Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (43 page)

They brought Dick Lombard in on the scheme because of his globe-spanning media empire. His tentacles reached everywhere. He could channel electronic imagery from any corner of the planet and draw it down into a single location. The faith of billions was swarming around in the infosphere, just waiting for the person with the right infrastructure, the right connections, to milk it. A reservoir begging to be tapped – and Lombard owned the drilling equipment.

Which isn’t to say he was easy to convince. When Bhatnagar and Krieger approached him with their idea, Lombard dismissed it as “the most harebrained load of old cobblers I ever heard in all my born days.” But when the potential profit level was put to him – an income stream pouring in from the defence budgets of just about every nation on earth – he soon changed his tune.

And so the Trinity Syndicate was born.

Korolev was given the task of somehow developing the Harappa lotus’s properties into a reproducible process that could refashion men into gods. He was promised a sizeable cut of the proceeds if he managed it, which was more than enough of an incentive to do his utmost to succeed.

He quickly ascertained that the bright blue glinting flecks in the flower were crystalline structures, basically organic in nature. A single tiny fragment could be cultured in a gel medium derived from hydroxyapatite, a mineral found in teeth and bones. The artificially grown crystals could then be atomised and inserted into a protein cage structure – his “god virus” – which housed and bonded with the crystal molecules and was able to “infect” the tissues of a host body with them.

Abracadabra, theogenesis.

It wasn’t too great a deductive leap to suggest that the crystals and laghima, the vimana power source, were associated. Perhaps the Indus Valley god-beings fuelled their aircraft with their own minds, their own faith. They believed their vehicles could fly, and thus they flew.

The Harappa lotus, then, was nothing other than an exotic battery which operated on a closed-loop system with every vimana pilot. He fed it with his faith – his imagination – and it in turn supplied energy to the flying chariot’s antigravity propulsion drive. A larger vessel such as the Rukma Vimana might require a hundred minds working in unison to keep it aloft, like the oarsmen of a Roman galley all pulling together. As long as everyone on board was convinced it would stay airborne, it would.

As for the Indus Valley Civilisation’s drastic demise, one can conjecture that the society went through a decline and fall as most societies do. It began with a golden age and, millennia later, ended in a dark age.

Reading between the lines of the Vedic texts, there was fragmentation, a fissuring. On one side the devas – enlightened, gifted, abiding by the rule of law. On the other side the asuras – devious, dangerous, malcontent. The faultlines were pre-existing. Mistrust and hatred had festered for centuries, one faction chafing against the other. In the end, the mutual antagonism got too great. Tempers flared. Deities waged war against demons in a string of escalating battles until finally the ultimate weapons were unleashed. All died, leaving behind nothing but ruins and a regional race memory which, over time, evolved into epic tales of gods and monsters and, ultimately, into a creed.

¹
The Bilderberg Conference is the annual shindig for top-level politicians and high-net-worth individuals where the fate of the world is thrashed out, or so the conspiracy theorists would have us believe. Others think it’s just a big knees-up for the ultra elite.

48. MAGIC ALIEN JUJU DUST

“S
O THAT’S WHY,
when we leaned close to the lotus, it had a reaction to us,” said Parashurama. “Like it recognised us.”

“Yes,” said Aanandi. “Some sort of feedback. A resistance. Like pushing the same poles of two magnets together. You and it are essentially full of the same stuff.”

“Freaky.”

“The freaky part for me is the advanced ancient civilisation bit,” I said. “I thought all that Erich von Däniken
Chariots of the Gods
bollocks was thoroughly debunked years ago. Shows how much I know.”

“You’re the proof that von Däniken was on to something,” said Aanandi. “All of you are. The Trinity Syndicate have resurrected a long-lost technology and put their own spin on it, and you’re now carrying it around inside you.”

“I dunno,” said Vamana. “Is it better or worse, knowing we’ve got magic alien juju dust running through our veins? I think I preferred it when it was just the prof’s virus. That at least was science. This is science fiction.”

“Anyone else seeing some uncanny parallels?” said Kalkin. “A race that vaporised itself to oblivion with nuclear weapons? History is about to repeat itself.”

“Cycles,” I said to Aanandi. “The yugas. From Satya to Kali.”

She acknowledged it with a glum nod. “Maybe the sages of old were on to something. It seems the world needs a regular purging. No society, however mature, can last indefinitely. Ripeness, then rot.”

“It doesn’t have to happen,” said Kurma. “Not this time.”

“Unless we can find the Trinity, it may. And even then...” She sighed. “Talk about grasping at straws.”

The
Garuda
banked left, beginning a turn. I assumed we had just completed a pass and were coming about to try the next. In other words, still no sign of the
Makara
.

But then, over the intercom, Captain Corday said, “Gentlemen and lady, we’ve had a ping from Matsya. Seems he may have struck gold. I’m heading for a rendezvous with his co-ordinates. Keep your eyes peeled.”

He poured on speed, and within twenty minutes we sighted a gargantuan motor yacht, closer to a cruise liner than any private boat, white as an iceberg in the azure ocean expanse. It had seven tiers of deck, a helipad just like Tiffany Krieger had said, a huge radar array, and a superstructure silhouette that combined humpback whale with space rocket.

Corday circled the yacht, and the name painted on the stern confirmed once and for all that we had found our objective: MAKARA.

He then matched the
Garuda
’s course to the
Makara
’s and began decelerating.

“Expect resistance,” said Parashurama. “They’ll surely have drafted in more bodyguards.”

Krishna drew his sword, Nandaka. “I’m ready.”

Kurma tightened his grip on his club. “So am I. Bring it on.”

Narasimha flexed his taloned fingers like a pianist warming up. He said nothing.

Rama came aft from the cockpit, shouldering his bow and quiver. “Corday will hold position above the helipad so that we can jump out.”

“What about Fishface?” said Vamana. “Is he going to join the party?”

“Matsya is submerged alongside the
Makara
. He will resurface when he sees us board.”

“Good luck, guys,” Aanandi said. “I mean it. You know what’s at stake. Do it right.”

The outer door opened and wind rushed in. The helipad’s huge white H lay some twenty feet below, lurching slightly as the
Makara
ploughed through the Pacific swell.

Parashurama dropped first, hitting the helipad with his knees bent and ankles together and then rolling, paratrooper-style. Rama was out next, followed by Krishna, Kurma, Kalkin, Narasimha, me. Vamana stepped out growing, so that he was somehow almost stationary as he fell. He hit the boat at nearly full height, crouching on his giant haunches.

The
Garuda
peeled away.

“Perimeter,” said Parashurama, and we moved in pairs to the helipad’s edges and looked over.

Nobody in view.

“They must know we are here,” said Narasimha. “So where are they?”

“Hiding?” said Vamana. “Cowering in the bilges? Who cares? Let’s go dig the fuckers out.”

“Easy there,” said Parashurama. “I don’t like this.”

“Please don’t say, ‘It’s quiet. Too quiet.’”

“Well, it is, Vamana. No obvious defensive measures. It’s like they’re lying in wait. Like we’re right where they want us.”

“Paranoid much? This is three businessmen and a handful of ex-special-forces squaddies, not the ruddy Taliban.”

“After the Golden Rocks Mine fiasco, I have every right to be cautious. How many darn traps did they spring on us there? I know from dangerous, and these guys are it.”

The Warrior padded down the steep flight of metal stairs from the helipad to the top deck, his axe held warily at an angle in front of him.

The rest of us never saw the door open and the gunman emerge. We heard the shot clearly enough, though, a sharp
crack!
above the hiss of the waves cleaving under the
Makara
’s bows.

The bullet struck Parashurama in the arm. He reeled under the impact, but recovered swiftly and lunged at the shooter. His axe blade embedded itself in the man’s gut.

I leapt down to the Warrior’s side. “Shit. How bad is it?”

He inspected the ragged hole in his arm. “Missed the artery. Hurts like crazy, but I’ll live.”

He leaned over the gunman, who lay on the deck with a wedge of entrail protruding from the gash in his stomach. A puddle of blood glistened on polished teak planks.

“Unlike you, buddy. How many of you are there? Tell me.”

The man coughed wetly and redly. He was dressed in a black battledress jumpsuit, Kevlar tac vest, holsters and webbing galore, ammo belts, grenades, combat helmet. He wasn’t one of the four goons, but he was clearly military. Mercenary.

“I can make it quick,” Parashurama told him. “Put you out of your misery. Or you can lie there bleeding out, long and slow. What’s it to be?”

“You are so screwed,” the dying man gasped.

“How’s that?”

“Dozens of us. And that’s... that’s not just any bullet.”

“What do you – ?”

Parashurama staggered. His dropped his axe and clung on to me for support.

“Parashurama? You okay?”

He didn’t look okay. His face had paled. It seemed thinner, too. In fact, all of him seemed thinner.

“Hollowpoint fragmentation round,” the gunman said, weirdly, serenely smug. “Got some sort of... juice inside. Makes you super creeps... not so super any more.”

Parashurama slumped to the deck. “Korolev’s antidote.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

He looked up at me, sunken-eyed. His musculature was shrinking, flesh seeming to melt away. The Warrior was reverting to his former self, still well built but slender, a shadow of the bulked-up beefcake he had been.

“Dammit,” he seethed. “So weak. Dammit, dammit, dammit.”

The gunman gargled repeatedly in the back of his throat. He was laughing, gloating, even as he drowned on his own blood.

“‘Dozens of us,’” I said to him. “So there’s a private army on board.”

A crimson grin. “That, and worse. Guys who hired us... don’t fuck around. They know how to... protect themselves.”

There was activity on every deck. All at once, below us, around us, we could hear doors opening, boots thumping, the
click-clack
of cocking levers being ratcheted.

Parashurama had almost completed the transition from deva back to human. He sat slumped against the base of the stairs, Korolev’s antidote coursing through his bloodstream in liquid form. He was half the size he had been, and his wound was doubly serious now. The arm hung limp by his side, useless.

“What do we do?” I said. “Do we bail?”

“Heck no.” A wave of pain made him grit his teeth. “We’ve come too far, we’re too close, for that.”

“But you’re our leader.”

“And as your leader I’m telling you don’t give up. I may be no good to you any more, but you’re still devas. You still have your siddhis. Use them. Show these scumbags what you’re made of. Here.”

He slid his axe across.

“I can’t take it,” I said.

“It’s no use to me. You, you’ve got two working arms.”

The clatter of approaching footfalls was loud. The Trinity’s private army was coming up to engage.

“Go on,” Parashurama urged. “You’ll get the hang. You’re Hanuman, a born fighter. A warrior too.”