Steph Bennion - Hollow Moon

“Tell it to the console,” retorted Ravana.

She glanced up at the hatch, then rushed to the cage to try to free the trapped grey but could not open the door. Taranis shouted an order and the nearest clone came towards her, its scaly arms outstretched. Ravana picked up a wrench that lay next to the book on the nearby crate and started to hammer hysterically at the lock.

“Ravana!” cried Zotz. “We need to get out of here!”

“Reactor coolant failure,” came the voice. “Engine room ejection in twenty seconds.”

Ravana looked helplessly at the sad stare of the creature in the cage and felt the gentle touch of its hand upon her arm. Its other pointed a spindly finger to where Zotz was jumping up and down on the stairs and beckoning to Ravana to follow.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered. Tears welled in her eyes as she rested her fingers upon the creature’s own. “I will never forget you.”

“Reactor coolant failure. Engine room ejection in ten seconds.”

Ravana stood up and grabbed the book from the top of the nearby crate. If Taranis was mad before, this simple act of theft made him more furious than ever.

“No!” shrieked Taranis. “The sacred texts! Disciples, stop her!”

Ravana ran towards the stairs as fast as her legs could carry her, then crashed to the floor as another surge of pain shot through her skull and sent her reeling. She scrambled up the steps and reached the hatch with the disciples close at her heels. Zotz pulled her through the opening just as the first of the twelve made a grab for the book under her arm. Moments later it was Ostara’s turn to pull her forward yet again. Ravana heard a clang as Zotz shoved the airtight hatch closed behind her and spun the locking wheel.

Surya and the Maharani were waiting anxiously when Ravana, Ostara and Zotz rushed through to join them in the room ahead. As Zotz went to close the outer hatch they heard a series of muffled explosions and the room began to shake.

All of a sudden, a gust of escaping air slammed the hatch shut of its own accord. Zotz, still holding the handle, yelped as he was pulled off his feet. Ravana felt one last burst of pain in her mind, but this time it was a cry of despair; the final shout of anguish as Taranis felt the engine room separate from the Dandridge Cole . So it was that he and his disciples were condemned to a dark oblivion.

Zotz put an eye to the spy hole. The huge silver cylinder that was the ejected engine room spiralled away into space, spewing tiny jets of gas as emergency systems hastened it away from the asteroid. Soon it was no more than a speck in the black.

Ostara lowered the electric cat to the floor. “Have they gone?”

Ravana felt the pain in her head subside and nodded. “They’ve gone.”

In the shocked silence that followed, it was not until Zotz went to pick up the torch he had left by the hatch that anyone realised the lights had come back on throughout the network of tunnels. With Reactor A and the rest of the engine room drifting away on an orbit all of its own, the console for Reactor B had reset itself and restored power to the Dandridge Cole .

The silence continued as they rode the railcar back to the palace, where Ravana and Zotz got to see the crude passageway Fenris had hacked from the back of his wardrobe up through the cliff into Access Tunnel A. Inside the palace, now brightly-lit and looking decidedly less eerie, they caught up with Hanuman, who having pulled the Platypus into the dock had been ordered by an extremely worried Wak to come and look for them.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, startled by their weary expressions. “Did you find Fenris?”

“Fenris is dead,” Ostara told him.

“It was just like Alien and the Terrorclones ,” added Zotz. He picked up Ravana’s cat and brought its furry face close to his own. “Clever Jones saved us all from a mad mechanical priest and his lizard men!”

“Zotz was amazing,” said Ravana and looped her arm through his. “A real hero!”

She was preoccupied by thoughts of her father, for he had been unconscious still when Hanuman left. As soon as they were out of the palace, she borrowed Ostara’s wristpad to call Dockside and was relieved beyond words when Miss Clymene informed her that Quirinus was awake and waiting to talk to his daughter. His voice was croaky but full of pride for how Ravana had brought the damaged Platypus home, having heard an excited retelling of the tale from Endymion, Bellona and Philyra. Miss Clymene informed Ravana that with the power restored, the autosurgeon was ready to remove the final pieces of shrapnel. The relief in the tutor’s voice alone told Ravana everything she needed to know.

The world outside the palace was still in darkness, though occasional sparks of electricity could be seen leaping from the damaged heating and lighting units inside the sun. Hanuman had made his way to the palace on foot and was not impressed when he learned Wak’s hovertruck was on the far side of the cliff. Fortunately, upon reaching the deserted streets of Petit Havre, they found the monorail was once again running and they were soon aboard and trundling through the gloom towards Dockside. The street lamps shone brightly and the interior of the hollow moon was lit up like a starry sky.

By the time they reached the Dockside medical unit, Quirinus had been in and out of surgery and was sitting up in bed, chatting to Miss Clymene and Professor Wak. There were pads over his eyes held in place by fresh bandages, but after giving his daughter the longest hug of her life, he was quick to reassure her that everything was going to be fine.

“The autosurgeon took a piece of metal this big out of my eye!” he exclaimed, holding his hands unfeasibly wide apart. “Okay, I exaggerate. It looks like I’m going to be stuck in bed for a few days but my nurses say I should make a good recovery.”

Miss Clymene and Bellona smiled. Behind them, Endymion and Philyra were talking in excited whispers with Zotz, who having found some overalls to replace his missing birdsuit was filling them in with all that had happened.

“Hanuman says the Platypus will live to fly again,” Ravana told him. “It’s safely back in the hangar, awaiting repairs. I’ve got a maintenance robot checking the damage right now.”

“That’s my girl!” he said. “So Taranis was hiding here all along?”

“Is it true what he said?” Ravana asked. She could not bring herself to tell her father that it was he who had inadvertently brought the priest to the hollow moon in the first place. “That had I been a boy I was to be raised to rule Lanka?”

“Taranis created tales of destiny to suit his own end,” he told her. “Only you can shape your future. You must always remember that.”

“He gave me this implant. He said it was part of his plan.”

“He was a very devious man,” Quirinus said bitterly. “No one will mourn his passing.”

Ravana was not sure that referring to Taranis in the past tense was a safe thing to do. Zotz had already pointed out that the airtight hatches might have saved Taranis and his clones from immediate asphyxiation when the engine room was blasted into space. Part of her also regretted that she had not quizzed the priest further about what exactly it was he had ordered to be implanted inside her head, for many mysteries remained. She would never forget the first agonising moment when she had been torn by the pain of the Platypus , not to mention the way she had felt the dreadful inner anguish of Taranis’ disciples. She was still considering whether to voice her fears when they were interrupted by the arrival of Ostara, Maharani Uma and Surya. The medical unit was becoming very crowded indeed.