Vimana (8 page)

Aaditya was too stunned to respond as Narada continued, 'We were genuinely worried our enemies would come for you. Some of us argued that in the larger scheme of things it doesn't matter, but that is what makes us different from them. Every life is sacred. We have sent out the feelers that you are not connected with us in any way. We don't know if they believe us, plus we can't risk you trying another escape. So you earn a flight back.'

With those words, Narada tossed Aaditya's clothes and belongings towards him.

'Get changed. I'll be waiting outside.'

Narada had been nothing but civil, but Aaditya could sense a hint of disdain in his voice. Honestly, he didn't care- whoever these people were, they had no right to keep him confined here. And no matter how unexciting his regular life was, he would pick it any day over being locked up in a cell. He followed Narada outside, but before he entered the hangar, Narada asked him to wait. Aaditya was startled as Narada put a blindfold over his eyes.

'Is this really necessary?'

'Yes it is. You have already seen too much for your own good.'

Feeling like a prisoner even though he was supposedly being released, Aaditya was led through the hangar. He then heard the voice of the young man who was called Kartik.

'Look, my friend, I'll be flying you home. Please don't try anything silly like taking off your blindfold. My father looks much bigger than me, but I can punch just as hard.'

The last line was accompanied by a laugh, but Aaditya had no doubts that the young man would carry through on his threat. He had no intention of being a hero; all he wanted to do now was to get home.

Aaditya was helped into the cockpit, and strapped in with a seat belt. He heard a soft hum as the engine powered on, but before the canopy closed and the craft took off, he felt a soft touch on his left hand, and heard a whisper, 'Goodbye.'

It was Tanya. Aaditya felt a slight pang of regret at how he had betrayed her trust and wished that he had gotten a chance to say sorry. He heard the canopy slide down around him, and then the craft seemed to lift slightly as it glided forward slowly, presumably towards the hangar doors. He felt himself being pushed back against the seat as the craft accelerated and then entered a steep climb. Aaditya had no idea how fast they were going, but within what seemed like a few seconds, the craft stabilized in level flight. He heard Kartik murmur next to him, 'Now we sit back and wait till we're over Delhi. Should be there in twenty-five minutes or less, but we're in no hurry, are we?'

Now that he was free, Aaditya's curiosity was running on overdrive. Where had the base been located? The kind of mountains he had seen were certainly not to be found anywhere in the Indian heartland. The closest one could find them was in the Himalayas. If indeed they had been there, flying to Delhi meant a one-way flight of more than one thousand kilometres at least. All his knowledge of flying and planes was now being exercised as he did some quick calculations.

Travelling that distance in less than twenty minutes meant flying at over twice the speed of sound all the way. That was if indeed they had been at the closest possible location to Delhi. No fighter aircraft could sustain Mach 2 for such a period of time and still have the endurance to cover such a long round trip. He corrected himself- no aircraft that he knew of. If anything, this experience was showing him that there were many things he had not the foggiest idea about.

Kartik must have guessed what he was thinking about.

'They say you're quite an aviation buff. Flying is my life, so I can imagine how curious you must be about the vimana we're in. Too bad I can't tell you too much.'

Aaditya had heard that word before,

'Vimana? Doesn't sound like something the CIA or Americans would call their planes.'

Kartik seemed to mutter under his breath, as if regretting having spoken too much. After that, there was no more conversation.

The monotony of the flight began to get to Aaditya. He felt his body loosen up as the stress of the last few days drained away, and he was soon nodding off. He dreamt he was in a fighter plane under fire, and was being buffeted violently from side to side as it narrowly escaped exploding shells. When his head hit the seat behind him hard, he woke up with a start. It had not been a dream.

The craft was undertaking drastic maneuvers, swerving from one side to the other. There were loud explosions outside. Fighter pilots wore special pressurized suits to protect their bodies from the effects of pulling such maneuvers which often put pressures several times that of normal gravity on the body- G forces as they were called. But even in his shorts and T-shirt, he felt no major impact of G forces. However, he had little time to contemplate how the builders of this craft had managed yet another seemingly magical feat.

'What's going on?'

When there was no response, he shouted louder.

'Dammit, what the hell is going on!'

Kartik answered softly, but the tension was apparent in his voice.

'We're under fire.'

'Who? The freaks that you fought on my roof?'

No response. After a second, Kartik exclaimed, 'Is your mobile on?'

Aaditya remembered that he had turned it on when it had been returned to him.

'Oh God, that's how they are tracking us!'

Aaditya felt Kartik's hand reach into his pocket and take out his phone. Just then the craft shook more violently and he heard Kartik scream. Then there was silence.

'Kartik?'

No response.

Aaditya took off his blindfold. It was utter mayhem around him. Kartik lay slumped in his seat, blood oozing from his head. His seat belt was undone, and Aaditya guessed he had reached over to get the phone when the craft had suffered a near hit, and he had slammed his head against the wall. Aaditya looked frantically around, trying to see what was happening. The raised canopy gave unrestricted visibility, and Aaditya saw three dark shapes in the distance. As they came closer, he thought he recognized them as the saucer shaped craft he had encountered earlier.

With Kartik out cold, they would be a sitting duck. He had no idea how this craft worked, but at least he was no stranger to flying planes. He looked at the cockpit in front of him, searching for the controls. He was flabbergasted. There seemed to be no flight controls- no joystick, no thrust controls, nothing.

How the hell did one fly this beast?

He looked over at Kartik and saw an earpiece tucked into his left ear. He plucked it out and placed it inside his own left ear. Within a couple of seconds, he heard some transmission. He could not be entirely sure but the voice seemed to belong to the ash-covered monster who had knocked him out.

'Are you there? Please acknowledge.'

Aaditya looked behind to see the three saucers circling him. They could have shot him down at leisure but perhaps they wanted to capture the craft he was in. They had him boxed in, one on either side and one behind and slightly above his position.

'Hi...this is Aadi. Kartik is out cold and we are surrounded by enemy craft. What the hell do I do?'

There was an ominous silence before he got a reply. 'We have a problem here. Now, I'll try and keep you alive. Just don't try and be a hero.'

So, surrounded by enemy craft, and in one he had no idea how to fly, Aaditya finally got a chance to live his dream of being a fighter pilot. At that moment, he would have happily traded all his flying dreams for a lifetime attending Donkey's classes and dealing with impossible assignments on Economic History.

***

FIVE

Aaditya didn't know how high he was flying so it was hard to judge distances, but the three pursuing craft were now bracketing him, one flying on each side of his craft and one directly behind him- on his six o'clock, as fighter pilots would say. His craft was now hovering in the sky. He was far from calm but realized that if they had wanted to destroy him, they would have done so easily by now. Instead, it looked like they wanted him to surrender. A new voice came over the headset. He had not heard this voice before. It was deeper than either Narada's or the ash-covered man's voice.

'Aadi, I gather that you are not new to flying. We have retrieved your NCC records, and you've got hundreds of hours in microlights and gliders.'

'Fat lot of good that will do me now.'

The voice that responded was slow, deliberate, and if he was trying to calm Aaditya down, he was beginning to succeed.

'The basics are no different, just the user interface is. Now tell me, your father was a fighter pilot, was he not? So you grew up around pilots and fighters, and the exploits of IndianBader
on the Internet tell me that you know your way around fighters.'

Aaditya had no idea how they knew all this about him, but it helped to calm him.

'What's your name? If my life depends on you, let me at least know who I'm talking to.'

'My name is Indra. Now, as you may have gathered, they don't want to shoot you down. They will box you in and perhaps more of them are on the way to capture you. Look behind you, do you see the red tipped vimana behind you?'

Aaditya turned around and said he did.

'That is the vimana of Maya, who I gather you have already met.'

Aaditya remembered the snake-eyed man and shivered in spite of himself.

Then it struck Aaditya. 'How do you know who's behind me?'

'Because I am on the way. I should be there in less than five minutes.'

Aaditya let out a sigh of relief. Help was on the way, but how the hell would he get out, if Kartik could not be revived? Indra helped out, sensing his predicament.

'Look in Kartik's right ear. There is a small round plug there. Place it in your right ear.'

Aaditya did so, and for a second was struck by an intense headache. He gasped in pain.

'What was that?'

'Don't worry, it's calibrating to your brain.'

What the hell did that mean?

'Now, just go with your instinct. What you think, the vimana will do for you. Just don't speed away or do any drastic maneuvers- get a hang of it till I come.'

Not sure how this would work, Aaditya asked himself where he was and what his bearings were. To his amazement, a holographic 3D map emerged out of thin air on his left. His vimana was represented by a blue dot, and the three enemy craft were depicted in red. He saw numbers below each dot. Those below his craft read 20,20500,217. There were a smattering of green dots, but all much further away.

'Indra, what are these numbers? Speed, altitude and bearing?'

'I told you it wouldn't be difficult to get a hang of it. It displays in units your mind relates to. In your case, I guess speed in kilometres per hour, altitude in feet and bearing relative to our base. The red dots are the asuras, and the added number below each is the range in kilometres from your vimana. The green dots are aircraft of your people.'

Your people.
That was a strange way to put it.

When he wondered where he was, the map began displaying place names, showing that he was several hundred kilometres to the northeast of Delhi.

The enemy craft were no more than two kilometres away, and as he watched, the one behind him edged closer. He now saw another blue dot appear on the display. It was four hundred kilometres away and closing in at more than a thousand kilometres per hour, swooping down from an altitude of more than eighty thousand feet. His mind boggled both at the craft's performance and the fact that his radar, or whatever instrument the craft used, could pick it up at such a range.

'Now Aadi, don't move at all. I don't want to lose the advantage of surprise.'

On his display, Aaditya saw two yellow dots separate from Indra's vimana, and streak towards the craft around him at an impossibly high speed. He had barely had time to look around when the craft on either side exploded into giant fireballs and disappeared as if nothing had ever been there.

'Get out of the way now!' Indra screamed into his ears.

It seemed weird at first, but Aaditya mentally asked the craft to accelerate and willed it to bank sharply to the right. His first turn was way too sharp, and he soon found himself in a dive. In a fit of panic, his fingers grasped at thin air, trying to find the controls to pull up.

'Calm your mind, son.' Indra's voice boomed into his ear and he forced himself to sit back, and while hardly calm, thought,
pull up.

The craft came out of the dive. Still not used to the control system, Aaditya found himself involuntarily moving his body to the right or left as he maneuvered, but recovered enough to restore the craft to stable flight. He took out his lucky patch from his pocket and clutched it tightly in both hands. In part, it was like a safety blanket, helping to calm his nerves. In part, as he moved his hands, he used the patch like a joystick, so that he not only used his thoughts, but also hand movements that were more familiar, to control the craft. It seemed to help, as he managed to stop himself from abruptly jerking his craft around.

His problems were far from over though. His display showed the remaining red dot zooming in towards him.

Think you're at your damn PC. Think that this is another newbie out to earn his glory by trying to take on IndianBader. Once you thought you could be a fighter pilot- now don't be a chicken.

He hoped that would be enough to give him courage. However, soon he found himself facing a new danger, when a yellow dot separated from Maya's craft and moved towards his vimana. Aaditya noted that it was moving much slower than Indra's missiles. He did not dwell on that for too long, since he quickly realized that being shot at in a video game was very different from having a missile home in on you in real life. He moved his craft into a series of tight turns, but the missile kept closing in.

Do something to throw the missile off!

No sooner had he thought it when a flash enveloped his craft, temporarily blinding him. When he opened his eyes, the yellow dot was gone, and so was Maya's craft, which his display showed as speeding away at a speed of more than two thousand kilometres per hour. He looked out the window to see a craft just a few metres to his right. In the cockpit, he could make out a man, who raised his hand in a wave, as Indra's voice echoed over his headset.