Dimitar stopped in his tracks and did a swift about turn. “Don’t you bring my father into this.”
Holly saw the look in Dimitar’s eyes and quickly stepped in front of him. She knew that he would have been as likely to survive a fist fight with one of Netherdox’s autonomous vehicles as he would be to survive one with Grav; and however much she disagreed with his current position, that was the last thing anyone needed.
“At least I know my father’s name, you goddamn vagrant,” Dimitar spat from beyond Holly’s physical barrier.
“Enough!” a high-pitched voice yelled, its volume causing Holly’s face to contort in reaction. Viola, its source, then stormed into the control room and stared a hole through Dimitar’s eyes before turning to do exactly the same to Grav. “Everyone just shut up!”
Holly and Peter both shifted their feet in case the already enraged Grav reacted angrily to Viola’s intervention, but he didn’t. He instead stood in stunned silence along with everyone else.
“Holly,” Viola said.
“Yeah?”
Viola then gestured with her hands towards the pilot’s seat and control console. “Why are we still here? We need to get to the station to gather whatever we need to save those people.”
“Everyone take a seat in one of the landers,” Holly said, returning Viola’s gaze. “We’re leaving.”
forty-three
The tension in the Karrier was palpable as Holly carefully ran through the launch checklist, with the obvious external pressures now compounded by a growing element of interpersonal strife.
Dimitar Rusev, who insisted that his reluctance to commit to a decisive course of action was based upon pragmatic concerns rather than indifference towards the hundreds of civilians currently being held hostage on Terradox by the maniacal David Boyce, similarly insisted upon staying in the control room during the launch so he could maintain a line of communication with the Venus station.
Holly allowed Dimitar to stay, silently signalling this to Grav in an attempt to keep the tension from boiling over.
The launch itself was expected to pass without any significant difficulties now that the thick storm clouds whose winds had relentlessly buffeted the Karrier on its way down had been dispersed.
Holly experienced a momentary concern that the ground she had landed on might be composed of the same adhesive substance that had caused so many problems nearer the bunker, but this concern evaporated as the Karrier lifted off effortlessly and made its way towards the romosphere’s cloak.
Another concern reared its head as the cloak neared — equally natural and equally fleeting — but it in turn evaporated as the cloak-passer’s light turned green to signal that the Karrier was in the process of safely passing through.
Holly then took in the incredible sight of Netherdox disappearing into thin air as the Karrier completed its escape. She had no mixed feelings about leaving this place behind and none about having played a key role in hastening its imminent death via the unstoppable process of embryonic reversion. Unlike Terradox, Netherdox was an unmitigated abomination.
A faint and fleeting smile spread on Holly’s face as she considered what the group had left behind on Netherdox: a series of destroyed charging ports, several blown-up autonomous vehicles and pack-defence romodroids, an abandoned rover, a blown-off bunker door, and the sliced-off sole of an EVA suit’s boot.
The important thing, of course, was what hadn’t been left behind: a single member of the group. Everyone had made it off Netherdox in one piece; alive, and still in with a chance of saving the civilians on Terradox. However grave the situation now was following David Boyce’s coup-like takeover, Holly tried to retain the important perspective that all of the civilians would have been doomed if her group had failed to neutralise the threat posed by Netherdox, a rogue romosphere whose erratic expansion had been mere days away from provoking an unprecedented bombardment which would have collaterally destroyed Terradox.
Dimitar and Holly spoke no words directly to each other during the first several hours of the journey back to the station, only speaking at all to communicate with Ekaterina Rusev.
Rusev promised that no decisions would be made until the group reached the station. She also eased Holly’s concerns over the possibility of a destructive strike on Terradox by reminding her that any action unilaterally desired by Earth’s leaders would be greatly delayed by the enormous distances involved; whatever was going to be done would necessarily originate from Rusev’s Venus station, and Holly took her at her word that no orders would be given until the group was there to make their case.
Around five hours into the journey, Sakura and Bo entered the control room to share with Holly the findings they had made during a thorough reading of the Netherdox information binder she discovered inside the security bunker. In short, the findings told them that Netherdox had essentially been conceived as an enclosed test site for various kinds of romodroids and other artificially intelligent machines.
It was abundantly clear that Morrison’s plans for both Netherdox and the machines he intended to inhabit it had failed to materialise before his broader plans were exposed on Revelation Day; and given the artists’ impressions of some of the colossal intelligent machines featured in the binder, Holly couldn’t have been more glad that this was the case. The information contained within the binder confirmed Sakura’s earlier suspicions that Morrison had planned to test and observe machines which were far more intelligent, as well as far larger, than those which were actually present on Netherdox when the group touched down.
At the journey’s halfway point, Grav entered the control room and insisted that he take over from Holly so that she could get a few hours’ sleep and arrive at the station sufficiently rested to make her case for launching a last-resort ground campaign on Terradox.
Grav offered her a foil-backed strip of plastic which housed several extremely effective sleeping pills. Holly was initially hesitant, having previously gotten a little too used to these pills and having had a difficult time coming off them, but she ultimately relented upon realising that she really did need to get some sleep and that the stress of the moment would have made doing so impossible without some mild chemical assistance.
“Have you slept at all?” she asked Grav, noticing that he wasn’t taking any of the pills.
He shook his head, although the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes made this direct answer largely unnecessary. “I have been planning our manoeuvres with Peter and Bo. I will sleep later. In five hours, maybe six, I will wake you up and have my turn.”
“Just take them now,” Holly said. “That way we can talk about the plans when we both wake up.”
“Not an option, Hollywood.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because,” Grav said, loudly enough for Dimitar to hear, “one of us needs to keep an eye on him.”
David Boyce made no further contact with either Earth or the Venus station during the remainder of the Karrier’s journey. His continued absence from Terradox’s control bunker gave further support to the widely held notion that he didn’t possess the system access and control codes required to initiate changes to the romosphere’s atmosphere or behaviour.
In an otherwise bleak situation, this was one welcome source of relief.
Holly awoke from her induced sleep perfectly refreshed and once again reminded of why so many people got hooked on the extraordinarily effective pills, which could all too easily usher in a destructive cycle of growing tolerance leading to the need for ever higher dosages.
With Grav now taking his turn to get some rest and Dimitar having involuntarily nodded off, Holly spent most of the final hour of the journey speaking to Ekaterina Rusev.
Rusev’s manner had changed noticeably since she first delivered the news of Boyce’s coup, and she strived to make it clear that her earlier comments about dangerous precedents and the possibility of launching decisive strikes against Terradox had not been reflections of her own views but r
ather a summary of those being espoused by political leaders on Earth. She also spoke candidly of her personal view that the most dangerous precedent which could be set was not that leaders were open to negotiation with terrorists but rather that those same leaders, outwitted by a maniacal lone wolf, were open to killing hundreds of civilian hostages in a crude bombardment before fully exhausting alternative courses of action.
Although Rusev didn’t commit to anything, Holly was immeasurably glad to hear these clarifications and felt sure that no such bombardments would be launched from the station while Rusev had any say in the matter.
Convincing Rusev that it would be a good idea to travel to Terradox for a hastily planned ground campaign wouldn’t be easy, but Holly was pleased that it at least seemed a lot less impossible than it had a few hours earlier. She didn’t directly lobby for this idea just yet, knowing that it would stand a better of chance of being well received when it was proposed along with the supporting plans that Grav and the others had spent most of the journey developing.
Conversational communication with the station became progressively easier as the delay dropped with every passing minute until it eventually became indiscernible and the Karrier docked safely following a straightforward approach.
What should have been a triumphant return from a mission once derided as suicidal felt anything but triumphant as the final stages of the docking procedures brought into view countless glum faces inside the station’s viewing gallery.
David Boyce’s initial direct broadcasts to Earth-based media outlets, which were widely viewed on the station, meant that everyone knew what was going on. And although Boyce hadn’t publicly mentioned Netherdox, station-dwellers now also knew the true nature of the mission that Holly’s group had just undertaken.
The level of panic which engulfed the station when news of Terradox’s fall first broke had forced Rusev into revealing both the true destination of the recently departed Karrier and also the true nature of its mission. The immediate panic subsided with the revelation that Rusev herself was in fact present on the station having merely pretended to board the Karrier as part of an original cover story which had been applied, somewhat ironically, to prevent panic over the nature and extent of the threat posed by Netherdox.
The atmosphere as Holly led her group inside was very odd, with few people present in the main entrance area and fewer still vocally welcoming them back. The moment occupied a bizarre middle ground between Holly’s two previous arrivals on the station, the first of which had involved a joyous reception and the second of which had occurred without the knowledge of anyone outside of senior management.
Towards the end of the lavender-scented entrance walkway, a young child ran straight towards Viola and hugged her tightly. Holly already knew that Viola worked in the station’s growing childcare division, and it was clear to see that she was popular among the children.
“Miss Harrington, are you going to save everyone?” the young boy asked.
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Viola replied without hesitation. “Don’t you worry about that.”
forty-four
The group made a beeline for Grav’s security room, where Ekaterina Rusev was ready and waiting to begin an exhaustive meeting in which no solutions were off the table. With David Boyce’s deadline approaching and the distance to Terradox meaning that the group would arrive with barely 24 hours to spare even if they set off immediately, time was well and truly of the essence.
The air between Grav and Dimitar remained tense but far less combustible than had been the case during their final few moments on Netherdox, though Holly knew that this relative peace was about to be tested when alternative courses of action were proposed and debated.
After a brief congratulation for their success on Netherdox and before attention turned towards potential solutions to the Terradox problem, Rusev set the scene by explaining that no one anywhere considered “doing nothing” to be a viable option. As she made clear, the prospect of a hostile individual enjoying control of an entire romosphere was universally unpalatable — particularly following the recent weaponisation of Netherdox.
“There are many who want to kill this cockroach with a sledgehammer,” Rusev went on, “with some insisting that any hijacked romosphere must be shot from the sky, so to speak, before it can do untold damage. I don’t think anyone can deny that there is some degree of merit to that line of reasoning.”
Dimitar nodded cautiously. Grav held his tongue for now.
“But…” Rusev said.
She then proceeded to display several satellite images showing David Boyce’s recent movements on the surface of Terradox.
Grav approached the large screen and assumed control of the display with Rusev’s blessing, quickly moving through countless images and zooming in whenever something caught his eye. After seeing dozens of images taken over a 24-hour period, he turned away from the screen and faced the rest of the group.
“Dimitar,” he said, talking relatively softly, “surely you can see how exposed this idiot is? He is defending an entire romosphere with three men and no heavy weaponry! All he had was the element of surprise. But now? He will be outgunned, outnumbered, and out-thought.”
“But Terradox is the weapon,” Dimitar replied, matching Grav’s non-confrontational tone despite his disagreement. “If he has access to the control system, the nature of the climate zones alone would mean that he could change the conditions in any given zone to make it deadly in an instant. Without even considering the damage he could do by further expanding Terradox or changing its path, just consider what he could do to us on the ground.”
“But Boyce doesn’t have the codes,” Holly chimed in, looking at Ekaterina Rusev. “Right?”
“We can’t be sure of that,” Dimitar interjected. “On the one hand, if he did have the codes then it seems likely that he would be threatening more than the deaths of these tourists. But we can’t assume that he doesn’t have the codes merely because he hasn’t tried to extort them from us. There was never a chance he would try to use the hostages as a bargaining chip to get the codes, if he doesn’t already have them, because: A) that would obviously confirm he didn’t have them, weakening his position, and B) he knows there is no chance we would ever hand them over, anyway.”
“We really don’t think he knows the important codes,” Ekaterina Rusev replied, talking to Holly after glancing somewhat scornfully at Dimitar for butting in. “Accessing the bunker and accessing the control system are two very different things, and implementing major changes is another thing altogether. On Terradox, different codes are needed for each step. The physical access code is meaningless if we assume that Boyce could smash his way into the bunker with relative ease. But the system access code and the change initiation code have both been changed since we took control four years ago, so short of having a mole inside the TMC or extracting the code from the head of security on the ground — both of which are unlikely — we don’t think Boyce could initiate any destructive changes. The stakes here are the lives of the 400 hostages on Terradox and the stability-supporting morale of billions more on Earth. Whatever we do is going to set a precedent, and my personal view at this stage is that we should set a precedent of doing whatever it takes to protect innocent lives.”
“Our plan involves taking the bunker,” Grav said, nodding towards Peter and Bo to instruct them to lay out the pieces of paper they had been using to draft their plan. “If no one is inside the bunker when we arrive, this task becomes trivially straightforward. Bo is confident that one of us could furtively access the bunker using a VUV — an invisible rover, that is — and Peter has already pointed out that we will need to land at the top of the cliff above Terradox Central Station, which lies in a valley that our ground vehicles simply could not escape. We have a detailed plan to create timed distractions which will spread the attention of Boyce and his two accomplices to breaking point. The most important consideration is to ensure that we do not sp
ook him too soon, because the moment he fears defeat is the moment he executes the hostages.”
“Tell me about these distractions,” Rusev said.
Grav was in full flow now. “As Bo has told me very clearly, the key thing we have that Boyce does not know about is advanced stealth. With the VUVs, we can become practically invisible at the touch of a button.”
“What does practically invisible mean?” Holly interjected. “Do you mean practically invisible as in ‘invisible for all practical purposes’ or practically invisible as in ‘almost invisible’?”
Grav held a hand out towards Bo, deferring to his expertise in this field.
“Nearer the second one,” Bo admitted. “What we have is better than a chameleon but worse than a romotech cloak, if you see what I mean. No one would see a VUV unless they were looking for it and looking for it in the right place, but in that kind of scenario there’s a fair chance that they would see it. The tracks left on the ground are my main concern but they’re nothing compared to regular tracks, and the terrain between our landing site and the bunker isn’t too bad. We would be driving across one of the least dusty areas of Terradox and I think you would have to be really looking for the tracks to see them. The VUVs are also extremely quiet vehicles but, again, I can’t accurately call them silent. We’re working on that — and on the tracks — but right now, those are our issues.”
“Can we apply the rovers’ cloaking tech to other things?” Sakura asked. “The Karrier, or even an EVA suit?”
Bo shook his head. “Not right now. We’re not applying a cloak to the VUVs; the tech is built into them. We’re starting from scratch with all of this because the ‘recipe’ for romotech cloaking isn’t something that’s ever been reverse-engineered. Suits are difficult to cloak because of the joints and irregular movements, and as for the Karrier… on that kind of scale, well, even with the progress we’ve made on the rovers, we’re still years away from something like that.”
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 52
