Nexus, Robert Boyczuk [best free ereader TXT] 📗

in a ragged line, watching the exchange. Watching Yilda gesture to Binlosson’s empty sled, then point back to the slope.

Strangely, Liis felt nothing. It was unreal. Her heart beat calmly, steadily, unperturbed by what had happened, by that shadowy figure she had hit on the way down-no, not a figure. There was nothing to indicate it had been another person. It had all happened too fast. It could have been almost anything. A rock. A chunk of dirty ice.

Penirdth moved away from Yilda, towards Liis.

Gently he took her gloved hand in his and gave it a consoling squeeze. Liis jerked her hand away and stared at the black band of his visor. Behind Penirdth, Yilda also watched her. They all did. What are they all staring at? She felt a spur of panic. “It wasn’t my fault!” Her shout died in her helmet, unheard.

Penirdth walked past her and crouched by the front of her sled. On the right side the tip of an ice axe had worked itself out from under the white tarp during the descent. Hung on its tip like a ragged pennant was a ripped piece of white cloth-the same cloth that covered the exterior of their suits. Penirdth removed it and let it flutter away in the wind.

Liis felt nauseous.

To her right, Hebuiza had already begun to sort through Binlosson’s sled, separating its contents into two piles. The others moved back to their own sleds and started unpacking their skis.

The sky was overcast, but the snowfall had lightened. Here at the foot of the glacier, a smooth plain of hard-packed snow opened out in all directions. It had once been a vast lake; now it lay beneath a thickening crust of ice and snow fifteen meters deep. Three hundred and eleven klicks due south, anchored on the far shore, was the Speakers’ dome. From this distance, it wasn’t yet visible.

The others were ready.

Liis had struggled to remove her crampons and was still trying to unpack her skis. Penirdth, who had prepared himself in minutes, had moved over to Liis’ sled and tried to help her. She’d waved him off angrily. Now he stood to one side, watching her. Liis tried to ignore him. Her broken arm ached sharply, but she couldn’t be bothered applying another patch. Being in pain somehow felt appropriate. Instead, she continued fumbling, mostly without much luck, at the buckles and knots of her gear. She managed to remove one of her skis, but the other one stubbornly refused to come free. As she worked away at it, Penirdth knelt down and gently moved her hand away from the strap she had been trying to loosen. She felt too tired to resist. She let him undo the second ski, then free her single pole. He handed the pole to her. Liis wrapped her thick fingers around it without looking at him.

Hebuiza had finished sorting the items from Binlosson’s sled; he redistributed equipment from one of the piles he made, dropping two or three things next to each of their toboggans, indicating they should add them to their loads. When he reached Liis, he dropped a dark case whose contents she had never seen and a box of explosives-two of the heavier items-beside her. As soon as Hebuiza had turned his back, Penirdth scooped up both items and slung them under the white tarp on his own sled. Liis took a step towards Penirdth, stopped. She chewed on her lower lip, watching Penirdth continue to arrange his gear as if nothing had happened. Turning around, she walked back to her own sled.

Liis tied down her load as best she could; she deployed her tail, securing it along the harness and the side of her sled. To her right, her skis lay atop the thin crust of snow. She stepped into the bindings and the clips on the front of her boots snapped securely into place. Floundering with her single pole, Liis tried a few halting strides back towards the glacier. Behind her, when the harness went taut, the weight of the sled almost toppled her. She tried again, managing three smooth, gliding steps before being thrown off balance and nearly falling. Looking up, she saw the others were huddled tightly around Yilda. In faltering steps, she made her way over.

Yilda had organized them into a line, their tails lying to the side. A steady wind blew at their backs. Penirdth was first. He would begin by breaking the trail.

Directly behind Penirdth was Mira, followed by Yilda. Hebuiza gestured roughly to Liis that she should fall in next. Careful not to abrade the tails of the others, Liis side-stepped over them and into line. When she had taken up her position, Hebuiza fell in behind her.

Yilda raised his left hand. Penirdth, with a final backward glance at the slope (a last look back at Binlosson? Liis wondered), turned and dug his poles into the snow. He lurched forward, his legs kicking up at the heels, his arms pumping. The leads snapped taut and his sled jerked to life, following him in an uneven, bucking motion like a small boat bouncing across waves. His tail uncoiled behind him. Mira’s helmet bobbed forward as she watched his tail play out. When the end flicked past her, she turned to look at Yilda, as if waiting for his permission to depart. Yilda gestured impatiently with his hand again, and Mira dug in her poles. But before she pushed off she froze; forty meters ahead, Penirdth had halted. His sled ran on, nudging his heels. But he showed no sign of noticing it. Instead, he bent at the waist, staring at the tips of his skis.

The snow around Penirdth sagged. His arms shot up into the air, his poles swinging wildly out to the sides. He teetered forward as the ground opened up beneath him. Liis stared in horrified silence as he toppled from sight, his tail ridiculously following him, whipping across the lip of breach and snapping out of sight.

The Twins

The bogey rode in towards the binary suns, its spew of fusion exhaust lighting up the vacuum on a broad band of frequencies. More than a dozen small drones now matched the ship’s course, orbiting it like a cloud of electrons, scanning it intensely. The first had arrived a New Polyarchy standard year ago, a few days after the craft began decelerating; others joined as the ship had continued to knife towards the Hub.

Six NP years earlier, when the bogey had pierced the one quarter light-year bubble of space surrounding the Twins, the presence of the craft had been logged by intelligence QT21-1749-9036J-17. Imbedded in the nearest monitoring station, intelligence QT21 had taken less than a billionth of a second to plot the course of the craft and determine its destination to be the constructed world known as the Hub, the seat of power for Nexus. Checking its catalog, QT21 found no official record of a scheduled flight registered by any of the affiliated worlds. The signature catalogues detailing the ship classes of the Polyarchy also failed to yield a match. QT21 became mildly uneasy. Referring to its infrequently used data stores on non-affiliated ships, the intelligence determined the probability to be 92.936 that the primitive D-D catalyst fusion drive vehicle had originated from an non-affiliated world twenty-one point one two light years distant. A world named Bh’Haret. Some four hundred and thirty-two years (NP - or 532 Bh’Haret local) earlier, a biohazard warning had been attached to the data entity/group representing that planet. Concerned, the intelligence dispatched a narrow-beam message to Karin_, forty-five light days distant and the nearest planet with a Speaker. Within a year, three other QT monitors, all further away from the bogey’s vector of penetration, had also dispatched reports to the same world. Proximate drones had been ordered to intercept._

_Certainty of the ship’s origin had been improved to 99.99567 percent after the arrival of the drones. Although the name had been carefully eradicated from the hull, they identified it from their records as a longhaul vessel named The Viracosa. Even on the non-affiliated worlds, Nexus maintained eyes and ears, meticulously cataloguing interplanetary commerce. The drones spun about the ship, built precise models of it, measured and analysed its EMF emissions, carefully checked the micrometeorite impact patterns on the ship’s outer skin and determined the cratering was consistent with the ship’s age. An analysis of the trace elements left in the impact dimples was correlated to density maps of elements for known space; thousands of possible courses were plotted. Once again, Bh’Haret came up as the most likely origin. The exterior of the vessel showed only primitive weapons-none formidable enough to pose a threat to the Hub. After months of pursuit, a one point seven three nine nanosecond debate ensued in which the drones decided to let the ship continue into Nexus space. They reported their decision, then returned to their surveillance of the bogey until further orders were forthcoming._

On a platform three light hours from the Hub, Lien, a Speaker Novitiate, lolled in a large, oversize bath. Not a bath, really, for she still sat at the command station on the bridge of her ship. She had felt like a soak, and so ordered the room filled with warm water to chin height. She could have completed the transformation and created the illusion of a pool in the midst of a pleasant, sun-dappled glade, but she preferred it this way, seeing the bridge submerged. The unreality of a projected background had always irritated her, more so than the sight of the instrumentation panel lights glittering and blinking under the surface. She preferred the real article whenever she could get it.

The dip was relaxing; below her, Lien’s long robes undulated like seaweed. Although she was the only fully organic intelligence on the station, she chose to bathe in her working dress, as was the current fashion. A restless-and somewhat vain-young woman, Lien always followed the current fashion with exactitude. After all, she reasoned, one never knew who might be watching.

Floating on the surface of the water were flat, two-dimensional projections of the reports the drones had sent back on the bogey. A refracted, three-dimensional image of the ship hung just beneath the surface. Without interest Lien watched it move slowly around the bridge, like an animal sniffing out its new surroundings. She sighed and read the reports dutifully. It was only one of a myriad of duties upon which she was required to attend during her apprenticeship. For now it was a minor matter, hardly worth her attention. More a fluke, than anything. Her platform simply happened to be the closest this ship would pass. She splashed idly at the water and the reports rippled and dissipated. She ordered the room drained. Rising from her seat, the edge of Lien’s robe sent the image of the bogey-now cruising by her left calf-into a frantic spin; the vessel seemed to struggle for a moment, then was snagged by an invisible current. It was drawn deeper into a corner of the room where it was caught in a vortex. It spun madly. Seconds later, it was sucked into a barely visible crack.

Lien stared after it, thoughtfully tapping her forefinger on her chin. It would still be several days before the bogey violated the second edict, passing the one light-hour boundary beyond which the Polyarchy forbid weapons of any kind. In the meantime it might veer off, or increase its deceleration. It might do anything. Lien decided only when the violation became imminent would she inform the Pro-Locutors. Until then_, she thought, let the ship come. She turned, started towards the corridor. Her step faltered, a new thought troubling her._

What if this is some sort of test? Perhaps part of my training?_