A Game of Gods: The End is Only the Beginning (The Anunnaki Chronicles Book 1) (9 page)

26

Chendi, Maharashtra

Manav switched off the Scorpio and the mechanical roar of the vehicle was immediately replaced by the silent song of the deserted location.

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ Manav tried to reconfirm.

‘Cent per cent!’ The angel confirmed confidently.

‘I do not see a thing that could have possibly given you all that aura to sniff.’ He said as he stepped out from the front door of the Scorpio. He looked around, there was absolutely nothing but overgrowth of moss over ruins that were scattered here and there.

‘Follow me, Manav.’ The angel commanded as it descended towards the ground. Its wing faded into its body and Kun-Ha started walking on its paws like a normal cat. Manav caught up with the angel’s pace. Kun-Ha spoke as it gently walked, ‘You know, among all creatures of the Almighty, cats have an exceptionally higher receptory mechanism. They can see equally well in the dark and broad light, hear minutest of sounds, by instinct land on all fours without breaking a limb, and when you cannot see them they can even ward off evil spirits or welcome the good ones. That is why cats tend to possess a divine ego, because the Almighty gave them a little too much in everything including cuteness. He did so in order to keep a close check on his most mischievous creation- Man!’

‘So, cats are spies of god?’ Manav asked.

‘Come on, Manav. Didn’t you weep when you lost your first pet cat?’

‘I was hardly nine then. I was emotionally attached to that thing.’

‘You still are. Isn’t that why you wrote a whole book on that cat reincarnating as the protagonist’s guardian angel. Am I not like that cat from that book of yours?’

‘It was just a story.’

‘A story that you wrote few years ago.’

‘Fine! I admit, but she was not an ordinary cat.’ Manav conceded.

‘Of course! No cat is ordinary. Cats are divine.’ Kun-Ha declared proudly.

‘I suppose, had you had the form of a dog, you would have praised dogs.’

‘Oh come on! Dogs are dumb.’

‘Many will disagree.’

‘Do you?’ Kun-Ha shot back.

‘No! But why do you call them dumb?’

‘Because they surrender their free will to humans. They don’t even make it to His purgatory.’

‘For those who believe in that, it is cruel. People love dogs because of their loyalty.’

A brief moment of silence followed. Kun-Ha slid itself under a rock and Manav could hear the creature’s paws rustling through what seemed like a badger’s burrow. A golden glow appeared beneath and it slowly displaced the rock, exposing a bright explosion of light on Manav’s face. It was some kind of an opening into a nether world.

‘Step inside,’ Kun-Ha said from below, ‘Don’t worry, I am here.’

Manav carefully stepped inside the hole and as soon as he was completely inside, the rock slid back to its original position and covered the opening. The glow subsided and it was dark again.

‘Maybe you would like to use that flashlight again.’ Kun-Ha suggested, ‘I can see here, but you will need that artificial source of light for illumination.’

Manav pulled out his Lumia and switched on its flashlight.

‘How hard was it for you to choose this handset over that Samsung?’ The angel asked.

‘You know everything, then why bother asking?’ Manav remarked.

‘All in order to please your daddy dear.’ The guardian angel toyed with its ward.

‘There is something on the backside of your left hind limb. I think its stain or something.’ Manav observed.

‘Oh, that’s a birthmark dear. Every creature has one. You have a black mole on your chest, don’t you?’

Manav hummed in agreement.

‘I call it… my
beauty spot
.’ The angel said playfully.

‘Is there a divine explanation behind that too?’

‘I would rather ask you to observe this beautiful underground passage. You will find lot of interesting things if you would care to shine some light on these walls.’

Manav followed Kun-Ha’s suggestion and flashed the cellphone’s led light over the eastern wall. He noticed engravings on the mushy surface that were not anything like the ones he had seen in Indian temples. Most of the engravings were symbols representing different elements of nature.’

‘Intriguing, aren’t they?’ Kun-Ha asked Manav.

‘Indeed!’ The filmmaker said as he scrubbed off the overgrown moss from the surface of the wall, ‘what are these… some form of a primitive writing system?’

‘Ancient they are… primitive not all! These, my dear, are highly advanced instructional methodology implemented by the
Anunnakis
over twenty thousand years ago.’

‘An.. Anu… what?’

‘Anunnaki, those who from the heavens came…’

‘I do not get it.’

‘Did civilization even exist back then?’ Manav inquired in a confused state of mind.

‘This is an ancient temple built by Parasuraama that succumbed to ruins some four thousand years ago when the Anunnakis were doomed in the forbidden portal by an early human civilization.’ Kun-Ha replied.

‘Where are we getting to?’

‘Let’s just say that you are dealing with an ancient extra-terrestrial science that is beyond the scope of human understanding. These instructions have been written in a system that no human mind can ever decode in a million years. Even if it does then also it will reveal only a metaphorical mythology, not the scientific instruction.’

‘Scientific instruction… for what?’

‘For this...’ The angel exclaimed and stopped suddenly on the way. The golden glow faded in around its back and its wings appeared. It rose above the ground and left enough illumination for Manav to see the circular platform on the ground. Manav’s eyes were wide open and curiosity accompanied by the anxiety of the unknown shuttled inside them. Kun-Ha called his ward to stand below it, ‘Step inside the
Mandala…
. the circle and hold on to my hind limbs gently.’

Manav took a deep breath, a sense of fear replaced the curiosity of the knowledge seeker. The presence of the glowing angel in a cat’s body did little to boost his confidence.

What am I doing? This is crazy. Should I pinch myself to wake up from this dream?
The tall dangling man thought.

‘No my dear, you are not dreaming at all. Just trust me and step in… Hurry, I cannot keep this vortex open for long.’ The angel said after reading his thought.

‘What the hell!’ Manav gasped and quickly stepped inside the
Mandala
and as asked held the hind limbs of the floating angel whose upper body was almost engulfed by the glowing light. They were warmer by a few degrees centigrade or maybe it was too cold inside the underground temple.

‘Hey, gently I said. Do not squeeze the flesh out of my paws. I am delicate.’ Kun-Ha exclaimed.

Manav softened his grip on the angel’s limb and then in a moment of a micro second, there was a blinding explosion and nothing remained inside the
Mandala
after that.

Silence and Darkness was restored in that place, once again.

25

Somewhere in the outskirts of Giza

The Boeing CH-47D gloriously hovered over the blue waters of the Nile. The twin engine American heavy-lift helicopter could easily carry over a score of heavily armored marines, and today it was only carrying four marines and three civilians. Among the three, two were women, Chinese journalist Xhin-Jo from Beijing and Pakhi Dutta from Mumbai. The third was Dmitri Schwerovsky of the Russian News Network, very well known in his region for those silky blonde hair and ravishing blue eyes.

The three external-cargo hooks carried cuboidal container of arms supplies for the army base. They were running out of supplies, for everyday the radicals were growing in strength. The American base had reportedly lost over five thousand men and two bases in the African region in the last 6 months. While the setting up of a base in Giza came against strong protests from taxpayers back home, for they believed that their money was being used to achieve the American agenda of global domination and not for the welfare of whatever they already had. The common people of the United States of America had long grown tired of their government’s obsession with world domination. After the attack in Paris in 2015 and Geneva in 2016, the world had taken stern action against any radical bases. After Obama’s term, the United States had witnessed more unrest from its own people than from rest of the world. While there was an emergence of a greater alignment in Asia that saw India, Russia, Afghanistan and Japan entering into an alliance, which kept China and India from barging against each other. The USA was heavily depending on Pakistan to keep a check on the growth of the alliance and China in the region.

Xhin-Jo and Dmitri had already struck into conversation in a common language that Pakhi did not understand.

It must be Russian
. She thought. She felt herself being ignored by the two journalists. She looked at the marines. While three of them were standing guard at each of the four exits with a machine gun, ready to pull the trigger the moment a radical is spotted on the ground, the fourth marine did not have gun. Instead he was carrying a bag and walked towards Pakhi. The man’s body was muscular and his face rough, yet his eyes were light brown and carried generic innocence of a nine year old. It reminded of her niece. He passed a momentary smile and opened the bag to pull out a digital tablet attached to a set of wireless Bluetooth headphones.

‘Here, just press this button,’ he said showing the right side of the device that had a button. He continued, ‘The briefing of the operation is contained in this device and as soon the video is over, the device will automatically shut down.’

‘Thanks.’ She said receiving the device. She placed the headphone over her ears.

‘Oh, the briefing is in English, we could not arrange one in Indian.’

‘Indian?’

‘You know… your language.’

‘Nevermind, I can understand
American
pretty well.’ She passed a pissed smile and the Marine moved to the Russian. It was difficult to explain a rough neck that there is no language called Indian. The very concept of India was complex and remnant children of European
colonists
would not understand it. She chose to ignore the white man’s ignorance.

The chopper punched through the air at a top speed of 300 kilometers per hour and it was extremely difficult to hear anything else but the sound of the chopper’s blades and engine. However, the moment she had the headphones on, she felt the outside sound cut off almost entirely, which was quite surprising. She thought the item must be of German make, band she checked the jack, and a
Made in India
mark was engraved on it in small font next to logo of a lion. She felt proud as an Indian. She pressed the button as suggested by the marine. The screen lit up and on a black background appeared a graphic interface that asked to select a language from one of the following – Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and English.

‘Where the fuck is
Indian?
’ Pakhi sighed as she went ahead and touched the screen where the button for English was shown.

‘Thank you for choosing your input. My name is VABS, your Virtual Army Briefing System.’ Said a voice and this was followed by the appearance of 3D model of a male face. Pakhi had seen many Hollywood war films and all of them had given her the expectation that the briefing would done by a real army personnel, maybe Harker or his subordinates, at the army bases or some other secretive location. But here she was; inside a chopper with a couple of hostile journalists who were also glued to their respective digital tablets, fortunate enough to listen to the briefing in their own languages. The 3D face was perfectly fair with grey eyes and light brown hair, the kind of typecast face that could represent the United States of America. It had on its perfectly rendered pink lips, a smile that came almost close to a real one.

It started speaking in its digitally maneuvered voice, ‘Before I begin I must inform you that this device is automatically enabled and disabled, however, you can pause this anytime by tapping on the screen’s center. You can rewind by swiping your finger from center to left, and forward by swiping from center to right. Or alternately you may use the time bar that appears at the bottom of the screen.’ It took a second’s pause and began, ‘I am sure that you have been following events that have been unfolding in the past decade. From the onset of the Ansar Bait al-Maqdis and IS to various smaller radical groups that took birth in the desert nation, it was clear that the new center of terrorist activity was in the North African region, and it was the perfect location to infiltrate militants into Europe. We had no other option but to move our base from Iraq to Egypt.’

A map of Egypt replaced the 3D face on the screen and showed the path taken by the infiltrators using arrows. The digital voice continued, ‘In 2015, the American Army set up its first large base outside the Giza plateau with the permission of the Egyptian government that had started showing sign of decline due to the overgrowing presence of the IS, backed by anti-government protests by the citizens. Our army successfully pulled off anti-terror operations in the metropolis. On January 7 2015, a radical group bombed the ruins of Qasr al Abd in Jordan and an ancient temple in Iraq, and we were already aware that the radicals made it a point to destroy all ancient wonders elsewhere, so we deployed 24 x 7 surveillance team around the Pyramids of Giza and Sphinx. Incidentally, in February our surveillance team witnessed a total electronic blackout from the region. Upon inspection, we found a group of men planting some form a primitive device around the Giza plateau. All men taller than seven feet, clad in black outfits. Most of them escaped, but we were able to capture two of them. Neither showed any signs of defiance or hostility, it was as if getting caught was their intention.’

The screen showed images of the two captives and explained, ‘Javed Ibn Ifrar, 27, and Isaac Basil, 29, revealed themselves to be the men of
Mesha mes-en Saret
, or the Army born of Wisdom. Almost all Egyptologists unanimously dismiss the Mesha mes-en Saret as a mythical unity formed by the minister of Pharaoh Khasekhemwy in the second millennia BCE. Their objective was to preserve the deepest of Egyptian secrets about creation of humanity, and aid its resurrection at the end of the stipulated time.’

Then a video recording of the captives played. The first one chanted something that sounded like an obsolete language while the second one proclaimed in English that had a heavy tint of Greek, ‘We come in peace, we are the keepers of the creator, and we shall reveal the truth soon. Stay away from the sphinx and you shall be spared, for even if you dare to hinder the progression of the creator, you cannot escape the day of his return. Hail Atem! Hail Ptah! Hail Anu! Hail Anunnaki!’ The chants carried the highest decibels of energy, almost superhuman. Suddenly, the shine in the eyes of the two men disappeared and fell on the ground. Even the army personnel were stunned to see the incident, for nobody had shot at the captives, neither had they taken a dose of cyanide. It was as if they simply left their bodies at will. The video was soon replaced by a picture of some devices lying on sand. The voice started briefing again, ‘These were the devices planted by the men. We presumed it to be some kind of explosives; however, upon closer inspection we found out that they were not explosives at all. In fact, they were some kind of advanced transmitters in the most primitive outer covering. Experts at NASA inferred it as an inter-dimensional communication device; however they were totally illiterate about its functioning. They embarrassingly admitted that it was a highly sophisticated technology totally unknown to the NASA, and instantly suggested to classify the operation. Our government immediately classified the
Operation Anunnaki.
Since then we have been monitoring the situation very closely. We have seen the
black
crusaders,
that’s what we are calling the members of the Mesha mes-en Saret. They have not yet made any destructive attempt at anything, but regularly come to program the device at sunrise and sunset.

‘In September last year, the black crusaders started digging the sand, exactly between the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid. The following week, six crusaders were seen at the site and they were invoking some invisible entity before falling down on the sand lifeless. We have established that there is something ‘out of this world’ activity going on in the Giza necropolis and every day since then our monitoring devices have picked up irregular readings in the electromagnetic spectrum, largely in the highest frequency ranges. Our scientists are working on it as I speak to you. As of now we have not revealed anything to the media, for we believe that such sort of information would create panic among ordinary human beings across the world. It is important for us to find out what has been going on, as part of the Operation Anunnaki’s selective declassification agenda. We have invited one journalist each from United States, China, Russia, Australia, United Kingdom, and India. Your job is to collect data from our operation and prepare stories in case we decide to declassify the operation. The….’

Just then the entire chopper rocked and a loud sound was heard, something had brutally hit the American air-carrier. And then another impact was felt and a piece of the metallic wall of the chopper fell off and thick fumes of smoke filled inside. Pakhi lost her balance, the tablet dropped off her hand, and she felt a tight hand gripping her from behind. It was one of the marines who had given her the tablet earlier.

‘We have been hit by a rocket, launched from the outskirts of Giza city. We are going down, I repeat, we are going down.’ He said into a lapel attached to his collar.

Pakhi looked around in shock, but before she could analyze the situation another rocket hit the chopper. This time a hole formed behind the Russian journalist and he was oozed out of the chopper at lightning speed, and before the marine could hold her, Xhin-Jo was sucked out of the CH-47D too. Terribly in shock, Pakhi’s eyes filled up. She looked at the man who was tightly holding her from falling. She felt a salty uprise from her stomach, and within a second her eyes drew a blank and she surrendered to the shock of the moment.