Steph Bennion - Hollow Moon

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 have 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.”