Nexus, Robert Boyczuk [best free ereader TXT] 📗

orders, they had all lightened their loads. He sent Hebuiza down the line, picking and choosing the items they would keep. When he came to Liis, the Facilitator indicated that she was to keep her skis and a single pole (she’d need only one for her good arm); a backup energy cell for her suit; a pack containing clothes, a medical kit, a dozen foil food pouches, a laser pistol, and a box of battery clips for the pistol; six flares wrapped in plastic; a heavy metallic cylinder containing plastic explosives and detonators; and two long nylon ropes. He had her discard two bolt guns and their magazines (impossible to use with only one arm) and her climbing gear. After Hebuiza had moved on to Penirdth, Liis also dumped her backup energy cell. Her display showed that her suit still had enough juice for at least fourteen days; three days after that the first symptoms would manifest. If they weren’t at the dome by the time her battery died, there’d be little point.

Visibility was almost nil. Although the snowfall was no heavier than before-and had perhaps let up marginally-the wind had increased in intensity as they moved another half klick into the maw of the pass. It continued beat at their backs with ferocity; snow whipped past them in a blur. The ground was worn to a smooth, glassy texture. Thirty meters to her right Liis could barely make out Binlosson lying on his sled; the same distance to her left was Penirdth. No one else was visible. Yilda had strung them out across a hundred and fifty meter gap in the middle of the pass. Past Binlosson, and hidden by the curtain of snow, were Yilda, Mira and then Hebuiza. Hebuiza would go first and the rest would follow, in three minute intervals, Penirdth going last.

Liis glanced back and forth between Binlosson and her clock. Eight minutes had already elapsed since the Facilitator’s departure had been signalled down the line. Liis waited. Exactly when the stopwatch display showed 9:00:00, Binlosson’s shadowy figure wiggled the spiked end of his boots free of the ice. His sled lurched forward. Binlosson dragged his feet, his heels bouncing slightly as the tips of the crampons alternately caught and released ice. Liis strained to watch his progress, but one moment Binlosson was visible, the next obscured by the twisting sheets of snow, his image fading in and out like a wavering signal. Within seconds he became a smudge of uncertain colour, then nothing.

Liis turned her helmet to look at Penirdth; he was visible through the thickening storm only as a faint outline. He had helped Liis rearrange her sled and discard her unwanted equipment. He had even taken her jettisoned energy cell and secured it to his already overloaded sled-despite her protests. He insisted, pretending it was for himself, though he had his own backup cell. Lifting her good arm, she waved once. She wasn’t sure, but she thought he raised his arm in answer before disappearing entirely behind a thick curl of snow and wind. In the corner of her visor, the green figures of the clock continued to climb. Liis turned away.

Two minutes and forty-seven seconds had elapsed since Binlosson had disappeared. A strange calm took possession of Liis. Her heart beat steadily. The ache in her arm seemed to fade from consciousness. She felt no fear, only an odd kind of elation. None of it matters anymore, she thought. Not Bh’Haret, not Josua. Not Nexus. Just this.

Without checking her stopwatch, she jerked her crampons free of the ice.

White closed Liis off, obliterating her.

The transition was abrupt: one moment there had been a solid, tangible world around her; now there was nothing but walls of ivory. Beneath her the sled rasped over the ice, but she felt no sensation of movement. It was as if she were stationary and the ground drifted beneath her. Snow continued to stream past her, but it did not seem to be moving as fast as it had before, slowing with each second. Liis let her sled run free, gathering momentum. Fascinated, she watched the steady stream of snow resolve itself into individual flakes.

The sled bucked beneath her and tried to slough off to the left. Liis dropped her feet. The crampons bit into the glacier and immediately kicked her legs back up in a jolt more surprising than painful. The sled responded by veering yet more acutely to the right; she felt a slow, counterclockwise spin begin to sweep her legs around. She lowered her feet again, careful this time to let the spikes on the crampons skim the surface only lightly. Vibrations sang through the soles of her boots, hummed up her bones and into her wounded arm, making it feel like it was being squeezed in a vise. Ignoring the pain, she concentrated on maintaining the correct pressure with her feet. In a few seconds the intensity of the vibration fell off dramatically. Snow streamed past her again as it had at the top of the pass. That’s it, she said to herself. Take it slow. Checking her compass, she discovered she was already several degrees off course. She increased the pressure of her right foot; the compass display corrected itself, the digits running back in the proper direction. Still, the sled continued to try to surge to the left. After a few tries, Liis found a combination of pressure with her right and left legs that seemed to keep her on course. A lot of good it’ll do me, she thought, if I’m already too far off line. She cursed herself for letting the sled get away from her right at the start.

The glacier slipped relentlessly underneath her; the sled bucked now and then, but never as sharply as it had at the start. When she thought to check her clock, it showed she’d been descending four minutes. There was no telling how far she’d travelled; without visible landmarks, her suit had no way of estimating. Hebuiza had said the descent was five and a half kilometers. Much of that distance had to remain. She decided to try to compensate for her initial mistake by swinging her sled a few degrees to the right for fifteen seconds, then straightening out. She lightened the pressure of her left leg marginally; her compass showed she was edging to the west. The clock ticked off its seconds.

The slope dropped away suddenly. Caught unprepared, Liis struggled to retain control. A shape, dark and humped, appeared directly in front of her. There was no time to do anything but brace herself. Her toboggan caught the edge of the object, leapt into the air. For an instant everything was still, the rasping of the sled bottom silenced as she cleaved the air. Then the impact threw her forward, knocking the wind from her lungs and dropping her weight on her broken arm. Pain reddened her vision. Yet somehow, she managed to retain her grip. The sled sped forward, rocking violently from side to side, each second threatening to dislodge her. No! she thought, anger surging through her veins like an amphetamine. I won’t die this way! She dropped her feet; they bit into the ice. Whether the surface here was more porous or her determination that much stronger, the tips of her crampons sank firmly into the glacier, ripping shallow, even grooves. Her speed decreased.

Her descent continued at a headlong pace. Liis tried to reduce it further, but she had reached a kind of equilibrium where wind and slope and momentum conspired to make it impossible to go any slower. The muscles in her thighs and calves ached from the effort; she grit her teeth. The sled bucked and rolled as if it were alive. Liis fought its wild surges, no longer caring how far off course she might be. Every ounce of her energy was directed towards maintaining the small control she still had. Minutes passed-or so it seemed to her. She still didn’t dare glance at her suit display. Several times the sled reared up and Liis thought she would be thrown free. But she managed to make it yield to her will, wrestling it back into submission.

As suddenly as it had increased, the grade of the slope decreased; the sled decelerated, became docile. Like a curtain being drawn back, the snow abruptly thinned and disappeared, the glacier appearing around her, everything returning to its blood-red cast and stark black shadows. A kilometer ahead, the tongue of the ice spilled into the frozen plain Hebuiza had promised. Far off to her left snow obscured the greyish-black, vertical rises of exposed rock at the foot of the western peak. To the right, where several of the others should have already descended, she could make out the dark lines of crevasses. She tried to put the sight out of her mind, the same way she had managed not to think about the object she had hit, about what she feared it might have been.

Checking her display she found ten minutes had elapsed; her compass indicated that she was moving two degrees too far to the west. She corrected her course as the world continued to open up in front of her. The constant pressure of the wind had vanished, perhaps because she was travelling at the same speed now. Though she could have brought the sled to a halt, she let it run on for a handful of minutes, scanning the juncture of glacier and plain for her comrades. She saw no one. It wasn’t until she was nearly at the base of the slope that she made out the clutch of figures several hundred meters to the west. Their white suits had camouflaged them so well she hadn’t spotted them until this moment. Dragging her right foot, Liis forced her sled to swing towards them. She counted four toboggans arranged side by side. But only three figures stood beside them, one with an elongated helmet. Someone hadn’t made it.

Reaching the bottom a hundred meters east of the party, she pushed herself up on her good arm and struggled to her feet. Turning, she searched the tongue of the glacier for Penirdth. Nothing. About a kilometer up, the snow thickened into clouds, spun about in the clutches of the wind, cloaking the rest of glacier. She glanced at her display. Three minutes had elapsed since she’d cleared the line of snow. Shouldn’t he be in sight by now?

Liis almost jumped when fingers closed around her good forearm and another helmet clacked against hers.

“Made it, hey?” Yilda said matter-of-factly.

“Yes,” Liis whispered, still intent on the slope. Penirdth had yet to appear.

“Binlosson doesn’t seem to have been so fortunate. Yes. His sled is here. Alas, he isn’t.”

Until this moment, Liis had managed not to deal with that unsettling moment on the slope when her sled had bounced out of control. She thought about that shapeless thing she had hit on the way down and how, in that brief instant, it had appeared to rise in front of her, its outline human. “Binlosson might be all right.” She said. “He could have fallen off. He’s probably walking down the slope right now.”

“Can’t wait.” Yilda pulled his head away and scanned the horizon. Then he touched her helmet again. “Penirdth should have arrived by now, hey? Maybe he veered off course. Looks like just the four of us.”

“No,” Liis answered. “Five.” She jerked her arm free from Yilda’s grasp and pointed. A kilometer away and a little to the east, a last sled emerged from the thick veil of snow, a tiny figure clutching its back.

Penirdth dragged his sled to a halt in front of the group. Stepping forward, Yilda inclined his head until their helmets touched. The rest of group stood