Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

though.”
    The approaching light resolved into the flare of a rocket engine, propelling a kind of open-topped airborne sled in which two figures were visible. One manned the controls. The other rode behind, legs braced and apart for balance. They must have been doing two hundred miles an hour, yet the standing figure didn’t appear to be having any trouble staying upright. More than that, he didn’t appear concerned in the least.
    And he had a bow in his hands.
    If ever there was a time to exclaim “What the fuck!?” this was it, and I did.
    The chariot shot past.
    The bowman unleashed an arrow, a streak of silver in the gleam of the full moon.
    There was a burst of golden orange, the unmistakable bright cascade of fuel igniting.
    Then water bubbled up over the Garuda ’s windows, rising like ink, blotting out the sky.
    We plunged into the depths of the Laccadive Sea, the Garuda humming happily to itself, quite at home.

 

    6. THE TRINITY SYNDICATE
    GRAND HOSPITALITY PROJECT
     
     
    I STEPPED OUT from my room onto the patio, into a billow of humid morning air. In the shade of an awning, breakfast had been laid out for me. Hot coffee. A huge bowlful of fresh pineapple, mango and papaya. Porridge. Bacon and eggs under a domed steel lid.
    I ate and drank like I hadn’t seen food in weeks.
    Just yards from where I sat lay a white beach caressed by blue wavelets. A leatherback turtle was lugging itself across the sand, making for the shallows. A pair of scarlet-clawed crabs were engaged in some kind of turf battle or mating ritual, tangoing back and forth amid the coarse shoreline grass, pincers locked. Brown, nondescript little birds fluttered onto the table, hoping to snaffle some scraps.
    In the light of a new day, the events of the previous evening seemed distant, incomprehensible, almost surreal.
    Had I really been in an aircraft that doubled as a boat and trebled as a submarine?
    Had we really come under attack by Pakistan Air Force planes?
    Had I really seen someone armed with a bow and arrow take out a Dassault Mirage in midair?
    I could scarcely believe any of it. If someone had come to me with a story like that, I would have told them to lay off the wacky baccy for a while.
    Yet all I had to do was turn round, my back to the beach, to know that it was all true.
    Behind me loomed a mighty, outward-curving building, a giant edifice occupying almost the entirety of one of the lesser Maldives at the far northern end of the island chain. It was steel and concrete and tinted glass, narrower at its base than at its summit, flaring like a conch shell, with barely a straight line anywhere in its architecture.
    This, of course, you will all know as Mount Meru.
    At the time, though, it had another name, a much less evocative, more prosaic one. It was known as the Trinity Syndicate Grand Hospitality Project. It was – or so everyone had been led to believe – a gigantic hotel complex, the largest and most ambitious undertaking of its kind, a billion-dollar attempt to create a kind of static cruise ship, an isolated and self-contained venue for leisure, entertainment and relaxation. It was touted as a Mecca for wealthy vacationers who wanted a combination of high-end luxury resort and the balminess of the tropics, Las Vegas but with breezes and ocean views.
    I had seen pictures of the complex in the news media, both computer-generated artist’s impressions of how it would look when completed and work-in-progress update photos. I think I might have marvelled at the sheer audacious folly of it and reckoned I’d never be able to afford to stay there in a month of Sundays even if I’d wanted to.
    It was beautiful, no question. An aerial shot I’d seen showed how the building radiated out in seven concentric layers. The petal-like rings rose towards the middle in an inverted funnel shape. They were divided by courtyards and gardens and connected on their upper levels by walkways and skybridges.
    Some of the solutions to the