“Shennong, the divine farmer,” the man said. “A Chinese name, but one somehow appropriate. The gardens of Yuanshi and Daode have indeed proved bountiful to the intrepid adventurers who have made these distant moons their home.”
Surya stared at him. “Do you always talk like that?”
“Namtar does like his fancy words,” retorted the fat man, who sat by himself on the other side of the cabin. “He acts all swish but he’s no better than scum like me.”
“If I am scum, I am merely guilty by association,” replied Namtar. “It is regrettable that circumstances have forced me to associate with miscreants of your ilk, my dear Inari. Rest assured that once I have taken my rightful place in the brave new world we are building on Yuanshi, standing shoulder to shoulder with my fellow elite, no one will call me scum.”
Inari gave a derisive snort. “You’ll always be scum to me.”
Surya looked away and smiled. Barely two Terran days had passed since he had been rudely awakened from his afternoon nap and taken bound and gagged from his cosy rooms at the palace. Namtar and Inari had been a little heavy-handed during his kidnap and there was no denying that he had been scared, especially after they had bundled him out of the strange burrowing machine into another cramped vehicle, which had then shot out of a tunnel to present him with a mind-bending vision of the hollow moon spinning through space. After that his senses had been in overdrive as he sought to comprehend their fiery descent towards a small brown planet, the brief sojourn on a strange jungle world to meet another waiting spacecraft, then another hasty departure away into the void of space.
Through all this, it quickly became clear that Namtar and Inari had no intention of hurting him and indeed often treated him with a politeness verging on reverence. Notwithstanding the shock of the abduction, Surya was getting to like being away from his mother’s stifling influence. The scariest part of the journey since had been the stomach-churning leap, lasting mere nanoseconds, which had taken them through extra-dimensional space to Shennong, sixteen light years away.
“Fourth planet of Epsilon Eridani and first of its three gas giants,” Surya murmured. “Given to Indian settlers by a Chinese nation grateful for our help in colonising the star system. I have studied my homeland,” he said, addressing Namtar. “What was never explained to me was why Shennong and its moons kept their Chinese names.”
“Space traffic control throughout the system is firmly in the hands of the Chinese authorities on Taotie,” Namtar replied. He referred to Epsilon Eridani’s second planet, the first ever discovered outside the Solar System with an Earth-like biosphere and one which had been claimed exclusively by Chinese colonists. “All local navigation and survey data comes from Yao Chi city and it would be a gross incivility to start changing names.”
“If it were up to me, I would give Yuanshi an Indian name,” declared Surya.
“Our Chinese friends may take offence at such a suggestion,” Namtar said darkly.
“And when the people of Taotie get offended, other people get hurt,” muttered Inari. “Steer clear of the Chinese, I would.”
“I’m sure they feel the same way about you,” Namtar countered.
They were interrupted by the arrival of a third man, who entered from the flight deck ahead by pulling himself along a ceiling handrail, perfectly at ease in the zero gravity. He was a young Indian, his mop of unruly hair and two-day growth of stubble framing a confident gaze and knowing smile. Hanuman was the owner and pilot of the Sun Wukong, the Chinese-built ex-military transport ship in green and black camouflage livery that had collected Surya, Namtar and Inari from the Eden Ravines and delivered them to the Epsilon Eridani system. To avoid detection they had maintained a ground-hugging flight path deep in the Ravines for over an hour and Surya had been impressed by the way Hanuman piloted the spacecraft through the maze of deep canyons. At the moment it was his co-pilot Ganesa who was at the controls. She too was Indian and for want of a better offer had flown with Hanuman for many years.
The Sun Wukong was essentially a broad flying wing, the angular hull of which was mostly taken up by fuel tanks and a cargo bay big enough to take three armoured ground transports and a platoon of troops. The ship was of an old design and when the time came for it to be taken out of service and auctioned off it had been stripped of its military hardware and weaponry. However, over the years Hanuman had gradually equipped it once again with a formidable array of defence systems. The one thing he had not managed to improve was the passenger compartment, which like that of most military craft was cramped with a tiny kitchen area and a very unpleasant zero-gravity bathroom and toilet.
“We’ve just had the all-clear from Lanka spaceport,” he said, addressing Namtar. “We should be down on Yuanshi within the hour. I’ve also had an interesting conversation with Ayodhya space-traffic controllers who think we’re gun runners,” he added casually. “They’ve launched a gunship, which given the chance will undoubtedly try to blast us into tiny bits.”
“So why aren’t you at the controls?” Namtar asked, regarding him quizzically.
“I trust Ganesa implicitly,” Hanuman told him. “Besides, I must have done something to annoy the computer as it’s only responding to her at the moment.”
Namtar gave him a weary look. “Anything else I should know?”
“It’s raining hard in Lanka. The terraforming crews disintegrated another ice asteroid into the atmosphere last week.”
“Typical,” muttered Namtar. A gunship was one thing, but Surya saw he was far less impressed by the prospect of bad weather. “Do you perchance have a hat I may borrow?”
Lanka spaceport turned out to be not much more than a rain-drenched landing strip next to a small terminal building and a bomb-damaged warehouse. The long civil war on Yuanshi between the followers of the exiled royal family and the Que Qiao Corporation had taken its toll and Lanka had been heavily scarred by the long royalist campaign to secure the city as their own.
Que Qiao was the driving force behind the colonisation of the Epsilon Eridani system and the huge terraforming projects on Yuanshi and Daode. Despite its Chinese name, the corporation was very much a multi-national affair. On Daode the Indian colonists had accepted the security of a Que Qiao administration with the same lackadaisical political vigour the Chinese had shown on Taotie. The people of Yuanshi had not been so compliant; after declaring their intention to self-govern, the Indian settlers instead adopted an archaic system of government under the rule of a Maharaja where older traditions shaped the law. Yet Yuanshi had many riches that both the Maharaja and Que Qiao were keen to exploit and the political battle for control had long since escalated into civil war, inflamed by a heady mix of religious tensions and the heavy-handed attitude of the corporation. The Maharani and her son went into exile following the assassination of the Maharaja. The sumptuous palace that had been theirs in the old royalist capital of Ayodhya, on the other side of the moon’s main continent, became Que Qiao’s headquarters on Yuanshi.
Raja Surya, the Maharaja’s son and heir, was coming home. The descent from orbit turned out to be uneventful, notwithstanding the colourful and quite obscene language exchanged between Hanuman and the commander of the corporation gunship sent to intercept the Sun Wukong. Any flights in or out of the rebel stronghold at Lanka were automatically deemed an act of war but the gunship never got close; Hanuman and Ganesa knew full well how difficult it was for two craft to rendezvous at high altitudes, especially when one was actively fleeing the other.