Terradox Beyond

by Craig A. Falconer

  Peter chuckled and sat up slowly. “This is my last day on Earth, V,” he said, revealing that he’d been having similar thoughts to her own. “Is a lie-in really too much to ask?”

  “When our flight time has been carefully calculated so that we dock with the Ferrier at the right time…” she said, reaching over to whisk the covers from the bed, “I’m afraid that yeah, it is too much to ask.”

  “It’s not cold enough for that old trick to work…” Peter said, pretending to settle back down.

  “My next trick is a bowl of cold water,” Viola retorted as she headed downstairs to make Katie’s breakfast.

  Peter looked around the bedroom, laughing as he got up. Although their family home wasn’t ostentatiously decorated by any means, it was spacious and plush to a sufficient degree that Peter imagined his younger self would have irrationally hated anyone who lived in a place like it. He had fallen into the position he was about to assume as Head of Security on a man-made world of wonder on the back of a horrifically tough childhood, and where he came from was never far from his mind.

  Today was all about where he was going, however, and he frequently felt like he should pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming and that he really had come this far. That the war-torn and violent path of Peter’s youth had ultimately led him to Viola and the perfect daughter they shared was the icing on an already unbelievable cake.

  And despite Peter’s faux reluctance to get up, Arkadia and all the unbridled opportunities it represented was the cherry on top that he couldn’t wait to taste.

  nineteen

  By and large, the Ferrier’s long trip from Terradox to the rendezvous point near Arkadia was welcomely uneventful. Watching the new world grow larger by the hour had been the main event of the last few days, until the excitement ramped up when a VIP-packed Karrier left Earth on a course that would see it dock with the Ferrier just a few days later.

  The only mere hint of strife came from Chase’s continued anger at Romesh Kohli over the latter’s actions in engaging in unapproved research which ultimately led to the precautionary elimination of his Nancy project. Chase was infuriated by what he perceived as unadulterated selfishness on Romesh’s part, particularly in regards to the inherent risk to which he had exposed the rest of the colony by undertaking such reckless atmospheric interventions. Nisha, who would have been caught in the middle of any overt arguments between the two, successfully talked Chase into keeping his feelings to himself in this case, insisting that what was done was done and that her father had gotten the message loud and clear that any kind of repeat performance would lead to serious consequences.

  Chase actively stayed away from Romesh for the vast majority of the journey — something picked up on by Romesh but no one else — and the general group’s excitement reached fever pitch when the approaching Karrier finally came into view.

  With some long overdue reunions now imminent, spirits were far too high for Chase to want to inject any conflict. He spent a good deal of time playing strategy games with Romesh’s fiercely intelligent son Vijay, who spoke for everyone as the moment drew tantalisingly near when he once again reiterated that he truly couldn’t wait to see Viola and Peter.

  For Viola, the only moment her mind could remotely link to the docking procedure which was underway between her Karrier and the far larger Ferrier was her arrival at the Venus station after the initial discovery of Terradox.

  On that occasion the main entrance area had been fit to bursting with elated station-dwellers, but this was different. While that had been a huge moment for everyone, she had never previously met even one of the people waiting on the station. The Ferrier she was about to enter, on the other hand, contained some of her dearest old friends and her only brother. Her heart was racing in the best way.

  Viola stood near the locked doorway with her family at her side, leading the way. Like the Hawthornes were more than willing to let the Ospanovs go first, she similarly assumed that Bo would be the first person any of them would see on the other side.

  At the last moment, however, she ushered her father Robert to the very front, encouraging him to go first and ultimately leaving him with little choice in the matter.

  As the door opened to instantaneously reunite the two groups, Bo and Robert stood directly opposite each other for a few pleasant seconds before meeting halfway and performing a surprisingly perfunctory father-son greeting. They were clearly delighted to see each other and the lack of physical warmth didn’t surprise Viola, who knew them both well enough to have known that was exactly what would happen.

  “Are you okay?” Robert asked.

  Bo nodded, fairly convincingly. “She just couldn’t leave her family,” he said, immediately addressing the question Robert hadn’t wanted to raise outright. At that point Robert belatedly put a hand on Bo’s shoulder, but the contact lasted only until Viola burst forward to pull Bo into a hug so tight that he quickly had to ask her to stop.

  She hadn’t seen Bo for seven years as opposed to the three that Robert had been away from him, but beyond that she was also far more emotionally expressive in all situations. She didn’t say anything about there being plenty more fish in the sea, knowing that was the worst thing she could have possibly said. Chase and Nisha were together and the rest of the Kohlis had arrived as a tight-knit family of three, leaving Bo alone.

  Instead of referencing who Bo’s life would now be without, Viola gestured back towards the rest of the recent Karrier arrivals. “I’ve got someone here who can’t wait to meet her Uncle Bo,” she said.

  His face positively lit up when Katie stepped forward, although he did have to glance very briefly back to Viola to make absolutely sure that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him and that Katie really did look that much like her in real life.

  While Bo and Katie got acquainted in person for the first time, others began to file past in both directions. Robert and Romesh smiled broadly when they caught sight of each other and quickly dove into a conversation.

  “I was sorry to hear about Nancy,” Robert began.

  Someone who overheard this gave an overtly communicative cough, suggesting quite clearly to Robert that this was a no-go topic and still a point of contention. He got the message loud and clear and took it upon himself to marshal the crowd away from the bottleneck of the doorway and towards a more open area of the Ferrier.

  There, Vijay took advantage of the space to run straight towards Viola and hug her like he was still the six-year-old she’d taken under her wing in Terradox’s Childhood Development division. Seeing how much he’d grown was by far the biggest shock she’d received so far, with a seven-year gap naturally making a lot more difference between the ages of 6 and 13 than it did for the already grown-up others she hadn’t seen in the same amount of time. She also hadn’t communicated with Vijay via frequent video chats like she had with Bo, which further enhanced the surprise factor.

  “You got big,” Peter said to the boy.

  “I’m catching up,” he replied, his voice not yet truly deep but also having changed dramatically.

  “Just keep eating your vegetable-shaped algae and you’ll maybe get there one day,” Peter laughed, before pulling away to catch up with some of the others.

  Viola put her hand over Vijay’s head and ran it straight to the top of her nose. “Seriously, though… how long ago did I actually leave?” she asked with a laugh. It then hit her that her own daughter was now the same age Vijay had been back then, which made her realise in an altogether different kind of way just how long it really had been.

  Nisha came into Viola’s view with a few steps towards her brother, leading to another warm reunion. The two hadn’t known each other very well or for very long before Viola’s forced departure from Terradox, but in the mean time they had helped to keep each other sane from a hundred million miles away.

  Nisha next greeted Kayla Hawthorne, a fellow physicist she’d worked alongside on Terradox but had never been particularly close to outs
ide of work. For Kayla, though, seeing such a familiar old colleague’s face after so long without any, it felt like reuniting with her best friend.

  Chase Jackson had been holding a respectful distance, allowing the three families and old friends to reunite. While Viola was with the Kohlis and Kayla, the first person his eyes rested on for more than a few seconds was Peter.

  They shared a long glance across the room, two intimidating physical specimens, not sizing each other up so much as showing mutual respect. Arkadia was big enough for the both of them and they were glad to share it with each other, but there was an inescapable reality that men of their statures and reputations were unlikely to greet each other in the same outwardly carefree way that most of the others did.

  “Good to see you again, man,” Chase said, breaking their two-way silence and ignoring the part of his animal brain that pointlessly but persistently told him that speaking first was a sign of subservient weakness.

  Peter smiled warmly. “Sorry, cowboy, but we weren’t able to bring any of those bison you wanted.”

  Chase roared with laughter as he walked forward to shake Peter’s hand. “That’s space cowboy to you, sheriff,” he grinned.

  “So I hear he let you win too, huh?” Peter asked when their handshake ended at the regular, non-confrontational point that all did when they didn’t involve Grav.

  “He’s some guy,” Chase said.

  “I sure am,” a quiet but unmistakeable voice interjected from the shadows of a corridor leading further into the Ferrier’s interior.

  Chase gave a knowing grin as Peter, utterly stunned, stepped to the side and walked over to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.

  “I am not coming to Arkadia,” Grav said, keen to shut down this train of thought — if it was indeed present, which he naturally wasn’t sure of.

  “Of course,” Peter said, “but you’re here now.”

  The two had a jovial catch-up out of everyone else’s sight until Grav beckoned Chase over for a more serious discussion. “I know I do not have to say this, but I am going to say it anyway to stress the point,” he said. “We are all on the same team. You are on the same team. People look up to you two in particular, and I want you to understand the weight of responsibility that comes with that.”

  As the two younger men listened like attentive pupils, Grav told Chase in no uncertain terms that he had better not undermine Peter or his team at any point. Not picking favourites, he then ordered Peter in equally firm terms to remain humble at all times and to never discount Chase’s input.

  “I have spent the last four years with this man,” he said, putting an arm around Chase’s shoulder, “and I see a lot of you in him, Peter.”

  This made for an awkward moment for both of them — but less so for Grav, apparently — with Peter and Chase both unsure what they should say, if anything.

  Peter eventually broke the tension with a second reference to the rigged handshake contest Grav had engaged in with Chase, which sounded an awful lot like the one he’d engaged in with Peter many years earlier. In both cases the younger man hadn’t known ahead of time that Grav was going to throw it to make them look good, but both appreciated that he would do such a thing.

  Grav shrugged. “It is good for morale when people think the young pretenders can hold a candle to their sensei.”

  It was unusual to hear Grav talk even remotely prosaically, let alone with words like sensei sprinkled in, causing both of them to laugh again.

  “But now that no one is looking, if the two of you want to know where you really stand…?” he continued, extending both arms at once.

  “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.”