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

As their progress fell off, Yilda’s exasperation had grown in proportion. His gestures became anxious, and his demands on the party increased. Rest periods were shortened, and then seemed to disappear altogether. Yilda traversed the winding paths of safe ground as if he were sprinting against an invisible opponent. And unlike the other members of the party, he seemed inexhaustible. Even Hebuiza’s narrow shoulders were stooped. But Yilda, despite his pot belly and generally dissipated appearance, was possessed of an apparently bottomless stamina. He urged them to push a little bit further before their next extended rest. They had been skiing without a break for five hours. Exhausted, her legs rubbery, Liis watched Yilda finally signal for a rest. The party closed ranks.

Mira lost her balance.

As she approached the point where the Facilitator had stopped, her ski slipped out of the track, slewed to the side, and she fell over. Liis, who’d been behind her, watched it happen without concern. After all, she herself had fallen several times since they’d set out and was none the worse for it. But this time something different occurred: the momentum of Mira’s sled carried it forward; it banged into her arm and drove the sharp tip of her pole, which had caught in the articulated folds behind her knee, into her suit. She withdrew it.

From the mouth of the small breach a jet of red spewed across Liis’ infrared display, roiled into a cloud in the air. Mira, who must have seen the same thing on her display, immediately clapped a hand across the mouth of the tear. Heat continued to leak out around her palm and fingers like blood haemorrhaging from a wound.

Liis stared, too stunned to react. She looked up to Yilda, but he stood five meters ahead, twisted around on his skis, watching impassively.

Hebuiza flashed past her; he flung aside his poles as he bore down on Mira. The Facilitator lifted his right arm; a thin, silver needle, driven by some hidden mechanism, slid from the forearm of his suit, extended to a length of several centimeters past the palm of his hand. He curled his fingers under the instrument and out of the way. Reflected sunlight flashed off the casing of the needle as Hebuiza bent down and jabbed Mira in his chest, directly over her heart. The small woman jerked once and went limp; Hebuiza withdrew the needle. A thin jet of red streamed from the second tiny puncture; this time it was accompanied by a thin trickle of blood. The needle disappeared back into its sheath. The Facilitator quickly unbuckled Mira from her leads. With surprising strength, Hebuiza grabbed Mira’s harness and lifted her from the ground. She hung from the Facilitator’s grip, her poles dangling from their wrist straps, making her look like a broken marionette. A miasma of red grew around her. Hebuiza grabbed her suit by the crotch and shoulder and heaved her, like a sack of offal, to his left. Mira’s loose-jointed body, her stubby skis still attached to her boots, sailed towards one of the weak spots outlined on Liis’ display. She hit it dead centre. The crust collapsed under her and she tumbled from sight.

Liis swung back to face Hebuiza. He had already pushed Mira’s sled to the opening. Placing his bootsole on the edge of the sled, he shoved it forward. It teetered for a second on the brink, then followed Mira down. Unhurriedly, Hebuiza picked up one of the poles he’d discarded and then carefully retrieved the other from the periphery of a second, unbroken weak spot. Both poles in hand, he turned and kicked himself into motion, gliding past Liis, back to his place behind her.

My God, Liis thought. Just like that. Shocked, she stared at the hole. It could have been me. How many times she had fallen? She couldn’t remember.

Something caught Liis’ attention: it was Yilda, motioning for her to follow. He turned his back and pushed off, clearly anxious to put as much distance between them and the site of the revealing leak. Liis watched him begin to pick his way through the maze of weaknesses.

They’d talked about this contingency, back when they’d been preparing the meteoroid. In the event of a suit breach, their only option was to dispose of the leak-as quickly and ruthlessly as possible. She hadn’t thought much about it since. But Yilda and Hebuiza apparently had. The needle proved that. Liis was certain Mira had been dead before she’d begun her tumble down the shaft.

Liis tried to convince herself that Mira was really the lucky one. For her it was over. The Dissolution Ruen’s disciple had longed for had finally arrived. She wouldn’t have to succumb to the disease and its progressive indignities-or take her own life to avoid it. The decision had already been made for her.

It’s better this way. Yet even as she thought this, Liis knew she wouldn’t have traded places with Mira for anything. Much to her surprise, she realized she begrudged every precious moment left to her. She wouldn’t give up a second without a fight.

Something struck her in the small of the back, and Liis jumped, the lines of her sled tugging sharply on her harness. A pain jolted down the length of her broken arm. She swung around and saw Hebuiza, his pole reversed in his hand, the butt end waving at her impatiently to get moving. Anger flared like a nova; she swung her pole around. But it went wide of the mark this time and she nearly lost her balance. She was twisted around awkwardly on her skis and Hebuiza had already backed out of range. Her face seemed to radiate heat.

She lowered her pole, seething. Patience, she thought, pushing her anger back down to that place where she coddled it deep inside her chest. There will be time enough for this later. With disdain, she turned her back on Hebuiza, pushing herself into motion, remembering that long, sharp needle hidden in the folds of the Facilitator’s suit.

It was late in the planet’s afternoon when the crown of the dome first became visible. Liis hadn’t been watching; instead, her attention had been fixed rigidly on Yilda’s ski tracks. Her analgesic patches had run out that morning, and the throbbing in her broken arm (along with the countless aches of her other muscles) permeated her consciousness like an endless hum. She followed those two narrow depressions in the crust without caring where they might lead, trying to lose herself in the mindless act of mechanical repetition. Even Yilda had disappeared from her thoughts, the fact of the trail seemingly unconnected to his presence thirty meters ahead.

Then, when she fell out of the numbing rhythm for the briefest of moments, distracted by what she couldn’t have said, she’d glanced up to see the dome.

At first she thought she imagined the tiny anomaly that seemed to float just above the horizon. When she went to maximum magnification, it remained an enigmatic, grey smudge. But her compass marked their destination with unarguable accuracy. It was the dome. The display estimated it to be eighteen klicks away.

Less than a day.

Liis could hardly believe it.

Since Mira’s death six days earlier, they’d made relatively good progress. But they had slowed to a crawl the last ten hours as they’d approached the far shore of the buried lake; here they’d encountered a dense field of the perilous shafts, far worse than any they’d yet encountered. As they crossed the boundary of the buried lake, had the formations abruptly stopped. Now they skied straight ahead over a level surface, a steady wind at their backs. Barring any further delays, they’d arrive tomorrow, leaving them five days before the onset of the first symptoms. They would be behind schedule, yet well within the parameters of Yilda’s plan. Liis’ heartbeat quickened.

Don’t let yourself get too hopeful, she admonished herself.

She still had no idea what the Facilitators hoped to do when they arrived. They had been as tight-lipped and mysterious about the details of their plan as they had about everything else. And she’d let herself be led by the nose in all of this. A sudden wave of cold anger seized her; she bit her lip, shook it off. Soon, she thought. When we get to the dome and peel off these suits. They’ll tell me. I’ll make them! Yilda won’t be able to ignore me then. She thought back to the brief exchanges between Penirdth and Yilda back on Bh’Haret, the few questions Penirdth had asked, the small objections he raised. But Yilda’s confidence had been unassailable.

“Can’t disclose the details, no. Rest assured, however, we can, and will, accomplish our mission.” His tone had been boastful. “They are not gods. No. Spent my life studying their ways, hey? Mortal as we are. And they could not have foreseen an expedition as, um, audacious as ours.” He had paused, stroking the golden studs along his chin. “They could have no notion, no conception, we know about the relay station. Security will be lax.” With a wry smile, he added, “You might say I know them better than they know themselves.”

Liis had found his braggadocio annoying in the extreme. Though she wasn’t superstitious, she had squirmed at his cockiness. It was almost as if he were inviting disaster.

But Yilda had gotten them this far.

Still, there was something wrong. Something about Yilda. His self-confidence might have merely been bravado, a pose. He was, after all, a Facilitator. Only she didn’t believe that. He seemed to be growing more assured with each stride he took towards the dome. His gait increased in length and he poled with vigour, throwing up small spumes of snow in his wake. Liis struggled to keep up. If she hadn’t known better, she would have guessed by his body language that he was returning to a long lost home rather than skiing towards an enemy enclave. It gave her the creeps.

Or am I being paranoid?

She stared at Yilda’s back, at the eagerness that seemed to animate his arms and legs, at the way he leaned forward as if this might get him to the dome that much sooner. No, Liis thought. He knows something that he hasn’t told me. Hebuiza had shown none of the anticipation that Yilda had. The other Facilitator looked more and more exhausted as the days had passed. His stoop had become permanent. Glancing back, Liis saw him move his arms and legs in a leaden motion; his head was bowed. Whatever buoyed Yilda wasn’t working for Hebuiza. Perhaps the taller Facilitator was in the dark every bit as much as she was.

Liis shook her head to clear the clutter of pointless, unverifiable thoughts. It was all speculation. Nothing more. Still.

Nearly sixty meters ahead, Yilda had increased the tempo again. His poles pistoned up and down, and the back end of his skis snapped up into the air at the end of each of his strides. Liis grit her teeth and redoubled her effort. Her pole bit into the brittle surface and her legs