Mainak Dhar - Vimana

He looked around. Shiva lay slumped in a corner of the room. Kalki brought his face close and Aaditya recoiled at the stench. It was the smell of death and decay-of dead mice, rotten food, of the fate that Kalki had in mind for all of mankind.

'I have waited thousands of years for this moment. Who are you to stop me? A mere boy? A cripple. You could have been on my side, now you can only watch as my rule on Earth begins.'

Aaditya felt his hair being singed from the flame that was in Kalki's eyes. He had spotted what was in Aaditya's pocket. The lucky patch. Kalki snorted dismissively as he took it out, still holding Aaditya in the air effortlessly with one hand.

'A pathetic token to remind you of a pathetic man. Fear not, you will soon join your father.'

Kalki spat on the patch, and it burst into flames, its ashes crumbling to the ground at Kalki's feet. Still dangling in the air, Aaditya saw a plug in Kalki's right ear and wondered if the thought controls worked the same way as for the Devas. It was a gamble, but it was the last chance he had. The problem was that he had no way of pulling the plug out. He could barely move.

Kalki opened his mouth, just inches from Aaditya's face. Inside, a fireball was forming.

Then, suddenly, Kalki's eyes widened and his grip came loose. Shiva's trident was impaled on Kalki's thigh. Shiva was at Kalki's feet, bringing his blade down for another strike. It gave Aaditya the time he needed. He reached out and pulled the plug out of Kalki's ear. Shiva's blade connected and Kalki dropped Aaditya, the plug falling a couple of feet away from him.

Kalki kicked Shiva away and advanced on Aaditya. Only twenty seconds were left till the charges detonated. Aaditya crawled towards the plug, but felt Kalki's grip on his right leg. Kalki began pulling Aaditya towards him, screaming in rage.

'I will burn you limb by limb!'

Aaditya's hand was just inches from the plug, but he was being pulled back, unable to resist Kalki's strength.

'Maybe I'll just burn your other leg and your arms so you can live like a cripple!'

Aaditya reached down to his right thigh and felt for the catch there. As Kalki roared in anger with Aaditya's prosthetic leg in his hand, Aaditya picked up the plug and put it into his ear. There was a flash of blinding pain. When he opened his eyes he saw Kalki leaping towards him, talons bared, his wings spread, like a predatory bird about to pounce on its prey.

Seven seconds left.

There was just enough time to still his mind and give the command to stop the detonations. Kalki must have known what he had done because he screamed as he bore down on Aaditya, determined to rip him to shreds and then detonate the charges again.

Aaditya closed his eyes, but Kalki never landed. He felt a gust of wind and heard a thud. When he opened his eyes, Kalki was in a corner of the room, his left wing sheared off in half. At the doorway was Vishnu, his hand held out to recover the discus that had just done the damage. Behind him were Indra and Durga. Kalki looked at them calmly.

'My war is not over. It never will be.'

He spat out a huge fireball into the middle of the room that blinded everyone for an instant. And then, Kalki was gone.

Everyone's eyes turned to a CNN news report on one of the monitors in the room. It showed thousands of people gathered at Times Square in New York. There were similar groups throughout the world, many praying, others crying, all waiting for what they had come to believe was going to be the end of the world. Aaditya could hear the newscaster speaking, a sarcastic smile on her face.

'For those of you joining us at this hour, it is 12:55 Eastern Standard Time on the 21st of December, 2012, and as far as I can tell, the world has not ended. Please stand by for the Sports News.'

***

The relief and joy of the victory had soon given way to several uncomfortable questions. What had happened to Kalki? Nobody seemed to know for sure, but the golden capstone that had stood on top of his pyramid was missing. It was assumed that it had been some kind of vimana in which Kalki had escaped. Badly wounded, without his weapons or his army, Kalki was little immediate threat, but the very fact that he was unaccounted for meant that his dark shadow had not been banished forever. The battle had also ripped away the veil of secrecy that the Devas had surrounded themselves with. For the first time in tens of thousands of years, humans were aware they shared their planet with beings from another world. The Americans had guessed as much as they went about the frenetic battle over the ocean. When one of their helicopters picked up Narada, who had been found afloat in the water, they got a chance to see them up close. It was reported that the first words spoken between them and the Devas, was, 'I'll be damned. ET looks like an old rock star.'

The next few days were filled with frenetic activity, Aaditya learning of most of the happenings from reports back in Kongka La, where he spent every minute possible with Tanya. If any doubts had remained about the truth of their story, the Devas dispelled them by bringing up the humans who had been kept as slaves in Kalki's base and handing them back to their respective governments. They then took some representatives of the world's leading powers to the sites where Kalki had laid the charges, and true enough, they found thermonuclear weapons embedded deep in the fault lines. There was a tricky issue of what to do with the hundreds of daityas who had been taken captive, and Brahma finally ordered that they be resettled in a heavily guarded camp in a remote area of Antarctica, where they would be under constant surveillance by the Devas.

It was a lot for human governments to deal with over just a few days, as they digested the full magnitude of the events and also how close the planet had come to a true apocalypse. Narada had started working on a plan on how best to communicate this to the masses, with Brahma deciding that there were now too many people who knew the truth-pilots, government agencies, the freed human prisoners-for their existence to be kept a secret.

But for now, none of that mattered to Aaditya. The only thing that mattered to him was that he could feel Tanya close to him, holding his hand tight as they sat in a movie theatre watching the latest Bollywood potboiler. It was a spectacularly bad movie, but that was hardly the point. The point was that he had just spent his first day with Tanya back among humans. They had been dropped off by Shiva near Delhi, and they had spent the whole day shopping, eating out, watching people, and most importantly, reveling in each other's company.

There were so many things they needed to figure out. Where would they stay? Brahma had told them that they were welcome to stay at Kongka La as long as they wanted, but with the Devas' existence no longer a secret, Tanya's heart was in making a fresh beginning. There was also the question of what they would do next. Would he go back to college? With all that he had been through, could he really go back to the life he once had? Having tasted what it meant to be a pilot, could he live with never soaring through the skies in a vimana again? At least he wouldn't have to worry about money. Narada had told him that the money that Kalki had transferred to his account was all his to keep.

Aaditya's mind told him that he should worry about at least some of those things. But his heart told him that as long as he was with Tanya, they would somehow figure things out.

After the movie, as they walked out into the street, they looked at the stars in the night sky above.

'Tanya.'

'Yes.'

He brought his hand up to caress her left cheek.

'Happy New Year, sweetheart. This will be the first year of the rest of our lives-together.'

He kissed her as fireworks streaked across the night sky.