by Mainak Dhar
'That's Ezekiel speaking, in the Bible.'
Seeing Aaditya's expression, Vishnu added with a smile, 'If you don't believe me, Google it, as you say nowadays.'
'Did you fight these Ashwins then?'
'Oh we had to. We couldn't let them continue. Not after they crossed a threshold we never imagined they would.'
'What did they do?'
In response, Vishnu took the vimana into a gut-wrenching dive and sped towards the Earth.
'Look down. What do you see?'
Aaditya saw a lake…no, as he looked closer, he could see that the water was contained in a depression of some kind.
'Looks like one of those meteorite craters that you see on Discovery Channel.'
Vishnu nodded.
'Looks like one but it isn't. This is in Lonar, just a few hundred kilometres from Mumbai, and the crater you see is over six thousand feet in diameter and was formed over 12,000 years ago. It looks like a meteorite crater but no evidence has been found of an impact. Do you know why?'
Aaditya shrugged his shoulders.
'Because it's not a meteorite crater at all. It is the impact point of the first use of nuclear weapons in the history of Earth.'
***
Aaditya sat wordlessly as Vishnu took his vimana on a trip crisscrossing many continents at speeds well in excess of five thousand kilometres per hour, pausing only to show him a site of interest before moving to the next.
'The Ashwins used the nuclear weapon to support one of their human client states in a war, and then repeated it several times. It emerged that the first use was executed on the orders of one the Ashwin generals, a wonderful specimen called Maya, whom I believe you know well. When we sought to intervene to stop this madness, they used nuclear weapons against us.'
Aaditya involuntarily clenched his fist at the memory of the snake-eyed monster and also the fact that his father's last transmission had mentioned a red-tipped craft like the one Maya piloted.
'So many years later, the traces remain. In Rajasthan, near Jodhpur, there is still a mile wide area of high radioactivity. In the Middle East, there are peaks that seem to have been cleaved off, and their tops still show radioactive traces. Look below you and see the blackened top.'
'And I suppose that this use of nuclear weapons is also recorded?'
Vishnu shook his head, as if in mock despair. 'Ever the skeptic. But don't take my word for it. This is what the Mahabharata says.'
The holographic display glowed with a new set of characters.
A single projectile
Charged with all the power of the Universe.
An incandescent column of smoke and flame
As bright as the thousand suns
Rose in all its splendor…
…it was an unknown weapon,
An iron thunderbolt,
A gigantic messenger of death,
Which reduced to ashes
The entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.
Aaditya was silent for a while.
'So you didn't retaliate?'
Vishnu began to set a course back to base as he responded.
'Oh we retaliated all right. We obliterated them. First we wiped out their major base in the Middle East-an episode that has gone down in human folklore as Sodom and Gomorrah. They had set up one of their generals in Lanka and we destroyed him, and then unable to break through their defenses, we used nuclear explosions to create giant tidal waves that destroyed their main citadel. And thus the legend of Atlantis was born.'
'And then?'
Aaditya could now see the Himalayan peaks over the horizon, as Vishnu responded.
'And then, we stepped back and looked at what we had unleashed. The Earth was devastated, the nuclear winter brought on a new ice age, and we left, vowing to return when the Earth was indeed more ready in terms of its evolution for us to make contact again.'
'But…'
Vishnu silenced him.
'I cannot give you all the answers in one flight. If you choose to remain, you will get all of them gradually.'
The vimana landed in a few minutes and Aaditya was back in his room, thinking over all that he had seen and heard. There was a knock on the door. It was Tanya.
'I heard about your trip. They must feel for your situation, otherwise I've never seen them take so much effort.'
Aaditya sat down beside Tanya.
'It all sounds so….'
'Crazy?' Tanya volunteered.
'Well, yeah.'
'Sometimes, Aadi, if there is no other feasible alternative than what you see with your own eyes, no matter how unexpected or improbable it seems, it is perhaps the truth.'
Aaditya turned towards her.
'I didn't realize you were a philosopher.'
She smiled. 'Hardly, but I've seen too many people discover this and then not be able to cope with it, or worse, use the knowledge to try and get fame when they go back.'
Aaditya just sat there quietly for a minute, still coming to grips with everything he had just learned. He felt Tanya's hand close over his.
'Aadi, I know just how tough it is to lose one's family, so I can understand your pain. If you do stay, and just want someone to talk to, I'm always here.'
Aaditya looked at her and smiled.
'Thanks. At least I have you to chat with and relate to. It must have been tough for you, being….alone here.'
Aaditya saw her face darken and mentally kicked himself for saying the wrong thing.
'Hey, I'm sorry if I said something wrong.'
Tanya quickly composed herself.
'I guess I'm used to it now. This is the only life I know. So while you were dating girls in college, I was handling lost explorers and half-crazy adventurers.'
It was said with a smile, but Aaditya thought he heard something more.
'That's too bad, if we had been in the same college, or if I had met you somewhere else, I would have asked you out for sure.'
'Why don't you?' she said with a sly smile.
'I mean, where would we go? To the hangar?'
Tanya got up, a twinkle in her eyes.
'The Devas don't just wage war against evil and fly around in their vimanas. They know how to throw a mean party as well.'
'You've gotta be kidding.'
'They'll only let you in there if you're staying.'
Aaditya hadn't yet digested everything he had seen, but he knew here was an attractive girl literally asking him to ask her out.
'Let's go.'
They walked together down a corridor, then entered a room that took Aaditya's breath away. There were flashing lights and music. Aaditya found it surreal, but they were playing Floyd. Tanya nudged him.
'They like this music a lot.'
Shiva was in a corner, drinking from his hip flask, next to Kartik who seemed to be nursing his own drink. Indra was seated at a bar where a small bartender was mixing a drink for him. The bartender was so short that only the top of his bald head was visible above the bar. Narada was sitting by himself in a corner, strumming a stringed instrument.
Tanya grinned. 'Come on, try it.'
The bartender handed Aaditya a glass of cream-coloured liquid. When he took a sip, he realized it was the same drink Shiva had poured for him. It was sweet, but he already knew how potent it could be.
'Welcome to the wonders of Soma,' laughed Indra
Just then the music changed to a fast beat, and Shiva leapt on to the dance floor, moving faster and with more rhythm than Aaditya had ever seen.
'Care to dance?' asked Tanya.
Aaditya, feeling a bit light-headed after his drink, agreed, but as they were about to enter the dance floor, he stopped.
'Tanya, I'm not much of a dancer…'
Tanya hushed him.
'There's more than one way to dance.'
The two of them, oblivious to everything around them, held each other as they slow danced. As Aaditya held her close to him and looked into her eyes, he tried to remind himself.
This is not the right time or the right place, and for God's sake, she lives with aliens.
But, in the battle between mind and heart, as usually happens, the heart won out. That evening, they left together. He did not ask her to. They had been holding hands, and when it came time to leave, it just felt right to leave hand in hand. They walked for a long time, talking, and then they stopped in front of Aaditya's room. As he faced her and looked into her eyes, without thinking about it, he leaned down and kissed her, a single tentative kiss. He pulled back, wondering if he had done something wrong. But then she looked up and smiled at him. It melted away all his uncertainties. It told him that in the midst of all the chaos he found himself involved in, this was the one thing that made sense.
The next morning, he went back to the conference room, having asked for a meeting with Brahma. He found Brahma studying something on a small holographic display hovering above his palm. He looked up as Aaditya entered, and the display disappeared.
'So, my son, what have you decided?'
Aaditya spoke with a newfound certainty. 'There is a lot I don't understand yet, and honestly, a lot that does not yet make sense. But it's clear that if I ever want a chance at avenging my father's death, it has to be with your help.'
Brahma beamed with pleasure.
'I am glad you made that decision, but you do realize that you will not be piloting a vimana into combat, don't you?'
'I do, but I will start by helping in any way I can and then one day, earn the trust to do just that.'
Durga came into the room, and stood just behind Aaditya. 'Are you sure there's no other reason for your wanting to stay?'
Aaditya turned around, not knowing what to say, but in her expression he saw no mocking, only a genuine smile of warmth.
'Aadi, we all see Tanya like our own adopted daughter. But one day soon, we will reveal ourselves, and then she needs a life back among humans. I cannot think of anyone better to help ease her into that than you.'
Brahma was about to go back to the display on his palm, when Aaditya interrupted him. 'There's just one thing I wanted to know. Vishnu told me that you all left after the nuclear wars, so why are you still fighting and whom are you fighting against?'
Brahma looked up.
'We are fighting the same enemy, Aadi. The same one who brought catastrophe to Earth so many years ago with his greed. He and a few of his generals, including Maya, escaped, as we were to find out later.'
He motioned to the centre of the room, where the large display reappeared showing footage of a fleet of large ships approaching the Earth from space.
'We monitored Earth's development, and though you suffered the growing pangs and pains of all civilizations, two hundred years ago, we were sure that you were on the verge of reaching a level of technological and intellectual development where we could contact you. So we came back, with many more of us this time.'
The display now showed a barren frozen wasteland.
'To ease our way in, we set up base under the snowfields of Siberia, where there was no trace of humans for thousands of miles around.'
Then the display showed a bright light streaking through the night sky, a flash of light so bright that Aaditya had to avert his eyes. When he turned back to the display, he saw a mushroom cloud forming over the snow-covered landscape.
'What your scientists call the Tunguska Event of 1908: a gigantic explosion in remote Siberia that they still have not been able to explain. But we know only too well what caused it. A nuclear explosion 1000 times more destructive than the first human nuclear bomb dropped over Hiroshima. An explosion caused by our returning arch-enemy. Many of us perished, but several of us were aloft in our vimanas and we regrouped at this new hidden base. And our struggle resumed.'
'Who is this guy?'
Brahma motioned for the display to go away.
'Someone we once held dear. One of us. Your culture knows him by many names, Shaitan, Satan, and the Devil. I know him by the name I gave him once as a proud father. Kalki.'
SEVEN
'Aadi, we've already told you that we cannot let you fly in combat. You survived the last time you were up in a vimana, but playing video games and flying against Maya and the other Asuras are two very different things.'
'Then teach me,' Aaditya pleaded with Indra.
Once again, Indra refused. Aaditya returned to his room, and found Tanya there, who greeted him with a big hug.
'You don't give up, do you?'
Aaditya grinned. 'I may not be as strong or as fast as these Devas, but I sure as hell will prove that I'm more stubborn than any of them.'
It had been three days since Aaditya had told Brahma that he would stay. Three days since Tanya and he had spent virtually every spare minute together. Three days in which he had gone and made the same request to Indra a grand total of fifteen times. That afternoon, just after they had lunch, a message flashed on the holographic screen that served as his communicator to the Devas. The message read: Come to the conference room. We may have good news for you.
'Oh my God, maybe they have agreed to let me fly after all.'
Aaditya rushed as fast as he could, arriving slightly out of breath. He found Brahma and Indra there, together with Ganesha.
'Can I fly?'
Brahma laughed, 'No, you cannot fly.'
Seeing Aaditya's crestfallen expression, he spoke more gently, 'Aadi, the reason you cannot fly is not because I don't believe that, given the right training, you could master a vimana. We cannot spare the time or resources to train you. Kalki is intensifying his activities, and we need all our resources to understand what he's doing. But I do have an important job for you. Go with Ganesha.'
Aaditya was disappointed, yet excited at being given some work. So he followed Ganesha. The potbellied Deva seemed to always be smiling, and had a voracious appetite, picking out sweets from his pockets and munching on them as they walked.
'Do you want one?' he asked, offering a bar of chocolate to Aaditya.
'Thanks, I'm quite full. By the way, what exactly am I going to be doing?'
Ganesha motioned over his shoulder for Aaditya to follow. They entered a room where the walls were covered in holographic screens, with a seat in front of each. There was only one person in the room, a thin girl who looked like a geeky schoolgirl, with ponytails and thick glasses.
'That's Lakshmi. She's our money person.' whispered Ganesha.
'Money?'
'We need tons of it. To repair our vimanas, liquid Mercury for their propulsion, other materials for our weapons, to pay informants, you name it, it all costs money. So she runs several shell companies, trading in options and futures, and rakes in billions a year. Narada uses his contacts to get material transported to private airfields, where we pick them up. We are the biggest Fortune 500 corporation nobody knows about.'
Lakshmi just nodded as Aaditya passed her, and got back to whatever she had been doing. Ganesha asked Aaditya to sit down.
'The same holds for Kalki and his gang. So, part of our job is to track down his operations and shut them down. That's where you can help.'
'What do I do?'
Ganesha sat down on the next chair.
'Laskhmi handles the financial intelligence. I do the tactical part, trying to find out what Kalki's up to by ferreting out information, making connections, trying to get a picture of his latest mischief. You're knee deep in defence and aviation matters, and you seem to be a regular on forums where this kind of stuff gets picked up, so you have a headstart over a civilian who wouldn't known a Sukhoi 30 from a Sukhoi 27.'
If it was meant as a compliment, it sure worked, so Aaditya asked what he needed to do.
'Intelligence, my boy. Intelligence.'
Aaditya was still not clear what was expected of him, so Ganesha laid it out. Basically Aaditya was expected to go through literally thousands of pieces of information-news reports, intelligence summaries from the world's agencies that Ganesha had hacked into, even forums dedicated to conspira
cy theories. He would have to keep searching for a few keywords such as 'unidentified flying objects', 'unknown attackers' and so on, and then feed the results to Ganesha.
It was mind-numbingly repetitive and Aaditya soon saw that Ganesha was several times faster than him, so he began to wonder if he was really doing something useful or if they just wanted to keep him occupied. After a while, it really got to him, so he turned to Ganesha. 'Hey, mind if I ask you something?'
'Go ahead,' responded Ganesha without even turning to face Aaditya.
'Look, I've been here two hours, and I feel kind of silly just going through this junk and forwarding it to you. Does this ever help?'
Ganesha swiveled around in his chair to respond.
'This is where the action is. Sure, the flying and blowing things up is glamorous, but without the right intelligence, we're as good as blind. You have it so easy now, with all the information flowing through the networks.'
'What do you mean?'
'Fifty years ago, Kalki used human agents he'd bribed or threatened to do his bidding. So we'd have to track them down and neutralize them. Messy work. The way we play the game now is different, but the game's the same.'
'What game?'
'Oh man, the game Kalki loves playing, and I must add, is very good at. The game of temptation. For an ambitious bastard like him, he has one big problem. Do you know what that is?'
Aaditya just nodded encouragement, wanting to learn as much as he could, as Ganesha continued, 'There's maybe fifty Asuras left. Between them and the hundreds of dimwit daityas he has, he can't really conquer the Earth all on his own. Maybe he could a hundred years ago, but not now. You have nukes and as far as his vimanas go, they are but one or two generations ahead of your latest fighters. So you know what he does?'
Once again, Aaditya figured it was a rhetorical question, so he waited for Ganesha to continue.
'He divides and conquers. He pits one nation against another, hoping you weaken your nations enough to give him a chance. And you ask if this intelligence gathering serves a purpose! Hell, sitting in this very chair, I discovered how he was leaking knowledge on rocketry to the Nazis. We put an end to that, for sure.'
