014

Suneeti felt a dull ache in her head and a slight constriction in her chest. Her entire body felt as if it had been put through an agricultural harvester.

“Are you okay?” Karnak asked her. He was sitting at the controls which blinked erratically behind him.

“I guess,” said Suneeti as she got up from where she lay, “I’ll live.”

“Good,” said Karnak with some concern, “because we seem to be abnormally low on power. Everything is working fine right now but I’m not sure how long we will last. The system needs some time to estimate our power needs and then predict how long we’ll last.”

“Aren’t these things built to last several years?” Suneeti asked.

“They are, but you have to remember that the Atirath was out of service for several decades. The rate of discharge in unused fuel cells is miniscule, but they do discharge.”

“I’m glad the ones on the main ship worked better than these.”

Suneeti moved over closer to the controls and peered over Karnak’s shoulder.

“Can we see what’s happening outside?” she asked.

“We can, but only hazily. We can use only passive sensors, since we do not want to get detected. And we’re deep inside the asteroid belt. There are too many solid obstacles around to get a clear reading. But I can make out several small ships approaching a large one, which I guess is the Atirath.”

Suneeti grunted and looked as Karnak brought a schematic on the screen, which was just a representation of what he’d just said. She saw five small dots rendezvous with a big cross and then stay in the same position. They had probably docked with the Atirath and were searching through it.

“I just hope they don’t find us,” she said after a while.

“I don’t think they would,” said Karnak, “we seem to be well protected till now. Fortunately the habitat shuttle leaves no record of its destination on the mother ship. In fact if they don’t dig deep enough, they’d not even find that a habitat shuttle was launched.”

Karnak spent the next hour or so trying to recalibrate the sensors to get a better reading. But as he’d said, they were well hidden and it worked both ways.

After about an hour they saw the little dots dislodging from the big cross and fly back the way they’d come.

“They’re going back,” said Karnak.

“Yes, and the Atirath isn’t moving. Which means they can’t take it back. It’s stranded out in space.”

“I guess. Though they can always come back and install new fuel cells and take it back. I don’t think they’re going to let something as valuable as that drift forever.”

“I wonder what value they find in something that can’t be used.”

Karnak shrugged. He didn’t see the point either.

The lights flickered.

“Uh-oh,” Karnak exclaimed as he pressed a few controls, “Power’s going down. According to the system we only have a few hours of power left.”

“How many is few?”

“About five. We will actually have a little more time after that but it will start getting uncomfortable after five.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We are going to call for rescue,” said Karnak with a cocky smile.

***

013

Karnak and Suneeti moved through the dimly lit corridors of the vimana. The main powercore had depleted and only the basic systems were running on emergency power.

“This ship has a habitat shuttle,” explained Karnak.

“And what is that?” asked Suneeti.

“A kind of escape pod. But more advanced. It is used mostly in or near solar systems. A habitat shuttle can be launched towards that system’s asteroid belt. The shuttle will locate a suitable asteroid and then forcibly lodge itself as deep as possible into the surface of the asteroid. It will then create a small life supporting habitat inside that asteroid. If cleverly chosen, the habitat can remain completely hidden from external scans and continue to function of years on solar power.”

“A hideout,” said Suneeti.

“Yes. And that’s what we’re going to do. Once we’re inside an asteroid, no one will be able to locate us.”

Suneeti nodded and followed him down the long winding corridors.

The habitat shuttle wasn’t as big as Suneeti had expected it to be. Karnak had almost made it sound comfortable. There was barely space for two people to squeeze in. The controls were moulded into the walls at awkward places, more out of concern for functionality than any aesthetic need or desire.

Suneeti felt odd being cramped in such a small place with a man she barely knew. But then, it was better than being ‘married’ to a man who you hardly knew. At least she knew that Karnak wasn’t going to harm her.

Karnak worked at the controls as Suneeti sat in silence and watched him. For the first time she had the leisure to notice his physical features. He wasn’t very tall and somewhat dark skinned for an aryavarti. But he had lush black hair, of that sort that made Suneeti want to run her fingers through them. His shoulders were firm, his arms shapely.

Suneeti smiled shyly to herself.

“We’re set,” said Karnak, looking up from the controls, “you ready to go?”

Suneeti was startled out of her reverie.

“Yes, of course,” she said with a slight smile

Karnak grinned and pressed the button. The shuttle moved and gradually accelerated out of the vimana. It manoeuvred slowly as it cleared the shielded volume of the Atirath then turned sharply and shot into the void like a bullet. The habitat shuttle was designed so as not to be found. In the vast emptiness of space, moving fast was one way of not being found. Moving irregularly was another way. The shuttle changed direction many times, taking as roundabout a way to the asteroid belt as its power reserves allowed. Then it entered the asteroid belt and slowed down, scanning for an appropriate spot to set up the habitat. Then in one final burst of power, it made a bone crushing lunge into a cup shaped asteroid that budged slightly as the shuttle lodged itself into its surface.

Suneeti had blacked out due to the heavy accelerations of the shuttle. By the time she came to the shuttle had grown in size, utilizing the entire space of the crater that it had dug into the asteroid as living space. The gentle throb of engines that was every present on every space faring craft was missing. The habitat now had the quiet, damped feeling of an underground bunker.

012

Karnak smiled in a way that for some reason sent a chill down Suneeti’s spine.

“I’m bringing on the external shield.”

She watched in fascination as exterior of the vimana glowed with diffuse energy. The shields came with sudden force and hurtled those men into the air like shreds of paper in a hurricane.

Suneeti had hardly breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a group of tantriks approaching the vimana from the other side. She manipulated the display to bring them into focus.

One of the tantriks moved forward, as close to the outer limit of the shield as he could. He was wearing only a loincloth and rudraksh neck and armlets. His entire body was covered in what Suneeti knew was ash of a freshly cremated corpse. His hair were long and matted in locks. He carried a trishool in one hand.

The tantrik hit the ground in front of him with his trishool, holding it upright with both hands. Then he began chanting. The trishool appeared to glow in his hands. He lifted it up and thrust it into the shield. The shield buckled and bended inwards at that spot. It shimmered in colours that made Suneeti’s eyes water.

The tantrik took a step forward and the shield diminished around him. Two more tantriks had begun similar procedures on either sides of him.

“They have tantriks now,” Suneeti cried out with renewed panic, “do something!”

“I’m doing it!” Karnak lashed out at her, “This is an Atirath, not a ground-chariot! The systems are complex and I don’t have time to understand them fully. They have to brought online in as specified order for this to work.”

Suneeti kept her mouth shut. She knew that there was not much she could do to help.
She watched with growing fear as the tantriks took step after step, weakening the shield with each one.

Suddenly the floor shuddered. Suneeti had to hold on to the guard rails that encircled the room to steady herself.

The shuddering grew more violent. They were taking off. Suneeti saw the tantriks hurriedly back off as the ground around them cracked and melted. The air shimmered and the Atirath leisurely rose up from its underground recess.

The vibrations had become so violent that Suneeti had to sit down on the floor. On the screens, the ground fell rapidly beneath them and all she could see were pinpoints of light in the night.
She felt the acceleration growing. The air grew heavy and it became difficult to breathe. She closed her eyes. She was feeling as though she was going to throw up.

Suddenly the ship lurched, it indeed it was possible for an object of that size to lurch. The heaviness went away and Suneeti found herself staring at Karnak’s face who was sitting beside her with a worried expression on his face.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Suneeti grunted and sat up.

“We had only enough power to take off,” said Karnak, “but it gave us enough velocity to escape the gravity well. We’re currently on a parabolic orbit around the planet.”

“That that would not help us too long, would it?” asked Suneeti, “If they’re so keen on getting to you they’d be following us.”

“Yes,” Karnak agreed, “and soon. We don’t have much time. It will not take much time to prepare a shuttle and come after us.”

“Do you have another plan?” Suneeti asked with a grim smile.

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

***

011

The Atirath looked even more imposing the night. The giant dome gleamed in the moonlight, the shadows the darkness making the apex appear miles away. They ran to the entrance and found the gate to be locked. There was a small square copper plate, a about a foot on each side, hung around the lock by a thin metal chain. Even in the darkness they could make out a complex geometric pattern, looking roughly like a twelve sided star, engraved on the plate.

“What is it?” asked Suneeti.

“It’s a tantrik yantra,” replied Karnak, “it is here to prevent anybody from trespassing. I can take care of it, but if I break it, it will immediately alert the tantrik who put it here. But I don’t think we have much choice.”

Karnak held the plate in both hands and began muttering to himself. Gradually his voice became louder until it actually hurt Suneeti inside her skull. Karnak’s hands crackled with energy. He gave the plate a sharp pull and it came off its chain. The plate appeared burnt and mangled. Karnak threw it away. He touched the lock briefly. There was another crackle and the lock broke in his hands.

He pushed the gate open and ran inside, Suneeti following closely behind.

They boarded the Atirath and closed the airlock behind them.

“No one has ever been able to charioteer the Atirath,” said Suneeti, “How do you expect to get it off ground.”

“I think you’re mistaken about the whole thing,” replied Karnak, “I’m sure they were able to get it off the ground. That part is fairly easy. It is getting it to warp that’s difficult. Getting it to warp requires connecting. And to get a vimana this complicated would take one hell of a sarathi. Now I just hope this thing has enough power in its fuel cells to get off the ground.”

“You mean you don’t know whether it has enough power or not?”

“No.”

“I thought this was a plan.”

“It’s become more of a gamble now.”

Karnak smiled cockily as he entered the garbh-griha of the Atirath.

He sat down cross legged on the circular platform in the centre.

“Now,” he said, “I need to concentrate.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Suneeti could make out that he was chanting under his breath. One by one, the circular grooves around him lit up and their displays came on, encircling him in concentric rings. Karnak opened his eyes but Suneeti could see that he was not looking at the screens but somewhere beyond them.

Suneeti felt a dull throb coarse through the vimana’s body. Systems were coming online.

She notice that screens had lit up on the walls of the garbh-griha. She moved to the one nearest to her and after some experimentation managed to make them show the view from the external cameras. A team of men was trying to cut through the airlock with laser saws.

“They’re trying to get in,” she said, with a trace of panic.

010

“Makes sense,” said Karnak to himself.

“What do you mean,” asked Suneeti, glancing briefly around the corner to see if the soldiers were gone.

“Gorakhnath and I go back a bit,” said Karnak.

The soldiers disappeared around the corner. Karnak caught Suneeti by the hand and made a dash for the boundary wall. He helped her over it and then climbed over himself. They found themselves in a dirty back-alley. The stench of urine was rank in the air. The stepped through carefully.

“So, where are we going now?” Karnak asked Suneeti.

“I don’t know!” said Suneeti, “You’re the one who can connect, figure something out!”

Karnak grimaced as he jumped over the pot-holes full of murky water. He knew that Mahaguru wasn’t particularly fond of him but this kind of full-scale assault was somewhat surprising. He was a minor irritation in Gorakhnath’s life at best. Why had he suddenly developed this craving to see him dead?

“They’ve cordoned off the city, you say?” he asked Suneeti.

“That’s what I heard. Though it’s still early. They might not have secured all routes out of the city. And we can always move through the woods.”

Karnak considered that for a moment.

“I think that’s a good idea.”

They moved through the city, slowly and stealthily. They avoided the main streets and moved through the galees. The city thinned out as they got closer to the office. Patrol cars were frequenting the highways. Karnak and Suneeti took the narrow road that led into the denser parts of Rathvan.

“Oh shoot!” Karnak exclaimed as they neared what appeared to be a ground chariot in the distance. They could make out several scantily clad men alighting from the vehicle. They appeared eerily white in against the dark backgrounds of the night.

“Who are they?” Suneeti asked him.

“Tantriks,” said Karnak, “Looks like Mahaguru is sending them into the woods. This means we can’t go into the forest.”

“Why?”

“I have the skills to connect. Those tantriks will sense me within minutes. In fact, even now we’re running the risk of being discovered. We must more back.”

The backtracked hurriedly towards the city. They could sense that the patrolling activity had increased.

“What now?” asked Suneeti as they half ran and half walked though the cobbled streets of Rathpur.

“I have another idea,” said Karnak as he paused for a second at a crossing to decide which way to go.

Suddenly, he halted.

“What now?” asked Suneeti, “We must hurry, come on!”

“What I’m about to do, may mean that I cannot come back to his city again. In fact, I might not be able to come back to this planet either.”

“So?”

“You don’t have to come with me,” said Karnak, “Leave me now and go home. Or to Manojav’s place if that is what you have to do. This place is your home. If you come with me, you may not be able to come back.”

Suneeti smiled ruefully.

“You think there is still something left for me here? I have aided an enemy of my so called husband. Do you think Manojav will let me live? Even if he lets me live, it will be a miserable life at best. No, I will come with you. If you do not want me to stay with you, drop me off at the next planet that you visit. I will fend for myself.”

Karnak nodded and began moving again.

“By the way,” shouted Suneeti after him, “How exactly do you plan to get off this planet?”

009

Karnak roamed about the city all day and was completely exhausted by the evening. He found a cheap sarai in the older parts of the city and checked in.

Even though the sun had set, the temperature had not come down. Karnak took a bath in the common bathrooms. The water was chilly but refreshing in the heat. He had food at the sarai’s kitchen and then went back to his tiny room. The heat was killing him and he stripped down to his underclothes before collapsing on the creaky and faintly smelly bed.

The ceiling-fan poured down air that felt like a hot wash of soup. Karnak closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

He dreamt that he was back in the jungle again. The moonlit night was cool and fragrant and he could hear a girl crying somewhere in the woods. He followed the voice and came to find Suneeti, who starting walking away from him as soon as he approached. He followed her deeper into the forest, her perfect figure becoming more enticing and mesmerising by the minute. Karnak felt himself getting aroused until Suneeti stopped and leaned seductively against a tree. He approached her, his heart thumping. As he drew close, Suneeti placed her arms gently on his shoulders.

And shook him violently until he woke up.

Karnak leapt to his feet, standing up instinctively in as summoning stance.

“Relax,” it’s me, Suneeti said, “but we need to move. Get some clothes on.”

She took his clothes from the wall hanger and threw them at him. Karnak clumsily began putting them on, his head becoming sleepy again.

“What is this all about?!” he complained.

But before Suneeti could answer, they heard a loud altercation downstairs. There were loud
knocks on doors and shouting across the building.

“They’re here to get you,” Suneeti said with renewed urgency, “we must leave.”

“Who are they?” Karnak asked, “And how many. I can take them down!”

But Suneeti grabbed his arm and pulled him out with surprising force. They ran down the corridor until they heard a group of men ahead. They double-backed and ran down the fire escape.

“They’re Manojav’s soldiers,” Suneeti told him, “They’re here to arrest you.”

“We don’t need to run,” said Karnak, “I can take them out.”

“No you can’t!” said Suneeti, hurtling down the stairs as fast as she could.

“You don’t understand! I can connect! With the kind of weaponry I can summon, they won’t last a minute.”

“No. You don’t understand! It isn’t just this bunch of soldiers. The entire city has been cordoned off. They’re hunting you down. It’s big. You could probably take these men down but you can’t take down all of them!”

They reached the ground floor and Karnak peeped out the doorway. There were soldiers there but they were moving out, towards the front of the building.

“Wait,” he said in a whisper, trying to catch his breath.

“Why are they after me?!” he asked aftera while.

“You tell me!” said Suneeti, “Mahaguru Gorakhnath was in Manojav’s palace today. I don’t know what he told him, but then I heard orders being issued that you be arrested and brought to the palace. They’ve been trying to track you down all day.”

008

Karnak read the information board in front of the ticket booth. The paint was peeling off, but it was still readable. It cost five mudras to get in. Money was something Karnak was short on but he dug into his wallet for the precious little that he had.

The man at the ticket counter had his lips stained red with gutkha and had a look of a person who had the worst job in the world and thought people should be obliged for it. Karnak took the purple coloured piece of newsprint with barely readable markings on it and proceeded towards the entrance to the Atirath.

Surprise of surprises, they actually had a guide to show them around.

A small crowd had gathered around the man who seemed entirely too cheerful for the occasion. He was speaking in a pretentious sing song voice reciting well rehearsed lines to his disinterested audience. Karnak ignored him and followed the crowd into the ship.

The interior of the ship was decorated in sharp contrast to the outside. The corridors were plush, carpeted and spotlessly clean. The lighting looked expensive and state of the art.

“This Atirath,” said the guide in a high voice, “or may I call it the Atirath, was built about fifty years ago under the direction of King Charuvarman, the father of our esteemed Samraat Mahendravarman. But as you all would know Charuvarman was blessed by Indr himself. It would not have been possible to build a vimana such as this without divine help. Indr, in his avatar of Manojav, himself oversaw the construction of this might vessel. Therefore it was that the tradition of Atirathotsav – an annual festival honouring Indr and this vimana that he gave us – was started by Samraat Mahendravarman when he took over.

“What did he say the name of the avatar was?” Karnak asked the man standing next to him.

“Manojav,” the man muttered and hurried on to follow the crowd that had move forward.

Karnak took in the news, following hurriedly behind the crowd. So Manojav was Indr’s avatar. That explained a couple of things, including his fetish for beautiful, young women.

The guide toured them around the crew quarters all of which were luxuriously furnished and altogether too spacious for a regular space ship. Karnak wondered why that was. Interiors of a vimana were generally cramped and claustrophobic. The less the mass of the ship, the less the energy needed to pilot it. And in a battle, that could be the deciding factor between victory and defeat.

Walking at a pace too fast for anyone’s liking, the guide showed them around the weapon’s controls, astrogation rooms, medical facilities and finally brought them to the garbh-griha – the central command centre where the sarathi would sit and control the entire vessel.

The garbh-griha was really simple in design. In the very centre was a circular platform, which Karnak knew was for the sarathi to sit. Around the platform, there was many grooves in the floor expanding in concentric arcs around the central platform. These, Karnak assumed, were for the holoscreens that would feed the sarathi with every tiny bit of information from sensors hidden throughout the body of the ship. If the ship was a creature, this would be its brain, and the sarathi, its will.

“And this,” said the guide with a flourish, “ends our exciting tour of the Atirath. I will now leave you to take some photographs to take home. Once you’re done you can walk along that corridor and it will lead you straight outside. If you enjoyed your time, and liked my work, I would be honoured to accept whatever token of appreciation you will deem me worthy of.”

“Not bad for five mudras,” Karnak thought as the crowd broke off like an evaporating liquid around the room.

007

Karnak enjoyed cities. He liked the sensory overload that cities offered. He liked his streets to be crowded with traffic, his sidewalks to be full of hawkers selling their myriad good, his restaurants, cafes and dhabas to be full of ceaselessly chattering people. Karnak enjoyed watching people, observing and studying them from a distance. He enjoyed talking to them, catching a glimpse of lives so distant and alien and yet so much like his own. He enjoyed the insight into life that seemingly insignificant people gave. But most of all he enjoyed street food.

The guy was selling chana-jor-garam on a cart by the roadside. The road itself circled around a vast dome like structure that rose high above the ground. From what Karnak reckoned, this was the very centre of the city – the kind of monument that a city was proud of and organized its life around.

“What is this?” Karnak asked the chana-wala after he’d bought a handful from him.

“Are you new in town, saab?” the chana-wala asked.

Karnak nodded.

“This is the Atirath. I’m surprised that you came to Rathpur without knowing about the Atirath. Most people visit the city only to see this monument. It’s not really a monument though. As the name tells you, it’s a ship.”

Karnak raised an eyebrow.

“You mean this is a real ship?” he said.

“Yes,” the chana-wala smiled at his baffled expression. Clearly, that was exactly the effect he’d hoped to achieve. “This rath was gifted to the city by Indra himself. It is one of its kind – the largest and the most powerful rath in the galaxy. But the rath was so difficult to pilot that no one has ever been able to lift it out of the ground.”

“You mean this thing has never been flown?”

“Nope,” said the chana-wala, “Not for the lack of trying though. Our city is known for its vimanas and sarathis, saab. We make the best of them and we fly them the best. The KR squadron of the King’s fleet is the deadliest force in the galaxy.”

Karnak nodded in appreciation and flipped a few chanas into his mouth. He savoured the taste as the hot spicy masala burnt his tongue and made his mouth water. If there was anything he had missed in ashram life, it was spicy food.

“This thing is huge,” he said after a while.

The chana-wala chuckled.

“This is just the top portion of the whole thing. This vimana is shaped like a shankh. What you see is the broad top portion of the shankh. The tapering tip goes in several hundred meters into the ground.”

This time Karnak was genuinely surprised. He had heard about Atiraths at the ashram. People had long proposed building such a machine. Besides the construction costs being exorbitant, the yoga-shakti needed to charioteer the machine would have been phenomenal. It was not wonder that no sarathi had ever managed to fly the thing.

“You can go inside it and take a look,” the chana-wala said, “They give guided tours.”

006

Karnak glanced at the girl who seemed a little surprised at the way things had turned out to be. Clearly, she had not been expecting someone very different from Manojav.

“Devi,” Karnak asked her, “what do you wish me to do now. It appears that Manojav is not the monster you were afraid is going to take you. He appears to be a handsome young man, with enough wealth to keep you happy. He may have other wives, but polygamy is not unusual in Aryavart and sharing your husband is a small price to pay for the prosperity of you town. It is entirely your decision now. I will defend you if you say so. But as Manojav has said, this is a deal and not an extortion. He doesn’t appear to be the kind who will take you by force.”

Suneeti nodded and sighed heavily.

“I think it is best,” she said, “if I take this man as my husband. As you said, it is a small sacrifice to be made given my current predicament. I daresay things have turned out to be better than I’d expected them to be.”

Saying thus, Suneeti departed with Manojav and Karnak walked back to the town of Rathpur.

***

On his way back, Karnak stopped at a small tea shop at the outskirts of the town. The shop owner was a jovial, middle aged man named Lachhi. As Lachhi brought him the steaming cup of tea, he asked who Karnak was and what his purpose in travelling to these regions was.
Karnak introduced himself and then narrate the incident with Manojav and Suneeti, still wondering if he did the right thing in letting Suneeti go with that man. Hearing the tale, Lachhi smiled.

“It becomes so much more difficult to be free when the cage is golden, isn’t it,” he said.

“I think Suneeti will be happy with Manojav,” said Karnak.

“Oh I’m sure she will be. Only it would not be out of choice.”

“How can anyone be happy unless they want to?” asked Karnak.

“Depends on what kind of happiness you’re talking about,” said Lachhi with a smile.

Karnak sipped his tea in silence for a while.

“Tell me,” he asked, “what does Manojav give this town in return for these girls?”

Lachhi smiled.

“It is not to be spoken of,” he said, “ask any question around this town but not this one and you will be treated well.”

He stood up and walked away, pretending to care about his other customers. Karnak wondered what the secret of this town was.