“So the longer we wait, the further away the bunker gets?” Viola chimed in.
“The difference isn’t something anyone would notice without deliberate observation,” Dimitar reassured her. “Not over such a short distance. At this distance and this rate of expansion, I expect the journey back from the bunker would take less than a minute longer than the outward leg. Because we’re on the same level as the bunker — level, tier, plate… whatever you want to call it — the rate should remain steady and fairly negligible for practical purposes.”
“The first of the new close-ups are coming in,” Bo announced excitedly, tapping the on-screen confirmation without asking permission and speaking over the end of Dimitar’s explanation. “Yessss! It’s the bunker!”
twenty-five
“Fucking beautiful, Hollywood,” Grav said, speaking loudly enough to be heard over countless cheers as he embraced Holly in a tight bearhug complete with three very firm pats on the back. “I could not have asked to be dropped any closer.”
“Good job,” Sakura added.
Grav then stepped back and clapped his hands together loudly to recapture everyone’s attention. “Okay, people… we celebrate when the job is done. Now that we know the bunker is close, Bo and myself will be joined by a third person. In the event that communication from the inside of the bunker to this Karrier proves more difficult than we would like, a second head could greatly expedite the solving of any problems I may encounter. Dimitar must remain here to liaise with the TMC as soon as the clouds can be lifted to enable radio contact. Peter must remain here in my place. Bo, as we know, must of course come with me to efficiently and effectively pilot the rover. And in terms of giving us the greatest chance of quick success — through problem-solving, physical strength, and calmness under great pressure — I believe there is only one natural choice.”
“Holly,” Bo said.
Grav nodded.
Holly immediately turned to Dimitar. “If you had to pilot this Karrier to get everyone else home safely, could you do it?”
“Yes,” he said, convincing in his straightforwardness.
Viola stepped forward. “I want to go, too.”
“No,” Peter snapped. “There is no need for anyone else to risk—”
“I’m talking to Holly,” Viola said. “Holly, please. I don’t want Bo to go out there without me.”
Holly returned her gaze. “Tough.”
“I’ll be fine,” Bo insisted.
Viola, too stunned by the curtness of Holly’s reply to answer Bo, just shook her head and looked at the floor.
Holly didn’t enjoy being so brusque with Viola, but Peter was right: it would have been crazy for anyone else to leave the refuge of the Karrier at this stage. And if hurting Viola’s feelings was the price of ensuring her physical safety, Holly would pay it every day.
“Does everyone remember what I told them about the new EVA suits?” Grav asked, maintaining focus on the task at hand. “To recap: you should only engage the C-Suit protection feature if there is a reason to do so. Engaging it will enhance the suit’s impact protection but will reduce external flexibility. It will slow you down. No one will need a C-Suit, but in the interest of being thorough and prepared: do you all remember how to engage it?”
Everyone nodded.
“I remember what you showed us,” Robert said, “but what does the ‘C’ in C-Suit stand for? You never did tell us.”
Grav answered without blinking: “Combat.”
Robert didn’t offer much of a visible reaction. Like Holly and everyone else, he knew they were alone on Netherdox but still didn’t like the sound of that word.
“And everyone remembers the basics of the communication system?” Grav went on. “The Karrier can communicate with both the primary and the backup rover, which can also communicate with each other. All you need to do is preface your initial vocal message with ‘Comm to’ followed by whatever you are trying to reach: ‘Karrier’, ‘rover one’, or ‘rover two’. Those of us wearing suits will automatically hear each other’s speech when we are within regular talking distance or inside the same rover, otherwise we must preface the message with ‘Comm to’ followed by the name of the person we are trying to reach. It is simpler than it sounds, as you all know. In short: when you are with someone, you can talk to them as though you were not wearing suits. But if you want to talk to someone further away, you must initiate the conversation. You must open a line of communication. This step exists to ensure that people in physical proximity can always communicate instantly without having to speak over messages from distant individuals. When someone distant tries to communicate directly with you, a notification will pop up in your helmet’s HUD — you know, the augmented digital display. Simply look at the notification for one full second and the line will open. Is all of that clear?”
Everyone either nodded slightly or muttered some form of affirmation; as Grav had intimated, the communication system was much easier to understand than it was to explain.
Grav then continued to his final point. “The other point of order I must address before embarking on the journey to the bunker is what happens if I — if we — are unsuccessful. There is a Plan B and there is a Plan C. Our last resort, Plan C, involves drilling deep into Netherdox’s core to provoke a sudden romospheric implosion. This would kill whoever stayed behind to begin the action, but this will not be necessary. Plan B, to be used if my group encounters a problem, is for a second group to drive the second rover to assist. This group would consist of Peter and Sakura.”
“Oh, come on,” Viola said, almost laughing such was her level of vexation. “Bo goes out there without me, and if his group hits trouble, Peter goes out there without me?”
“We are not having a discussion on this,” Grav said. “In my absence, and since Holly will also be gone, Dimitar is in charge. You will defer to his instructions at all times. Is that clear?”
“Who stays behind to drill?” Robert asked, interjecting. “If it comes to that, I mean.”
“It will not,” Grav said. “But—”
Dimitar cleared his throat to signal an interruption. “But if it did, it would be me. I’m sure I could show Robert and Viola how to launch the Karrier with full juice. With the automatic cloak-passer, it’s just a case of full speed ahead until the Karrier passes through, at which point communications with the TMC and the station would return and the staff there could talk them through everything.”
Suddenly, the mood was sullen. All the talk of fallbacks and worst-case scenarios, prudent though it was, had the inevitable effect of casting a gloomy shadow over the crew’s final moments together before the primary grouping departed.
The goodbyes were quick but difficult, particularly for Viola. She called Holly back as the bunker-bound trio set off towards the cargo bay which housed the rover, delivering a simple message: “You better take care of him.”
This didn’t add to the pressure Holly felt, which was already at a level from which there was nowhere left to rise.
It wasn’t just about Bo and it wasn’t just about protecting hundreds of lives on Terradox. It was about the hundreds of individual lives on Terradox, exemplified in Holly’s mind by CeCe and DeeDee Bouchard; by the young twins’ excited smiles and the innocent wide-eyed wonder with which they had explored Terradox in her presence. She couldn’t help but picture them, imagining what they would be doing at the present moment — she liked to think they might be jumping on their beds and enjoying the comfort of their underground hotel room in New Eden, eagerly looking forward to another sunny day at the beach.
And then there were the thousands of individual lives on the Venus station, many of which were tirelessly dedicated to carrying out difficult work for the betterment of humanity.
In one sense Holly could understand Ekaterina Rusev’s position that the station was more important than Terradox, as there was no denying that the work done on the station improved and saved countless more lives than were currently enda
ngered on Terradox. Holly could understand this position, but that didn’t mean she agreed with it.
After putting on her EVA suit — heavier than the old ones, for sure — Holly progressed into the Karrier’s main cargo hold and quickly found herself in the shadow of two reassuringly colossal rovers. Their size and shape had more in common with tanks than the buggy-like rovers of Terradox, and they were extremely impressive to look at even without a full appreciation of the bountiful cutting-edge technology hidden within.
As Bo Harrington showed Holly how to get inside, she couldn’t help but think back to a moment four years ago on Terradox when Bo had excitedly begged her to be allowed to drive the relatively uneventful route from their lander to the bunker which was now flanked by Yury’s unopened Memorial Garden.
Times had changed, and so had the urgency level.
Bo explained that the rover would be lowered to the surface via a magnetic claw, rather than via an elevator platform as had been the case in the old Karriers. This was part of a design feature included to assist in allowing Visually Undetectable Vehicles to leave the Karrier without being spotted, he said; a rudimentary square cloak which was “more like four sheets of cameras and screens than an adaptable romobot cloak” would fold open from the cargo hatch to shield the magnetic claw from prying eyes. Bo insisted that Rusentra’s cloaking technology had come a long way even since the new Karrier fleet was launched, but that what they had now was nevertheless better than nothing.
“Stealth is the least of our concerns right now, anyway,” Grav said, gently encouraging Bo to get on with the task at hand instead of delivering an abridged rundown of recent advances in non-romotech cloaking techniques.
Once inside, Bo tapped some commands into the rover’s main control panel. This prompted a loud warning message to fill the cargo hold:
“External seal will open in T-minus twenty.”
Bo then ushered the vehicle slowly forward towards the hatch.
“This is it,” he said, looking straight ahead as the countdown reached zero and the arm-like claw grasped the rover from above. “Here we go…”
twenty-six
“It feels like we’re inside a huge room,” Bo said. He spoke as soon as his rover touched the alien surface of Netherdox, having descended safely from the Karrier’s cavernous cargo bay.
“The ground does look like a floor,” Holly agreed. “Almost like a kind of jet-black marble.”
With every passing second, the uneasy feeling of being an unwelcome guest on an artificial world grew in Holly’s stomach. “Artificial” was absolutely the word for Netherdox, she thought. “Synthetic” was another. This growing impression of the romosphere’s artificial and synthetic nature did not stand only in relative comparison to the convincingly expansive Terradox — an Earth-like romosphere for which “cultivated” somehow felt like a more suitable term than “artificial” — but also in absolute terms.
Several drones maintained a steady formation around the rover while some hovered above the bunker to light the area and others remained by the Karrier to illuminate its surroundings. At Holly’s request, Bo directed one of the rover’s accompanying drones to point its light upwards, revealing red-tinged storm clouds which were surprisingly discernible from the ground. Although their helmets offered functional night-vision, the increased acuity provided by an external light source made everyone’s job a lot easier.
From the heart of the clouds, Holly had known nothing of what she could expect to find on the surface. Now, looking up, she felt an overwhelming gladness over how much more peaceful the ground-level conditions had turned out to be compared to those within the clouds. Through this gladness she remained wary of taking anything for granted, knowing very well how quickly conditions on Terradox had changed with a single step across an invisible line and having no firm reason to think the same couldn’t be true on Netherdox.
The rover moved smoothly across the jet-black surface, leaving little doubt that Bo’s anticipation of a short journey time would prove correct. Throughout the first few minutes, nothing came into Holly’s view. All around in every direction, all she saw was the perfect black surface. The powerful lights shining down from the drones illuminated some spots more than others, but all this really added to Holly’s vista was some brighter spots of black.
As preferable as this uneventful progress was to her earlier descent through the hellish and seemingly endless mass of storm clouds, the lifeless and unnerving environment of Netherdox made Holly long for the Terradox Resort’s crowded beach and tacky gift shops. Only four days had passed since she and Sakura were taking in the tourist sights, little CeCe and DeeDee Bouchard’s excited giggles punctuating the guide’s observations, but to Holly it felt like a month.
The thought of what a Netherdox Resort might be like then occupied Holly’s mind for a few moments. There could be laser tag, she thought, along with midnight bowling and whatever else people liked doing in the dark. She made a mental note to suggest a dark zone within the Terradox Resort; with the environmental zones enabling distinct conditions, she couldn’t imagine that it would be difficult to set up.
Holly observed herself thinking about the future and couldn’t help but take as a positive this indication that, deep down, she expected to succeed and survive. It had been imprinted on her long ago that this kind of perspective was crucial, and she took it as a good sign that she was thinking positively without effort… that her automatic subconscious expectation was an expectation of success.
A thought then crept in that maybe Netherdox really could be turned into another tourist resort, following the Terradox model of raising tremendous amounts of money which could then be invested into humanitarian projects on Earth. Holly began to wonder if it might prove possible to “tame” Netherdox by halting its unchecked expansion and taking whatever steps were necessary to prevent it from going rogue again
No, she thought. No.
Within a few seconds of having the idea in the first place, she came to a quick conclusion: the only action which could decisively ensure that Netherdox would never again go rogue was to definitively reverse its expansion. Halting the expansion wasn’t enough; the only safe Netherdox was no Netherdox.
Netherdox had to be eliminated, the entire romosphere reverted to its embryonic state and safely decommissioned in the manner all romospheres were designed to allow.
At last, after a tense and largely wordless drive, the rover drew close enough to the bunker for Holly to see the discernible outline of the stairway which would lead her to its door.
“At least there are none of those killer plants,” Bo said with a slight chuckle. “Remember?”
“How could I forget,” Holly replied.
“There may be other protective measures,” Grav cautioned, “so stay on full alert at all times.”
“I think the clouds were the barrier this time,” Bo said. “They obscured the bunker, and everything else, and they made it pretty damn difficult to get down here.”
Grav gave a “hmm” of faint agreement. “But still, go slow.”
The rover slowed, as Grav instructed, before drawing to a relatively sudden stop some 600 metres from the stairway.
“We need to be closer than this,” Grav said. “Take us closer.”
Holly watched with growing concern as Bo held and pressed various button combinations and performed increasingly frustrated gestures on the rover’s main touchscreen control panel. His EVA suit’s highly dextrous gloves did not complicate this, but it was clear to Holly that none of the gestures were working.
“It’s not doing what I’m telling it to do,” Bo said. “It’s not working. I can’t get it to go any further.”
“So why the hell did you make it stop?” Grav yelled, allowing his frustration and concern to boil over into anger directed squarely at Bo.
“I didn’t tell it to stop!” Bo yelled right back in a booming tone, sounding nothing like the bright but timid young boy Holly remembered.
&nbs
p; Grav looked out of the window at his left side. “Well if we cannot go forward, take it backwards and we will try to approach from another angle.”
Bo pressed a new button and tipped his joystick backwards.
“It won’t reverse, either,” he said, all the fire in his voice gone and replaced with dread. “We’re stuck.”
twenty-seven
“What do you mean stuck?” Holly asked.
“I mean stuck,” Bo said, throwing up his hands as he struggled to think of another way to put it.
“With no way out?”
“Out of what?” Bo asked. “I can’t see anything! If this was a remote rover and I was controlling it, I could explosively propel it away from whatever the obstruction is. Those things are built with the overriding priority that they won’t get stuck; they can roll into a ball, compress themselves, almost whatever you can think of. But these transport rovers are built for people. All we can do is find out what’s stopping us from moving and try to brute-force our way past it. I’ll check the external cameras.”
While Bo navigated the camera menu on the screen in front of him, Grav alerted the others of their current situation. Since only Bo and Holly were currently in his immediate vicinity, only they could automatically hear his speech. Communication to and from the rest of the group in the Karrier, as he had explained to everyone before setting off, required a short initiation phrase.
“Comm to Karrier,” Grav said, pausing for a second. “Our rover is currently experiencing restricted movement but we are safe and well and we are working on a solution. Our current position is 600 metres from the stairway.”
Bo gestured with his hand to catch Grav’s attention then pointed to the screen, which now displayed live footage from one of the rover’s external cameras.
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 45
