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

For a moment she stood there, uncertain what to do; then she hurried down the row and knelt next to Josua. She followed his gaze through the clear spot he’d rubbed into the dust that grimed the dome. It was an older woman with a thin face and wisps of blonde hair pasted to her scalp. Dark lesions covered her shoulders and throat. She looked waxen in the bath of cryoprotective gylcerol, as if she were in the last stages of a consumptive disease. Perhaps she suffered from the plague that had destroyed Bh’Haret; or perhaps it was one of the other maladies for which they had no cure at the time she was interred.

Dead, she thought. I just watched her die. But she felt no pity. Only annoyance. She turned to Josua. “Are you okay?”

Josua stared at the woman; perspiration clung to his upper lip. He pointed at her, the laser still clipped to his arm, its snout aimed right at the woman. For a moment Liis thought he might to pull the trigger. He let his arm down.

“Everyone’s dead.” He looked at Liis, his eyes filled with an unutterable despair. “Or will be soon.”

“There was nothing we could have done to save her, Josua. Saving ourselves is our first priority.”

“Why? What’s the point?”

“There’s always a point,” Liis said, though she could hardly believe she was saying this. To her, life had seemed pointless, random, chaotic. Or so she would have said until she met Josua. She got to her feet. “Come on.” She hooked her hand under Josua’s arm, helped him up. “We’ve got lots of these rooms left.”

Abstracted, Josua allowed himself to be dragged forward a few meters, then tugged his arm free. “No,” he said, shuffling back up the row. “I have to finish here first.”

Liis let him go.

What else was there she could do?

She watched him pick up where he left off scanning the cells, his helmet swinging back and forth like a forlorn lighthouse beacon, searching uselessly for something she couldn’t fathom.

“Josua?”

The quiet hiss in Liis’ headset went dead. Josua had cut their comm link. Liis curled her hands into fists-at least as much as the thick gloves allowed.

In all, she’d known Josua less than a month of subjective time. So why did it hurt so much?

Had it been four or five floors they’d checked already?

Liis couldn’t remember. She stood at the foot of another identical array of stasis cells, waiting for Josua to complete his ritual inspection. Trailing off into the distance were the small and lonely footprints his boots had scribed in the dust on the floor. A slowly churning haze of dust hung over them like a luminous vapour. Liis stared at it, transfixed by its slow undulations, a sea of dust rising and falling in languorous peaks and troughs.

A burst of static startled her.

She swung around instinctively, her light cleaving the darkness as cleanly as a blade. Her heart hammered against his ribs. She could see no one. Then, in a rush, she remembered where she was, where she stood.

A garbled transmission came through her headset.

“…crate…” There was a hum, followed by a distorting hiss as the receiver tried to hold the signal. “…something here…Liis…”

“Sav?”

“…found…panel…this level…” The voice crackled in Liis’s earpiece, struggling through the intervening concrete floors, fading in and out as it cycled through the frequency shifts Hebuiza had programmed. “…older housing. Probably been…forever….”

“You’re breaking up, Sav.”

“…think…out…problem with…span…..gone for a look-see….” His voice faded, the hiss receded.

Liis left the room and stepped into the corridor hoping to catch a stronger signal; static, unintelligible sounds, maybe words, crackled through her headset. She moved towards the drop shaft. “Sav?” Liis maxed out the gain on her headset, leaned into the dropshaft.

“DO YOU COPY, LIIS?”

Liis winced, quickly muting the transmission with a muttered voice command. She pulled her head out of the shaft and took a step back.

“I’m at the dropshaft.” Sav’s voice was crystal clear now. “How’s the signal now?”

“Terrific,” she said, her ears ringing.

“We’ve found an old access panel that seems to be active.”

“Active?”

“Yeah. There’s a pilot light. Or something. But a skid of barrels is blocking it. We need you and Josua to give us a hand clearing them away.”

“Where are you?”

“Eleventh sublevel. Turn left when you come out of the dropshaft. It’s the second corridor on the right.”

“Copy,” Liis said. “We’ll be down in a few minutes.” She turned and headed back to the chamber where she’d left Josua, switching frequencies to the channel she and Josua had been using. “Did you catch that Josua?” No answer; the display in Liis’ suit show his comm unit was still not acknowledging. “Sav thinks he’s found an active data port.” Liis reached the door and was about to push against it when Josua came barrelling out, almost knocking her over. He shouldered past Liis and ran-as much as his suit would allow-down the corridor to the dropshaft. Grabbing the ladder, he swung himself in dropped quickly from sight, descending at a dangerous clip.

Dammit! Liis thought. He’s going to kill himself.

She hurried down the hall and poked her head into the shaft. It was like looking into a well at midnight. She couldn’t see a thing. Where was Josua’s lamp? For a moment Liis panicked, fearing he might have slipped; then she flipped on her external pickups. In the distance she heard the dull clunking of boots on metal rungs several levels below. For whatever reason, Josua had turned off his headlamp. Catching hold of the ladder, she swung herself into the shaft to begin her own descent.

The access panel was in a maintenance corridor wide enough for four of them to walk abreast. Sav had hung a trouble light from a cabling conduit that ran down the centre of the ceiling; it filled the tunnel with a bright, unnatural light, illuminating Sav’s small, round figure bent over the panel, his head bowed over the tiny leads he was trying to solder onto a plug. He worked slowly with the thick fingers of his suit.

Liis sat with her back against the last drum they had wrestled to the ground, her breath ragged, her visor fogged. Her suit had been designed for a zero-gee environment; here it seemed to weigh far more than it actually did, making any kind of labour awkward and dangerous. Her recirculator hummed, whining like an angry insect, straining to keep her cool.

She looked around, trying to spot Hebuiza. He’d moved even further away, to the junction where this service corridor met the main corridor. In his black suit and with his helmet light now off, he was shrouded by darkness, nearly invisible. Liis turned to look at Josua who leaned against the wall, his head hung, lost in his own despair. He hadn’t stirred since they’d hauled the last barrel out of the way. Liis wanted to go to him, to comfort him. But she couldn’t bring herself to rise and cross the few meters to where he stood. Not here. Not this way.

She lowered her own head.

What now? she thought. What now?

She needed to find something else to occupy her thoughts, something else to do, while she waited for Sav to finish his work. Anything but think about Josua. She considered running a diagnostic on her suit to make sure she hadn’t damaged anything, but changed her mind. What was the use? They had no replacement parts here, only basic patch kits. There was little more on the ship. And, unless they found a cache of similar suits, that was all there ever would be. It was the end of everything. Josua, she thought. Don’t give up hope….

“I’m in,” Sav said quietly. A light winked green in the lower corner of Liis’ HUD as Sav completed the relay and patched it into their broadcast group. “There’s one pending message,” he said.

Josua snapped out of his lethargy, pushing himself away from the wall. “Play it,” he said.

An image coalesced, overlaying the visor of Liis’ helmet. Along the bottom was a date stamp showing the recording to be over twenty-nine years old, made shortly after their departure. A woman, tall and gaunt, with lank, greasy hair and red, bloodshot eyes sat behind a desk. Her skin was the sickly yellow of jaundice. She appeared older than Liis, perhaps forty in standard years, though it was hard to tell. She wore a simple short-sleeved shirt and a stained vest with four bulging pockets. On her arms and neck were red lesions, many caked with dried blood, like those Liis had seen on several of the people in the cryo cells. Beneath her darkened fingernails were the sharp red lines of haemorrhage splinters. A single drop of blood hung off the tip of her index finger. She coughed, a deep, wracking thing, then cleared her throat:

Our own human plague wasn’t enough. Now we have to contend with a network virus. We lost a total of seven thousand thirty-seven clients because of system failures, but nothing since we cut the trunk line to the outside world two days ago. I’ve tried to moat the remaining systems as best as I could, but all the technicians have succumbed to the contagion. In the chambers still containing active stasis cells, I’ve isolated the controlling AIs by physically cutting all the cables except for the power lines. But if the computer virus has already infected the network supervisor, as I suspect, it may be too late.

Her voice was cracked, dried out. She paused, swallowing rapidly, struggling to catch her breath. Then she continued.

The power feed has been intermittent the last few days as well, and went out entirely this morning. I’ve switched all the units over to the backup solar array, and powered down all non-essential systems. If my calculations are correct, this should be just enough to sustain the remaining cells. There is nothing more I can do. Everyone else is dead or in cryosuspension. I’m the last one left…. Twenty-seven days. It only took twenty-seven days to infect us all. I thought I might be spared since I hadn’t shown any symptoms until four days ago. Even then I tried to convince myself it was merely a simple viral infection. But then I got it, just like they did….

She lifted her hands and stared at them, then turned them outwards to face the lens of the recorder. The pads of her fingers were stippled with small red nodules.

When I saw these two days ago, I knew with certainty I had the disease. Only in me, the progression of the plague has been more rapid than any other cases I witnessed. I can barely walk now and can’t keep anything down. I’ve blacked out twice already this morning. It’s time to put myself in suspension. I’ve instructed the system to lockdown as soon as I’m under.

I’ve left the general catalog open…should anyone happen to…for anyone to use….

She stared past the recorder, looking like she had lost her train of thought. Then, her eyes went wide and she vomited. A stream of bloody sputum shot from her mouth and splashed over the desk. Staring at the spumous mess, an expression of surprise and sadness filled her face. The muscles in her neck constricted, and she bent to her left, head behind the desk, shoulders heaving. Pus leaked from a blackened sore on the back of her neck. Josua could hear each retch clearly, and the sound of her vomit spattering on the floor. For a moment the woman remained doubled