“All that is part does belong,” she declared. “Do I belong?”
The twelve stopped. Taranis scowled at her from his immobile perch. Behind him, the caged mother of the clones once more gesticulated wildly towards the book on top of the crate. Zotz had reached the reactor and Ravana’s glance caught his own as he started to pull at the conduit that ran down the side of spherical chamber and into the floor.
“zz-beeliieevee-zz!” the clones chanted. “zz-oonlyy-theen-wiill-yyoouu-truulyy-beeloong-zz!”
“You learn quickly,” Taranis growled approvingly to Ravana. “You would have made a formidable leader of men. It is not too late for you and the Raja to be at my side! A vacancy has arisen, as you can see,” he added dryly. His glare flickered to Fenris’ prone body.
Ostara stifled a yelp as she was tugged from behind. Surya had returned and was pulling at her sleeve, eager for her to follow. Meanwhile, Zotz had opened the cable conduit and was haphazardly pulling lengths of wire free. Ravana tried not to stare in a way that would alert Taranis to the attempted sabotage, but there was something about the reactor she found oddly familiar. Inspiration struck her as she realised Professor Wak had used schematics of the Dandridge Cole fusion plants in her engineering classes.
“Do you really think we would join you?” she remarked loudly. “That would be like joining the orange wires on a temperature sensor. Things would quickly get out of control.”
“An odd and irrelevant metaphor!” retorted Taranis. Zotz however took the hint and after selecting the correct cables from the bundle in his hand began to feverishly scrape at the orange insulation with his fingernails. “The ethics of youth are foolish and untamed,” the priest continued. “Yet your spirit is strong. That can be broken!”
Ravana winced as a blast of pain tore though her head and smashed away all rational thought. Suddenly, she was back in her virtual-reality nightmare, seeing walls of grey books squeeze towards her, their pages spilling out thousands of miniature mechanical priests on spider-walker legs. In her mind the arachnids were all over her once more, crawling up her limbs, over her face and in her hair, then amidst it all she saw the real Taranis, standing behind his alien clones, laughing at her.
Close to exhaustion, she concentrated upon the cruel grin of the priest and crushed the illusions in her mind. The clones stepped forward to surround her with all hands outstretched. Ravana caught sight of Zotz frantically trying to join the bared wires together and failing miserably.
“For Frigg’s sake, Zotz!” she cried wearily. “Tie a knot in it!”
Taranis snapped his head around and saw Zotz holding two orange wires.
“Stop, puny child!” cried the priest. “You are powerless before me!”
“I am Zotz Wak,” the boy declared. “I may not have the badge, but I can tie a knot!”
With a last defiant twist, he knotted the wires and stepped back. The engine room instantly came alive with flashing red beacons and the sound of sirens. Startled, the twelve clones shuffled to a halt, unsure of what to do. Zotz, knowing perfectly well how to react, dashed across the chamber and was back with Ostara halfway up the steps before Taranis could muster his disciples. The control desk near the hatch began to recite a warning in carefully-modulated tones.
“Reactor coolant failure. Engine room ejection in thirty seconds.”
“What!?” Taranis roared. “This is a trick! The reactor is stable!”
“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!”