Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  As a measure of abundant precaution, our great leader has instructed our shuttle that is currently on the 3rd planet, to move out, just in case the deaths are due to any infection from pathogens on that planet, while we investigate the deaths. The shuttle has been instructed not to return back to the base here on the 4th planet, again to prevent the remote possibility of carrying the infection. Instead, it has been asked to wait in a sterile environment either in space or on the moon of the 3rd or 4th planet.

  Year 95.27

  I deserve to be put to a horrible death! Even more horrible than the death that my fellow beings are dying of. I may have struck the final blow to our species and pushed them over the precipice of extinction. I contacted the great leader from my lab workstation about my discovery. I offered him my life, which I pay for my incompetence.

  The great leader told me from above where he is on surface inspection, that he refuses my sacrificial offer, for that would serve no purpose now. If anything our expertise was needed by our people now more than ever before. Instead my penance and that of all who work in my team would be to find a cure to the infection working continuously.

  To stop the spread of the infection, the great leader immediately ordered the lab locked from outside. I an all my staff would be quarantined inside this lab till we found a solution. He believed that the source of the infection and all the diseased were all inside the lab. If the lab was locked, then the infection would not be able to spread.

  I did not have the courage to tell him that I did not think that locking the lab would help, for I suspect most of us have already been infected for a long time. I have been incompetent in failing to recognize the pathogen and the danger it posed, but these pathogens from the 3rd planet are as insidious as they are inventive in modifying and hiding themselves.

  I have now developed a new respect for the brutality of the struggle for survival on the 3rd planet in evolutionary terms. The organisms on that planet have gone through a far more brutal biological war than our creatures have. This arms race between the pathogens and the creatures of the planet have not just resulted in far more potent pathogens, but creatures with far stronger immune system than our people.

  The virus that infects our body now had infected us years ago, probably as far back as 60 years ago on our initial visits to the 3rd planet. It is impossible to pinpoint the source of the infection for almost all large living creature from the 3rd planet including these strong ones in the cage carry the virus.

  This virus in fact a mildly beneficial effect inside the creatures of that planet. It attacks and kills various pathogens inside the body of the creatures of that planet, thus keeping them healthy. We had cataloged this virus and have detected trace amounts of this virus in our own body fluids.

  However there had been no cause of alarm, since there were hundreds of other such pathogens and virus that had hitch hiked on our bodies, but none had the protein mechanism to latch on to our cells and thus infect us. Our biology is different enough that these pathogens and viruses are harmless to us.

  What we had not counted on, was the amazing capacity of these viruses to mutate. It is my failing and incompetence that I took my eyes off the danger of pathogens from that planet long time ago. I developed a sense of false security after a few years of not getting infected. I should have kept my vigil strong.

  This virus has mutated and found a way to attach to the very structure which stores our genetic information within our cells. Once the virus found a way to attach, it started doing what it had always done in the creatures of the 3rd planet. It first hid itself inside the cell by faking its molecular signature, so that no antibody could target it. Then it slowly started making copies of itself using the molecules of the cell, unravelling the cell from inside and liquefying them, till the organs bled out of the body of the infected crew member.

  I am at my wit’s end trying to find a cure, but I am afraid that we don’t have the time to do it. The people inside the lab are panicking, I don’t see how they can work in such a situation being locked inside. We may not have that much time ourselves in any case for all of us are also infected.

  Year 95.28

  I got a message from my friend from the bridge. There have been two deaths on the outside. The infection has spread to the entire population as I suspected. Locking the lab door has not helped. My people on the outside are reacting irrationally in their panic. They somehow suspect that the infection is coming through the door, transmitted by air. I know for certain that this is not the case, but in their panic they are not willing to believe any one of us. We are being blamed for the entire infection in any case, so we have little credibility with them.

  Some of the most hyper members of the crew want to seal off the lab with concrete to prevent infection from spreading. I do not care if they did that, for I know that we are all dead anyway. It is only a matter of days or weeks before the virus activates and we bleed to death. My team inside the lab however is not so stoic. They are not taking this well. I hear some of them banging on the door wanting to be let out. Some are using the coms to plead not to seal us in with concrete.

  I sit here and watch the scenes of chaos playing all around me with a sense of surreal calm.

  Year 95.29

  So it has been done! My friend let me know that we have been sealed inside, but that has not stopped people from dying. The great leader is dead as well, but he was not claimed by the infection. It demonstrates the extent of madness and panic that has spread amongst my people outside, that they killed the great leader, when he refused to seal the lab with concrete.

  The remaining members of the crew now are blaming the entire air of the habitat, which they say is infected. They are all now moving into the only place that has remained relatively sealed throughout our stay here – our ship. They will seal themselves within the ship in the hope of escaping the infection. I wish them well, but I know that it will not save them for they are carrying the infection with them inside their bodies.

  The virus is not the only infection that is spreading. The madness is equally infectious and has now completely taken hold of my team inside the lab. There are people killing each other for no reason at all. Some have tortured and killed the specimen in the cages, for reasons I cannot fathom. Most have however just kept banging and scratching at the door and the wall, asking to be let out. Some have even tried to break the concrete walls.

  I see no reason in persisting with this log any more since the howls and the smells of fear around the lab is overpowering. I will however save a copy in the main computer in the hope that some of us might survive and learn the lessons learnt by me. Right now my hearing is filled with the cries of my fellow researchers scratching on the doors and howling “It cannot end this way! We cannot die like this! We are the chosen people, we cannot go out of the universe this way!”

  Chapter 7

  Opening up the stars

  Bronx, NY, USA

  December 2085

  Benedict sat straight. He was tense. He was not used to this kind of proceedings, but he had no choice in this matter. He would have to go through the formal process of deposition, which the politicians seem to love. Everything he had to say was already written in far more detail in the reports he and his team had been filing for over a year now. Yet the politicians insisted on such public spectacle.

  He understood at a different level the political necessity of these depositions. They demonstrated to the public, how their money was being spent and gave sound bites on achievements of the USC which in turn helped in keeping the money rolling in. It was all about justifying the budgets through the mainstream internet media. The clips would also be picked up by TV media, which was still more popular than the internet media establishment in the poorer, least developed countries. The thought of being streamed on the mainstream internet, made Benedict even more nervous.

  Benedict was a regular to this USC administrative headquarters building in the Bronx. He was a NASA employee on deputation
to USC right now, but had dealt with the USC throughout his career. He was a project engineer, and almost all the exciting projects in his profession of space engineering were done for USC. USC was the main client for almost all the space agencies around the world. So he had been here before and to this deposition hall specifically. The only thing different this time was that he was on the hot seat now.

  The chairman of the USC governing council opened up the hearing and invited Benedict to begin his report. The council consisted primarily of the national representatives of the major nations. It also had USC top brass represented in the form of Admiral Daniel Cloutier. Benedict had prepared for this deposition in close consultation with the admiral, and knew that at least the admiral was an ally on the council, if things got hot for him.

  “Distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the council. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you the interim findings of my group. I will be concentrating primarily on the findings about the Ka-let space ship this evening, although I will supplement it with other discoveries from the Ka-let base on Mars, wherever pertinent. Since prior briefing has already been done by my predecessor and colleague from NASA, Dr. Yusuke Matsumoto regarding the discoveries within the Ka-let base last year, and nothing substantively new have been found there since then, I will be concentrating only on the ship.

  As you are aware ladies and gentlemen, that we were able to access the ship only after a long concerted effort to find a way to enter it. I would like to place on record the efforts and brilliant deductions of the VHAPS group, who pointed us in the right direction.

  We along with perhaps every other human following the event had been mystified as to why the Ka-let would build a layer around the hull and fill it with water. At that point it made no sense to us at all. I will explain later in my discourse, why it makes perfect sense given the purpose and capability of the ship.

  What is pertinent to remember for the moment right now, is that because the outer hull was filled with water, there was no way to get access into the ship. The only way to access the ship was to first drain the water, so that the specialized doorway mechanism would open for us to gain access to the ship. The doors had been designed to seal tightly and seamlessly when the water was filled in the outer hull and open only when the water was drained.

  We later found out that the design of the ship was such that, one does not need to drain out the water and lose it to open the door. The water can simply be pumped to a different section of the ship’s hull or the holding tanks inside. For this however one needs to have control of the ship, which we didn’t have when we entered the first time.

  When we entered the ship, we found exactly what Ramses the Ka-let had expected. The entire ship was a tomb filled with bodies of 80 thousand year old dead Ka-let. The ship’s environment had not been as kind to the bodies of these Ka-let as those of that died in the lab below. The ship’s atmosphere lasted a lot longer, unlike the lab and the overall habitat, where the atmosphere was lost within a few years. This moisture laden, oxygen rich atmosphere degraded and decayed the bodies, till very little was left of the bodies.

  During the ensuing months after the opening up of the ship, the best of our space engineers examined every small detail of the ship. The fact that the Ka-let script and computers had already been cracked, speeded up the job of the engineers a great deal. I will summarize the details available to you all with a few salient points.

  First, we believe that we now understand almost every aspect of the ship. A few internal accessories are still a mystery to us, but we believe those are more in the nature of comfort accessories for the biology of the Ka-let, similar to our sauna or spa, or quirks of their culture, similar to our pool table. We do not believe that there is any functional aspect of the ship we do not understand.

  We now believe that while the Ka-let engineering was slightly more sophisticated than that of the Shaitans, it was not a lot ahead of them. The Shaitan engineering on the other hand is a lot more robust. The mechanisms of the Shaitan engineering may be simpler than those of the Ka-let, but that very fact makes them more reliable and serviceable.

  The ship is in a remarkably good condition for the fact that it is an 80 thousand year old machinery. Being cocooned in a layer of water, the internal cabins of the ship held on to the atmosphere for a long time, causing damage to whatever was exposed to it like the control interfaces of the ship. Most of the ship’s critical machinery however was not exposed to the cabin atmosphere, and the almost airless cold environment of Mars has preserved it marvelously.

  The ship is not airworthy by any shade of imagination, but many of its sub systems are either working or well preserved enough for us to know exactly how they worked. By studying the ship, we would be able to improve on many aspects of our ship building and particularly improve the efficiency of our engines and our fusion reactors.

  However none of these technologies is fundamentally new save one. Before I come to that new technology, let me mention some of the noteworthy improvements we can make on our existing technology. Our fusion reactors, and those of the Shaitans run at close to 50% efficiency. This means that we can harness only 50% of the energy generated into usable form, the rest is lost as heat or radiation.

  If we incorporate the design improvements of the Ka-let, we believe we will be able to bump up that efficiency closer to 60%. This means that we can get 20% more bang for the buck from the same hydrogen fuel we carry right now. This is a big deal, as I will explain later that the mass of the hydrogen fuel is our biggest limitation in a long flight.

  We had designed our ion plasma engines on our own, without looking into a Shaitan design, since we did not have access to one at that time. Now that we have access to partly intact Shaitan ships, we are glad that we did not have access to their ships while designing our ion plasma engines. We would definitely have been tempted to copy them. We are better off with our own design because they are more efficient than the Shaitan ones by about 8%.

  The Ka-let ion plasma engines are remarkably like our own design and give off a similar drive signature. However we believe that they have been improving their design for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Consequently their ion plasma engine is at least 10% possibly 15% more efficient. We have not been able to run the Ka-let engine, so we are not sure yet, we will know when we make a copy.

  This would mean that we would get 10% to 15% more bang for the buck on our hydrogen fuel. Overall between these two improvements we are looking at a 33% or about a third more efficient engines for our ships. This in itself gives us a great advantage over the Shaitans, but it pales in comparison to the new piece of technology we discovered.

  We call this piece of technology the ‘Hydrogen harvester’ or simply the ‘Harvester’. To give you a background to what this is and why it is important I would like to pose a question to you all ladies and gentlemen. Have you ever wondered why the fastest Shaitan vessel we have observed has only been travelling at about 2% the speed of light?” Benedict paused at his rhetorical question by the councilwoman from Japan answered it anyway.

  “I thought that 2% of light is a very fast speed. We have already seen what terrifying impact even that kind of speed can have on our world. I figured that it must be dangerous to travel faster than that or maybe it consumes more fuel, or maybe it is not practical to travel faster than that.” The Japanese councilwoman finished.

  “You are right on only one count councilwoman. Yes 2% is a frighteningly fast speed compared to the sedate pace of our lives here on Earth and the speeds we are used to. However it is nothing in the open interstellar space. In fact it is a crawling pace if one wants to get anywhere even within our own neighborhood of the nearby stars. For example if one wants to go to the nearest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, one would need nearly 215 years at that speed. That is the reason why the Shaitans take over 16 years in their fastest ship to reach Earth from Alpha Shaitan which is literally in our backyard.

  It is not more dangerous to t
ravel at 20% the speed of light than 2%, madam for if one was unfortunate enough to be struck by floating debris in space, it would make no difference to how you died. One is hardly more likely to be able to detect and evade a small dark rock in space travelling at 2% the speed of light compared to 20%.

  Lastly, there is a speed limit in space, but that speed limit is the speed of light itself. Although it gets increasingly difficult to increase speed beyond 80% of light, but till that speed one can keep accelerating without expending disproportionate amount of fuel.

  Which brings me to the real problem, where you hit the nail on the head madam councilwoman – fuel. Both our ships and those of the Shaitans follow a very conventional principle. We carry our fuel in hydrogen tanks on the ships. We use roughly half of it to accelerate to whatever is the maximum speed of the ship and the other half to decelerate on reaching the destination.

  So the logical reasoning would be that if someone wants to travel faster, all the ship has to do is carry more fuel. This is where things get tricky ladies and gentlemen. The problem is the fuel itself carries mass, and to drive that additional mass, one needs additional fuel. This in turn spirals the need for larger tanks and more fuel, which carries more mass.

  As you can see, this quickly spirals into a ridiculous situation where even to move a few percent faster, one needs fuel which is almost 99% the mass of the entire ship. Clearly this is not practical, and hence this approach of carrying your hydrogen fuel in the tanks of the ship puts an upper limit to the speed at which the ship can travel.

  To illustrate the point, A Shaitan warship has a weight of 20 thousand tons without fuel. At the beginning of a journey, it has to take on almost 45 thousand tons of fuel to reach its top speed of just of 2% the speed of light. At the end of the journey after deceleration, it is barely left with one and a half thousand tons of fuel, which is what it used last time to fight the war in the solar system. Within the system.