Hollow Moon (37 page)

“Welcome to the crew, Master Wak. I look forward to
learning your voice print.”

“Quite,” murmured Ravana. The tendrils were one thing,
but a chatty spacecraft was something else entirely, especially now she knew
the AI’s thoughts were the product of alien brain cells. “Ship, run pre-flight
checks for a short interplanetary hop to Hemakuta spaceport, Daode. I have one
last thing to do before we leave, but be ready for a quick getaway.”

“Good luck,” said Zotz quietly. He suddenly looked quite
distraught.

Ravana leaned over and gave him a kiss. “Look after Jones
and the
Platypus
for me.”

Before Zotz could reply, she quickly dropped into the
crawl tunnel and returned to the cargo bay. With a wary eye upon Fenris,
Hanuman was showing Ostara how to use his plasma pistol, which she held as if
it were a dead fish.

“Zotz has access to the AI unit,” Ravana reported. “What
now?”

“Now we wait for the diversion,” murmured Hanuman.

Surya stood at the control panel of the rocket launcher,
awestruck by the simplistic yet savage lines of the weapon created from the
contents of the bags. It had taken Namtar and Inari just a few minutes to
assemble the device, which was essentially a barrel and flare shield fixed to a
tilted frame. The battered shield had one new dent where Namtar had hit Inari
with it after the fat man accidentally caught Namtar’s shins with part of the
frame.

“This is amazing,” murmured Surya. He idly brushed his
fingers across the panel.

“No touching!” snapped Namtar. “The firing circuits are
live.”

“I haven’t loaded a rocket yet,” Inari muttered, limping
towards them.

The black cylinder in his arms was half a metre long and
oozed malevolence from the red cone at one end to the small rocket nozzle and guidance
fins at the other. Inari lifted it to the open end of the barrel, pressed a
concealed lever to make the fins retract and then dropped the rocket smoothly
into the launcher. There was a soft thud as the missile slid inside and linked
with the ignition mechanism at the bottom of the barrel.

“Is this what you two do in the war?” asked Surya.
“Terrorist attacks?”

“We are not terrorists!” Namtar declared indignantly. “We
are freedom fighters, with the right of the Dhusarian Church on our side!”

Surya was quite taken aback at this sudden outburst.
Namtar frowned, well aware of how the rebels’ activities looked to Que Qiao.
His own motives for joining the Dhusarian Church and Kartikeya’s royalist army
were questionable, for Namtar had done so purely for personal gain, admittedly
with little success.

“My father, Ravana’s mother and other innocent people
have died in your fight for freedom,” Surya said at last. “Perhaps my place is
here on Yuanshi. If I can help bring peace to the moon then I should. I am sure
this would have been my father’s wish.”

“Honourable words indeed, my dear Raja,” said Namtar,
though they all knew the late Maharaja had been far from innocent as far as the
war was concerned. “It is time for us to select an apt target for creating our
diversion. I am reliably informed there are a number of official transports on
the far side of the palace that should serve admirably.”

Surya took this as a cue to step away from the launcher’s
control panel. He watched with interest as Namtar switched on the guidance
system and brought up a satellite image of Sumitra Palace and the surrounding
park on the console screen. Various dark blobs were marked by a green square,
with a large group of them on the other side of the palace and a further
solitary one very close to their own position. Earlier, Namtar had suggested it
would be better if Inari personally took a homing beacon to the car park but
Inari had refused, for he was slowly becoming wise to Namtar’s homicidal
tendencies.

“You’re right,” observed Inari. Surya joined him in
peering over Namtar’s shoulder at the cluster of green squares on the screen.
“There’s a whole convoy parked over there.”

Namtar pressed the green square at the centre of the
cluster and the symbol marking the distant Que Qiao ground car began to flash
red. Satisfied, he lifted a cover next to the screen to reveal a large red
button. His finger moved to press it, then paused.

“Would you care to have the honour, my Raja?” he asked.

Surya’s eyes lit up and he nodded greedily. Extending his
own hand, he put a finger to the button and gave it a firm press. With a
deafening whoosh, the rocket erupted out of the launcher and soared into the
air, leaving a white vapour trail in its wake.

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “That is fantastic!”

Surya stared in delight at the missile speeding towards
its target. As he stepped back for a better look, he accidentally trod upon
Inari’s laser-damaged boot and was promptly deafened by an agonised shriek as
the freedom fighter felt the boy’s weight crushing down upon his charred toes.
Blinded by pain, Inari half-hopped, half-staggered away, then made a grab for
the launcher to stop himself from falling. His fingers barely managed to brush
the control panel and then he was on the ground, sobbing gently as he clutched his
wounded foot.

“Sorry about that,” murmured Surya.

“You fool!” roared Namtar. Surya looked at him in alarm,
but it was to the fallen Inari he spoke. “You imbecile! You’ve reset the
guidance control!”

Inari slowly staggered to his feet and looked at the console.
Surya saw the target was no longer that selected in the heart of the far-away
cluster; instead, it was the square closest to them that now flashed red. As
one, they looked up into the sky and saw the rocket begin to loop around and
head back in their direction.

“It’s locked onto the bus!” Inari glanced over his
shoulder in horror to where the church hoverbus was parked. “How do I stop it?”

Namtar did not reply. Mesmerised by the
rapidly-approaching missile, he was dumbstruck and rigid with fear. Inari
started hammering at the console screen but the pain in his foot and his
growing panic thwarted his efforts to change the target back again. Surya took
one look at the situation and quickly came up with a plan of his own.

“Run!” he yelled.

Not waiting for a response, Surya sprinted towards the
trees at the edge of the car park. Namtar uttered a strangled cry and quickly
followed, abandoning Inari to limp to safety alone. They had barely reached the
shelter of the surrounding woodland when the missile struck the unsuspecting
hoverbus with a mind-numbing bang. Surya yelped as a huge blast of hot air
swept them off their feet.

The bombardment of flaming shreds of church minibus came
a split second later. Soon the surrounding undergrowth was ablaze, forcing them
to scramble further into the trees. Once clear, they staggered to a halt and
looked back at the scene of devastation on the car park. The explosion had torn
the hoverbus apart and scattered the pieces far and wide, leaving nothing but
the charred and twisted remains of the chassis and a plume of black smoke.
Incredibly, all three of them had escaped with no more than a few cuts and
bruises from where they had been thrown to the ground.

“All in all, not a good week for the Dhusarian Church,”
remarked Namtar. At his feet lay a smoking fallen panel inscribed with the
words: ‘PRAY THE GREY WAY!’.

“Sorry,” mumbled Inari. “Still, it’s a diversion of
sorts.”

“What an utter debacle,” grumbled Namtar. “Today you have
plumbed new depths of incompetence. Where are you going?” he asked irritably,
seeing Surya walk away.

“To find the others,” Surya replied tartly. “It’s either
that or walk home.”

Ravana and Hanuman squatted beneath the starboard wing of
the
Platypus
, watching the distant
commotion as Que Qiao security guards and a fire crew tackled the blaze in the
car park. The diversion had come from an unexpected quarter but Namtar and
Inari had done their job. Ravana twitched nervously when Surya’s call sign
appeared in her mind and it took her a few moments to remember how to flex the
mental switch to bring his disembodied words into her head. The implant’s
headcom took a lot of getting used to.

“We’ve caused a bit of a distraction,” came the voice.
“Good luck!”

“Message received,” she replied, earning a strange look
from Hanuman. She had not yet mastered the art of transmitting a message
without speaking aloud.

Together they crept back to the airlock door where Ostara
and Fenris were waiting. Ravana would have preferred Hanuman to lead the
rescue, but he and Ganesa were going to be busy stealing liquid hydrogen from
the airstrip’s underground storage tanks so that the
Platypus
had enough fuel for the return to Daode. Fenris
looked extremely nervous, no doubt because Ostara held Hanuman’s pistol in a
way that suggested she would blast a hole in his head if he so much as sneezed.
Behind them, Zotz was busy pulling all sorts of strange gadgets out of his bag.

“Ready?” asked Ravana.

Ostara nodded, handed her the slate she had brought from
Kubera, then gave Fenris a prod in the back with the business end of the
pistol. Fenris scowled and led them quickly across the runway towards the
nearby palace, where a low-roofed terminal building had been built at the rear
of the complex. They could see a security desk through a nearby window, but it
was unoccupied and the entrance firmly locked.

“Never mind,” Fenris said condescendingly as Ostara
tugged at the door. “You tried your best. Perhaps we should give up now and go
home before someone finds us here.”

“I’m sure we can force our way in somehow,” Ostara
retorted. “We could go back for Inari’s laser cutter or try to break the glass.
I even saw Zotz with some sort of jet pack and I for one would love to fire you
head-first through an upstairs window.”

“Shall I just unlock the door?” Ravana suggested wearily.

The implant image for the electronic catch on the door
was straightforward and she opened it with ease. Moments later they were inside
the surprisingly drab terminal building, standing quietly by the deserted desk
and contemplating their next move.

“Where now?” Ostara asked Fenris, who was clearly
perturbed that they had managed to get past the first security door so easily.
When he did not answer straight away she gave him another prod. “Where are they
keeping Quirinus?”

“The palace has a small cell block for prisoners brought
in for questioning,” Fenris told her. “Unless he has been moved in my absence,
Ravana’s father is there.”

Ravana interrogated the slate in her hand.

“I have it,” she said, looking at a plan. “It should be
ahead and down one level.”

“Take us there,” ordered Ostara, speaking directly into
Fenris’ ear. “Now!”

“Have you noticed how people’s personalities change once
they have a gun in their hand?” Fenris remarked lightly, as he started on his
way. “Not for the better, I may add.”

“I saw it myself when you pulled a pistol on my father,”
retorted Ravana.

Fenris led them through a set of double doors, beyond
which the decor changed from the dull pale grey of the security lobby to a
sumptuous red-and-gold colour scheme more befitting of the once-royal Palace of
Sumitra. At the end of a short corridor, they came to an archway that opened
onto a landing on the middle level of a large staircase. The ornate wall
coverings and brass banisters were as graceful as anything they had seen at
Kubera. Voices could be heard from a nearby room and it suddenly struck Ravana
what a terrible risk they were taking in wandering around the governor’s
headquarters uninvited. Fenris had visibly brightened and she just knew he was waiting
for a chance to reveal their presence.

“Down the stairs,” Ravana whispered. “As quietly as
possible!”

“What if I refuse to be quiet?” replied Fenris, speaking
deliberately loudly and making Ostara jump. “What would you do to me then?”

“Shut up!” hissed Ostara, raising the pistol to his head.

“Firing the gun will only hasten the discovery of our
presence,” Fenris said with a leer. “Perhaps a fine Dhusarian hymn will do just
as well!”

To their horror, he suddenly started singing at the top
of his voice:

In a panic, Ostara lashed out with the butt of the pistol
and hit Fenris hard upon his left temple, cutting off his song to send him
crashing to the floor. Ravana stared in horror at the prone figure suddenly
motionless at her feet.

“What have you done?” she whispered.

Ostara quickly bent down and felt the man’s pulse.

“He’s out cold,” she muttered. “That’ll teach him to sing
hymns at us.”

“We can’t leave him lying on the floor like that!”

“Stick him in there,” said Ostara, pointing to a nearby
door.

Ravana cautiously opened the door and peered inside. To
her relief, the office beyond was unoccupied; that is until she and Ostara
dragged Fenris off the landing and propped him up against the wall inside.
Ravana closed the door on the drooping figure, then frowned.

“There’s no lock,” she murmured.

“Can’t be helped. With any luck, by the time he awakens
we’ll be long gone.”

With Fenris no longer around to hinder them, they made
swift progress down the stairway and soon Ravana was tentatively probing the
implant images of the security gate at the bottom, while Ostara kept a lookout
for agents. A few seconds later the gate was open and they hurried along the
short corridor beyond to a further locked door, which Ravana found offered no
more resistance than the others. She could sense a multitude of systems
monitoring their progress, but any red flashing image in her mind she identified
as a security device miraculously changed to green as they approached, for it
seemed her implant was keeping them from tripping any alarms.