Terradox Quadrilogy

by Craig A. Falconer

  Viola’s words about where Dante wouldn’t hide the remote gave Holly one last idea. Since she didn’t hold out much hope and the idea wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, she kept it to herself during their walk up to the rover and their drive back to the rest of the group.

  Once back in the lander, with only a few hours of light to spare, Holly quickly told Robert and Bo that the search had come up short. They seemed entirely unsurprised and so expressed no real disappointment. Holly wasn’t sure how much they understood about the importance of uncloaking Terradox. Grav, who understood it very well, was clearly disheartened.

  “Grav,” Holly said, “we should probably go and see how Rusev and Yury are doing.”

  “I’ll come,” Viola said.

  Holly shook her head gently and motioned towards Bo, who wasn’t looking, to tell Viola that she should probably stay with him for a while. The girl got the message.

  Once outside with Grav, Holly wasted no time in getting to the reason why she hadn’t wanted Viola to accompany them.

  “What?” Grav asked, reading her face.

  Holly answered with a question of her own: “Where did you put him?”

  “Dante? Why?”

  “He might have hidden the remote somewhere on his person. I want to check.”

  Grav placed his still-swollen right hand behind his back. “I will look.”

  “It’s fine,” Holly said, “I can do it. Just tell me where you put him.”

  “Hollywood… I really do not think you want to see him.” Grav’s shoulders slouched and his eyes fell to the floor; while he may not have been ashamed of what he’d done to Dante, he certainly wasn’t proud of it.

  “Grav, I can handle—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “You should not have to handle it. This is my mess… I will search through it.”

  “Search every inch,” Holly said, not exactly disappointed by Grav’s insistence on doing the dirty work. “Pockets, waistband, shoes, body. For all we know, the remote could be tiny.”

  Grav, slouching in the passenger seat as Holly drove towards the bunker, nodded passively. “I have done this kind of thing more times than I would like. You do not have to worry about me being thorough.”

  At the bunker, Grav stayed in the rover and shifted over to the driver’s seat.

  “You’re not coming in?” Holly asked.

  “It is not getting any lighter,” Grav said. “And the body is not exactly a stone’s throw away.”

  Holly closed the rover’s door and somberly waved him off before descending the stairway to the bunker.

  Inside, Rusev and Yury greeted her with warm positivity.

  “There’s a way,” Yury said, wasting no time.

  “Slow down,” Rusev said. She turned to Holly. “Any luck?”

  Holly shook her head. “Grav is still looking in a few places. He’ll be here soon, one way or the other. But what do you mean there’s a way?” she asked, shifting her focus to Yury.

  “Well, I hope Grav isn’t going too far because together with the rescue crew we’ve come up with a plan that can’t fail,” the old man said.

  “You have?”

  “We have,” he beamed. “We’ll be able to uncloak Terradox anytime up to the scheduled data transfer, which gives us a full day to foster unrest with the evidence-based revelations before the actual revelation.” He paused and smiled. “I’m calling it Revelation Day.”

  Holly felt strong regret at having sent Grav to search Dante’s corpse for something which was no longer necessary, but the happiness in Yury’s tone left her in no doubt that the new idea was a good one. “So what’s the plan?” she asked.

  “It’s very straightforward,” Yury said.

  There was a brief silence as Holly waited for he or Rusev to expand on this, but neither did. “Okay… so what is it?”

  Rusev responded: “Yury is taking the lead with this, so it’s up to him to—”

  “The rescue crew have a way to augment our little radio module here,” Yury interrupted. “A way to hook it up to this whole control console so we’ll be able to see and control everything from the rescue Karrier. We’ll check that the concept works before we leave, and the only possible obstacle after that is distance… but we already know that this radio and this transmitter can communicate all the way to the station, so that’s no real obstacle at all.”

  Holly didn’t say anything at first. It sounded good; she couldn’t deny that. “So when you say we’ll check the concept before we leave, that means looking for the remote isn’t a waste of time, right? Because as far as we know now, there’s a small chance the concept won’t work?”

  “It was definitely worth searching,” Rusev said. “As a contingency. Although this plan, well, the plan we have… it can’t really fail.”

  Holly was glad to hear that — both parts. She desperately hoped the plan would work, of course, but she also didn’t want Grav to arrive with the remote only to hear that it was wholly unnecessary.

  She spent the next thirty minutes hoping he would return with the remote in hand, indicating that his grisly task hadn’t been for nothing. But when he eventually came through the door, he immediately shook his head.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Yury said. “We have a new plan.”

  Holly mouthed the word “sorry” in Grav’s direction.

  He shook his head slowly then relieved her by laughing. “So… tell me about this plan.”

  Yury repeated what he had told Holly, almost word for word.

  Despite the day having proven a failure in relation to her sole personal objective of finding Dante’s remote, Holly knew that the ultimate outcome — a confidence-inspiring plan that didn’t depend on the remote operating at a tremendous range — was for the best.

  “How sure is everyone that this new plan is going to work?” Grav asked.

  “I assure you,” Yury said, very gently, “beyond any doubt… beyond any concerns… beyond any fears you may have. I am telling you right now — with every possible assurance — that everything is going to work out. Trust me, my friend. Trust me.”

  Day Ten

  seventy-six

  By late morning, the entire group had gathered in the bunker with their luggage and belongings in tow. Viola checked not once but twice that Holly had “definitely definitely” packed her well-travelled potted plant. They had never discussed why Holly cared enough to salvage it from their struggling Karrier in the first place, but Viola seemed to silently understand.

  As everyone had hoped and expected, the communications delay which had been fading consistently since the rescue crew’s departure from the Venus station was now a thing of the past.

  Holly listened keenly as the crew aboard the rescue Karrier reported on its imminent arrival. Her presence in the bunker, along with the rest of the group, not only enabled her to stay abreast of the crew’s progress but also ensured she was a safe distance from the designated landing site in the large grassy canyon where the group’s own Karrier had crashed nine long days earlier.

  Excited anticipation turned to stomach-churning tension as the message rang clearly through the radio module’s speaker that the rescue crew believed they were now within the stated range at which entry procedures should begin. The bunker’s computer system had revealed this range as well as everything else Rusev had learned about the necessary steps to ensure a safe arrival. Dante’s failure to begin the procedure early enough during his initial sabotage had been the reason that he and everyone else had nearly died, and Rusev knew full well that the group’s hopes of leaving Terradox were entirely dependent upon her success in ensuring a safe entry this time around.

  Grav ushered everyone away from the control console, leaving just Rusev and Yury.

  Safe hands, Holly thought.

  Rusev performed a downward gesture on the console’s large central touchpad then spread her fingers and tapped twice.

  If it worked, the romobots forming the exterior layer of Terradox’s
cloak would separate at the correct section to allow the Karrier to pass, at which time they would immediately reform the impenetrable cloak by returning to their original configuration. Since the separation of the exterior layer could only be initiated by someone with access to the controls, the interior layer’s proximity sensors would then take over and cause its component romobots to automatically part and reform as the incoming vessel passed.

  “You’re in,” Rusev announced, maintaining an impressively calm demeanour.

  Safest hands in the universe.

  As Rusev spoke, a graphic appeared on the console’s main screen to alert its operator that the entry procedures had been successfully initiated. The graphic consisted of a simple circular representation of Terradox surrounded by two concentric rings. The outermost ring, which the Karrier had already passed, was flashing green. The inner ring was static and red. A white dot, clearly representing the Karrier, moved steadily inwards towards the red ring.

  “Fifteen seconds,” Rusev announced. “At most.”

  Bo tugged on Holly’s arm. “Can we open the door to see the sky?”

  Holly glanced at Robert. When he nodded, she led Bo and Viola to the door. Robert himself followed close behind, as did Grav.

  “I would say five seconds,” Rusev said, speaking loudly for the incoming crew’s benefit.

  Holly heard an excited exclamation ring through the speaker as she reached the stairs: “Oh my God! There it is!”

  “They’re in!” Rusev yelled.

  Bo, having ran ahead to the top of the stairs, gasped. “Look! They’re here.”

  Holly and Viola reached the surface and gazed up at the overwhelming sight of the incoming Karrier.

  Even without context, this would have been a stunning visual. But as the literal vessel of the group’s salvation descended towards the mysterious pseudo-planet they couldn’t wait to escape, it was without question the greatest thing that any of them had ever seen.

  There was plenty of sound to go with the sight, but it wasn’t yet unbearable.

  Holly briefly turned to see whether Robert and Grav had seen it yet. Robert was behind her, gazing up in teary-eyed wonder, but Grav remained at the bottom of the stairs looking and listening into the bunker.

  For a second, Holly worried.

  But Grav then turned around and ran up the stairs, wiping his brow in a habitual display of relief. “They are in a fully controlled descent towards the landing site,” he told the others, having to speak up to be heard over the incoming Karrier’s increasing volume. “All systems operational.”

  Grav held his hand out when he reached the surface, at the perfect height for Bo to jump as high as he could and deliver a palm-stinging high-five. Grav then pointed to his ears and encouraged everyone to return to the bunker to gather their things for the drive to the landing site.

  “You mean launch site,” Viola happily corrected him.

  He laughed. “Launch site it is.”

  Bo and Viola immediately crossed the bunker towards the pile of luggage. Yury was still in his seat. And though Rusev rose to her feet when the others re-entered, Holly couldn’t miss the grim look on her face.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, making sure to speak quietly enough that the children, at the other side of the bunker, wouldn’t hear.

  “The entry went perfectly,” Rusev replied. While shaking her head in an effort to dismiss Holly’s concern, she gulped very noticeably. Combined with the tone of her voice, this left little doubt that something lay behind her words.

  “What the hell is going on?” Holly asked, a lot less quietly.

  This caught the attention of Robert and Grav, who crowded around to see and hear what the apparent problem was.

  Bo, having heard nothing while engrossed in his carefree task of gathering his things, returned from the far side of the bunker with his own suitcase in one hand and Yury’s walking stick in the other. “Come on, Spaceman,” he beamed, offering a hand to help the old man out of his chair. “It’s time to go.”

  Yury’s eyes flicked to Rusev and then lingered on Holly for several seconds. He finally returned his focus to Bo and put a quivering hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Thanks, little man,” he said, trying to force a smile. “But I’m not coming.”

  seventy-seven

  Grav spoke for everyone: “What did you just say?”

  “Everyone understands the importance of uncloaking Terradox,” Yury said, appearing slightly more relaxed now that his secret was out, “and this is the only guaranteed way. There’s no magic plan to hook our radio up to the control console so we can do it remotely; the plan is that I’m staying here to press the button.”

  Holly didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know what to think. Her mind was a mess of anger, of sadness, of everything. The anger lay at Rusev’s door since she had obviously known of Yury’s idea the previous day and stayed quiet while he lied to Holly about the other make-believe plan. The sadness came from the fact that she had known Yury long enough to know that literally nothing could sway him.

  “You’re not staying here,” Bo said. “Dad, Holly… tell him. Tell him we’re all leaving. Tell him we’re all going to the station.”

  Robert, clearly sensing the futility in saying any such thing, put his arm around Bo and kept quiet.

  “The kid is right,” Grav insisted, addressing Yury in a tone so firm it bordered on aggressive. “If you actually think I am leaving you behind…”

  Yury’s instinctive reaction was a grin. “Grav, I appreciate the sentiment but—”

  “Fuck your sentiment,” Grav snapped. “You are going to the station. If someone has to stay here to do the uncloaking and bring Morrison to his knees, that someone is going to be me.”

  “Listen to me, Goran,” Yury said, lowering his tone and emphasising the Goran in the firm manner of a parent calling their son by his rarely used full name. “There are two chairs. If you insist on staying, you’re welcome to sit beside me.”

  Grav blew air from his lips in exasperation. “I am volunteering to stay instead of you.”

  “Grav…” Holly said. “I don’t want to leave him, either, but his mind’s made up.”

  “Listen, Hollywood: I do not have to tell you how I feel about the job you have done, okay? You have kept the three unlikeliest space-crash survivors in history alive for nine days on this shit-hole of a planet, and now you are taking them to the station. That was your job,” Grav said. He then motioned towards Yury. “But he was my job. My job was delivering him and Rusev to the station. That is why I am here. And if I am not walking onto that station with both of them by my side, I am not walking onto that station.”

  “You want to talk about reasons for travel?” Yury said, leaning on the arms of his chair. “Let us talk about reasons for travel. You say you are here to keep me alive, correct?”

  Grav nodded firmly, holding Yury’s eyes.

  “Well I left Earth to die with dignity.”

  Silence circled.

  “Not here, I admit,” Yury went on, “but that detail can’t be helped. You’re a man who likes to talk about respect, Grav, and I ask you now to speak with your actions. I ask you now to respect my wishes.”

  Grav stood perfectly still for several seconds before inhaling so deeply that everyone saw his chest rise. He then signalled his surrender by extending a hand for Yury to shake.

  Yury ignored the hand and embraced Grav warmly. “I will not forget the things you have done for me,” he said.

  Grav’s head briefly fell onto Yury’s shoulder. It quickly jolted back up, as though he remembered that people were watching. In all the time Holly had known Grav, he had never exhibited so much as a hint of vulnerability. Neither this nor the stubbornly tear-resistant expression on his face when he and Yury parted were easy things for her to look at.

  “Morrison is going to burn for this,” Grav said.

  Yury chuckled, piercing the glum mood. “That’s the spirit.”
r />   Grav proceeded to silently carry everyone’s luggage outside to the waiting rovers, several pieces at a time.

  Everyone else said their goodbyes to Yury, with both Bo and Viola openly weeping as they exited the bunker. Robert ushered them outside after expressing his gratitude to Yury, understanding that Holly and Rusev, who had known the iconic man for far longer, would want some privacy to say their own farewells.

  Rusev had in fact had plenty of time for this, having already known of Yury’s desire to sacrifice his remaining time to remove every shred of doubt that the group’s plan to take down Roger Morrison and his corrupt global order would succeed. She kissed Yury on the cheek, told him that his sacrifice would never be forgotten, and turned to leave.

  “She was sadder than that when I first told her the idea,” Yury whispered as she left. Holly laughed through her sadness. “She didn’t just accept it. But there’s no other way. No one in the crew could think of anything. I couldn’t, she couldn’t, you couldn’t.”

  Holly shook her head, wishing dearly that she’d been able to.

  Yury sat down. “Do you remember your first day? When you waltzed into my testing centre with the rest of that year’s intake?”

  “Of course I remember it,” Holly said. “That was the biggest day of my life. If I hadn’t passed those tests, I would’ve been out.”

  “Exactly. But you didn’t just pass; you slaughtered those tests then told me to call you Holly, not Ivy, because everyone else had been calling you Holly to annoy you. And when you said it, everyone laughed… so then I told you not to talk back… and then you said ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gardev’… and then when you all left, I turned to Alana — remember Alana? — and I said: ‘That girl has it. She’s going to make it.’ And do you know what? Every single day since that very first one, all you’ve ever done is prove me right.”