The Dry Earth (Book 2): The Nexus

by Orion, W. J.

  “He’s a good man.”

  “By human measure, given the reality your species has, he’s a rock star. Or rap god, as you like. But perhaps he’s not the easiest one to live near,” Trey said, and let slip a chuckle. “Or be the enemy of. But we are not always able to pick our allies, or our friends, or our heroes. Sometimes the cosmos presents us with chaos, and we have to make something out of it.”

  “Like the two of us?”

  “Like the two of us.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Baba ganoush.”

  Less than five minutes after the Baron dropped his niece and her crab friend off at the truck, the four bicyclists following them approached the gap that marked the hundred yard distance. Trey slid forward on his biomechanical legs until his tentacle-draped head reached the edge of the flipped trailer.

  “Ready?” she asked him.

  “This is ‘old hat’ for me, I think is your expression. Relax in cover behind this axle and let me scare them off.”

  “Easy.”

  Yasmine watched as Trey extended the barrel of his heavy laser and unfurled the full length of all his facial manipulators. He took several bulky steps out into the center of the road at a full-speed stride–just as if he’d been walking along for some time–afraid of nothing.

  He isn’t afraid of anything. Nothing here can hurt him. But watching him do that… that makes my skin crawl.

  Trey turned his chassis’s head with a snapping motion, like a wolf that had caught the scent of prey. He planted his suit’s many feet and postured his torso up, as if to fire the powerful weapon at the four people who had been pursuing their convoy north.

  There it is. That vibration of all his little squids juicing up that gun. Makes my hair stand on end. Crazy that I can feel that. She drew her pistol. Please don’t let me shoot this today. Not at people. Too few of us left.

  Screams erupted in the direction of the riders; mostly male, they hollered out a string of colorful expletives laden with shock and horror. She heard the sound of metal toppling into more metal, and the dusty scrape of worn tires on loose sand.

  Then a single, off-kilter scream came out, and Yasmine heard a crunching thud as a bike rider smashed into the side of a crashed car. There was a bizarre, breathless silence, then a terrible groan of pain.

  I wanna look. I wanna look. Someone wiped out hard and got hurt bad, and what are we gonna do? This is my fault. Dammit.

  Trey postured his suit down and took off in the direction of the fallen rider. Yasmine couldn’t contain her curiosity or the rising, undeniable urge to help the injured person. She ran out into the open to see what had happened. She kept running when she saw the busted up young man wearing a leather jacket similar to her uncle’s, adorned with an unofficial, homemade Monolith patch. Upside down and twisted into strange angles at the arms and waist, he cried out in pain as the three other riders attempted to render aid to him.

  Through a tear-streaked face, she recognized one of the people kneeling at the boy’s side. A girl twisted her head up in agony as the young man at her feet cried out in agony. The crying girl looked past the giant white crab chassis striding towards her and made eye contact with Yasmine. Yaz ran at them, never breaking the gaze the girl had locked with her.

  Yasmine came to a stop as Trey’s massive form reached them.

  The girl still stared at Yasmine, and with two furious wipes she cleansed her eyes of dust and tears. Her chin quivered with overwhelming emotion as she struggled to contain all she felt.

  “You said we should pick up a wrench,” she said.

  Yasmine started crying.

  Chapter Twelve

  For Realsies

  “Why?” Yasmine pleaded with the girl. “Why did you follow us?”

  “Help my brother,” was her answer.

  “Trey, can you help?” Yaz asked the crab.

  “I’m scanning him,” the crab replied with his speaker. “I have the equivalent scanning abilities of a weak human x-ray machine, but I need him still for a few seconds.”

  “Ryan,” his sister begged as the other two teenagers milled about, stressed and angry. “Ryan, you gotta stop moving for a few seconds.”

  “Okay,” he gasped in his still partially upside-down state. He gritted his teeth and fought a sob, trying to stay perfectly still. He couldn’t stop the pain-fueled tremors, but he did manage to stop flailing around.

  “That’s good,” Trey said. “Just like that.” One of Trey’s sensor tendrils flipped up and out from under his head like a live snake. The cylindrical tip opened up like the iris of an eye, and he swayed the device back and forth along Ryan’s body, projecting invisible power.

  “You ever seen a crab that can talk?” one of the two young men milling about nervously said. “I ain’t never seen no talking crab. What the hell you gotten us into, Michelle?”

  “You wanted to rank into the Monoliths, idiot,” she yelled at him. “And we wanted to follow them to help.”

  “You said your name was Michelle?” Trey asked her, adjusting his stance to face her. His sensor still scanned, lingering on spots here and there as it surveyed Ryan’s body for internal damage. “And this is your brother Ryan?”

  She shrank back from the alien’s attention, but she nodded.

  “Ryan?” he continued as the sensor tendril closed up and retreated back under his head.

  “Yes? Yeah?” the hurt teenager said through stiffened teeth.

  “Your fall broke several bones. Collarbone is the worst of it. Femur, too, and it looks like a few small bones in your wrists. None of which will kill you, but all of which hurt frigging awful. You have no significant internal injuries that I can see, and with rest and some decent and prompt medical attention, you’ll make a full recovery.”

  “Hell yeah,” Yasmine said. “I know a doctor back in Shant, Dr. Sonneborn, he can fix you right up. Fixed me up good when I got shanked.”

  “Too far away,” Trey said. “We own this. We’ll have to give him some painkillers and try to set the bones as best we can. He can come with us north and recuperate in Sturgeon Bay with the resistance crabs. They’ll have a doctor, or someone with more expertise who can help him.”

  “Seriously?” Yaz said. “If we have to bring them my uncle is gonna lose his marbles.”

  “That’ll set him back about three marbles,” Trey said, rising up to look back at the convoy. “They’ve stopped.”

  Yaz turned and flapped her arms up and down, waving at the red truck her uncle rode in. The truck backed up and started to make the 180-degree turn needed to return to them.

  He’s gonna be so pissed. “I need you four to start explaining. Did you and your brother decide to follow us after that awkward scene in the garage?” Yasmine asked the girl named Michelle.

  “We did. We recruited these two yokels from the market. They’re friends. They’re good. They want to be Monoliths for the right reasons.”

  “I’m Yasmine,” she said to the two young men. “I’m the Baroness-” Shit. I didn’t mean to say that. “I’m the Baron’s niece. What’re your names?”

  “I’m Antonio,” the shorter and darker skinned of the two said. He wore a tattered leather bomber jacket that sported a homemade Monolith patch on the shoulder.

  “I’m Miles,” the taller, narrow-faced man said before turning away to look at the road they’d just traveled. He too wore a jacket sporting a hand-stitched version of the Monolith’s patch.

  “Alright, Antonio and Miles, thank you for bringing our friends this far. Ryan, I’m sorry about the crash and your injuries. I hope you understand we thought you four were a threat, and we wanted to scare you off our tail. We’ll get you some medication for pain. I know my uncle packed meds.”

  “Thank you,” Ryan managed as his sister dropped down to comfort him.

  “Are we going to meet the Baron?” Miles spun and asked her. “First a talking, friendly crab, now we’re going to meet the Baron? For realsies?”

&nb
sp; He’s giddy. “Yes, you are, for realsies. You’re gonna love him. He’s gonna love you guys, too. The bravery is really gonna stand out to him.”

  “Complete. Utter. Morons,” he said to them at their final campsite before the peninsula–and their target destination–the town of Sturgeon Bay.

  Before night fell (several hours after the confrontation and crash) they’d found yet another overpass to take shelter under and here, with the encroaching proximity to the old lake beds on both sides of the land, the wind gusted, sending stinging grit against skin and into eyes with painful regularity. The crew of the four-vehicle convoy tied up tarps to hang off the steel and concrete upper roadway, making fragile walls to protect them from the weather. As the winds grew and threatened a sandstorm, the entire convoy, plus its four biker add-ons, huddled inside the safe space or sleeping in their vehicles.

  For whatever reason, the air of the dust storm was warmer, so they’d built a smaller fire with the sparse supply of sticks that didn’t get burnt the night prior. Beside that fire slept a battered but medicated Ryan, attended to by his sister Michelle. His leg was held straight by a tight splint and his arm was attached to his chest by a tight wrap. Caleb—a former fireman and EMT—took excellent care of his injuries prior to their departure earlier in the day.

  Antonio and Miles sat with their heads slung low, hiding the shame brought on by the Baron’s admonishment.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry. You’re just… you’re just kids,” Yaz’s uncle said. “There’s no reason for you to catch an ass-chewing after wandering off into the wastes on a wild goose chase.”

  “What’s a goose?” Miles asked.

  “Large white bird,” Yaz answered. “Probably extinct. And Uncle Caleb, they were trying to help us. They’re on our side. Give them a break. We can always use extra eyes on the road, or on watch. They’re an asset now.”

  “And their weight will make us burn fuel faster, and they’re more bodies to protect in a fight, and they have no weapons to help us with, and we don’t know them from a piss hole in the snow, Yaz. It’s just not good. I mean, don’t get me wrong, kids, I like your spunk, but we do not need teenagers running around underfoot. What are we gonna do with them if we actually leave this planet on a spaceship? Will they fit onboard? Will we leave them with stranger crabs?”

  “Am I also underfoot?” Yaz asked him, almost in a whisper.

  “No, of course not,” he dismissed.

  “I’m a teenager. I can’t be more than year older than them, and I’m worthwhile. I proved who I was, and how I could get stuff done. People trusted in me and gave me a chance. You gave me a chance. They deserve one too.”

  Caleb looked at her, a long and lingering look that Yasmine couldn’t quite decipher the meaning of. Eventually she looked to the new arrivals–and the silent Trader Joe, who watched it all through his goggles. The covered alien made a tiny laughing sound and crossed his arms in a very satisfied way.

  “What are you gonna do with us?” Michelle asked the baron. “I don’t think we can make the trip back to the tower on our own with Ryan hurt.”

  “You’re going with us as far as we can take you,” he answered without pause. “Lord help us, but that’s the only course of action I can stomach.”

  Miles and Antonio visibly perked up with the news that the captain of the ship wasn’t about to walk them off the gangplank. They high-fived each other, and almost hugged.

  “But look: You’ll do exactly as we say, and no more. You’ll be where we know you’re gonna be at all times, and you’re gonna listen to everything we say. If any of you put any of us or this frigging journey we’re on at risk, I’ll personally duct tape you to a light post with your pants around your ankles and leave you there. Understand?”

  “Yes sir,” Antonio said, standing up and applauding.

  “Our pleasure, Baron,” Miles added.

  “What part of that is your pleasure?” Caleb asked him.

  “It’s um… our pleasure,” he said in return. “All of whatever it is we’re talking about.”

  “You don’t understand the expression, do you?” Caleb asked.

  “No, sir. Antonio and I spend a lot of time in the wastes alone. I know it’s like, kinda appropriate,” the lanky teen said back. “We just want to… we want to fit in.” He dropped his head and Yaz watched as his shame started to return. She looked at Trey, whose bulky chassis sank at the kid’s statement.

  “Guess we better start teaching you all some stuff then, eh?” Caleb said. “Let’s eat, and then we’ll start on learning you how to drive.”

  Yasmine leaned back against the giant tire of her uncle’s truck and smiled. Her gaze drifted over to Trader Joe, who watched on with his round goggles. He turned to her, and tilted his head as if to ask, “Well, why not?”

  She smiled at her friend and shrugged.

  Why not?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Five Versus Three

  [TRANSLATED FROM GALONISH]

  The manufactured world called Nexus, and the twelve wormholes circling it, hung in deep orbit around the lone remaining sun of an old binary system. The surviving star was a distant blue-white gem that cast out tremendous warmth despite the chill in the color of the light it gave. That bright blue light glittered off of the millions of windows mounted in the station’s exterior surface. Views to the void for those inside, the portals to space gave illumination and provided additional power.

  Nexus’s defensive moon would pass across the face of the manufactured sphere of the massive transit station, giving the surface and those beneath the glass ceilings a reprieve from the white light in the black sky.

  Ships came and went to the Nexus through ordinary space at very rare frequencies but appeared constantly through the dozen floating rings that surrounded the station. Many of the alien vessels—in all possible shapes and sizes, and in various levels of technology—appeared in silence, and docked at the station to refuel, sell their wares at the Grand Market, or to rest their crews. Most, however, were steered around the orbit of Nexus to another ring where their girth was guided through the circular holes in space that took them across the galaxy to their final destination. All of this happened without noise or fanfare–like a delicate, silent dance, all choreographed by the floating Irib’dirari in flight control.

  Some races called the Nexus the hub of the universe for this reason.

  At the core of the enormous handmade world was the Triumvirate’s Interstellar Court. Endorsed with the authority of the three races (now two, really, seeing as how the Beru’dawn had retreated to their corner of the galaxy due to the treaty with the Crab Collective), the court served all species and multi-race coalitions in good standing with the Nexus.

  Whenever any two groups (or two large enough blocs within a species) had a disagreement that would lead to massive destruction and death, they could resolve their dispute on the station using the Interstellar court’s facilities and judges. The arena had even been used to see personal vendettas answered, and more than once a wager had been clarified there.

  Binding terms agreed to, the court would be brought to task to enable the duel. At any given time the core of Nexus—the court’s physical location—hosted thirty to fifty trials of varying size and galactic importance.

  The central arena—a floor at the center of the core—was fifty miles to a side, with a five-mile-high ceiling, and could be terraformed on short order to meet the needs of any race. The arena had contained a billion bullets, a hundred million deaths, and had been the ultimate site of just as many world-changing events.

  Today, with a million onlookers, the arena hosted one of its most common war-deciding events: a large-scale duel between two teams of heavily-armed and armored mecha. Mecha were anthropomorphized vehicles with sentient pilots that fought–either for an objective or until one team was no longer able to do battle. The mecha had become stylized, powerful and even monetized by the forces engaged in their dispute.

  Tickets were sol
d to spectators to watch the battle live from observation towers placed in the field of battle, or alongside the walls of the arena, and the proceeds were divided amongst the two participants after the court recouped the cost of hosting the battle.

  Dwen—on leave from its shift as the head of Nexus security—sat in its private suite atop an observation tower, near the center of the arena’s forest floor, watching the unfolding battle below. Dwen had invited a pair of visiting Galon dignitaries to view the battle. They were visiting on standard political business: business that didn’t interest Dwen.

  “The Yenndowenn Empire’s heavier mechs are going to take the day,” Dwen’s friend said as it looked through a telescope, down into the unfolding fray. “Their armor seems impenetrable.”

  “Do not discount agility,” Dwen countered as it looked into a holographic slate it held in one of its three hands. The device projected a view of the battle into the air. “Or motivation.”

  “Why’s that?” Dwen’s friend asked. “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “I always know more than you do, but that’s a virtue of my position in Nexus security,” Dwen teased as a massive laser blast below scorched a dozen trees and shook their observation platform. “But yes, the smaller, lighter mecha sported by the Sarpalan Alliance are not to be trifled with. Pilots with experience and skill with a motivation like theirs will find a way to become victorious. They also have the numbers advantage: five versus three.”

  The Yenndowenn heavy mech at the end of the arena near the wall released a salvo of missiles into the air. Each of the screaming rockets left a sizzling trail of exhaust as they arced up to a zenith then down into a flowing stream where two fields met. A Sarpalan Alliance mech—a fifth the size of the heavy attacking it, iridescent blue, and shaped like a scorpion with longer legs—sprang up and out of the way, avoiding a brutal annihilation at the hands of high explosives. It fired a series of small thrusters in its belly, staying aloft long enough to land a hundred yards away. It ignored the opportunity to return fire at the bipedal behemoth that tried to swat it, its pilot instead opting to guide their mech into the tall trees that obscured it from view.