Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

Momus leaned back in his seat and idly flicked a switch on the console. The flight computer responded with a sarcastic beep and then a click as automatic systems moved the switch back to its original position. Quirinus gave the pilot a scornful look.

“Crappy autopilots,” muttered Momus. “It’s frigging boring flying one of these heaps. What happened to proper ships that relied on real people to fly them?”

“They all fell apart due to lack of maintenance,” Quirinus retorted.

“What about the shuttle?” asked Zotz. “Is that a proper spaceship?”

“Just going up into frigging orbit and back down again? Give me a break.”

“Momus used to fly shuttles,” Quirinus told Zotz. “Then one day he thought it would be clever to attempt a docking with Stellarbridge without using the automatic pilot. He was showing off to some girlfriend riding in the cabin with him. You can still see the dents today.”

“Momus dented the space station?” exclaimed Zotz, his eyes wide.

“I was talking about the dents in his head. His girlfriend was a kick-boxer.”

“Crappy shuttles,” muttered Momus. “It’s no life for an adventurer. I should be out there in the black; finding new stars, new systems, new worlds! Not plodding towards a bloody asteroid in a frigging gas bag like this.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” mused Quirinus. Zotz caught his wink and reflected it was this philosophy that had saddled them with Momus in the first place. “The Indra is all we’ve got until the Platypus or your own ship is fixed.”

Momus snorted in derision, then froze as he caught Quirinus’ stern glare.

“Remind me,” Quirinus murmured coolly. “Who’s paying you to be here?”

“You are,” Momus replied meekly. “Though I’ve yet to see any actual credits.”

“I miss my Platypus .” Quirinus sighed. “I wonder how Wak is getting on?”

“Shall I give dad a call?” asked Zotz. He reached for the bag wedged beneath his seat and pulled out his touch-screen slate, causing some of his spare underwear to float free in the process. “We’re close enough to the servermoon for a holovid link.”

Quirinus shrugged assent. Ascension’s servermoon, a kilometre-wide satellite relay crammed with data banks and an extra-dimensional transmitter, was one of many that enabled near-instantaneous communication across the five systems. Interstellar spacecraft could use their ED drives to send packets of data to the nearest servermoon. The Indra had only a standard transceiver, but Zotz quickly confirmed they were close enough to the Ascension relay to avoid irritating signal delays. The Dandridge Cole had its own ED transmitter.

“Just calling him now,” Zotz remarked. He clipped the slate into a slot on the console.

He stared startled as the screen lit up in a flurry of movement. Grunts of exasperation wafted from the slate’s speaker, then came a glimpse of panic-stricken ashen features beneath an unruly mop of ginger hair. Green tendrils swept across the screen, writhing angrily against the arm attached to the transmitting wristpad. As the watchers on the Indra stared in disbelief, the owner of the arm wrestled free from his attacker and staggered back to safety. The face of Professor Wak, the Canadian chief engineer aboard the Dandridge Cole , appeared before his wristpad lens. He gave a weary wave with his other hand.

“Quirinus! Zotz!” he called, sounding as tired as he looked. “Good to see you!”

“What the hell is happening there?” exclaimed Quirinus. On the screen behind Wak, something long and green hung from the ceiling in great loops like a basking snake, visibly twitching. “It looked like you were being attacked!”

“I was!” Wak retorted irritably. “By your damn ship! These weird growths are all over the blasted place, lashing out every time I try to remove them!”

“Weird growths?” asked Momus, perturbed.

“Woomerberg Syndrome,” Quirinus told him, not bothering to explain.

“Wow,” murmured Zotz. Taranis’ secret experiments released growth hormones into the hollow moon’s life-support systems, causing strange tendrils to erupt from the Platypus ’ organic AI unit. Judging by the image on the screen, they had grown considerably since he last saw Quirinus’ ship. “That’s amazing!”

“I told you not to touch them,” Quirinus told Wak. “Ravana was convinced they saved the ship. It was Fenris’ bomb that caused the crash, not those things.”

“I don’t like them,” Wak said sulkily, scratching his head in exasperation. “It’s not natural, having stuff growing through the ship like that. Especially when hell-bent on strangling me every time I reach for the wire cutters. Even touching them with my false hand is enough to set them off.”

“It’s only the AI,” Quirinus pointed out. Wak still lacked a proper replacement for his damaged artificial left hand and the temporary repairs did look a little scary. “How would you react if someone tried to cut bits off you? Talk to it. Reason with it!”

“Reason with a machine?” scoffed Wak.

“Isn’t your repair crew all robots anyway?”

“And mostly unreasonable. Are you on your way?”

“We’ve just left Stellarbridge ,” Zotz told him. “Captain Momus has broken his spaceship so we’re coming in the Indra .”

Wak smiled. “I hope you’ve been behaving yourself with Quirinus!”

“As good as gold,” Quirinus told him. A pair of pants floated past his face and he frowned. Zotz blushed and quickly snatched his underwear away. “How’s my ship?”

“It needs a lot more work but the hull repairs are complete,” Wak told him. “I know you’ve come to lend a hand, but as you have the Indra I need you to go to Thunor. We leaked a lot of fuel when we lost Reactor A and the main tanks are running low.”

“The Indra doesn’t need a pilot for that,” Quirinus protested.

“I contacted Sky Cleaver a while back and they insisted on a personal visit,” replied Wak, sounding apologetic. “I’ve tried to find out why but there’s been no reply.”

“Newbrum Police have sent a ship to investigate,” said Quirinus. They had all heard the spaceport rumours. “They think there’s been trouble out there.”

“They were very annoyed at having their planet-leave allowance reduced, I know that much,” Wak told them. “Have you heard from Ravana?”

“She’s due to call tomorrow. The dig is in the middle of nowhere so she only gets the chance when the University’s ship visits to deliver supplies.”

“It doesn’t seem right, everyone scattered across the five systems like this,” Wak said sadly. He brushed away the tendril slowly descending to his shoulder. “The hollow moon is such a cold, dark place at the moment. I wonder if it will ever be the same again.”

“Ostara says hello, if it counts. And you’ll soon have me and Zotz for company.”

“And me,” added Momus, sounding indignant at being left out.

“Oh yes,” Wak muttered. “And Captain Momus. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Bellona crept nervously into the darkened hall and found a seat near the back. The Dhusarian Church of Ascension met in the basement of a residential block near the western edge of Newbrum’s dome, in a hall that once hosted bingo and karaoke nights. Even now the remains of faded posters advertising talent competitions and super prize days could be seen, peeking from beneath the brightly-coloured banners that church members had strung across the walls in an attempt to make the hall their own. The latter left a reader in no doubt it was a place of worship, declaring such things as: ‘IN THE BLACK SEEK ONLY THE GREY’, ‘TRUE WISDOM SHINES FROM ABOVE’ and the more confusing, ‘ALL THAT IS PART DOES BELONG’. The low stage was backed by a large black curtain, upon which was a silver six-pointed star with a swirl at the centre, the symbol of the Dhusarian Church.