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

On the display, the point indicators had been replaced by real-time images of the two vessels, now two kilometers apart. The Viracosa was a centimeter-long narrow wire, unremarkable save for the bulbous feeder tanks on its aft and the long tail of exhaust that lit up the darkness ahead as it continued its deceleration; the Speaker’s ship, however, was mammoth in comparison, the mottled grey ovoid at its centre two hundred times the length of The Viracosa. Its superstructure bristled with antennae, the outer skin of the ship covered with what looked like a metallic furze; dozens of articulated, tapering arms sprouted from the top half of the monstrous egg, most folding back into its underside. Two arms, however, were extended like giant, black mandibles forward of the ship. At their extremities they were mirror-bright silver. Sav couldn’t shake the impression that the ship looked like an enormous insect, its mandibles about to close on The Viracosa.

“One kilometer,” Josua said grimly. “That’s it.” He sat at the pilot’s board, his work on the docking tube completed hours earlier, the hatch overhead dogged. His coveralls were grease stained, and he had managed to rip them in two places; but he showed no signs of fatigue. He had watched the approach of the Speaker’s vessel intently, his chair turned around to face the display.

Ruen sat in the comm officer’s couch to Josua’s right, his soiled burgundy robes flowing over the arms of the chair. In his right fist he clutched his cane. Maybe it was his age, or perhaps his constitution, but the patrix evidently didn’t take to stasis well. The skin seemed to sag from his face and his head wobbled slightly. His eyes were unfocussed. He seemed only partially aware of his surroundings; occasionally he muttered a few incoherent words that sounded vaguely execratory.

Sav had sagged into the navigator’s couch. He’d broken off negotiations an hour earlier, with the proviso discussion would resume after the samples had been retrieved and tested. Up to this point, they’d accomplished little other than to establish the parameters for the agreement on the initial conditions. The process had been extraordinarily draining. Although Sav had managed a cat nap earlier during a break in the session, that had been his only sleep since he woken from stasis twenty hours ago. Everything had taken on the unnatural lucidity of a dream.

“Extend the tube.”

It took Sav a moment to remember the command was for him, that that was the reason he’d moved to this station from his comm board. He turned back to the panel, punched up the sequence; the distant whirr of motors was audible through the hatch overhead. At the same time, the display in the centre of the cabin showed one of the mammoth pincers on the Speaker’s ship stretching towards them. Sav froze; to his left, Josua’s knuckles had gone white as he gripped the arms of his chair.

“I told her one thousand meters!” Josua turned to Ruen. “Connect me!”

The holy man stared at him blankly.

Sav snapped out of his paralysis and was about to scoot across the cabin to the comm board when something happened on the display to stop him: the silver tip of the pincer split open, its sides peeling back like the petals of a flower. Without waiting for Josua’s command, Sav swung around and zoomed the view. From the newly formed aperture a tiny figure shot forth, began sailing towards docking tube of The Viracosa.

It was a naked woman.

Her body shimmered in the running lights of the two vessels, a faint aura playing over every exposed millimeter of her hairless skin. In one hand she held a canister, presumably to house the samples they’d placed in the tube. If she wore any EVA equipment-other than that protective shimmer-to shield her from the vacuum or direct her movements, Sav couldn’t see it. Yet she moved unerringly towards their docking tube, hitting its outer airlock dead centre.

“She’s in!” Josua stabbed a key and the air pumps above thrummed loudly as they worked to equalize the pressure in the far end of the tube. Running the lock cycle would take seventy-three seconds; they had stipulated that the Speaker, once in the tube, would have thirty seconds to retrieve the samples before he’d reverse the cycle. In total, she’d be aboard for a little less than three minutes.

“Sixty-five seconds,” Josua whispered. A pause. “Equalization.”

The pressurization pumps fell silent. Sav counted down the thirty seconds. Right on cue, Josua began hammering keys on the pilot’s board.

The pumps didn’t come back on. And the command to reverse the cycle required only a few simple keystrokes. Yet Josua typed furiously.

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

Josua ignored Sav’s question. With a final flurry, Josua finished his entry. The pilot’s panel lit up; indicators on the navigator’s board flickered to life.

What the hell? Sav thought.

Josua pulled his harness over his shoulders and fastened it. It was only then Sav noticed that Ruen had also been buckled into his couch, the material of his robe bunched tightly around him by the straps. Josua punched a final button and the fusion engines died, killing their deceleration. Their world went silent, their gravity fled.

Sav drifted away from his seat, his stomach wobbling. He clutched at the armrest but missed. Ruen sat rigidly, his knuckles white around his cane. His face blanched. Vomit erupted from between his withered lips, fanned out into the zero-gee of the cabin.

Sav recognized the distant sound of their attitude jets firing. The cabin began to rotate. Ruen coughed and sputtered. His cloud of vomit grew, clotting the air. As their ship turned on its longitudinal axis, the air mass dragged Sav along but his inertia kept him from turning as quickly as the rest of the ship. The bridge spun around him.

“Josua!” Sav shouted. “What are you doing?” But Josua was intent on his board.

“Our…our time is at hand!” Ruen managed to croak between mostly dry heaves.

The centrifugal force of the ship’s rotation made it difficult for Sav to control his movement; he snagged the webbing. A cloud of Ruen’s vomit spattered against him, stuck to his shorts and tee-shirt, clung to his face and arms.

“Josua!”

But Josua ignored him; he had turned to face the display in the centre of the bridge. Sav craned his neck to follow Josua’s gaze. The display had returned to its original dimensions. And the image showed The Viracosa swinging around so that its aft would face the Speaker’s ship.

The attitude jets flared briefly to halt their rotation. The fusion engines kicked to life. Exhaust plasma from The Viracosa lashed out; a spear of energy, heated to the ignition temperature of 500 million degrees, engulfed the extended pincer, scourged the forward face of the Speaker’s ship. Gravity returned like a punch, throwing Sav to the deck, knocking the breath from him. Drops of vomit pattered around him like a heavy rain. Gasping for air, he turned back to the display. It looked like the Speaker’s ship was ablaze. The exhaust stream slewed around the contours of the ovoid, igniting it. There was an explosion amidships and glittering debris spun off into the void, followed by a white plume of atmosphere. The jet of air yawed the Speaker’s ship away, out of the torrent of their exhaust stream. Its extended pincer swung like a broken limb. Stunned, Sav watched the gap between the two vessels widen.

“The Dissolution has begun.” Ruen had turned to the display. His unkempt beard was flecked with vomit. But his eyes were clear now; he turned his gaze on Sav triumphantly. “Too late to repent,” he added with a smirk.

Sav watched The Viracosa accelerate away from its rendezvous. The forward surface of the other ship had been scored and blackened, and atmosphere continued to jet from a breach in its hull. In a fog, Sav caught at webbing, dragged himself to his feet in the press of acceleration, his stomach churning madly as he watched the Speaker’s vessel slip sideways off the edge of the display. Behind him, Ruen had fallen into a rapturous chant.

Wide-eyed, Sav looked around. Josua had undone his harness and now stood next to navigator’s console. Before Sav could do anything, Josua keyed in a new sequence. Overhead, the explosive bolts anchoring the emergency tube to the ship detonated with a muffled bang. The flight deck shuddered; the clang of the released clamps rang through the cabin. Immediately, Ruen fell silent and all three men craned their necks upward, toward the docking tube hatch, although there was nothing they could see. Metal on metal creaked as the emergency tube was pushed away from its mooring and extended fore of the vessel by the rigid umbilical.

“Now we’re safe.”

Sav was stunned. Open-mouthed, he watched Josua walk back to the pilot’s seat and buckle himself in.

“Safe?” Sav asked, his voice rising. “Safe from what?”

“From them!” Josua waved his hand irritably in the air, a gesture he must have meant to indicate the other ship, the Hub, perhaps Nexus itself. “That Speaker was a pawn. A dangerous one. But a pawn, nonetheless. Our job is to reach the Hub. To get the antidote.”

Sav swore softly. The Hub again. “But they’d already agreed to our real demands!”

“Don’t be naive. We have nothing from them. No fuel. No antidote. Only empty promises. For all we know they might not be able to synthesize the antidote on the vessel out there.”

“Not after what you did to it!”

“With any luck.” A cold smile lit Josua’s features. It enraged Sav; he took a step, and his foot skidded out from under him on the vomit-slicked floor. He grabbed at the webbing to steady himself.

Ruen’s eyes fluttered; he began chanting in unfamiliar dialect-or in gibberish. The holy man’s narrow chin jutted up into the air, his knobby arms moving in an intricate obeisance, waving his cane high, eyes open and rolling back as if he were gripped by an ecstatic fervour.

“Shut up!” Sav shouted.

Oblivious, the holy man continued his wheezy glossolalia, the goiter in his neck bobbing up and down.

“We had them!” Sav turned his rage on Josua. “And now you’ve attacked a Nexus vessel.”

“I had to,” Josua answered, loud enough to be heard over Ruen’s rant. “We needed a hostage. One we control.”

Sav was incredulous. “A hostage? What about the nanoagents she could release? God only knows what damage she’s doing right now!”

Josua leaned over his panel to zoom the image of The Viracosa. The nose of ship and the docking tube, a dozen meters apart, filled the entire display area. The thin shaft of the umbilical, invisible before, now spanned the two. It glowed like a light bulb filament.

“That’s the polycarbon-steel umbilical,” Josua said, pointing. “It’s strong enough to hold the mass of the tube in place. And I’ve wired it so that it’s heated several hundred degrees to prevent any nanoagents from using it as a bridge to infest our ship. The thermal vibrations at those temperatures should break down anything less stable than the polycarbon-steel fibre.”

“A burning bridge,” Ruen croaked, his voice strained from his chant.

“Unless the nanoagents have been engineered to withstand those temperatures.”

Josua shrugged. “True. But it’s better than nothing. And the trade off,” Josua said, a hint of pride in his voice, “is that we have another hostage.”

Sav stared at the image. The Viracosa was pushing the tube ahead of itself like a shield. But for what purpose?

“The Hub,” Josua said resolutely, before Sav could frame the question. “We have to go to the Hub. She’s our free passage.”

“What?”