Steph Bennion - Hollow Moon

“Greys don’t exist!” retorted Wak.

“They are for real,” Ravana told him. “And yes, Hanuman did say those things.”

“You see!” Ostara exclaimed. “And, err…”

“Fourthly?” suggested Surya.

“Yes! And the alien weirdness that made Ravana’s cat act strangely at the plantation is now luring it to that cave!” Ostara squared up to the professor and stood defiant, her hands on her hips. “It is my deduction that Taranis is hiding in one of the engine rooms and drawing power from the hollow moon reactor to run secret cloning experiments!”

“Experiments that released growth hormones into the air and gave the Platypus Woomerberg Syndrome,” added Zotz, wide-eyed. “It does make sense!”

“Elementary, my dear Zotz!” Ostara exclaimed. “That’s from Sherlock Holmes .”

Wak opened his mouth to reply, then hesitated. His sceptical expression faltered when it became evident he could not think of a good argument against what Ostara had put to him.

“My word,” murmured Ravana, looking at Ostara in a new light. “That is the best piece of detective work you’ve ever done. Do you really think Taranis is doing something like that right under our noses? What can his experiments be?”

“Cloning greys? As if they exist!” muttered Wak, in the manner of someone still not convinced. “On the other hand, you can set up a small cloning facility almost anywhere. It might explain where the missing equipment went from the biology laboratory. How do you propose to put your deduction to the test, security officer Ostara?”

“Find Fenris,” she declared. “He’s got nowhere to go now except back to Taranis.”

In his haste to escape, Fenris had left his personal effects behind in the Sun Wukong , including the wristpad he had taken with him to Epsilon Eridani, something Zotz discovered when he tried to locate the fleeing Fenris via the tracker screen on his own. While Ostara remained convinced that Fenris was to rendezvous with Taranis in the old engine rooms, Surya feared he was instead making for the palace and was concerned for his mother’s safety should she still be there when Fenris returned.

The power drain had put the monorail trains out of use and none of the monocycles in the nearest bay had enough charge to make it all the way across the hollow moon. It was decided therefore that Ostara and Surya would hitch a ride on the hovertruck as far as the palace, leaving Ravana and Zotz to continue onwards to the cave to collect the generator. Surya was confident that any staff left at the palace would side with him rather than Fenris. Professor Wak however had concerns of his own.

“I’m pretty sure you’ll find the palace deserted,” he said. “Everyone left on the Indra . They even managed to take some of the livestock. It looked like Noah’s Ark when it went!”

“You’re still here,” Ostara pointed out. “If you were daft enough to stay, there may be others. The Maharani’s household weren’t keen on mixing with the rest of us at the best of times and for all we know they’re still there, hiding and hoping the problem will go away.”

“I don’t want you to face Fenris alone,” Wak told her. “At least promise me that.”

“You could come with us,” Ostara suggested.

“With this hand?” retorted Wak, holding up his poorly-repaired artificial digits. “Do you want me to slap him into submission? By all means do your investigation, but please wait for Hanuman to join you before you try any heroics. I’m sure it won’t take them long to drag the Platypus back into dock and I only need Ganesa here to try her idea for the airlock.”

“Okay,” Ostara said. She gave his arm a reassuring pat. “I promise.”

The Sun Wukong had left the airlock and Ravana, Ostara, Wak and Zotz went outside to watch as it moved slowly through the zero-gravity zone on its way to rescue the stranded Platypus . Left to their own devices, Endymion and Philyra had been busy rifling through the bundle of Fenris’ possessions Hanuman had chucked out of the passenger compartment before leaving. Apart from his wristpad and a case of clothes, they found a slate loaded with all sorts of interesting material and also, to their surprise, Fenris’ copy of the Isa-Sastra . Eager to show their discoveries, Endymion and Philyra came down to the medical bay.

“He must have really been in a panic to leave this behind,” mused Miss Clymene, as she casually flicked through the book. The dense text was written in an archaic style and the few sentences she read were full of obscure references and double meanings.

“May I have a look, miss?” asked Bellona. Miss Clymene handed her the book.

“The slate has engineering plans for the Dandridge Cole ,” Endymion revealed. “Ravana did mention that Fenris was the inside man for the Raja’s kidnap.”

“Indeed he was,” said Ravana, appearing at the door. “The scumbag.”

She went to the bed and knelt beside the motionless form of her father. Miss Clymene and Bellona had replaced the bandages on his head and chest. A small metal dish on the nearby cabinet held half a dozen fragments of bloody shrapnel, removed by Bellona’s steady hand. Quirinus remained unconscious, but Ravana took some reassurance from the pink blush upon his face, for earlier her father had looked as pale as a ghost.

“How is he?” she asked Miss Clymene.

“He’s no longer critical,” she replied, startling Ravana who had not been told that he was to begin with. “He should make a full recovery. Except…”

“Except what?” asked Ravana, her heart sinking.

“His eyes,” Bellona said quietly. “We need the autosurgeon to save his eyesight.”

Fighting back her tears, Ravana took hold of her father’s hand and clutched it tightly. The pain and anguish she had suffered the last few days had become unbearable. At the forefront of her thoughts was that Fenris was to blame. Everything bad that had happened to her father; his arrest, his imprisonment, the bomb on the Platypus ; Fenris had been there. She did not care for the bigger picture, that of Taranis and Kartikeya and their grand schemes for some far-flung moon, for it was Fenris alone who had personally caused so much grief. It was Fenris who was going to have to pay for what he had done.

“I love you, father,” she whispered. “We will make you well again. I promise.”

Ravana looked up at the solemn faces of Miss Clymene, Endymion, Philyra and Bellona, suddenly feeling lost and alone in a room full of strangers.

“Fenris will not take away my family,” she said. “He will not get away with this.”

The hovertruck sped through the gloomy void of the hollow moon, its headlamps picking out one deserted scene after another as it followed the monorail track to Petit Havre. All four of its passengers were squashed and securely strapped into the front bench seat, for Ravana had made it clear she was in no mood for taking things slowly.

They had left Dockside barely ten minutes ago and stopped just once to collect Ravana’s errant cat from near the lake, but already the hovertruck was surging past one of the central pylons that supported the mangled artificial sun. The bright lights of the Sun Wukong could be seen overhead, though as yet Ravana had heard no word from Hanuman and Ganesa on whether they had been successful in pulling the Platypus free.

“Do you always drive this fast?” Ostara yelled to Ravana, raising her voice against the oncoming rush of wind. The hovertruck’s open cabin was not designed for rapid flight.

“I did warn you!” Ravana shouted back. The headlamp beams momentarily fell upon a stray mob of confused wallabies, causing them to bound away in fright into a nearby coppice. “Anyway, eighty kilometres an hour is not that fast.”