'Many of you have seen battles before, so I will not speak to you of marching into battle with valour, since I know all of you will do that. The only thing I will do is remind you that we cannot fail. If we do, everything we have worked for, everything human civilization has achieved will be washed away by the rage of a mad person, my own son. Today we fly and fight to stop him, to erase forever the shame and pain he has brought to all of us. Today we end this conflict once and for all, so that humans and their planet no longer have to bear the burden of our wrongs. Now, go and fight like there is no tomorrow, because there will not be one if we fail.'
Soon Aaditya was boarding his vimana. He held Tanya, hoping it was not for the last time.
'If it doesn't. .'
Aaditya stopped her. 'We will be together. I promise you, whatever happens out there, I will be back, and we will be with each other.''
He kissed her, then, he turned and got into his cockpit. The Devas were all airborne in moments, only Brahma staying back to guide the drones and Ganesha with Tanya to put their own plan in action. The vimanas and drones were to scatter all over the world, so Kalki would not notice a large concentration of forces, and converge and act when the time was right.
With the sun just rising over the Himalayas, Aaditya flew his vimana to a holding pattern high over the Middle East. At the base, Tanya and Ganesha had started their plan. The first blow was a touch Tanya had suggested. The website of the People Liberation's Army of China showed a series of articles supposedly written by senior generals saying that the end of the world hysteria was being propagated by the Western media as a way of letting the US gain more control over the world. The Chinese authorities tried to take the articles down, but found they could not. The Americans, of course, took immediate notice. Then came articles on websites of leading newspapers about reports from reliable sources of Chinese nuclear submarines leaving their bases a few days ago fully armed with nuclear tipped missiles. Within a couple of hours, the Internet was abuzz with these reports. There was near panic in the US government. Everybody was going slightly crazy with the hysteria around what was likely to happen the next day, but nobody had anticipated that China would choose this moment to try and settle scores.
Official US protests and queries were met with vigorous denials by the Chinese, but in a couple of hours, the US got even stronger confirmation when one of their spy satellites picked up a submarine surfacing briefly no more than five hundred kilometres from the US East Coast. Quick analysis showed it to be a Jin class nuclear submarine, with launch tubes for 12 ballistic missiles. If the panicked US authorities thought the Chinese were bluffing, another satellite pass showed one more submarine surfacing near the first sighting. It had been Ganesha playing with the satellite's systems, but to the astonished US operators who saw the pictures, they had no way of knowing otherwise.
The hotlines between the two countries were abuzz but when the US President tried to get through to the Chinese Premier, the line dropped suddenly, courtesy Ganesha's hacking of the computerized system.
It had been a calculated gamble by Ganesha. He wanted the sense of alarm in the US to be enough to generate some action, but at the same time, not so drastic as to trigger actual conflict. As the day wore on, he noted with satisfaction that the plan was working just as he had hoped.
A US carrier battle group with the aircraft carriers Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and eight other ships was steaming at maximum speed towards the last known sighting of the Chinese submarines-less than twenty kilometres from Kalki's base. The US ships would reach there within the next five or six hours. Yet another battle group with another aircraft carrier was headed there, likely reaching there a few hours later.
Aaditya and each of the airborne Devas heard Brahma's voice on their headsets, updating them on what was happening. 'With such a powerful battle group practically on top of his base, Kalki will have to react. They are looking for submarines and he can't risk his base being discovered. That will give us the opening we need. You know your holding areas, when I give the order, head for Kalki's base.'
The Devas had picked up some powerful allies for the coming battle.
SIXTEEN
The opening salvo in this historic battle turned out to be a stroke of sheer good fortune for the Devas. They had not really counted on the US forces getting dragged into a shooting match with Kalki's forces. Brahma had just hoped that unnerved by the approaching US battle group, Kalki would send out a couple of vimanas to reconnoiter the group, leaving the sphere that carried the vimanas to the surface exposed.
As things turned out, the attack on the Asura main hangar had been successful beyond Aaditya's wildest hopes. It had not only given him the opportunity to escape, but had resulted in the death of at least three Asura pilots. That, coupled with the loss of Maya, had left Kalki with only a handful of Asuras. They were waiting for Kalki's order to launch, while the armies of daityas had been massing in the fields below, waiting to be loaded into transport vimanas to take them to their targets according to Kalki's invasion plans.
Just two hours before the quakes were to be triggered, a US Navy S-3 Viking Anti-submarine aircraft started patrolling the area ahead of the Lincoln task force, trying to ferret out the Chinese submarines lurking in the area. The pilot had been deploying dipping sonars to try and get a fix on the submarines and much to Kalki's growing frustration, had been straying closer and closer to his base. He did not worry about his base being detected, located as it was at the bottom of the ocean, but he had to lower the sphere. He wished Maya had still been around. Then Kalki's attention had been diverted by reports of another carrier battle group closing in from the other direction, when a daitya controlling the defenses mounted on the sphere panicked and sent up a single shot. The beam hit the Viking mid-ship, breaking the aircraft into two and sending it crashing into the ocean.
That unleashed a beehive of activity in the US forces. The loss of one of their aircraft led the commander to order the launch of two more anti-submarine aircraft, escorted by F/A-18 fighter escorts, while the two Los Angeles class nuclear submarines accompanying the group now streaked towards the last reported location where the Viking had gone down. With discovery of his troops imminent, Kalki's hand was forced.
What happened next was played out in detail on the screen before Aaditya as his vimana screamed towards Kalki's base. Brahma had informed all the airborne Devas about the latest happenings, and they were now converging on the scene. Aaditya's screen filled with red dots as Kalki launched no less than a dozen drones and at least three vimanas piloted by Asuras. He watched four green dots representing the US aircraft approaching Kalki's base. The US F/A-18s must have picked up the drones on their radar since they accelerated towards them, trying to protect the slow and lumbering anti-submarine aircraft, while they urgently radioed back to their carrier to ask for reinforcements. They however had no way of picking up the vimanas on their radar, and both fighters fell to a volley of missiles from attackers they did not even know existed. A second later, both Vikings were blotted off Aaditya's display by missiles fired by the drones.
By now, the US fleet commander was apoplectic with rage, having lost five aircraft without even getting the chance to get a shot in. He was bewildered as to where enemy aircraft had just appeared from, seemingly out of the middle of the ocean, but now eliminating this threat was on the top of his mind.