and when he came upright, he saw that his assailant was now headed straight for him. Good, he wouldn't have to go looking for the Asuras. Now that they knew the Devas had joined the battle, they were making a beeline for the vimanas.
The Asura fired two more missiles, and Aaditya intercepted both with his astras, but did not have time to fire back before the saucer shaped vimana passed him. Aaditya took his vimana through a sharp turn. The Asura was trying to turn towards him so that he could fire again. Aaditya fired an astra at point blank range, watching the saucer as it glowed red-hot for an instant before it disappeared in a flash of intense light.
'There's a saucer on my back. I can't get him off!'
An American pilot was being pursued by an Asura. Aaditya calibrated which fighter had made the emission and took his vimana to the scene of the chase, climbing high so that he could swoop down for his attack pass. He looked down in admiration as the American pilot weaved and turned, avoiding one burst after another from the saucer that was right behind him. As skilled a pilot as he obviously was, Aaditya knew that the American was living on borrowed time unless someone took the vimana off his back.
Aaditya took his vimana into a near vertical dive, focused on nothing else but the red dot he saw on his display. As he got closer, he could see the saucer clearly before him. The Asura at the controls must have been so frustrated by his inability to shoot down this American pilot that he never even knew what hit him. Two astras slammed into him as he and his vimana were vaporized.
Aaditya pulled alongside the F/A-18, slowing down so that the American pilot could see who had just come to his rescue. He gave the pilot a `thumbs up' sign and then peeled off.
This battle was however far from over.
The other Devas had made good progress as well, and the number of red dots on his display had thinned to a handful of drones. There were no Asura vimanas to be seen. Either they were all gone, or else Kalki was holding back the few that he may yet have left.
The Americans were shooting down drones at a steady rate, though Aaditya did see several American fighters go down as well. Shiva and Durga were staying close to Aaditya, but Indra and Vishnu were cutting a swath through the drones.
Another battle was being waged under the seas as well. Two American submarines had tried to penetrate Kalki's base, and Ganesha had already sent all the Devas a message that both had been sunk.
All the Devas now regrouped above the battle. Indra spoke for all of them. 'Kalki will now unleash all his drones. There may be dozens, or even hundreds of them. We will hold them as best as we can. The Americans know they're in an all out war, and they will be getting reinforcements. Aaditya, you know what you have to do when that does happen.'
Aaditya knew only too well. He found his stomach tightening as he contemplated what he had to do soon.
On the ocean surface the familiar sphere was emerging from the water. A gap opened in its surface and drone after drone flew out of it, looking like a swarm of locusts. The Devas wasted no time. Astras slammed into the drones, incinerating many of them before they had even reached level flight. Aaditya fired a couple himself, but then focused on his own mission. As the only one who had been inside Kalki's lair, it was critical that he make it inside, and find out Kalki's command centre. He dove towards the sphere, drones still emerging from its opening. Shiva was on his right and Durga on his left, sweeping aside any drones that tried to attack him. Narada was right before him. It had been an incredibly risky mission, but Narada had insisted on flying it, arguing he was not as good in aerial combat as the other Devas and wanted to make himself as useful as possible.
Narada fired two astras, destroying a drone at point blank range, but then his vimana seemed to be wobble as beams reached out from the sphere. There was no apparent damage, but Narada's vimana seemed to slow down as the descent into the sphere continued.
Aaditya was now barely a hundred feet above the waves. Narada's vimana took another hit from a beam from the sphere, but he kept on going. The beams from the sphere were now reaching out at Aaditya too, and he flinched at a near miss. He was close enough to see the small gun ports on the sphere's surface that were firing and saw one swivel towards him. He was too close and going too fast to abort his run, so Aaditya prepared himself for the inevitable.
Just then, Narada maneuvered his vimana right in front of Aaditya. The beam from the sphere hit him near his tail, nearly splicing off the vimana into half. Aaditya watched in horror as Narada's vimana spiraled towards the ocean and impacted the water. But the sacrifice had given him the opportunity he needed. He was now headed straight into the opening on the surface of the sphere, which was rapidly filling the screen in front of him. Kalki must have released all his drones; they were now coming out in trickles of one or two. With Aaditya barely fifty feet away, the opening on the sphere begin to slide shut. He willed his vimana to go even faster. Just then a drone shot out. Without conscious thought, Aaditya destroyed it and then flew his vimana straight through the debris.
He felt the pitter-patter of the fragments of the destroyed drone hit his vimana, sounding like a hailstorm. He turned his vimana steeply to one side, and guided it through the opening moments before it slammed shut. Shiva and Durga were right behind him. He could hear Shiva's voice in his ears.
'We made it!'
Aaditya took a deep breath. He accelerated his vimana and shot into the depths of Kalki's base.
***
Aaditya flew into the open fields he had seen before with the gleaming giant pyramid looming in the distance. The only difference was that this time the landscape was not filled with workers tending to the crops, but an army preparing for invasion. As far as the eye could see, dark shapes of daityas massed around large landing craft. There must have been thousands of them-all awaiting Kalki's order to spearhead his invasion once the tsunamis had hit. Some of them looked up at the three strange vimanas that had suddenly appeared overhead. Aaditya was tempted to fire into their massed ranks or to destroy their hulking landing craft, but this battle depended on their ability to stop Kalki before he detonated his underwater charges. One or two of the daityas took potshots as they passed, but when Shiva fired two astras right into the middle of a large group, incinerating more than twenty of them, the others scattered for cover.
'Follow me!' Aaditya screamed into his headset as his vimana roared towards the hangar opening on the side of the pyramid. There were a few daityas there, but they scrambled away out of sight. It seemed that they had no idea that some attacking vimanas had made it all the way into the innermost recesses of Kalki's base. Aaditya brought his vimana down in a corner of the hangar. Shiva and Durga's vimanas landed close by. As he stepped out, he realized that Kalki had indeed sent out all his drones for the battle that was now raging overhead. There were no drones or vimanas in sight, and any daityas who had been standing guard were nowhere to be seen.
'Now, that wasn't so difficult.'
Shiva had barely spoken when a beam of red light slammed into his vimana, missing his head by inches. The three ran for cover behind Shiva's vimana, their handheld vajras at the ready. Aaditya leaned forward and saw a group of four daityas at the far end of the hangar. Each of them held a long rifle-like weapon and they were firing pretty indiscriminately at the intruders. Aaditya turned to Shiva to see what he was thinking.
'They can't shoot to save their lives, but they don't even need to touch us. If they keep us bottled up here long enough, we've already lost.'
In the chaos and adrenaline rush of the dogfight, Aaditya had almost forgotten just how much of a knife's edge their mission rested on. Each of them had a holographic display over their wrists that showed a timer counting down till the moment when they anticipated Kalki would trigger his explosions.
There were only twenty minutes left.
Aaditya felt Durga come closer to him.
'Which way is Kalki's command centre?'
Two doors lead out of the hangar. One, to the right, almost directly behind the daityas attacking them led to the quarters, where his room had been. The other, to the left, led to a short staircase that ended at the elevator that would take them straight to Kalki's command centre. Aaditya nodded towards the left.
Before Aaditya could say or do anything to stop her, Durga sprinted out from behind the vimana and ran straight towards the daityas who had been shooting at them. She weaved left and right as beams bounced off the floor and walls all around her and cartwheeled across the floor, landing in a crouch behind a drone engine. The
