Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

Her silent stare moved to the crumpled arachnid and a shiver ran down her spine. Equally perturbing were the sharp-edged gouges across the creature’s bulbous head, which looked like the interrupted cuts of a surgeon. Kedesh came to her side.

“Thraak thraak,” said Nana. The grey’s voice sounded oddly distant.

“The capsule and spider,” Ravana murmured. “Did they arrive together?”

“It must have spun a hell of a web to catch a frozen astronaut,” said Kedesh.

“Astronaut?” retorted Jizo. “Go on, show them.”

Lilith knelt before the capsule and pressed a concealed catch. Ravana expected the hiss of gas or a puff of vapour, but there was nothing. Lilith took hold of the lid and lifted it open. Athene sprang to look and Ravana shuddered as the watcher’s visage momentarily slipped into the fang-toothed crone she saw on Hursag Asag.

“zz-froozeen-traaveelleer-creeaateed-aaneew-zz,” intoned Simha.

“zz-reeboorn-beeneeaath-twiin-suuns-zz,” screeched Dhanus.

Ravana glanced towards Artorius. “Surely you don’t think…?”

She left her sentence unfinished. Through her implant she felt the fierce passion of the cyberclones, a cruel wash of emotions shaped from shards of pain. Taranis’ disciples were half alien and part machine; all manner of ideas may have been implanted in their minds during their creation. In her eyes Artorius was but an innocent little boy, one who had already suffered too much at the hands of Jizo. Ravana did not want him to suffer any more.

“Nana, Stripy,” she said. “This portal. Is it something you can open?”

“Fwack fwack!”

“Thraak thraak.”

Ravana’s implant translator flickered with the strange chain-gang image from their confrontation with Missi’s spiders. The unmistakeable odour of alien flatulence filled the air.

“Enough of your horrid games,” Ravana told Jizo tartly. “The greys will fulfil Artorius’ so-called destiny and then we’re out of here. All of us.”

“Don’t do it,” Athene said suddenly. “You have no idea what’s on the other side.”

Jizo gave Ravana a venomous glare. “Your move, demon king.”

ZOTZ WAS THE FIRST to react upon hearing the ship’s alert of an incoming message and was at the holovid console before a dozing Momus had time to move his feet out of the way. With everyone else away in the domes, the mood within the Platypus simmered in an air of nervous anticipation. The AI’s gentle beep had a similar impact to a meteorite strike.

“It’s Endymion,” said Zotz, startled. “Calling from Newbrum.”

The on-screen holding message cleared to reveal a grinning Endymion and a tentative-looking Ostara, both of whom were squeezed into a holovid booth clearly not designed to seat two. Judging by distant announcements and the chaotic background scene, they were in a public booth at the spaceport. The image jerked and occasionally froze, for the signal from Ascension’s servermoon was coming direct to the Platypus rather than via Aram and the ship’s transceiver was having problems smoothing the incoming chunks of data.

“Hi Endymion, Ostara,” greeted Zotz, with a wave at the screen.

“I got Quirinus’ message,” Ostara said excitedly, before Endymion could speak. “I’m so glad Ravana is safe! Where are you now? Are they there with you?”

Momus’ response was not so enthusiastic. “They’re off rescuing some brat from a bunch of frigging Dhusarian nutcases,” he grumbled.

“We’re still on Falsafah, at the dig,” added Zotz, feeling he should clarify the man’s summary of the situation. “Two of Taranis’ cyberclones are here. Ravana says the Dhusarians are being really horrible and have taken this boy somewhere for a silly prophecy.”

“That’s why we’re calling!” cried Endymion. “The Church was after Taranis’ Book of the Greys. All my stuff on the servermoon was hacked and the copy I kept has gone.”

“We’ve also traced some of the other clones,” Ostara said hesitantly. “I’ve a horrible feeling all twelve survived.”

“What?” Zotz looked worried. “Where are they?”

“Two were seen in Yao Chi on Taotie,” she said. “Another two on Asgard. Endymion has been brilliant and asked all his spaceport contacts for sightings of their ship.”

“The Atterberg Epiphany ,” said Momus. “Black flying wing?”

Endymion looked surprised. “How do you know?”

“Because I’m staring at the bloody thing right now,” retorted Momus. “What about the frigging mad priest himself? Don’t tell me he’s still around.”

Zotz went pale. “Taranis?”

Ostara however just shrugged. “We don’t know. I found someone from the Newbrum church willing to talk and the word being put out is that Taranis has ‘ascended to a higher plane’, whatever that means,” she said. “The scary thing is that they see the appearance of the cyberclones as the start of something big. Having someone like Nyx in charge also worries me. It seems wrong to have a police officer involved in all this.”

“Something big,” mused Momus. “Just my frigging luck to be in the middle of it all.”

“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Zotz promised.

“Be careful,” said Ostara, pensively. Endymion tapped her shoulder and pointed to something off screen. “We’re about to run out of credits. See you…”

The holovid screen went blank, then switched to a generic servermoon status screen. Momus killed the connection, leaned back in his seat and looked thoughtfully at Zotz. He reached to the console again and opened a voice channel to Quirinus’ wristpad.

“Captain?” he called. “We’ve had news from Newbrum. Are you receiving me?”

A hiss of static wafted from the cabin speakers. There was no response.

“Ship?” Zotz sounded hesitant. “Is Ravana using her implant?”

“The link is active but Miss O’Brien is out of range,” the AI replied.

“Wonderful,” muttered Momus.

“It is an archaeology dig,” Zotz said hesitantly. “They might be underground.”

“The calm before a frigging storm,” said Momus. His gaze moved from the Atterberg Epiphany to the Alf-Sana Booma , just visible beyond the domes. “It’s a bit bloody crowded for my liking. I don’t want to be last off this crappy planet when all hell breaks loose.”

Zotz knew he meant they would need to get people back aboard fast. His own stare was upon the Dhusarians’ transport linked to the nearby dome. The flexible walkway tunnel had multi-purpose vacuum couplings that could link to anything with a hatch, assuming they could get the transport out of the way. His gaze caught the road-laying machine parked in the desert near the end of the runway and he smiled.

“Captain Momus?” asked Zotz. “Do you have your spacesuit handy?”

Ravana stared warily at the cloaked figures and shuddered. The cyberclone monks had lowered their hoods to expose their lizard-like features and paced restlessly from one rod to the next. The staccato chants that left their lips were neither their customary screeching English nor anything the translator could decipher. Her implant pulsed wave upon wave of the clones’ anger into her headache, tightening the noose upon her mind.

She knew a limitation of all cyberclones was they lacked initiative. Jizo appeared to be their controller, but without Cadmus the nurse seemed lost. It was the greys who now led the way. Stripy, scrutinising a nearby rod, ran nimble fingers over the faint indentations Ravana had seen earlier. Nana had clambered across to the remains of the crumbled cocoon and was rummaging through the debris as if looking for something.