Terradox

by Craig A. Falconer

“Good,” Robert said. “Because if there was a hidden planet that could harm people from that kind of distance, imagine what it would do to people who were actually on it…”

  twelve

  Just over an hour into an uneventful trek across an unrelentingly barren landscape, the group reached the base of the mound.

  With Holly’s encouragement, Bo had amassed a small collection of metal fragments. Or, as he called them, “spaceship parts”.

  Robert’s age came up during a time-passing conversation. Though it wasn’t quite as surprising as Bo’s, he was nonetheless one of the roughest 42s Holly had ever seen. His age would have made more sense listed beside the clean-shaven image on the forged travel card Holly and Dante had viewed several hours earlier, but that all felt like a distant dream.

  When the opportunity presented itself, Holly quietly asked Robert about the situation with Bo’s medication and the potential shortage of syringes which Viola had been so concerned about when the lander separated from the Karrier. To Holly’s relief, Robert insisted that the syringe issue wasn’t a serious one and that Viola’s hysteria had been an understandable overreaction.

  “I’ve always told them that we should never reuse his syringes,” the man said, “probably because that’s how I was brought up. But the equipment these days is so far beyond what we used to have; we could quite safely use the same one forever. As for the medication, I looked into it carefully and the station has a reasonable stock of everything Bo needs as well as the capacity to produce mass quantities. His condition isn’t a common one, but it’s not stupendously rare.”

  Before Holly could push for details, Viola, who turned out to be a more easily believable 17, slightly changed her path to come within earshot.

  The girl had remained largely silent throughout the walk so far. Holly didn’t want to condescend by suggesting anything like Bo’s metal-hunt to occupy Viola’s mind in defence against too many negative thoughts, but her silence was at times disconcerting.

  This was why Holly was so pleased when Viola jumped into a new conversation in which she and Robert were discussing the Venus station.

  “I heard the whole place smells amazing,” Viola said. “Like lavender. Bo read that somewhere and told me. Someone else said it in a video, too. Is it true?”

  “I don’t know,” Holly replied. “I’ve never actually set foot inside.”

  “What? Bo said you’ve been like ten times.”

  “I’ve been to it a lot of times, but I’ve always stayed inside the Karrier when it docked.”

  Viola’s expression asked “Why?” without the need for any vocalisation.

  “My grandfather had this fancy watch,” Holly said, flipping back through pages of memories that hadn’t been read for many years. “He saw my dad looking at it one time when we visited, and he asked him if he wanted to try it on. I’ll never forget what my dad said. He said: ‘Thanks, John, but when I put on a watch like that, it’ll be because I’ve earned it.’ And that’s how I feel about the station. When I walk through that door to take my place on the station, I’ll have earned it.”

  The girl looked like she understood.

  “It was mainly that,” Holly said, a hint of a grin spreading across her face, “but it was partly because I knew that if I’d walked through the door, they would’ve had to drag me back on to the Karrier for the next cargo run.”

  Viola laughed. “I get that. It’s like if I’m really tired and I have to finish studying or something. If I try to tell myself I’ll sleep for five minutes then get back to it, there’s no way I’m getting back to it.”

  “Exactly,” Holly said. Exactly might have been a stretch, but it was close enough. She hadn’t exactly gotten off on the best foot with Viola, what with the whole forcefully tackling her through the lander’s partition door and bruising her collarbone thing, but that was all behind them. And even if relations weren’t yet as warm as Holly would like, she was glad that they had at least thawed.

  Holly considered only then how completely her view of the Harringtons had changed over the course of the last several hours. When Robert and Viola had been Norman and Jessica Tanner, presumed husband and wife, Holly saw them as nothing more than another pair of hyper-rich passengers she wanted to deliver to the station and never see again. Now, on the other hand, she was personally and deeply invested in their safety.

  “Don’t go too far ahead,” Robert called in response to Bo’s increasing pace as the summit neared.

  Looking back in the direction they’d come revealed nothing other than how isolated their lander truly was. The mound no longer seemed anywhere near as high as Holly had thought from a distance. A horrible feeling built in her stomach as they approached the summit; a hunch that they would see nothing but nothing in every direction.

  “I’ll catch up with him,” Viola said.

  “Thanks,” Robert replied, but the excited tone in the girl’s voice told both Robert and Holly that she was rushing ahead out of eagerness to see what lay on the other side of the mound rather than merely to do her father a favour.

  This excitement in Viola’s voice was nothing compared to the elation in the words she screamed from the summit with Bo by her side just thirty seconds later:

  “Holly, Dad… hurry up! There’s someone coming!”

  thirteen

  “Why would there only be one person?” Robert asked, speaking only to Holly as they ran the rest of the way to catch up with the children at the top of the mound. “Why would they split up? There can’t be anyone else here, can there?”

  “Of course there’s no one else here,” Holly reassured him, using a far less patient tone than she would have with Bo or Viola. “They split up for the same reason people always split up: to cover more ground.”

  In truth, Holly was slightly surprised that the group from the other lander had split up. She knew that Yury was in no shape to trek anywhere and that Rusev would never leave him alone, which left Dante and Grav to look around. Dante would have been her preference, but none of that really mattered.

  All that mattered to Holly was that her wristband and its four red-for-dead tracking dots had been proven wrong; because if someone was alive, they all were.

  A few steps from the summit, Viola ran towards Holly with one hand outstretched and asked to borrow her binoculars. Holly handed them over.

  But before Viola had even removed the binoculars from their protective case, Holly recognised the body shape of the approaching man and spoke to answer the question on everyone’s lips:

  “It’s Grav.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Robert said, breathing a very literal sigh of relief.

  “Who’s Grav, again?” Viola asked.

  Holly and Robert answered at the same time: “Goran.”

  Viola’s face lit up. Bo punched the air as if celebrating a victory. Their previous experience with Grav — of his cooperation and agreement to keep Bo’s presence on the Karrier to himself — had clearly been endearing.

  Holly was less enthused.

  She had known Dante on Earth for far longer than she’d known Grav. And while Dante was the youngest of the three by the better part of a decade, he was also the most conservative and by-the-book. Dante’s lack of seniority meant that the decision to split up would definitely not have been his to make. Holly couldn’t help but worry about him; they remained closer than anyone else knew, if not as close as they once were, and she feared that he might walk an unsafe distance from the other lander in his effort to find her. With the sun maintaining its steady trajectory and with nothing to decisively indicate that the group’s first night on this alien planet would be a temperate one, Holly knew that isolation after sunset could prove fatal.

  No part of Holly regretted running towards the Harringtons’ lander rather than Rusev’s, but she wished she’d been firmer with Dante and insisted that he follow her.

  She couldn’t fairly hold against him his spur-of-the-moment decision to run for Rusev’s lander in the afterm
ath of the Karrier’s mysterious initial collision, understanding as she did why he decided that his primary duty of care was to Rusev and Yury rather than to two wealthy passengers. Had Dante known who Robert and Viola truly were, though, much less that they were travelling with another child, Holly felt confident he would have been standing beside her now.

  Though she still felt great relief that the rest of the group were alive and that someone had come to look for her, the vast canyon on the other side of the mound did no more to raise her spirits than the identity of the man who had traversed it.

  In every direction, she saw nothing but more of the same reddish-brown dust and rock.

  The mound Holly stood atop was no higher than the other side of the sloping canyon, but the developing theme of barren nothingness gave her little hope that anything better lay beyond it.

  Holly then caught Bo glancing up at her. In reaction to an expression she took as a question as to why she didn’t look happier, she forced a smile and spoke: “Race you down?”

  He was on his way before her mouth closed behind the challenge.

  The closer Holly got to Grav, the rougher he looked. His face appeared irritated and roughly shaven; far more so than it had when she’d passed him in the Karrier’s corridor the previous day.

  He was carrying the same kind of backpack as Holly, evidently loaded to bursting point. Grav was no tall man — barely taller than Holly and several inches shorter than Robert and Dante — but his broad shoulders and tree-trunk thighs were built for heavy loads. Whatever he had carried across the canyon, Holly knew it must have had some serious weight to it. But the visible sweat dripping from his face and neck then made her consider that the same body shape which formed the basis of Grav’s static strength wasn’t exactly ideal for travelling long distances in such arid conditions, with or without any extra weight, so she was now less sure about the heavy load theory than she had been moments earlier.

  The first thing Holly had thought when Rusev introduced her to Grav was that he looked like a man who got into a lot of fights. He had two independent scars on his scalp. Both were prominently visible, and he kept his hair shaved short enough to ensure that this remained the case. He had more tattoos than bare skin on his hands, forearms and neck, and probably everywhere else, too. Dante had his own fair share of tattoos, but his flawless Mediterranean skin and careful attention to facial hair detail could hardly have put him more at odds with Grav’s ‘it is what it is’ indifference to surface-level presentation.

  Holly and Grav had coexisted on the Karrier for six months with no hint of either hostility or cordiality. Each did their respective job, and that was it. Now, as Grav drew near and his emotionless face came into view, Holly wondered what news lay beyond his typically stoic expression.

  Grav reached the base of the mound at the same time as the group, leading Bo to promptly leap into his arms. Grav held the boy in one arm and gave Holly a prolonged thumbs-up with his other hand.

  After Viola ran in to hug Grav, Robert stepped forward to shake his hand. “Am I glad to see you,” he said, chuckling for the first time.

  “Likewise,” Grav said, looking mainly at Holly. “All of you.”

  Holly said nothing.

  Grav exaggerated the effort required to free himself from the children’s warm welcome. “I am going to catch up with Holly for a few minutes. Does anyone want some food from my bag? It is real food, from my room.”

  Robert exhibited as much keenness as his children.

  “Okay. Give us a minute and then I will find it,” Grav said. He then walked over to Holly and stopped within inches of her face to speak quietly: “Is your lander intact, secure, airtight, and with functioning power?”

  Holly replied with a question of her own: “Where’s Dante?”

  Grav sighed and crouched to the ground. He lifted his bag from his shoulders. “The snacks are just coming, kids.”

  “Answer my question,” Holly demanded, growing concerned.

  Grav allowed a few seconds to pass. “What I can tell you for sure is that Rusev and Yury are safely in the lander.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Where’s Dante? Where did he go?”

  Grav looked down at his wristband. “There is still no data from his band. Mine, Rusev’s and Spaceman’s are now working, but not his or yours.”

  Holly pulled her sleeve out of the way to reactivate the wristband she had earlier deactivated in an effort to conserve its power having long ago given up on finding anyone else alive during this excursion. Sure enough, as soon it as it came to life she saw Grav’s dot right beside her own while Rusev’s and Yury’s were together in a distant location. There was no sign of Dante.

  “When did these start working?” she asked. “And where the hell is Dante?”

  “Dante made a mistake,” Grav said, casually proceeding to shuffle through the contents of his large backpack in search of the snacks he’d promised the children.

  Taken aback by Grav’s tone, Holly considered her next words carefully.

  But before she said anything, the movement of Grav’s hand inside the backpack revealed something that raised her concern level from moderate to severe.

  Grav immediately covered the yellow and red object and looked up, as though checking whether Holly had seen it.

  The look in her eyes told him she had.

  He rose to his feet. “That is not what it looks like.”

  Holly said nothing and took two steps back. Because from where she was standing, it looked a lot like Dante’s shirt stained with fresh blood.

  fourteen

  Holly could more than handle herself in most confrontations. But face to face with Grav, who was at least as well trained and likely twice as physically powerful, she knew the outcome would be a matter of physics.

  Grav threw a small bag of assorted snacks towards the children then put his hand on Holly’s shoulder and led her away. When he was confident the family were out of earshot, he stopped and faced her.

  She kept as straight a face as she could.

  “Listen,” Grav said, almost grunting the word out. “If I wanted to kill him, do you really think I would need to draw blood?”

  Since everything Grav ever said tended to drip with this kind of bravado, Holly didn’t know what to read into the words. “So why the hell do you have his shirt?” she asked, mustering up the courage. “And why the hell is it covered in blood?”

  Grav quickly glanced at the Harringtons to make sure they couldn’t see, then lifted his skin-tight black T-shirt to reveal a blood-stained bandage in the centre of his stomach. He lifted one side of the bandage without wincing. “Some of these rocks are pretty damn sharp. Did you trip, too? Your eye looks rough.”

  “That happened on the Karrier,” Holly said, instinctively rubbing the badly swollen eye socket she’d forgotten all about.

  “Lucky for you it was that eye.”

  Holly nodded a few times then stopped abruptly. “Stop changing the subject. Why do you have Dante’s shirt?”

  “It’s mine. Check the size.”

  “So why did you try to hide it?”

  Grav laughed slightly. “You are really going to make me say it? You are really going to make me say that I did not want you to know I was injured? Truly, it is nothing: a scratch and no more.”

  This subtle choice of word — injured, rather than hurt — summed Grav up. She quietly checked the size of the yellow shirt, though she already believed him. Ever since Rusev told them it wasn’t necessary, neither Holly nor Grav had once worn their Rusentra branded shirts during what was supposed to be their final journey to the Venus station. Dante, a stickler for propriety who also lacked their seniority, had continued to wear his as though it remained mandatory.

  “Fine,” Grav shrugged. “But I want you to know that I trust you. You want to know why?”

  Holly hadn’t expected Grav to say anything like this. “Why?” she asked automatically.

  “Because Spaceman vouched for yo
u. Rusev did, too, but she has blind spots. Spaceman does not make mistakes. Anyway… tell me about the area around your lander. What is the landscape like on the other side of this mound?”

  “Like this,” Holly said. “Barren. What about yours? Are there plants or anything?”

  “There is something like lichen all around. No trees, though. No animals, either.”

  “Any sign of the Karrier?”

  Grav shook his head. “But neither of us have seen any smoke, so the landing gear might have kicked in. I do not know. The console was dead — totally non-responsive — but there is a chance that the automatic landing sequence may still have functioned.”

  “Is there any chance it could reach orbit?” Holly asked, fearing she already knew the answer.

  “No. Even if everything is perfectly intact, we do not have the fuel. What the Karrier can give us are its supplies and its radio. The radio is where your boy could finally prove himself useful. Like I said, the control panel was dead. But if he can fix the radio…”

  “So where is he?”

  “I do not know,” Grav admitted. “We split up to find you. That was my decision, but I let him choose which way he wanted to go. He chose wrong; that was his mistake. But I gave a strict instruction to mark his path and turn back after four hours, maximum. He is alive. I do not know where he is alive, but I know that much.”

  Satisfied with this, Holly moved on to the other big question: “What about the crash?”

  “I know no more than you.”

  “Of course you do! I was in the utility room and you were looking out of the window. Were we being pulled in before you saw this planet, or did it not start until the planet appeared?”

  “The second one,” Grav said, exhibiting more patience than normal. “It was as though we hit something that engaged… something. After the first impact, the pull was inescapable. All readings flatlined; the radio cracked with static; the Karrier lost all control of itself.”

  Holly leaned in close and lowered her voice even further. “Is there any way someone could have messed with the controls before we left Earth? To change the destination or something?”