“I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” Robert said, catching her off guard. “I was shaken up by what happened. And as for what did happen… it had to be done, Holly. It had to be done.”
“I know,” she said, very quietly. “I just wish it wasn’t me who had to do it.”
After a slight hesitation, Robert asked if Holly was now going to save Grav.
She said yes and appreciated that Robert had used the phrase “going to save Grav” rather than “going to try to save Grav,” because failure was quite simply not an option to be considered.
Before turning towards the TE-500 touring vehicle, Holly waved goodbye in the general direction of Bo’s VUV which remained impressively undetectable.
He saw her walking towards the TE-500 and stepped out of his rover to yell a question: “Do you definitely know how to drive that thing?”
“Probably not,” Holly yelled back, “so it’s a good job it can fly.”
sixty-two
Holly’s route from the bunker to New Eden took her across vast swathes of Terradox. She flew over several of the formerly coerced tourist guards making their way towards the Karrier, some of whom had very long walks ahead of them and one of whom she recognised as the Brazilian man whose family had won their trip to Terradox in the same public lottery as the Bouchards. She made a note to send for rovers to collect these unlucky men who had been stationed at out-of-the-way sites which Boyce had apparently considered worth guarding for one reason or another.
The touring vehicle lacked a built-in radio, or more likely lacked one that Holly knew how to access. The physical controls for both driving and flying were perfectly standard and posed no problems, but the abbreviation-packed dashboard may as well have been annotated with hieroglyphics.
The speed of the vehicle pleased Holly even more than its ease of control; when she maxed out the acceleration, the horizon proceeded to extend further and further in a visually arresting manner.
An odd feeling crept in now and then: an unplaceable and frankly inexplicable feeling that, independent of both recent and distant events on its surface, there was something about Terradox itself that Holly couldn’t help but like. Covering so much distance so quickly opened her eyes to the unparalleled potential of the romosphere… she just wished that bad things didn’t always have to happen whenever she was on it.
Given that the TE-500 was far quieter in flight than Holly had expected, she dared to take it slightly further than initially planned before touching down to cover the final leg on the ground. She ended up playing safer than a large part of her wanted to, but she nevertheless soon reached the point where she had arranged to meet Peter and Sakura.
The only problem was, they weren’t there.
Unable to call Peter, and equally unable to call Viola in the bunker or even the Rusevs in the Karrier, Holly didn’t know what to do.
But just as panic began to set in, their rover appeared from thin air only 30 or 40 metres away.
Those VUVs are too damn good, Holly thought, lightheartedly cursing the progress of Bo’s rover division under her breath.
Holly climbed into the back of the rover, behind Sakura’s driving seat.
“Everything going okay?” Sakura asked, wasting no time in setting off back towards New Eden after making the rover disappear once more.
“I think so,” Holly said, “but I’ve been out of touch with everyone. Viola is in the bunker but it’s not exactly straightforward operating that radio, especially reaching these VUVs via the Karrier, so I told her to maintain focus on the specific task I gave her. Have the Rusevs told you anything about the plan? They heard it all when I told Viola.”
Peter turned to face Holly. “Yes. Dimitar also confirmed that he used one drone to gather images at low altitude from a safe distance, and that Grav is being restrained in the room where you expected him to be: Morrison’s planned office, with the broken window.”
“Was he okay? What was happening?”
“All Dimitar could tell for sure was that Grav was there,” Peter said. “And as for the idea to use crashing drones as a distraction, I like it.”
“Sakura?” Holly asked.
“I don’t hate it,” she replied. “I just feel like this is a lot to put on Viola’s shoulders.”
“She can handle a lot more than you’d think,” Holly said, speaking while quickly getting into the EVA suit which Grav had earlier packed into the VUV but foolishly decided not to wear. “I have total faith in her.”
Sakura turned her head slightly while driving over vast empty terrain which didn’t always demand her full attention. “I didn’t mean it like that. It would be a lot for any of us who don’t know the intricacies of the control systems. I’m just a little bit worried that she has to do too many things at once.”
“If you want to see someone doing too many things at once, you should take a look at Viola’s job when we get back to the station,” Peter said. “She works full-time hours raising the first generation of kids to grow up so far from Earth; the first generation of kids who can’t go outside and can’t mix in a wider social circle. Some of these kids are old enough to know about Earth and Earth is where a lot of them want to be, so even though they have good parents this is not an easy job. Truly, head of childcare on the station is no joke. That’s not a role Rusev gave Viola to keep her busy, it’s a serious position with serious responsibilities. All artificial environments are fragile, even the station, so one resentful kid who hates the station could turn into one messed-up teenager who does something to harm it. She worries about this stuff all the time, every night. What I am saying is that even if Viola sometimes presents a face of, you know, that kind of vacant detachment and constant happiness, she lives with pressure; this is not a new experience for her.”
Holly didn’t have an immediate reply to that beyond a surprised expression. In their many conversations over the last few years, Viola had never expressed anything but love for the childcare position she called “the best job in the solar system”, so Holly certainly hadn’t expected to learn that she felt so much pressure. It made sense now that Holly reflected on the difficulty and importance of raising well-adjusted children within an isolated artificial environment such as the Venus station, but the fact that Viola not only lived with constant pressure but also managed to keep it from everyone except Peter only made Holly even more confident that she would succeed in the high-pressure situation she now faced.
“How much longer from here?” Holly asked.
“About six minutes at full speed,” Sakura replied.
Holly sat back and tried to think about Viola in the bunker, tracking their movements, rather than Grav in the house, enduring Boyce’s…
It didn’t even bear thinking about.
This was going to be a long six minutes.
sixty-three
As the imposing blue and white plantation-style house at the centre of New Eden came into view, Sakura slowed the VUV to a crawl and followed Holly’s precise directions to the optimal parking spot.
“Ten,” Holly said, beginning a countdown as soon as the rover stopped moving.
“Viola drops the first drone at zero,” Peter said. “Right?”
Holly nodded. “Nine…”
Nothing was supposed to happen before zero, so there was no reason for alarm as Holly’s countdown continued.
But when zero came and lingered with no drones in sight, Peter quickly began to discuss their options. “We can take those assholes,” he said, pointing to Boyce’s unsuspecting accomplices as they stood in front of the grand stairway. “One shot, two shot, boom.”
“Exactly,” Holly said. “Boom. Have you forgotten why we don’t want Boyce to hear a gunshot? Have you forgotten why we want to mask the sound with dozens of crashing drones?”
“Minus eight,” Sakura said, still counting quietly in the driver’s seat.
At minus eleven, Holly perked up. “There!” she said, pointing to a drone as it plummeted from a great al
titude towards the ground on the left-side of the house as they looked at it, just in front of the parked rover. The drone looked far bigger than Holly had expected — easily the size of a house cat — and the resulting crash was suitably and pleasingly loud.
Immediately, Boyce’s two accomplices turned to the source of the sudden impact. One ran towards it; on arrival, he wasted no time in calling his partner over for a full inspection.
The men were now directly in front of the rover. For Peter, the temptation of their tantalising proximity was almost too much. “Boyce wouldn’t even hear the shots,” he said, one hand on his door handle and the other grasping his firearm. “Holly… just say yes.”
“No. When the other drones start falling, that’s when we step out.” Come on, Viola… she added internally.
“Now!” cried Sakura, first to spot the dozens of drones plummeting around the house.
“Holly, don’t move,” Peter said as he threw open his door. “I’ve got this.”
Holly paused briefly then opened her door nonetheless, but the three-second head start Peter had on account of her momentary delay proved enough for him to send both of David Boyce’s accomplices to the ground before she even had a chance to take aim.
Photo-drones thundered to the ground around them like enormous hailstones, some landing on the fallen men and causing Holly to grimace.
“Stay,” Peter said, holding out a hand. This demand was more fit for a dog than a person, but Holly understood why brevity and clarity were vital in the current moment. He moved tentatively towards the first of Boyce’s fallen accomplices until he was sure the drones had stopped coming, at which point he ran the last of the way. He aimed, looked away, then delivered a second shot to be absolutely sure. He then repeated this three-step process with the other man, clearly taking no pleasure from doing so.
Peter then returned to the rover wearing a conflicted expression. He held his hands outwards, palms up, and looked to the sky. “I know what I have done,” he said, before whispering something less audible about forgiveness and necessity.
Despite Grav’s generally successful efforts to mould Peter as a security operative in his own image, Holly saw now more than ever that they were two very different people. She put a hand on his back and spoke very simply: “We have to move now.”
He turned towards her and took a sharp intake of breath through his nose then fired the air straight back out. “Let’s do this.”
“Stay hidden,” Holly told Sakura. “And hey, thanks for the smooth ride.”
Sakura smiled briefly, before her expression stiffened. “Listen, guys… I know there are already more than enough reasons to want to take this guy down, but he killed my dad. He smothered an old man in his bed, all so that man couldn’t testify against Morrison. What I’m trying to say is: give him one for me, okay?”
Holly nodded platitudinally but Peter clearly took this request more seriously. “Don’t worry, Sakura,” he said. “I will see to it that he gets your message.”
Holly and Peter, already suited up, both put their helmets on and proceeded towards the entrance of the imposing house. A rocker on the porch swayed gently in the breeze as Peter looked up at the opulent balcony.
As expected, the previously guarded door was unlocked — just as it had been on the only prior occasion Holly had entered this building, along with Viola and none other than Yury ‘Spaceman’ Gardev himself.
“Engage your C-Suit,” Holly said, whispering very quietly in the knowledge that Peter would hear it loud and clear through his helmet’s internal speaker. “We can’t be totally sure that Boyce is still in the room where Dimitar saw Grav. They could be anywhere.”
Holly led the way with Peter walking backwards behind her, following basic protocol that was second nature to everyone under Grav’s charge in the Venus station’s security division.
What Peter was not so accustomed to was walking in an engaged C-Suit, backwards or not. Holly had some limited experience of this armour-like adaption from a frightening incident with Grav on the unforgiving surface of Netherdox, but even she found it slightly difficult to judge her steps as they ascended the richly carpeted stairway to the floor where they expected to find Boyce and Grav.
At the top of the stairs there were several doors to choose from, but Holly’s gaze immediately settled on one in particular: the one with Roger Morrison’s name still right there on the plaque she had first seen four years earlier.
She couldn’t help but think of Viola’s words from that day, when after she and Yury had tried and failed to open every downstairs door, the girl had insisted: “if this one’s locked, we’re breaking it down.”
On that occasion, the door hadn’t been locked.
On this occasion, there was no time to check.
A failed attempt to turn the doorknob could alert Boyce to their presence and give him time to react before they made it inside, which would defeat the whole purpose of their carefully planned distractions and furtive passage through the house so far.
This kind of interior door had no need for the kind of explosive charge Holly and Grav had been forced to use inside Netherdox’s bunker; in this case, a firm and decisive two-person shoulder smash would more than suffice.
“We want Boyce alive,” Holly whispered, “but not as much as we want Grav alive. Understood?”
“Perfectly,” Peter replied. “On three?”
Holly nodded and positioned her left shoulder against the door. “On three.”
sixty-four
It was the right room.
The good news ended there.
sixty-five
A split second was all it took for Holly to wish she had been there an hour earlier.
In the far corner of the room, behind the large desk which lay in front of the window, Grav was helplessly tied to a wooden chair.
His mouth was taped shut. His eyes were closed tight. Huge sweat patches had gathered under his neck and arms, giving an indication as to the kind of ordeal he had been subjected to.
Worst of all, his left leg was exposed and raised on the desk. This highlighted that Boyce had viewed this area, already horrendously disfigured at the hands of GU militants many years earlier, as an easy and natural target.
Boyce, for his part, stood on the near side of the desk like a child caught misbehaving by a returning parent. His expression — not just surprise, but a special pathetic kind of surprise — made it crystal clear that he truly hadn’t seen this coming.
He shot twice, both times at Holly.
Her C-Suit laughed it off.
Knowing that he would fare no better against Peter’s suit, Boyce then turned the gun towards Grav. After a positive momentary thought that this meant Grav was definitely alive, Holly’s instincts took over and she fired towards Boyce’s arm. Having hoped to hit anywhere which would make him drop his weapon, she was immensely relieved to see the bullet connect just above the wrist of Boyce’s outstretched hand.
Peter began his dive towards the airborne gun before it even hit the ground. “What a shot!” he said, picking it up for safekeeping.
“Close range,” Holly humbly replied.
David Boyce, the tyrant of Terradox, now kneeled statue-like on the floor as reality slapped him across the face like a wet fish on a cold day.
In this room, in this moment, he was nothing.
He was no one.
He was finished.
Holly pressed a button to retract the front of her helmet and looked straight at Boyce. “We overestimated you,” she said.
Boyce, now in agony from the gunshot as well as acute shock from the events of the last few moments, remained totally still for several seconds. Holly and Peter saw little that could go wrong now, so they slowly spread across the room in preparation for the final physical takedown.
But then, as though waking up from a dream, Boyce blinked tightly and used his good hand to assist himself in climbing over the desk.
“He’s going for the window,�
�� Peter yelled.
If Boyce jumped, he would almost certainly die. While Holly would have seen that as no tragedy, their mission had included the objective of capturing Boyce alive.
Grav was alive, his slow breaths discernible now that she’d had some time to look for them, and it would not be acceptable to come this close to achieving both objectives only for Boyce to slip through their fingers and take the easy way out.
Peter ran around the side of the desk, trying to position himself for a tackle before Boyce could jump.
Boyce inched further away, stopping inches from Grav’s side-on chair. Grav’s back was to the window, some two metres behind him, while his leg rested on the desk. Boyce hesitated and took a deep breath.
It was then that Grav opened his eyes and winked in Holly’s direction.
When Boyce planted his foot to launch the jump, Grav mustered every ounce of energy he had left to throw himself sideways and knock Boyce off balance.
Holly then dived through the air, pouncing cat-like across the desk to take David Boyce down. She immediately wrenched a knee into the small of his back and restrained his arms. Face to face with Grav, she gratefully allowed Peter to take charge of Boyce and proceeded to help Grav back upright.
The side of her head had endured a rough thud against the floor. Her chin, of all places, ached worst of all following its secondary impact inside her retracted helmet. But given the state of Grav, she couldn’t devote too much attention to such relatively trivial injuries.
Wasting no time, she removed the tape from his mouth quickly without being too rough. “What needs attention first?” she asked, looking over every visible inch of his body. The bullet had already been extracted from his thigh and the wound tightly compressed, perhaps to ensure he didn’t pass out, but it still didn’t look too clever. “Your leg?”
Grav stretched his jaw and clicked it twice. That didn’t sound too great, either. “Nice of you to join me, Hollywood,” he then groaned through an obviously forced smile. He paused to spit a worryingly blood-filled mouthful of saliva to the floor. “Busy day?”
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 60
