Terradox Quadrilogy

by Craig A. Falconer

  The few remaining umbrellas in the crowd now went down, and Viola saw amused expressions as far as she could see. Her plan, carried out more in hope than expectation, had worked perfectly. Her use of the term ‘us New Londoners’ wasn’t calculated but rather came out naturally, since the first seventeen and latest four of Viola’s twenty-seven years had been spent in the city. These were her people, and they knew she was one of them.

  Viola then took a few moments to gather her composure, knowing that as well as the enormous crowd before her, she was also being watched live on giant screens at gatherings across the globe and in hundreds of millions of homes. No one wanted to see her stumble over her words and the crowd was as supportive as they came, but Holly had repeatedly stated that a confident delivery would go a long way to winning over the small minority of people elsewhere who had doubts as to the value or utility of the Kosmosphere project.

  “In less than an hour,” Viola began, using a well-practiced and resonant speaking voice which still didn’t come naturally, “years of planning will come to fruition with the launch of the Kosmosphere. In approximately two years, a small crew of humans will walk on the Kosmosphere’s surface for the first time, once it has safely expanded to its final size. Just one year after that — three years from now — the Kosmosphere will depart its holding orbit to set course for the stars, expanding humanity’s reach and decisively ushering in a new and exciting era of deep-space exploration.

  “Work is ongoing in preparation for that momentous day of departure, not only here but also on Terradox and the Venus station. We all have a lot to look forward to, and final information on residency applications for life on the Kosmosphere will be made available very soon.

  “But while this is very much a day for looking forward, it’s no accident that the launch is taking place on our annual Day of Gratitude. Without the sacrifices of the individuals we are here to honour, none of this would be happening. None of us would be here at all without the sacrifices of these individuals, and that is why we continue to dedicate one day each year to looking back.

  “The Day of Gratitude is a day for looking back at the lives, the legacies, and the sacrifices of those who stood up to tyranny so that we could all be free, with particular remembrance of those who are no longer with us to reflect upon the darkest of times they helped see us through.”

  Viola paused to avoid speaking over a sudden and rancorous applause. When it died down, the voice of a child near the front of the crowd broke a momentary silence.

  “You helped too!” the young girl shouted, genuinely unprompted as far as Viola knew.

  Viola smiled awkwardly and nodded. “I appreciate that,” she said. “I assisted when I could, sometimes by being in the right place at the right time, but I count myself lucky to have known Spaceman, Sakura and Rusev. I can understand why some of you look to me and my family and see heroes — or ‘saviours’, as it’s more commonly put — but I look up to those three and the other survivors in the same way… Holly and Grav in particular. Without them, my family would have died on Terradox and Roger Morrison would have had his way.”

  With the most emotionally challenging part of her speech out of the way, Viola shifted gears and moved on to providing some new details about the Kosmosphere’s imminent launch. She was at least as keen to watch the events on Terradox as her audience were, and there was no need for her to exaggerate her excitement or enthusiasm for the project.

  One of the parts of the remainder of the speech she’d had to rehearse most was the part intended to stress that those left behind would benefit from the work conducted on the Kosmosphere. She dived quickly into this point, keen to get it out of the way:

  “I won’t stand here and pretend that Earth has already become a technological utopia thanks to the work that’s been done on Terradox or the Venus station, and I won’t say that a perfect world is coming. What I will say — and what we should all be proud of — is that there has been major progress. Food scarcity is a thing of the past,” Viola said, pausing for a few seconds to let this statement linger exactly as Holly had suggested, “and future breakthroughs will help humanity in other equally important ways. That’s not just a promise, it’s a guarantee.”

  The crowd applauded, as expected, but Viola knew she was preaching to the converted. She dearly hoped that her words would also get through to those less positive about the project.

  The rest of the speech passed easily as Viola spoke honestly and openly about her hopes for the future of not just the Kosmosphere but humanity as a whole.

  After four years on Earth, Viola Ospanov was itching to move on. And on this third annual Day of Gratitude, she was growing tired of looking back.

  As far as Viola was concerned, it was time to look forward. Difficult missions had been completed and difficult battles had been won to reach this point, and the prize for those often-costly victories was the safety and comfort of Earth, Terradox, and the Venus station.

  Now, with all three of humanity’s population bases safe and secure, it was high time to look further afield.

  Now, it truly was time to look to the stars.

  six

  While the crowd in Terradox’s Romotech Production Zone were all absorbed by Viola Ospanov’s recent speech as it was relayed to them on an enormous screen, the rapid approach and landing of a Wasp aircraft broke their focus.

  “Better late than never,” Grav muttered, standing with Holly in a small square surrounded by four temporary grandstands. These grandstands were packed out with spectators eager to see Holly initiate the Kosmosphere’s launch, with the only single seat currently unoccupied being the one with Bradley Reinhart’s name on it.

  Unlike everyone else, Holly and Grav weren’t overly surprised to see Bradley step out of the Wasp with Chase; they knew how far away he’d been four minutes ago, and they knew it didn’t take four minutes to get from there to here. Bradley’s absence had been noted — it was easy to see a space when it was the only space going — and Holly’s mind had put two and two together and already concluded that Chase must have flown over an on-the-way Bradley. Though it wasn’t quite a weakness, Chase’s inability to not help whoever he could had led to lateness in the past, so this really was no surprise.

  Chase hurried over to Holly and Grav’s side, where he had stood during rehearsals. He was too late to say the few lines he was supposed to have said and would later learn that his good friend Marcel Platt had stepped up in his absence. The crowd reacted to Chase’s obviously late arrival with some lighthearted ironic cheering, which he acknowledged with an embarrassed wave. Bradley, far less used to the spotlight, was even more embarrassed as he made his way up the stairs of one of the grandstands and sidestepped along the row to his seat. Chase watched as Bradley’s parents quietly asked the obvious questions, but he knew that those questions would be easier for the boy to deal with than those that would have come his way if he hadn’t shown up at all.

  Chase then turned to another of the grandstands, where his mother Jillian and his father Christian were sitting. Jillian waved, glad to see him, but Christian’s anger at his lateness was obvious. A few seats further along, Chase saw his long-term girlfriend Nisha Kohli and her family. Nisha looked halfway amused and halfway annoyed that he was so late — somewhere between his two parents’ conflicting reactions, as he might have expected — but the annoyance faded into laughter when he embarrassed her by exaggeratedly throwing a kiss her way.

  Holly nudged Chase in the arm, prompting him to face the screen and stop distracting people.

  “Sorry,” he said, quietly but honestly. “And I’m sorry I’m late. I saw Bradley trying to—”

  “You were already late before that,” Holly cut him off.

  A few seconds of silence passed between them, filled by the words of Viola’s stirring speech, as Chase searched for something to say in his defence.

  “But good work acing that Hell Run,” Holly said, saving him the trouble as she broke into a brief smile.r />
  Not long later, and as soon as Viola’s speech ended, Holly stepped forward to address the eager crowd. “First of all, I want to thank you all again for coming out to witness this momentous occasion in humanity’s history,” she said, before glancing back at Chase and Grav. “And Chase, it was very kind of you to join us.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it,” he replied after the crowd’s good-natured laughter died down.

  “You almost did!” his friend Marcel yelled. Even Grav cracked a smile at this.

  “Anyway…” Holly said, segueing into the important matter at hand. “We all know why we’re here, so I won’t go back over familiar ground. Before we go ahead with the launch, though, I think it’s time to reveal the given name of the romokinetic sphere that will be inhabitable in as little as two years’ time. Kosmosphere was the name of the concept, a concept generated by Yury Gardev himself. But while that name has become familiar to us all over the last few years, Yury would have been the first among us to say that a new purpose-built human settlement needs a name more befitting of its grandeur.”

  The crowd was truly silent now, very keen to hear the name.

  Many had been suggested and debated in recent years, with some naturally having gained far more support than others. Popular proposals included names like Celestia, Xanadu and Elysium, along with similar variations of the same theme: words meaning something close to utopia or paradise.

  ‘Kosmosphere’, used as a publicly known placeholder during the planning and development stages, clearly lacked the desired punch.

  Vesura was one potential name Holly took a liking to, as it sounded relatively pleasant and held meaning given that its spelling was ‘Rusev’ backwards with a prettifying ‘a’ on the end. The less meaningful but equally pleasant Avalon was another she considered very seriously.

  One group of proposed names Holly took a distinct disliking to were a group of -dox suffix names favoured by some high ranking Rusentra board members on the Venus station. Novadox, Caelodox, and Astrodox were all presented as viable options, but the working group behind those suggestions ultimately threw their collective weight behind the name Asteradox. With aster being more faithful to the ancient Greek inspiration than astro and with the name containing the full ‘Terradox’ sound, Asteradox was viewed by many as an excellent choice.

  Despite Dimitar Rusev having been as unconvinced by this name as Holly, the lack of a popular alternative meant that Asteradox had looked very much like the winning name for a prolonged period of time.

  Following a Greek theme which seemed to have struck a chord with many, and simultaneously holding true to the group of paradise-themed names favoured by those on another side of the argument, Dimitar himself eventually came to Holly privately with a suggestion of his own: Arkadia.

  He argued that it ticked all the boxes and rolled off the tongue better than the alternatives, particularly if people came to think of and refer to the Kosmosphere as a ship and hence added ‘the’ before its name. The Greek spelling even had a ‘k’ in place of the typical English ‘c’, continuing a theme common in Rusentra-designated names of the past, seen in everything from Karrier to Kompound and even Kosmosphere itself.

  It also contained the word ‘ark’, which was a word that had been thrown around in relation to the Kosmosphere given that it would, after all, carry an extensive variation of human and animal life on its travels through space.

  “The Arkadia is a perfect name for a sphere like this,” he had told her. “It works better than anything else, and even more so when the name follows the RKS prefix denoting it as the first Romokinetic sphere: RKS Arkadia. Say it aloud, Holly… ar-kay-ess ar-kay-day-ah. Even if everyone ends up considering it as a place and not as a ship, ditching both the ‘RKS’ and ’the’ prefixes and just calling it ‘Arkadia’, that still works really well. What do you think?”

  Holly’s reaction was one of immediate support, and she was relieved that the name pleased almost everyone else who had a say. Dimitar’s will would ultimately have been done and he would have pushed ahead with any name Holly supported even if the rest of the board didn’t like it, but it was much better for everyone to work from a position of consensus. Arkadia wasn’t everyone’s first choice, but it was more people’s first choice than anything else and placed overwhelmingly as the most common second choice. It would have won a vote under any system had a formal vote been conducted, and no one felt strong enough opposition to argue against it.

  Although the name was common knowledge among the Venus station’s relatively small population, it had not been more widely announced as an option, let alone as the final choice. Indeed, with just seconds before Holly’s announcement, not even Chase Jackson — standing just a few feet from her side — knew the name of the new world that he and many others would call home in just a few years.

  With Chase being the only future inhabitant standing separately from the crowd and RPZ team, Holly turned to address him directly before she spoke her next words:

  “I christen your new home… the RKS Arkadia.”

  As the words settled, the crowd’s initial murmurs of reaction had a decidedly positive tone. Needless to say, this relieved Holly greatly.

  “Arkadia?” Chase echoed, nodding slowly as he automatically ditched both prefixes as everyone else would likewise come to do. “I like it. I like it a lot.”

  Holly knew that Chase was far too professional for there to have been any question of him publicly voicing disapproval for the name, but she was glad that he sounded very genuine in his support.

  “If I could ask for a quick hand for our team here in the RPZ,” Holly said, pointing to a group of twenty or so uniformed men and women who had toiled over every detail of the imminent launch for the last four years of their lives. The audience obliged, raucously applauding as the somewhat shy staff members in question offered humble waves of acknowledgement.

  “Over the next two years, our excellent team here in the RPZ will spend some of their time designing and developing a second and far smaller romokinetic sphere — a minisphere, if you will — which will eventually travel through space in Arkadia’s wake. This minisphere, to be named at a later date by the Arkadian population, will at all times remain exactly halfway between Earth and Arkadia. It will be unmanned, at least to begin with, and will be used as a point for emergency in-person rendezvous of all kinds.

  “The minisphere’s midpoint position will self-evidently halve the journey time required for any emergency physical contact between citizens of Earth and Arkadia, should a situation requiring that arrive. It is our longer-term intention to place minispheres of this kind at frequent intervals, each serving as a kind of interplanetary pit stop. Each could quite conceivably house a Romotech Production Zone of its own, enabling long-distance travellers to fabricate any replacement parts needed for their vessels or equipment.

  “By developing the minisphere here on Terradox, via the embryonic process that’s familiar to everyone by now, we will ensure that it can be launched from Arkadia very shortly after the population’s arrival. Some of our current RPZ team will be among that population, ensuring that the minisphere’s launch from Arkadia will be just as seamless as Arkadia’s launch from Terradox. Continuity and cooperation are two core tenets of this ambitious multi-site project humanity has recently endeavoured to undertake, and those tenets are at the heart of this minisphere sub-project.”

  Holly didn’t intend to pause for applause, but the few seconds she spent considering her next words proved long enough to invite one.

  “Unlike Terradox, Arkadia has been equipped with two independently functioning Romotech Production Zones. The first will function much as our RPZ did for the first few years of its life, focusing on the fabrication of relatively small items for both personal and research use. The second, however, will focus on the kind of large-scale sphere-development that our RPZ has conducted over the course of Arkadia’s design and creation. This second zone will be known as the Shipyard, and i
t will be from that Shipyard that Arkadia’s citizens ultimately launch large spheres of their own design to venture off in new directions of interest. The potential is limitless — before long, Arkadian Shipyard staff will doubtless design other spheres with their own Shipyards, ultimately allowing careful deliberate replication throughout our galaxy.”

  The applause was a lot louder this time, with many people looking at each other in surprise and nodding approvingly at the exciting-sounding possibilities.

  Holly beamed from ear to ear as she stepped towards the launch console, not even trying to hide her delight that four years of near-endless work was finally about to come to fruition. “And now, without further ado, the time has come for Arkadia to soar.”

  She pressed the console’s small green button and stepped back. As everyone knew, the embryonic romosphere which would ultimately become Arkadia was being launched from the canyon beside Terradox Central Station. Incredibly dense and almost as large as a regular 6,000-capacity Ferrier, its launch had required the development of an enormous Super Ferrier capable of hauling it into orbit. Terradox’s zonal nature had made the logistics of a launch like this easier than would otherwise have been the case, since the Habitat Management team were able to reduce atmospheric gravity within the launch zone to simultaneously reduce the force required to initially lift such a massive object.

  A highly experienced pilot was ready and waiting in the Super Ferrier, prepared to begin take-off procedures just as soon as Holly pressed the button.

  Everyone also knew that the nature of a Ferrier’s take-off meant that there would be no explosive rocket-style fireworks in the sky, but they didn’t care about that and were unanimously eager to see the prodigiously sized Super Ferrier soar through the sky overhead. It wouldn’t pass directly over them, of course, but the point where it would cross Terradox’s romobot cloak had been chosen as one which would be visible from the RPZ.