Meru

Chapter 2

5 Years later

Captain Mohini Sharma sat squeezing a stress ball, her eyes fixed on the Comms Monitor as she waited for a response from Central Command.

Another expedition. Another darned planet.

She closed her eyes, let out a big sigh and watched her frustrations drift past her mind's eye like shit coloured cotton candy.

While the crew stirred awake in their cabins, Mohini, now the captain of INSO Dwaraka, sat on her chair in the bridge agonising over next steps. From space, the planet their mining crew had just spent 30 days on, looked like a brown and green opal stone someone had unearthed from a river-bed. It had some exotic vegetation reminiscent of cacti and vast swathes of deserts that stretched for miles. Storms had crafted strange finger like rock formations on its surface and its gravity was like that of the Earth.

Her mining crew led by Chief Miner Raghuram Nagar had toiled on 12-hour shifts and yielded nothing of actual value. Then on the last day; they found something incredible.

Inside one of the tall rock formations that rose like the hands of a monstrous being - a temple complex. A perfect cube within a perfect cube. A geometric structure crafted by sentient beings. In the middle of fucking nowhere. On a planet millions of miles away from earth.

For centuries now, dig sites in India had been unearthing artefacts that showed ancient Indian tribes were in contact with alien civilisations, had received gifts from their ancient gods, and perhaps even travelled to the stars.

Initially, these representations were dismissed as the fantasy of naïve, ill-informed fabulists; the childish interpretations of a primitive mind. Xeno-biologists and futurists who considered the cave paintings and artefacts as harbingers of future encounters with alien species were booed. Those who claimed it was evidence that there was a kernel of truth in the Indian myths surrounding Devas and Asuras, were kicked out of scientific institutions.

But all that changed when the Bharatiya Jagaran Sena party took power decades ago. They gave the INSO the power and the mandate to seek the truth behind the cave paintings and shards of pottery and Sanskrit poems that spoke of Gods and Demons from the stars beyond. And now, for the first time in human history, the INSO team was ready to confirm the truth behind the legends. The significance of the occasion was not lost on Mohini.

The scans from 248 showed that the small cube within the larger cube like structure was akin to the sanctum sanctorum in a Hindu temple. At the centre of it was what looked like a metal or wooden chest on a pedestal. Once 248 dug through the rock and helped them gain entrance to the inner structure, Mohini had halted the mission.

She withdrew the crew from the surface and brought them onboard the INSO Dwaraka for a period of rest, as she sent preliminary details of the discovery to Earth to seek permission and guidance on the mission parameters.

She knew the response would be a solid - go ahead. But she was risk averse now, and she deferred a lot of decisions to those above her pay-grade, because look where her risk appetite got her.

Presently, she stopped squeezing the stress ball, and her eyes sought the view of the planet below. It now resembled the inner chambers of a rotting heart, where pain and loneliness lived.

She worked long hours, so she didn't have to lie down in that half empty bed. And when she rested her head, she stroked the cold empty side of the bed where Dev's body would have been.

A tear escaped her eyes as the memories of the horrible accident on Grah Taxxon 91 flooded her consciousness. In her mind, Dev was always falling, forever, into a dark unending abyss.