Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The moment the computer was powered on, the radio signal emitted made it obvious that it was interfaced wirelessly. The engineers had figured out most of the protocol the Ka-let used, but this was the first full-fledged computer they were hacking into. Things were a lot more complex in there. It took the engineers well over a month to get into the data store and past the encryptions that every intelligent species seem to use.

  When the computer was finally hacked, no one doubted that all the effort that had gone into it had been worth it. It gave so many details about the Ka-let that it kept thousands of academicians busy for years to decipher every aspect of it. The computer was primarily a research computer, so most of the details were technical and technology detail.

  The lab was primarily a biological lab, so a majority of the details were secrets and techniques involving biology, mostly of the Ka-let itself, but a lot about general principles of biology that applied across the universe. There were specific biological knowledge on 4 alien biomes that the Ka-let had encountered.

  From the biological descriptions it was obvious that one of the biome and the biology described was that of the Shaitans, from which the humans came to know the name Ka-let called the Shaitans. It was a symbol. No one knew if the Ka-let had spoken language or what it sounded in that language. Another biome described was that of Earth and detailed biology of the Neanderthals. The other two biomes described belonged to alien species which humans were not aware of.

  Whatever else the Ka-let may have been, they were definitely the masters of biology. The miscellaneous section of the computer made it clear that the Ka-let culture had a special place for biological studies. There was much that the humans could learn about their own DNA and that of other creatures of the earth from the research done by the Ka-let on Earth creatures.

  Other than the research being conducted in the tomb, and biological reference library, there was a small miscellaneous section containing general rules and instructions and various logs kept by the researchers. It gave some insight into the culture and society of the Ka-let, but nothing authoritative. Because biology does not operate in a vacuum, the reference library had a lot on chemistry and basic physics. There was a lot of knowledge to be gained from those, but nothing that could be termed as earth shattering or miraculous.

  Beyond that there wasn’t much in the data core of the computer. There was no mention for example about the location of the Ka-let home world, although there were detailed description of its composition, atmosphere etc. Things that affected the Ka-let biology. There was no hint either on how to open up the massive spaceship that stood on top of the tomb. It was in the space ship where the most gain in knowledge was expected.

  It was from this computer that a log would be extracted, that would fire the imagination of human writers for generations. Operas and tragedies would be written based on that log. Some would go down as classics while others would be soon forgotten. The logs were particularly fascinating to humans because it made references to both Neanderthals (strong ones) and prehistoric humans (weak ones). This log would become famous in human history as the ‘Ramses logs’, after the Ka-let writer of the log.

  No one knew the actual sound of this Ka-let writer, or even the fact whether the Ka-let had a sound for his name. The name Ramses was coined by an Egyptologist, who noticed that the symbol for the name of this individual, matched closely with the hieroglyphic symbol of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses the Great.

  Although scholarly work done on the computers of the Ka-let gleaned a lot of details about the Ka-let history, pop culture knew the history of Ka-let through the Ramses logs. It was helped in no small measure by the Smithsonian translation of the logs into proper human sentences, converting their measure of units and time into human frames of reference. This gave the logs an almost human dimension, peering into the life of Ramses the Ka-let and the story of his tragic life.

  Chapter 4

  It the Economy stupid!

  Most pop analysts and military historians swoon over cool and lethal technology, bravery of soldiers, superior tactics and strategy and a host of other things that determine the outcome of a battle. Anyone with deep enough understanding of history would however tell you that whatever may the outcome of individual battles, wars are ultimately won or lost by economies. So it has been through the ages from the Egyptians, Romans, Byzantine Empire and European imperial powers to this day. Why should it be any different for a space war amongst two species?

  In the end, whether humans would live or die would be determined by how much they can produce. That is not to take away anything from the bravery, cunning or the resourcefulness of the human military. They had proved themselves worthy time and again against the Shaitans. That was not enough however, bravery can only take you that extra distance. You still need a lot of ships and weapons to be able to match the fleets and armadas of the enemy.

  Ironically, the biggest trigger to the mobilization of human economy and the society in general towards their own survival and the defeat of the Shaitans was an act of the Shaitans themselves – the ‘Great Kinetic Holocaust’, or simply known as the ‘Holocaust’ in popular parlance since there was no danger of confusing it with another holocaust in the annals of human history that happened 150 years ago.

  Till that event occurred, humans had been intellectually aware of the danger to their survival from Shaitans, but the popular perception could hardly appreciate it. It is hard to appreciate a war that brave men and women are fighting millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of kilometers away from home.

  The soldiers do get their customary honors whether they arrive back alive or in a casket, and sometimes without even the trace of a body to be returned back. The governments allocate a small part of their budget for the war effort, deliver rousing speeches on the bravery and service of these soldier and then go back to their normal life of sniping and politics, fighting over which special interest group gets what benefit and favor from the government.

  For example, the US had spent about 3% of its GDP for a few years immediately after the discovery of the Shaitans, which enabled it and other nations to ready technology and launch a reasonable defense over Titan. Since the formation of USC however the spending of the US had stabilized at just about 1% of GDP. All other major spacefaring nations were spending a similar percentage of their GDP on space research and funding USC.

  It wasn’t as if the bureaucrats and politicians were shortsighted nincompoops. To be fair to them, most in the government appreciated the importance, need and urgency. The problem was that it was only the governments of nations which were spending on space efforts as well as funding the USC. The US government was actually spending 8% of its annual federal budget on space research and USC, but its budget was only about 15% of the entire GDP of the country, so the nation as a whole was only spending 1%.

  Private Citizens and the private sector had not started contributing money for the war effort in anyway till that point, other than building technology and equipment for the governments, for which they got paid. The government itself could not increase its spending on the space navy, space marines or space technology any further in its own budget, without having to make severe cuts somewhere else and hence annoying some or the other lobby and voting constituency.

  For example the federal government spent more in its federal budget on its defense forces on Earth viz. Army, Navy and Air force, than on space. While threats within Earth had not gone away, they were nowhere close to the threat of the Shaitans. Even the money spent on climate change was almost comparable to that on space. While climate change was an important aspect for human survival, it was not an immediate threat like the Shaitans.

  The spending patterns of the US were typical. Most nations had allocated similar paltry percentage of their GDP for space research and defense of Earth. Nothing more would have been politically tenable till the Holocaust. That changed the day nearly 20 million people around the world were butchered in a matter of minutes.


  The war had come home, and people of the earth felt it viscerally for the first time. They understood that it was real. There was no government conspiracy or exaggeration. The Shaitans existed and presented a clear and immediate threat to their survival. The people of Earth experienced for the first time, the death and tragedies that till then had been only experienced by the USC and Marines fighting in space.

  If there were any more greens, peaceniks, conspiracy theorists or other sundry leftist still remaining in society, they kept their mouth shut if they knew what was good for them and didn’t want to be lynched by a mob. The governments didn’t have to justify increased spending on space defense. It was demanded of them.

  After the Holocaust, there was both private and public spending on research into matters which were so obvious that one would wonder why no one had invested in it before. The biggest limitation humans had in their space efforts was also one of the oldest of problems. Lifting things out of the gravity well of Earth into space. Every problem that humans face in space emanated from this basic problem. It was hard and expensive to lift every Kg of material into space. Lifting humans was even more expensive.

  The only practical innovation that had happened in this 21st century on that front had been the space plane, which could lift a handful of people up into low earth orbit using small hybrid plane with booster rockets. It was the last private sector innovation in use, achieved in the first few decades of the century by Virgin Galactic, and the century was almost over.

  The workhorse of lifting material into space was still a 150 year old technology – rockets, a technology developed in the last century. It wasn’t as if there were not enough ideas or even private sector innovation tried. All of them had however floundered, either due to lack of demand or lack of funding.

  There was the two century old idea of a space elevator, which was impractical on Earth because the only material known that could be used on Earth’s gravity to make the tether, carbon nanotube could not be made long enough or in enough quantity. It was however possible to make the space elevator on the lower gravity of Moon or Mars with the materials known to humans.

  Then there were many variants on the space elevator idea like the sky hook, which took the idea halfway to make it feasible with known materials on Earth. There was also the five hundred year old idea first proposed by Isaac Newton, and popularized by Jules Verne of a space cannon. It might sound ridiculous, but it really isn’t. In the early part of the 21st century, there was actually a company that showed that the idea could work practicably by using a barrel over a kilometer long powered by heated hydrogen.

  Most of the concepts using a barrel to shoot were hybrid in concept, which still required a single stage rocket to boost into space, and they were too violent for human transportation. They were however very cheap compared to multi-stage conventional rocket launches and were considered ideal for moving fuel, water and consumables to space.

  Humans took a three pronged strategy to increase their space lifting capability by an order of magnitude, while reducing the cost at the same time by an order of magnitude. The first was to start experimenting and using new techniques to lift things out into space. The second was to build production capacity in low gravity planets and moons. The third was to bolster R&D efforts in improving the existing methods of lifting things to space.

  There were new grants given to companies to build space guns that could lift fuel and consumables cheaply. The technique had been proven in 2030s, but never carried forward. That was because there was not enough demand for lifting consumables up to space for the space guns to be built and operated profitably. That situation had however changed now.

  With fusion powered engines, human space crafts were getting bigger and bigger by the day. The current Nautilus class ships fully stocked, weighed 10 thousand tons without fuel and could carry a total complement of 200 crew and marines. The recent campaign of the Third Fleet beyond Pluto had lasted almost 2 years. These ships were provisioned for 3-4 year journeys. They required a lot of consumables.

  The Nautilus class vessels carried less than thousand tons of hydrogen fusion fuel, which was more than sufficient to last for a few years of patrol duty anywhere within the solar system. However if one wants to go any further, then even a thousand tons of fuel is not good enough. One required tens of thousands of tons of fuel. Newer ships were being planned which would be even bigger and require even more payload lifted from Earth.

  Consequently the new companies subsidized by various governments around the world, no longer lacked demand to lift consumables from water, food, Deuterium, Tritium, spares, conventional rocket fuel and a host of other things that needed to be lifted into orbit in bulk. There were space launch guns sprouting around the world, submerged with just their tips above water.

  The massive barrels filled with hydrogen gas was heated using natural gas and solar energy to blast out pellets of payload a few tons at a time. The largest of these space launch guns was about 200 km off Guangzhou near one of the industrial hubs of China, launching almost every hour day and night. Delicate items however were still sent up the conventional way using rockets.

  A large part of what was being launched in space was being sent to the Moon as part of the second prong of the human strategy. There were two space elevators being built on the Moon in a friendly competition and a race. These would be the first human space elevators built 200 years after it was first proposed. Humans would learn from these first ones to build bigger and better ones which could one day be installed on Earth.

  Moon is rich in iron, titanium, aluminum, manganese, oxygen and various other raw materials required to build the superstructure and the body of a ship. All that is required is mine it, refine it and build. It is easier said than done, and the startup cost is insane. Once that investment is made though, one can build ships so large that they would be unimaginable to be ever pulled up from the gravity well of Earth and assembled in Earth orbit.

  While ESA-ISRO-JAXA consortium was building the space elevator using M2 as the tether material and a design that was extremely elaborate and ambitious, the US was developing the mining and manufacturing base near the place the elevator would be tethered. When fully developed the mining/industrial complex would be able to assemble pieces of the spacecraft hundreds of tons at a time and lift it to space, where the final assembly can take place.

  The assembled shell of the ship weighing tens of thousands of tons would then be slowly hauled the short distance to Earth orbit by tugs, where the final assembly would take place. Engines, and other complex parts that can be only manufactured on Earth along with fittings and furnishings would be installed to create the largest spaceships that humans have ever created.

  The moon complex was being built on the Moon Equator, which is the best place to install it. There was plenty of minerals to mine within a few hundred kilometers. There were no environmental constraints or regulations on the Moon. The minerals could be hauled by surface transport with relatively puny engines thanks to the lower gravity. There is enough flat terrain on the moon to provide no obstacles for transportation.

  The only bummer was that all the supply of water on the Moon was on the poles, which needed to be transported to the equatorial habitat for humans to work. But it was still cheaper than carrying water from Earth. Other than machinery required for the one time setup, it was basically food and other things that humans needed for daily amenities, needed to be brought from Earth. Nothing more than a few tons at a time.

  The Chinese bloc had a similar setup about 500 kilometers to the west. Their space elevator was being built with a much more conventional material as a tether – Kevlar. It was cheaper and a better known material, but slightly lower in tensile strength. Their space elevator design was not as elaborate as the ESA-ISRO-JAXA design, so it had lower carrying capacity and speed.

  That meant that they would have to carry smaller pieces and that would require more assembly in orbit, resulting in slower constru
ction. The mining and manufacturing complex was also not as elaborate as the one being built by the US, but it was fairly acceptable. The economies of countries made the difference. The Chinese bloc consisting of China, Russia, Brazil and various other aligned countries were no match economically to the combine of US and ESA-ISRO-JAXA, who between them had almost 3 times the amount of resources.

  Last but not the least, the humans increased their conventional launch facilities. Private launch facilities mushroomed as demand for payload lift to orbit increased dramatically. With private sector involvement, R&D dollars went into making rocket fuels more efficient and rockets cheaper. The space planes became bigger, more fuel efficient and cheaper to maintain.

  All in all, within 5 years of the Holocaust, the major 20 economies of the world were spending close to 10% of their national GDP on space. While half of that expenditure was being done by the governments, fuelled by special taxes as they cut expenditure on many other activities, half of it was funded by private ventures hoping to make a profit, especially in the field of R&D.

  As a result in five years after the holocaust, humans had lifted more mass out into Earth orbit than had been done in the 130 years of space history prior to that. Despite these expenditures, the economies of these 20 countries was not flagging. Quite the contrary. The additional spending had created jobs and commerce. The economy was booming. War on Earth had always been good for business. Why should a space war be any different?

  While the most prosperous countries were spending money on space and also reaping R&D benefits of spinoffs of those technologies in all walks of life, the poorer countries contributed in their own ways to the survival of the human species. They may not have money or technology, but they had manpower. They often took the harshest, hardest and the riskiest jobs which had very few takers amongst the people of the developed countries.