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

“What’s done. You were supposed to….”

Invisible hands clutched at Sav, dragged him back towards the hatch; the cable he’d plugged into the board pulled taut.

“…_tell me first_-”

The connector snapped free, cutting off Lien. Sav tumbled backwards into starstrung darkness. The heavens wheeled around him.

The Viracosa came into view, arced across his line of sight, and disappeared. As it swung past Sav for the second time, he saw the hatch on the end of emergency tube spin away silently, a plume of white gas racing after. Impossibly, a naked woman shot from the tube, a miraculous creature of the stars. The edge of her skin was alive with dancing fire. She burns! Sav thought. He marvelled at the sight, felt disappointment when she spun from view. An angel, he thought.

On his third spin she was nowhere to be seen. In the corner of his visor, the clock showed ninety seconds. Goodbye, he thought forlornly. He shut his eyes.

Something seized his arm in a grip so fierce it made him wince. Go away, he thought. Leave me alone. The pressure persisted.

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. The dizzying spin of the heavens had stopped. A shadowed face pressed close to his, a faint glow sketching its outlines.

“Liis?”

The figure turned and the shadow fell away; he could see the face was too round, the features too fine, for it to be Liis. It was another woman.

“Your suit,” Sav mumbled, stifling his disappointment. “You need a suit….”

Her dark eyes burnt with anger and determination, a look that scalded Sav like a brand. The woman wrapped her arms around his chest, cutting off his breath. Sav felt his momentum shift, like he was caught in a current, a strange, otherworldly tug, sharp and persistent. Together, he and the strange woman rotated until they faced a small craft, its rear blackened and its nose battered. The_ dropship_, Sav thought, amazed at how different it appeared from outside. They accelerated toward the open hatch.

Before he could fully fathom what was happening, they were inside and in front of the control panel. A connect light on the panel blinked furiously.

“Maybe we should answer that,” he mumbled.

But the woman didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, she clutched at something near Sav’s waist, raised the cable and examined its connector. Sav watched as she began jamming it into the half-dozen jacks of similar size on the board.

With her third stab, a voice erupted in his ear. “- the thrusters! We have to get out of here!”

“I know you,” Sav said slowly. “You’re Lien, aren’t you?”

“The thrusters!”

Was that all she wanted to do? Sav reached forward, tried to move the slider up, but it had grown heavier, seemed stuck in its slot. The woman closed her hand over his and pushed hard; the control slid forward easily. The engines fired, and Sav felt himself being dragged back by the acceleration.

Lien managed to grasp both the drag bar in front of the control board and the arm of Sav’s suit. She pulled him towards her with an amazing show of strength, then bowed her head over the control board. “How much time?” she asked without looking up.

Sav hardly heard the question; the grip of acceleration had brought the full weight of his wound back upon him. His leg seemed to twist back agonizingly under the stress, and his brain crackled with wrathful bolts of pain. He cried out; tears streamed from his eyes. He felt his limbs flailing, and realised he wanted to get Lien’s attention, to let her know how he was too hurt to answer a silly question. But she was intent on the board, her head bowed over the monitor. “How long?” she repeated.

Sav tried to focus; several red droplets had been pulled across the inward curve of his faceplate by the force of acceleration, leaving bloody smears. Others stretched and snapped free, to patter against his face. His eyelids were stranded with red. He tried ignore everything, to focus on the orange digits. “F…five s…seconds…” His teeth chattered and his whole body seemed to shake uncontrollably. “I think…”

She turned, her features twisted up in an irate expression.

But when she looked him fully in the face, her own paled. The anger in her eyes fled; the expression they now held seemed to be a mix of sadness and pity.

“Sav, I’m sorry.”

Over her shoulder he could see the magnified image of The Viracosa on the screen.

She hooked her legs around the arm of the pilot’s couch and drew him in, clutching him tightly to her breast. Light flared on the monitor screen, eradicating The Viracosa. One moment it was there, hanging against a backdrop of stars; the next it had been consumed in a glaring, featureless oblivion.

“Shock wave,” she said. “Hold on.”

Consciousness returned bit by bit.

At first Sav thought he was back on the Ea, waking from stasis on the return leg to Bh’Haret. In the background an alarm klaxon wailed mournfully, and he felt the same heaviness of limb, the same sluggishness of thought that accompanied revival. A dream, he thought, his heart beating hopefully. It was a dream! But was he waking to the beginning of the same nightmare?

“You’re conscious.” It was a woman’s voice, vaguely familiar.

Sav opened his eyes, blinked away the cobwebs. He was strapped into the co-pilot’s couch; a naked woman sat next to him in the pilot’s seat, studying him intently. She looked grave, her mouth pursed and her brows drawn down in thought. Lifting her hand, she placed it on his forehead.

“No!” Sav said, struggling weakly to push her hand away. “The plague!”

“It’s all right,” Lien said, corralling his hands in hers, moving them back to his sides. “I do not believe I am in any danger.” She returned her palm to his head, smoothing his brow. “Or at least no immediate danger. Nor are you. You have been unconscious for twelve of your hours. Your fever has passed.”

It was true that he felt sharper, his thoughts clearer than they had been in days. Just as Yilda had told him he would. “I’m in remission. The fever will return.”

“We will be picked up shortly by another vessel. It will have the facilities to cure you.”

“The Viracosa, Josua,” Sav said, remembering the blazing light on the screen.

“Dead.”

Dead? Sav thought. It seemed unreal.

“When you sealed your suit it set off the trigger for the bomb. We were lucky,” she added. “The brunt of the shock wave hit us directly from behind. The engines and shielding plates protected us. I was not sure your primitive technology would stand up to the blast, but it did-for the most part. You will still need treatment for radiation sickness. My skinsuit can only do so much in the way of regeneration.”

Sav stared down at his body. He was naked-except for an almost imperceptible shimmer that covered his skin from the neck down. Yet he could feel nothing. Not even the pain of his broken leg. Although the bone still protruded, his shin was amazingly quiescent. And the bleeding had been staunched. In fact, his whole body was as pink and clean as if he had just stepped from a shower. “You put your suit on me,” he said.

“Your need was greater than mine,” Lien said simply.

“My friends,” Sav said. “At the relay station. What happened to them?”

“We do not know. After they were told about the bomb detonating, they severed contact.”

“You mean they killed the hostages.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “We think that is the case. Several were executed immediately, and we have had intermittent contact from others since, those not initially taken hostage. It seems they are now being hunted.”

Sav watched her for signs of anger, for the flash in her eyes that would betray her hatred and desire for revenge. But she showed nothing-except, perhaps, for a hint of sadness.

“The Pro-Locutors say they cannot understand why the hostages were silenced. They claim they would have given you what you wanted.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I think they are telling the truth.”

“It makes no sense,” Sav said. “Why would Yilda execute the hostages when it was our only bargaining tool?”

“The Pro-Locutors think he may have been mad, like Josua.” She paused. “And there are also whispers of other things.”

“What things?”

“Rumours. Things I have overheard. They would be meaningless to you. They don’t mean much to me.”

“Tell me.”

Lien shrugged. “There is talk that the lost Brother has returned. The one consumed by the Twins.”

At first Sav misunderstood; then he remembered the binary suns of Nexus were referred to as the Twins. And the story Yilda had told them. “There was a myth,” Sav said. “One of the brothers was thrown into a fiery pit for betraying his twin.”

“It is not a myth. The details are uncertain, but this much is fact: the Brothers founded and ruled the Polyarchy for several centuries. One plotted an insurrection, but his scheme was exposed before he could bring it to fruition. When confronted with his sedition, the usurper attempted to flee. When he attempted to use the gravity wells of the double suns of the Hub to escape, his vessel disintegrated in the corona of the primary sun.”

Sav’s head began to ache. “I don’t see what that has to do with us.”

“Nor do I. I told you, they are rumours. You have to understand the lost Brother has come to symbolize uncertainty and chaos. Whenever the Polyarchy experiences a setback, his name is invoked. As if he were a hostile anima guiding those who wish to harm Nexus. Losing the relay station is not a minor matter. Though I do not appreciate its full impact, I sense that it may be the most catastrophic event to befall the Polyarchy since its inception. That his spectre would be resurrected is an inevitability.”

“Then I’ll be killed. In retribution.”

She shook her head. “You are not that important to the Polyarchy now. They are ruthless, perhaps, but never wasteful. You may still play a minor role. They wish to distance themselves as much as possible from the destruction of your planet. You will be cured, then released, as a gesture of their goodwill.”

“To do what?” Sav said bitterly, not really expecting an answer.

“Whatever you wish.” Her words were abrupt, as if something had angered her. “Stay here as the guest of the Polyarchy. Or return to Bh’Haret.”

Sav was taken aback; he stared at his bare feet, momentarily lost in thought. Cured and sent home. Wasn’t that what he had struggled for? Only now there was no reason to go back. Bh’Haret was a dead world. He shrugged and looked up to see Lien watching him intently. “There’s nothing for me there.”

Her expression hardened; a muscle in her jaw twitched.

Sav resented her reaction. Why should she care whether or not he returned home? “You look like you’re the one who’s lost everything,” he said, making no attempt to hide the scorn in his voice.

“I have been privy to information that makes me a danger,” she said flatly. “Until now, the relay station has been a well-guarded secret. I can tell they regret much of what was revealed to me. At the least they will strip me of the Speaker’s gift so that I am a containable problem; more likely is that I will be destroyed to make certain of the containment.” As she spoke she turned her head toward the front of the ship and stared off into the distance, as if she could see the Hub and those who sat in