Holly reconsidered the syntax. Even now, after catching him red handed, she was still letting him play with her head.
“Just shut up,” she said, wishing now that he was still knocked out.
He ignored her and began to say a few words about Robert, then stopped abruptly and shifted to Grav.
“You know something, Dante?” Holly cut him off. “When the lies you’re telling aren’t even consistent with themselves, it makes it a lot easier for me to spot them.”
She walked to the top of the stairs, making it perfectly clear that the conversation was over.
Ten minutes later, Dante broke the oppressive silence. “Hear me out, okay?” he said, raising his voice more than necessary because he couldn’t see beyond the top step and didn’t realise how close Holly still was. “Maybe not everything I’ve said is true, but—”
“Shut up,” Holly said. This wasn’t the first time these words had escaped her lips, but this instance was the firmest yet. Holly felt less unsettled and less alone than she had a few seconds earlier, because Grav and Viola were now in sight.
Grav was running as quickly as he could with Viola beside him. Holly had no doubt that the girl was holding back to keep pace and no more.
Holly turned and looked down at Dante. “Save some of your bullshit for Grav.”
Dante shifted and pushed himself against the door to make it to his feet. As good of a liar as he was, there was no masking his fear.
“What is the big emergency?” Grav asked as soon as he arrived. He was panting heavily and wincing in what looked more like pain than mere tiredness; Holly knew he was far more used to resistance training than cardio, but she didn’t know he was this unaccustomed.
Holly gave a half-nod to Viola, pleased that she’d followed the orders so dutifully. She then met Grav’s gaze and gestured towards the stairs.
Grav stepped to the edge and looked down. “What the fuck?”
“He’s a traitor,” Viola said.
Grav focused intently on Holly. “A traitor?”
Holly hesitated, having a good idea of what would happen when she confirmed it. She looked at the ground and nodded. “He was inside. He knows the code.”
Instantly, Grav charged down the stairs and pressed Dante against the thick metal door. “Okay, asshole. There are two ways we can do this. There is the easy way, and—”
From no more than a few inches away, Dante spat in Grav’s face.
Holly held out an arm to stop Viola from going near the stairs; it struck her as a near certainty that things were about to get uglier than the girl could stomach.
But to Holly’s amazement, Grav showed immense restraint in wiping the spit from his eye rather than caving in Dante’s skull.
Grav then shrugged, almost nonchalantly. “Hard way it is.”
Holly and Viola stood back as Grav marched Dante up the stairs.
The look on Dante’s face suggested that he was all out of defiance; reality had set in.
Viola looked at Grav. “Are you going to, you know…?”
“No one is getting tortured,” Grav said. He then casually dislocated both of Dante’s shoulders. Dante screamed like a pig in a slaughterhouse as Grav pushed him to the ground and began dragging him back to the lander by his feet. “As long as they cooperate.”
Day Six
fifty
Grav arrived back at the lander with Dante in tow, quite literally, as Holly and Viola hung back to avoid the worst of the traitor’s pained screams.
Holly watched as Grav popped Dante’s shoulders back in place before entering the lander to get Rusev and Yury. That no one had been roused from their sleep by Dante’s screams was testament to the soundproofing of the lander and the extension.
Dante was lying on the ground in a defeated fetal position when Holly and Viola reached him. Neither felt anything close to sorry for him, but that didn’t make it an easy thing to see.
“Should I wake my dad and Bo?” Viola asked.
“If you want to,” Holly said.
Viola answered by going to get them.
The sight of Rusev emerging from the lander reminded Holly of the following day’s plan for Rusev and Grav to return to the Karrier at first light to fix the power and try to use the radio to contact the Venus station. That plan seemed distant right now.
“He was definitely inside the bunker?” Rusev asked Holly, wasting no time with small talk. “You saw him opening or closing the door?”
“I heard him. I saw that he wasn’t at the bottom of the stairs, I heard the door opening and closing, and then I saw that he was at the bottom of the stairs. Viola was there, too.”
Rusev then asked the obvious question of why they’d been there and Holly answered as briefly as she could, explaining that Viola noticed Dante was gone and went to see where he was heading before Holly noticed that they were both gone and did the same. “We caught him,” Holly went on, “I subdued him, I sent Viola back to get Grav, and here we are.”
Robert was next to appear, exiting the extension alone and running over faster than Holly had ever seen him move. He rolled Dante onto his back and laid in with a few weak but all-out punches until Holly pulled him off and stepped in front of him.
“You son of a bitch,” Robert growled at Dante. Viola and Bo emerged from the extension seconds later; Holly was glad they had missed it.
“Did Grav try to make him talk?” Rusev asked, trying to focus amid the chaos.
Before Holly could answer, Grav himself appeared at the lander’s entrance and told everyone that Yury wanted them all to go inside.
Grav proceeded towards Dante and bound his legs with a length of cord from the lander. “You can save everyone a lot of trouble if you just tell me the code,” he said.
“Fuck you.”
Grav shrugged and led the rest of the group into the lander. Holly ushered Robert away from Dante, making sure he wouldn’t go back for a second bite at the cherry.
Absolute silence filled the lander. Yury stood at the window, looking out towards Dante as the night’s darkness slowly began to lift. The rest of the group formed an unplanned semi-circle facing Yury. A veteran of more missions than he could count, Yury Gardev had seen a lot of things. This was not one of them.
When the old man turned away from the window and towards the group, his eyes landed squarely on Ekaterina Rusev.
“Why was Dante Parker chosen to travel on the Karrier’s final trip?” he asked her in a very straightforward and unwavering tone.
“He was a valuable member of our team,” Rusev said. “I thought he could play a very useful role at the station.”
“Listen to the words I say,” Yury said, speaking a lot more firmly than before. “Why was he on this trip, the last trip? Why was he chosen for the same trip as me, as you, and as Holly? Why was he chosen for the same trip as our most valuable cargo, human and otherwise?”
There was real tension in the air. The last thing Holly had expected Yury to do was grill Rusev.
“We needed him on Earth,” Rusev replied. She spoke without hesitation and didn’t appear shaken, but Holly knew that Yury’s tone and line of questioning must have taken her by surprise, too. “He did a lot of work on the ground. He was in charge of the Karrier’s health checks before each Venus-bound trip, for one thing.”
“So that explains how he did it,” Grav mused. “He must have messed with the control panel or the destination settings when he was doing the checks.”
“That seems likely,” Rusev said.
Yury blew air from his lips. He knew as well as Holly did that Rusev wasn’t lying. “So… motive?”
No one spoke for several seconds, until Viola shared her thoughts. “When me and Holly were out with him, searching and mapping, a lot of the time he would argue with where Holly wanted to go. It was like he didn’t want us to find certain things. That’s not a motive, but… I dunno.”
“It’s useful,” Yury said, clearly in charge of the discussion. “Thank you.”
He looked at Holly, hoping she would add to it.
“He’s said a lot of things in the last hour,” she began. “He’s tried to turn me against everyone except myself… and even then, he tried to turn me over to his side. He wanted me to help him.”
Yury’s brow furrowed. “Help him with what?”
Holly hesitated. She didn’t really want to say it in front of Bo, but after looking at the boy for a few seconds she decided he was tougher than his size suggested and deserved to know. “He said we’re all going to be dead very soon and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. He was trying to get me to help him kill you all in your sleep. He said, compared to what’s coming, that would have been the kindest thing to do.”
“He said that if Holly killed him we’d all be dead in a week,” Viola chimed in. “And if she didn’t, we’d all still be dead soon.”
Holly nodded. “But whatever else is true and whatever else isn’t, Dante doesn’t think he’s going to die… so whatever is coming, it can’t be a planetary catastrophe.”
Rusev clasped her hands in front of her mouth. “So what’s the implication… that GU forces are about to arrive?”
After a few seconds of pensive silence, Robert snapped.
“Why are we wasting time asking these questions of each other?” he yelled. “None of us know the answers! But he does, and we can get them out of him. Whatever it takes, we can get them. Right, Grav?”
Holly saw that Grav’s eyes were on the ground. She knew that he’d always hated Dante for one reason or another, but he didn’t look too willing for what Robert was suggesting. Holly also knew that Robert hadn’t turned to Grav randomly and that everyone else was no doubt thinking the same thing: when it came down to it, Grav would be the one they all expected to get his hands dirty.
“Robert,” Yury said, very quietly. “Torture is more than a word. Grav has been on the wrong side, so he knows this more than anyone.”
“There are two wrong sides,” Grav said. “And trust me: the side Dante would be on… what happens when you are on that side is easier to forget than what happens when you are on the other.”
Yury nodded. “And real life is not like the movies where the information is always accurate. In real life, the victim will say anything to make you stop. They’ll say whatever they think you want to hear. Sometimes, if they can, they’ll give you information that isn’t just wrong but dangerously wrong.”
“But we only need one specific piece of information,” Robert argued. “A code. And we’ll be able to tell right away whether it’s correct. If it’s not, we’ll ask again. We’ll ask harder.”
Grav looked squarely at Robert. “When I was held, they wanted one specific piece of information: a name. Do you think I gave it to them?” He then lifted his left trouser leg to reveal a horribly disfigured calf muscle with what could only be described as a chunk missing from one side.
The agonised expression on his face after running to the bunker suddenly made sense, Holly thought.
“Dante isn’t you,” Robert said, unbudging in his position. “You would have been willing to die like a man. He is not.”
Grav’s gaze intensified. “And to get what they wanted, my captors were willing to slice off another man’s flesh like kebab meat from a skewer. Tell me, Robert: are you?”
“Everyone shut up!” Bo yelled. “Why don’t we just make an IED and blow the door off like I said yesterday?”
“There could be delicate equipment near the door,” Yury said gently. “It’s a good idea, but we don’t know what’s on the other side and what kind of damage could be done to it.”
Grav broke the group’s semi-circular arrangement by walking to the table and sitting down. He rubbed the top of his head with both hands in an unusually anxious display. “We need to fix the radio,” he said, facing away from the group as though he was talking to himself as much as anyone else. “That has to be the priority: calling for help. For rescue. Dante knows he is caught. Most of the time, when that realisation sets in, it alone is enough.”
No one replied immediately.
Grav stood up and turned back to the others. “Me and Rusev are going to the Karrier to try to fix the radio. If he has not broken and coughed up the code by the time we get back, we will reconsider our options. Because even if the radio does work, we are getting inside that bunker and figuring out what the hell is going on here.”
“And what about today?” Robert said. “We’re writing off… what… eight, ten hours?”
“Holly will guard Dante,” Yury answered, reaffirming that he was in charge. “And you will respect Grav’s decision that Dante should be left with his thoughts until tonight.”
Robert threw his hands up in disbelief. “Left to think of more lies? To think of a new plan?”
“Dad,” Viola said, pulling at his arm. “Just do what they say.”
Robert sighed but said no more, which Yury and Grav took as acquiescence.
Yury then called Rusev and Grav in closer to look over his map data and ensure that they knew the best landing site for the rescue Karrier. He told them that if contact with the station could be established today it would mean they could communicate with the rescue Karrier throughout its journey, enabling them to pass on whatever further information they gleaned about the upper atmosphere from Dante or the bunker’s contents in the meantime.
After this brief discussion, Grav announced his intention to use his bedroom in the extension as Dante’s holding cell. He asked Holly if she would mind helping him set it up, since she would be guarding Dante anyway. She agreed, and they both went outside while most of the others watched from the window and Rusev prepared everything she and Grav would need for their trip to the Karrier.
“It is safest if you do not let anyone else inside the room,” Grav said as he and Holly approached Dante. “And whatever you do, do not let him inside your head.”
Dante said nothing as they marched him into the extension and secured him to both Grav’s bed and the dividing wall. But once he was in place, the begging began:
“I’m sorry about the spitting, okay? And Holly, I’m sorry for all of the lies. But Rusev is in on this. I don’t know about anyone else and I don’t know what she’s been saying, but she’s in on everything.”
Grav lifted a roll of silver tape from his pocket and covered Dante’s mouth. “You can hear him out if you really want to, but he has been dreaming up lies and working on this shit for the last hour. I have been with Rusev a lot over the last few days while you have been with him, and I am telling you with certainty: if there was a single crack in her story — if she even had a story — I would have seen it. I will pay extra attention to everything she does today, but I think we both know she is clean.”
Holly nodded firmly. “I know.”
“Good. Well, I should go. I know this cannot be easy for you. Be strong.”
“Wait,” she called after him.
He stopped midway to the door. “Yes?”
“Once you get power back to the control room in the Karrier, check the cameras. He went inside first when we found it, so he could have done something to the radio or the power.”
“Good thinking.”
Holly tried not to beat herself up over allowing Dante to enter the Karrier alone, out of her sight. She’d had Viola to look after, and there had been no telling whether the vault containing the virus samples would still be intact. She remembered thinking that he’d taken too long to confirm it was safe, but, like the other clues, this only seemed decisively relevant in hindsight.
“If things go well at the Karrier, we will not be straight back,” Grav said, pausing at the doorway. “Hopefully we will be talking to the station. If you need a break as the day goes on, I am sure Spaceman would be willing to take over for a while. Maybe even Viola. But not Robert; too emotional.”
“I’ll be okay. Good luck with the radio.”
Grav raised his eyebrows before turning again to leave. “Fingers crossed, Hollywood…�
�
fifty-one
With Dante restrained beyond any hope of breaking free, Holly spent most of the morning and early afternoon guarding him without actually watching him. It was difficult to see him like that, whatever he had done.
Viola entered the extension some time in the afternoon with a glass of nutrition powder for Holly and one for Dante. She explained to Holly that this was at Yury’s request; the old man had predicted that Dante would reject the offering but insisted it was always good practice for guards to present themselves as humane.
Dante rejected the drink, as expected. Holly had removed the tape from his mouth hours earlier after impressing upon him that she would put it back as soon as he spoke. He hadn’t said a word since then, but Viola’s presence and the fact that Holly addressed him directly about the drink emboldened him to speak.
“There’s something you need to know about this planet,” he said.
“Mouth shut,” Holly ordered.
“It’s not a real planet, anyway,” Viola said.
Dante focused on Viola. “Fine: romosphere. There’s something you need to know about this romosphere.”
The girl pressed impatiently: “What’s a romosphere?”
“One of these,” Dante emphasised. “Basically an embryonic romotech structure with a self-contained artificial atmosphere. Roger has test sites on Earth, but this one happens to be in space. Anyway, listen to me, because that’s not the point. The point is that this romosphere is on a collision course with Earth. We are on a collision course with Earth! I came here to divert—”
“You’ve been inside the bunker how many times?” Holly asked rhetorically. “Once on day one, again when you got the antidote for Bo, and again last night. If you weren’t talking out of your ass and you actually did have to do something important, you would have done it by now. And if Earth was at stake, why the hell would Morrison stake everything on you?”
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