“Precisely,” Grav said. “And although the Karrier cannot be cloaked, its configuration is very helpful for this kind of mission. The emergency landers, specifically, are excellent places to hide additional personnel or even to trap any hostile individuals who may board to search the Karrier. It gives us options.”
An interruption came after only a few more minutes spent discussing other ways to utilise the technology available to the group, including a question from Sakura about whether any autonomous vehicles or advanced robotic machinery housed on the station could be utilised for either distraction or reconnaissance based purposes. Rusev’s answer — that the station’s advances in robotic and AI were significantly more modest than Sakura seemed to think — was cut short by a notification on her wristband.
After glancing down at the message, Rusev tapped the large screen on the wall to discard the satellite images from Terradox.
“I’ve been told that Boyce has given a two-minute warning that he’s about to broadcast a new message,” she said, finishing exactly as a countdown appeared on the screen, already more than halfway to zero.
“How’s he doing this?” Robert Harrington asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting began. “Without access to the control systems, how can he broadcast anything?”
“He’s using basic consumer tech,” Rusev explained. “His own devices, the kind all tourists are permitted to bring.”
As the countdown neared zero, Holly knew that Boyce, a significant distance from the station and many times further from Earth, was already talking. The relative distances involved meant that it would naturally take his message a lot longer to reach Earth than the station, but since the countdown was part of that message she knew that everyone would see and hear him as soon as the countdown on their respective screens hit zero.
For Holly and everyone else on the Venus station, this moment was now mere seconds away.
Everyone in the room stared intently at the screen, watching with no small degree of anxiety as the countdown disappeared at zero and gave way to a close-up of David Boyce’s gloating smile.
“Okay,” he said, flashing teeth like the cold-blooded shark he was. “Listen carefully, everyone, because I’m only going to say this once…”
forty-five
As David Boyce instructed the coerced and unseen camera-holder to zoom out, the faces of several hundred frightened tourists came into view.
Still in a circular arrangement, the hostages had been moved from New Eden’s museum to its eerie and now overcrowded nursery where they were flanked by Boyce’s two visibly armed accomplices.
Holly automatically scanned the screen for CeCe and DeeDee Bouchard and quickly found them towards the centre, closely huddling into their mother Cherise. That the Bouchards were in the centre of this circle, rather than at the front as had been the case in Boyce’s first broadcast, told Holly that their previous placement had indeed been an incidental result of their lottery-winning tourist status rather than a cruel attempt by Boyce to dig his knife even deeper into her heart.
She couldn’t have been more glad that Boyce, then under the guise of Chandler Rutherford, had been the individual moved from the Bouchards’ introductory tour group to accommodate her request to join them; solely because of that stroke of administrative fortune, Boyce didn’t know that she had grown close to one particular family and hence had not singled them out for special treatment as personal bargaining chips. The women and children from the other three lottery-winning families were dotted around the circle in three seemingly random areas.
After a few seconds it dawned on Holly that Remy Bouchard, along with all of the other working-age male tourists who had previously been herded together at the back of the circle, was now nowhere to be seen. Some male workers remained, including a young man she recognised from inside Terradox Central Station and others who wore ‘Terra Docs’ uniforms identifying them as staff from the medical centre. She hoped there was a palatable explanation for the disappearance of the male tourists but her mind came up short of finding one in the few seconds before David Boyce spoke.
“It’s very regrettable that I have to do this,” Boyce began, talking now in his natural voice, complete with a mild Australian twang. “These here tourists and workers have done nothing wrong and it’s unfortunate that strategic necessity has forced me to use them to ensure that those who have done something wrong will come here to pay the price. The leeches in whose hands the lives of these innocent families lie — the leeches who I hereby call to accept their fate — are as follows: Ekaterina and Dimitar Rusev; Robert and Viola Harrington and Robert Harrington, Jr; Sakura Otsuka; and, of course, Ivy Wood, better known to most of us as Holly.”
With Boyce’s list including no surprises, what stuck in Holly’s craw was the overtly derisive way he said her name.
“For clarity’s sake,” Boyce went on, “no one else is invited. There will be no security personnel present in your grouping. My message to Goran Vuletic, in particular, is to not be too disappointed about being left out… but also to not be too pleased. Something tells me that you may have your hands full on the station over the next few days, anyway.”
After winking to the camera, Boyce quickly ran through a list of demands including orders that the Karrier would land at Terradox Central Station and would travel with no emergency landers attached and no weaponry on board. He instructed the group not to leave the Karrier until they were escorted out, one at a time, to face their fate.
“And rest assured that any attempts to dodge your fate of being brought to public justice, whether by launching any kind of evasive or offensive action or by any other means, will have serious and immediate consequences.”
Although the presence of so many helpless hostages meant that these consequences hardly had to be spelled out, the grin on Boyce’s face suggested that he took delight in being explicit.
“On the anniversary of this putrid Resort’s grand opening, blood will be spilled. Blood will be spilled to atone for your sins against not only Mr Morrison but for your sins against humanity and its progress. How much and whose blood that is, dear friends, is very much up to you.”
The camera feed went black.
forty-six
“The first thing I take from that is that he really doesn’t have the access codes,” Rusev said, talking in a more upbeat tone than Holly would have expected following Boyce’s grim proclamations. “If he did, I think he’d be warning us of a sudden romospheric expansion and path-change as a threat against the station or even Earth. And the fact that he’s so concerned with us not bringing any security personnel… to me, personally, that suggests that the weapons we’ve already seen really are the only ones he has.”
Holly quickly glanced at Dimitar to look for signs of disagreement. His expression gave nothing away.
“His threat against the station is bullshit,” Grav chimed in. “Two people have arrived here in the last eleven months: Holly and Sakura. Neither of them will even be here in a few days.”
“Those two scumbag guards had been on Terradox for a long time before Boyce arrived,” Dimitar said, now voicing his uncertainty.
Grav shrugged indifferently. “With respect to the TMC, I personally screen our arrivals a lot more thoroughly than they screen theirs. There are no two ways about this: I am going to Terradox, and so is Peter. With respect to the rest of you, while Boyce may be an amateur, his two associates are trained security officers who could not be disarmed by anyone else. Holly, perhaps, but there are two of them and one of her.”
Robert Harrington cleared his throat. “If we’re breaking rules and changing the group to include people who were specifically not invited, can we exclude people who were?”
Holly didn’t think any less of Robert for suggesting this; first and foremost, his duty of care was to his children.
“If Rutherford learned who was really inside the Karrier,” Robert continued, “he’d be more angry to see that Grav and Peter were there
than he would be to learn that my family weren’t.”
This point initially struck Holly as a reasonable one, but Bo Harrington was quick to debunk it. “Grav and Peter can hide in one of the rovers,” he said. “We can’t fake our own presence.”
“But we’re planning to land in the wrong place, anyway,” Robert said, talking to everyone rather than directly to Bo. “We’re already breaking his rules! Are we bringing landers, too? Is the decision-making process over which rules are worth adhering to as arbitrary as it strikes me?”
“We can’t bring the landers,” Holly said. “Landing in the wrong place is one thing, because he didn’t invite a real Karrier pilot so we can convincingly say that none of us were confident of landing in that small valley without crashing into Terradox Central Station or the old Karrier. But there’s no good excuse for bringing the landers and I don’t think any of the potential benefits are worth the unnecessary risk of provoking a reaction.”
“Dad…” Viola said, pulling gently on his arm. “If Boyce looks inside that Karrier and we’re not there, whatever he did next would be our fault. We have to go. The plan is sound… we won’t even have to leave the Karrier.”
“She is right,” Grav said. “He wants his big spectacle to be on the day of the long-planned Anniversary Gala, and we will arrive the night before. You will be inside the Karrier and you will be safe. If some of us have to die to do this thing, some of us will die. But your family will not be the ones taking the risks. I can promise you that, Robert — man to man.”
Though Robert appeared concessionary and now largely accepting of the positions put forward by Viola and Grav, he had one request. “I want to see these VUVs,” he said. “I want to see these ‘practically invisible’ rovers. Before we leave I also want to see every detail of every element of your plan, but right now I want to see these rovers.”
Grav gave the okay for Bo to take his father to the ordinarily restricted area where the rovers were housed. He quickly sent a message to the security colleague stationed in that area, informing him of both the imminent visit and also that the VUVs would soon need to be prepared for loading onto the Karrier.
When Robert asked Viola to go with them, she was intrigued enough by the VUVs to accept the invitation and leave Peter in the security room. The Rusevs also left to meet with other members of the station’s upper management about the latest developments. Though Dimitar remained far from vocally supportive of the general plan, Holly had noticed his expression change when he saw the haunting faces of the frightened hostages in Boyce’s second broadcast. At that moment, she knew his opposition was softening.
With Peter and Sakura the only others left in front of the big screen on which Boyce’s smug face had been projected minutes earlier, Grav turned to Holly and spoke quietly. “Hollywood, about the people who will be taking risks…”
“I know.”
Grav nodded. “Everything in my body, my soul, and my heart, it all tells me that we will win this fight. But all of those things… they also tell me that this time around, the price of victory will be a high one.”
This time, Holly didn’t reply.
“Tell me what you are thinking,” Grav said.
She inhaled slowly. “Not a lot, but I have the exact same feeling.” After a long and pensive silence, Holly turned to Peter Ospanov and asked what he was thinking.
Peter looked at her for a brief moment before returning his gaze to the blank screen as though Boyce’s face was still there. Peter cracked his knuckles. “I am thinking about how his throat will feel between my hands.”
“We want him alive, Peter,” Grav said. “We need him alive. This has to be a clean job.”
Peter’s focus remained fixed on the blank screen.
“Peter!”
At this, Peter finally turned to Grav. “Of course, sir. Alive.”
Grav then walked away, telling Holly and Sakura that he had a few small things to take care of and that he would meet them again in an hour to go over their final preparations.
Before leaving with Sakura, Holly looked over at Peter and watched his knuckles whitening as he balled his fists and continued to stare a hole through the screen.
Holly flicked the light switch near the door on and off to break his entranced focus.
“Thank you,” he said, finally turning away and blinking several times.
“Get some rest, Peter. You heard what Grav said: this has to be a clean job.”
He nodded as Holly set off, but after a few seconds he called her name.
“Yeah?” she asked.
“You cannot do a clean job when the other side is fighting dirty,” Peter said, his voice lowering and his nose crinkling as though he didn’t like the taste of the words. “I will follow every order Grav gives me and I will listen to everything you say, but this is going to be a lot messier than you think.”
forty-seven
In the hours following the group’s in-depth planning meeting and David Boyce’s unsettling second broadcast, frantic preparations saw Holly grow progressively more thankful for Grav’s insistent advice on sleeping for a few hours before arriving at the station. She knew now that there would be precious little opportunity for rest until everything was over, one way or another.
Her latest conversation with Grav had largely focused on ensuring that nothing was missing from his provisional checklist of necessary supplies and equipment. The amount and level of weaponry on Grav’s list surprised her, but she trusted his judgement; and after Peter’s comment that things were going to get seriously messy, she was keen to err on the side of overkill.
“This will all fit inside one of the VUVs along with myself and Peter,” Grav said. “So even in the event that one of Boyce’s men boards the Karrier to search for contraband, which I consider extremely unlikely, he would not detect anything untoward. Besides, our plan is to disembark from the Karrier inside a VUV as soon as we land at the top of the cliff. That way, even the most thorough of searches would find nothing. And while the idiot was searching, we would be on the move. In that regard I hope there is a search, because it would take one of our three enemies out of the equation. We can confidently assume that the other guard will remain with the hostages at first, which should leave Boyce isolated and exposed. He will have no idea that Peter and I are there, and the guards will almost certainly stand down as soon as we capture him and convince him to give the order.”
“Too many assumptions,” Holly said, very bluntly. “Too many shoulds and woulds and thinks. The truth is: we don’t know how Boyce is going to act when we arrive. The hostages might be locked in a small room with no need for a guard on the inside, for one thing.”
Grav’s eyes widened “All the better! If we see all three of them outside on the surface, I will head straight for the hostages. If he is stupid enough to leave them unguarded, a straightforward rescue mission becomes a formality.”
Holly said nothing for several seconds.
“There is no complacency here,” Grav said, reading her expression. “Confidence, but not complacency. All I want to make clear is that this mission is less risky than our visit to Netherdox. And just like then, if I did not think we would win then I would not allow Bo and Viola to travel.”
“Peter isn’t as relaxed about everything as you are,” Holly said. “He knows every detail of the plan and he thinks it’s going to be messy.”
Grav nodded very slowly. “He is right, Hollywood. This is going to be messy... for them.”
Sakura was waiting for Holly when she returned to her customarily unoccupied dorm to gather some clean clothes for the forthcoming trip. Sakura held something in her hands and wore an energetic expression.
“You look happy,” Holly said, half-inflecting the statement into a question.
“I think I found something that could really help us when we get there,” Sakura replied, holding out her palm to present a small device which was roughly the size of a standard old-fashioned photograph. “I got this when w
e arrived on Terradox and I left it here when we went to Netherdox. It’s the thing tourists use to look at the photo-drone images they’ve been automatically tagged in.”
Holly took the device from Sakura’s hand and looked at it more closely.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about surveillance,” Sakura went on. “When we get there, we won’t have any access to any truly live satellite images and the communications delay to the station will make their observations useless when every second counts. We also won’t be able to use the regular mapping drones like we did on Netherdox because those would be way too noticeable.”
“Come with me,” Holly said, taking Sakura by the hand and leading her towards Ekaterina Rusev’s main office. The security officers Holly passed on the way all stepped aside and allowed her to enter the normally closed-off area. She knocked three times on Rusev’s door and entered when invited.
As soon as Rusev looked across her office, she rose to her feet with wide eyes. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s the thing that lets a tourist access any photo-drone images or videos they’ve been tagged in, so they can edit them or mark them as favourites to buy at the end of their stay,” Sakura said, proudly handing the device to Rusev. “Do you think there’s a way we can use this to access more than that… maybe live images from the photo-drones?”
“This is good,” Rusev replied. “Let me find out how good.”
Rusev then sent a question to the TMC’s Earth-based headquarters, asking if and how the group could use this device to their advantage. The Venus station’s current distance from Earth made the two-way communications delay positively excruciating and sufficiently long for Holly to fetch some food from the nearest algae machine and be back in Rusev’s office with several minutes to spare before the reply arrived.
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 53