Mainak Dhar - Vimana

Aaditya's mind boggled at the numbers. He had no idea that so many people were kept here as captives. Jim continued, 'Those stories you hear about alien abductions, all those people who seem to be loony bins talking of flying saucers carrying them off-many of them are truer than we'd ever have cared to believe possible.'

'So, you were abducted as well?'

A wistful look came into Jim's eyes.

'Desert Storm, 1991. I was flying an F-15 Eagle over Iraq. Saw a bogey flying low and thought it was an Iraqi trying to get to our troops so I hit the deck and chased him over the Persian Gulf. Bloody saucers ambushed us and splashed us. They picked me up, but my wingman didn't make it. From what you told me, sounds like you at least got some payback on those saucers for all of us. Now how do you plan to get out?'

Aaditya confessed sheepishly that he hadn't really thought that part of his plan through.

'Man, you are on a suicide mission. I wouldn't have cared but if these Devas can help stop Kalki, then we need to get you out. Come on, we need to call a meeting.'

'A meeting? With whom? I thought all the people here were prisoners.'

'Kid, they captured us, but that doesn't mean they broke all of us. There are others like me out there. We have no hope, or a real plan of ever getting back to our lives, but we won't make it any easier for these demons. Let me get a meeting arranged, and then we'll see how to get you out once your mission is done.'

***

Two hours later, Aaditya was in a small opening beneath what appeared to be the main Asura hangar, judging by the sound of vimanas or drones taking off and landing virtually every minute. Half an hour of waiting later, Aaditya was beginning to doubt Jim and wonder if the man he was with was a crazed and delusional prisoner of the Asuras. A few minutes later, his doubts disappeared when he saw four more men appear. One was a tall black American who introduced himself as Deuce, a former US Navy pilot. Another was a slight Russian called Pavel, who said that he had been a test pilot in the Russian Air Force. The third was a Chinese man called Lim, who had commanded one of the Chinese strategic bomber squadrons before he had been captured by the Asuras, and the fourth was a wiry man called Michael, who refused to say any more than the fact that he had been in the Israeli Air Force.

'So, Crazy Jim, why call us here? You know those demons are always sniffing around and I don't want to hang around here a minute longer than I have to.'

Jim addressed Michael, though it was apparent that he was speaking to all the men gathered around. 'We have lived like mice for years. We hide, and once in a while we come out and bite, but at the end of the day, let's be honest to ourselves, what we do hardly matters in the larger scheme of things.'

Aaditya noted that Jim seemed to have struck a chord somewhere, since all the men fell silent. Then Jim pointed at Aaditya. 'This kid could change all that. Aadi, tell the guys what you've been up to.'

Aaditya had not really been prepared to share his story with a large group, but as he began speaking, he saw a visible change in the attitude of the assembled men. Even if subtly, their eyes began to change from showing little more than poorly disguised skepticism and contempt to one of awe. Aaditya began to realize that he was the first sign these men had seen in years that there was some hope beyond waging a desperate, and ultimately futile guerrilla campaign against Kalki and his army in the heart of his base.

Michael was the first to speak. 'Kid, you need to tell them about the narrow window of opportunity they have. We can kill a frigging demon a week, but at the end of the day we are waging a losing battle.'

'What do you mean?' Aaditya asked.

Jim answered. 'Aadi, there are at best ten of us who have escaped and are fighting back. The others have given up, and serve Kalki out of fear more than anything else. But till you got here, none of us had any real hope that anyone could stop the horned bastard. You need to get out and tell the Devas what we know.'

'And what is that?'

'Come with me.'

Jim clambered into another narrow vent, with Aaditya and the others following close behind. A good twenty minutes of scrambling along on all fours later, Aaditya climbed down into another narrow enclosure where there was a woman waiting for them. She hugged Jim and the other men when they climbed down.

'Jesus, thank God you're okay.'

Jim introduced her to Aaditya. 'This is Major Leslie Johnson, of the United States Strategic Air Command, and the commanding officer of the resistance movement down here.'

The wiry woman looked Aaditya over, and then motioned for Aaditya to follow her. All of them walked through the passageway till it intersected with a wall. It seemed to be a dead end, but as Aaditya watched in fascination, she lodged her knife into a corner and pulled out one brick. She then used her bare hands to pull out a few more till there was a small hole in the wall. She squeezed through it and asked Aaditya to follow. He could see only darkness through the hole and hesitated, but Leslie hissed at him to hurry. 'Come on, we don't have all day!'

He was halfway through when Leslie grabbed his hands and pulled him through, making him land in an ungainly heap at her feet. When he sat up, the first thing that hit him was the stench. The smell of human waste, the smell of rotting food. Then he saw the bars. He realized then that he had entered a prison cell. Leslie was in a corner, turning on a small lamp that served to provide the only light in the cell.

'Where are we?'

Leslie smiled. 'This has been my home for the last five years or so, but down here one does tend to lose track of time.'

'You're a prisoner here? But Jim said that you lead the resistance here.'

'To Kalki and his demons, I am the most pliant prisoner they could hope for, but then I slip out that hole and hook up with Jim and his boys to raise some hell. Being here means that I have the ability to stay in contact with the other prisoners and also the civilians they keep as slaves outside the fort.'

Aaditya was beginning to realize that a whole lot more was going on under the surface at Kalki's fort than he had ever imagined. Leslie offered him a glass of water with a sad smile.

'I'm afraid that's all I can offer by way of hospitality.'

Then she began her story. 'When they got me, I thought I had lost my mind. But then I realized what they wanted with us military types-nuclear launch codes, details of bases, tactics and technology. It became obvious that these guys may or may not be aliens or whatever, but their plan was clearly to try and invade Earth at some point.'

'So what did you do?'

'Eventually, I told them whatever they wanted.'

Seeing the surprise and shock in Aaditya's eyes, she continued. 'Forget what you see in the movies and read in novels-every human being has a threshold beyond which they break. I fought them as long as I could, but they broke me. They broke all of us sooner or later.'

Aaditya saw the pain in her eyes and realized that he could not even begin to guess the hell she had been through.

'I lost all hope, we all did. Many of us killed ourselves, some of us lost our minds and were killed by that snake-eyed bastard for sport.'

A chill went through Aaditya's spine.

'We had no way out, nothing to look forward to, so we tried to create some semblance of normality in our miserable lives. We'd look forward to the hour a day when they'd let us out into the light. We'd wait for those few minutes when we could be out in the fields and meet the civilian slaves. They forbade us to talk to each other, but we'd just look at each other, hold hands, and cry together. That's what we had been reduced to.'

Aaditya heard Jim whispering something through the hole in the wall, and Leslie cursed under her breath. 'Damn, I almost lost track of time. The guards are due for their rounds soon. We need to hurry. Jim will get you back to where you were being kept.'