Free Vimana by Mainak Dhar Page A

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 IndianBaderon 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