Ekaterina Rusev, however, took issue with something else. “I’ll say this one last time,” she began, sounding more than a little weary. “The station can be protected against this threat from a safe distance. Everything required for a decisive detonation can be readied within—”
“A decisive detonation which would write Terradox off as collateral damage!” Holly butted in. “We’ve been over this. You’ve said your piece one last time so I’ll say mine: if there’s any chance this can work — and I know Grav wouldn’t be taking us if there wasn’t — we have to do it.”
“Okay,” Rusev said, and that was all.
Grav clapped his hands together once more. “Okay,” he parroted. “Everyone will now gather their personal things and make their own preparations. Our Karrier is currently being stocked with everything crucial for the mission and will be ready when we are. One day this story will be told, and every day thereafter your names will be revered.”
When Grav held his hand towards the door, Holly waited awkwardly beside the table as everyone else but the Rusevs made their way out of the meeting room.
“It has to be done,” Holly said, stopping at the threshold and striving to clear the bad atmosphere while Ekaterina Rusev stared at the wall. “There are children on Terradox and they’ll die if we do nothing.”
Rusev finally turned to face Holly. “If Bo doesn’t come back, that’s on you,” she said. “Can you handle that? Is taking on that kind of responsibility something you’re willing to do?”
Before setting off, Holly answered with five simple words:
“Spaceman would have done it.”
seventeen
Grav and Peter accompanied the others to the residential quarters, where Bo would retire to the Harringtons’ dorm on one side of the open hallway and Sakura would join Holly on the other.
Throughout the walk, Sakura and Bo talked keenly about the ever-evolving fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, two fields which interested Bo greatly in regards to potential rover applications. Their earlier frosty exchange over the source of funding for Bo’s research into Visually Undetectable Vehicles seemed already to have been forgotten on both sides.
Fifteen paces back, Holly and Grav discussed a handful of administrative specifics. Peter Ospanov said nothing until the Harringtons’ dorm drew near, when he broke his silence with an unexpected and direct plea to Grav.
“I would be forever in your debt if you explicitly forbid Viola from volunteering for this mission,” he said, speaking while walking. “When she finds out that Bo is coming, she will insist on—”
“I will turn no one away,” Grav said.
Peter placed a hand on Grav’s arm and stopped him in his tracks. “Goran, please... I am begging you.”
Grav inhaled deeply and looked down at Peter’s hand, which was still grasping his forearm. He stared silently at the hand until Peter lifted it, at which point he theatrically moved his stern gaze to Peter’s eyes and held it there until an apology came.
“Know your place, Peter,” Grav said, setting off again. “And stay in it.”
Holly had kept her distance during this unusual interaction. Within a matter of seconds she found herself doing so again when Polo, her pilot for the impromptu journey to the station, appeared into view from around a corner up ahead.
“Where have you been?” Grav asked.
“I had to take care of all the post-flight checks,” the man explained. “Usually there are two of us. What do you want to see me about, anyway?”
As Grav began to give Polo a rundown of the extraordinary and urgent situation, Holly noticed that Sakura and Bo hadn’t stopped walking like she and Grav had. Peter noticed the same thing and excused himself to catch up with them. Though Grav didn’t seem to hear it, Holly acknowledged Peter’s comment and told him that she was going to wait.
When Grav reached the end of his explanation and invited Polo to pilot the Karrier to Netherdox, the answer wasn’t the one Holly had expected.
“Not a chance,” Polo said, crinkling his eyes in disbelief. “Are you serious? I have a family waiting for me on Earth. This is a suicide mission!”
“There are many families on Terradox whose safety depends on the success of this mission,” Grav said, saying far more with his tone and firm expression than the words alone conveyed.
Polo maintained his position, shaking his head several times. “Holly can fly. Right, Holly?”
“You can’t tell anyone about any of this,” she replied, more than a little disappointed in Polo but already over it and keen to stress the importance of his discretion. “You’re the only person who has said no, so if people find out then we’ll know it came from you.”
He nodded meekly. “Okay. I would help if I could, but… my family. I just can’t.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Polo,” Grav whispered, leaning in close. He then patted Polo twice on the cheek with an open palm, cutting a figure like a Mafia don in an old movie. “Not to me.”
Not altogether unsurprisingly, Holly reached the entrance to her dorm only to hear raised voices emanating from behind the Harringtons’ closed door.
With Sakura apparently already inside Holly’s dorm, Grav took it upon himself to knock on the Harringtons’ door and Holly took it upon herself to wait by his side.
When the door swung open, Peter Ospanov and his laudably stoic expression stood on the other side. “She is already packing,” he said.
Robert and Bo were arguing loudly further inside, with words like “reckless” and “insanity” fighting against “responsibility” and “selfishness”. The two were so engaged in their argument that Robert didn’t even notice Holly walking behind his back towards Viola’s bedroom.
“And you!” Robert yelled as Grav assumed a position at Bo’s side. He then launched into an angry tirade, using many of the same words he’d been saying to Bo but with more than a few stronger ones thrown in for good measure.
Holly slinked into Viola’s room and quietly closed the door. “What are you doing?” she asked, as casually as she could.
Viola looked up from her suitcase. “I hope you were going to tell me about this if Peter hadn’t? I don’t think Bo would have.”
“Viola, you really don’t have to do this.”
An out-of-place smile briefly crossed Viola’s lips. “If you actually think I would let you all do this without me…”
“This is serious,” Holly insisted. “How much has Peter told you? Do you know there’s a non-negligible chance that no one who leaves here tomorrow will ever come back?”
“If Bo goes, I go. And from what Peter said it sounds like Grav’s plan won’t work without Bo, so...”
“You’ve been teaching and looking after young kids here, right?” Holly said, trying a new approach. “They need you a lot more than this mission does. You would be taking a needless risk.”
“I could say the same to you! If the only reason you’re going is to fly the Karrier, you don’t need to go. Grav can do that in an emergency. Besides, I can do first aid.”
“Grav can do that in an emergency, too,” Holly retorted. Sensing an impasse, she searched for some other way to try to get through to Viola. “Just try to remember that you have your whole life ahead of you.”
Viola closed her half-filled suitcase and stood up for the first time in the conversation. “Okay,” she said, “let’s go there. Let’s talk about the rest of my life if you all leave and don’t come back. Without Bo, without Peter, Grav, you… what am I left with? Who are me and my dad left with then? What kind of life is that to have ahead of me?”
Holly sighed; her failure to convince Viola not to join the crew was no surprise, but that didn’t make it any easier to take. She left Viola to her packing and walked back into the dorm’s main living area.
When Peter glanced over in hope, Holly could only shake her head. “I tried,” she mouthed.
He gave a half-nod of recognition then looked to the floor.
Holly had quietly predicted a pattern of events as soon as Bo had entered the meeting room: Viola wouldn’t let Bo and Peter go without her, and Robert wouldn’t let Viola and Bo go without him. The discussion that Robert and Grav were now engaged in made it clear that all predicted elements had indeed come to pass.
Robert’s anger from a few minutes earlier was gone, now replaced by a much calmer demeanour. Now, it sounded very much as though he was trying to convince Grav to let him join the crew.
“Viola is highly skilled in first aid and is extremely physically fit,” Grav said. “But Robert, with respect, I fail to see what you would add.”
Holly knew Grav well enough to know what he was doing: making Robert feel as though Grav would be doing him a favour by allowing him on the Karrier. It was manipulative, for sure, but from a pragmatic point of view Holly understood that Robert was going to be on the Karrier one way or the other and that it would be better for everyone if his natural resentment towards Grav for endangering his children was at least slightly tempered by a small element of gratitude for allowing him to go with them. Judging by their silence, Bo and Peter — who like Holly had heard Grav say that he would welcome any volunteer — understood this, too.
“You know all about my work in Habitat Management over the last four years,” Robert protested. “You won’t find anyone better qualified in maintaining the Karrier’s essential systems.”
“I will think about it,” Grav said.
“Grav,” Holly said, catching Robert’s attention for the first time. “I really think we could use his knowledge in that department. If there’s any more space on board…”
Robert glanced warmly at Holly, thankful for her input.
“Okay,” Grav said. He extended his hand for Robert to shake. “Sleep well and tell no one. We leave after breakfast.”
eighteen
Only Grav was in the Karrier when Holly and Sakura arrived to prepare for their imminent early-morning departure.
Sakura was by now settled in the comfortable utility room while Holly was trying to settle in the more functional and spartan control room.
Grav remained busiest of all, still tirelessly running through checklist after checklist during the moments when he wasn’t supervising the loading of every diverse piece of equipment deemed necessary for the high-risk mission ahead. He had barely spoken to Holly since the previous night other than to relay the latest observation data and inform her of the target departure time, now just two hours away. Several of Grav’s countless preparatory tasks, already time-consuming, had been greatly complicated by his desire to ensure that the true reason for the group’s departure and the true nature of their mission wouldn’t become known to the station’s general population.
While acclimatising to the control room, Holly seriously considered asking Grav whether they could change the plan and depart without any of the Harringtons. She ultimately kept this to herself, knowing that whatever chance the group had of reaching the control bunker on the surface of Netherdox was dependent on Bo Harrington’s expert piloting of a prototype transport rover which only he could reliably operate.
Holly was even more reluctant to accept the far less necessary presence of Viola and Robert who, both unfortunately and understandably, insisted upon coming with Bo as a three-part package. In any other circumstances Holly would have welcomed their presence, but in this instance — when the only question was precisely how grave the danger they were willingly getting themselves into would prove — she was uniquely keen to leave them behind.
Disconcertingly, the necessity of the group’s mission had only increased overnight given that the hours of careful observation since the crew’s previous meeting confirmed that the Netherdox romosphere was still expanding at an alarming rate. Grav had expressed some relief that it hadn’t begun expanding at an even greater rate, but any such relief was more than cancelled out by the confirmation that its change of path had not been temporary and that Netherdox was unquestionably still on course to head for the station once its expansion consumed Terradox.
Between the continued approach and the continued expansion, steady as they were, there was now no doubt that inaction would soon lead to a no-win situation in which the Venus station itself would fall squarely within the fallout zone of any attempt to halt or disrupt the rogue romosphere.
Sakura had suggested the possibility of temporarily moving the station out of harm’s way, but Grav disappointed her with the news that the station — though modular and essentially mobile given that it was composed of the three largest spacecraft ever assembled — now functioned as a singular and integrated whole which would take several weeks to be prepared for separation and relocation. Though Grav thanked her for the worthwhile suggestion, Sakura didn’t need an explanation as to why any solutions with a timescale of several weeks were out of the question.
When the Harrington family and Peter Ospanov arrived at the Karrier to complete the crew, Holly was working through a pre-flight checklist of her own. She soon joined the others in the utility room for a final briefing from Grav.
Bo’s first question, inspired by Peter’s insistence that he say goodbye to no one prior to leaving, related to how their departure would be explained to the rest of the station’s population without revealing the level of danger posed by Netherdox.
“They think we are going to Terradox early,” Grav said. “It will not be news when we do not arrive there because no one on the station talks to anyone on Terradox, other than upper management of both; and, of course, those individuals in upper management already know what is going on. The greatest complication in this regard is that we must ensure that it looks like Rusev is coming with us. She will be brought here immediately prior to departure, as though preparing to board, and then quietly taken to a secure location until our return.”
“And speaking of what other people do and don’t know about the mission…” Robert Harrington chimed in. “What about Netherdox? Is it observable from Earth or Terradox? I know its existence hasn’t been officially disclosed, but surely as it continues to expand it’s only a matter of time before—”
“Netherdox is double cloaked,” Grav said. “Visual and gravity, just like Terradox was. No one without access to the necessary instruments knows it is there, just like we did not know Terradox was there until the moment of our collision. Proximity means nothing in that regard, at least until the moment of impact. Like a tiger in the night… its victim suspects nothing until it is too late.”
“So how did we get photos of the clouds?” Bo asked.
“Many useful devices were seized in the weeks following Revelation Day,” Grav answered. “These included devices which function like the remote control which Dante Parker failed to engage early enough to allow our passage through Terradox’s gravity cloak. The new Karriers have automatic cloak-passing technology built in, and neither that technology nor the handheld devices are specific to one romosphere; they temporarily weaken any kind of romobot cloak as they approach it, so that the craft they are in can safely pass. We sent an unmanned mapping vessel to Netherdox two years ago, before there was any problem, and we were able to remotely engage the device at the correct moment to allow it to pass the cloak without difficulty. Unfortunately, the mapping vessel’s inability to descend beneath the clouds meant that we obtained no meaningful images of the surface.”
Bo nodded in understanding of this explanation, but he had another question: “Why couldn’t it descend?”
“That was a very small vessel,” Grav said, clearly choosing his words more carefully than normal. “It was not built for the conditions it ran into. But the data it sent back before being destroyed taught us a lot and we know for sure that a Karrier can comfortably withstand the levels of environmental stress it detected.”
“But isn’t all you know that it died when the conditions got too bad?” Bo pressed. “For all we know, the conditions might get a hundred times worse nearer the surface.”
; Grav calmly shook his head. “I did not merely say that a Karrier can survive everything experienced by the vessel… I said that a Karrier can survive everything detected by the vessel. The data tells us enough about the surface to know that there is no threat to the Karrier’s physical integrity. Our prototype exploratory rovers will likewise prove capable of handling far more than Netherdox can throw at them, as you should know better than anyone.”
While Grav had everyone’s attention, he delivered some practical information about what he hoped would be a short and straightforward mission. He stressed the importance of water conservation, telling the Harringtons in particular that this would not be like their unplanned trip to Terradox when the local atmosphere meant they didn’t have to be so careful.
“All we have now is all we will have until we return,” he said, “so we have to be smart. The Karrier and EVA suits have excellent reclamation abilities but I want to make it clear that water preservation protocols will apply at all times. There will be no ten-minute showers. Netherdox is not Terradox and the Karrier is not the station. Is that clear?”
“Clear,” Viola said, understanding that the shower comment had been meant for her.
“From here, Netherdox is closer than Terradox,” Grav said, “so the good news is that we will have a short flight of only 26 hours. The Karrier we are standing in, one of the new K-3 fleet, stands proudly among the greatest spacecraft ever conceived. The Ferriers may have the size, but these Karriers have the bite. This is a more modular craft than it looks, and the ability to jettison everything unnecessary for the return journey is one more reason — not that I need one — to be one hundred percent sure that whatever issues we might face, successfully taking off from Netherdox and escaping its atmosphere will not be among them.”
After several seconds during which no one voiced any concerns or questions about Grav’s comments, Viola half-raised her hand. “There are no stupid questions,” she said. “Right?”
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 42