The Sacred Vault

clearing. Adjoining it was an open-topped cage - in which stood a goat, tethered to a pole. Over the speakers she heard a faint bleat. ‘What are you doing?’

‘One of the tigers injured her paw,’ said Vanita. ‘We need to bring her inside so our vets can treat her.’

‘We have three tigers, two female and one male,’ Khoil added. ‘They keep to their own territories, so we have several stations linked by tunnels where we can enter the sanctuary and provide them with live prey.’

Nina gave the goat a sympathetic look. ‘Sorry, Billy.’

The billionaire turned back to the controls. The image on the main screen shifted as the camera moved. Nina saw that it was airborne, slowly descending into the clearing. Khoil touched a button, and a crosshair was superimposed over the centre of the screen. ‘Lower the cage.’

A metallic rattle came over the speakers as the cage dropped into the ground, leaving the goat standing on a metal platform. Vanita indicated one of the markers with a long red nail. ‘She’s getting closer! Pramesh, let me see.’

Khoil obediently adjusted the controls. The camera panned left, tilting downwards to show a patch of bush at the edge of the clearing. ‘Each tiger has a tracker implanted,’ he explained to Nina. ‘We can locate them to the metre. This one will come into view . . . now.’

For a moment, Nina saw nothing. Then she spotted a slight movement in the undergrowth - and suddenly what she had taken to be patches of light and shadow took on graceful yet deadly form.

A Bengal tiger, three hundred pounds of muscle, teeth and claws standing over three feet high and eight feet long. Even with a wounded paw, the animal moved with silent, precise purpose.

‘We would not normally tie up the goat,’ said Khoil as Nina watched, unable to look away from the spectacle. ‘We want the animals to keep their hunting instincts.’

‘Move the drone back,’ Vanita warned sharply. ‘If she hears it, it might scare her away.’

‘The vimana is eight metres away. The rotors are inaudible past six metres.’ But the camera retreated slightly after she glared at him.

The goat finally saw the danger. Bleating in fear, it tried to run, but was jerked to an abrupt stop by the tether. The tiger responded, a black and orange explosion of action as it sprang across the clearing faster than Khoil’s camera could follow. By the time it caught up, the tiger had already reached its prey, slamming the goat against the side of the bunker and biting down hard on the unfortunate ungulate’s throat. Blood gushed over the grey concrete. Even with a lethal wound the goat was still struggling; the tiger lashed out a paw, claws tearing open its abdomen and spilling its innards across the ground. Nina winced.

Khoil worked the joystick controls. The drone descended towards the scene, crosshairs moving over the tiger’s body.

‘Don’t hurt her!’ Vanita warned.

‘I won’t, my beloved,’ Khoil replied, a hint of impatience in his flat voice. The camera drew closer.

The tiger looked up, a noise catching its attention—

He pulled a trigger on one of the sticks. A flat whap came over the speakers, the image jolting backwards. When it settled again, the tiger had released the goat and was trying to run back into the jungle - but only got a few yards before drunkenly flopping to the ground. A silver dart protruded from its flank.

‘She is down,’ Khoil reported into the headset. ‘Bring her inside.’ On the smaller monitor, the platform lowered into the ground. After a short pause it rose again, several men in white overalls stepping off and moving cautiously to the fallen predator.

‘Is she all right?’ Vanita demanded. One of the men felt the tiger’s body, then gave the hovering camera a thumbs up.

‘She will be fine,’ Khoil assured her. He pushed a button. The words Auto return flashed up on the big screen, the camera swinging round of its own accord and ascending above the treetops. ‘Now, Dr Wilde,’ he said, standing, ‘we can talk. I suspect it will be pointless, but Qexia projected a twelve per cent probability that you might be persuaded to work with me.’

Nina shrugged. ‘Sounds like your projections have a thirteen per cent margin of error, but go ahead.’

As he had earlier, Khoil missed the subtext and took the remark literally. ‘Less than five per cent, actually. But you are undoubtedly wondering why we want to obtain the Talonor Codex.’

‘It’d crossed my mind.’

‘Mr Zec has sent me scans of all the IHA’s research and translations from your apartment. They confirm everything I had hoped - that the Codex contains the information needed to reveal the location of the Vault of Shiva.’

‘So you think it’s real?’

‘As real as Shiva himself.’ Seeing her sceptical look, he continued: ‘You are surprised that a computer billionaire could also be a devout believer? This is India, Dr Wilde. The gods are all around us, as important a part of daily life as water. Vanita and I are both Vira Shaivites - “heroes of Shiva”. Following Shiva has brought us great wealth and power, and we want to show our gratitude by fulfilling the great lord’s plan for the world.’

‘What plan?’ Nina asked, but they were interrupted by a buzzing sound as something flew into the room through an open window: a black and silver flying machine about two feet across its front and slightly longer. It was triangular, a cylindrical shroud at each corner containing fast-spinning rotors. ‘What’s that?’

‘One of my vimanas - the name in the ancient Hindu epics for the flying machines used by the gods. They are described as flying chariots, mechanical birds, even floating palaces . . . the products of a great civilisation now lost to time.’ The little aircraft made its way to a stand at one side of the room, hovered above it, then lowered itself down. As the buzz of its engines faded, Khoil walked to the drone, Nina - and the three bodyguards - following.

She saw that slung beneath its body was a dart gun, a camera lens above it. ‘That’s how you tranqued the tiger? Cool little toy.’ The gun had a conventional trigger, pulled by a mechanism protruding from the drone’s belly. It had a magazine holding two more of the darts, which were fired by a small bottle of compressed gas.

She leaned closer. The amount of tranquillising agent needed to take down an animal as large as a tiger could be potentially lethal to a human. If she could reach the trigger mechanism . . .

‘Vanita has her pets; I have mine. I grew up under the flightpath of Bangalore airport, and when I was a child I thought the airliners were the vimanas my father told me about when he read from the Vedas and the Mahabharata. I actually wanted to be an engineer, to build aircraft, but then I discovered computers.’ Khoil became noticeably more animated as he warmed to his subject. ‘But it is still an interest. I own a large stake in one of India’s military aircraft manufacturers, and I designed this drone myself. Getting a high thrust- to-weight ratio in a small frame was—’

‘Pramesh,’ his wife scolded from the control station, ‘if you must talk to her at all, at least do her the courtesy of staying on topic.’

Khoil’s expression dropped back to its usual blankness. ‘But, yes, the Vault of Shiva. I do believe it is real, and I also believe it contains the means to advance the world into the next stage of existence - the words of Shiva himself, the wisdom of a god.’ Nina looked at him for a long moment. ‘You doubt me.’

‘It seems . . . far-fetched. To say the least.’

‘Why? Your own translations say the priests showed Talonor stone tablets from the Vault. The Shiva-Vedas, the words of the god.’

‘Which doesn’t mean they were literally carved by Shiva himself.’

‘I am not saying they were. But what is important is what they say . . . and when they were made. Dr Wilde, have you heard of the yugas?’

‘Well, you just jogged my memory, so yes - they’re parts of the cycle of existence in Hindu mythology.’

‘Correct. There are four stages in the current cycle: the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Dvapara Yuga, and finally the Kali Yuga. The Kali Yuga is the last, and most debased, part of the cycle, farthest from the golden age of the Satya Yuga. It is also the yuga the world is in now.’

‘But that’s a theme with practically every religion,’ said Nina. ‘The present is always the worst time there’s ever been, and things were invariably better in the past. It’s either rose-tinted nostalgia, or “proof” that things have descended into sin and decadence - and the only way out is through whatever flavour fundamentalism the preacher prefers.’

‘In the case of Hinduism, though, it actually is true. The world will sink deeper into the darkness, until Shiva ends the cycle.’