“You can’t be serious,” Peter said. “At the same time?”
Grav said nothing, only wriggling his hands in reply.
Chase and Peter exchanged a disbelieving shrug but went along with it, Chase using his left hand since he was facing Grav’s left-side. Given that this naturally placed his weaker hand against Grav’s and that all three were right-handed, this made no difference in relative terms.
“Go,” Grav said, at which point the scene became truly surreal with three men’s men facing off in a competition more suited to a school playground.
Twenty full-hearted seconds in, Grav visibly grimaced. “Okay,” he said, his voice unusually shaky.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to quit?” Peter asked.
Grav’s face, slowly but surely, began to turn a deep shade of red as the pressure of his muscular exertion kicked in.
“Do you want us to stop?” Chase asked, not gloating by any means.
Grav closed his eyes and tensed up, as though ready for a final push. But as his eyes opened again after a series of quick exhalations, he appeared unlikely to turn things around. “You are really going to make me say it?” he asked.
Peter looked at Chase and shook his head.
Chase got the message. “On three?” he mouthed.
As agreed, both men dropped their hands on three. “Call it a stalemate,” Peter said.
Grav looked down at his own hands, decades older than his opponents’ and both as red as lobsters in the sun. “Sometimes it is good for the old lion’s morale to think he can keep up with the young guns,” he said, ruefully appreciative of their graciousness.
“You could still take us one at a time,” Peter said.
“I got evidence of that all too recently,” Chase added with a smile.
“And that is why I am glad there are two of you,” Grav said, wincing as he slapped them both on their shoulders and his raw hands moaned in protest. “Because if I cannot take you both at the same time, no one has a chance.“
With Katie and Patch having run off to explore the Ferrier shortly after reaching the main meeting area and with Grav having been out of sight of the main mingling area, Viola was yet to even realise he was there.
He looked around, himself only now realising that he hadn’t seen her, either. He caught Robert Harrington’s eye and saw him pointing down the corridor.
Grav approached Robert and hugged him, almost as tightly as Viola had squeezed Bo a few minutes earlier.
“The quietest hero of all,” Grav said. “You know I wanted you to stay on Terradox, Robert, but I am so fucking glad you will be there to keep Arkadia running smoothly. I love these kids, but they need a wise head.”
“They’re hardly kids,” Robert replied.
As Grav looked back over at Peter and Chase he could certainly see what Robert meant, but he shrugged. “Could you call Viola?” he requested. “I want to surprise her.”
Robert was only too happy to oblige, and when she ventured back down the corridor Grav was lying in wait to jump out in front of her.
At first her face wore nothing but the instinctive physical shock of such a fright, but this was closely followed by the dawn of the real shock as it hit her. “Oh my God…”
“Surprise,” he said, sporting his wildest smile so far and opening his arms in anticipation of the borderline violent hug he knew was coming.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, not letting him down on the hug front and sounding a lot more pleased to see him than the words themselves might have indicated.
“They had two extra spots in the crews’ quarters,” Grav shrugged, before gesturing down the corridor towards Katie, who had popped into view in search of the source of her mother’s surprise. “And I wanted to meet that little one, of course.”
“Wait…” Viola said, physically pushing Grav away and staring into his eyes as these words sunk in. “Did you just say there were two extra spots?”
Grav’s face, normally the poker face to shame all others, cracked with the slightest hint of a grin.
That was more than enough to set Viola sprinting down the corridor towards the control room, belatedly realising that where there was Grav there was bound to be…
“Holly!” she yelled, the tears of joy flowing as soon as she saw her step into view and long before she reached her.
“You didn’t really think I’d let you leave without saying goodbye?” Holly asked, bracing herself against the wall to guard against an embrace that would make Grav’s bearhug seem like a gentle tickle.
“I left six years after we met,” Viola went on, now almost sobbing to the extent that she sounded upset rather than happy as was really the case, “and that was seven-and-a-half years ago! Everything we ever went through together… it all happened in less time than the time since I last saw you.”
Within seconds and before Holly could reply, the other recent arrivals had gathered around. All were just as shocked and almost as delighted as Viola to see that Holly, their undisputed and unchallenged group leader, was walking among them one last time.
For her part, Holly was also delighted to see Peter and Robert. The Hawthornes, too, but admittedly to a lesser extent since she had known them far less personally and had gone through far less alongside them than she had with the combined Harrington-Ospanov family.
Holly confirmed to the group that they had a twenty-five minute window for a comfortable parting of ways, with her and Grav set to move into the Karrier to head back to Terradox while the Ferrier and its vast cargo carried the Arkadia-bound crew to their destination.
As those twenty-five emotional moments wore on and eventually drew towards their end, Holly pulled Viola aside to a private area and gave her something she hadn’t for a moment expected to see: a badge marked COMMANDER which she knew meant more to Holly than any other material item.
“I can’t,” she said.
Holly shook her head very firmly. “It’s yours. Chase might have the uniform, Peter might run Security, and your dad might sit at the end of the table, but I want you to hang on to this. You’re the only person going to Arkadia who was there on the frontlines in all three of our gravest challenges: against Dante, against Boyce and against Steve. And I’m not asking you to wear it; this isn’t for everyone else to know who’s in charge, this is for you to remember who you are. Never forget where we’ve been, Viola, and never put limits on where you can go.”
Holly then somewhat reluctantly responded to a time call from Grav and performed a brief final walk around the others, offering heartfelt if less emotional goodbyes before returning again to Viola.
“We really need to go,” she said, struggling to look away once her eyes were back on Viola, who in so many heart-wrenching ways felt like the daughter she’d never had.
Viola was no longer crying and was instead now making a conscious effort to remember every little detail of Holly’s face. This final farewell was difficult, but since it was one she hadn’t expected to have she was taking every second of it as a bonus.
“We’re going to continue what you started,” she said, pleasantly surprising Holly with a strong tone. “I’m going to continue what you started, and I’m not going to stop until I do you proud.”
This was more than a platitude and had in fact been a driving force for Viola for a decade; because before there was Chase Jackson, understandably seen by many as the anointed chosen one, Holly had shown remarkable faith in Viola from an even younger age. And just like the richly deserving and always grateful Chase, Viola would do whatever it took to show Holly she was right to have believed in her.
“You do me proud every single day,” Holly said, for once the more emotional of the two. “Just stay true to yourself and keep trusting your gut, okay? The rest will take care of itself.”
“I love you all,” Grav said loudly, capturing everyone’s attention as he gently pulled Holly away towards the doorway that would soon reseal. The windowed partition closed before the airlo
ck, giving all of the future Arkadians one last view of the two people they would miss more than any others.
“Thanks for everything,” Viola said, greatly over-enunciating the words so that Holly could make them out through the glass.
Holly smiled warmly, not at all forlornly, and gave a slow wink in reply.
Combined with the proud look on her face, it said more than words ever could.
twenty
The Ferrier’s descent towards the Arkadian surface involved no instantaneous passage through an invisibility cloak, as some of its passengers had experienced elsewhere in less positive contexts, but this did nothing to reduce the feelings of awe-struck wonder among all of those who watched their gargantuan new world gain detail and fill more of the Ferrier’s viewing windows with each passing second.
The largely unseen crew of pilots had made several cargo runs in recent months and guided the Ferrier towards its landing spot beside the straightforwardly named Arkadia Central Station with no difficulties.
Their vantage point, like that of their passengers, revealed a distinct but not unexpected lack of fanfare on the ground. Indeed, there was no fanfare at all and literally no one to be seen. Although Rachel Berry and a small number of other Arkadians had arrived early, all of them were there to do a job and clearly none of those jobs involved welcoming and greeting the arriving VIPs.
No one particularly noticed the absence of a welcoming party, however, such was the sheer wonder of the blank canvas before them. Arkadia was the epitome of human ingenuity — a whole world borne of human ingenuity — and all of the adults who took it in understood how privileged they were. The children were quite understandably more expressive in their excitement, bounding around between different windows to take in as many aerial views as they could before the ever-nearing touchdown.
That touchdown, which came with remarkable smoothness, was greeted by cheers and applause all round.
“I’m more than willing to be the last one out,” Chase said as the initial hubbub faded while the others got ready to make their move. “I was lucky enough to be first on my earlier landing.”
“Rub it in, why don’t you,” young Vijay Kohli laughed as he positioned himself near the front of the crowd. He didn’t go all the way to the front, seemingly respecting an unspoken ’youngest first’ setup that saw Katie and Patch eagerly leading the way. No one had told Vijay to do this and Peter knew how keen he was to get onto the surface, so the self-managed patience and kindness spoke well of him.
As the Ferrier’s outer hatch slid open, the overwhelming thought in most minds was that Arkadia looked an awful lot like Terradox. This was no accident, with the landing area having been built with Terradox’s in mind, but Chase knew that the similarities largely ended there. Once the others saw more of their new home they would realise that the craggy terrain of Terradox was utterly absent, with vast plains as flat as any they could imagine ready to greet them in almost every conceivable direction.
With varying degrees of ecstatic impatience, each of the Ferrier’s passengers made their way down the gently sloped exit ramp and touched foot on their new home.
The three children in the party bounded around like gazelles, with Vijay’s unrestrained exuberance making him fit in perfectly with the much younger Katie and Patch. The latter pair had never even set foot on Terradox, while Vijay couldn’t remember ever setting foot anywhere else.
Regardless of where they had come from, everyone on Arkadia was delighted to be there.
As the grown-ups took in their new surroundings somewhat more sedately, Chase’s eyes fell on a parked group of TE-900 multi-terrain vehicles which were modelled on the old Explorers from the days of the ill-fated Terradox Resort.
“Does anyone feel like a quick tour before it gets dark?” he asked loudly, directing his offer squarely to the children.
They reacted with predictable glee, all three quickly turning to their respective parents and letting their expressions do the begging.
Viola and Kayla looked at each other for a few seconds before agreeing that Katie and Patch could go, while Peter and Vic nodded in assent without the need for any such deliberation. The Kohlis authorised Vijay’s participation in the unplanned tour just as quickly, but Romesh added that he was keen to get everything out of the Ferrier and into their new family home before darkness fell. His wife Farrah voiced her agreement with this plan, as did Viola and the Hawthornes.
Nisha, sensing this was a good time for Chase to get to know Katie and Patch and that her closeness to Viola would give her plenty of similar opportunities, chimed in to say that she would stay on the ground to move her and Chase’s things into their new home just as the others were all doing.
It was certainly the case that having the children eagerly occupied by Chase’s aerial tour would make the task of transporting luggage easier than it would otherwise have been, so the spur-of-the-moment idea was keenly received by everyone.
While Viola said something about important supplies and went to grab a few bottles of water from the Ferrier for the kids to take with them, Chase turned to Peter, who was standing right next to him and was the only person yet to state his intention.
“How about you, sheriff?” he asked. “Coming along for the ride?”
“I don’t have the best memories of those things,” Peter said under his breath, his voice solemn.
“Why?” Chase asked, understandably enough.
Peter exhaled deeply, discomfort tinging his typically stoic expression. “Holly and I had to fill one of them with the bodies of the guards that Boyce’s men massacred. They’d been lying in the sun for far too long, piled up like rats.” He shook his head and looked to the ground. “That kind of thing doesn’t leave you.”
As a relative latecomer to Holly’s inner circle and a veteran of only one near-disaster, it was sometimes difficult for Chase to bear in mind just how much the likes of Peter and Viola had gone through before he came to prominence within Little Venus’s Isolation Kompound.
And although people often spoke of him and Peter in similar tones, particularly those who had grown up during Peter’s seven quiet years on Earth, Chase Jackson knew he had a long way to go before he deserved to be considered on anything close to an equal footing. In decision-making terms they were officially equals as per the terms of Arkadia’s founding constitution, which gave each of them and Viola one deciding vote versus Robert’s two in any situation where a consensus couldn’t be reached, but Chase nevertheless looked up to Peter in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“Everything you guys have done over the years is what brought us here,” he said, trying to comfort Peter with the only words he could think of before clapping his hands together and using a far more upbeat tone to encourage the children to follow him to their touring vehicle.
None of the three so much as looked back at their parents before boarding.
“Don’t be too late,” Viola said to Chase as she handed him the water and emergency supplies she’d gathered from the Ferrier. “And Katie, do whatever Chase says. He’s the boss today, okay?”
“So who’s the boss tomorrow?” Chase whispered.
Viola, caught off-guard by this playful reply, used a hand to cover her face during an instant outburst of laughter. Still smiling widely, she drew a triangle in the air between the two of them and Peter. “If we disagree on something, my dad. But you already know that as well as I do.”
“Well I’m gonna use the next few hours to win the youth vote, so my time will come,” he winked. Viola chuckled as she walked away.
As effortlessly as the TE-900 then took to the sky under his capable control, Chase fell into his role as Arkadia’s first ever tour guide. His audience could hardly have been more interested, meaning that he didn’t have to say much.
“Do these fields go on forever?” Patch Hawthorne asked, gazing around in every direction.
“It sure feels like it,” Chase said, thinking that ‘fields’ was a fair eno
ugh term for what he thought of as plains, “but there’s a lot more to this place than you can see right now.”
Before too long the TE-900 passed over a relatively small area of water that Chase didn’t recall from his previous flyover a year earlier. He wasn’t following a set route so couldn’t be sure he had crossed this exact piece of land — Arkadia was enormous, as everyone was now seeing with their own eyes — but curiosity got the better of him and led to a change of course directly for the area in question.
This closer vantage point revealed that the water was something akin to a moat, although its size relative to the patch of land in its centre made him think it was more like a pond with an island in the middle. It finally clicked when he noticed the presence of some medium-sized buildings at the shoreline.
“This is where the chimps live,” he said, an authority in his voice belying that fact that he’d only just realised this. “They can’t swim, so an island makes sense. Who wants to go lower for a better view?”
To put it mildly, the children weren’t as enthused at this prospect as he’d expected.
“You know what chimps are, right?” he pushed. “Chimpanzees? The really smart monkeys?”
“Really smart apes,” Katie said, sporting a self-aware grin that said she knew the correction would make her sound like a know-it-all. “But yeah, they have those on Earth, too…”
“Gotcha,” Chase said, momentarily having forgotten that the novelty of Arkadia was the whole reason for their general excitement. “Don’t worry, though, the next big thing we’ll see is something they definitely don’t have on Earth.”
This led to guesses and fidgeting in the passenger seats behind Chase while he took a final look down at Chimp Island. His knowledge of the non-invasive tests and observations that would be carried out on the chimpanzee colony was very limited, but his faith in the project was strong. This was because he knew the chimps would be primarily monitored and cared for by a young primatologist named Yannika, an early arrival from Terradox. Chase had spent some time with Yannika in recent years, initially through his closeness to her fiancé Bradley Reinhart, an already high-ranking communications officer who had made the move at the same time.
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 100
