“Byeble” Prologue

Wading through the narrow passageway of a cluttered space-station orbiting the earth, and then passing by its kitchen, turning left and then diving down an open hatch-door, a young woman picked a walkie-talkie from a communication stand. Having checked and found that the device was not receiving signals, she glided to another location.

A fragile figure, the woman was not yet in her late thirties; but due to the fear and anxiety in her eyes and from the tattered shirt and trousers she wore, she looked older. By the colour of her skin, she was mostly American, by the angle of her nose she was partly French, by the texture of her skin and eyes, she looked Asian.

More notably, by the heat of the fire in her eyes, she looked betrayed, having been numbed by the sight of her Captain being taken by a masked intruder out of the zero-gravity space-station in which they had stayed for five months.

On a large war-torn table in front of her, lay half-a-dozen guns, needles of varying sizes, hammers, pincers, levers, magnifiers, drillers, a binocular, a camera and two mobile phones – most of them floating. Among hundreds of other things, named and unnamed, tethered and untethered, was a black, thin disc with a shiny golden border, twice the size of a wrist watch.

Presently her large eyes studied the movements of a masked man and a woman on a large CCTV monitor with several live display slots. As if she had been familiar with the footage, she cast her sleep-deprived eyes at the man’s movements, in conversation with the woman, moving him back and forward in ultra-slow-motion, zooming in and out.

She bent forward, briskly grabbed the slim disc from the table. Running her electric magnifier above the disc, she studied some tiny, extruded micro pyramids, studded on its black surface. The closer she brought each pyramid – sides and height less than five millimetres – to her sharper observation, the woman saw an extended front-yard and a complete landscape with hills and rivers around each pyramid, perfectly carved with sharp tools. From the way she studied the disc and the pyramid shapes, it was evident that the powerful magnifier was restricted from zooming in the details any further.

Before she was so much lost in the micro-pyramids, she heard the walkie-talkie wail. Suddenly, as if she had been poked with a sharp something, the woman swung around and grabbed the frog-shaped device. She held it closer to her ear and gasped.

“Laura,” she heard the hardy voice of a man on the other side. “Are you safe?”

“Stephanie has been lifted from here, an hour ago, by a masked man,” she said, her voice unusually breaking. “I feel numb, Smith. The Space-Digger is badly damaged. What do you recommend? What are we supposed to do next?”

“Laura,” the man’s voice was thick. “I am sorry to speak bluntly but you are the only survivor of the mission. Charlotte and Sylvia have been – killed, five minutes ago – by the intruder. We have been watching – helplessly.”

She didn’t speak this time. Turning around, she glided back and led herself through the narrow space of the space-station. Her face now red with what she just heard from the Director of the Control Station, Laura peeped into a cabin on her right. There, floating in mid-air, surrounded with slimy bubbles of blood, she saw her colleagues – abdomen slit with some very sharp weapon.

She looked at the sight of the most unbelievable murders until her welling eyes blurred the world inside the space station.

“You will be killed, too, Laura,” the Director said, waking her up from a whirlpool of memories. “Unless we terminate the mission and land immediately.”

Coughing, she turned to her right and plunged down another circular opening, the cloudy expanse of the earth seen through the windows.

“Did you say that I am to terminate the mission, and return all by myself? Or, is that a joke?” she stopped.

“When two of your dear ones are murdered, in a space-station, their blood still floating around you, when the Captain is missing, when all the exit-doors are locked, and you are the last to be killed or to explode with the orbiter, you won’t dare cracking a joke, Laura,” he shouted back. “Space-Digger is badly damaged. Upon the blood of the two of you who have been killed, obey my orders without delay. Re-enter the atmosphere and make a landing. Is that clear?”

“Are we terminating a mission that cost us such a huge investment?” she asked, feeling undecided about manoeuvring the huge space-ship. “The mission is not yet completed.”

“I don’t care,” the Director shouted. “Now my only concern is your safety. Undock the orbiter and make haste. You are going to land in less than an hour. Is that clear?”

“Smith,” she called. “With due respect, can I complete the mission all by myself? I can take care of myself here. I need a few more days to get to the bottom of the truth. This mission is the dream of three million Knights scattered worldwide.”

“Hell! This mission was a deception, Laura,” she heard the Director, this time more clearly, shouting as much as he could. “All the four of you were sent to the orbit with less than one out of a hundred chances of returning. You don’t know anything. Hurry. I want you back on earth, alive, and hand me over to torture and death to redeem Stephanie from him. Did you understand?”

She hesitated, hearing something she had never thought like. A deception?

Laura didn’t ask any further questions. She turned to the floating dead bodies. Kissing on the faces of her colleagues and closing their eyes, she glided to the hatch-door in the nose of the orbiter. On her way, she lifted a silver box of a weird design and approached the hatch door.

“Get in and undock the orbiter,” she heard the Director behind her ears, voice now breaking.

She let the box go for a while and turned the door-handle. The handle turned smoothly with its usual warning tone.

“Locked?” she heard the director, sounding helplessness.

“Yes. It was never locked like this before,” she could not contain trepidation. “I remember Stephanie opening it last night.”

“Listen!” she heard the Director again. “Stay focussed and calm. The killer doesn’t know that you are in there in the Space-Digger, so, you are safe for a while. But you will be found out. Let’s open the door. Wait!”

As she waited, undecided, for further orders, Laura turned to one of the screens closest to her, still showing the visuals of the camera footage and then, at the disc in her firm clutch. She held the disc closer to the eyes and tried to keep the tiny pyramids in focus, looking for a clue.

“I think Stephanie has left to me a clue,” she said, without waiting for the Director to respond. “While she was in conversation with the masked-one, Stephie stuck some tiny pyramids on a disc, as if she was showing me the way.” Her eyes now glued to the disc, Laura gasped.

“What do you make of them?” the Director’s voice was now steady.

“Eight smaller pyramids, more like medieval French villas, and a ninth one, replica of the Temple of Venus and Roma in Rome. Looks like she has been taken to Rome.” Her eyes were still studying the visuals on the screen and the disc in front of her red eyes.

“Not to Rome,” the Director’s voice was conclusive. “The new headquarters of the Knights in Coorg is built entirely as a duplicate of the Temple of Venus and Roma. The killer who has fled with Stephanie and left you locked in the Space-Digger is a Knight or someone who works for the Knights.”

“Are you sure he doesn’t know that I am here?” She was all air for a while.

“No,” the reply came after a long delay but it was not the Director on the other side. As she held the walkie-talkie, as far as it could go into her ears, the silence was interrupted by a sudden commotion. A shower of gunshots and groans, tampering of footsteps, upturning of furniture, incoherent words spoken in panic.

She was suddenly busy translating the trigger-clicks, the groan and the sudden silence that followed. As she gasped and stared around, the walkie-talkie sputtered behind her ear.

“Laura Willis,” she heard the caller. “Your Director was a bad man. He and I designed Mission 7.5 but he lied to me that the Mission had lifted off only three astronauts on board the mighty Space Digger and kept you out of my reach, for a very dirty job. Very smart!”

She felt defeat and dismay taking deep roots in her chest when the man’s sharp voice interrupted the lethargy.

“The game is up, Laura,” the man was heard between a sigh and a muffled curse. Then he paused abruptly. She could see that he was sniggering and humming a song.

“Who’s this?” she called, her voice sharp and rising. She held the phone closer and waited.

She had just spoken to the murderer!

“You are a survivor worth all that I have, brave Knight,” the man was heard once again above the slamming of doors and the noises of boots. “The three of your colleagues had taken the Knight’s oath to stay in the space either till the completion of the mission or, death. But your Director betrayed all the Knights and you ran this errant for him. The mission was the dream of three million Knights scattered across the globe who had not slept enough for the last three years. Think of the hardship we had faced to get approval for this unusual mission and think of the monetary burden we have all borne to make this mission a reality. Only half of this mission is funded by the government while the other half is ours – collected penny by penny by the members of a broken organization that has been the guardian of one of world’s least solved mysteries. Stay there…”

She stood dazed.

“Mission 7.5 was my intellectual property and the loot is mine – those boxes of treasures,” the man spoke as if he was very close to her. “I will not spare a thing nor will I allow you to land the orbiter anywhere on the surface of the earth – on land or water – other than the one I will decide.”

“Listen,” she growled, her lips now quivering. “Director Smith said that Mission 7.5 was a deception, but I didn’t know how until you have taken the blame. Upon the blood and breath of my colleagues, trapped in this most hostile and lonely space, I swear, if you are the one who had masterminded this mission, having foreseen the perils into which we had been sent, whoever you are and whatever you think can keep you safe, I will risk all my life to make you pay for it.”

The man on the other side did not respond this time, yet she could hear his faint breathing. As she held the phone, subduing her heavy breathing, she heard the caller sing Happy Birthday to You, his fingers drumming on a wooden desk. He repeated the eight-line song, the lyric of the last four lines entirely different from the original.

As the caller started over a third time, Laura felt her head go crazy with a whirlpool of broken memories and voices speaking and singing. She heard the same song being sung by Stephanie a week ago.

Without another word, Laura rose to her feet. Both hands and all the ten fingers working like a machine, she let the walkie-talkie fall. She brought the disc closer to her eyes and turned to the camera footage.

Her eyes kept flying from and to the disc and the footage. Nine dots. Nine pyramids. Then she saw it very clearly. Stephanie’s finger was pointing to the largest of the nine micro-miniatures. The headquarters of the Knights.