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

The skirl of the alarm shocked him, dragged him back from the borders of sleep.

A tiny speaker embedded in the control panel crackled. “_Message to The Viracosa from the Council of Pro-Locutors_.” The voice this time was flat and artificial sounding. “The next control sequence is as follows: ‘Abitef, Miran, Defetesque.’” Yilda’s key: three cities in Bh’Haret’s southern hemisphere. The message didn’t require a response for another full day. The uninflected voice droned on. “A ship carrying fuel for your vessel has been dispatched. It is also capable of synthesizing an antidote once biological samples have been transferred. We are awaiting your requirements for the exchange of the fuel and antidote-and for the release of Novitiate Lien. On your current course, rendezvous will be at three point seven three eight million kilometers from the Hub. Closer approach will not be allowed. Request return of the counter sequence. Message repeats. The next control sequence is ‘Abitef, Miran, Defetesque’. A ship carrying fuel for your vessel-”

Sav let the message loop twice more, then killed it. He was about to cut the circuit altogether when Josua’s voice filled the tiny cabin. “This is the captain of The Viracosa.” The screen on the dropship’s control panel indicated he was broadcasting from the comm board on the bridge. The incoming message had woken him. “Your message has been received. The counter sequence will be returned in twenty hours. We cannot alter course, nor will we make an exchange before we are in orbit around the Hub. Message ends.”

The cabin fell silent.

The Hub again, Sav thought wearily. It was becoming harder and harder not to believe what Novitiate Lien had told him.

Sav lifted a leaden arm and checked his watch. 4-17:01. Four days and seventeen hours before the onset of the first symptoms. Four days to the Hub. Two to reach the Pro-Locutors’s proposed rendezvous.

It all seemed too quick. And at the same time, excruciatingly slow. There was nothing to do. Except sit here in the dropship and wait. Sav thought about Josua up on the bridge-and suddenly remembered Ruen’s prostrate form. He sat up.

What would Josua make of his attack on Ruen? And what would the holy man do when he next encountered Sav? It was something Sav hadn’t considered in the rush of the moment. For an instant he felt regret at his precipitate action; then he shrugged it off. Josua probably wouldn’t care. His only concern was getting to the Hub. As for the patrix himself, Sav would deal with him when he had to.

Sitting back, Sav let his head loll against the seat. He stared through the windscreen at the grey double doors of the outer airlock, a meter past the nose of the dropship. The scene blurred; Sav’s eyes fluttered.

“Sav?”

The word pierced Sav’s consciousness, pulled him from sleep like a swimmer plucked unexpectedly from a warm pool. He thought to sit up, but succeeded only in twisting himself into a corkscrewing motion, the cabin of the dropship turning slowly before his eyes as if panned by a revolving camera, his stomach drifting helplessly behind. He was weightless, tumbling from his couch. The Viracosa ran silently, the thrum of its engines gone.

“Please respond.”

Josua’s shut down the engines! was Sav’s first thought. When the initial wave of panic subsided, he realised that this was the opposite of what Josua wanted. Had Josua’s maneuvers exhausted the fuel prematurely? No. It would have taken time to use up the remaining fuel pellets. I’ve been asleep, Sav realised._ It seemed only like seconds, but I’ve been asleep_. He spun slowly towards the ceiling of the cabin in zero-gee.

“What is happening?” Novitiate Lien’s voice had taken on a note of panic, of fear. “Why have we stopped accelerating?”

Sav bumped against the ceiling of the cramped cabin. With a practised movement, he tucked his legs and rotated so that his feet thumped against the ceiling. Then he kicked off gently, propelling himself towards a drag bar fixed along the edge of the control panel. Snagging it, he righted himself, feeling an uncustomary swell of nausea, like a green recruit might experience in freefall for the first time. He ignored the sensation, attributed it to fatigue and stress. Reaching out, he pressed the transmit key.

“This is Sav.” He glanced at his watch, saw he had slept ten hours. Why, he wondered, did he still feel so tired?

“I…I am sorry, Sav. I know I was not supposed to contact you. But it has been so long since I talked to you. I wanted to know what was happening. Then the loss of gravity startled me. I thought-”

“The fuel pellets are exhausted. That’s all.”

“Oh.” She sounded sheepish.

Sav felt irritable; a headache fogged his brain, seemed to settle behind his eyes. “There’s no danger,” he said. “Except for what Josua might do if he discovers we’re in communication.”

There was a moment of silence in which his accusation hung between them. Much to Sav’s surprise, she didn’t respond in anger or fear, but said simply, “I trust you.”

Sav felt a stab of shame. “I’m tired.” It was all he could think to say.

“I know. I am too.”

“You were right,” Sav said, his words controlled this time, softened. “About the bomb I mean. It looks like Josua planned this from the start. I think he’s determined to detonate it at the Hub.” His throat felt thick, and it sickened him to say the next words: “Negotiating for an antidote was only a sham.”

“I see.” there was a pause. “I will not tell my superiors yet. Not until it is absolutely necessary.”

Sav understood: if the Pro-Locutors believed there was nothing to be gained from the negotiations, they might decide to destroy The Viracosa, Speaker and all, before it reached the Hub.

“If we survive, I will do my best to help you find your cure.”

She sounded sincere. Sav was surprised to find her simple assurance meant more to him than he would have thought. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “And I’ll do my best to see Josua doesn’t harm you.”

“Thank…_thank you_.”

“Try to rest.”

“You too.”

“Yeah,” Sav said, realizing he was still tired, so tired he felt he could fall asleep again simply by shutting his eyes. “I’ll try.” He cut the connection. Releasing the grab bar, he drifted free. Rest, he thought. It sounded so appealing. But first he knew he should check the bridge, find out exactly what Josua had or had not done. Perhaps he should begin his search for the bomb’s trigger. But his limbs felt leaden and his brain ached. Why am I so tired? he wondered. A shiver ran through him and he closed his eyes, thinking, I’ll rest just for second, not intending to fall asleep again.

Two discordant sensations swam in Sav’s mind: the first was a feeling of detachment, a kind of dizzying displacement from the moment in which his physical body was rooted, as if he observed rather than inhabited it; the second was exactly the opposite, a heightened sense of the minutiae of his physical being, of the fine sheen of sweat that coated every millimeter of his skin, of the tiny shiverings that jangled each nerve ending, of the queasy ball growing in the pit of his stomach. His consciousness swung sickeningly between the two perspectives like a long arcing pendulum.

Sav opened his eyes and blinked. He was in freefall.

He turned his head, and the world moved unsteadily, the motion of his skull seeming to drag it reluctantly along. His nausea increased in alarming surges. He decided to remain still. In the periphery of his vision he recognized the shape of a control panel.

I’m in the dropship. His perspective twisted with the rotation of his body.

Then it came back to him: he recalled going between the shields, finding Josua’s handiwork, securing himself in the dropship. I’m tired, he thought. A little disoriented. That’s all. But as soon as he thought that, he knew it was wrong. Fear spiked his heart into a fevered beat. I’m sick. Lifting his hand, he looked at the pads of his fingers: dozens of small, red nodules had erupted on his skin.

The plague!

Fear banded Sav’s chest, making it difficult to draw breath. Holding up his wrist in disbelief, he stared at his watch. 4-2:20. He still had four days and two hours. No, Sav thought. It can’t be!

Yet the tiny red bumps that stippled the pads of his fingers were incontrovertible evidence. The Trojan vector had wound down inside him, had blossomed like a deadly flower into the plague. The disease was multiplying in him at a maddening pitch, bacteriophages reconstituting billions of cells into virulent factories. It was seated itself in his liver and spleen, had begun its attack on his blood cells. Within forty hours he would be in remission. But the respite would be short lived: in a matter of hours black lesions would appear on his skin. Abscesses would start growing inside his lungs, kidney, heart and brain, and he would begin experiencing intense abdominal pain, nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. Within a week irreversible cerebral and renal damage would occur, and finally a sudden death from toxic shock, if he was lucky, or the agonizing death of hypovolemia brought on by multiorgan failure….

Panic seized him; he tried to swim back through the air to the couch, but his arms churned uselessly. The sudden movement had made his gorge rise and the cabin spin uncontrollably. He managed to snag the arm of the seat and clung to it desperately, squeezing his eyes shut. The wave of queasiness retreated, his heart slowed. Though he still felt woozy and his limbs trembled, the cabin had almost stilled; now he felt like he rode a boat over gentle swells.

Sav opened his eyes again and everything seemed deceptively normal. Except the hard nodules dotting the tips of his fingers. Maybe, he thought with a rush of hope, it’s not the plague. Maybe it’s something else. It would be easy to find out. All he had to do was check Josua and Ruen for symptoms.

He launched himself towards the dropship’s airlock, the world moving vertiginously beneath him; fighting back his nausea, he caught at the hatch. He fumbled to undo the dogs. They were perplexing beneath fingers that felt thick and awkward. He managed to open the hatch and propelled himself to the airlock, slapping the red button to unseal the door. He pulled himself up the ladder towards the crew quarters.

The holy man was in his stasis cell, webbing pulled haphazardly across the opening so that half floated free. Ruen’s face was slicked with sweat. Though his eyes were open, they were glazed, feverish. In white-knuckled fists he gripped the bunched material of his stained robe, muttering incoherently between racking shivers. Red nodules speckled the tips of his fingers.

Sav tore his eyes away from Ruen, from the confirmation of the plague, his brain burning red, his limbs trembling with anger and outrage. Long ago he thought he’d reconciled himself to the inevitable process of his own death, but now he was seized with an irrational desire to flee, to lock himself behind the thick door of the shuttle craft. Only he knew it was too late for that. It was too late for anything.

During the last few seconds the