Steph Bennion - Hollow Moon

“Impossible,” retorted the Maharani. “The palace is shielded against any electronic methods of espionage and as the girl saw, my son was inside when the kidnappers struck. Perhaps you should ask Quirinus if he knows of another who may have an implant.”

Ravana glanced to her father, puzzled by the Maharani’s words. He looked back with a most curious expression, but quickly turned away as he caught his daughter’s gaze.

“Are you saying Que Qiao agents took the Raja?” Ostara asked Quirinus.

“That’s unlikely. The scanner is an old design,” Quirinus replied hesitantly. “My guess is it was bought on the black market. The real mystery is how someone managed to wander up to the palace waving a scanner around without being apprehended by the guards!”

“My security team had been called away to complete a health and safety assessment,” the Maharani replied frostily, glaring at Fenris. “The timing was most unfortunate.”

“I must get to Yuanshi,” Fenris said to Quirinus, ignoring the Maharani’s rebuke. “If I am to negotiate with the kidnappers on the Maharani’s behalf, I need to be there with the authorities in Ayodhya.”

Ravana looked at her father. “Miss Clymene has invited me and Zotz to play in their band at the peace conference on Daode,” she said, her expression hopeful. She glanced towards the window, hoping to catch Zotz’s attention. He and Endymion had taken a break from trying to grab fish with their bare hands and were busy soaking Bellona and Philyra with water from the garden pool. “We could all go to Epsilon Eridani together!”

“It would be a tremendous help and much appreciated,” admitted Miss Clymene.

“I would be only too happy to provide the necessary finances,” added the Maharani. “Fuel, accommodation; everything you need. I may be in exile but I still have many influential friends on both Yuanshi and Daode.”

“I’m sure you do,” muttered Ostara.

“Quirinus has already made his feelings clear,” retorted Fenris. “He will not take us.”

“You know as well as anyone that I vowed never to return to Yuanshi,” Quirinus said, regarding the Maharani carefully. His gaze fell upon Ravana, who did not hide her excitement at the prospect of an adventure away from home. “However, despite all I’ve said, something has come up and I have some personal business to take care of in Epsilon Eridani. If he is happy to travel with the band, your man can accompany us to Daode.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Ravana.

“That is wonderful!” agreed Miss Clymene. “I can’t wait to tell my students!”

“In that case, I’m coming with you,” declared Ostara.

“No, you are not!” retorted Fenris.

“I need to continue my investigations,” she told him, eyeing him coolly.

Ravana caught her expression, which clearly betrayed her lack of trust in Fenris and as such echoed her own feelings. She knew Ostara had yet to make her mark as an investigator, but with a ship full of strangers she hoped her father would think it would be good for them to have a friend aboard.

“You are more than welcome,” Quirinus told her. Fenris pulled a face.

“The moon of Daode,” breathed Ravana excitedly. “Epsilon Eridani, here I come!”

INSIDE A SPACECRAFT it was never totally quiet, for there was always the murmur and hiss of life-support systems, the whirr of actuators and the occasional beep of control panels to disturb the eternal silence of space. Yet out in the inky depths of the Barnard’s Star system, somewhere between the orbits of Woden and Thunor, the hush that fell upon the Platypus as the plasma ion thrusters shut down was both deep and heavily pregnant with anticipation.

Suddenly, a banshee wail erupted from the ED drive. Its cosmic spinning wheel grabbed the membrane of reality, jabbed its spindle, twisted the void into a kaleidoscopic spiral and smoothly stabbed a hole in the space-time continuum. For a split nanosecond the Platypus was no more than a fleeting thread of quanta sixteen light years long. Then the multi-dimensional roller-coaster was over, almost before it began, leaving those aboard nursing fractured memories of an imploded universe and indescribable feelings of nausea. Out across the star-spangled void, the light of a new sun shone through the cabin windows.

“Extra-dimensional navigation complete,” intoned the Platypus ’ onboard computer. “Interplanetary plasma drive and automatic pilot engaged. Estimated time to Daode orbit is twenty-five hours, thirty-seven minutes.”

“Welcome to the Epsilon Eridani system,” Quirinus muttered gloomily, earning a strange look from Ostara. Ahead, the view through the window shifted as the automatic pilot aligned the beak-like nose of the ship with the faint brown disc that was Shennong.

“I feel sick,” moaned Zotz. “Is it always like that?”

“Pretty much,” Ravana confirmed, giving him a mischievous grin. Ostara and Zotz had joined her father and herself on the flight deck for the manoeuvre. Their sickly yet stunned expressions reminded her of how she had felt the first few times she had experienced an extra-dimensional leap. “Is this really your first jump?”

Zotz nodded. Unlike Ravana, he had lived his whole life on the Dandridge Cole and to her knowledge had never ventured further than Lan-Tlanto with his father. He was transfixed by the distant yellow sun, which was startlingly bright despite being muted by the polarisation of the flight-deck windows. Ravana too was captivated, but for a different reason. She was coming home.

The four seats on the flight deck were in a staggered row, with the middle two pilot chairs positioned further forward within a nest of flight controls. Quirinus was seated centre starboard between his daughter and Zotz. Ostara had claimed the port-side seat on the far side of where Ravana was now releasing herself from the co-pilot’s chair.

“Shall I check on the others?” Ravana asked chirpily. She always felt more alive and cheerful when aboard the Platypus , for she much preferred the private realm of the ship to the communal reality of the hollow moon. Even when they carried passengers.

“I’ll come with you,” murmured Ostara, looking pale. Unlike Zotz, she was no stranger to interstellar travel but that did not mean she had got used to it.

Unbuckling her seatbelt, Ostara gently wriggled free of the chair and let herself drift in the zero gravity up to the grab handles by the ceiling docking hatch. Ravana’s movements were far more confident and with one graceful backwards flip she was out of her seat, across the cabin and above the entrance hatch, floating poised and ready to enter the crawl tunnel.

“Show off,” muttered Ostara.

“Coming, Zotz?” asked Ravana.

He managed a weak smile. “I think I’ll stay here a bit longer.”

Ravana grinned. With a fish-like spurt of speed, she twisted in the air and pulled herself through the hatch.

In deep space the carousel was set to spin once every ten seconds and the crawl tunnel now rotated about her like a rolling barrel. The only handhold, in a recess next to the open hatch to the carousel itself, revolved with the rest of the tunnel. This made entering the spinning compartment a little easier, especially given that Ravana had long ago learned the hard way that it was vital to enter feet first. There was a good reason why the inside of the tunnel and hatchway were padded; nevertheless, she still earned herself a few new bruises by the time she managed to get her feet inside and onto the top of the carousel ladder.

Ravana pulled herself through the hatch into the brightly-lit space beyond, feeling the faint centrifugal pull of the spinning cabin become more insistent as she descended the rungs. Once clear of the hatch, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Fenris, Endymion and Philyra sat stiffly upon the couch in the living quarters below, still stunned after the extra-dimensional jump. Miss Clymene and Bellona were up to her right, standing at the small kitchenette. Ravana gave them a little wave, slid down the ladder and landed lightly upon the floor.