Author: marylowd

Nexus Nine – Chapter 12: Resolved

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Nexus Nine.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1 or return to the previous chapter.

“Mazel had never actually seen the chip that had become part of her brain before — it had been removed from Darius’ brain and put directly into hers while she’d been unconscious on a medical bed.”

In the morning, Grawf walked with Mazel to the medical bay, by way of Scharm’s Bar where they each had a bracing mug of hot jumaria nectar.  Once Mazel felt good and jittery from the jumaria nectar, she figured she was ready to face Doctor Jardine — who probably didn’t need jumaria nectar to feel energetic.

When Mazel hesitated outside the doors of the medical bay, Grawf put a giant paw on the small cat’s shoulder.  She didn’t say anything.  They hadn’t talked about Mazel’s fear, uncertainty, and general quandary since their brief conversation aboard Star-Skipper 1 the night before.  Sometimes, it helps more to spend time with someone and not talk about your problems.  Just take a break from them. Continue reading “Nexus Nine – Chapter 12: Resolved”

Nexus Nine – Chapter 11: Big Decisions

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Nexus Nine.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“When a god asks you for a favor,” Quincy said, “you don’t pick and choose what parts of the favor you want to do.”

The tension aboard the shuttle was palpable.  With every minute they waited, Mazel expected a Hiviiarchy warship to find them.  When an answering message from Bataille finally came, the Morse code translated to:  “Sending probe.  Standby.”

With bated breath and scanners running, Mazel waited for the probe.  Finally, bright lines of color flashed across the shuttle’s main viewscreen, dimmer than they’d been before but recognizably an opening to the nexus. Continue reading “Nexus Nine – Chapter 11: Big Decisions”

Nexus Nine – Chapter 10: Visions Revealed

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Nexus Nine.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“By the grace of the Unhatched, I swear,” Omoleura said, “I cannot wait to give my Rheun-self back to you, and would never have taken it if there had been any other way.”

Omoleura heard Neera’s sad song, and zhe dragged zirself, limping and in pain, out of the barracks and toward the front of the shuttle.  Quincy hopped after zir, gallumphing about how the insect was supposed to stay still until the medical foam on zir talon hardened.  The frog had replaced his expensive color-changing shirt with a simple synthesized one in plain, bright green.

But Omoleura couldn’t stay out of the way when zhe could hear in Neera’s voice that something was so clearly wrong. Continue reading “Nexus Nine – Chapter 10: Visions Revealed”

Nexus Nine – Chapter 9: Cracking Eggshells

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Nexus Nine.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“Mazel knew Neera had been a freedom fighter, killing Reptassan occupiers as little as a year ago. But watching her face off with these insects made that whole, arcane history more real.”

While Mazel and the rest of her team — minus Omoleura the traitor — waited for the Carapids to return, Quincy lightened the mood by telling stories.  Most of the frog’s stories seemed to end with the moral:  “And so the soggy swamp swallowed them up, along with everything they had and everyone they knew.”

After a while, Unari suggested that the rest of them should steal the frog’s color-changing pants as well as his shirt and watch captioned episodes of “Small Dog, Big Heart,” but Quincy objected both to the idea of being left naked and to the idea of having everyone stare at his legs for entertainment.  So, they were left with his swamp stories. Continue reading “Nexus Nine – Chapter 9: Cracking Eggshells”

Nexus Nine – Chapter 8: A Different Perspective

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Nexus Nine.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“Plummeting wingless eggshells! Omoleura needed to rescue that little cat, and get this ancient biohazard of a computer chip out of zir brain.”

Rheun’s reality shrank down to a pinpoint — pure thought, no physicality.  Time could only be measured by the shape of her impatience, which came in waves.  With no external anchors, only darkness, it was hard to keep track of who she was.  Mazel the cat?  Darius the dog?  Augrula the bear?  An octopus?  Maybe even human.

When reality returned, the truth of being Mazel melted away like frost in sunlight.  The cat was only a memory, and the physical truth of Rheun’s existence had changed.  Zhe extended an arm to look at zir paws, but instead two limbs moved — a wing and an arm, zhe thought — and the appendage that appeared in zir view was not a paw.  A talon, perhaps; covered in blue fuzz with darker ridges, creating a feathery pattern.  Except the talon appeared dozens of times in overlapping, multitudinous views until Rheun figured out how to resolve all of the images into one. Continue reading “Nexus Nine – Chapter 8: A Different Perspective”

Nexus Nine – Chapter 7: Off the Rails

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Nexus Nine.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

“But the memories were already gone. All of her past selves, all of those voices had been like friends inside of her, but they wouldn’t talk to her anymore. The chip in her brain wasn’t working. Was it broken?”

After the initial blush of excitement, several hours of studious, focused concentration and contemplation followed.  Numbers streamed over screens — fascinating, mesmerizing numbers — each one representing a star or planet; asteroid field or nebula; likelihood of habitability and — even more exciting — likelihood of already being inhabited.

Mazel was in seventh heaven; her crew was less thrilled.  Quincy, Neera, and Omoleura disappeared back into the barracks to play a game of Chanster’s Claws.  Even Lt. Unari seemed to grow weary of cataloguing star systems by their likelihood of containing biological elements — native plants and animals — that she could study if they went to them… but that were too far away as they floated in space beside the currently invisible nexus just scanning, scanning, scanning. Continue reading “Nexus Nine – Chapter 7: Off the Rails”