Shadow Tyrants

SEVEN

Romir Mallik strode toward the helicopter arriving from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai. It settled on the landing pad of Orbital Ocean’s launch command ship. The sixties-era Huey, a refurbished relic from the Vietnam War, had barely touched down when Asad Torkan jumped out and came toward the Indian billionaire without offering his hand. Mallik still thought it was odd after all these years that Torkan was such a germaphobe that he wouldn’t even shake the hand of his brother-in-law.

“Nice to see that your flight was on schedule,” Mallik said, leading Torkan back toward the control room.

“After three years’ worth of preparation, it would have been a shame to miss the final act. And I’m sure you wouldn’t have waited for me.”

Mallik shot him a sly grin. “I might have, but only for you.”

“And my brother.”

“Of course.”

“Any word from Rasul?”

Mallik told him about the hijacking by the Goreno in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Torkan frowned. “Then they’re out of range of Jhootha Island?”

“Correct,” Mallik said. “Hopefully, our satellite launch will make his mission unnecessary. And even if he does have to go ahead with it, I’ve identified an alternative target that should accomplish the same goal.”

Torkan thought about the implications for his brother and nodded. “I know Rasul can take care of himself. He’s been in tougher situations before. Besides, he knows what’s at stake. The longer we delay, the closer the rest of the Nine Unknown get to achieving their goal. Are we still ahead of them?”

“With the damage to the fifth ship, they don’t have the computer power they need to make Colossus fully operational. After a successful launch today, we will make sure they never do.”

Torkan was one of the few people in the world that knew Mallik was one of the Nine Unknown. They could all trace their lineage back to the original Nine Unknown Men that Ashoka, in his wisdom, had selected to safeguard the critical knowledge of physical and social sciences that could be used to conquer the world if it all remained in the hands of one person. Initially, they had been unknown even to one another, but they sought each other out after the Mauryan Empire fell so they could honor Ashoka’s legacy and pool the collective wisdom from their individual Scrolls of Knowledge. At the very first meeting of the Nine, they agreed to keep the contents of the scrolls secret from one another so that all decisions would be made as a group and never by a single man.

Throughout the millennia since then, the knowledge specific to each of the Nine Unknown had been expanded upon and passed down to the next generation, carefully handpicked by his or her predecessor.

Until two hundred years ago, all nine had been of strictly Indian descent. But when the British took over the country, an exodus began. They still met on a regular basis and kept their society intact, most of the Nine had immigrated to other nations to take advantage of new opportunities, and a majority of them were now non-Indians. Mallik’s family was the only one that remained in Ashoka’s homeland to this day.

Each of the Nine had built or inherited fortunes based on the knowledge that was handed down to them. But they had a greater mission than simply acquiring wealth. They took seriously their charge to secure their individual areas of knowledge and use them for the betterment of humanity. The other eight had a plan called Colossus, a plan they thought would save the world from lesser minds and make them de facto rulers of every nation on earth.

Mallik was the only one of the Nine convinced that Colossus was instead going to cause the end of humanity. And because of the knowledge passed down to him, he was in the unique position to stop them.

His area of knowledge was cosmogony, the study of space and the origins of the universe. Thanks to the accrued expertise he and his ancestors had gained, Mallik now owned the world’s largest private satellite company, which was involved in everything from satellite development to spacecraft launches into orbit. As one of the richest men in India, he’d used his fortune to expand his corporate empire into manufacturing, energy production, and agriculture, all in service of his new goal to save the human race.

As he looked at the floating launch platform two miles away, with its rocket raised into position to fire in just a few minutes, Mallik knew his wife, Yasmin, would be proud of what he was about to accomplish. They had met in university after she had moved to India from Iran to get her education. She’d been the love of his life: beautiful, intelligent, kind, caring. But all of that had been taken away from him five years ago.

Even after she got pregnant, she insisted on continuing her work as an advocate for children’s health initiatives in Third World nations. Although Mallik had always worried about her travels to war-torn regions of Africa, it never occurred to him to be concerned when she went to a conference in France.

It still caused his stomach to knot when he remembered the call he received after her high-speed train derailed. A tiny computer software error, it was later discovered, had incorrectly thrown one of the track switches. She and their unborn child were among the one hundred and forty-three people who died.

No one was ever held responsible, a fact that tormented him, and the Torkan twins, Yasmin’s beloved younger brothers. Even though Mallik was a mogul in the tech industry, with a degree in computer science, he blamed the frightening pace of technological advancement for the death of his wife and the son he would never get to see grow up. Because of the accident, he no longer had any descendants to whom he could pass along his knowledge, though one day he hoped to. But if the eight other members of the Nine Unknown finished Colossus, he’d never have any more children. And no one else would, either.

For now, Mallik had a greater purpose, perhaps the greatest in the history of mankind. The satellite mounted in the nose of that rocket represented his future, as well as the future of everyone yet to be born.

Mallik breathed a sigh of relief that his years of living in fear and worry over Colossus were almost over. Then he patted Torkan on the shoulder, and they entered the control room together.

The countdown had already begun and was down to two minutes before liftoff. Mallik had developed the mobile sea-based launch system not only so they could avoid bad weather and achieve a more efficient orbital insertion but also to keep prying eyes away during launches. A Nilgiri-class Indian frigate brought out of mothballs by Mallik circled them to provide security in case any unauthorized ships got too close to the operations.

“What’s our status?” Mallik asked the flight director, a trim man in his fifties with graying hair named Kapoor.

“No problems detected,” the gruff former Indian Air Force officer replied. “All systems are showing green. We are good to go.”

Mallik exchanged smiles with Torkan and nodded to Kapoor.

When the countdown reached ten seconds, Mallik walked toward the window. He didn’t want to see the sterile camera views of the rocket. He had to watch the launch with his own eyes.

“Five… four… main engine ignition…” White-hot flames shot from the liquid-fueled engines of the reusable booster, sending a huge plume of smoke into the air.

“…two… one… liftoff!”

The rocket slowly rose from the launchpad, its support scaffolding retracting as it ascended. The control room erupted with applause and cheers.

But it took only a second for Mallik to see that something was wrong. He’d attended every launch of the nineteen previous rockets and he could tell right away that this one was different.

“Flight,” one of the technicians said, “I’m detecting a cascading malfunction in the fuel pump system.” Mallik knew that was potentially disastrous. The pumps controlled the fuel flow to the engines.

“Can you compensate?” the flight director asked.

“I’m trying!”

The rocket didn’t accelerate as the others had. Instead, the blazing jet power coming out of the engines sputtered, and the rocket slowed until it hovered only three hundred feet above the launchpad.

Then it began to come back down.

The flight director frantically called out for information about the engines, but it was too late. The tail of the rocket collided with the launch tower and mushroomed into a gigantic fireball. If anyone had been on the launch platform, they would have been killed instantly.

Mallik turned and stared at Kapoor, whose jaw was clenched in a grim expression. The control room was deathly silent. They locked eyes until the command ship was jolted by the delayed blast concussion.

“Find out what went wrong,” Mallik growled.

Kapoor cleared his throat before replying with a muted, “Yes, sir.”

Torkan, who gaped at the burning rocket and satellite, came over to Mallik and, lowering his voice, said, “What happens now?”

“Fortunately, I always anticipate setbacks,” Mallik said, fuming at getting so close to his goal and having it literally blow up in his face. “Therefore, I have a backup.”

Torkan looked at him with surprise. “You have another satellite?”

Mallik nodded. “The rocket on our second platform will be ready for launch within ten days. But we can’t take any chances that the Nine will repair the Colossus 5 sooner than that. We are convening in three days, so I’ll find out then what its status is. I thought they didn’t suspect what I was up to, but I doubt this explosion was an accident.” He looked at each person in the control room. Someone here might be a saboteur.

“You think one of the other Nine Unknown is responsible for this?” Torkan asked, looking toward the smoking launch platform.

“He or she must suspect what I am planning, so we need to cast suspicion on someone else. It will make the other members of the Nine think I’m innocent. To do that, I’m sending you on assignment to Sydney. But first, I need to set the other part of my backup plan in motion.”

“The Triton Star?”

“Correct.” Mallik took out his phone. As he texted Rasul to go ahead with the operation, he said to the flight director, “Prepare the Vajra system for activation.”

Kapoor looked confused. “But sir, the launch failure means we can’t get a global—”

Mallik cut him off. “Isolated location only. This will be a good opportunity to test the effectiveness of the system on a hardened site.”

“Yes, sir. The target?”

“The U.S. military base on Diego Garcia.”