“Did you make it?” she asked him, no longer needing the ‘Comm to rover one’ keyphrase.
“I’m out,” Bo confirmed. “I’m on my way down the lad— aah, ohhhh…“
A horrible sound filled Holly’s ears; the shaky sound of a fall. “Bo?! Bo, what happened?”
“The ladder broke and I fell! Holly… Holly…”
“We are coming, junior,” Grav groaned in pain as he pushed Holly ahead and fought to stay as close to her as he could despite the burning agony in his lower leg. “Breathe and be calm. We are almost there.”
“But Grav,” Bo shrieked, his young voice tinged with terror rather than pain. “Grav… Holly… my foot landed in the moat. I’m stuck!”
thirty-three
“This fucking place,” Grav muttered, now straining harder than ever to quicken his pace.
Holly sprinted ahead towards Bo as Grav opened a communication line to the second rover and delivered an order for Peter to stay inside it despite Bo’s predicament. When Peter began to argue, Grav became more explicit.
“This is a direct order, Peter,” he said, almost barking the words. “Holly will be there very soon and you will ensure that your rover is ready to leave when we need it to leave.”
Holly, meanwhile, gave Bo the obvious but important instruction to not make his situation any worse; as in all the comic-book adventure stories whose dimwitted characters stuck their hands in quicksand to free their feet, any attempt by Bo to dislodge his own feet could only make things worse.
Bo replied that only one of his feet was in contact with the mysterious and unbelievably effective adhesive substance, with the other resting on top of it while his hands held the intact parts of the rover’s ladder for support. “And I’m right at the edge of the moat,” he went on, a more hopeful edge entering his tone. “I really don’t want to test out the blade so maybe if you guys both pull my arms as hard as you can…”
“We’ll get you free,” Holly promised, unsure what blade Bo was talking about but sufficiently put off by the very word to agree with him that it shouldn’t be part of their first attempted solution. “There was something in the bunker that we think might be able to help. The label says ‘instant debonder’ so we’re hoping it might unstick whatever it’s applied to.”
Bo’s tone perked up further at this news. “Like the antidote to the plants on Terradox! Remember, when my foot was all swollen and black and there was stuff inside the bunker made specifically to undo the damage from the plants? The plants were the barrier on Terradox and the moat is the barrier here, so it makes sense for there to be something like that!”
As Holly made her final approach to the rover and prepared to climb over to the safe side of the moat to reach Bo, she was caught off guard by his next words: “What are you doing here?”
The rover blocked their view, but Holly and Grav had little doubt who Bo was talking to.
“One order,” Grav snapped. “I gave him one order.”
But when Holly carefully ascended the narrow ramp and moved through the rover’s interior to jump down from the other side, she saw that Bo wasn’t talking to Peter — he was talking to Sakura.
“It’s Sakura,” she reported to Grav.
Just as surprised as Holly, Grav didn’t reply immediately. He couldn’t reasonably be angry at Sakura — she hadn’t been ordered to stay in the rover like Peter had — and he didn’t quite know what else to feel.
“Tell her to open her comms link,” Holly said to Bo, seeing that Sakura was speaking but unable to hear the words. “I don’t know why, but I think she has to do it manually because it still has her down as part of the ‘rover two’ network instead of the external proximity-based network.”
Holly understood the thinking behind this kind of communications setup, designed to ensure the line was always open and uninterrupted between partners working in close proximity as she and Grav had been in the bunker, but in situations like this it wasn’t without its frustrations.
“I couldn’t leave him out here alone,” Sakura said clearly just five or six seconds later, turning to Holly while holding Bo’s weight to ensure that he didn’t fall into even worse trouble than he was already in. “If something had happened to you and Grav… I had to be here to help, however I can.”
Having jumped from the top of the broken ladder with no real difficulty, Holly then unclipped the small bag from her back and placed it on the safe side of the moat. She quickly told Sakura about the debonder she’d found in the bunker’s first-aid kit. The laudable dexterity enabled by Holly’s gloves made it easy for her to open the container, sealed with a child-proof push-and-twist lid which was immediately familiar from many chemical products on Earth.
“I’ll hold his weight,” Sakura said. “You pour the stuff, sticking as close to the outline of his foot as you can.”
Holly wasn’t quite sure how it was going to work. Specifically, she didn’t know how the liquid would get under Bo’s foot to free it from the part of the moat it was touching. She imagined it might work by isolating a patch of the mysterious adhesive from the rest and somehow stripping it of its power in the process.
But as had so often been the case recently, the how was not what mattered. All that mattered was getting the job done.
With that in mind, Holly crouched to her knees and leaned as close to Bo’s boot as she dared. She then poured the liquid over the boot and its immediate surroundings.
“I think it’s working!” Bo squealed with excitement.
“Woah there,” Sakura said, urging caution as Bo tried to lift his foot. She shifted the weight of her own thin frame to brace for the imminent lateral shift she expected to come when he became dislodged and fell towards her. “Don’t move too suddenly.”
“It’s almost free,” Bo said, striving to pull his foot upwards and detecting slightly increased freedom of movement with each attempt. Then, with no prior warning, he pulled with all of his force and freed the foot.
“Be careful!” Sakura yelled as Bo pushed his hands away from the ladder at the same time as lifting his foot. This caused him to wobble unexpectedly and required Sakura to lunge forward and firmly push him back towards Holly just to stop him from falling the wrong way.
Holly caught Bo and pushed him even further from the moat. A flood of relief like nothing she had ever felt passed over her as Bo repeatedly lifted and lowered his previously stuck foot then sprinted off towards Peter and the waiting second rover.
“Holly, quick,” Sakura yelled. “Pass me the rest of that stuff.”
Holly’s heart sank as she turned around and saw that in doing everything she could to ensure Bo’s safety, Sakura had ended up with part of her own foot in the hellishly adhesive moat just a few inches from where Bo’s had been.
“Hurry up!” Sakura said. “Just pour it on!”
Holly looked down at the container of debonder in her hand. It then took a great effort to lift her gaze back to Sakura to deliver the heart-shattering news:
“Sakura… there’s none left.”
thirty-four
“Is there any more inside the bunker?” Sakura asked, her eyes reflecting that this question came more in hope than expectation.
Holly shook her head solemnly. “Definitely not.”
“Then go,” Sakura said. “Get out of here. Better one person—”
“I’m not leaving you here to die. However many times you ask me to, I’m not leav—”
“Holly,” Sakura snapped, continuing the chain of interruptions but adding new force. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Go!”
Holly stepped towards the rover and grabbed hold of the upper section of the ladder — the section which remained intact and attached — and pulled herself up to climb in.
“What are you doing?” Sakura asked. “Just go! Get out of here!”
From inside the rover, Holly spotted Grav slowly and bravely making his way up the ramp on the other side. She walked to the open door and extended a han
d for him to grab when he was within reaching distance. He gratefully took it and slumped to the floor of the rover once inside.
“Hollywood…” he panted, “we are getting too old for this shit.”
Holly didn’t laugh; not only because of the gravity and urgency of the situation, but because Grav clearly hadn’t been joking. She continued to search the unfamiliar rover for a pressurised container in the faint hope that she might be able to somehow move some of the already used debonding liquid the requisite few inches from Bo’s footprint to Sakura’s boot.
Grav caught his breath and pushed himself to his feet. “Bo is free, Sakura is stuck, and we are all out of debonder, correct?” he said, pointing Holly to a compartment near the rear. “That is what it sounded like. If so, the blade is under there.”
“What blade? Is this the blade Bo was talking about?”
“Probably. These rovers are well stocked for dealing with obstructions and other problems and he knows them inside and out. The stocked items cannot deal with all obstructions and problems, as we have seen, but the suits are likewise designed with problems in mind. There is technology in each boot, between the exterior of the sole and the base of the foot, which can elevate the wearer by several inches. Like a jack, almost. With a steady hand and a worthy blade we can slice off the sole of Sakura’s boot without risking injury.”
Holly looked nonplussed. “But if we slice off part of her suit — part of the boot — won’t the atmosphere kill her instantly?”
“If you sliced off part of her arm, yes. Part of her leg, yes. But part of the elevated boot, below the inner seal, no. Not if you do it in the right place.”
“So why couldn’t we do something like this with the rover to begin with? Surely it must have the same tech as the boots?”
Grav shook his head. “It can elevate itself, but not in the same way. And the rover does not have the same adaptive regeneration capability. If you do this right, the new sole of Sakura’s boot will feel exactly like the old one did before it became stuck and she will be able to run to safety. But enough talk, Hollywood; it is past time to get the blade and do it!”
With no other options, Holly lifted the encased blade from its safely out-of-sight storage point and carried it out of the rover. She jumped once again from the top of the broken ladder, being sure to land safely clear of the moat, and then removed the blade from its safety cover. It was long and thin, more like a giant knife than a small sword to Holly’s untrained eye.
The perfectly constructed blade momentarily threw Holly’s thoughts back to the makeshift scythe Grav had constructed on Terradox to clear the area around its control bunker of the poisonous thorned plants which served to shield it. There was an obvious parallel here — using something sharp to get around a dangerous bunker-shielding mechanism — and the irony wasn’t lost on Holly.
She didn’t quite understand why the barriers on each romosphere had been so low-tech relative to the countless technical marvels involved in creating and maintaining such enormous artificial environments.
Couldn’t the bunkers have been hidden behind their own small-scale invisibility cloaks?, she wondered.
Thorned plants and adhesive moats struck her as almost childish in their overt simplicity, and she considered this as yet another reflection of the level of total control Roger Morrison had enjoyed and exercised over his inferiors. Installing a moat made of glue as a last ditch defensive barrier wasn’t the kind of decision that was made by a committee, she thought, but then Morrison never had been one to listen to committees.
“Why did you jump from the top?” Grav asked, bringing her focus quickly back into the moment.
“It’s safer than going part of the way down the broken ladder,” Holly replied. “Can you land mainly on your good leg? I’ll try to take some of your weight; it’s not very high.”
“I will jump once this job is done; otherwise, if I got hurt coming down, we would have two problems at once. Sakura, listen to me carefully. I will talk you through how to elevate your boot. And Hollywood, do you feel confident about swinging the blade at the right height? For obvious reasons you cannot touch the moat and for equally obvious reasons you cannot go too high.”
Sakura told Holly not to worry about it; she told her to try her best and to know that she couldn’t make Sakura’s situation any worse since death was certain if Holly didn’t try.
Before Holly could reply, a notification flashed in her HUD. Peter, alone in the second rover, had forced open a direct communication channel to everyone else on Netherdox. In the momentary window during which Holly could have blocked the opening if she had already been engaged in an uninterruptible conversation, she heard both Grav and Sakura voice their wonder over what was going on.
When the short countdown hit zero and Peter’s voice came through, the answer was worse than anyone could have imagined.
“Grav, Holly, it’s too late. You have to get out of there! I can see it right now… there is some kind of… oh my God… it appears to be some kind of autonomous vehicle. Right now! Both of you, get out of there right now!”
Autonomous vehicle?, Holly thought. What the…?
“We are seconds away from freeing Sakura,” Grav said, striking Holly as remarkably unflustered by Peter’s incredible warning.
“Whatever you are trying to free her from, seconds is too long,” Peter insisted. “I am not speculating on this; I can see it in real time, relayed via the most distant mapping drone. Right now, from beyond the bunker, there is a heavily armed and heavily armoured robot heading straight for you!”
thirty-five
“Holly, you really have to go,” Sakura said. “I won’t hold it against you. Go!”
Holly stood within touching distance, wielding a long blade she had little confidence of being able to use successfully; not with the tiny margin for error, let alone the newly increased tension and urgency that came with the news that the drones hadn’t been shot down by automatic antiaircraft fire, as Grav had previously thought, but rather by an autonomous vehicle.
That Peter Ospanov’s clear view of this incoming vehicle had led to him describing it as a “heavily armed and heavily armoured robot” suggested that its arrival would bring death, so time truly was of the essence.
“Grav,” Holly called up to the rover, which he was still inside. “Tell her how to elevate the boot. Quickly!”
“Holly…” Sakura said, signalling feverishly with her hand. “Run away!”
The next voice Holly heard was Grav’s, talking Sakura through a relievingly brief and simple series of steps. Within ten seconds, Sakura had spoken the necessary vocal instructions and the sole of her boot had been elevated by a few inches, giving Holly a faint hope of swinging the blade between the moat and Sakura’s foot… contact with either of which would spell the woman’s doom.
“Do not think, Hollywood,” Grav said. “Swing!”
Holly stepped back and performed two rapid parallel-to-the-ground practice swings before returning to the edge of the moat. She then crouched to the ground, held her breath, and swung the blade towards Sakura’s foot.
The first things Holly knew for sure were that she hadn’t gone too low and that she had swung hard enough to fully sever the boot from its original sole, which was another thing she had been worried about despite Grav’s vocal faith in the blade.
Courtesy of Sakura’s controlled leap to the safe ground beyond the edge of the moat, the next thing Holly knew was that she hadn’t gone too high.
Sakura hugged her tightly for a brief second, whispering “I’ll never forget what you just did for me” before setting off for the second rover.
At the precise moment when Holly was about to ask Grav what the hell he was still doing inside the immobilised rover, he beat her to it.
“Change of plan,” he said. “Get back inside. I can see Peter’s images from the drone and there is no way we can outrun this thing.”
“We have to try,” Sakura said, slowing to a mome
ntary halt.
“You could maybe reach the other rover on foot,” Grav said. “Maybe… but then what? From what I am looking at through the drone feeds, there is no way that the rover could reach the Karrier in time. This thing is big and this thing is fast. Our best hope — our only hope — is to take it out from here.”
“Fight it?” Holly asked.
“I know how it sounds, but we either deal with this thing now or it deals with us. This is our situation, Hollywood: kill or be killed. To run is to die. The worst we can do is slow it down, which gives Peter and Bo a chance.”
“Okay…” Sakura said, “but if we run to Peter and Bo, you can give us a chance, too. If you think we can make it to their rover, what sense does it make for all three of us to stay here?”
Grav hesitated for a second. “You are right; it makes none. You go, I will do what I can.”
Sakura had heard enough and set off again as quickly as she could. She called for Holly to join her when she noticed there was no one by her side, but Holly was already walking the wrong way — back towards Grav and the immobilised rover.
“Keep running,” she told Sakura. “I won’t hold this against you, but I’m not leaving him behind.”
Grav responded to this with a predictable barrage of forceful calls for Holly to go with Sakura, but he was powerless to prevent her return and in the end could do nothing but extend a hand to help her climb the rover’s broken ladder which hung in dangerous proximity to the adhesive moat and the severed base of Sakura’s boot.
“There’s no way you could jump down from here on your own and be able to walk back after the landing,” Holly said. “And I didn’t come all this way to let you die in a rover. You wouldn’t leave me.”
Grav nodded very slightly as he returned his focus to the rover’s complex control panel. “I would admonish your foolishness, but we both know you are right. We did not come here to die, Hollywood. We came here to kill this problem, and that is what we are going to do.”
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 48