“We found this unfortunate soul in that piece of junk tied to the pontoon,” said the blond sergeant. “We’re working on the theory that...”
“You may know him,” interjected Nyx. “Care to take a look?”
He took hold of the sheet and with an unnecessary flourish whipped it away from the head of the dead man beneath. Momus recoiled at the sight of the pale-skinned corpse. The deceased, who was dark-haired with a neat goatee beard, was no one he recognised.
“Did you kill him?” asked Nyx.
“What?” exclaimed Momus. “No, I frigging well did not!”
“You arrived in the Indra, which belongs to the refugees from the Dandridge Cole,” said Nyx. “That colossal lump of steel moored next to your own ship happens to be an engine unit from the very same asteroid. Coincidence?”
“Yes!” Momus exclaimed nervously. “Well, maybe not. Wak did say the crew here wanted to talk to us in person about something.”
“According to their records, it was salvaged by the Sky Cleaver crew and brought here with the aim of selling it back to the Dandridge Cole for a not inconsiderable sum,” said Nyx. “Was the price perhaps a little too rich? Is that why you resorted to murder?”
“I have never seen that man before in my life!”
“Are you sure?” asked the other officer. “We have ways of...”
“I am not a frigging murderer!”
Nyx paused. “I believe you,” he said at last. “Look at you! You’re shaking like a leaf just thinking about it. As it happens, the crew met their untimely end long before you showed up, so as theories go it doesn’t really work.”
“They’re dead?” asked Momus, regarding Nyx warily. “All of them?”
“We can only vouch for the few we found.”
“You haven’t found all of them?”
“Sorry,” said Nyx. “I meant for the bits of crew we found. Mostly on the walls.”
“Crapping hell,” murmured Momus.
“Exactly,” replied the blond sergeant. “Someone came here, attacked the crew and then took off with their ship, leaving this half-eaten body behind. Who knows what...”
“Half-eaten body?” cried Momus, interrupting. “You mean that man lying under the sheet has been... well, eaten?”
“Half-eaten,” corrected Nyx. “Arms and legs, mainly.”
“That’s frigging gross.”
“And it definitely wasn’t you?” asked Nyx, smiling slyly.
“I’m no cannibal!” Momus cried. He wondered why he was being told the gory details and decided Nyx just wanted to see him squirm. “Who did this? Where are they now?”
“The stolen ship was found abandoned in Woden orbit,” the sergeant said. “But...”
“It’s of no concern,” Nyx said swiftly. He fixed Momus with a steely stare. “Trust me when I say that what you have seen here is for your eyes only. This is a delicate situation. We do not want our operation here and in Tau Ceti influenced by outside conjecture.”
“What operation? You said we were to destroy all...”
“Shut up!” snapped Nyx.
Momus pretended he had not heard the blond officer’s slip and nodded sagely. “I saw nothing,” he confirmed. “No blood, no body, nothing.”
“I would hate to have to censor you by more permanent means,” added Nyx.
Momus gulped as the officer mimed cutting his throat. “I saw less than nothing,” he said hurriedly. “A black hole is a frigging supernova next to what I saw here.”
Nyx smiled. He made as if to turn away and then paused. “One last thing,” he said. “If you’re from the Dandridge Cole, are you one of those scummy, low-life refugees who have come to Newbrum and taken all our jobs?”
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” retorted Momus. “The answer is no.”
“In that case, I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Have a nice trip.”
“I’m free to go?”
“You’re a rubbish pilot,” Nyx told him. “But you’ll keep your mouth shut. If I was a betting man I would stake your life on that.”
* * *
Zotz soon discovered that while Ravana’s electric pet did not take well to zero gravity, its AI unit liked being controlled from afar even less. In the end he came up with a method whereby he would transmit a list of possible places to explore, safe in the knowledge that the cat would reject every single one and go somewhere else. It had somehow already left the Indra and despondently clung to a handrail in the passageway outside. Persuading the cat to jump to the floor and grip the steel mesh floor with its diamond-tipped claws was one thing. Getting it to go where he wanted was something else entirely.
Endymion’s hack however worked like a dream. The view through Zotz’s VR headset, as seen by the electric pet just a fraction of a second ago, was a cat’s-eye aspect of the flexible walkway that linked the docking pontoon to the huge mysterious cylinder. Ahead was an open hatchway, beyond which was darkness. He set the VR console to record, sent a message to the cat ordering it back to the Indra, then grinned as the pet promptly ignored the request and began to claw its way towards the hatch.
“Stupid Jones,” he murmured.
A faint growl came over the speakers. Zotz froze, then sighed with relief when he saw his microphone was switched to mute after all. An angry electric cat was not a pretty sight.
Something in the darkness ahead excited the cat and urged it to scramble forward. The view through Zotz’s VR headset changed from colour to monochrome in shades of green as the pet’s electric vision automatically switched from visible light to infra-red. Moments later, the cat clawed over the sill of the hatchway and was inside.
The steel lattice floor at the pet’s feet slowly resolved into a balcony looking out upon the curved walls of the cylindrical hull. Looming out of the gloom in the centre of the vast chamber was the large spherical casing of a nuclear fusion reactor, surrounded by a network of pipes and electrical systems. Everything in sight was caked in mould or fungus. Vine-like growths grew up every walkway, ladder and steel beam, all somewhat reminiscent of the tendrils infesting the cargo bay of the Platypus.
The cat clambered to the top of a flight of steps and peered down. Zotz gazed in awe at the chaotic mishmash of refuse, console parts and weird green globules drifting in zero gravity. Heavy equipment swayed at the end of cables fixed to the reactor. Twelve sinister vats gaped like giant glass seed pods, each standing firm before the reactor and evidently bolted to the floor. An uncontrollable shiver ran down Zotz’s spine.
“The cyberclones!” he murmured.
The huge silver cylinder lashed to Sky Cleaver’s docking pontoon was the missing engine room of the Dandridge Cole, ejected into space with Taranis and his newly-born creations inside. Zotz still had horrible dreams about his own role in the tense confrontation between Ravana, a double-crossing agent called Fenris and the mad priest himself. Fenris had been killed by the cyberclones and Taranis incapacitated after having his spider-walker chair sabotaged by the teeth and claws of a certain electric cat. Yet the eyes of the very same pet now revealed no trace of Taranis, Fenris or the dreadful clones, living or dead.
Zotz had long felt uneasy over his part in their fate. Now he was unsure which was the greater mystery: how the engine room came to be moored at Thunor, or where its reluctant occupants had gone. It was the latter that worried him most.
“Jones,” he murmured. “I think we’ve seen enough.”
He sent an order to return to the Indra. This time, the cat did not disobey.
* * *
The thought that there was a ship full of cannibals somewhere out in space did little to ease Momus’ nerves as the Indra headed back to the Dandridge Cole. Refuelling the tanker had taken an agonisingly long time, during which he and a strangely subdued cat had kept themselves to the Indra’s flight deck with the airlock securely closed. The image left lodged in his brain by Nyx and his fellow officer turned every streak of rust on Sky Cleaver’s walls into a splas
h of blood, every creak of the superstructure into the scrape of a butcher’s knife and every touch of hydraulic hose into a brush of a discarded severed limb. He could see himself having nightmares for months to come.
Once clear of Thunor orbit, he recorded a holovid message to Quirinus and sent it on its way. A two-way conversation was impossible this far from the hollow moon, but despite his promise to Nyx not to say anything it felt good to burden someone with his experience. When Wak’s reply came a couple of hours later, interrupting his enjoyment of the fifties’ clatterstomp blasting from the Indra’s cabin speakers, Momus was miffed to discover that the others on the Dandridge Cole already seemed to know about the salvaged engine unit and what it may have contained. Now he felt like a sacrificial lamb that against the odds had lived to bleat again.
The hours passed. Momus received a further communication from the Dandridge Cole, this time from Quirinus who was eager to bring his pilot-for-hire up to speed regarding the plan to take the Platypus to Falsafah. One thing Professor Wak, Quirinus and Zotz had not known before Momus’ report was Nyx’s revelation that the Sky Cleaver deaths were somehow connected to an operation in the Tau Ceti system. In his earlier message, Wak had not mentioned Quirinus’ own conversation with Administrator Verdandi, but now Momus heard the news he could see why Ravana’s father looked more worried than ever. The plan itself sounded preposterous.
“Mining boosters!” he mumbled. “First they send me off in a crappy tanker chasing cannibals and now they expect me to fly a frigging heap of fireworks!”
The electric cat, curled beneath the seatbelt of the co-pilot’s chair, looked up at him and yawned. Momus did not expect any sympathy from that quarter.
* * *
The final hurried repairs to the Platypus continued unabated even as the freighter began its ascent on the hangar’s elevator up into the main airlock. The fitting of the external boosters added a few hours to the AI unit’s original estimate, but now all Quirinus had left to do was link the firing circuits of the three rockets to the flight-deck console.
Momus had returned and overseen the transfer of hydrogen and helium-three from the Indra to the Dandridge Cole’s own tanks. Upon hearing that the automated systems at the cloud mine were operational, Wak sent the tanker straight back to Sky Cleaver on autopilot, for it would take several trips to replenish all the fuel lost. A nervous Momus made sure the tanker’s hatch was securely locked, fearful of what might hitch a lift back home.
Quirinus snapped the final connector into place and extracted himself from beneath the console. The flight deck of the Platypus still wore the blackened scars from the bomb blast but was otherwise clean, tidy and fully operational. After recalling the holovid image of Wak being half-strangled, he had not dared to even attempt the removal of tendrils, but the more obtrusive ones had been encouraged to hide out of sight.
The hangar elevator groaned to a halt. Quirinus heard the reassuring clunks as docking tethers and a refuelling gantry reached out and latched to the freighter’s hull, then again as the redundant undercarriage folded into the hull to leave the ship swaying gently in the zero-gravity wobble of the spinning asteroid.
The view through the flight-deck window was of the huge circular portal that led into the interior of the hollow moon itself. This had been opened just once since the Dandridge Cole left the Solar System more than a century ago; a spur-of-the-moment decision that had saved the crew from certain death wrecked inside an airless airlock, but which had ended with the stricken Platypus crashing into the artificial sun. Quirinus was still not sure whether to be grateful he had been unconscious at the time.
“Ship?” asked Quirinus. One curious development was that the AI unit no longer needed to be called via the customary switch. “Run pre-flight checks and prepare flight systems for a trip to Tau Ceti, coordinates to follow. Seal the cargo bay airlock, but leave the EV pod bay door open for now.”
“Confirmed,” replied the AI. “It is a pleasure to be back in service, Captain Quirinus.”
“Let’s hope so,” he muttered.
A murmur of voices wafted through the open floor hatch. Outside, Quirinus glimpsed the bobbing heads of Wak, Momus and Zotz near the beak-like nose of the ship. Sounds of scrabbling hands and feet were followed by Momus’ inevitable grumbling as each in turn made their way through the tiny pod bay and up into the flight deck.
“My word!” exclaimed Wak, clambering from the hatch. “You don’t make things easy for your poor passengers, that’s for sure!”
“This is frigging madness,” Momus muttered.
Quirinus watched as Zotz scrambled in after him. Both carried luggage, which for Zotz included Ravana’s electric cat. Despite his grumbles, Momus went straight to the co-pilot’s seat, buckled himself in and scrutinised the controls. He may have been the only one with a valid licence, but knew better than to take the pilot’s chair himself.
“Have you decided to come with us?” Quirinus asked Zotz.
“Ravana is my friend,” he said quietly. “I want to help you find her.”
“There’s still lots to do here,” Wak suggested. “It feels like we’ve hardly spent any time together and already you’re rushing off on another adventure!”
“Momus said Taranis’ horrible cyberclones might be at Tau Ceti,” said Zotz. “What if they’re on Falsafah? It was me who sent them into space and so it’s my fault they went mad and killed those people. If they find Ravana and hurt her that will be my fault too.”
“If anyone’s to blame it’s that damn priest,” Quirinus told him. “But this won’t be a comfortable trip. It’s two days to Falsafah and as the carousel isn’t working you’ll be eating and sleeping in zero gravity. It isn’t exactly the most welcoming of planets either.”
“I don’t mind staying,” Momus interjected. “I can feed the pigs and chickens.”
“Shut up!” retorted Quirinus. “You’re coming whether you like it or not.”
Zotz looked hesitant. Quirinus knew he was desperate to join the Platypus to Tau Ceti, but saw the boy’s loyalty was torn between his father and his friend.
“Zotz,” said Wak, quietly. “Go with Quirinus. You will always have family, but a good friend like Ravana is hard to find. We’ll have plenty of time for father-and-son stuff when you get back.”
Zotz grinned and darted into the crawl tunnel to stow his luggage in the hold. Momus opened his mouth to speak, caught Quirinus’ glare and closed it again.
“In that case, shall we make a move?” suggested Quirinus. “Ship! How are you getting on with those pre-flight checks?”
“Life-support systems are running at maximum efficiency,” said the unruffled tones of the AI. “Fuel tanks are full and all flight systems are fully operational. The AI unit has had a nice rest and is looking forward to getting back to work. Forward visual scanner assembly and carousel drive unit remain inoperative.”
They heard a clunk as the refuelling gantry uncoupled from the Platypus and retreated into the hangar wall. Zotz reappeared on the flight deck, went straight to his father and gave him a hug. Wak looked embarrassed at the sudden show of affection.
“Right! Well, I’ll be off,” he said, moving towards the hatch. “Good luck and all that!”
“You too,” replied Quirinus. “I expect the sun to be shining when we return.”
“And keep a look out for space cannibals,” added Momus.
Wak did not seem to know how to respond to that, so settled for a final brief wave to Zotz and quickly left. Quirinus watched the professor exit the airlock chamber, then manoeuvred himself to the pilot’s seat and strapped himself in. The four flight-deck chairs were in a row facing the windscreen, with the middle two pilot chairs set forward within banks of flight controls. Quirinus settled into his familiar centre-starboard seat with a satisfied smile and looked to Momus and Zotz either side of him. As usual, Zotz was having problems with his seatbelt, but managed a grin in return.
“Ship, seal the pod bay door,” said Qu
irinus. He gave Zotz a wink. “Ready?”
“Flight systems on standby,” said the AI. “Please clarify your last command.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Quirinus said irritably.
“I’m ready,” replied Zotz.
“Whatever,” muttered Momus. “Ship, open the main airlock and cut us free.”
“Confirmed,” intoned the AI. “Please be gentle, Captain Momus.”
The console holovid screen showed the view from the rear of the spacecraft. Two-and-a-half pairs of eyes watched the airlock door open behind them, revealing the long tunnel to the outer airlock and deep space. The docking tethers released with a clunk.
“Do you want me to do this bit?” Momus asked Quirinus. “What with you having only one good eye, no bloody depth perception and all that.”
Quirinus scowled. “Don’t spoil my moment.”
He punched the control for the retro rockets. Caught off guard, Momus and Zotz lurched forward in their seats as the Platypus blasted backwards into the tunnel. Barely a minute later they were into the void and slipping smoothly away from the slot in the nose of the hollow moon. Quirinus ran his hands over the controls and in one fluid movement the ship swung upon its axis, corrected its spin and locked onto a course for the outer star system.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured and gave the console an affectionate pat.
* * *
Several hours passed. The Platypus accelerated onwards, eager to distance itself from the gravitational pull of the planets to safely leave the Barnard’s Star system. Finally, Momus received confirmation from Ascension space-traffic control that they were good to go. The extra-dimensional drive spun into life, blasted a membrane-bursting mortar at right angles to reality and in a stomach-churning, space-time-blurring blink of an eye they were suddenly a mere two hundred million kilometres from the star Tau Ceti, fifteen light years from home.
Paw-Prints Of The Gods Page 18
