“Honourable words indeed, my dear Raja,” said Namtar, though they all knew the late Maharaja had been far from innocent as far as the war was concerned. “It is time for us to select an apt target for creating our diversion. I am reliably informed there are a number of official transports on the far side of the palace that should serve admirably.”
Surya took this as a cue to step away from the launcher’s control panel. He watched with interest as Namtar switched on the guidance system and brought up a satellite image of Sumitra Palace and the surrounding park on the console screen. Various dark blobs were marked by a green square, with a large group of them on the other side of the palace and a further solitary one very close to their own position. Earlier, Namtar had suggested it would be better if Inari personally took a homing beacon to the car park but Inari had refused, for he was slowly becoming wise to Namtar’s homicidal tendencies.
“You’re right,” observed Inari. Surya joined him in peering over Namtar’s shoulder at the cluster of green squares on the screen. “There’s a whole convoy parked over there.”
Namtar pressed the green square at the centre of the cluster and the symbol marking the distant Que Qiao ground car began to flash red. Satisfied, he lifted a cover next to the screen to reveal a large red button. His finger moved to press it, then paused.
“Would you care to have the honour, my Raja?” he asked.
Surya’s eyes lit up and he nodded greedily. Extending his own hand, he put a finger to the button and gave it a firm press. With a deafening whoosh, the rocket erupted out of the launcher and soared into the air, leaving a white vapour trail in its wake.
“Wow!” he exclaimed. “That is fantastic!”
Surya stared in delight at the missile speeding towards its target. As he stepped back for a better look, he accidentally trod upon Inari’s laser-damaged boot and was promptly deafened by an agonised shriek as the freedom fighter felt the boy’s weight crushing down upon his charred toes. Blinded by pain, Inari half-hopped, half-staggered away, then made a grab for the launcher to stop himself from falling. His fingers barely managed to brush the control panel and then he was on the ground, sobbing gently as he clutched his wounded foot.
“Sorry about that,” murmured Surya.
“You fool!” roared Namtar. Surya looked at him in alarm, but it was to the fallen Inari he spoke. “You imbecile! You’ve reset the guidance control!”
Inari slowly staggered to his feet and looked at the console. Surya saw the target was no longer that selected in the heart of the far-away cluster; instead, it was the square closest to them that now flashed red. As one, they looked up into the sky and saw the rocket begin to loop around and head back in their direction.
“It’s locked onto the bus!” Inari glanced over his shoulder in horror to where the church hoverbus was parked. “How do I stop it?”
Namtar did not reply. Mesmerised by the rapidly-approaching missile, he was dumbstruck and rigid with fear. Inari started hammering at the console screen but the pain in his foot and his growing panic thwarted his efforts to change the target back again. Surya took one look at the situation and quickly came up with a plan of his own.
“Run!” he yelled.
Not waiting for a response, Surya sprinted towards the trees at the edge of the car park. Namtar uttered a strangled cry and quickly followed, abandoning Inari to limp to safety alone. They had barely reached the shelter of the surrounding woodland when the missile struck the unsuspecting hoverbus with a mind-numbing bang. Surya yelped as a huge blast of hot air swept them off their feet.
The bombardment of flaming shreds of church minibus came a split second later. Soon the surrounding undergrowth was ablaze, forcing them to scramble further into the trees. Once clear, they staggered to a halt and looked back at the scene of devastation on the car park. The explosion had torn the hoverbus apart and scattered the pieces far and wide, leaving nothing but the charred and twisted remains of the chassis and a plume of black smoke. Incredibly, all three of them had escaped with no more than a few cuts and bruises from where they had been thrown to the ground.
“All in all, not a good week for the Dhusarian Church,” remarked Namtar. At his feet lay a smoking fallen panel inscribed with the words: ‘PRAY THE GREY WAY!’.
“Sorry,” mumbled Inari. “Still, it’s a diversion of sorts.”
“What an utter debacle,” grumbled Namtar. “Today you have plumbed new depths of incompetence. Where are you going?” he asked irritably, seeing Surya walk away.
“To find the others,” Surya replied tartly. “It’s either that or walk home.”
Ravana and Hanuman squatted beneath the starboard wing of the Platypus, watching the distant commotion as Que Qiao security guards and a fire crew tackled the blaze in the car park. The diversion had come from an unexpected quarter but Namtar and Inari had done their job. Ravana twitched nervously when Surya’s call sign appeared in her mind and it took her a few moments to remember how to flex the mental switch to bring his disembodied words into her head. The implant’s headcom took a lot of getting used to.
“We’ve caused a bit of a distraction,” came the voice. “Good luck!”
“Message received,” she replied, earning a strange look from Hanuman. She had not yet mastered the art of transmitting a message without speaking aloud.
Together they crept back to the airlock door where Ostara and Fenris were waiting. Ravana would have preferred Hanuman to lead the rescue, but he and Ganesa were going to be busy stealing liquid hydrogen from the airstrip’s underground storage tanks so that the Platypus had enough fuel for the return to Daode. Fenris looked extremely nervous, no doubt because Ostara held Hanuman’s pistol in a way that suggested she would blast a hole in his head if he so much as sneezed. Behind them, Zotz was busy pulling all sorts of strange gadgets out of his bag.
“Ready?” asked Ravana.
Ostara nodded, handed her the slate she had brought from Kubera, then gave Fenris a prod in the back with the business end of the pistol. Fenris scowled and led them quickly across the runway towards the nearby palace, where a low-roofed terminal building had been built at the rear of the complex. They could see a security desk through a nearby window, but it was unoccupied and the entrance firmly locked.
“Never mind,” Fenris said condescendingly as Ostara tugged at the door. “You tried your best. Perhaps we should give up now and go home before someone finds us here.”
“I’m sure we can force our way in somehow,” Ostara retorted. “We could go back for Inari’s laser cutter or try to break the glass. I even saw Zotz with some sort of jet pack and I for one would love to fire you head-first through an upstairs window.”
“Shall I just unlock the door?” Ravana suggested wearily.
The implant image for the electronic catch on the door was straightforward and she opened it with ease. Moments later they were inside the surprisingly drab terminal building, standing quietly by the deserted desk and contemplating their next move.
“Where now?” Ostara asked Fenris, who was clearly perturbed that they had managed to get past the first security door so easily. When he did not answer straight away she gave him another prod. “Where are they keeping Quirinus?”
“The palace has a small cell block for prisoners brought in for questioning,” Fenris told her. “Unless he has been moved in my absence, Ravana’s father is there.”
Ravana interrogated the slate in her hand.