Chase hurried over to Holly and Grav’s side, where he had stood during rehearsals. He was too late to say the few lines he was supposed to have said and would later learn that his good friend Marcel Platt had stepped up in his absence. The crowd reacted to Chase’s obviously late arrival with some lighthearted ironic cheering, which he acknowledged with an embarrassed wave. Bradley, far less used to the spotlight, was even more embarrassed as he made his way up the stairs of one of the grandstands and sidestepped along the row to his seat. Chase watched as Bradley’s parents quietly asked the obvious questions, but he knew that those questions would be easier for the boy to deal with than those that would have come his way if he hadn’t shown up at all.
Chase then turned to another of the grandstands, where his mother Jillian and his father Christian were sitting. Jillian waved, glad to see him, but Christian’s anger at his lateness was obvious. A few seats further along, Chase saw his long-term girlfriend Nisha Kohli and her family. Nisha looked halfway amused and halfway annoyed that he was so late — somewhere between his two parents’ conflicting reactions, as he might have expected — but the annoyance faded into laughter when he embarrassed her by exaggeratedly throwing a kiss her way.
Holly nudged Chase in the arm, prompting him to face the screen and stop distracting people.
“Sorry,” he said, quietly but honestly. “And I’m sorry I’m late. I saw Bradley trying to—”
“You were already late before that,” Holly cut him off.
A few seconds of silence passed between them, filled by the words of Viola’s stirring speech, as Chase searched for something to say in his defence.
“But good work acing that Hell Run,” Holly said, saving him the trouble as she broke into a brief smile.
Not long later, and as soon as Viola’s speech ended, Holly stepped forward to address the eager crowd. “First of all, I want to thank you all again for coming out to witness this momentous occasion in humanity’s history,” she said, before glancing back at Chase and Grav. “And Chase, it was very kind of you to join us.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” he replied after the crowd’s good-natured laughter died down.
“You almost did!” his friend Marcel yelled. Even Grav cracked a smile at this.
“Anyway…” Holly said, segueing into the important matter at hand. “We all know why we’re here, so I won’t go back over familiar ground. Before we go ahead with the launch, though, I think it’s time to reveal the given name of the romokinetic sphere that will be inhabitable in as little as two years’ time. Kosmosphere was the name of the concept, a concept generated by Yury Gardev himself. But while that name has become familiar to us all over the last few years, Yury would have been the first among us to say that a new purpose-built human settlement needs a name more befitting of its grandeur.”
The crowd was truly silent now, very keen to hear the name.
Many had been suggested and debated in recent years, with some naturally having gained far more support than others. Popular proposals included names like Celestia, Xanadu and Elysium, along with similar variations of the same theme: words meaning something close to utopia or paradise.
‘Kosmosphere’, used as a publicly known placeholder during the planning and development stages, clearly lacked the desired punch.
Vesura was one potential name Holly took a liking to, as it sounded relatively pleasant and held meaning given that its spelling was ‘Rusev’ backwards with a prettifying ‘a’ on the end. The less meaningful but equally pleasant Avalon was another she considered very seriously.
One group of proposed names Holly took a distinct disliking to were a group of -dox suffix names favoured by some high ranking Rusentra board members on the Venus station. Novadox, Caelodox, and Astrodox were all presented as viable options, but the working group behind those suggestions ultimately threw their collective weight behind the name Asteradox. With aster being more faithful to the ancient Greek inspiration than astro and with the name containing the full ‘Terradox’ sound, Asteradox was viewed by many as an excellent choice.
Despite Dimitar Rusev having been as unconvinced by this name as Holly, the lack of a popular alternative meant that Asteradox had looked very much like the winning name for a prolonged period of time.
Following a Greek theme which seemed to have struck a chord with many, and simultaneously holding true to the group of paradise-themed names favoured by those on another side of the argument, Dimitar himself eventually came to Holly privately with a suggestion of his own: Arkadia.
He argued that it ticked all the boxes and rolled off the tongue better than the alternatives, particularly if people came to think of and refer to the Kosmosphere as a ship and hence added ‘the’ before its name. The Greek spelling even had a ‘k’ in place of the typical English ‘c’, continuing a theme common in Rusentra-designated names of the past, seen in everything from Karrier to Kompound and even Kosmosphere itself.
It also contained the word ‘ark’, which was a word that had been thrown around in relation to the Kosmosphere given that it would, after all, carry an extensive variation of human and animal life on its travels through space.
“The Arkadia is a perfect name for a sphere like this,” he had told her. “It works better than anything else, and even more so when the name follows the RKS prefix denoting it as the first Romokinetic sphere: RKS Arkadia. Say it aloud, Holly… ar-kay-ess ar-kay-day-ah. Even if everyone ends up considering it as a place and not as a ship, ditching both the ‘RKS’ and ’the’ prefixes and just calling it ‘Arkadia’, that still works really well. What do you think?”
Holly’s reaction was one of immediate support, and she was relieved that the name pleased almost everyone else who had a say. Dimitar’s will would ultimately have been done and he would have pushed ahead with any name Holly supported even if the rest of the board didn’t like it, but it was much better for everyone to work from a position of consensus. Arkadia wasn’t everyone’s first choice, but it was more people’s first choice than anything else and placed overwhelmingly as the most common second choice. It would have won a vote under any system had a formal vote been conducted, and no one felt strong enough opposition to argue against it.
Although the name was common knowledge among the Venus station’s relatively small population, it had not been more widely announced as an option, let alone as the final choice. Indeed, with just seconds before Holly’s announcement, not even Chase Jackson — standing just a few feet from her side — knew the name of the new world that he and many others would call home in just a few years.
With Chase being the only future inhabitant standing separately from the crowd and RPZ team, Holly turned to address him directly before she spoke her next words:
“I christen your new home… the RKS Arkadia.”
As the words settled, the crowd’s initial murmurs of reaction had a decidedly positive tone. Needless to say, this relieved Holly greatly.
“Arkadia?” Chase echoed, nodding slowly as he automatically ditched both prefixes as everyone else would likewise come to do. “I like it. I like it a lot.”
Holly knew that Chase was far too professional for there to have been any question of him publicly voicing disapproval for the name, but she was glad that he sounded very genuine in his support.
“If I could ask for a quick hand for our team here in the RPZ,” Holly said, pointing to a group of twenty or so uniformed men and women who had toiled over every detail of the imminent launch for the last four years of their lives. The audience obliged, raucously applauding as the somewhat shy staff members in question offered humble waves of acknowledgement.
“Over the next two years, our excellent team here in the RPZ will spend some of their time designing and developing a second and far smaller romokinetic sphere — a minisphere, if you will — which will eventually travel through space in Arkadia’s wake. This minisphere, to be named at a later date by the Arkadian population, will at all times remain exactly h
alfway between Earth and Arkadia. It will be unmanned, at least to begin with, and will be used as a point for emergency in-person rendezvous of all kinds.
“The minisphere’s midpoint position will self-evidently halve the journey time required for any emergency physical contact between citizens of Earth and Arkadia, should a situation requiring that arrive. It is our longer-term intention to place minispheres of this kind at frequent intervals, each serving as a kind of interplanetary pit stop. Each could quite conceivably house a Romotech Production Zone of its own, enabling long-distance travellers to fabricate any replacement parts needed for their vessels or equipment.
“By developing the minisphere here on Terradox, via the embryonic process that’s familiar to everyone by now, we will ensure that it can be launched from Arkadia very shortly after the population’s arrival. Some of our current RPZ team will be among that population, ensuring that the minisphere’s launch from Arkadia will be just as seamless as Arkadia’s launch from Terradox. Continuity and cooperation are two core tenets of this ambitious multi-site project humanity has recently endeavoured to undertake, and those tenets are at the heart of this minisphere sub-project.”
Holly didn’t intend to pause for applause, but the few seconds she spent considering her next words proved long enough to invite one.
“Unlike Terradox, Arkadia has been equipped with two independently functioning Romotech Production Zones. The first will function much as our RPZ did for the first few years of its life, focusing on the fabrication of relatively small items for both personal and research use. The second, however, will focus on the kind of large-scale sphere-development that our RPZ has conducted over the course of Arkadia’s design and creation. This second zone will be known as the Shipyard, and it will be from that Shipyard that Arkadia’s citizens ultimately launch large spheres of their own design to venture off in new directions of interest. The potential is limitless — before long, Arkadian Shipyard staff will doubtless design other spheres with their own Shipyards, ultimately allowing careful deliberate replication throughout our galaxy.”
The applause was a lot louder this time, with many people looking at each other in surprise and nodding approvingly at the exciting-sounding possibilities.
Holly beamed from ear to ear as she stepped towards the launch console, not even trying to hide her delight that four years of near-endless work was finally about to come to fruition. “And now, without further ado, the time has come for Arkadia to soar.”
She pressed the console’s small green button and stepped back. As everyone knew, the embryonic romosphere which would ultimately become Arkadia was being launched from the canyon beside Terradox Central Station. Incredibly dense and almost as large as a regular 6,000-capacity Ferrier, its launch had required the development of an enormous Super Ferrier capable of hauling it into orbit. Terradox’s zonal nature had made the logistics of a launch like this easier than would otherwise have been the case, since the Habitat Management team were able to reduce atmospheric gravity within the launch zone to simultaneously reduce the force required to initially lift such a massive object.
A highly experienced pilot was ready and waiting in the Super Ferrier, prepared to begin take-off procedures just as soon as Holly pressed the button.
Everyone also knew that the nature of a Ferrier’s take-off meant that there would be no explosive rocket-style fireworks in the sky, but they didn’t care about that and were unanimously eager to see the prodigiously sized Super Ferrier soar through the sky overhead. It wouldn’t pass directly over them, of course, but the point where it would cross Terradox’s romobot cloak had been chosen as one which would be visible from the RPZ.
When Holly pushed the green button and the Super Ferrier initiated the take-off, the image on the large screen behind Holly switched to a live feed from the launch site. The crowd cheered, understandably, and Holly turned away from them to catch a glimpse.
The camera capturing this sight had evidently been placed at the cliff-edge from which she and Viola had first discovered their crashed Karrier ten long years earlier. It was incredible to see the scale of the spacecraft that was about to launch from that very spot, let alone to consider what it was hauling, and Holly had to make a conscious effort to restrain her emotions.
The embryonic romosphere, which most people already thought of as Arkadia, appeared jet black thanks to the opaque cloak which would remain around it until the two-year expansion was complete. Teams on Terradox, Earth and the Venus station would all have access to imagery from cameras on the inside of this cloak, but the first time the general public saw Arkadia’s surface would be in two years’ time when the cloak was lifted. Arkadia’s external gravitational cloak would remain in place for even longer — right up until the enormous sphere reached a sufficient distance from Earth that its presence would have no discernible gravitational effect.
Cloak or no cloak there would have been nothing to see at the moment, in any case, and the colonists surrounding Holly were all more than satisfied to catch a glimpse of the perfect black sphere.
Only twenty seconds after she pressed the button to order the launch, Holly felt a lump in her throat as she gazed at the screen and saw the Super Ferrier successfully lift its most precious of all cargo.
“Woohoo!” dozens of the crowd yelled. “Yeahhhh!”
Within another minute or so, both the Super Ferrier and black sphere became directly visible at a great height in the sky.
“Up there,” someone yelled, drawing everyone else’s attention. “That way!”
Sure enough, there it was.
“There she goes,” Chase said, beaming the widest smile of his life.
Holly said nothing, only wiping a stubborn tear from her joyous face.
Chase briefly glanced beyond her to Grav, whose expression, as ever, gave a lot less away.
“Go well, little sphere,” Grav said, looking directly at it and speaking his first words since Chase stepped out of the Wasp. “Go well.”
Two years later
seven
“No… Peter, I don’t want to mess up your home!”
“Pavel, enough,” Peter insisted, guiding his friend and bodyguard out of the taxi and trying to usher him towards the front door of the Ospanovs’ New London home. “No one is in and if there’s any mess, I’ll clean it. I’m not sending you home across the city looking like that — not after all you’ve done for me.”
Pavel sighed in acceptance. Seconds later, he was following Peter inside… at least until Peter stopped dead on the spot.
“Daddy!” Katie yelled, excitedly jumping to her feet.
It was already too late.
“Daddy?” Viola’s voice parroted, as surprised as Katie. She appeared from the living room seconds later. Upon catching sight of Pavel she gazed intently at Peter. Their eyes silently asked each other why they were home at this hour, with Viola’s unspoken question understandably carrying a significant level of concern along with the healthy measure of surprise.
She looked beyond Peter at Pavel once more, but before she could ask anything out loud and before Peter encouraged Katie to go upstairs, the child beat them all to it.
“Is Pavel covered in paint?” she asked, the words full of all the innocence in the world.
“That’s right, angel,” Peter said, pulling Pavel into full view by his side. “Some bad people tried to throw paint at me and Pavel stepped in the way.”
Katie looked puzzled. “But you must have had your bubble switched on…” she said, halfway to a question.
Too smart for her own good, Peter often thought. Viola often told him that some of Katie’s mannerisms and unusual speech patterns reminded her of how her own younger brother Bo had been at six years old, and Robert had said similar things with more conviction. She had “her uncle’s brains and her mum’s looks”, in Robert’s grandfatherly words; “the best of both worlds”, in Peter’s.
Pavel cleared his throat. “I wasn’t one hundred percent sure tha
t the paint wouldn’t get through,” he said. “I’ve never seen paint hit a cloak before.”
Peter bit his lip, but he knew this explanation would last a few seconds at best.
“How could paint get through?” Katie pressed. “I thought nothing gets through?“
“It doesn’t,” Pavel said, “it was just that in the heat of the moment, things aren’t always clear. My job is to keep your dad safe. I would do it for free, but that’s how I’m earning my families’ tickets to Arkadia. You remember Sophie from your birthday party, right?”
Smart move, Viola thought.
“Baby Sophie?” Katie asked, her suspicious inquisitiveness dying in an instant and quickly replaced with a wide-eyed smiled. “Are you and Sophie coming to Patch’s birthday party, too? It’s tomorrow!”
“Of course they are, honey,” Viola said. “But why don’t you go and make an invitation for them now, just in case Patch forgot to give them one? Daddy will help you with the scissors while I help Pavel clean up all of this silly paint.”
Katie happily took hold of Peter’s hand and pulled him into the living room, too excited by the thought of seeing little Sophie again to reason that there was no way Patch would have forgotten to invite her.
Peter glanced at Pavel as he went and held a firm finger to his lips. “Nothing,” he mouthed, as forceful as a silent word could be.
As soon as Peter pulled the living room door closed, Pavel’s expression changed immediately. “Don’t ask,” he said, incongruously weakly for a man of his size and build. “Please.”
Viola looked deeply into Pavel’s dark eyes; there were no tears, but they were bleary. “Come to the bathroom and get cleaned up,” she said gently. “I’ll get you some clothes from Peter’s wardrobe.”
Pavel nodded in thanks and followed her up the stairs. Viola opened the bathroom door and turned on the shower, telling Pavel not to worry about staining any towels while he washed away the worst of the stains. It wasn’t paint, as everyone over the age of six knew only too well, and clean linen was the least of anyone’s concerns.
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