“Did you hear about Namtar and Inari?” Hanuman asked Yaksha.
Yaksha smiled. “I did. Kartikeya is not a happy man.”
“What happened?” asked Surya.
“They took their special brand of terrorism to Ayodhya,” Ganesa told him. “No one was hurt and there’s one less church in town. I thought that was rather a good result myself.”
“You’re not supposed to say things like that!” said Hanuman, adopting a mock scolding tone. “These people pay us good money to fly them around.”
“Aren’t you all on the same side?” asked Surya, thoroughly confused. “I thought Kartikeya was your leader.”
“We don’t take sides,” replied Hanuman. “We only take cash. Preferably in advance.”
A hush fell upon the table. From across the palace, the distant sound of an extremely irate Kartikeya shouting at Namtar and Inari drifted quietly through the air.
“Do you know a girl named Ravana?” Yaksha suddenly asked, turning to Surya.
Surya looked at her in surprise. “Ravana isn’t a girl’s name,” he pointed out.
Hanuman regarded Yaksha oddly. “Why do you ask?”
“I heard the name recently,” she said. “As the Raja says, Ravana is not usually a name someone would choose for a daughter, yet years ago I did know of a child who had been given that name for a very strange reason. I wondered whether it was indeed the same girl.”
“Ravana was the ten-headed demon king,” Surya declared.
“A lot of people have names from mythology,” mused Ganesa. “It seems to be a growing trend as we delve deeper into the galaxy. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
“Fascinating,” retorted Hanuman, faking a yawn.
“I am pleased you know something of the legends of our homeland back on Earth,” Yaksha said to Surya. “The priest Taranis was also fond of the old stories and once gave the name Ravana to the unborn son of a good friend of mine. He predicted that the boy would be a great warrior, who would see Lanka join forces with Ayodhya and free Yuanshi from Que Qiao rule. My friend wanted no part of this and had secret medical treatment early in the pregnancy so that her child would be born a girl. Yet she was so scared of Taranis that she still let the priest name her newborn Ravana.”
“Taranis must have found out eventually,” remarked Hanuman.
“Not until Aranya Pass,” Yaksha told him. “Ravana was injured in the attack and her unusual name was commented upon by hospital staff. Taranis was reportedly furious, but soon after disappeared in mysterious circumstances and was presumed dead for years.”
“Why did you ask me if I knew Ravana?” asked Surya. The infamous battle of Aranya Pass, a botched and bloody attack early in the civil war that saw royalist rebels fire upon an unarmed medical supplies convoy, was one he knew from history lessons.
“Do you know her?” inquired Yaksha.
Surya shook his head. “My mother doesn’t let me get out much,” he confessed.
“Ravana’s father was a pilot and it was his ship that was commandeered when you and your mother fled Yuanshi following the death of your father,” she told him. “Ravana too may have ended up at that asteroid you have called home for the past nine years.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Ganesa.
“Because she is a sneaky, devious woman who listens to private conversations when she should be minding her own business!” roared Kartikeya, suddenly appearing at the door.
Yaksha went deathly pale. “I was just telling the boy of his history, no more.”
“Did you mention that this girl Ravana was a witness to the Raja’s kidnap?”
“Kidnap?” retorted Yaksha. “Yesterday you were talking of liberation.”
“Silence!” snapped Kartikeya. He approached the table and glared at Yaksha. “Your indiscretion will be the death of you, mark my words.”
“Your words are something for which I do not care,” Yaksha remarked coolly.
“Maybe not,” retorted Kartikeya. “Yet careless talk is dangerous. You’d better pray to the greys it does not prove to be the undoing of this girl Ravana also!”
Chapter Five
Strangers in a strange land
RAVANA PEERED into the narrow space between the curved hull and the carousel housing and cautiously felt along the bundle of cables that ran along the inner spine of the Platypus. The spherical mass of the combined fusion plant and extra-dimensional drive at her back left little room for manoeuvre. The ladder upon which she stood, though bolted to the cargo bay wall, seemed a lot more wobbly in the gravity of the hollow moon than when in flight.
When the ship first came into her father’s possession it had been no more than a lowly interplanetary freighter. Quirinus saw the ship’s potential from the start and the fitting of an ED drive had been but the first of a series of modifications towards creating a vessel ideal for clandestine voyages between star systems. The most recent addition was the carousel habitation module, a cylindrical cabin that spun upon its axis like a miniature version of the hollow moon, transplanted from a larger passenger cruiser to provide an area of artificial gravity during long flights. The downside was that when it came to repairs, the various alterations and necessary extra fuel tanks had left the Platypus with far too many nooks and crannies to make maintaining the ship easy.
Reaching into the gap, Ravana’s hand at first found nothing amiss, but then she felt the squishy tendrils of the strange, plant-like growth they had recently noticed invading the inner recesses of the ship. She gave the tendril an experimental tug but it clung firm. Withdrawing her hand, she lowered herself down the ladder to the halfway point, slipped into the carousel hub crawl tunnel, then shuffled quickly past the hatch leading to the carousel interior and onwards to the short ladder at the end. Moments later, she emerged breathlessly up onto the flight deck, where her father was busy peering into the dark recesses behind the main console, an open tool box at his feet. True to form, her electric cat was fast asleep on the co-pilot’s chair. Upon hearing her enter, Quirinus turned and gave her a weary smile.
“Did you see anything?” he asked.
“They’ve reached as far as the ED drive,” Ravana told him. “I can feel them along the main run of cables. I wonder what they are?”
“All the stems we’ve found lead back to the AI unit,” reflected Quirinus, meaning the artificial intelligence core processor at the heart of the ship’s flight and life-support systems. “Zotz reckons he has seen something like it before and has gone back to his father’s workshop to have a look.”
“Do you think it’s dangerous?”
“Hard to tell. They don’t seem to be affecting anything,” Quirinus admitted, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “I’ve run the AI unit’s diagnostic programme twice already and searched the net for any mention of it in maintenance bulletins, but found nothing helpful.” He pressed a switch on the console. “Ship, report status.”
“All flight and life-support systems are functioning normally,” said the synthesized female voice. “There is superficial damage to the starboard tailfin, a small leak in the flight-deck air-conditioning unit, the light is not working in the toilet cubicle, the…”
“Stick to the important stuff!” Quirinus interrupted testily. “Nothing’s wrong, see?”