Steph Bennion - Hollow Moon

“I remember her,” said Philyra. “She was voted off after she lost a leg to a dragon.”

“Yuck!” Bellona pulled a face. “That’s horrible!”

“They sewed it back on afterwards,” Philyra reassured her.

“What on Frigg are you four talking about?” exclaimed Miss Clymene.

“ Gods of Avalon ,” replied Bellona meekly.

“A truly terrible celebrity holovid show,” Endymion explained to the Maharani.

“He likes it,” retorted Philyra, indicating the clone. “He told me so. You don’t say much, do you? I can tell we’ve got a lot in common, though,” she added, looking hopeful. She looked down at his empty plate. “Are you not hungry?”

“You do not eat, do you?” the Maharani said to the clone.

“Maybe a drink then,” Philyra said, filling a glass with orange juice. She leaned across the table and offered the glass to the clone.

“No!” cried Bellona, seeing the Maharani’s look of horror. “Stop!”

She lunged across the table to snatch the glass from Philyra’s hand, then shrieked as she knocked it from her grasp and into the clone’s lap. Surya’s cyberclone looked momentarily stunned, then a small wisp of smoke rose from between its legs. Suddenly, the clone slumped forward and collapsed face-first upon the table.

“Reboot me!” it murmured, then fell silent.

A faint smell of burning drifted upon the air. Philyra looked around at the other diners with an expression both terrified and apologetic. Endymion grinned sheepishly.

“My dear,” the Maharani said icily. “Surya’s cyberclone does not care to drink either.”

Ravana rode the monocycle furiously through the streets of Petit Havre, earning startled stares from the villagers as she went by. The electric motor behind her seat whined in protest as she urged the vehicle forward at close to maximum revolutions. Monocycles were single-seat machines where the rider sat inside the hub of a huge wheel, then hung on for dear life as AI-controlled gyroscopes handled the tedious business of making sure it did not fall over on corners. A monocycle’s top speed was barely thirty kilometres an hour, but when perched upon the low-slung saddle mere centimetres from the ground, where the only view of what lay directly ahead was via a monitor screen, such a speed seemed dangerously fast.

She was angry, for her father was clearly keeping something from her. After she collapsed aboard the Platypus he had taken her to the medical unit, where a young doctor on duty had run a scanner over her skull before walking away to talk to her father in private. Ravana had seen them pointing to something on the scanner display, but although they reassured her there was nothing wrong, all her questions had gone unanswered. The pain in her head had been fleeting but excruciating and even now the memory of it remained. It was not something she wanted to experience again in a hurry.

Upon leaving the medical unit, she had looked for Zotz but he was nowhere to be seen. Nor indeed was her poor cat, but her electric pet had an inbuilt tracking device and it did not take Ravana long to ascertain that in the two hours since it had run from the Platypus it had somehow managed to make its way from one end of the hollow moon to the other.

The ride was doing Ravana good and already her anger was fading. Leaving the streets of Petit Havre behind she sped onwards down the road, the gates of the palace now visible in the distance. Up ahead, the road passed a large brick maintenance shed, outside which stood Professor Wak’s familiar blue hovertruck, the flatbed loaded with tools and ropes. Ravana decided to stop and see whether Zotz was there with his father.

As she parked the monocycle behind the battered hovertruck, Ravana spied the professor himself walking up and down outside the open doors of the shed, looking gloomy. She was pleased to see that Ostara was with him, for although some people made fun of the security officer’s misguided enthusiasm, Ravana liked her a lot and often went to her for advice on personal matters, particularly those she would not have been comfortable taking to her father. Ostara was kind and always ready to chat, for she understood that Ravana was of an age where men and women started looking like they were from totally different planets. Seeing Ravana arrive, Ostara waved in greeting.

“It’s a mess!” Wak was saying. “The kidnappers knew the Dandridge Cole well, but it baffles me as to why they were so destructive. There was no need!”

“Hullo, Ravana!” greeted Ostara, ignoring Wak. “On the way to the palace?”

“I wasn’t invited,” replied Ravana glumly, thinking of the visitors from Ascension. She found herself distracted by the professor, who was pacing in circles and running a hand across his mop of ginger hair in exasperation. “Hello, Professor Wak.”

The professor gave a vague wave, his mind clearly elsewhere.

“The kidnappers blew the end off a maintenance shaft which runs to the outside,” Ostara said to Ravana. “The top of the shaft comes up inside this shed.”

She explained that a robot probe, sent out by Wak to fly alongside the Dandridge Cole , had discovered that a control bunker on the surface of the asteroid had been ripped open by an explosion. The bunker was one of four housing the thrusters used to keep the asteroid on course and spinning at the right speed, but they also capped four long excavation shafts, bored into the centre of the asteroid when the hollowing-out of the Dandridge Cole had first begun. Wak had a team of engineers out on the surface of the asteroid assessing the damage to the bunker, but there was no question it had been deliberate, for it appeared that it was into one of these shafts that the kidnappers had guided the stolen Nellie Chapman .

Her search for her cat forgotten, Ravana looked with renewed interest at the nearby brick shed, which she now noted was barely fifty metres from the palace gate.

“Do you think the Astromole I saw burrowed towards the shaft to escape?” she asked.

“Maybe,” muttered Wak. “All I know is that the airlock in the floor of the shed is damaged and the maintenance shaft is open to space when it should not be.”

“Never mind!” replied Ostara brightly. “It gives your team something to get their teeth into. It must be quite exciting to go outside and see the asteroid in space.”

“My team are skilled engineers, not dare-devil bricklayers!” retorted Wak. “The prospect of directing a bunch of concrete-laying robots whilst clinging to the side of a spinning lump of rock is not their idea of excitement. We were already very busy trying to find the power drain affecting the Dandridge Cole ’s systems. We have lost remote access to the reactor controls!” he exclaimed. “I need my team here, opening the old tunnels to the engine rooms, but instead I’ve got them outside erecting a temporary dome over the damaged bunker, so they can waste even more time repairing this senseless demolition!”

Ostara looked humbled. “It sounds bad.”

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Ravana.

“Another pair of hands is always welcome,” Wak replied, inadvertently drawing her attention to his mechanical left hand, the artificial skin of which was a markedly different colour to his own flesh tones. “My engineers outside already have the dome in place and I’m just waiting for confirmation that it’s all sealed and secure. Once that’s done, we can re-pressurise the shaft and have a look inside. I am more than happy for you to dangle on the end of a rope on my behalf.”

Ravana’s eyes grew wide. “Will it come to that?”

Wak smiled. “Probably not. The airlock should be big enough to take the hovertruck.”