"This is Victor Vance hailing Nexus. Come in Nexus."

Victor Vance had tried over and over to hail someone, anyone. He was alone in a small ship, surrounded by silence. He had long since turned off all essential systems but life support and communications. The former were necessary, and the latter were his only hope of rescue.

In the dark cabin, he shook. Not from the unthinkably cold near-vacuum outside, the life-support would hold stead for another day or two, but from the knowledge of what came next. Nexus was on the other side of some sort of special wormhole, and it was unlikely that it would find it's way back anytime soon. Victor was feeling the nervous calm of someone who knew with absolute certainty what their fate was. He would die here, alone in this cabin. When the search parties arrived from the homeworlds years hence, they would find his corpse perfectly preserved by the interstellar chill.

Had Nexus at least survived? What had happened to the relay stations? There were questions, always more questions, but he would never know the answer. Short though his tenure in the universe had been, it would soon be over. Victor felt like he should weep, or rage or do or feel something, anything. Instead, he stared out at the stars, shivers occasionally overtaking him in a way that reminded him of the passing rumbles Nexus had experienced.

It was a little early to give up, he knew that. If he was okay being a bit chilly, he could conserve a fair amount of energy. He was alright being a bit hungry, he could drag his rations out. Hell, maybe he would surprise himself and make it to the end of a second week.

But he'd already been waiting three days, and each day the odds seemed to plummet further toward infinitesimally small. What sort of life had he led? What had he ultimately accomplished? He wasn't sure any of it meant anything, especially if all of his friends were dead.

Victor wondered what Sara and Alexander were doing back on Aurora. He wondered if they led normal lives. He wondered if they ever thought of him. His mind wandered to Eve. Eve. Why had he thought of her? Blonde hair and blue eyes, she could have been Lucas' sister. Victor laughed. He liked the hair and eyes on Eve better.

Victor's mind pushed and shoved against hunger and exhaustion, searching for a solution against all odds. He came up as empty as the area surrounding the ship. There was the S.O.S. beacon, of course. It wouldn't be too much better than the comms, but the range was much farther than the comm system in the shuttle. Unlike Nexus and the Ansible Relay Stations, the shuttle used a humble radio transmitter as its sole method of communication. The beacon had a slightly better range and would come up on the emergency frequency that all homeworld ships kept open.

Problem was, that was the frequency he was already asking for assistance over. He'd have to stop to turn the beacon on. Stopping meant sitting, waiting. Sure, no one would hear him but the giant blue star that Nexus had orbited. At least it was something to do. Sitting and waiting would be unbearable.

He once again pressed the panel button to open the emergency channel.

"This is Victor Vance hailing Nexus. Come in Nexus."

--------------------------------------

Alex Normstrom and two members of the Reactor Club worked furiously at the console panels aboard the Ansible Relay Station. Thinking only of resources he had cursed his luck when he realized that he would have to wake them fully. Now he was glad for the help and company. To his right was Veer Vora, the person in the club who had called HQ when the club first noticed the anomalies. To his left was Mac Gleeson, a slightly pudgy academic and the fearless leader of the former club. Together, they were fighting furiously against a dying sun, set to vaporize them at any second of the next day or two.

"How's it coming with those shields, Mac?" Alex asked. The relay had a slight spin that Alex himself was trying to stop. They needed it to face one direction so that they could focus shields.

"Almost done. As soon as your ready with those orientation coordinates you can zap them over to my screen."

"I never thought I'd work with you two again," Veer said, smiling. Alex sensed in Veer and Mac the truth he himself felt guilty about: he found this situation unbelievably exciting. He was scared, sure, but he wasn't alone. They could beat this. They were, more or less, the Reactor Club. Veer swiveled in his chair.

"I've shut down most non-essential systems and tweaked life support to make our air stretch a little further. I've got to go down to check the systems room to shut down the shuttle deck, since we probably won't be using that any time soon."

The maintenance door shut behind him as he left.

"So, between you and me," smirked Mac, "what do you think our chances of surviving this are?"

"Low." Alex answered without hesitation.

They both laughed, but in the awkward silence that followed doubled their efforts.

---------------------------------

Victor was dozing off when he heard the chiming from behind him. He rose from the cockpit seat for the first time in many hours. There were two orbs of light floating in the middle of the shuttle.

"Are you guys real?" he said. He knew this dream, though he usually forgot it before waking.

"Your paradigm might say no, Vance first called Victor," chimed the first light in a high tone. "Perhaps it is time your paradigm shifted."

"We come to talk of other matters," the second light chimed, in a lower tone. Was there annoyance that Victor sensed in it's 'voice'?

"If you're really here, why don't we talk about getting me out of this situation?" Victor asked.

"Forgive us, Vance first called Victor," the lone tone said. Now that Victor had had this dream a few times, he noticed that the lights were different in small ways. The deeper tone was also almost a richer color by an almost imperceptibly small amount. It was also slightly larger. "We sometimes forget that your timeline perspective is linear. Physical interference of the degree you require is against our paradigm, but do not fear. Your timeline is unlikely to end in this place. We leave you this. You will need it within the mouth, where you will be beyond our reach."

A black data cube popped out of the shuttle panel slot. Red lights ran over paths on its surface, indicating that there had been data recently downloaded onto it. Had there even been a data cube there before?

Victor awoke with a start and immediately looked down at the panel slot. The data cube still sat there. He looked around the cabin of the shuttle. Had the dream been real? He popped the cube back into the slot to check it's contents when a brilliant white flash from in front of his shuttle blinded him.

When his vision cleared, he saw a large, battered station in the shape of a half two half loops, a long jagged tear on the flat side where the loops suddenly ended. It was Nexus, and half of it was missing.