Terradox Quadrilogy

by Craig A. Falconer

  “I’ll do it,” Sakura said.

  “Are you sure?” Grav asked.

  “Who else could it be? Dimitar is second in line, Robert has two kids, the kids are kids, Rusev is Rusev and Holly is going to storm the bunker. If everything else is lined up and this is the missing piece, I’m willing to do it.”

  Grav walked directly in front of Sakura and looked into her eyes. “This will not go wrong. But in case it does, you will take painkillers and dissociative drugs before getting out of the rover, and as soon as someone threatens serious harm you will feed them small truths and big lies,” he said, speaking rapidly without taking a breath. “You will feed them small truths which they can easily verify so that they think you have been broken right from the start. That way, when you feed them bullshit, they will buy it. It will not come to any of this, like I said. But if it does, this is the basic procedure you will follow to keep yourself alive and give us the best chance of success. Thank you, Sakura. Do you have any questions? Time is tight. Dimitar, get the drugs. Peter, get ready; we need to get into the VUV.”

  Sakura’s expression matched the age old “deer in headlights” metaphor better than any Holly had ever seen.

  “Do not worry,” Grav told her. “You will be coming in our rover, so I will give you full instructions for every possible contingency.”

  “Hold on,” Holly said. “You’re going to disarm a guard and pose as him, then Peter is going to do the same and report to Boyce that he’s found Sakura out in the middle of nowhere?”

  Grav nodded. “Exactly. Whatever Boyce is expecting, it is not that. Chaos creates opportunities, Hollywood. We will make a hole and you will crawl through it, straight into the bunker. In there you will have full control of everything, including the ability to send messages directly to the headsets of the other tourist guards to tell them that Boyce is out of the picture. They can lay down their arms or they can join us in taking him down, depending on how things work out. Are you with me?”

  It wasn’t so much that Holly didn’t agree with the plan as it was that she didn’t fully understand it. But she understood her role — getting into the bunker at any cost — and she trusted Grav implicitly. He understood his plan and he had succeeded in all kinds of armed raids and espionage missions during his chequered past as first a mercenary and then an anti-GU militant, so his clarity of purpose was what mattered most.

  “Hollywood, I need you to tell me that you are with me. I need to know that you understand what I am telling you.”

  Holly hugged him and whispered two words in his ear: not I understand, but rather “be careful.”

  Grav gently pushed her away after several seconds. “I did not come here to be careful,” he said, his expression and tone less harsh than the words. “And neither did you. I will see you on the other side, Hollywood. Everyone else… be strong.”

  Dimitar returned with the pills Grav had asked for and shook his hand firmly. “You can do this,” he said.

  “Of course I can fucking do it!” Grav replied, this time with a tone to match the words.

  Most of the others laughed at Grav’s reply, particularly Viola and Bo. Viola then slowly kissed Peter goodbye and reluctantly let him go before telling Grav in no uncertain terms that he “better keep him safe”, a request which would have embarrassed Peter had Grav not gently replied that the safety of Peter and Sakura was his personal priority.

  “We have less than a minute,” Holly said, returning to the control console and confirming that the Karrier was perfectly on track to land safely atop the cliff which overlooked Terradox Central Station. It would touch down on a large X marked for the Resort’s multi-terrain touring vehicles, one of which Holly and Sakura had travelled in for a short time upon their arrival on Terradox what felt like half a lifetime ago.

  Even as the pace of the final goodbyes picked up, Holly again had to reiterate how little time was left for Grav and Peter to get into the VUV ahead of the touchdown as had been planned all along. They left in a hurry while Sakura stayed with the others for now, again as originally planned.

  “He’s trying to talk to us,” Holly said, watching as another communication request came in from the bunker. “Should I take the call?”

  Rusev walked to Holly’s side and pressed the button. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  fifty-two

  “Terradox Central Station!” Boyce bellowed. “I was very specific in my order for you to land at Terradox Central Station!”

  “I couldn’t do it,” Holly said, as convincingly as she could. “There’s barely enough room for a trained expert to safely land a Karrier in that valley. How was I suppos—”

  The communications light went out. Holly turned to Rusev.

  “Don’t change course,” Rusev said, though Holly hadn’t been considering it and wouldn’t have had time to do so even if she wanted to.

  Everyone braced themselves for the landing, as they always did, but, as it always did, the Karrier touched down without so much as a bump.

  Dimitar held the CamCard tightly, looking at a split-screen view which showed live images of Terradox Central Station on one side and the control bunker on the other. There was no visible movement on either feed.

  Another communications request lit up Holly’s console, and this time she accepted it without waiting for Rusev’s permission. This request was for a video call.

  “I want everyone in the shot,” Boyce said. “All of you. I want to see everyone at once.”

  Holly called the others over with her hand.

  “Ekaterina,” the madman smiled. “Dimitar! Oh, and Sakura. I was so sorry to hear about the old man. What a coincidence for the key witness to die in his sleep the night before the trial. It’s almost as though there might be some other explanation, don’t you think?”

  Sakura kept a laudably straight face and said nothing.

  “Anyway, anyway… Holly. You were saying something about the valley being too small to land in? Some pathetic excuse like that?”

  “The margin of error was too small for me,” she insisted, a complete lie delivered with a clear conscience. “I tried my best to get close but I saw how tight it would have been.”

  Boyce held up a finger to his screen then called out for someone named John, who Holly could only assume to be the innocent tourist who had been coerced into guarding the bunker.

  Sure enough, a reluctant looking man in a guard’s uniform two sizes too big soon appeared behind Boyce’s shoulder.

  “Mr Francis,” Boyce said, his voice dripping with mock sincerity. “Could you please tell our nice friend Holly what we think of excuses?”

  John Francis’s frightened eyes darted between Boyce and the screen.

  “Tell her we don’t like them,” Boyce said.

  “Uh, we don’t like them.”

  “Correct! Thank you, John. You can go back outside.”

  “Now?” John asked, evidently terrified of putting a foot wrong.

  Boyce smiled and nodded.

  John set off.

  “Oh, John,” Boyce called after him. “One more thing.”

  The man turned around, just in time to see David Boyce pull the trigger to fire a bullet between his eyes.

  Robert Harrington instinctively tried to pull his children away, but it was too late. They had seen what Holly had seen: John Francis, the unfortunate tourist caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, collapsing to the bunker’s floor, dead in an instant; killed to make a point.

  David Boyce faced his screen once more. “The next time I give you an order, you follow it,” he said, callously expressionless as an innocent man lay dead just a few metres in the background. “No more games, Holly. Don’t try me.”

  Just like that, the screen went black.

  fifty-three

  Having heard the rest of the group’s reaction to David Boyce’s cruel killing of an entirely innocent tourist turned unwilling guard, Grav returned from the cargo bay with Peter close behind. He wore the
sternest expression Holly had ever seen.

  “If this is how he wants it…” Grav said, neglecting to finish the thought.

  “It was my idea,” Peter said, sighing ruefully and shaking his head at the floor. “It was my idea to land here, and a man is dead because of it.”

  Holly put a hand on Peter’s shoulder in an effort to ease his feelings of guilt, which she considered natural but unfounded. “You were the first person to suggest landing here,” she qualified. “It was a smart idea, but it wasn’t the kind that no one else would have come up with. Once we got to the real planning stages, we would always have settled on this site because otherwise there would have been no route to the bunker. Don’t beat yourself up.”

  “Beat him up,” Viola said, moving in for her own physical effort to lift Peter’s mood via a long hug and a kiss on the cheek. “He’s the only person to blame for any of this.”

  Grav, clearly unaccustomed to seeing the ordinarily stoic Peter exhibit negative emotions, chimed in with his own effort: “No guilt and no sadness, Peter; neither lead to anything but more of the same. Turn guilt and sadness into anger, and let anger fuel your victory.”

  “Another guard is heading towards the bunker,” Dimitar announced, CamCard in hand. “The one who was second closest, after John Francis.”

  This wasn’t an unexpected development, but it was an unwelcome one.

  “Can Boyce see footage from the photo-drones, too?” Robert Harrington asked. “Can his accomplices? Would they see Holly outside the bunker when she gets out of the VUV?”

  Ekaterina Rusev fielded this question. “In short, no. I’ve been told that the drone network can be accessed from within the bunker, but such access requires login credentials unique to the drone system. That login isn’t used for anything else and there’s no reason for us to think that Boyce has even considered trying to extract it from one of the staff members who would know. The fact that we’ve been able to position a photo-drone over the bunker while he’s inside is a very strong indicator that he doesn’t have access and probably hasn’t even thought about it. If he had, the drones would have been either deactivated or positioned here as soon as he knew where we were landing.”

  “Okay,” Robert nodded, satisfied with Rusev’s reasoning. “So we should also be able to position some photo-drones over New Eden to see the comings and goings of his accomplices?”

  “Sadly not,” Dimitar interjected. “None of the drones can get inside the New Eden zone, which suggests a hard zonal block. These drones don’t explode on impact with the invisible boundaries like your mapping drones did the last time you were here, but they don’t get through, either. New Eden is the only protected zone we’ve found so far, but we’ve only tried to position drones in a few key locations.”

  “But Boyce and his accomplices need headsets to communicate with each other,” Grav said, quick to jump in before this bad news deflated the group. “The Karrier can locate those headsets by tracing interference patterns. It may well be possible to infer which three headsets are worn by our enemies, which is better than nothing until Holly reaches the bunker.”

  Getting inside the bunker was far from a given, despite Grav’s total confidence to the contrary, so Holly moved beside Dimitar for a look at the guard who would soon be standing in her way. She touched the CamCard’s screen and spread her thumb and forefinger to zoom in.

  When the face became clear, her mouth widened and her eyes lit up. “Oh my God, it’s Remy,” she yelled excitedly. “Remy Bouchard!”

  fifty-four

  “Who the hell is Remy Bouchard?” Dimitar asked. Several confused expressions suggested that he wasn’t the only one wondering this.

  “It’s Remy! I met him on the way to Terradox,” Holly explained. “I spent most of the journey with his wife and their kids.” She looked at Viola. “You know, the girls I told you about?”

  “The twins?” Viola asked.

  “Exactly! I know this guy and he knows me. Not just a little bit, either. He’s only doing this because he’s been coerced like the rest of them, but the difference with him is that he’ll step aside as soon as he sees me; I won’t even have to sneak up and restrain him before I explain what’s happening. In fact, he’ll turn around and stand by my side when I go in to take Boyce down.”

  Holly was almost too happy to smile, overwhelmed that this long overdue good break was such a big one.

  “The last five minutes have been good for us,” Grav said to everyone and no one in particular. “That is cold, I know… but it is true. The plan remains as it was but the timescale is moving up. Peter, Sakura, we leave now. Hollywood, you know the rest. Our plan is still to distract Boyce enough to flush him out of the bunker, and ideally to flush his accomplices into the open at the same time. Use your judgement over the precise moment to leave for the bunker, but err on the side of speed. If things go well and we flush him out, it is important that you leave immediately. If things get hairy for us — if something goes wrong out there — it is even more important that you get to the bunker immediately. But however bad things might look at any individual moment, do not deviate from the plan. I will take care of my side of things and you will take care of yours. Everything depends on your control of the bunker, Hollywood. Everything.”

  “Wouldn’t it make sense for Holly to drive to the bunker now and wait for an order to go inside?” Robert suggested.

  Grav shook his head. “In theory, it might. But in reality, the distance is so short that it makes more sense for her to wait here for now. If there was any kind of communications problem between her rover and the Karrier, everything would be in jeopardy. It certainly makes sense for you to be ready to leave without delay,” he said directly to Holly, “so I suggest suiting up and waiting inside your rover.”

  Holly agreed. And with that, Grav said his goodbyes and led Sakura and Peter back to the cargo bay and their waiting VUV. Their farewells were briefer and less emotional than would have been the case if they hadn’t already left for the cargo bay just minutes earlier only to return in reaction to David Boyce’s wicked murder of the innocent John Francis.

  Holly called Sakura back and took a few seconds to directly thank her for volunteering to play a central part in such an inherently risky plan. Sakura insisted that it was nothing compared to the risk Holly had taken to save her from Netherdox’s adhesive moat, stating this without the context that she had only been in danger because of her own efforts to save Bo from the same predicament.

  In the little time Holly had known Sakura Otsuka, she had come to expect this kind of selflessness. The two had become unlikely friends and Holly’s only regret in that regard was that they hadn’t met in happier circumstances.

  Holly requested that Dimitar lower a photo-drone to ground level so she could watch as Grav’s VUV departed. To her relief and Bo Harrington’s evident pride, the rover truly was visually undetectable; even when she knew where it was and looked in the right place, all she could see was the rocky surface of Terradox.

  Holly stayed in the Karrier’s control room with everyone else as Grav’s rover carried his trio towards the first of the distant and unwilling tourists-turned-guards he had identified as easy targets. When it looked like they were only a few minutes from their initial destination, Holly got into her EVA suit.

  “Why do you need that, anyway?” Viola asked. “The air is better here than on Earth.”

  “I need this because Boyce is armed,” Holly replied very matter-of-factly. “I want Remy to know it’s me as soon as he sees someone coming, so I’ll carry the helmet until I’m going inside. At the door, I’ll engage my C-Suit so Boyce can’t take me out before I take him down. If Boyce leaves the bunker before then, I won’t need it at all.”

  Viola nodded slowly in understanding. “Well… just be careful, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  There was something about the simple straightforwardness of Viola’s words that made them all the more impactful, and Holly pulled her in for a
hug.

  “I would say two minutes,” Dimitar reported, keenly tracking Grav’s progress via the CamCard.

  Holly straightened herself up. “Keep in contact with my rover at all times once I get out there,” she said, addressing the request primarily to Bo. “Tell me everything you see, however small. Okay?”

  “Understood,” he said, walking towards the main control console in anticipation of his task’s commencement. “Good luck.”

  “We’re definitely due some of that,” Holly said as she made her way to the rover, waving silent goodbyes to Robert and the Rusevs as she passed them one by one. “Let’s hope Remy is just the first piece that’s going to fall into place.”

  fifty-five

  From inside her rover, Holly had direct contact with both Grav’s rover and the Karrier’s control room.

  She communicated primarily with Peter, who reported back on a safe journey despite some frightening moments when their VUV had to pass a guard at closer proximity than planned due to an inconveniently placed rock formation. Although this wasn’t planned, the VUV’s success in passing “way too close” to a guard without being noticed actually served to ease Holly’s mind.

  A happy accident, she thought. More pieces falling into place.

  “Hollywood,” Grav’s gruff voice suddenly interjected. “You are talking to Dimitar, who can see us, correct?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. We are approaching the target guard and we are going to momentarily disable radio communications. We have to be silent as well as invisible.”