The last comment was timed for effect as Dante stepped away and a rough hand on his back combined with a well-placed leg to trip him up. He dusted himself off and walked away while Grav’s friends laughed. Grav turned back to face them, not quite redeemed but at least having shown that he wouldn’t be disrespected without consequence.
“What about the other two?” one of the men asked. “These rich bitches taking two spots that should be going to two of us… what are you gonna—”
“All of you get inside,” Grav boomed. “I do not take orders from Holly but I do take them from Rusev, and these ‘rich bitches’ are to be treated well. Their money bought our supplies.”
Some of the men looked more than a little disappointed at Grav, but most of them understood. Like him, they understood the situation regarding paid places without quite accepting it, but Rusev called the shots and the discussion ended there.
Grav repeated his order for the men to disperse and asked the more senior among them to hurry the stragglers along. Within a minute or so, they were all gone… only so far as the indoor viewing platform, but gone nonetheless.
At this point, Grav finally opened the rear passenger door of the armoured vehicle and invited his two final passengers to step out. When they did, he saw a haggard looking man of around 45 years and a striking young woman who couldn’t have been half his age. Their travel cards identified them as Norman and Jessica Tanner, and Grav knew better than to ask any questions.
“If you would be so kind…” he said, inviting Jessica Tanner forward first. “May I?” he asked, signalling with his hands that an unavoidable pat-down was coming her way.
She nodded indifferently.
Grav took no longer than necessary, knowing full well that no one paying this much money for a seat would be any kind of security threat. His well-honed instinct had also told him at one glance these people were no threat to anyone, but thoroughness was part of the job. With less concern for propriety, his pat-down of Norman Tanner was far more rigorous yet still no more so than necessary.
“On you go,” Grav said to them both, unlocking the gate to usher them through the cordon.
Norman shook his head. “Sir, erm… our luggage.”
Grav studied the man, surprised by an accent that seemed to come from a bygone age; he knew from a conversation with Rusev they were ‘old money’ and English, but he still hadn’t expected this.
“I will carry it, do not worry about that,” Grav replied in an accent just as unusual to them as Norman’s was to him.
“I… I really need to keep it with me,” Norman replied. He gulped. “If you don’t mind.“
Grav walked behind them and ushered them away from the gate, which he closed once more. He studied their expressions in turn, waiting for the cracks which were about to appear. Right on cue, Jessica’s eye began to twitch. Grav began to realise that his instincts, honed though they usually were, may have been set to let him down. “Do not move a muscle,” he ordered. “Either of you.”
As the Tanners stood by, Grav returned to the car.
“Please, sir, I’m begging you to be extremely careful with the large suitcase,” Norman called.
“And what happens if I am not?” Grav asked, peering back to them from the side of the car.
Jessica, apparently having seen and heard enough, stepped towards him.
Grav almost looked amused. “What part of do not move—”
“Enough!” she said, putting her hands between Grav and the large case. To Norman’s understandable requests to step back, she replied: “The old plan is off… he’s either with us or he’s not.”
With his curiosity now piqued like never before, Grav instructed Jessica to unzip the suitcase.
As the contents met his eyes, it took every ounce of control Grav possessed not to react. No one but Jessica could see him — the inside of the car guarded against the gaze of his colleagues, while the angle of the Karrier meant that Holly couldn’t see them at all from the control room — but her eyes were enough to keep his guard up.
He glanced back at Norman, who was fighting his own inner battle to avoid throwing his head into his hands. Jessica, meanwhile, was ready to firmly meet his eyes.
“I heard the way they spoke to you,” the young woman said, remarkably forthright and assured. “Holly… Dante… are you really going to let people like that decide the course of our lives?”
Grav didn’t say anything.
“Do you think it’s right that we were able to buy our way onto this spaceship… that the two of us can escape, but no one else? Do you think any of this is right?”
Still, he remained silent.
“Listen to me: we’re going to be in the converted lander for the whole journey, out of everyone else’s way. This can work if you let it. It’s in your power to decide what happens next, not theirs. Now’s not the time to tell you everything, so don’t even ask, but you make this call.”
Grav looked again at the suitcase, which was closed once more, and reflected that no one else was going to inspect it. He was the law — trusted unquestioningly — and once his decision was made there would be no going back.
This wasn’t a reversible choice and there would be no second chance to make the right call, but each passing moment of reflection told him that Jessica was right in her confident insistence that the unspeakably audacious plan could work.
“Remember…” she said, “… we’ll be in our lander the whole time.”
Seconds later, in a moment of sudden and remarkable decision, Grav gently lifted the suitcase to the ground.
“Go,” he said, wheeling it to Jessica’s side as he swallowed away all hesitation. “Before I change my mind.”
Five
Dante
“Holly!” Dante called as he saw her hurrying past. He stood at the edge of his room, right next to hers in the small staff quarters. “Long time no see.”
She stopped in her tracks. “Dante… hey. I really have to check on the new passengers before we take off. Uh, do you want to come along? It’s just down the corridor, then we can go to the control room to catch up?”
He smiled and stepped out to follow her. “Sure thing.”
As they passed the utility room, a voice called from within:
“Say, Hollywood…”
She stopped instinctively, rolling her eyes as she looked in at Grav.
“You did not happen to see some plates I left in here, did you? I could have sworn they were right—”
Holly swung the door closed and continued forward. “He’s gonna be in for a fright when we get to the station and no one takes his shit anymore,” she muttered.
Dante kept quiet, not exactly keen to give away his own embarrassment at Grav’s hands just a few minutes earlier.
The next door they came to was the Tanners’ quarters, or more accurately the emergency lander that Holly had recently converted into makeshift quarters. She paused before knocking. “What should I be expecting here?” she asked, knowing that Dante had driven them to the launch site from a nearby hotel.
“Rich English guy, trophy wife, very polite. They didn’t say much, but I don’t think they’re going to cause you any problems.”
Glad to hear it, Holly knocked three times.
“Yes?” a young woman answered, opening the door just a crack. Upon seeing Holly, she opened it more but still not completely.
“Hello,” Holly smiled warmly. “I’m your chaperone for this journey to the Venus station, and if there’s anything at all I can help you with, please let me know. You can call me at any time — day or night — by pressing the appropriate button on your control panel. My wristband will buzz and I’ll be right here. For now, can I get you a light meal or perhaps a drink? You’re free to roam in your quadrant of the Karrier during most of the journey, as Grav will have explained, and I can show you how to use the food and drinks machines at any point. We do require you to stay in your quarters during the take-off procedure, though, so if
you’d like anything in the next thirty minutes or so I’ll have to bring it now.”
“We’re fine for now, thanks,” Jessica Tanner said, replying with a warm enough smile of her own. “Bye.”
The door slid closed without any further pleasantries.
“Well, maybe not very polite…“ Dante mused. He and Holly both laughed as they set off along the corridor.
“She seemed fine,” Holly said. Her wristband then buzzed, alerting her of a message not from the Tanners but from Rusev. It asked if there was any specific problem causing the ever-growing delay, and Holly immediately replied with a simple message stating that she had just completed all final checks.
Within moments, Holly was announcing this out loud to everyone on board: Rusev and Yury in their lander, the Tanners in theirs, and Grav in the utility room. Dante sat at her side in the control room, gazing around at the buttons and screens he had worked on several times during maintenance procedures but had never seen in real-world operation.
He sat back and breathed deeply as Holly hovered her finger over the launch initiation controls, which — all being well — were the only ones she would have to touch.
“Nervous?” she asked.
Dante laughed defensively. ”We haven’t all done this a million times, you know!”
“Hardly a million,“ Holly grinned, “… as much as it feels like it sometimes.“
“Let’s just get it over with then… push the button.”
“I always like to take one last good look at the ground,” Holly said, “because the next thing my eyes will see up close is the station.”
As her finger entered the code to begin the launch procedure and the Karrier prepared to escape Earth’s atmosphere one last time, Holly could never have imagined just how wrong she was…
Author’s Notes
Thanks for reading my Terradox Quadrilogy!
If you enjoyed the collection and could spare a few moments to leave a review on Amazon, that would be very helpful. Even a few words is great! Reviews are an important way for readers to find books that might interest them and every kind word really does help. Thanks again.
I’ve had a lot of fun exploring the possibilities of romotechnology and writing about Holly and the gang, but the events that closed the fourth book felt like a natural end point. Of course, never say never — we may one day return to Terradox and Arkadia…
In any case, I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride!
I have two more great-value box sets coming in 2019, my Cyber Seed Quadrilogy on October 30th and Not Alone: The Contact Trilogy on November 30th.
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