Nexus- Ascension Read online

  NEXUS : ASCENSION

  ROBERT BOYCZUK

  ChiZine Publications

  For Sandra, who did a helluva job editing this book

  FIRST EDITION

  Nexus: Ascension © 2010 by Robert Boyzcuk

  Cover artwork © 2010 Erik Mohr

  Cover design © 2010 Corey Lewis

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Nexus : ascension / Robert Boyczuk.

  ISBN 978-0-9813746-8-0

  I. Title.

  PS8603.O979N49 2010 C813’.6 C2010-902882-1

  CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS Toronto, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  [email protected]

  Edited by Sandra Kasturi

  Copyedited and proofread by Gemma Files and Helen Marshall

  NEXUS : ASCENSION

  Table of Contents

  THE TWINS

  1398

  REPORT

  PART I • 105 YEARS LATER

  EA

  HOME • DAY 0

  PLANETSIDE DAY 1

  DAY 2

  DAYS 3 TO 6

  DAY 7

  DAYS 8 TO 17

  DAY 18

  DAYS 19 TO 31

  DAY 32

  DAY 33

  DAY 39

  DAY 41

  DAYS 42 TO 52

  DAY 65

  DAY 66

  DAY 70

  DAY 71

  DAY 72 TO 76

  DAY 80

  THE MISSION • 104 DAYS LEFT

  103 DAYS LEFT

  99 DAYS LEFT

  98 DAYS LEFT

  45 DAYS LEFT

  12 DAYS LEFT

  SJH-1232-K, THE RELAY STATION

  Part II

  THE RELAY STATION • 23 DAYS LEFT

  22 DAYS LEFT

  21 DAYS LEFT

  19 DAYS LEFT

  17 DAYS LEFT

  THE TWINS

  VIRACOSA • 12 DAYS LEFT

  11 DAYS LEFT

  6 DAYS LEFT

  THE RELAY STATION - 17 DAYS LEFT

  16 DAYS LEFT

  12 DAYS LEFT

  6 DAYS LEFT

  VIRACOSA • 6 DAYS LEFT

  5 DAYS LEFT

  4 DAYS LEFT

  THE RELAY STATION - 5 DAYS LEFT

  EPILOGUE: THE RELAY STATION

  EPILOGUE: THE BROTHER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BACK COVER

  THE TWINS

  The ship drove toward its hellish perihelion.

  On its cramped flight deck spun a simulacrum of a binary system: two white dwarfs locked in a vicious gravitational embrace, a combined orbital period of two minutes, twenty-five seconds. Their luminosity had been muted to make them bearable. Even so, the display cast double shadows throughout the cabin that slashed across walls and deck like whirling blades.

  Too late, he thought from the confines of his narrow cell. Too late to change anything.

  A bright green designator appeared at the periphery of the display. His ship. Then, before he could draw another breath, seven red indicators appeared like flotsam in his wake. Drones.

  His ship had no weapons.

  A heavily armoured gravity-whip vessel, it was shielded only against the temperatures and tidal stresses of the stars it skirted. The drones’ particle weapons would be useless, the fan of his exhaust consuming anything they might fire at him. But their warheads . . .

  If he could lock into the gravity well before one detonated, then he could kill his telltale plasma-fusion drive and wink out of existence—at least as far as his pursuers were concerned. A millisecond-long power manoeuvre at perihelion, and he would be flung out of the system at twice his current velocity.

  Two of the furthest indicators shifted to orange.

  Out of range. Even if those warheads detonated now, their expanding shells of radiation would be beaten back by the furious solar winds, what was left damped by the powerful shielding of his ship.

  Another indicator turned orange. Four viable drones left. The corner of his mouth twitched up. But the smile collapsed almost immediately under the weight of a bilious memory: the face of his betrayer. Years of meticulous planning had been unravelled by one weak man chosen for his political acumen as much as for his overweening ambition. That man was still dying, painfully. A death that would go on for days, perhaps weeks. It was far too small a consolation.

  Another indicator turned.

  The cabin temperature had risen sharply in the last few moments. Sweat sheathed him. His body had been enhanced in every conceivable way, yet there were limits to what even he could bear. Soon he would have to seal his cell, order protective agents to pack around his body, turning off his metabolic processes, insulating him. He watched the display, unwilling to surrender to the oblivion of stasis just yet. As soon as he was out of range of the last drone—

  Where will you go?

  The words thrust into his mind, a jagged edge of glass. He sucked in a sharp breath.

  You cannot survive. Cold this time, malevolent. What do you hope to achieve?

  He squeezed his eyes closed, concentrated on shutting out the intruder’s words.

  Please. An abrupt change in tone, a sad whisper in the back of his mind. Do not abandon me. Surprised, he relented—until something exploded in his skull, like a pinpoint charge had been detonated in his medulla. He screamed, clutching his head.

  You see. The words tore through. I can still hurt you.

  Dizzy and nauseous, he clutched the sides of his cell. He sensed a rising wave of anger crashing toward him, and gasped beneath its weight—but it hadn’t the strength of the first attack. This time, it broke against his will, receding quickly. He wiped sweat from his eyes and checked the display. A lone red indicator remained. And then it turned orange.

  Too late, he answered, triumphant.

  A howl of outrage filled his mind.

  The cabin temperature continued to climb. He ordered his cell’s lid to coalesce. A prominence rose from the chromosphere of the sun, sending his instruments momentarily off-scale.

  His display wobbled, then refreshed, a new red blip ahead of him. Another ship. It had been hiding, its engines shut down. In seconds he would hurtle past it. But for the next few heartbeats, he would be exposed to its weapons. He cursed aloud.

  I can’t let you go. This time, the other seemed almost apologetic.

  You’re too dangerous.

  His ship shuddered, pitched violently, and he was thrown into the cell’s transparent cap. He fell back onto his pallet, stunned. The ship rocked again. Through a fog, he saw the forward bulwark buckle, vaporising in a fiery cloud. Smoke swirled madly, tore past him, rushing toward vacuum. Vaguely, he was aware of his ship intoning its warnings, shutting off a damaged engine and jettisoning its leaking deuterium/helium-3 reaction mass.

  His head spun and his ears rang; his cheek burned, like it had been splashed with acid. Tasting blood, he felt tiny fragments of tooth swimming in his saliva. Darkness swirled around him, tried to pull him down. Pressing his palm against his shattered cheek, he screamed as bright pain drove it away once more.

  He was sealed in his cell, a red smear of blood on the lid’s underside.

  The cabin was dark, display gone, most of the instruments off-line.

  Debris tumbled listlessly through vacuum, rebounded off walls and his cell with dull clicks and hollow thumps. Through the ragged tear forward, he could see stars.

  The ship seemed to stagge
r. Two engines down, it reported flatly, the third partially operational, magnetic field fluctuating. A steady stream of figures detailed its imminent collapse. The display flickered back to life. Incredibly, they were suddenly past the red indicator, yet still well within range of its weapons.

  The last engine cut out altogether, taking with it the protective plume of exhaust. He sucked in his breath, waiting for the final blow which would transform him and his ship into an expanding cloud of radioactive debris.

  But there was nothing.

  What happened? he asked. Why hasn’t the drone fired? When I jettisoned the reaction mass, his ship replied, I directed it at the other vessel.

  You’re alive. The other voice was astonished. For a moment, he felt astonished too. Then despair supplanted relief. Before, he had hoped to reach those sympathetic to his cause—but now he was off course, his injection into the gravity well irrevocably altered. His engines were severely damaged, perhaps beyond the ship’s repair capabilities. His stasis cell would become his coffin, among distant, unfamiliar stars.

  No matter, the other said, understanding.

  No, he replied.

  A brief pause. Then, one word: Goodbye.

  Goodbye, brother

  Silence opened up, as broad as the millions of kilometres separating them. The other presence fled. His ship plummeted pointlessly toward the gravity well.

  Briefly, he considered ordering the ship to break the seal on his cell, letting vacuum rush in and finish the job. But it was only a momentary lapse.

  Instead, he ordered the biostasis process initiated.

  A grey mist spilled into the cell, enveloping him. Tiny molecular machines swarmed into his lungs and bloodstream, diffusing throughout his cells, binding to proteins and other reactive molecules. The machinery of his body slowed. His anger ebbed. Peace, warm as the balmy equatorial seas in which he and his twin had played as children, washed over him.

  Trying to sort the information from his ship became increasingly difficult. An amber liquid rose and covered him. As cryoprotectant vitrification began his thoughts, already torpid, became muddy and disconnected. A series of images, fragments of memories, crawled through his mind as neurons fired one last time.

  Then, for him, time stopped altogether.

  1398 YEARS LATER

  REPORT

  Special Transmission to Bendl My-Fenoillet, Nexus Assumption Committee, Third Senior Deputy, Representative of the Greater Systems Council, Locutor-Nota of the world Nalitman, etc.

  Re: Background Material on the Assumption of Bh’Haret; Related Issues of Placement of Bh’Haret in the Nexus Polyarchy Ascension Program; Concerns Pertaining to the Effects on Local Systems.

  Located at the tip of the Right Leg Cluster, 21.12 light years from The Twins, Bh’Haret is one of the most distant seeded worlds, in close proximity to twenty-three other planetary systems, fourteen of which are non-affiliated. Of the fourteen, seven have reached the technological threshold but have not yet committed to the Polyarchy’s Ascension Program—in part, we believe, due to the influence of Bh’Haret.

  A resource-rich world, Bh’Haret has extensive tracts of arable land and huge reserves of oil and common metals.1 Only 0.031 percent of the world’s surface area is currently in use. Politically, the planet is divided into forty-one city-states that govern the surrounding regions. An Upper Congress with a representative of each city-state oversees planetary and off-world concerns. The population is estimated to be nearly one hundred million and is growing rapidly. Few regions have experienced population decline in the last twenty local years. Little attention has been given to this world because of its previous ranking (in the lower tenth percentile of Level II) and its relatively small population. Threshold was estimated to be more than five hundred years off.

  This was clearly a miscalculation.

  Our Instrument there reports a disturbing admixture of cultural and technological touchstones whose statistical variance falls well outside acceptable ranges established for the Ascension Program. Below are excerpts from her transmissions:

  Walking down almost any street, one finds recent buildings constructed from crude, almost pre-technological materials, stone and mortar being the most common. Remnants of ornate oil lamps line the boulevards, yet arclamps actually light the thoroughfares. It is not unusual to see a cobblestone street being excavated to lay fibre-optic cable. Public trolleys, governed by AIs, are routinely re-routed to bypass construction crews working with pick-axes and shovels. . . .

  Several orbiting manufactories have been established. Colonies have been installed on Dayside and Night, the two cold worlds in the system. Regular missions are run to the outermost reaches of the system, and already two dozen manned interstellar missions have been completed to proximate worlds. Suspension techniques requisite to these missions have already been developed or acquired. Representatives from other non-affiliated worlds have visited, and part of the impetus for growth has no doubt been spurred by the bartering of technologies. . . .

  Most disturbing, however, is that antimatter trigger systems for DeHe3 drive systems are now being tested that are, ultimately, expected to achieve specific impulses in the millions of seconds—or more than 10% of c! When applied to the Standard Ascension Model, this development, given the current technological base on Bh’Haret, is so unlikely as to be of vanishing probability. . . .

  The general population has embraced these rapid advances without the hesitation normally seen in developing worlds. New technologies have been incorporated into the daily round of things with a surprisingly matter-of-fact acceptance. There is scant evidence of the social upheavals and displacements one would expect to slow the process of technological development. . . .

  There is strong anti-affiliation sentiment on Bh’Haret. Although the government has not openly condemned the Nexus Polyarchy, they have adroitly used the media to colour public perception. Nexus has been portrayed not as a vehicle for disseminating new technologies in an orderly, controlled fashion, but as a monolithic organization designed to suppress technological advancements, doling out minimal information to its members, hoarding the best for itself. Persistent rumours call into question the ability of Speakers to communicate over interstellar distances, suggesting their powers have been feigned in an elaborate hoax designed to keep the Polyarchy in control of the affiliated worlds. Affiliation is now generally considered to be tantamount to a surrender of individual freedoms. Coercion on our part, real or perceived, would almost certainly have disastrous results. Indeed, were the authorities to discover my activities as an Instrument of Nexus, I believe they would use this information to further incite public sentiment against the Polyarchy and discredit the Ascension program. . . .

  Clearly, these are all signs of an immature culture whose technological ascent is dangerously out of control. In my opinion, Bh’Haret is on the cusp of dramatic changes for which the standard Ascension Models are of little use. I cannot recommend too strongly that additional Instruments, and a Speaker, be sent immediately to monitor the situation. . . .

  ‘Dangerous,’ the Instrument says. A strong word, but one with which I must agree. We may have already witnessed the effects of Bh’Haret’s recalcitrance: Ohan, half a light year from Bh’Haret, scheduled to be assumed in three local years (a Speaker was en route), has now requested an indefinite stay. Though they have not stated so, I am convinced they are reluctant to sever trading ties with Bh’Haret (and the seven other non-affiliated worlds clustered in a 1.3 light year radius), as required by assumption into the Polyarchy. It is my belief the administrators of Bh’Haret have convinced their counterparts on Ohan that technological acquisition will occur more rapidly through trade with non-affiliated worlds than through the Nexus Ascension program. If so, this constitutes a major setback. Had Ohan been assumed, Bh’Haret would have been further isolated. Instead, we now find ourselves facing an extremely delicate situation, as other local non-affiliated worlds wait to see the outcome of Ohan’s vacillation.


  I urge you to act expeditiously. Because the current Instrument installed on Bh’Haret is not a Speaker, her communications are timelagged by two years (the nearest Speaker is on Doelavin, 2.1 light years distant), an unacceptable delay. As our current Instrument has suggested, the rate of change on Bh’Haret clearly demands the presence of a Speaker.

  Yours Humbly,

  H. R. Ptiga, Local Ascension Administrator, Right Leg Cluster

  PART I • 105 YEARS LATER

  EA

  “I need you!”

  Sweat filmed Liis’s naked body; cold air blew over her from the right and she shivered, pulling herself tighter. Her mouth was gummy, lips numb. A thin, high-pitched wail sounded in the distance, ululating in melancholy cycles.

  Warm fingers closed on Liis’s shoulder, shook her insistently. “Get up!”

  Leave me alone, she thought and curled further into a fetal ball.

  The wail rose and fell, and Liis winced. An alarm klaxon. She opened her eyes, felt the lurch of nausea and vertigo that accompanied revival from biostasis.

  “Come on,” the same voice shouted, over the alarm. “Snap out of it!”

  Sav. Liis blinked rapidly, vision clearing. She lay on her side, staring into the cramped, circular cabin. The door to her stasis cell had been retracted; all traces of liquid nitrogen had vanished. Sav, a small, swarthy man, dropped his hand from her shoulder and took a quick, nervous step back. His face, normally soft-featured, was drawn into a grimace.

  On his right cheek was a white service scar, a long jagged line that ran the length of his jaw and ended in a six-pointed star. Like most officers, he’d removed all but his most current qualification. Liis, on the other hand, had kept everything, including the elaborate swirls and garish colours on her left cheek where non-com rankings were made; the style of the earliest ones dated to a hundred years before Sav had been born. It intimidated most people, also serving as a reminder that she’d logged more interstellar time than anyone else on board—including Sav.