There was plenty of sound to go with the sight, but it wasn’t yet unbearable.
Holly briefly turned to see whether Robert and Grav had seen it yet. Robert was behind her, gazing up in teary-eyed wonder, but Grav remained at the bottom of the stairs looking and listening into the bunker.
For a second, Holly worried.
But Grav then turned around and ran up the stairs, wiping his brow in a habitual display of relief. “They are in a fully controlled descent towards the landing site,” he told the others, having to speak up to be heard over the incoming Karrier’s increasing volume. “All systems operational.”
Grav held his hand out when he reached the surface, at the perfect height for Bo to jump as high as he could and deliver a palm-stinging high-five. Grav then pointed to his ears and encouraged everyone to return to the bunker to gather their things for the drive to the landing site.
“You mean launch site,” Viola happily corrected him.
He laughed. “Launch site it is.”
Bo and Viola immediately crossed the bunker towards the pile of luggage. Yury was still in his seat. And though Rusev rose to her feet when the others re-entered, Holly couldn’t miss the grim look on her face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, making sure to speak quietly enough that the children, at the other side of the bunker, wouldn’t hear.
“The entry went perfectly,” Rusev replied. While shaking her head in an effort to dismiss Holly’s concern, she gulped very noticeably. Combined with the tone of her voice, this left little doubt that something lay behind her words.
“What the hell is going on?” Holly asked, a lot less quietly.
This caught the attention of Robert and Grav, who crowded around to see and hear what the apparent problem was.
Bo, having heard nothing while engrossed in his carefree task of gathering his things, returned from the far side of the bunker with his own suitcase in one hand and Yury’s walking stick in the other. “Come on, Spaceman,” he beamed, offering a hand to help the old man out of his chair. “It’s time to go.”
Yury’s eyes flicked to Rusev and then lingered on Holly for several seconds. He finally returned his focus to Bo and put a quivering hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Thanks, little man,” he said, trying to force a smile. “But I’m not coming.”
seventy-seven
Grav spoke for everyone: “What did you just say?”
“Everyone understands the importance of uncloaking Terradox,” Yury said, appearing slightly more relaxed now that his secret was out, “and this is the only guaranteed way. There’s no magic plan to hook our radio up to the control console so we can do it remotely; the plan is that I’m staying here to press the button.”
Holly didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know what to think. Her mind was a mess of anger, of sadness, of everything. The anger lay at Rusev’s door since she had obviously known of Yury’s idea the previous day and stayed quiet while he lied to Holly about the other make-believe plan. The sadness came from the fact that she had known Yury long enough to know that literally nothing could sway him.
“You’re not staying here,” Bo said. “Dad, Holly… tell him. Tell him we’re all leaving. Tell him we’re all going to the station.”
Robert, clearly sensing the futility in saying any such thing, put his arm around Bo and kept quiet.
“The kid is right,” Grav insisted, addressing Yury in a tone so firm it bordered on aggressive. “If you actually think I am leaving you behind…”
Yury’s instinctive reaction was a grin. “Grav, I appreciate the sentiment but—”
“Fuck your sentiment,” Grav snapped. “You are going to the station. If someone has to stay here to do the uncloaking and bring Morrison to his knees, that someone is going to be me.”
“Listen to me, Goran,” Yury said, lowering his tone and emphasising the Goran in the firm manner of a parent calling their son by his rarely used full name. “There are two chairs. If you insist on staying, you’re welcome to sit beside me.”
Grav blew air from his lips in exasperation. “I am volunteering to stay instead of you.”
“Grav…” Holly said. “I don’t want to leave him, either, but his mind’s made up.”
“Listen, Hollywood: I do not have to tell you how I feel about the job you have done, okay? You have kept the three unlikeliest space-crash survivors in history alive for nine days on this shit-hole of a planet, and now you are taking them to the station. That was your job,” Grav said. He then motioned towards Yury. “But he was my job. My job was delivering him and Rusev to the station. That is why I am here. And if I am not walking onto that station with both of them by my side, I am not walking onto that station.”
“You want to talk about reasons for travel?” Yury said, leaning on the arms of his chair. “Let us talk about reasons for travel. You say you are here to keep me alive, correct?”
Grav nodded firmly, holding Yury’s eyes.
“Well I left Earth to die with dignity.”
Silence circled.
“Not here, I admit,” Yury went on, “but that detail can’t be helped. You’re a man who likes to talk about respect, Grav, and I ask you now to speak with your actions. I ask you now to respect my wishes.”
Grav stood perfectly still for several seconds before inhaling so deeply that everyone saw his chest rise. He then signalled his surrender by extending a hand for Yury to shake.
Yury ignored the hand and embraced Grav warmly. “I will not forget the things you have done for me,” he said.
Grav’s head briefly fell onto Yury’s shoulder. It quickly jolted back up, as though he remembered that people were watching. In all the time Holly had known Grav, he had never exhibited so much as a hint of vulnerability. Neither this nor the stubbornly tear-resistant expression on his face when he and Yury parted were easy things for her to look at.
“Morrison is going to burn for this,” Grav said.
Yury chuckled, piercing the glum mood. “That’s the spirit.”
Grav proceeded to silently carry everyone’s luggage outside to the waiting rovers, several pieces at a time.
Everyone else said their goodbyes to Yury, with both Bo and Viola openly weeping as they exited the bunker. Robert ushered them outside after expressing his gratitude to Yury, understanding that Holly and Rusev, who had known the iconic man for far longer, would want some privacy to say their own farewells.
Rusev had in fact had plenty of time for this, having already known of Yury’s desire to sacrifice his remaining time to remove every shred of doubt that the group’s plan to take down Roger Morrison and his corrupt global order would succeed. She kissed Yury on the cheek, told him that his sacrifice would never be forgotten, and turned to leave.
“She was sadder than that when I first told her the idea,” Yury whispered as she left. Holly laughed through her sadness. “She didn’t just accept it. But there’s no other way. No one in the crew could think of anything. I couldn’t, she couldn’t, you couldn’t.”
Holly shook her head, wishing dearly that she’d been able to.
Yury sat down. “Do you remember your first day? When you waltzed into my testing centre with the rest of that year’s intake?”
“Of course I remember it,” Holly said. “That was the biggest day of my life. If I hadn’t passed those tests, I would’ve been out.”
“Exactly. But you didn’t just pass; you slaughtered those tests then told me to call you Holly, not Ivy, because everyone else had been calling you Holly to annoy you. And when you said it, everyone laughed… so then I told you not to talk back… and then you said ‘I’m sorry, Mr Gardev’… and then when you all left, I turned to Alana — remember Alana? — and I said: ‘That girl has it. She’s going to make it.’ And do you know what? Every single day since that very first one, all you’ve ever done is prove me right.”
Holly glanced away, preferring to risk looking rude over welling up.
“Time to g
et going,” Yury said. “Get those kids to that station, Holly. That’s why you’re here.”
Holly blinked hard then turned back to face him. “Okay. And you definitely know what to press, right?”
“Well, it’s definitely one of these three buttons…” Yury joked.
She laughed. “Goodbye, Mr Gardev.”
“Stay strong,” he replied, slowly swivelling his chair around to face the console once more.
Holly came face-to-face with Grav at the bunker’s open door. Each knew exactly how the other felt, so neither said a word.
seventy-eight
The drive to the launch site was a less happy occasion than it should have been. Holly drove one rover with Robert in the passenger seat and his children behind, while Grav drove the other with Rusev and everyone’s luggage.
As Holly drove, she wasn’t sure whether Grav would stay diplomatically silent or whether he would currently be lambasting Rusev for supporting Yury’s decision to stay behind. She hoped for the former, since Rusev was closer to Yury than anyone else and had obviously only accepted his selfless offer as an absolute last resort.
Bo and Viola were quieter than Holly had ever heard them. The sight of the waiting Karrier livened them up — particularly Bo — as they exited the rover and began the familiar descent to the grassy canyon below.
Holly watched as the rescue crew of four busily moved cargo from the group’s fallen Karrier into the rescue Karrier. She hadn’t directly asked Rusev for confirmation of whether the previously discussed defensive weapons system would be taken to the station, but the heavy lifting equipment and huge metal crates suggested so.
On the ground, the crew warmly greeted Holly and the rest of her group. She vaguely recognised two of the four as the chaperones who had been assigned to the other Karrier months earlier when she and Grav had assumed their own respective roles. The third and fourth crew members were more senior members of Rusev’s station command. Holly knew both of their faces and names but had never met them in person. Predictably, they both knew her and proclaimed how glad they were to finally meet her despite the circumstances. They also fawned over the children and thanked Robert for his strength, making sure he understood that the evidence he had provided — specifically his late wife’s explosive research into the origins of the catastrophic famine — would play a crucial role in the hours and days to come.
“Is this thing exactly the same as our Karrier?” Bo asked as he covered the final few steps towards the entrance.
“Yup,” Holly said. “Identical.”
“So we can sleep in the lander?”
“Sure can.”
Bo hurried inside. Viola ran forward to keep up with him, leaving Holly and Robert to enter last.
Though none of them, Holly included, had ever set foot in this Karrier, its familiar layout made the route to the emergency lander feel like second nature.
“This is where you rugby tackled me,” Viola said to Holly, feigning annoyance as they crossed the threshold from the main section of the Karrier into their makeshift accommodation.
“And that’s where Bo was hiding,” Holly replied, pointing to the corner. “How in the hell was that only nine days ago?”
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Robert quipped.
Holly turned to see the man grinning as he placed his suitcase under one of the beds. Nine days earlier, she had been exasperated by how useless he seemed as she tried to ensure a safe touchdown while dealing with Viola’s anger and her own feelings of crushing helplessness. But now that she knew what Robert had gone through in the lead up to those moments, she not only regretted judging him so quickly but also had a newfound appreciation for his strength and courage. He had taken massive and selfless action to protect his children not once but twice: first by taking them off-Earth to evade the danger he wisely saw coming, and more recently by tackling Dante when he had a gun pointed at Bo.
Robert Harrington may have taken a while to prove himself, Holly thought, but he had sure as hell come through when it mattered.
After what seemed like no time, one of the senior crew members appeared at the door to tell everyone that take off was imminent.
“Are you staying with us?” Bo asked Holly. “Dad, can she stay with us?”
“She’s not a stray dog,” Robert grinned, still in jestful spirits now that escape from Terradox was so imminent.
“I’ll stay,” Holly said. She turned back to the crew member. “The seal between the compartments doesn’t have to close during take off anyway, right? We only did that during the passenger runs so no one was walking around.”
“That’s right, it’ll stay open,” the crew member replied before departing.
“You all remember what it felt like to take off from Earth, don’t you?” Holly asked. “I know it was a while ago.”
“Viola was crying,” Bo said.
“Only because I actually had friends who I was leaving behind,” she retorted.
Robert sighed and rolled his eyes. “Take away the danger and they fall right back into the old patterns.”
“That’s always the way it goes,” Holly said, quietly glad that everything felt so low-key.
An automated message then played through the lander’s speakers, instructing everyone to remain seated. The vibration kicked in seconds later. The Karrier’s launch procedure was far smoother than many Holly had experienced in simulations prior to her first real mission, but it still had some kick.
“’Bye, Terradox,” Bo said as the Karrier left the logic-defying surface.
“Good bloody riddance,” Robert added.
Holly was the first to stand in defiance of the automated order, a mere twenty seconds or so after take off when the worst of the intense vibrations had passed. She looked down as everything grew smaller and smaller. It was a surreal sight; one which was being carefully and thoroughly captured by sophisticated recording equipment mounted to the Karrier’s base.
Robert joined Holly at the window seconds later, prompting the children to follow.
“How will we know when we’ve definitely made it out?” Viola asked.
“It’ll disappear, dummy,” Bo replied.
Viola punched him in the arm, hard enough to show him she meant it but lightly enough to avoid leaving a mark.
As a whole, the visible areas of Terradox looked as rocky and barren as they had during the group’s initial unplanned descent. Holly hadn’t seen it “come out of nowhere” like Grav described, but she looked forward to seeing it vanish.
And then, just like that, vanish it did.
“Holy shit!” Viola said.
“Language,” Robert automatically chided as he gazed open-mouthed at the nothingness below.
Bo jumped onto one of the beds, claiming it as his own. He lay back and smiled. “Next stop: Venus.”
“That’s my bed,” Viola yelled.
Robert temporarily ignored their squabble and turned to Holly. “We made it,” he said. “We actually made it.”
“We sure did,” Holly said.
When Robert walked over to quell his children’s argument over which bed was whose, Holly sighed and gazed mournfully towards the perfectly cloaked romosphere.
Well, she thought… most of us made it.
Day Eleven
seventy-nine
Given the Karrier’s closed environment and artificial lighting, there had been no obvious division between night and morning. But when Holly glanced at her wristband after taking in the latest positive report from the station that the early stages of the group’s evidence-leaking plan were going down well on Earth, she saw that it was now the day on which everything rested: Revelation Day.
In theory, Holly had agreed to share a lander with Robert and his family for the return trip to the station while Rusev and Grav shared the other. In practice, she had spent almost every second in the control room with Rusev, Grav and the two senior members of the rescue crew. Bo slept for a few hours here and there and Viola
made the most of her proximity to the Karrier’s dining machine, but Holly hadn’t seen much of either of them.
Phase one of the leaks, orchestrated by Ekaterina Rusev but carried out by high-ranking members of her team aboard the Venus station, had so far gone better than anyone could have realistically hoped.
Any GU attempts to overwhelm receiving equipment with gibberish signals, which Rusev fully expected to come, would have proven futile for the simple reason that the station was communicating directly with friendly Earth-based operatives using uncracked transfer protocols. These earthbound communications originated from the station rather than the Karrier in order to avoid the remote but potentially fatal risk of the Karrier’s path being traceable from Earth, a development which would have revealed the group’s survival and escape from Terradox.
To further encourage the belief that she and the rest of the travelling group hadn’t survived, Rusev ordered her station-based team to include statements to the effect that her Karrier had failed to reach its destination and that, in keeping with the rest of the leaks, foul play from Roger Morrison was suspected. Rusev’s presumed death was cited as the reason for the explosive information being released now, a kind of dead man’s switch activated ten days after her last contact with the station. Rusev had candidly shared her thought process regarding this point with Holly, asserting with confidence that GU retaliation against the station was out of the question given that it would be seen as a self-evident admission of guilt in the eyes of a global population already reacting with growing fury to a series of appalling revelations which could never be pushed back under Roger Morrison’s rug.
The content of phase one focused on two issues: Morrison’s myriad links to the epoch-defining events of Devastation Day and Olivia Harrington’s research into the origin of the near-apocalyptic famine which preceded it. Olivia’s research, bravely smuggled to Rusev’s launch site by Robert and his children, spoke for itself. Only very limited excerpts had been widely published before high-ranking GU officials caught wind of the story and called her in for an unscheduled but supposedly routine performance review. Olivia’s documented fears about the real reason for this meeting, along with her suspicious death just minutes before its commencement, painted a vivid picture.
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