Hollow Moon (34 page)

“Now you’re scaring me,” muttered Bellona.

“I’m scaring myself,” Endymion admitted. “Let’s get out
of here.”

The door at the other end of the storeroom was a luminous
shade of red and had the word ‘FIRE’ written on it in huge letters. Endymion
hesitated when the door did not open automatically upon his approach. When he
pushed it with his hand, it swung aside to reveal the bottom of a brightly-lit
stairwell.

“A fire exit,” Endymion noted with relief. “And the only
way is up.”

“That could describe our last performance,” mumbled
Bellona.

Philyra pushed past Endymion and ran to the foot of the
stairs. Eager to escape whatever it was lurking in the dark, Bellona followed.
The stairwell was several storeys high, presumably ascending all the way to the
top floor of the hotel.

“More stairs,” Philyra said glumly. “Why couldn’t you
lead us to a lift?”

“Use the hoverchair,” retorted Endymion. A folding
mobility chair hung from a frame on the wall, beneath a sign that read:
‘EMERGENCY USE ONLY’.

Philyra stuck her tongue out at him and stomped noisily
up the stairs. On the next floor, the stairwell opened into a deserted
corridor, at the end of which they found a small lobby with a window and an
emergency exit leading outside. Endymion however ignored this and began to
climb the next flight of steps, pointing to another door on the landing above
that led back in the direction of the conference hall. When Bellona and Philyra
finally caught up, Endymion had his face pressed against the small glass window
in the door and was peering into the space beyond. When he tried to open the
door he found it locked.

Bellona sighed. “What now?”

Without saying a word, Endymion withdrew a length of
cable from his pocket, connected his wristpad to the control panel beside the
door, then began to tap at the screen. Moments later, they heard a dull clunk
as the lock released.

“Coming?” he asked, pushing open the door.

“Any spiders in there?” asked Philyra nervously.

“It’s quite safe,” Endymion reassured her. “Come and
look.”

The lights came on automatically as they entered,
revealing a deserted control room. The tiny chamber was dominated by a darkened
window that took up the whole of one wall, in front of which stood a huge desk
console and a couple of padded chairs. On the floor, next to a second door to
the left, was a small packing crate with the lid removed. Scurrying over to the
window, Philyra looked to see what was on the other side.

“It’s the conference hall!” she exclaimed. “You can see
everything from here!”

Endymion and Bellona came to her side and gazed at the scene
beyond the glass. The window gave a panoramic view of the whole auditorium,
looking out above rows of empty seats towards the stage from a vantage point
high in the rear wall of the hall. Directly below, they could see a holovid
crew making preparations for the evening’s live broadcast, while far away on
the front row were the bobbing heads of the Bradbury Heights band. Philyra
seemed more interested in the Avalon news team and eagerly scanned the crew.
She never watched current-affairs programmes; Bellona guessed one of the
celebrity gossip shows had recently uncovered an embarrassingly-hilarious
scandal involving a popular news presenter.

“I can see Maia,” she grumbled. “I’d recognise her fat
head anywhere. She’s not sitting under a sprinkler by any chance?” she asked,
giving her brother a sly look.

“I wouldn’t dare,” muttered Endymion, though Bellona saw
he was tempted to see what the desk console could do in his mischievous hands.
“This must be the control room for the stage lighting and sound system. I’m
pretty sure we’re not supposed to be here.”

Bellona watched as he moved towards the second door,
paused by the packing crate and then knelt to look inside. Nestling within the
shredded packing paper was a small metal box, which Bellona decided looked a
bit like the device Endymion had shown her from the kidnappers’ tunnel on the
Dandridge
Cole
. This one had a larger aerial, a slot
for a data rod and a control panel that had not been smashed with a hammer.

“What is it?” asked Bellona, peering over his shoulder.

“A personnel scanner,” he told her. He had not been able
to resist switching it on and was soon flicking through the control menu that
had appeared upon the tiny screen. “Ravana said the kidnappers used the one I
found in their hideout to trace the Raja through his implant. This one appears
to be able to transmit as well as receive. I wonder…”

Bellona waited for her brother to continue. When he gave
no sign of doing so she gave him a shove. Philyra came to join them, looking
bored.

“Zotz and I hacked into a holovid call between Fenris and
someone called Taranis,” said Endymion. “Ostara asked us to do it!” he added
quickly, as Bellona gave him a shocked glare. “Anyway, we heard them say that a
ship was bringing equipment to Hemakuta and it was all to do with the Raja’s
appearance at the conference.”

“The Raja was kidnapped,” Philyra pointed out. “He’s not
coming to the conference.”

“How do we know that? The kidnappers might be planning to
bring him here against his will,” said Bellona. “Isn’t he from the royal family
of Yuanshi?”

“A personnel scanner that can transmit data,” Endymion
murmured thoughtfully, his hand resting idly upon the device. “This could tap
into someone’s implant and put ideas into their head! Whoever commands the Raja
could change the outcome of the civil war.”

“You mean that thing can brainwash people?” remarked
Philyra.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Endymion admitted.

“Why is it lying around for anyone to find?” Bellona
asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Endymion paused. On the face of it, her observation did
seem to pour cold water on her brother’s conspiracy theory. Suddenly, his face
became a picture of shocked realisation.

“Don’t you see?” he said urgently. “It means there must
be people at the conference who are in on the plot themselves!”

“That’s crazy,” retorted Philyra, looking perturbed.

“We should tell Miss Clymene,” declared Bellona
resolutely.

“What can she do?” exclaimed Endymion. “Who on this moon
can we trust?”

Yuanshi took five Terran days to complete each orbit of
Shennong, turning just once on its axis in that time. On the daylight side of
the moon at Lanka, the storm clouds brought into being by the recent ice
asteroid had hidden the tiny sun for what seemed like weeks.

The rain lashed down in torrents and splattered heavily
against the windscreen of the
Sun Wukong
as
it slew to a halt at the end of the muddy airstrip that was Lanka spaceport. To
those aboard, the prospect of getting drenched was less of a concern than the
hail of bullets erupting from the squat gunship high above, with the missiles
exploding noisily above the city barely half a kilometre away coming a close
third. Que Qiao militia were out in force and concentrating their fire on the
Crystal Palace of Kubera. The daylight strike on Lanka had taken Hanuman,
Ganesa and their new-found friends by surprise, not least because the latest
message from Commander Kartikeya had reassured them he was not expecting
anything to happen this close to the peace conference.

“There’s an aircar waiting but we need to make a run for
it!” Hanuman yelled.

The whine of the engine compressors wound down as he
rapidly ran his fingers over the console, shutting off the flight systems with
well-practised ease. Behind him in the passenger compartment, Ganesa stood by
the airlock door with her hand ready on the release control. Ostara, Zotz,
Ravana and her cat sat rigid, shaken by their descent into a battle zone. The
oft-mentioned civil war on Yuanshi was suddenly too close for comfort.

“Welcome to Lanka,” remarked Ganesa, giving the door a
shove. Outside, a plasma cannon bolt from the gunship struck the edge of the
runway, showering the
Sun Wukong
with
clods of mud. “Thank you for choosing to fly with Hanuman airlines.”

“Very droll,” muttered Ostara, unbuckling her seatbelt.

A frantic dash across the runway took them to the waiting
stubby-winged aircar and soon they were on their way. Ravana’s first sight of
the city that had once been her home was one of a community ravaged by war, for
the outskirts had long ago become a bleak wasteland of bomb craters and crumbling
buildings, one of which she recognised as the shattered husk of the former
Dhusarian Central Church. It was not until they crossed the old dome wall that
the Lanka of her childhood abruptly came to life and she eagerly looked on as
the aircar sped low over the bustling conurbation and on towards the circular
park at the heart of the city. Ahead, the Crystal Palace was coming into view,
its four glass towers managing to look both awe-inspiring and ostentatious as
they glittered in the blaze of exploding missiles.

“What is that place?” murmured Zotz, staring spellbound
at the palace.

“Kubera,” Ravana told him, equally mesmerised. “It was
known as the Maharaja’s summer palace, though he and his family lived mainly in
Ayodhya.”

“Now it’s Kartikeya’s headquarters,” said Hanuman. “He
likes to command in style.”

Their pilot brought the aircar down into the inner
courtyard and parked neatly next to another on the landing pad. With the noise
of the aircar’s turbines still ringing in their ears, the travellers from the
Sun
Wukong
scurried through the rain into the
palace.

Hanuman led them to an ornate antechamber, where they
were met by an elderly Indian woman who greeted them with a smile. Ganesa
hurried forward and gave the woman a warm hug.

“Yaksha!” she cried. “Did you get my message?”

“I did,” the woman acknowledged. She gestured to where
Ravana, Ostara and Zotz stood, dripping wet from the rain. “Kartikeya asked to
speak with you before you do anything else. Are these the ones you told me of?”

Ganesa nodded and left it to Hanuman to perform the
introductions. Yaksha approached Ravana and like Ganesa before her, gently
raised a hand to the scar upon the girl’s face. Ravana felt a pang of
recognition upon seeing the old woman but could not place the memory. It did
not help that her implant was generating all sorts of distracting images inside
her head, for the palace network was a random mess of circuits where almost
anything could be controlled by the flick of a mental switch. Her cat wriggled
in her arms and meowed.

“So you are Ravana,” said Yaksha. “You’re even more
beautiful than I remember. Your mother was a very dear friend of mine, such a
long time ago.”

“You knew my mother?” Ravana exclaimed. She lowered her
cat to the floor.

“More coincidences,” muttered Ostara. Ganesa smiled.

“Ravana’s family and my own have long been connected with
Kubera,” Yaksha told Ostara. “It was her mother’s grandfather, one of the
founding fathers of Lanka, who originally built the Crystal Palace back in the
days of the first Maharaja. Kartikeya himself cares little for the past,” she
added with a touch of bitterness. “He sees only his glorious future, leaving
the rest of us to deal with the present.”

“Do you think Kartikeya can help me rescue my father?”
asked Ravana.

“He should,” retorted Yaksha. “He is to blame as much as
anyone.”

“Where is he?” asked Hanuman.

“In his operations room. The basement?” she suggested,
when Hanuman looked puzzled. “I should warn you that Fenris is down there with
him.”

“Fenris!” exclaimed Ostara.

Ravana frowned, equally dismayed. “Here?”

“He’s only just arrived,” Yaksha told them. “Fenris has
been entrusted by Kartikeya to escort the Raja to the peace conference
tomorrow. Were you not aware?”

“The Raja is here also?” asked Zotz.

“We knew that much,” Ostara pointed out. “I think.”

“I’ve lost track of who knows what,” sighed Hanuman.
“Take us to your leader.”

Yaksha led them along a hallway, down a flight of stairs
and into a brightly-lit room with an arched roof, leaving Ravana’s cat to
follow at its own pace. Of the two men who stood by the large table in the
centre of the room, Ravana instantly recognised the goatee-bearded, dour figure
of Fenris, while the younger Indian man in military dress next to him she assumed
was Commander Kartikeya. At first she thought the boy standing beyond was the
Raja’s cyberclone, then with a start realised it was none other than Surya
himself. Fenris saw them first and his face dropped into a scowl that did
little to conceal his anger.

“Damnation!” he spat irritably. “What are you three doing
here?”

“That’s him!” Zotz exclaimed excitedly, pointing at
Surya. “The kidnapped Raja!”

Kartikeya looked up and frowned as his gaze fell upon
Ravana and Zotz.

“More children,” he said disapprovingly. “This is a war
room, not a crèche.”

“I am not a child!” retorted Ravana.

Surya caught her glare and smiled. The lack of music took
away the lustre of life at the palace but the Que Qiao attack and unexpected
visitors promised a bit of excitement.

“Good to see you made it in one piece,” Kartikeya said to
Hanuman and Ganesa. “We thought Jaggarneth was on to our plot and is trying to
stop us leaving for Daode, but my spies tell me this attack is in response to a
raid on a Que Qiao research laboratory.” He gave them a knowing look. “Is there
anything you would like to tell me?”

Hanuman gave him a sheepish look. “That was Ravana’s
idea,” he said, putting a hand on her arm. “She helped us with a spot of
espionage and while we were there she suggested we cause some trouble. I didn’t
expect Que Qiao to retaliate like this.”