“Steve didn’t believe it was really them, just like with the audio message,” she explained. “He couldn’t see their faces and he wouldn’t let anyone close enough to show him, and he thought they could be using voice changers. His head was completely gone. And when Holly and Peter got inside, Chase was already knocked out in the control centre. He’s concussed or something, really bad, and Steve was using Nisha as a shield until he saw Chase moving and went back to him. Nisha got away but Steve was holding some kind of jagged pipe against Chase’s throat. Grav, I didn’t mean for this to happen. I was going to take my helmet off so that he would see me and let Chase go, then Holly and Peter could have taken him out and rushed into the control centre while he was looking at me. But Holly did it before I could… she didn’t want me to endanger myself, so she did. And it did distract him. Peter did halt the evacuation procedure and restrain Steve, but Holly still isn’t moving. Grav… I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”
Grav didn’t have to raise his hand this time. Most of the others, while naturally concerned about Holly, were all breathing deep and instinctive sighs of relief that their own immediate family members were still alive.
“Can you see her vitals?” Grav asked. “What exactly is her current status?”
Viola glanced again at the data in the corner of her visor’s HUD. “It all looks fine, but it looked fine as soon as Steve put her helmet back on. I don’t know what’s wrong with—”
“Steve put her helmet back on?” Grav asked. “Viola, it really feels like there are parts of this you are leaving out…”
“When he saw it was really her, he was shocked. But then he turned to me and it was like his eyes just went again and he was back out of his mind. He was coming at me, Grav. I had to do it. I had to.”
Grav didn’t ask the obvious question of just what she’d had to do; with Viola in the middle of a delicate and dangerous task of traversing the hostile surface of Little Venus, now was not the time to upset her with prying questions about things that couldn’t be undone.
“Around forty more seconds at this speed until I’m going to tell you to slow down,” Bo reported. “V, I’ll tell you when and I’ll need you to do it gradually, okay? The medics are on their way. You’re almost home — both of you.”
Viola looked back at her motionless friend and was again reminded of two terrible situations Holly had faced in the past, one distant and the other relatively recent. It was now far less difficult than it had previously been for Viola to imagine how Holly had felt when she, at around Viola’s current age, had been confronted by an irrational and situationally insane former friend who lunged at her with a knife and the intent to kill.
The more recent moment when Holly had been forced to kill Remy Bouchard had always haunted Viola given that she witnessed it first hand, but she now had a new appreciation of how much worse it must have been for Holly.
But more than anything, Viola could finally understand why Holly had become so single-mindedly focused on the integrity of Terradox’s security: her absolute priority was ensuring that nothing like either of those situations could ever happen again.
“Okay, V,” Bo said. “Easy does it…”
Viola gradually slowed the rover as it approached the Buffer. Her ability to communicate with Peter in the Kompound had ceased several minutes ago when she moved beyond their suits’ range, so she couldn’t let him know that she had made it. She knew that plans to get everyone else safely back to the Buffer as soon as possible would be enacted before long, but her mood was far from celebratory.
Holly’s vitals were encouragingly steady, at least, but they didn’t cover everything and Viola’s guilt over causing her to remove her helmet had no chance of fading even slightly until Holly’s eyes were open.
Unshakeable and unrelenting, there was also guilt brewing inside Viola over what had happened with Steve. However real his threats had been and however equally necessary her preemptive strike, violence did not come easily to Viola Ospanov and the feeling of the impact reverberating in her arms would not easily be forgotten. There was no firm reason to think Steve would die from his injuries, but Viola’s mind lingered on the possibility.
‘Whatever it takes’ was easier said than done, as she had just become acutely aware, and thinking of Grav’s ‘kill or be killed’ mantra did equally little to ease her conscience. Viola knew that her history of non-violence was a privileged one made possible only by the strength and selflessness of people like Holly, Peter and Grav who had always been there to do the dirty work needed to keep everyone else safe in untroubled comfort, but no such perspectives meant anything when the feelings were so raw.
Peter was still in the thick of it, handling things in the Kompound, while Grav was waiting at the other end of the Buffer’s entry chamber to lift Holly from the rover in the hope that she would make it.
Hope was all Viola had. There was no sense of relief that Steve had been stopped and the others were safe, there was no sense of achievement, and there was no sense of satisfaction.
If this was a victory, it sure as hell didn’t feel like one.
forty-one
Grav lifted Holly from the rover as soon as Viola finished driving through the inner airlock and parked inside the storage area where it had all started less than an hour earlier. It felt more like a year, such was the magnitude of the situation.
Viola stayed in the driver‘s seat. “I’m okay,” she said, loudly projecting her voice through her still-on helmet but gesturing with her hand for the others to give her some space.
Grav carried Holly to the gathered team of emergency responders, and the sound of approaching feet indicated that an army of their better-equipped colleagues would be on the scene imminently. There were no problems with these medics gaining access to the high-security Buffer; as intended, all access restrictions to enter a given area were disabled for relevant personnel when an emergency was officially declared.
As the medical staff removed Holly’s helmet, Grav returned to the rover and encouraged Viola to remove her own.
She did — it couldn’t stay on forever — and in doing so revealed a face tear-marked by long mascara trails.
“You acted with courage,” Grav said. He placed a gentle hand on Viola’s cheek then tapped her temple twice. “Brains, fuck no. But courage? For sure. I am proud of you, Viola, and she will be, too.”
Viola wiped her eyes.
“One thing I cannot help but wonder is where Peter was when you said you were going to remove your helmet,” Grav said. “I would have expected him to—”
“He tried,” Viola interjected in her husband’s defence. “Marcel stopped him. He was the only person apart from Holly and Peter who was telling me not to do it, and Peter was the only one of us he could reach to stop.”
“And Marcel is okay?” Grav asked, taking care to speak quietly. “All of the others… they really are okay?”
Viola nodded. “Steve did a real job on Chase; he’s concussed and really didn’t seem to have any idea of what he was doing, but he was kind of conscious, at least. Nisha and the others weren’t really hurt at all. Nisha is shaken up — Steve had her like a rag-doll — but physically they’re all okay.”
“You saved a lot of lives,” Grav said, glancing briefly at Holly and then back to Viola. “Whatever else happens, you did that.”
When Grav succeeded in talking Viola out of the rover, the others took turns to express their gratitude for the risks she had taken. Jillian Jackson was the most effusive, repeatedly saying through tears that she could never repay her for saving Chase’s life. Christian and Romesh thanked her equally profusely, albeit with more emotional restraint.
Viola threw herself at her father Robert as soon as she saw him, resting her head on his stoical shoulder.
“Marcel will be dealing with things in the Kompound as we speak,” he said, trying to reassure her and keep her thoughts away from Holly’s condition. He knew Marcel well, being his boss in Habitat M
anagement, and knew that he really would already be at work preparing everyone to leave and return to the colony without experiencing the kind of shock to the system that Holly had just experienced in the reverse situation. “And Holly is probably just in shock,” he said, explicitly addressing this point only as he noticed Viola looking right at her over his shoulder.
“So is that just oxygen they’re giving her?” she asked.
“They know what they’re doing, whatever it is,” Robert replied.
The next voice Viola heard was Romesh’s, calling Vijay back and telling him to give Viola some space. Viola turned around and saw the boy coming. She crouched to his level and smiled.
“How did you manage to knock down Steve?” he asked with wide-eyed wonder. “I thought only Peter would be able to do that!”
Viola looked at the boy’s face, so pure and innocent, and took care not to say the wrong thing.
“Steve thought that, too,” she said, forcing a wink.
“So you surprised him?”
She nodded. “I surprised myself.”
Vijay put his arms around her neck and hugged her as tightly as he could. “Thanks for saving my sister,” he said.
Before Viola could tell him it was no problem, another voice captured her attention and everyone else’s.
“Her eyes are opening!” the medic called.
And at that very moment, Viola’s own eyes closed tightly. The slow tears that followed were not tears of joy but rather of pure and unadulterated relief.
When she reopened her eyes, she saw Grav kneeling on the ground next to Holly as a medic gently helped her to raise her head.
“Hollywood…” he said, “you did it.” He raised a thumb towards Bo, who was standing way back near the door, and then looked over to Viola. “You all did it.”
forty-two
Forty-eight hours later, Holly’s solitary stay in an emergency ward finally came to an end when she was moved into a designated ‘recuperation ward’ down the hall. Yury’s old badge was pinned to her medical gown, having been given to the medical staff by Viola and passed on to Holly as soon as she woke up.
She didn’t feel like much of a commander inside an almost empty medical centre where she wasn’t even allowed access to her wristband, but a welcome surprise greeted her when she entered the recuperation ward: Chase Jackson was already there.
Immediately, he pushed himself to his feet, slightly less steady than Holly was on hers, and smiled broadly. “There she is,” he said.
Holly laughed. “Here I am.”
“Words will never be enough, Holly, but thanks for what you did in there.”
She shrugged it off and sat on the bed next to Chase’s. Both were ready to leave the medical centre, by their own assessments and their doctors’, but their eventual return to the colony apparently had to wait for some final test results coming through clean.
For the next several hours they talked about what had happened and what would happen next, with their conspicuous lack of visitors ironically being due to the access restrictions Holly had instituted just a few days earlier.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Chase was acutely concerned that the isolation test’s early end would harm the chances of further training programs being authorised by Rusentra’s board. It had been made clear a year earlier that the beginning of the next stage in Holly’s plans to initiate a functioning space program were dependent on the test’s success — no ifs and no buts. All Holly could promise was that she would argue their case until her voice was hoarse, and that other influential figures like Grav and the Harringtons would do the same.
“And let’s not forget how influential your voice is,” she said. “When everyone except a few bean-counters want us to expand our horizons, I don’t think we have too much to worry about. This wasn’t written in stone like the pregnancy or antisocial behaviour edicts, it was just that the plan I presented was approved on the basis that each stage could only begin once the previous one was complete. If anyone wants to be bureaucratically obstructive, I’ll just make a new plan that starts at step two. Really, that’s not anything to worry about.”
Holly then filled Chase in on what had been happening outside of Little Venus over the past year, while he filled her in on what had happened inside the Kompound after she was carried out and driven back to the Buffer. He explained that he and the others had remained there for many hours, with Marcel insisting that they should spend some time in the transition chambers to reacclimatise themselves to the regular atmosphere they would encounter when they reached the Buffer. This precaution was necessary in order to avoid anything like the kind of shock Holly had experienced when suddenly exposed to the relatively low-oxygen atmosphere of the Kompound to which Chase and his colleagues had been gradually and safely acclimatised over a long period of time.
The answer to Holly’s question of who drove the rover back to the Kompound — Viola — both surprised and impressed her. Chase also confirmed that he had indeed been concussed, but revealed that he was more or less fully lucid before he left the Kompound and had learned the details of all that happened while he wasn’t. Steve had been profusely apologetic when he came around, Chase said, but Peter steadfastly refused to free him from his restraints.
“And I know exactly what you did to distract him,” Chase said. “So when I said thanks, I wasn’t just thanking you for coming in to save us… I was thanking you for the selflessness of that risk you took.”
“Viola’s idea,” Holly said with a half-chuckle. “I only co-opted it to save her from herself. And I’m not angry at her, but the frustrating thing is that we had it covered. We had a plan to rush at Steve when he tried to barricade the—”
“Let me stop you right there,” Chase interrupted with a grin on his face. “That might all be true, but Marcel and Nisha said exactly the same thing: that they had it covered with a plan to lock Steve in the privacy room, right before you guys’ arrival derailed it at the worst possible time! The problem was that you and Peter went in blind, just like Viola did a little while later.”
Holly was quiet; she thought she had arrived at an inopportune time, given the looks on Marcel and Nisha’s faces, but she hadn’t previously had the suspicion confirmed.
“But I guess all’s well that ends well,” Chase said philosophically, “and all things considered, I’d say this ended pretty well. I have a few broken fingers from trying to punch a hole in Peter’s helmet, but I’m sure he’ll find it in his heart to forgive me for that slight misunderstanding!”
At last, a doctor entered the room.
“Do you have our results?” Chase asked. “Are we good to go?”
The doctor shook his head. “Not quite yet, but you do have a visitor. I’ll send her in now.”
Holly and Chase instinctively looked at each other, sharing silent surprise.
“Did Grav give her clearance?” Holly asked, thinking this was the only way Viola — who she assumed the doctor had to be talking about — could have accessed the medical centre.
“No,” the doctor said, “I don’t think he knew she was coming, but she was utterly insistent that I find a way to let her through. In the end we gave her an off-duty staff member’s wristband so she could pass the barriers.”
Holly’s eyebrows were now raised halfway to the back of her head. She knew that Viola could be convincing, but this was on a whole different level.
“It must be important for her to do something like that,” Chase mused.
“It better be,” Holly laughed.
Facing Chase, she then watched him gasp as he was first to see the figure in the doorway.
When Holly turned around, her confusion and mild concern faded immediately and were replaced with a warm serenity.
“Fancy seeing you here,” she smiled at the frail figure in the doorway: none other than Ekaterina Rusev herself.
forty-three
“So what brings you here?” Holly asked, more glad than inquisitive.
�
�Sakura’s funeral,” Rusev replied with more than a hint of sorrow. “What we know now is that she definitely suffered a massive cardiac arrest, with no obvious external cause. It’s an unspeakable tragedy, but she would be proud that your courage prevented that tragedy’s knock-on effects from devolving into a full-on disaster. Dimitar was desperate to come for the funeral, too, but with everything that’s happened with the production studio being closed down and all the other ongoing issues, one of us really did have to stay behind on the station.”
Despite appreciating Rusev’s kind words, Holly regretted asking why she had ventured to the station; in hindsight the answer was the most obvious one in the world, and delivering it only looked to have upset Rusev.
As much as Holly missed Sakura and as hard as she would work to ensure that her legacy lived on, she tried to quickly change the subject for Rusev’s sake. “Did you announce that you were coming?”
Rusev took a seat next to Holly. “We thought it would be good for morale,” she nodded, “and it was. You should have seen the crowd at Central Station when our Karrier came in… three-quarters of the colony must have been there. Children, parents, Grav.” She chuckled. “You know, he insisted on escorting me on the ten-metre walk to a transport capsule.”
“Sounds like him. And what did you think of the capsules?” Holly asked, a hint of pride in her voice
“Incredible,” Rusev said. “Everything is. Incredible and immaculate. I stopped off at Yury’s Memorial Garden, next to the new security centre and the old bunker, just to take in the changes. I haven’t been here since Boyce’s coup attempt, and it’s barely recognisable. The Gardev Heights tower blocks alone are some of the most impressive architectural structures I’ve ever seen, without even considering the groundbreaking research that’s going on inside them. I haven’t been to any of the other research zones yet, but the atmosphere of progress and of everyone pulling in the same direction is everywhere. It’s just… well, I understand now that you really do have to see it and feel it in person to understand. You’ve excelled yourself, Holly.”
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 84