaceports. Sav overlaid the map on a composite of the images they had collected from orbit. The ground in five of the circles was blackened by the smear of nuclear strikes. Sav reached forward to zoom the co-ordinates of the sixth circle, then paused. In the unlikely event the site was intact, the computers there would have been down since the continental power grid collapsed twenty-nine years ago. The data would almost certainly be unrecoverable.

The only place on the entire planet with detectable EMF levels had been the stasis facility at Lyst. Then he remembered Shiranda’s file. When he had called it up, the reason for her interment had been recorded, along with Josua’s name as designated contact. It included details of his occupation. Those waiting for the return of other longhaulers might also be in the catalog. Assuming their revival dates matched the return dates of the missions, it should be possible to determine when the next ship was due.

Sav cleared the navigation screen and restored the original display. His flight path reappeared. The altimeter indicated the dropship was already skimming the upper atmosphere; looking out the windscreen, Sav could now make out features of the cumulus cloud bank below him, the precipitous valleys and dramatic peaks. The upper edge of the sun had crept above the horizon, casting stark shadows. Glancing at the display, he saw he was already well inland, moving steadily towards the stasis facility.

As soon as Sav landed, he made directly for the interface on the eleventh sublevel. He jacked into the data socket.

“Yes?” the AI’s voice said before his hand had left the end of his jack.

“Inquiry on revival dates.”

“Proceed,” the AI said pleasantly. A holographic projection superimposed itself on Sav’s visor. It simulated a large, well appointed office with several display panels spread out along the far wall.

“How many clients are scheduled for revival?”

“No scheduled revivals. All revivals have been suspended indefinitely by order of the Director of this facility. Rescheduling will take place as soon as possible.”

“Do you have the original revival dates, before the order?”

“Of course.”

“How many were originally scheduled to be revived in the next five years?”

“Twenty-one.”

“List them.”

Two of the panels detached themselves from the wall, zoomed forward to fill his Sav’s entire field of view. A matrix of data appeared on the leftmost screen, the first column containing a revival date, followed by the name of the occupant of the stasis cell. Additional information on the client’s age and occupation filled the next few columns, followed by dozens of abbreviated status codes that meant nothing to Sav. On the right screen were thumbnails of the clients.

“Get rid of everything except the name and revival date of the client.”

The other information vanished.

“Now include anything you’ve got on contacts and emergency contacts.”

Next to each client name, additional names now appeared, most with an address, occupation and contact information.

“Select for all clients whose contacts are long haul officers or envoys, and whose original revival dates fall after today.”

Seven names remained.

The third client, a woman scheduled to be revived in seventy days, caught Sav’s attention. Her contact, a woman named Vela, was a communications officer aboard a vessel called The Viracosa.

“We’re not the only ones,” Sav said, barely able to contain his excitement.

From the corner of the room Liis stared at him blankly. She looked utterly defeated: her shoulders were slumped and dark circles had grown under her eyes. Next to her Josua lay on his cot; although his eyes were open, he stared sightlessly at the ceiling. To one side, Liis had set up an intravenous drip, but the bag was empty, the needle lying next to Josua’s bed.

“I checked the log here. There’s half-a dozen contact names that are longhaulers. Like us.”

“Like us?” Liis’ seemed only dimly aware of Sav’s presence.

“Yeah. People who were contacts, like Josua was for Shiranda.”

“People who had lovers.”

“Maybe,” Sav said. “In any case, the administrators who ran this place were thorough in collecting information on their client’s contacts. I got a return date for the next longhaul due back. The mission is less than seventy days out. A ship called The Viracosa. Pretty soon we’ll have company.”

“What’s a funeral without mourners?”

“Don’t you see!” Sav stepped up to her, gripped her shoulder. “Each ship carries a reserve tank. With two ships, we should have enough fuel to get the hell out of here!”

Liis blinked, ran her tongue across her lips distractedly. “And go where?”

“The Ballic system for one,” Sav answered quickly, dropping his hands from her shoulders. “It’s only a one point five light years away. They’re not that sophisticated technologically, or weren’t thirty years ago. They’re mostly an agrarian society, still a good century from industrialization and well out of the Ascension Program. It’s possible they haven’t heard about the plague.”

“And Josua? What do we do with him?”

“Seventy days is a long time off. I’m sure he’ll have recovered completely by then….”

“Or be dead.”

The finality of her pronouncement shook Sav. He tried not to let it rattle him. “We might all be dead by then, Liis. But that’s no reason for giving up now.”

“A few times I got the feeling he was watching me,” Liis said. “But when I turned around he was still staring at the ceiling, that empty look on his face.” She scrutinized Josua intensely. “What’s he staring at?” she asked, suddenly angry. “Is it her? Is he looking at her?” In the light of the lantern, Liis’ face was pale beneath her scars, the detail of the pattern all but washed out. “He’ll never get better,” she said, the ache of despondency a sharp note in her voice. “He doesn’t want to get better.”

“He’s had a shock, that’s all,” Sav said. “He’ll rally.”

“Unless,” Liis said, locking her eyes on Sav’s, “he has the plague.”

“Plague?” The new voice was a whisper.

Both Sav and Liis turned simultaneously to look at Josua. His eyes appeared focussed now; they burnt intensely with-with what? When Sav met his gaze he shuddered, feeling a cold fury emanating from Josua’s stare that was as palpable as a touch. Liis sucked in her breath.

“Death,” Josua rasped, a string of spittle suspended between cracked lips. Then whatever had animated him fled, and his eyes became flat and unseeing again.

Day 3 to 6

In the first few days they took care of their immediate needs. Two trips to Temparas yielded seven separate stockpiles of food in barricaded buildings. Most of what they found was inedible-empty tins and boxes of what looked like desiccated turds-but at the second site they discovered five cartons of dehydrated food in doubly-sealed vacuum packets, enough to last the four of them for half a year. A spring near the entrance of the stasis facility provided fresh water, and Liis, using a book Sav retrieved at her request, had begun to identify local edible plants.

In the evenings, Sav and Hebuiza returned to the Ea. The Facilitator rigged up an irradiation chamber to sterilize the food, water and oxygen they brought back; Sav worked with scavenged parts to build an uplink from the stasis facility to the orbiting ship. Although the Ea‘s radio equipment had the signal strength to broadcast to the surface, their suit transceivers simply weren’t powerful enough to return the signal.

As the days passed, Sav fell into a routine in which he would shuttle equipment and supplies from Temparas to the stasis facility at Lyst, and from there back to the Ea where he would rest until he was ready to do it all over again.

Hebuiza went about his own business, sometimes accompanying Sav to the city where he would dutifully request permission to run his own errands with the dropship while Sav was scavenging sites, reappearing hours later with sealed crates and bulky satchels crammed into every available space on the vessel. Sav never bothered to check the contents of these containers. When they returned to the stasis facility, Hebuiza immediately hauled his prizes to a room he’d co-opted on the level zero to serve as a lab. Twice more he asked Sav for blood samples; once, he had Liis draw blood from herself and Josua.

On their fifth trip together, Hebuiza had directed Sav to a small airport near the city’s southern outskirts; he instructed him to set down next to a small hanger. Inside was a two seat VTOL craft, its wings folded up and over its cabin so that it looked like a sleeping insect. Two pivoting jet engines were attached to each wing, and a single larger engine vented at the rear of the fuselage. In the corner of the hangar, canisters of fuel and an assortment