Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

She pushed away her coverings, wriggled into a sitting position and winced as something small and square jabbed her in the ribs. Ravana tried to stand, lost her balance and fell against a wall, which promptly swung open to reveal it was actually the door to the shower cubicle, leaving her to crash through onto the floor of the transport’s main cabin. The interior lights were no more than a feeble glow, but it was enough for her to see that Kedesh, Artorius and the greys had gone. Outside, night had fallen and the windscreen looked out upon a single white dome, above which arced the fiery trail of a spacecraft rocketing into the heavens. Between the transport and the dome, a collapsed wind pump lay amidst a pool of gushing water, which itself formed the head of a sizeable stream. It took Ravana a few moments to register that the dome before her was not the excavation site, but Arallu Depot.

“Kedesh!” she growled. “What have you done?”

She climbed to her feet and turned up the cabin lights. The square object that had bruised her ribs was Kedesh’s slate, which had fallen out of the shower cubicle with her. She picked it up and scowled at the message left on the notepad screen:

My behaviour was just not cricket, but unavoidable I’m afraid. Final day’s play is too risky for you to be involved. You should be safe here. Help yourself to cake. Kedesh.

“Bitch,” muttered Ravana. “You tricked me.”

The irritating whining had not gone away. It was now joined by a scratching noise, both of which came from the airlock. Ravana threw down the slate and stomped across to open the hatch, wondering what else Kedesh had left to surprise her. She was only mildly surprised to find a cat sitting in the shadows of the chamber, mewing pitifully.

“Oh, it’s you,” she snapped, thinking of the watcher. “Athene, is it? Come inside!”

The cat looked up, gave another sad meow and jumped lightly into the cabin. As it moved into the light, Ravana gave a shriek of surprised recognition and fell to her knees.

“Jones!” she cried. “My little fluff ball! Is it really you?”

The cat mewed, coughed and as if to answer her question spat out a mangled lump of circuitry from Arallu Depot’s food molecularisor. Ravana grinned and hugged her electric pet close. As she shut her eyes against her tears, she realised her cranium implant had awoken. A familiar glowing purple image hovered in her mind’s eye: a crude rendering of a duck-billed platypus, the symbol of her personal link to the onboard AI of the ship of the same name.

Her cat still in her arms, Ravana scrambled to her feet and into the cockpit. Her heart leapt with joy as she caught sight of the purple and white spacecraft, parked on the edge of the runway beyond the dome. A quick mental prod activated the image in her mind, which went green and then expanded into a line of control symbols. In the background was a web-like image of the Platypus itself, an echo of the strange tendrils that had sprouted through the ship. She hurriedly scrolled through the controls and opened a voice link to the AI.

“Ship?” she called hesitantly. “Are you there?”

The familiar cool female tones of the AI filled her head almost instantly.

“It is a pleasure to speak with you again, Ravana. How may I be of assistance?”

Ravana grinned with relief, hardly able to believe that the end to her trials was near. Lowering her pet to the floor, she dropped into the driver’s seat.

“Ship, is father nearby?” she asked. “I think he’s expecting my call.”

THE CLANKING OF THE TRANSPORT exploded into a deafening clatter, drowning out Ravana’s squeals of excitement as she nursed the vehicle into the hangar of Arallu Depot. The dusty windscreen framed an unexpectedly large group of people waiting to greet her, first and foremost of whom was her beaming father. Grinning like an idiot, Ravana killed the engine, scooped her cat from the co-pilot’s seat and hurried to the hatch at the rear. Moments later she was hugging her father tight, overwhelmed by the fact he was actually there. After all she had been through it seemed too good to be true.

“You’re safe!” cried Quirinus. He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her head to his chest, as if frightened to let go. “I was so worried. You might have died out there!”

“Several times,” she murmured. There were tears in her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here! It feels like everything on this planet is out to get me.”

“You’re safe now,” he reassured her. He glanced down to where her cat was doing its utmost to trip them up. “I see you’ve found that dratted pet of yours.”

Ravana smiled. For the first time since stepping outside, she looked to the four figures fidgeting awkwardly by the door to the depot’s passenger lounge.

“Is that really Zotz with you?” she asked. “And what’s Philyra doing here?”

“It’s a long story,” Quirinus replied wearily. “I’m guessing you have a tale or two of your own. Where have you been?”

Her reply was interrupted by a dreadful metallic groan from the transport. They both retreated in alarm and then jumped as the suspension on the left-hand side collapsed with a loud bang. The tired, worn-out vehicle, having performed admirably through six thousand kilometres of harsh alien terrain, had finally reached the end of the road.

“Shall we go into the dome?” suggested Ravana. “It’s been a bit of a rough journey.”

The news that the transport had brought food the depot’s abused molecularisor could only dream of was well-received, particularly when Zotz discovered the locker full of chocolate cake. They retired to the habitation cabin near Morrigan’s Bar, where Ravana told her tale over a hearty meal washed down with copious cups of tea. Her portrayal of Kedesh was harsh but she felt bitter over the way the woman had abused her trust.

Fornax greeted Ravana with a puzzled stare that flickered just once to her facial scar. Upon hearing the woman was a journalist, Ravana glossed over their escape from Missi and the giant spiders, for the last thing she wanted was to become a story on Weird Universe . That everyone bar a doubting Philyra accepted her account of the alien greys surprised her, though she knew Zotz briefly saw the caged Nana when they faced Taranis on the Dandridge Cole many months before. To Ravana’s further surprise, when she hesitantly described her encounters with Athene, it was Fornax who was the least sceptical of her listeners.

“We did a piece on watchers for Weird Universe ,” the journalist revealed. “There was this crazy old man who said he was a knight of Saint John, who had all these bizarre stories about alien cat gods who meddled in history. Most of what we recorded was too off-the-wall to use. It ended up as a ten-minute filler on our ghost-watch special.”

“I saw that,” said Philyra. “There’s no such thing as ghosts. Or aliens.”

“Well, that’s my story,” declared Ravana. “The rest, as they say, is geography.”

“Don’t you mean history?” asked Zotz.

“I know what I mean,” she muttered. She had seen enough desert to last a lifetime.

In the process of swapping tales, her father confirmed it was the Platypus she had seen circling the excavation site. He and Momus had taken the ship on a couple of reconnaissance flights; on the second, they had spotted Kedesh’s transport near the dig, remembered what Jizo told them and had tried to make contact. Ravana recalled the password-locked transceiver and frowned, but was more startled by the revelation that Jizo had been at Arallu Depot. Momus scowled and put on a sulky face.