When Bo faded off to sleep just minutes later, no story required, Robert climbed onto the lander’s other bed and quickly followed suit.
Grav sat alone at the small dining table while Holly and Viola lay on the floor, both exhausted and ready to sleep.
“I want to hear the stories,” Viola said, very suddenly.
“No you do not,” Grav said. “You do not need to know what the enemy is capable of, and trust me when I tell you that you do not want to know. Not if you want to sleep tonight.”
Viola sat up. “I know what they’re capable of. I’m here because my mum’s dead, and my mum’s dead because of them.”
Grav looked into the girl’s eyes. To Holly, he looked not only surprised by the strength of Viola’s words but somewhat impressed. “Okay,” he said. “So you are sure you want to know why I am here? How I got into all of this?”
“Try me.”
He cleared his throat. “I started out working as a bounty hunter in the Horn. How did I get there? A long story; unimportant. Anyway, when the famine reached a certain point, me and a few other guys in Mogadishu were moved to Malta to guard a huge grain storage facility. I do not know precisely who was paying us, but they were paying us well. It was easy money, you know? Easy until the GU forces arrived.”
“And you saw action?” Viola interjected, listening with rapt attention. “You saw stuff that keeps you awake?”
“Only so many things can keep you awake. And I mean that literally: once you have seen enough things, there is no room for any more. There is a fixed limit to how many things can keep you awake. Because after all, awake is awake.”
“I still want to hear it.”
Grav looked at Holly, as if asking permission. He took her shrug as a yes and continued. “A few weeks after we got there, a group of militants arrived to seize the compound. These guys were not GU-sponsored militants or GU-backed militants. They were GU militants. At that time I was doing my job and nothing more; I did not know that they had deliberately engineered the famine, but I knew the grain we were guarding was already being distributed properly and that these men were not here to help. By the time they got me — took me prisoner, that is — I had already seen the bodies on the streets and heard the stories of the torturers sweeping through the city. I am no idiot: it is not like I thought the men on my side were good men, but they were better than these men. Some of the things these men did… I could not even think of those things, let alone do them. We had a mole on the inside, so we knew their men were not doing these things of their own accord; they were doing exactly what they were told, and sometimes reluctantly. We were up against animals; animals with orders to act like beasts.”
“What was the single worst thing they did?” Viola pushed.
Holly remained focused on Grav’s face. His left eye looked almost ready to shed a tear. It didn’t, but she knew that Grav’s almost was the same as anyone else’s breaking down into a crumpled heap.
Grav inhaled deeply. There was no exaggerated clearing of the throat this time. “My third night in the cell, they brought in an innocent local. He was a doctor. They said that if I did not talk — if I did not name our mole — then they would kill him in front of me; right then, right there.”
“What happened?”
After no little hesitation, Grav spat it out: “I did not talk.” His eyes fell to the floor and stayed there.
“I think that’s enough stories for one night,” Holly said.
Viola, apparently with the strongest stomach in the room, wasn’t finished listening. “So what happened next? I mean, you’re here, so you must have gotten out…”
“They told me there would be another innocent death the next night,” Grav said, “and that they would keep going until I talked.”
“Did you talk?”
“Fortunately it did not come to that; I got out that very same night. Only three, maybe four hours too late for the doctor. Our mole blockaded the other guards in a surveillance room and our men stormed the place where they were holding me and a few others. The men who found me knew something had happened; they saw it in my eyes. The original mission plan was to get in and get our men out, and to grab an easy target to capture and interrogate so we could find out exactly who they were working for. But when I told them what had happened, the plan changed. They carried me to the room where the guards were blockaded and asked me who did it.”
“And you told them?”
Grav nodded. “And what my men did to him… well, interrogate is not the word I would use. Believe me: if you think the look in that poor doctor’s eyes would keep you awake at night, you should have heard this asshole scream.”
Almost an hour after Grav finished his story, Holly stood up and spoke the first words since then: “Outside the cave, you said I was the kind of asset we need to win this thing.”
“That is correct.”
“What thing?”
“There is a plan,” Grav said. “Once we reach the station, we are going to expose Morrison’s past actions and attempt to destabilise the GU. Rusev is not abandoning anything; she is retreating to a safe distance from which they cannot reach us but we can still reach them. Because their weapons are weapons, and our weapon is the truth.”
Holly walked over to the table and sat in the chair next to Grav. She looked deeply into his eyes. “Grav, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Some of the things you have been told are not exactly true. I was told the same things originally, but Rusev told me and Dante the truth once we landed. Most of the people we have been ferrying to Venus did not truly pay for their tickets. They were people who know things about the GU; people who know things about Morrison; people who worked on his projects, from the space program to the weather manipulation. We have evidence of everything, it is simply a case of putting it all together and working out the best way to deliver it.”
Holly was stunned. Deep down she knew that any lies Rusev and particularly Yury had told her must have been for her own good, but that didn’t change the dirty feeling of being kept in the dark.
“It is a lot to take in. Trust me, I should fucking know,” Grav said with a hint of a smile.
Holly couldn’t help but mirror it for a second, until a new thought entered her mind. “So does that mean they knew about Olivia Harrington’s family being on board? Because Robert told me no one knew, not even Rusev.”
“I believe that to be true. Rusev said she was confident that you would be able to look after the other two passengers until we found you. Two. She really did not know about the kid, so she obviously does not know who they are. I did not tell her there were three of them, because I saw no sense in antagonising her when I was not even sure if you were all still alive. That is the whole story… every little bit.”
“But why does Rusev need us?” Holly asked, accepting the story but still struggling with this point. “Why does she need me?”
“Skilled, motivated, respected. That is the answer Spaceman gave me. And if you think about it, we were the two people they trusted with every single trip the Karrier made. They must see something useful in us; not just for the journey, but for on the station, too.”
“We still need to get there first,” Holly said.
“And we will. Tomorrow we reconnect with Spaceman and Rusev. If you asked me to pick two people to be stuck with on some desert island planet, it would be those two every time. Put them together with our grit — hell, even throw in your boy’s skills with the high-tech shit he is here for — and you can be damn sure of one thing: if there is a way out of here, we are going to find it.”
“There is a way,” Viola insisted, catching both Holly and Grav off-guard given that they’d both been sure she’d fallen asleep long ago.
“Huh?” Holly said.
Viola sat up, abandoning the pretence. “There’s no if. There was a way in to this planet’s atmosphere, so that means there’s a way out.”
“That is the spirit,” Grav said. “A
nd if I know Rusev, she has probably already found it.” The look in Grav’s eyes told Holly he didn’t quite believe this last part, but there was no harm in keeping Viola’s spirits up.
“Try to get some sleep,” Holly said. “Tomorrow is the biggest day of our lives.”
Though she knew these words sounded grand, Holly equally knew that they were true. After all, the group would either find the lander, or they wouldn’t.
They would either have a chance of getting to the station, or…
Holly cut off her own thought.
They would find the Karrier. They would have a chance.
The alternative thought, as invasive as it was, did not bear thinking about.
Day Two
nineteen
The night lasted eleven hours. Bo and Robert slept through almost all of them, Viola more than half, and Holly just over four. Holly didn’t know how well Grav had slept, if at all; all she knew was that he had been awake when she fell asleep and was awake when she woke up.
“Rise and shine,” Grav announced, waking all three of the sleeping family. He then stirred some high-energy nutrition powder into five separate cups of water. “You are not going to like this, but it tastes a lot better than dying on the way to the lander.”
He was correct: no one liked it. Holly couldn’t quite understand why or even how a product designed for human consumption could taste so bad.
Robert and Bo packed as much as they could into the space in Grav’s backpack, while Holly strapped as many water containers as possible to her shoulders and back. In the end she looked like an overloaded mule, as Grav had no qualms about pointing out.
Viola spent several minutes applying makeup to her eyes. By the time she was finished, they were surrounded with dark shadows. Holly couldn’t help but consider the irony that Robert didn’t have to worry about such things; the dark rings under his eyes had been well earned through the stresses of the last few weeks.
Holly accepted Viola’s offer of fresh clothes — the baggiest she had — then scanned the lander one last time to make sure she wasn’t leaving behind anything worth taking. Satisfied that everything important was safely packed, including her plant, she led the way outside.
This trek, though far longer and made with tired legs, passed more easily than the previous day’s journeys to and from the mound. When they passed that landmark — the only one in sight — Grav made a joke about going for a swim to cool off. It fell flat.
The relative positivity in the air came from the group’s knowledge of where they were going, which was a welcome improvement on the previous day’s “go to the mound and hope we see something” approach.
Holly’s immediate concern about the other lander was whether Dante had made it back before dark. Grav reaffirmed his confidence that Dante would be safely inside with Rusev and Yury, ready and waiting to fall at Holly’s feet all over again.
Though Holly ignored him and neither Robert nor Bo seemed to hear, Grav’s words caused Viola’s ears to prick up.
“So…” she said, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “You and this guy Dante, huh?”
“No,” Holly replied flatly.
Viola grinned and said nothing, like she knew this was the kind of silence that wouldn’t last long.
Holly sighed, proving her right. “A long time ago,” she said.
“How long?”
“Before he was assigned to my Karrier. We’re colleagues now. Maybe friends, nothing more.”
“Okay,” Viola said, like she knew that Holly’s silence this time was the kind that would last.
Slightly ahead of them, Grav turned around and called back: “Just a few more hours from here.”
As Bo continued searching for pieces of metal despite having found none for almost an hour, Holly and Viola passed the time by playing whatever games they could think of. I Spy was off the table once “R for Rocks” and “N for Nothing” had been exhausted, so they ultimately resorted to 20 Questions and even What Number Am I Thinking Of?.
Though Holly couldn’t consciously remember the exact moment it happened, she and Viola had overtaken the others and were now slightly ahead and around fifty paces to the side.
From this position, Viola was the first to spot him.
“Holly, Holly,” she said, grabbing her arm and pointing in the distance. “Is that Dante?”
Holly saw a man running towards them and sped up to meet him halfway. She encouraged Viola to keep pace and yelled back to Grav, who had already seen Dante by now and had also quickened his pace accordingly.
Dante’s eventual embrace, which was fully reciprocated, did little to convince Viola that Holly had told her the full truth about their history.
“Jessica,” Dante said, panting from his long run. “You made it.”
Holly smiled, realising how much he had to catch up on. She explained the Harringtons’ true identity while Robert, Grav and Bo caught up. Dante’s reaction of pure shock convinced Holly for good that Yury and Rusev — who had already come clean to Dante and Grav about many of the previous paying passengers really being VIPs recruited to expose Morrison — truly hadn’t known that the family on board for the Karrier’s final journey was Olivia Harrington’s.
Grav arrived in time to hear the end of Dante’s question as to why Holly had opted to leave her lander in the first place rather than remain safely inside.
“I thought you were all dead,” she said, revealing this to the Harringtons for the first time. “On my wristband’s last update before your lander went out of range, you all showed up as steady red dots. Red for dead, Dante. Was I supposed to wait there and—”
“So why were you looking for us if you thought we were dead?” he interrupted.
“I was looking for supplies. In your lander, in the Karrier, wherever I might have found them. Anyway, why aren’t you wearing your wristband now?”
“It was chafing in the heat,” Dante said. “Besides, your location wasn’t showing up. But none of that matters anymore. What matters is the Karrier. Have you found it?”
Holly shook her head. “We found water, though,” she said, remembering it all too vividly. “A deep pool, in a cave. No more plants, no animal life. You?”
Dante nodded briskly. “Trees. Weirdest looking things, but they had wood-like stuff at the bottom and leaf-like stuff on top. The ground was green, too. I wouldn’t quite call it grass, but it did seem to have stems; definitely more promising than the lichen stuff at the lander. We’ve only searched in two directions and we’ve already found plants and water, so there’s bound to be something edible somewhere.”
“Did you get any photos of the plants?” Holly asked. “With your wristband?”
“I didn’t think of that.”
“Drones?” Grav interjected. The bluntness of his tone and brevity of his question were typical of the way he interacted with Dante when a situation demanded it; even to the Harringtons, who were properly meeting Dante for the first time, it was clear that his relationship with Grav was limited to work and nothing else.
“I think some of the drones came back overnight,” Dante said, shrugging to make clear that he knew little else. “Spaceman was asleep at the time and he had just started looking at the data when I left this morning.”
“So the data will be ready when we get back?”
“Should be,” Dante confirmed. He then turned away from Grav and formally introduced himself to Robert and Bo. He also promised, just as Holly and Grav had upon finding out the family’s true identity, that Roger Morrison and his cronies would pay for what they’d done.
“Do you know where we are?” Robert asked him, very matter-of-factly. “Why we can breathe? How this planet exists?”
“No,” Dante said, being as straightforward as he could. “Right now we all have more questions than answers, but Spaceman is working on them as we speak. Between him and Rusev, I think they’ll have some by the time we reach the lander.”
Everyone’s desire for these answ
ers pushed them forward at a brisk pace. As they exited the gradually sloping canyon which had dominated the landscape for so long, the sight of the second lander caused them to speed up even more.
Holly was disappointed to see that the lichen Grav had mentioned appeared only sporadically on the rocks around the lander. She assumed its presence here but not in the canyon was something to do with the difference in elevation. Less disappointing was the proximity of the lander, which lay very close to the canyon’s edge. Within no more than fifteen minutes, the group stood outside the door.
Grav entered the security code and ushered everyone inside. The entrance, identical to the other lander’s, was reassuringly and comfortingly familiar.
Holly climbed the ladder first. Standing at the inner door’s threshold, she saw Ekaterina Rusev.
“I knew you would make it,” Rusev said, offering a hand to help Holly up the final wrung.
“Grav told me everything.”
Rusev’s expression didn’t change. “We told you everything it was safe for you to know,” she said; softly, openly, convincingly.
Holly already knew as much and accepted Rusev’s invitation for a hug.
“Why are there three of them?” Rusev suddenly said, looking down the ladder over Holly’s shoulder and seeing Bo beside Grav. Her eyes scanned everyone for an answer. “What’s going on?”
“He was a stowaway,” Grav called up. “I can explain.”
“You let a stowaway board the Karrier?”
“I said I can explain.”
“Oh, I’m all ears!”
Holly took it upon herself to cut through the tension that was souring what should have been a happy reunion. “The man is Olivia Harrington’s husband,” she said. “The children are theirs.”
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 9