Shackleton was the largest base on the moon. It was where most of the current human activity was centered. Last 20 years had seen extensive construction in this base, most of the new construction had all been deep underground inside the hollow lava tubes that had been discovered. This was the largest human base outside Earth. Although it currently housed 300 people, it could easily support double that.
The base had multiple and redundant power sources. Although it didn’t look like it, but there was frozen ice just beneath the surface. It wasn’t ice a layman would have recognized. It was mixed with the regolith and looked just like the rest of the surface. It however had 6% ice by weight, which could be extracted fairly easily as long as there was power.
The Shackleton base was going to be the first off world base that would receive a fusion power plant made with the new design. Right now they could not make enough to power ships, but in a few years there would be enough manufacturing capacity. Human bases off world would slowly get rid of the dirty fission plants which were the backbone of power generation right now.
The base was located just off center of the caldera of the Shackleton crater. The crater was 21 Km wide nearly circular and over four kilometers deep in perpetual darkness. The sun shone perpetually at a shallow angle here on the south pole of the Moon.
The rays of the sun were stopped by the peaks at the rim of the crater, and no sun ever reached inside the crater. That perpetual darkness helped in retaining the ice that had accumulated inside the crater over billions of years. It was the ice that had drawn humans to this crater. It was their life source, the source of water for the colony.
The layout of the crater and the base meant that unlike in Mars, there would be no easy way to lay a siege of the base. The crater was too large to blockade. The flip side was that there was no easy way to defend either. The crater was so large that it didn’t feel like a crater at all. It felt more like a large valley with mountain peaks visible far away on all sides.
The crater surface was not perfectly smooth. It had minor features splattered here and there, mostly smaller craters caused by meteors and rocks falling inside the crater. Most of them were just a few meters deep or tall. Good enough to take cover, but not anything major for a military formation to take advantage of.
Despite Alex claiming to the contrary, he did go on an inspection tour. A mini TBM (Tunnel Boring Machine) and a mini digger cum mule was all the construction equipment that the base had, but it had been put to good use. Trenches had been dug 360° all around the base.
They hadn’t had enough time to dig a continuous trench, so they had dug small segments in every direction to ensure 360° coverage. Now the machines were going round to dig as much of the missing segments of the trench as they could in the next few hours before the arrival of the Shaitans.
In Titan they had dug trenches manually by melting the ice and shoveling it out before it hardened back into rock. That was not an option here on the moon. Beneath the sand like regolith was a silicate strata that was almost as hard as rock. One had to use machines to dig.
Alex hitched a ride on a shuttle to inspect one of the dumps that was being laid out on the rims. The arrival of the shuttle had speeded up the process drastically. Unlike Mars where every Kg of material hauled was incredibly expensive, the cost of haulage to the Moon was nearly 10 times cheaper. Consequently there was far more stuff available on this base than it had been on Mars.
The dumps were being stocked liberally from everything including Oxygen, fuel, weapons and food. A company could easily live off this supply for weeks, and there were four of them being created in four different directions on the rim of the crater.
The dumps were meant as support base for the two arriving companies of marines. It was also an emergency supply for the people on the base, in case everything got destroyed inside, which was unlikely unless hit by a nuke. Nukes had not been used on ground battles yet, but there was always a first time.
When the alarm rang over the public channel, Alex scrambled for the position assigned the command center buried deep into lava tubes that made up a large section of the marines’ base. There were two company of marines, i.e. 6 platoons already present at the base, and Alex had brought along two more platoons. Eight platoons along with their officers, nearly 250 marines took up their positions and waited.
Alex could track the two Shaitan shuttles on the main screen of the control room. The Shaitans had not bothered to kill human satellites this time, plus they were being fed through most of the ships and ground stations littered around the Moon. There was no lack of tracking data.
The Shaitan shuttles came in low over the rim of the crater, and went down almost vertically hugging the wall of the crater. The Shackleton base was well stocked, including with SAM batteries. If the Shaitan shuttles dared to come anywhere near the base, they would pay a heavy price for it.
The Shaitans did not do anything that rash. The shuttles stopped and touched down about a kilometer from the edge of the crater. They could see the Shaitans disembark from the feed of a drone launched in the air. The curvature of the Moon was hampering the visibility across the 10 km distance that the Shaitans had landed from the base.
The drones on the Moon had a very short airborne time despite the low gravity. This was due to the fact that there is no atmosphere in which the drone can fly. So it has to continuously use rocket jet to keep itself levitated. So they had to continuously fall back on the hazy pictures from the cameras they had mounted at various points on the rim, as the drone returned continually to refuel.
It took the Shaitans less than an hour to offload troops and equipment. Once that was done, the shuttles lifted up and started moving back towards the wall of the crater. Once they reached the wall, the two shuttles turned in opposite directions along the wall and started flying slow and low, around the circumference of the crater, hugging the wall as well as the crater surface.
The shuttles went all the way up to the other end of the crater, where they met up again. Then they moved 100 odd meters away from the crater wall, towards the human base and once again started flying along the circumference of the crater. Alex heard Ma echo his thoughts. “What the hell are the Shaitans doing?”
Chapter 35
Pyrrhic victory
Approaching Earth
May 2084
Fabi was glued to his screen in his flag bridge, as was Gerald a few feet away in his chair and the console in front of it. The Third Fleet had completed the designed maneuver and planned changed in direction about 10 minutes ago. Within a few more minutes, the relative position of the Third fleet and the Tango 1 and 3 would be such that they will have a clear run towards Earth and enough lead that the Third Fleet would not be able to catch up until they have almost reached Earth.
The bait had been laid down, now everyone was watching to see if the Shaitans took it. The time came and went, but the Shaitan fleet did not change its direction. Everyone’s face fell, and a collective sigh of disappointment was released by the fleet. Fabi was starting to wonder about the intent of the Shaitans, when a ping rang out in his helmet.
“Sir the Shaitans have changed their direction! They have taken the bait… sort of. The Third Fleet has started changing its course accordingly.” It was Hamid.
Fabi turned around and looked at his screen. “They seem to have taken the bait captain. What did you mean by sort of?”
“Just zoom into the trajectory and you will notice that they have not taken the exact direct line to Earth. I am not sure what the Shaitan captains are thinking. I was wondering if you have an opinion.” Hamid said.
“Let me get the other captains into the conference. Four heads is better than two in this case, someone else may have a better theory.” Fabi said. He brought the other two captains into the conference and posed the same question.
“I think the Shaitans are playing it safe. I calculated the trajectory. If the Shaitan warships continue on that straight line, then they would miss Earth b
y nearly hundred and fifty thousand Km. If they have to call off the attack run, then they don’t even have to change direction, they can just keeping on going and pass by the Earth. So they have not fully committed themselves. Yet if they want to attack, a minor change in angle is all that is required.” Capt. Xhin Zhu said.
“I agree with that analysis. What is also significant is the direction the ships have chosen to miss the Earth. The Earth – Moon lineup is not exactly perpendicular to our line of travel. The Moon is slightly closer and thus the line is skewed. The Shaitans have chosen an angle that will bisect this Earth – Moon line, thereby passing exactly in between the two. I think it is keeping its option open on supporting TC-2 as well. So they have taken our bait but not handed us the entire prize.” Gerald said.
“On the contrary, they have given us an even better opening than we expected.” Exclaimed Fabi. “The Second Fleet now has a shorter distance to cover and it will approach the Tangoes at a much more head on angle, which will be helpful in case we have to draw on our insurance policy. In fact it enables the Second Fleet to speed up their timetable. If there is nothing more gentlemen, then let me coordinate with Admiral Maginot.”
Fabi sent a message packet with his thoughts, and was relieved to learn that the Second Fleet was on the ball, and had already calculated the revised timetable. The Second Fleet would start their run in less than 50 minutes, by which time the Tangoes would have built up enough momentum that they would find it hard to avoid the Second Fleet.
It was not possible to tell whether the Shaitans were surprised when the Second Fleet, which had just entered Moon orbit and was ostensibly waiting for TC-2 to turn back from its eccentric orbit, suddenly put their thrusters on full throttle and burst out of orbit and headed out towards the approaching Tangoes. There was no change in direction of the Tangoes.
The first indication that things had not gone according to Shaitan calculations came from TC-2. It started breaking orbit of the moon within minutes of the Second Fleet bolting. It took over 10 minutes before the new heading of TC-2 could be discerned. As expected by the humans in their contingency plan, it was heading towards Earth.
Whether TC-2 had not considered the Friendship class ships a threat, or whether it was making a desperate panicked dash towards Earth was not clear. Whatever the reason, TC-2 was making no attempt to avoid the ships. Three were heading almost headlong towards it while one Friendship class ship that had brought Alex and his marines was breaking orbit and giving chase to it.
There was no time to deliver the marines to the Moon for the three ships approaching the Moon, so they would have to sit through the battle and share the fate of the crew, whatever that might be.
The mystery about why TC-2 never fired its missiles first at the four Friendship class ships would take a few more decades to be solved. The missiles of the Friendship class ships carried far less propellant compared to the newer human missiles and the Shaitan missiles. It was necessitated by the lower capacity of the vessel class. TC-2 could have launched its missiles at the human ships far earlier than the Friendship class ships could have.
When humans finally raided the archives of Beta Shaitan, they would realize that the captain of TC-2 committed the same mistake that the captain of the first Shaitan ship over Titan had. Friendship class vessels were so small, that he had mistaken them for shuttles and did not consider them a threat. TC-2 had intended to simply bypass them on its way to Earth. As far as TC-2 was concerned humans had left the path to Earth undefended from TC-2.
While Alpha Shaitan had learnt in detail about human ships after the first encounter, and passed on technical details to Beta Shaitan as well. The lesson had not been learnt so well by this captain from Beta Shaitan, who had spent most of that time, nearly 31 years in stasis enduring the long journey to Earth.
The first missiles it fired was a few seconds after the four ships coordinated and opened simultaneous and continuous fire. The four missiles that were in TC-2’s tubes were fired immediately. Somehow the captain of TC-2 did not realize the gravity of the situation and how much trouble he was in. He loaded four more nukes and fired one more round before the realization about the volume of fire dawned upon him.
By the time TC-2 had launched its second round of missiles, the four human ships had released four rounds from four missile tubes each, totaling 64 missiles. The Troop carrier did not even have a third of the point defense capability of a Shaitan warship. It started launching missile killers and its antimissile lasers, but had no hope of stopping even half of the missiles launched.
The crew of the Friendship class ships stopped counting after the 20th missile hit TC-2. There might not have been enough of the Shaitan ship left for the last few missiles to hit anything. The bridge was however busy running away from the missiles launched by TC-2 before its death. There were two on the tail of each of them.
Unlike Titan though, this time the humans had appropriate missile killers. The antimissiles had grown large, over twice the weight of the ones humans had carried to Titan. The down side was that each ship had only three of them. They could hardly afford to miss.
The four ships were running is four different directions to ensure that they do not end up in the blast zone of a Shaitan missile killed by another ship. The ships had to hold their nerves and stick to timing discipline. The timing of the antimissiles was tricky.
If you released it too early, then the incoming nuke had ample time to try and evade it, thus reducing the chances of killing the nuke. If you left it till too late, then the dead man’s switch on the missiles will ensure and explosion too close to the ship for it to survive. If the ships had a lot of antimissiles, it would not have been an issue. However they carried only three, so they could not afford to miss more than once.
Two of the ships killed the nukes chasing them with their first two shots, while a third ship missed one but was able to kill it at a distance far enough for the ship not to damage any fatal damage, although they would require rescue. It was the fourth ship carrying Lt. Col. Xhu that got into trouble.
The captain of the ship had not held his nerve and had fired the first antimissile too early. Unfortunately for him the first two antimissiles missed their target. The third antimissile did get one of the nukes, but the ship was doomed. It vaporized with no trace whatsoever left for even a symbolic burial for the 72 marines and 8 crew members.
The reaction from the Shaitan warships to the total destruction of TC-2 was immediate. They changed their course. They were no longer going to miss the Earth but headed straight for it. This required both the Second and the Third Fleet to perform their own course correction, but things were still well within their planned parameters.
The Third Fleet was reaching the point where they and USC would take a gamble. They would turn on their emergency chemical rocket thrusters in a bid to catch up with the Shaitan warships, and hope that they don’t do the same. The navigational computers of the three ships of the Third fleet ignited their chemical rockets simultaneously, as the captains and the crew watched anxiously for the response from the Shaitans.
For the first few minutes there was no response, and everyone was starting to relax. Then after three minutes the two Shaitan warships ignited their chemical rocket thrusters and everybody’s heart sank.
“Sir I am observing an anomaly.” Shouted the young lieutenant who was the sensors officer on the bridge. “First the amount of thrust from the Shaitan chemical rockets is far lower than we had observed in our previous encounter. Second the thrust signatures of the two ships are different.”
“How are they different?” Asked Gerald.
“Sir the waveforms of one of the ships is smooth and steady, while that of the other is erratic. It is not something one can make out visually. I tried looking through the telescope, they look the same but the spectrum analyzer tell as different story altogether.” The lieutenant answered.
“Thanks and good job lieutenant. Keep monitoring and let me know if anything chang
es.” He thanked the sensor officer and connected to the flag bridge.
Fabi spoke up before Gerald could say anything. “I heard the Lieutenant, the Qūzhújiàn is reporting the same issue… one moment… ah the Shiva has also noticed it. So we have an interesting situation. Tango 1 is double lame. It is not just its ion plasma thrusters which were damaged, but also their chemical thrusters. I am hoping that Capt. Dar’s lame mountain goat analogy continues and the lame one slips and breaks something.” Fabi and Gerald had a laugh.
Little did they realize that the words of Fabi would turn out to be prophetic. A few minutes after that conversation, a flash was observed in the thrusters of Tango 1. It was clearly an explosion, and then both its ion plasma thrusters as well as its chemical rockets extinguished. It took Tango 3 many seconds to realize what had happened to its companion ship and shut off its own engines.
By that time it had gone almost a hundred kilometers ahead of Tango 1. Tango 3 started using its retro thrusters immediately to creep its way back next to Tango 1.
“My god. Hamid is either brilliant or the luckiest son of a gun on this side of the solar system. We pushed them, and something broke. Gerald recalculate our optimal vector assuming that Tango 1’s engines stay broken. My flag staff is coordinating with Admiral Maginot to get their optimal vector as well. We need to arrive at the same time.” Fabi shouted out inside his helmet.
Gerald had already left his seat and was standing next to the navigator. He could have seen whatever the tech-head was doing from his screen, but human dynamics and work style requires them to see each other face to face and stand next to each other.
Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans Page 40