Kahurangi bounded out of the crowd and gave each of us a hug. “Thank you for not dying,” he said.
“What the hell?” I asked, looking around.
“Mate, everyone saw the video of you three saving Ardeleanu.”
“Everyone?”
“Well, it was a slow news day.”
I looked around. “Apparently.”
Kahurangi punched me affectionately on the shoulder. “Take the win, Jamie. Today, you three are heroes.” He pushed me lightly into the waiting crowd; Aparna and Niamh followed. Hugs and backslaps ensued.
As it turns out, Niamh was right. The cameras on the instrument packs were working and, thanks to their positions, caught the attack on Ardeleanu and our defense of him from several angles. So did the aerostat, which provided a top-down view. All of these points of view were beamed back from the aerostat to Tanaka Base in real time; additional video from Satie’s helicopter would add to it when it was transferred over. By the time we got back to base, we had become must-see TV. Everyone saw Aparna go to aid her fallen comrade, Niamh zap the creature in the face, and me shoot it in the mouth.
“I had to go to another planet to go viral,” Aparna noted as we watched the video of the attack, back at our own cottage. The three of us were told to take the afternoon off, and Kahurangi, presumably, was playing hooky.
“You’re very famous to one hundred fifty people,” Niamh said to her.
“That’s about the level of fame I would ever want.”
“What were you thinking when you started beating the shit out of that thing?” Kahurangi asked Niamh. We were at the point in the video where Niamh had gone ham on the creature, but not yet where they had zapped it.
“What does it look like I was thinking? I was pissed.”
“You have very deep wells of rage, my friend,” Kahurangi observed.
“You have no idea.”
“What about you?” Kahurangi asked me.
“I was mostly thinking about how Satie was going to be annoyed with us,” I said. “He told us not to have an emergency, and then we went and had one.”
“You didn’t have it. Ardeleanu did.” Kahurangi scrubbed back to the biologist falling on his ass and the creature leaping apparently out of nowhere to get at him.
“Dude, I slipped and fell,” I said. “It was the very first thing I did coming out of the helicopter. My knee still hurts. It was him that was attacked, but it could have been any of us.”
“Not me,” Niamh piped in.
“No, your deep wells of rage would have rendered you absolutely immune to attack if you had fallen,” I said.
“Bang-on right they would.”
All our phones made notification noises; Aparna got to hers first. “Update on Ardeleanu,” she said. “Muscle tears but no ligaments torn or major blood vessels nicked. He’s been given a full spectrum of antibiotics and a pair of crutches, and has been told no more fieldwork for the rest of this tour. He’ll be fine.”
“Just like he kept saying,” I noted.
Niamh narrowed their eyes. “Don’t you even.”
“Sorry.”
“Also,” Aparna continued, “after dinner tonight there’s going to be a special ceremony and party in our honor. The three of us, I mean. Sorry, Kahurangi.”
Kahurangi grinned. “Considering what you had to do to get a party, I’m happy to miss out.”
“What’s the ‘special ceremony’ about?” Niamh asked.
Aparna looked back to the notice. “It says we’re to be ‘inducted into the orders.’”
Niamh’s brow furrowed. “And what the actual hell do you think that means?”
* * *
“From time to time, now and again, here and there, we find in our ranks people who do extraordinary things at extraordinary times,” Brynn MacDonald was saying in the dining hall. She was at the table where she had just finished her dinner before standing up and literally yelling at everyone to shut up and pay attention to her. If this was part of the “special ceremony,” then it was deeply, deeply informal. “And when that happens, what do we do?”
“Induct them into the orders!” came the general response.
“Yes! That’s it! And today is one of those days,” MacDonald continued. “By now I’m sure you’ve seen the video of Ion Ardeleanu almost becoming a buffet, and then three of our newest Tanaka Base citizens coming to his rescue. To commemorate this event, it is time to make inductions. To begin, I yield the floor to my Blue Team counterpart, your friend and mine, Jeneba Danso.”