“That is good to hear. The Maharani herself cares little for our cause and craves only the life of luxury she once enjoyed at Sumitra,” mused Taranis, referring to the grand palatial complex in Ayodhya that had once been home to the Maharaja and his family. “Fenris tells me she is trying to make a deal with Que Qiao to return as Governor of Yuanshi! This has put Fenris in a somewhat delicate position, but he assures me he will not let her plans interfere with our own and will do his utmost to sabotage any investigation.”
“She’ll soon have to rethink her plans, if all goes well,” noted Kartikeya.
“Indeed. My disciples are but days from their awakening. Soon we will be ready to spread the faith with both words and fire!” Taranis declared with grim satisfaction. “The true godly spirit of Yuanshi will rise again, Kartikeya. The time of the new dawn is near!”
A sound in the darkened room behind drew a glance from Kartikeya and he cursed as he saw a figure steal away into the shadows. Yaksha had long made a habit of eavesdropping. This latest exchange between himself and Taranis had revealed more than most.
“Damn that woman!” he muttered.
Her own murmurs, though faint, caught him surprise.
“Ravana,” he heard her say. “A name I’ve not heard in a long time.”
*
Inari and Namtar stood in the doorway of the church and looked out across the road at the brightly-lit entrance of Ayodhya railway station. They had left Kubera over three hours ago, but due to the time difference between Ayodhya and Lanka the sun had only just set. The rain had been with them all the way and in the gloom the deserted street shimmered as it reflected the city lights in its damp slickness. Above, a gap in the clouds revealed a glimpse of the blue moon of Daode low in the darkening sky. Inari squirmed uncomfortably as the straps of the heavy rucksack dug into his shoulders, took a hesitant step forwards, then paused.
“Do I have to do this?” he asked. “You know I don’t like the rain.”
“It will be nice and dry inside the station,” Namtar told him. “The spaceport express departs in half an hour and it is imperative that both you and the package are aboard when it leaves. All you need to do is hide it, activate the timing device and then keep watch to make sure our plot is not discovered before time. What could be simpler?”
“Staying at home?” replied Inari. “Speaking of which, if I blow up the station, how do we get back to Lanka? I bought a return ticket.”
“Our target is the spaceport, not the station,” Namtar reassured him. Inari saw he relished the taste of the lie upon his lips; he knew it was so, for earlier he had overheard his colleague mutter something about getting a refund on Inari’s return fare. Namtar raised his hand to push him out into the rain, glanced warily at Inari’s rucksack, then gingerly edged away. “Fear not, comrade. When all is said and done, we shall meet again. The embrace of the Dhusarian Church is here not just to keep us from the rain.”
Inari grumbled under his breath, recalling that as a homeless ex-convict he had been lured to church purely because it had been the only place willing to offer food and shelter. Seeing Namtar was not about to volunteer to take his place, he stepped into the rain.
Keeping low, Inari crossed to the other side of the road and entered the station. The concourse was almost deserted and the only eyes watching as he crept furtively towards the dormant trains were those of an elderly couple sitting on a bench, unless he counted the electronic stares of the omnipresent security scanners, not to mention that of a solitary maintenance robot sweeping the floor. Inari did not fear the cameras, for all they did was allow the replaying of his movements after the event, by which time he hoped to be safely back in Lanka and out of reach of Que Qiao police. The robot he regarded more cautiously, for some were armed and could be operated remotely by security staff. However, the eight-limbed metal box on wheels shuffling back and forth with a broom looked harmless enough.
The missile-like monorail train that was the spaceport express stood silently at platform four, its deep blue paintwork reflecting Inari’s nervous steps as he approached. The first two carriages already had a few passengers aboard, but the third and final one was empty and moments later Inari was inside. He quietly slipped the rucksack from his shoulders into a convenient hiding place behind one of the seats, reached into the top of the pack and pressed the switch to activate the timer on the device inside. Unbeknown to Inari, as the unseen digital display began to count down, the time left remaining was in minutes, not hours.
He was just about to take a seat himself when he felt a sudden pang of hunger. Namtar had instructed him to stay with the package, but Inari figured it would not matter if he had a quick look to see if there was a snack machine on the station concourse. As he stepped out of the express train he almost fell over the maintenance robot, which had followed and was now busily sweeping the platform outside the door. It seemed that after crossing the rain-drenched road Inari had left a muddy trail across the floor.
“Sorry about that,” he said to the robot. “Still, it keeps you in work.”
He pressed the control to close the carriage door and quickly headed back across the concourse. He had almost reached the row of vending machines near the exit when a sudden loud metallic voice from behind startled him into a stumbling halt.
“Is this your bag, sir?” rasped the maintenance robot.
Inari stared at the rucksack swaying gently from the claws at the end of two of the robot’s eight spindly arms. On platform four, he saw that the carriage door he had carefully closed behind him was wide open.
“Put that back!” he growled.
“Is this your bag, sir?” repeated the robot, trundling closer.
“Yes. No!” snapped Inari. “I don’t want it! Put it back on the train!”
Now starting to panic, he shuffled towards the exit. To his dismay, the robot followed, the swinging rucksack becoming ever more ominous with every squeaky turn of wheels. Inari reached forward to grab the pack, then thought the better of it and instead ran out of the station and across the street. As his feet pounded through the puddles he could still hear the rasping voice following him with its ever-insistent demands to claim his luggage.
Inari leapt through the door of the church and dashed to where Namtar sat hunched beneath one of the church’s telepathy transmitters, his fingers in his ears. Inari’s wild gestures and babbled words did not get through to him even after Namtar had extracted his digits and it was not until the maintenance robot rolled into the church, still holding the primed rucksack, that his colleague truly appreciated the gravity of the situation.
“Is this your bag, sir?”
“Quick!” Namtar yelled. “Get out of here!”
As one, Inari and Namtar sprinted for the door, the robot close behind them. Namtar slammed the door shut before the robot could catch up and they managed to cover a hundred metres in record time before a deafening explosion shook the street, throwing them to the ground.
Lifting his head, Inari peered over his shoulder into the cloud of dust billowing up the street, then shielded his eyes as flaming bits of church began to fall with the rain. The building had been completely destroyed, leaving nothing but a rubble-strewn crater and four smoking lumps of rubber where the wheels of the unsuspecting robot had trundled their last. As he picked himself up from the ground, the wail of distant sirens drifted across the night.
“Whoops,” he muttered. Beside him, his colleague wearily climbed to his feet.
“All in all, well up to your usual standards,” Namtar remarked. “I would not want to be in your shoes when Taranis hears you’ve blown up one of his churches!”
*
At breakfast the next morning, Hanuman and Ganesa were the first to take their seats in the banqueting hall and thus pleasantly surprised to find that Inari had not yet decimated the prepared morning feast. News of the failed attack had not gone down well with Kartikeya, who was reportedly furious that Namtar and Inari had managed to botch what should ha
ve been a straightforward assignment in such spectacular fashion.
“What do you make of the young Raja?” asked Hanuman, between sips of orange juice. “Seems a shame a young boy like that is mixing with Kartikeya’s ruffians.”
“I blame his mother,” said Ganesa. She tucked a length of dark hair behind an ear and reached for another bread roll. “It would be just like the Maharani to sanction the kidnap herself in some weird plot to return to Ayodhya. I heard she can be quite devious at times.”
“You think so?” asked Hanuman, surprised. “I thought it was all Kartikeya’s idea.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of Yaksha, followed by a sleepy-looking Surya still dressed in his nightclothes. Yaksha seemed strangely subdued and as she picked at the fruit salad Ganesa had laid out for her it was clear her mind was elsewhere.
“How are you settling in, Raja?” asked Ganesa. “Did you sleep okay?”
Surya nodded. “The holovid in my room is amazing!” he told her. Grabbing a bread roll, he proceeded to split it with his knife and pile it high with strawberry preserve. “It’s like magic the way I can change channels and do everything with my mind.”
“You obviously learn quickly,” Ganesa replied. She too had an implant but had never fully got to grips with its potential. Everyone else at Kubera had been born before childhood implantation became mandatory and now refused to have one as an act of defiance. Some even believed the rumours that Que Qiao could use them to read people’s minds.
“Did you hear about Namtar and Inari?” Hanuman asked Yaksha.
Yaksha smiled. “I did. Kartikeya is not a happy man.”
“What happened?” asked Surya.
“They took their special brand of terrorism to Ayodhya,” Ganesa told him. “No one was hurt and there’s one less church in town. I thought that was rather a good result myself.”
“You’re not supposed to say things like that!” said Hanuman, adopting a mock scolding tone. “These people pay us good money to fly them around.”
“Aren’t you all on the same side?” asked Surya, thoroughly confused. “I thought Kartikeya was your leader.”
“We don’t take sides,” replied Hanuman. “We only take cash. Preferably in advance.”
A hush fell upon the table. From across the palace, the distant sound of an extremely irate Kartikeya shouting at Namtar and Inari drifted quietly through the air.
“Do you know a girl named Ravana?” Yaksha suddenly asked, turning to Surya.
Surya looked at her in surprise. “Ravana isn’t a girl’s name,” he pointed out.
Hanuman regarded Yaksha oddly. “Why do you ask?”
“I heard the name recently,” she said. “As the Raja says, Ravana is not usually a name someone would choose for a daughter, yet years ago I did know of a child who had been given that name for a very strange reason. I wondered whether it was indeed the same girl.”
“Ravana was the ten-headed demon king,” Surya declared.
“A lot of people have names from mythology,” mused Ganesa. “It seems to be a growing trend as we delve deeper into the galaxy. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Fascinating,” retorted Hanuman, faking a yawn.
“I am pleased you know something of the legends of our homeland back on Earth,” Yaksha said to Surya. “The priest Taranis was also fond of the old stories and once gave the name Ravana to the unborn son of a good friend of mine. He predicted that the boy would be a great warrior, who would see Lanka join forces with Ayodhya and free Yuanshi from Que Qiao rule. My friend wanted no part of this and had secret medical treatment early in the pregnancy so that her child would be born a girl. Yet she was so scared of Taranis that she still let the priest name her newborn Ravana.”
“Taranis must have found out eventually,” remarked Hanuman.
“Not until Aranya Pass,” Yaksha told him. “Ravana was injured in the attack and her unusual name was commented upon by hospital staff. Taranis was reportedly furious, but soon after disappeared in mysterious circumstances and was presumed dead for years.”
“Why did you ask me if I knew Ravana?” asked Surya. The infamous battle of Aranya Pass, a botched and bloody attack early in the civil war that saw royalist rebels fire upon an unarmed medical supplies convoy, was one he knew from history lessons.
“Do you know her?” inquired Yaksha.
Surya shook his head. “My mother doesn’t let me get out much,” he confessed.
“Ravana’s father was a pilot and it was his ship that was commandeered when you and your mother fled Yuanshi following the death of your father,” she told him. “Ravana too may have ended up at that asteroid you have called home for the past nine years.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Ganesa.
“Because she is a sneaky, devious woman who listens to private conversations when she should be minding her own business!” roared Kartikeya, suddenly appearing at the door.
Yaksha went deathly pale. “I was just telling the boy of his history, no more.”
“Did you mention that this girl Ravana was a witness to the Raja’s kidnap?”
“Kidnap?” retorted Yaksha. “Yesterday you were talking of liberation.”
“Silence!” snapped Kartikeya. He approached the table and glared at Yaksha. “Your indiscretion will be the death of you, mark my words.”
“Your words are something for which I do not care,” Yaksha remarked coolly.
“Maybe not,” retorted Kartikeya. “Yet careless talk is dangerous. You’d better pray to the greys it does not prove to be the undoing of this girl Ravana also!”
Chapter Five
Strangers in a strange land
RAVANA PEERED into the narrow space between the curved hull and the carousel housing and cautiously felt along the bundle of cables that ran along the inner spine of the Platypus. The spherical mass of the combined fusion plant and extra-dimensional drive at her back left little room for manoeuvre. The ladder upon which she stood, though bolted to the cargo bay wall, seemed a lot more wobbly in the gravity of the hollow moon than when in flight.
When the ship first came into her father’s possession it had been no more than a lowly interplanetary freighter. Quirinus saw the ship’s potential from the start and the fitting of an ED drive had been but the first of a series of modifications towards creating a vessel ideal for clandestine voyages between star systems. The most recent addition was the carousel habitation module, a cylindrical cabin that spun upon its axis like a miniature version of the hollow moon, transplanted from a larger passenger cruiser to provide an area of artificial gravity during long flights. The downside was that when it came to repairs, the various alterations and necessary extra fuel tanks had left the Platypus with far too many nooks and crannies to make maintaining the ship easy.
Reaching into the gap, Ravana’s hand at first found nothing amiss, but then she felt the squishy tendrils of the strange, plant-like growth they had recently noticed invading the inner recesses of the ship. She gave the tendril an experimental tug but it clung firm. Withdrawing her hand, she lowered herself down the ladder to the halfway point, slipped into the carousel hub crawl tunnel, then shuffled quickly past the hatch leading to the carousel interior and onwards to the short ladder at the end. Moments later, she emerged breathlessly up onto the flight deck, where her father was busy peering into the dark recesses behind the main console, an open tool box at his feet. True to form, her electric cat was fast asleep on the co-pilot’s chair. Upon hearing her enter, Quirinus turned and gave her a weary smile.
“Did you see anything?” he asked.
“They’ve reached as far as the ED drive,” Ravana told him. “I can feel them along the main run of cables. I wonder what they are?”
“All the stems we’ve found lead back to the AI unit,” reflected Quirinus, meaning the artificial intelligence core processor at the heart of the ship’s flight and life-support systems. “Zotz reckons he has seen something like it before and has gone
back to his father’s workshop to have a look.”
“Do you think it’s dangerous?”
“Hard to tell. They don’t seem to be affecting anything,” Quirinus admitted, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “I’ve run the AI unit’s diagnostic programme twice already and searched the net for any mention of it in maintenance bulletins, but found nothing helpful.” He pressed a switch on the console. “Ship, report status.”
“All flight and life-support systems are functioning normally,” said the synthesized female voice. “There is superficial damage to the starboard tailfin, a small leak in the flight-deck air-conditioning unit, the light is not working in the toilet cubicle, the…”
“Stick to the important stuff!” Quirinus interrupted testily. “Nothing’s wrong, see?”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” asked Ravana.
“Yes and no. If there was a fault it would give us something to look for.”
Ravana lowered her sleeping cat to the floor and sat down in her co-pilot’s seat. The ship was berthed in the shuttle bay at Dockside. All she could see through the flight-deck windows, beyond the beak-like sonic shield generator that formed the nose of the aptly-named Platypus, was the graffiti-riddled concrete of the hangar walls.
“I wonder why she didn’t invite me?” she asked suddenly.
“Who?”
“The Maharani. We brought those people back from Ascension so she could talk to them in person, but it was me who saw the men take the Raja away.”
“That woman is trouble,” Quirinus retorted, returning his attention to the console. “My advice is to stay clear and not get involved. It will only end in tears.”
“All they did was find that spaceship,” Ravana mumbled, swinging her legs in a sulk. “Anyone could have done that.”
“The ship was here and we never saw it,” he pointed out. “Wak’s had a robot probe scanning the surface of the asteroid since yesterday looking for the other side of that hole you saw but as far as I know has found nothing.”
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