Grav agreed that there was no longer any need for him to guard the bunker, if there ever had been, so he accepted the offer of a ride back to the extension where he would instead guard Dante.
The rover was deceptively spacious, with room for four and plenty of space left over for the three EVA suits and other emergency supplies Holly grabbed from the lander before making a beeline for the Karrier’s crash-site.
The drive passed quickly and without difficulty; the fully charged rover had an operational range that could have taken them to the Karrier and back a dozen times, while conditions inside remained pleasant even as the dashboard showed the outdoor temperature plummeting.
The only real moment of excitement came when Viola accidentally discovered a loaded pistol within a small compartment she had expected to be a fold-out cup-holder. Holly, driving, ordered Viola to pass it forward to Rusev for safe keeping. She did so.
The subject then turned to the Karrier’s important cargo, which Rusev had alluded to in the past without ever being pressed for specifics. Now, with around a quarter of the drive left, Holly finally asked for details.
“We were carrying defensive weaponry,” Rusev said, “to protect the station. Ironically enough, we were aiming to create an impenetrable defensive ring of weaponised satellites. And one thing the station lacks are facilities for producing such weapons, so if we didn’t bring them now we would have remained exposed. The system would have been effective against threats that we knew of, but… well, given what they have here, it doesn’t take much of a leap to imagine that Morrison and the GU probably have significantly more advanced weaponry than our intelligence suggested. There’s nothing combustible in the cargo bays, though; they’re not that kind of weapons.”
By the time the rover reached the familiar cliff-edge above the Karrier, where the trio had to leave the rover due to the rapidly descending path down, the outdoor temperature had fallen to a point which would have made the short walk impossible without their EVA suits.
After putting on her suit, Holly also picked up a powerful flashlight to assist the group’s descent on relatively rocky terrain which would have been difficult to traverse using only their helmets’ night-vision capabilities.
The grassy canyon, always quiet, felt extremely eerie without daylight to illuminate the area. Had it been on Earth, Holly would have expected to hear owls or wolves calling in the night.
Once inside the Karrier, Rusev got right to work. She told Holly that disconnecting the radio — “the easy part” — was a one-person job, and suggested that Holly and Viola spend their expected two-hour wait triple-checking every nook and cranny of Dante’s quarters in case she and Grav had overlooked anything during their previous search.
Viola begged to be permitted a meal from the dining machine before they started looking. Holly, as keen as ever to eat something that wasn’t a dissolved powder, enthusiastically agreed. Viola managed two full plates of her usual vegetarian lasagne; Holly didn’t even look at what button she was pressing when it came time for her own order, quickly devouring both portions of whatever kind of pastry-based dish the machine provided.
“This bed is hard,” Viola pointed out after looking under Dante’s pillow. “It’s worse than the ones in the extension, never mind the ones in the lander.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I spent six hours a night on one of these things for six months straight!”
“I kind of get now why you never went onto the station all the times the Karrier docked. I mean, it wouldn’t be easy to come back to a bedroom like this after seeing the inside of the station, and seeing the view, and smelling the air…”
Holly laughed. “What is it with you and the smell of the air on the station?”
“Bo told me about it. And then when I looked it up, I saw a video of a woman arriving and she kept going on about how great the smell was. Lavender, she said. Like a candle. Or like actual lavender, I guess.”
“That might have just been one day,” Holly said. “Maybe they had just finished cleaning the floor with lavender-scented products.”
Viola shrugged. “We’ll see.”
After finding nothing in Dante’s room during their hour-plus search — unsurprisingly for Holly, since she knew how thorough Grav always was — they returned to the control room to check on Rusev’s progress.
“Good timing,” Rusev said. “This is it.” She rose to her feet having just finished disconnecting the radio module.
Holly wouldn’t have known how to describe it; it looked almost like an ancient computer tower with an open top and circuit board-like ‘layers’ inside. It was tall, reaching Holly’s knee, but fortunately wasn’t quite as heavy as it looked. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but she knew she could carry it up to the cliff-edge where they’d been forced to park the rover before descending on foot.
A brief discussion ensued over whether they should wait until it was light outside. Rusev estimated that dawn was no more than an hour away, which prompted Holly to reply: “and every hour counts.”
“Of course it does,” Rusev said. “But if you trip over a rock you can’t see and the radio breaks, nothing will count.”
Holly conceded the point and impatiently watched the darkness fade. Rusev used the time to get something from the dining machine while Holly passed the time by showing Viola her own bedroom. She didn’t miss it.
Eventually, the sun began its ascent. The wording of the information on the bunker’s computer left Holly unsure as to whether any of the sky they saw was real. Either way, the sunlight illuminating the vast canyon led to her suggesting to Rusev that the area would make a sensible landing site for the rescue crew they all so desperately hoped would be arriving very soon. “It would make it easy to load whatever cargo we want,” she said. “Because we couldn’t safely transport the virus samples on foot and I imagine the situation will be the same with the defensive weaponry.”
Rusev nodded. “This is as good a place as any.”
Though the early morning air remained very nippy, Holly proceeded without her EVA suit; given how precious her cargo was, she needed more dexterity and fine balance than even the most advanced suit could provide. Rusev and Viola suited up for the short ascent to the rover.
Viola stretched out on the back seat as soon as they stepped back inside the vehicle. The radio module, on which every hope rested, sat securely on the floor beside her feet.
“Settle a bet,” the girl said, tapping Rusev on the shoulder. “Is the air on the station scented?”
“Yes. In some areas. The entrances, primarily.”
“What’s the scent?”
“Lavender.”
“Ha!” Viola gloated. There was no rear-view mirror, so Holly didn’t see her sticking her tongue out in victory. The girl fell asleep shortly afterwards, understandably exhausted. It was going to be a long day for both Holly and Rusev, but both were glad to have an avenue to pursue.
“She’s been lucky to have you,” Rusev said. “To keep her spirits up. The boy is different — he seems to keep himself up — but you have been good for her. I suppose we could say you’ve proven a very capable chaperone.”
Holly laughed slightly at what Rusev had intended as more of a jovial truth than a full joke. “Viola is a lot stronger than she looks, though,” she said, insistent on pointing that out.
The lack of a mirror meant that Holly had to turn to see her, which posed no risk given the barrenness of the majority of the rover’s route.
She saw a faint smile on the sleeping girl’s face; surely indicative, Holly thought, of the growing hope in her heart.
Day Seven
sixty-two
Holly drove the rover straight back to the lander, in full agreement with Rusev that they should report to the others before heading to the bunker for what they desperately hoped would be a successful attempt to establish contact with the relatively nearby Venus station.
To her surprise, only Yury was inside.
“How did it go
?” he asked Holly.
“Where is everyone?” she replied.
“Robert and Bo are still in the extension and Grav is back at the bunker. So how did it go?”
“Who’s watching Dante?” Holly asked, again ignoring the question in favour of one of her own. “Robert?”
“No, Grav.”
Confused, Rusev couldn’t help but join the conversation at this point: “But you just said Grav is at the bunker.”
“They moved Dante,” Yury began to explain. “He wouldn’t stop yelling and Bo couldn’t sleep. Grav wanted to go back to the bunker to guard the computer, anyway — you know how he can be when he gets an idea in his head — and he also wanted to keep an eye on Dante.”
“Wait wait wait,” Holly said. “Dante is in the bunker?”
Yury nodded like it was nothing. “With Grav. They locked him in the other rover. He’s still restrained, and Grav is right there. It’s not like he’s walking around or pressing buttons.”
“And you thought this was a good idea?” Rusev asked.
He hesitated. “I didn’t think it was a bad one. Why… is it?”
“It’s just a surprise, that’s all.”
Rusev then sat down and poured herself two flasks of hot coffee for the long and hopefully fruitful day ahead. While she did so, she finally answered Yury’s question about their progress. He reacted as expected, but Holly could tell that his hopes were lower than he was letting on.
While Rusev got ready, Holly and Viola walked to the extension to catch up with Robert and Bo. Both were awake and keen to hear everything about the overnight trip to the Karrier. Holly told Robert as much as she understood while Viola gloated to Bo about her “real meals” from the dining machine and he asked countless questions about what it was like inside the rover.
“Are we going to be there when Rusev tries to make contact?” Robert asked.
Holly hadn’t really thought about this. Despite now once again trusting Rusev beyond any doubt, she certainly wanted to be there and didn’t feel that it would have been fair to exclude anyone else without good reason. “If you want to be,” she replied.
“Ace!” Bo exclaimed. “Can I drive the rover?”
Holly laughed. “No way.”
“Please?”
“Obviously not,” Robert interjected, as surprised as Holly to see how disappointed Bo looked by her answer and how serious his request seemed to be.
“You can sit next to me in the front and hold the wheel when I say so,” Holly added, regretting the harshness of her first response. “How’s that?”
The boy’s face lifted immediately. “That’ll do.”
Holly told them both to get ready and to expect a long day; she didn’t plan on ferrying people to and from the bunker, so she made this very clear.
Since only four people could fit in the rover at one time, Holly briefly returned to the lander to explain that she was going to drive the Harringtons to the bunker first and then return for Rusev. Yury wanted to stay in the lander, but two trips would have been necessary even without Robert and Bo given that Holly didn’t want Dante to be inside the bunker when contact was made. It made perfect sense in her mind to bring the Harringtons to the bunker, bring a fully restrained Dante back to the lander to be watched by Yury, and then return to the bunker with Rusev to get down to business.
Rusev agreed and was in fact glad of the chance to talk to Yury for a little longer; the trip to the bunker — already quick on foot — would take very little time in the rover, but for Rusev even a ten-minute break was highly welcome. She removed her wristband and handed it to Holly, asking her to pass it on to Robert given that she didn’t need it for now.
The drive did indeed pass very quickly, though Bo savoured every second. His childlike wonder over every little detail of the rover wasn’t exactly infectious, but it did make everyone smile. Holly tried to enjoy the drive as much as he did, knowing that her return trip with Dante a few minutes later would be a lot less fun.
Holly pulled up at the edge of the patch of thorny plants and carefully lifted the tall and all-important radio from the rover.
“That’s it?” Robert asked. “It looks like the inside of something. Is Rusev sure it’ll hook up?”
“She seemed pretty sure,” Viola said, taking the words from Holly’s lips.
Robert shrugged, taking their word for it.
Bo took great delight in once again typing in the code. He remembered it without prompt: 2 8 2 8 0 2.
Grav was in their faces with an aggressive stance as soon as the door swung open, but he relaxed as soon as he saw them.
“Who did you think we were going to be?” Bo asked.
“Probably you,” Grav shrugged. “But probably is not always enough.”
Holly proceeded to place the radio on the floor next to the control console, neglecting Grav’s offer of assistance not because the radio was easy to manoeuvre but because any hand-over would carry a needless risk of dropping and destroying their last hope of survival.
“Is Rusev following on foot?” Grav asked.
“No, I’m going to get her now,” Holly said.
With everyone quietly looking at the console and imagining how the day might go, a booming voice suddenly filled the bunker:
“Nobody move.”
Holly turned around immediately, towards the open annex where the rovers were stored and Dante had been confined.
And there she saw him:
Standing free beside the rover.
Grinning like a maniac.
Pointing a pistol right between her eyes.
sixty-three
“Stay back!” Dante ordered.
Holly’s eyes flicked sideways to Grav. A flicker in her mind had raised the notion that he might have been in on it, but the look on his face just as quickly put the idea to bed.
Grav instinctively pulled Viola behind his body to protect her. Robert had already done the same with Bo. Holly stood alone in the middle of the group, no more than five metres from Dante.
“Put the gun down,” she said, trying to sound calm and authoritative. “No one has to get hurt here, Dante. We can talk this out.”
Dante shook his head and gritted his teeth, breathing loudly and irregularly through his nose.
Holly noticed Grav inching away from her, taking Viola with him. She glanced and saw that he seemed to be moving towards the light switch. She lifted her eyebrows as subtly as she could, telling him to go for it.
“Fucking freeze!” Dante yelled, shifting his aim to Grav.
Grav took half a step forward. “Do it, you piece of shit,” he challenged, knowing that Dante couldn’t possibly readjust his untrained aim before Holly took him down as she inevitably would. “You will be on the ground before I am.”
Holly moved further away from Grav. On her other side, Robert and Bo did the same. Their line was now almost semi-circular, with Holly in the centre and Bo and Viola peeking out at the edges.
“I’m warning you,” Dante said. “Both of you. All of you!”
Grav took another step, forward and inward.
This movement had an unintended side-effect which Dante seized upon immediately: he himself took a diagonal step forward and shifted his sights squarely onto the newly exposed Viola. “This is it,” he said, his hands beginning to shake, which Holly took as a worrying sign that he really did mean it. “If the next move you all make isn’t straight backwards, I swear to God I’ll do it the second anyone moves a muscle.”
Holly knew now that she couldn’t afford to risk any reverse psychology or any attempts to get inside Dante’s head. From Grav’s careful half-step backwards, she knew he was thinking the same thing.
“I can’t go any further back,” Robert said.
Dante instinctively turned towards him then callously shifted his focus to Bo.
Holly considered the distances, working out whether she could make it to tackle Dante — who had as much experience discharging firearms as he did riding
unicorns — before he could decisively react. She took a deep breath, preparing to go for it.
But before she took a single step, the decision was taken from her. Not by Grav, as she might have expected, but by Robert.
In a rapid double motion, Robert pushed Bo to the ground and charged towards Dante.
He made it halfway before the shot rang out and he collapsed to the floor, clutching his chest.
Dante looked as stunned as anyone. Holly saw the look in his eyes, a horrified kind of regret, for the split-second it took until Grav arrived and tackled him.
Holly grabbed Viola, stopping her from running to her fallen father by pulling her against her own body. Bo was left alone on the floor, gazing open-mouthed at Robert as though his senses were suspended.
Robert’s wristband, having been worn for mere minutes, reported a sudden and potentially devastating blip in his vital signs. On every other wristband in the room, his dot flashed orange. Those wristbands all emitted shrill alarms, but no one could hear them over the two other sounds which dominated the air in a battle for aural supremacy: Dante’s screams and Grav’s punches.
Before long, only the punches remained.
Even when Grav slid the pistol to safety with his left hand, his right didn’t stop.
Satisfied that Dante was no longer capable of posing any kind of danger, Holly let go of Viola and rushed towards Robert. She rolled him onto his back and was instantly disheartened by the pool of blood that had already collected.
Bo rose to his feet as Grav continued to pummel Dante, whose supine body had long ago stopped resisting.
“Grav, enough!” Holly firmly shouted. “Help us out over here!”
He kept going.
Though it didn’t get through to Grav, Holly’s shout did rouse Viola from her understandable daze. “Enough!” the girl screamed, her voice dwarfing Holly’s and everything else since the near-deafening gunshot.
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 27
