Terradox Quadrilogy

by Craig A. Falconer

  An aura seemed to exist around Chase, thanks largely to the way he had been portrayed by an unusually united media on Earth for the past seven years. He could neither understand why he was so adored nor how the likes of Peter and Viola could stand next to him without feeling any kind of resentment, and he thought the fact that they always treated him so well said a lot about them.

  He went into auto-pilot during his short speech and did everything correctly in the moments before the anchor raising.

  When that time came, however, he felt suddenly and overpoweringly unworthy. This wasn’t so much an emotion as a realisation; one which very nearly took him completely off-script and which ultimately led to Viola joining him beside the all-important oversized button which would raise Arkadia’s metaphorical anchor.

  I don’t deserve to be the one doing this, he thought. His stomach churned. Not even close.

  “Now that Chase has let the anticipation build…” she said, drawing some well-meaning chuckles from an audience who had been on tenter-hooks while he silently stared at the button, “let’s give him one last countdown. Ten, nine…”

  As the crowd counted, each number louder than the last, Viola saw the reluctance in Chase’s eyes.

  “Don’t think, just press the button at zero,” she said, taking care to cover the microphone on her collar and completely oblivious as to the cause of his hesitation.

  “Viola, it shouldn’t be me,” Chase replied, relieving her by at least mimicking her microphone-blocking hand-on-collar trick.

  “Chase…”

  “You should do it. You’ve done more than—”

  “People died so we could get here,” she whispered. “If you don’t press that button…”

  With the crowd at two, Chase turned around to the giant red button. It was genuinely linked up to the romotech reactor at Arkadia’s core, which would begin the romokinetic sphere’s endless voyage as soon as his hand slammed down, but the size and shape was clearly for show.

  “Zero!” everyone shouted.

  Chase slammed a fist down on the button like he was trying to break it then turned around to the crowd with his arms held aloft. “Bon voyage, people of Arkadia!” he yelled, inviting by far the loudest roars of the day and kicking off a party that would run well into the night.

  Viola applauded and then gave Chase a hug that she skilfully managed to disguise as celebratory.

  But as a veteran of too many Day of Gratitude events, during which she was always presented as some kind of conduit for true giants of recent history like Yury ‘Spaceman’ Gardev and Ekaterina Rusev herself, Viola Ospanov was probably the only person on Arkadia with any knowledge or experience of the kind of inadequacy Chase was feeling. She could only commend how he had managed to muster up enough adrenaline for the unplanned ‘bon voyage’ stunt, but she knew what it was masking.

  “It gets easier,” she whispered in his ear. “Trust me.”

  Chase nodded, trusting that she was right.

  With the open-air party getting into full swing just minutes after the end of the anchor-raising ceremony, and with all manner of activities and refreshments available to keep everyone happily occupied, Chase was surprised to see Viola and Peter heading for a vehicle little over fifteen minutes later.

  “My dad wants to see us about something,” Viola said, honestly answering Chase’s obvious question as to where they were going. “He didn’t say why but he asked me not to bring Katie.”

  “Our stress testing has shown a slight hiccup with the security restrictions around one of the main school buildings,” Peter went on, “so I think it’s going to be about that. I can’t think of anything else that he’d need to talk to the two of us about but not you. You know, Childhood Development and Security wrapped up in one issue… that’s my thinking, at least.”

  Chase nodded in agreement with that logic. “Well, let me know if I can help at all, okay?”

  “Will do, cowboy,” Peter said affectionately.

  Chase then returned to the people he’d been speaking to, an excitable team of young doctors. He found his energy growing as he milled around the crowd, and particularly when he bumped into Nisha doing the same.

  “Nice job, but what was with all that hesitation before you went for it?” she playfully chided.

  “I was just… it’s all done now,” he said, thinking better of burdening Nisha with his pointless introspection. “From here on out it all gets easier.”

  And things did get easier for the next hour, with a huge crowd gathering around Chase as he gladly took on all-comers at a series of fairground games. This hadn’t been planned or asked of him, but the joy it was bringing to the young Arkadians all around rubbed off on him, too.

  Shortly after a close hoopla victory over one of Peter’s security team — a full-hearted but well-spirited contest — Chase felt his wristband buzz to alert him of an incoming message.

  A quick glance down revealed the sender to be Viola, and his quick tap to expand the screen revealed a nine-word message which was equal parts intriguing and concerning:

  “Shipyard office asap. Asteroid news — don’t ask. Leave quietly.”

  As Chase tried to think of an excuse to leave without causing a fuss — subtlety in this scenario was a lot easier said than done — he saw Rachel’s eyes uncomfortably darting around in a similar manner to his own. Their gazes met for the few seconds it took for both to realise that the other had received an identical message.

  After whispering to Nisha that everything was okay in an attempt to lessen her inevitable worrying, Chase blew air from his lips and went for the only tactic he could think of: leaving loudly to do what he thought Viola meant by ‘leave quietly’, which was something more along the lines of ‘leave without causing suspicion’.

  “Well, guys,” he boomed, “I could do this all day but right now Rachel and I have to take care of a little something. Keep the fun going and we’ll be back soon, okay? Have a good one!”

  He then beckoned Rachel over with a performative gesture, hamming it up more due to nerves than by design.

  “Do you have any idea what this could be about?” he asked when she reached him and they set off along the short walkway to the nearest vehicles.

  “Not a clue,” Rachel said. “But judging by the tone of that message, I feel like we should probably try to enjoy not knowing for as long as we can…”

  twenty-two

  No number of insistent requests for further information proved enough as Chase and Rachel began their fast-paced but painfully long-range journey to the Shipyard. Chase pushed the TE-900 to its limits and stopped fruitlessly communicating with Robert after a few minutes, instead using the time to speculate with Rachel as to what the hell was going on.

  One question on his mind was why he had been called in last — long after Peter and Viola, with whom he was supposed to be on equal footing in decision-making matters. Rachel implored him not to read too much into this, stating that Chase was a very visible part of the welcoming ceremony and likely the last person Robert wanted to pull away.

  As soon as they touched down, Rachel led Chase into the communications office of the main administration building. They immediately saw Peter and Viola sitting down while Robert stood in front of a large blackboard-like screen positively covered in digital readings.

  “Well?” Chase said.

  “The probe has stopped communicating and responding,” Robert said, relaying what he’d recently been told by the Shipyard’s operational staff who were apparently not privy to this higher-level discussion and had been dismissed to another area. “But before it died, we did get some data. And there’s something in the final communication… something you should really see.”

  Rachel, already poring over the data, suddenly stood slack-jawed. “Holy shit…” she muttered.

  Chase, a pilot and leader of men rather than an academically gifted scientist like Robert and Rachel, knew only that the symbols he was looking at were something to do with c
hemistry.

  “Fill me in,” he said. “What is this?”

  “It’s not so much what this is,” Robert supplied, “it’s what it firmly suggests about the asteroid.”

  “Well,” Rachel interjected, still poring over the data, “not so much the comet itself. It’s more what it suggests about what’s present on the asteroid.”

  Chase threw up his hands, quickly and uncharacteristically losing patience. “So what are you guys telling me here? What does the data suggest is present on the asteroid?”

  Robert and Rachel looked at each other, as though waiting for the other to say it.

  Viola, sitting with a troubled-looking Peter on the other side of the room, rose to her feet and put Chase out of his misery with a single but unbelievably powerful word:

  “Life.”

  twenty-three

  “The probe has inconclusively detected life signatures on the asteroid,” Robert said, his tone more than a little dismissive. “And that is not the same as saying the probe has detected life. Accuracy matters.”

  “Who all knows about this and what’s our next move?” Chase asked.

  “Us,” Robert said. “No one on Earth and no one on the station.”

  Chase’s eyebrows rose of their own volition. “How many on Terradox?”

  “None.”

  “You haven’t told Holly?” Chase asked, incredulous at this as much as anything. “Robert, if you’re going to start trying to cut Holly out, we’re going to have a serious problem.” He glanced around the room to gauge the general mood, but Peter and Viola weren’t giving much away.

  “We’re getting further away from Terradox by the minute,” Robert sighed. “Any dependence on orders from there, Earth or the station is going to leave us in trouble when we need to make decisions urgently. The comms delay is already far too long for a meaningful two-way conversation with Holly and that’s only going to get worse. There’s a reason the probe only communicates with Arkadia — this is our mission and our responsibility. We need to stand on our own two feet, just like Holly wants us to. And Chase, it’s early,” he stressed, in a tone clearly intended to diffuse the anger in his eyes. “This data just came in.”

  The others sat quietly, Peter and Viola paying keen attention to the heated discussion while Rachel continued studying the data. A potentially incredible scientific breakthrough was simmering in the background while Chase and Robert argued about whether and when to tell Holly, but Chase was far from finished.

  “Early?” he echoed with barely concealed contempt. “Early? Robert, this could hardly be any more time sensitive than it is. It would be way too dangerous to try to do this without at least running it by Holly and her teams first. A recovery mission like this would—”

  “Woah woah woah woah woah woah,” Robert cut in. “What? Recovery mission? You’re not seriously—”

  “You’re not seriously saying no?” Chase interrupted in return. “You’re not seriously telling me that our probe just died after detecting signs of life, but we’re not going to try to find out exactly what it found and exactly what happened? Do you really think there’s any way this plays out without me going to get it?”

  Peter rose to his feet. “Chase, don’t even get that idea in your head.”

  Chase opted to ignore Peter and continue on Robert. “Listen to me: with the speed this asteroid is moving and the path it’s on, we’re realistically only going to have one launch window — we can’t send another unmanned probe that might fail again, because that’s the last chance we’ll ever have!”

  “We couldn’t possibly even think about risking a crew on an elective mission as dangerous as this. I knew you were reckless… but for God’s sake, Chase, there is a line.”

  “I’m not asking you to risk a crew; I’ll go on my own if I have to. All I’m asking you to do is get out of my way and let me loop Holly in on this.”

  Robert shook his head.

  “Then we’ll vote,” Chase said.

  He glanced at Rachel, who had finally turned away from the data. Her expression of doubt suggested that she didn’t think this was a vote Chase could win, despite her hopes that he would. Her primary fear was of an Earth/Terradox schism; for while she and Chase had both been with Holly until very recently, Robert and the Ospanovs had been on Earth for years. Although the end goal was for the Arkadian population to stand on their own two feet just as Robert had suggested, large parts of both Chase and Rachel were still heavily tied to Terradox and keen to work with the colony’s many great minds when it made sense to do so.

  The speed at which things had moved from a discussion of the probe to a debate over Chase’s outwardly insane plan to recover it took everyone by surprise, but no one more than Rachel.

  “All in favour, raise your hand,” he went on, ignoring Robert’s disapproving expression.

  Rachel rose her hand immediately.

  “You’re out of your minds,” Peter said, laying his cards on the table.

  “Come on, sheriff,” Chase pleaded, “think about it! This is a one-time chance — literally, one time only.”

  Peter, unbudging, shook his head slowly and decisively. “We don’t have a lot of checks and balances in this executive committee for these first few years, and I know that’s by design. But they gave me a vote because I’m in charge of keeping Arkadia and its people safe. It would be a dereliction of duty for me to say yes to an elective risk like this.”

  “Correct,” Robert said, breathing a sigh of relief, “and you all know where I stand.”

  With the four declarations split two-two, everyone turned to Viola.

  “You know this is right,” Chase told her. “All the risks you and Holly and everyone else ever took will be for nothing if you say no to this. And as risks go, this is small. No one else will be at risk at all. Please, Viola… don’t stand in my way.”

  Looking torn, Viola didn’t say anything right away.

  “Listen, Chase,” Peter interjected forcefully, “you can make your case, but I draw the line at you trying to guilt Viola into agreeing with it. Is that clear?”

  “Quite right,” Robert chimed in before Chase could reply either way.

  “I can speak for myself,” Viola said.

  “Well feel free to join in at any time!” Robert bemoaned, delivering something of a fatherly scolding over her continued indecision.

  Understanding that emotions were high, Viola didn’t take anyone’s comments personally. She took a deep breath, her eyes and mind flitting between the two sides of the argument which were divided physically as well as by viewpoint. She looked at her father and husband on one side, two of the four people she loved more than anyone else, and then at the two fearless explorers on the other.

  “I can’t pretend I don’t want answers, but I really don’t like the idea of you taking a risk like this,” she said.

  Chase’s shoulders fell.

  “And Rachel,” Viola went on, “with the greatest respect, your vote doesn’t technically count.”

  Rachel didn’t react, bitterly disappointed but with no real comeback to the perfectly true fact that she didn’t have a say in executive matters and wouldn’t for the remainder of Arkadia’s three-year settling in period; the founding constitution, agreed upon by all successful applicants, explicitly granted Viola, Peter and Chase one vote each and Robert two.

  All eyes remained on Viola, who didn’t look like she’d finished.

  “But Dad, with the greatest of respect to you, biological discoveries made within the confines of our solar system are explicitly outside the scope of Arkadian governance. This is a matter for the board,” she said, walking with purpose towards the room’s radio console.

  Chase’s expression softened, hope returning.

  “This is a matter for the board,” Viola repeated, navigating the console’s menus to begin an outgoing communication. “And Holly’s word goes.”

  twenty-four

  Holly’s afternoon aboard a Ferrier bound for Terr
adox was going just like every other before it, until all of a sudden it wasn’t.

  The message arrived directly on Holly’s wristband and was clearly marked as being for her eyes only. Grav, at her side in the midst of their daily big-picture discussion, knew immediately that it was something big.

  “You have to see this,” Holly said, long before she’d finished reading. Her eyes and Grav’s were one and the same when it came to executive matters, and she knew that he wasn’t who Viola had in mind when warning to keep it under-wraps.

  “Break it down for me,” Grav replied.

  Holly kept reading. It wasn’t taking her long, but she had no idea just how long it had taken the group on Arkadia to agree on the wording of their jointly-signed message before sending it.

  “The probe died this morning,” she said, “and they don’t know why. All they know is that before it died, it detected what they’re telling me are firm indications of life.”

  “On the asteroid?”

  “On the asteroid,” Holly nodded. She looked excited by the news until she reached the next part, at which point a slow sigh escaped her lips. “And guess who wants to go exploring…”

  “Ha ha ha ha,” Grav laughed, extremely slowly. “Not Robert, I am guessing? Surely Chase.”

  “Who else?” she said, reading on before relaying that Robert and Peter were both firmly opposed to the idea while Viola was non-committal. Rachel’s position was also mentioned, which didn’t surprise Holly at all; although Rachel wasn’t yet a formal member of Arkadia’s Executive Council, she was greatly respected by those who were.

  Grav rubbed his chin and mouth with his left palm, almost aggressively. “Life…” he mused. “Our probe found life, Hollywood!”