Every crew of the 5th fleet was in their battle stations. At the speed at which the Shaitan fleet was coming, it would be less than an hour before they passed the Watering Hole. Capt. Brogan thought clicked a connection from his battle suit to Admiral Dar. “Sir it is a matter of minutes if not seconds before the Shaitans figure out those decoys. The Avenger reports ready and in condition 1 alert.”
“Acknowledged captain, although we will have several minutes before we need to act, as per Capt. Jansen’s plan. And captain… our wager is still on I hope?” Admiral Dar asked.
“Yes sir… and this time I have a good feeling that the penny is going to drop in my favor sir.” Capt. Brogan replied with a smile.
It took the Shaitans several minutes to figure out the ruse, during which time they kept coming closer to the Watering Hole and towards danger. The laser was not hot enough at this distance to burn the metal, but was hot enough to heat up the flimsy structure of the decoy and make it glow on the IR scan. It was only when the decoys started glowing unnaturally in the IR scans did the Shaitans get an idea of the puny mass of the decoys.
The Shaitan fleet reacted in the most logical and predictable way. They engaged their emergency thrusters and accelerated at a 90° angle to their line of approach to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the Watering Hole. What was of interest to the humans was the direction in which the Shaitan fleet veered. It was a random direction, as would be expected. The computers noted the direction and adjusted the pneumatic ejectors accordingly.
The pneumatic ejectors could eject these standard missiles which were lighter than the ‘specials’ with a velocity of 50 m/s, which was not enough for this battle, but it would enable the missiles to run silent for a few extra minutes. Right now the Shaitan fleet only suspected ambush. The ambush was neither confirmed, nor was the direction of the ambush known, although if one thought about it logically, it could come from only one place – behind the comet.
The longer the missiles could run silent, the longer that period of uncertainty would last for the Shaitan fleet, and the lesser time they would have to respond. The lesser the time the Shaitans had to respond, the lesser should be the volume of antimissiles pumped out by them. The Shaitan warships could pump out antimissiles right now blind, in anticipation of the coming attack. That way they would have a decent volume of antimissiles surrounding them when the actual attack came.
However the Shaitan fleet was accelerating at this moment, which meant that the antimissiles would also have to accelerate to stay close to the Shaitan warships it is supposed to protect. Antimissiles normally carried a lot less rocket fuel compared to nuclear missiles, since antimissiles were not expected to travel a lot of distance. Their job was to intercept missiles heading towards the ship, which meant travelling a short distance.
The Shaitan fleet was still 38 minutes from passing he Watering Hole, which meant that to protect the Shaitan warships, the antimissiles would have to keep up for 38 minutes with the fleet. Shaitan antimissiles had never been observed to last that long. Actually no Shaitan antimissile had needed to last that long. So it was not a surprise that no anticipatory antimissiles were observed being launched from the Shaitan warships.
The Shaitan fleet would have been accelerating away at 90° from the Watering hole for 38 minutes, before they passed it. The human missiles had over three times more acceleration compared to a Shaitan warship’s emergency acceleration owing to a much smaller mass. It would take just under 15 minutes for the human missiles to travel the same distance and catch up with the Shaitan fleet at the crossing point. A couple of minutes got shaved off due to the initial velocity imparted to the missiles by the pneumatic ejector.
The Shaitan Warmaster displayed competent warcraft and ample prudence. About 14 minutes before the time of crossing the comet, the Shaitan warships started firing antimissiles blind. The release of the antimissiles was timed such that its fuel would last till the time of the crossing. The anticipatory antimissiles would help increase the volume of antimissiles in case the Shaitan fleet got ambushed.
A minute after the Shaitan warships had started firing anticipatory antimissiles, their fears were validated. One by one human nuclear missiles, which had been silently floating in the direction of the point of intersection with the Shaitan fleet, fired up their rocket thrusters and started rushing headlong towards the point of intersection.
The missiles started firing up one by one in a staggered manner, taking into account their current position and the desired position each missile would take in the ‘cloud’ of missiles that Capt. Jansen’s algorithm required. From whatever was known about the Shaitans, they probably did not feel emotions the same way humans do in terms of fear or shock, but they do feel something similar to anxiety by the release of neurochemicals within their circulatory system.
Capt. Brogan wondered what the Shaitan admiral, whom they call the ‘Warmaster’ would be feeling at this moment, as he observed human missiles lighting up one by one, and the counter of missiles in his computer taste sensor ticking up at an alarming rate. The humans had killed a few Shaitans in this campaign till now, but he had not had the pleasure of seeing them die up close.
He wished he could see this Warmaster die, touch and taste his fear and anxiety as he saw his death looming close, feel his sense of frustration as the Warmaster realized that he had failed in his duty to protect his home world. That would have given Capt. Brogan some sense of personal retribution. For himself and his sister.
While no one knew how the Shaitans felt at that moment, if it had been humans they would have watched the count of missiles rising precipitously with extreme alarm. The count of human missiles that fired up rose in count first into the thousand within a few seconds. Individual missiles firing up in a well-orchestrated sequence within milliseconds of each other. The last missile fired up almost 10 seconds after the first one to complete the count of 2400 missiles in all. The single largest count of missiles thrown in anger ever by humans at an enemy.
Meanwhile the 5th fleet had made a subtle change in its own position. Comets outside the inner solar system are a picture of serenity. They are mostly a stable piece of dirty ice, usually with a rocky core. Some of the comets are big, like this one. The Watering Hole was roughly spheroidal in shape, more like a slightly deflated balloon. The surface of the comet was completely covered with ice and reasonably smooth.
Tomography showed that the rocky core of ‘Watering Hole’ was highly irregular piece of rock. However the comet was over 40 Km in diameter, and as such could be considered a reasonably large comet. It even had a small micro-gravity of its own. That micro-gravity had partly helped in shaping the comet into a roughly spheroidal shape. Partly it was also due to the fact that water/ice could flow and form a sphere far more easily in micro-gravity compared to rocks which can’t flow.
The four Avenger class ships could hide comfortably behind the 40 Km wide Watering Hole. The 4 ships had been parked just 100 meters above the surface of the comet, a few Km apart from each other. As the Shaitan fleet was nearing the intersection point, the 5th fleet made a small adjustment to their position. The four ships raised themselves to a position about 4 Km above the surface of the comet, and at the same time came closer to each other to pack themselves in a tight diamond shape just 100 meters apart from each other.
The diamond formation of the 5th fleet was place exactly at the center of the comet from the original line of approach of the Shaitan fleet. Before getting into the tightly packed formation though, each ship released a hundred antimissiles, which drifted away from the comet facing the original line of approach of the Shaitan fleet.
If the Shaitan fleet had released nukes before veering off from their original line of approach, then those nukes drifting in cold would reach the ‘Watering Hole’ at the same time as the Shaitan fleet would reach the intersection point. The 400 antimissiles would be the first line of defense if that were the case. Any Shaitan nuke, which got through those 4
00 human antimissiles, would have to make a sharp turn around the comet to be able to target the 5th fleet.
At the speed at which the nukes would be travelling, it should not be possible for them to make such a sharp turn. It should be next to impossible for the Shaitan nukes to reach within 6 Km of the 5th fleet. That was the minimum distance at which a 400 MT nuke could cause any kind of damage to an avenger class ship.
However there was one more way a Shaitan nuke could damage the ships of the 5th fleet. The nukes could simply explode close to the surface of the comet, as it passed by. A 400 MT nuke would throw up a lot of ice/water and rocky debris in this micro-gravity environment, which could rise up hundreds of kilometers to cause damage.
Explosive debris however followed one of the basic laws of physics and geometry – inverse square law. So by moving 40 times further from the surface, the 5th fleet reduced the explosive debris damage probability by 1600 times. It was a good thing that the 5th fleet performed the maneuver. The Shaitans had released nukes before they veered off their trajectory. They could not be sure of the human fleet hiding behind the Watering Hole, so they must have released the missiles blind.
Each of the Shaitan warship had unloaded their tubes before they veered off their original course. The Shaitan warships had 16 tubes, so a total of 96 Shaitan nukes had been heading silently towards the Watering Hole. At the speed at which the Shaitan nukes were travelling, the human antimissiles got to detect the cold Shaitan missiles only about 10 seconds before they reached the comet.
The human antimissiles fired up trying to target the Shaitan nukes. The moment the human antimissiles fired up, so did the Shaitan nukes in response, trying to actively evade the antimissiles. Trying to target a missile moving so fast and actively trying to dodge is extremely difficult. The 400 human antimissile could stop only 70 of the 96 Shaitan nuclear missiles. 26 Shaitan nukes got through.
Shaitan missiles still had the technological advantage compared to human missiles. All Shaitan missiles had a Q-computer navigation system, which the humans were just starting to put on their most expensive missiles. More importantly, all Shaitan missiles had a very decent AI running on that Q-computer. Humans had not been able to develop programs and algorithms yet that could be truly called AI.
The Shaitan nukes had kept close to the surface of the comet as they passed it. The moment the nukes caught a view of the 5th fleet hiding behind the comet, the AIs in the nukes realized that there was no way they could get anywhere close to those ships to cause them any damage. So the AI detonated the nukes immediately next to the surface of the comet.
The Shaitan nukes were crossing the comet from both sides. 12 nukes detonated on one side and 14 on the other. The effect of 26 nukes of 400 MT yield exploding on the surface of the comet was devastating. A few million tons of ice and dirt evaporated into plasma and flung out into space. This was however not dangerous to the ships of the 5th fleet. The explosions had happened at 2 ends of the comet, and the explosive debris was flung high above those explosions. The 5th fleet was right at the center of the comet, and the direction of the two explosions were 90° away on either side.
What was potentially dangerous to the ships of the 5th fleet was the shockwave that rippled through the surface of the comet. It was like two stones thrown into a pond, and their ripples heading towards each other, meeting up at the point almost right below where the 5th fleet had parked 4 Km above. The shockwave ripples were so prominent that they could be seen from the ships.
When the two wave fronts collided, it threw up a huge amount of ice and rocks from the comet straight up as high as tens of Kilometers. Some of those debris struck the ships of the 5th fleet. Every ship went into their emergency systems check routine to assess the damage, as they had been practicing for the last few days. The last to report to the Admiral was the Redeemer, about 5 minutes later.
None of the ships had suffered anything more than a minor dent. All systems were nominal and no damage to sensors were recorded. The 5th fleet had emerged from the Shaitan missile barrage literally unscathed. Admiral Dar smiled and said. “Now it is my turn.”
The algorithm worked by Capt. Jansen seem to be working as expected. The initial swarm of human missiles triggered the Shaitan point defense system to prioritize the ships that it wanted to save. Tango-6 was at the top of that priority list. The Shaitan point defense system had decided that Tango-6 would be saved at any cost. Capt. Jansen’s algorithm had accordingly concentrated a disproportionately larger number of missiles on Tango-6.
Almost 800 missiles, or a third of all the missiles released were targeting Tango-6. It had almost turned into a contest of stubbornness between the two algorithms. One trying to destroy Tango-6 at any cost, and the other trying to save Tango-6 at any cost. In this melee, it became apparent that the Shaitan point defense algorithm had never come across such a strategy as the humans had unleashed before.
If the Shaitan point defense system had come across such a strategy before and had adjusted for it midcourse now, the Shaitans might actually have had the chance of saving one or two of the non-prioritized warships. That was because the lower defense priority Shaitan warships were being attacked by a far lower number of human missiles. If the point defense system had chosen to play a cat and mouse game by switching priority mid-course, it may have been successful in fooling the human algorithm and save one or two ships.
The Shaitan point defense algorithm didn’t display that flexibility and went about its business in a pigheaded manner. That ensured that five of the six Shaitan warships were doomed for sure. The only contest going on right now was whether Tango-6 would survive or not. From the number of missiles targeting Tango-6, it seemed unlikely that Tango-6 would survive.
Then the Shaitans pulled a rabbit out of their hat. In a surprisingly fast maneuver, which threw caution to the wind and safety procedures out of the airlock, five of the Shaitan warships other than Tango-6 turned the end hosting the emergency thrusters towards Tango-6. In unison, the five Shaitan warships approached one side of Tango-6, beside which they had been flying in formation till a few seconds ago. Just as the five warships banged into the side of Tango-6, the computers of the five Shaitan warships overloaded the emergency thrusters, causing a huge rocket fuel explosion.
Rocket fuel causes chemical explosion, but the simultaneous explosion of the entire rocket fuel of five Shaitan warships felt almost like a mini nuclear explosion, although the temperature reached was nowhere near a nuclear explosion. The tough exterior skins of Shaitan ships, meant that the Tango-6 was dented but not critically damaged in anyway.
The same could not be said about the five Shaitan warships. These five Shaitan warships were completely crippled with their thruster section badly damaged, and the engines blown out. It didn’t matter for in a few seconds they would be dead anyway. The sacrifice of the five Shaitan warships however gave Tango-6 a fighting chance.
It was a classic example of Newton’s third law – ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’. The five ships flew away from Tango-6 with the violence unleased by each of their rocket fuel explosion. Tango-6 was thrown in the opposite direction, but with the combined momentum of five warships, which meant that it flew away five times faster.
The sudden and unpredictable movement of the Shaitan warships caused a little difficulty to the human missiles targeting them, but not enough to save the five warships which were now immobile. For Tango-6 however that additional random spurt at great speed, just tipped the scales in its favor. It was able to avoid all but one human missile.
Five Shaitan warships were vaporized. Not even small fragments were left behind. While Tango-6 escaped with a cauterizing wound to its skin. It was hurt, but not fatally. A single 2.1 MT nuke, unless detonated right next to a Shaitan warship, could only hurt a tough Shaitan ship superficially. Tango-6 continued moving away from Alpha Shaitan system at high speed.
Capt. Brogan had an additional reason to be happy. He had finally won a combat rel
ated wager with the Admiral. The first that he had been able to win with the old fox, who seemed otherwise to be able to divine every outcome of a battle. The Shaitans had left the decoys alone. They had not attempted to blast them with nukes or any other means. Just as Capt. Brogan had predicted, they had instead slipped in a few nukes blind floating towards the Watering Hole in anticipation of the 5th fleet hiding behind. To blast the decoys would have given away that game. He looked forward to tasting hooch from the Admiral’s private collection.
Admiral Dar now had a choice to make. He could give chase to Tango-6, or head towards the Alpha Shaitan system to begin the invasion in earnest, preventing the Shaitans from rebuilding their spacefaring capability once again. If he gave chase to Tango-6, the 5th fleet was sure to catch up with the Shaitan warship eventually. The human ships could accelerate almost infinitely thanks to their harvester, whereas Tango-6 would eventually run out of fuel.
However the chase could last over a two years assuming Tango-6 filled up its tanks before they headed out, which was most likely. It would then take another 4 years for the 5th fleet to return back. A total delay of 6 years, during which time the Shaitans were sure to rebuild a few more warships to defend their system. That was unacceptable on all counts including the endurance of the crew.
The choice seemed obvious to Admiral Dar. Ignore Tango-6 for the moment, and proceed towards Alpha Shaitan to begin the next phase of the campaign. Force Tango-6 to return back to its home system if it wanted to defend its home world. If Tango-6 chose not to return against such odds, then it was not a concern for the 5th fleet any longer.
It was a decision Admiral Dar would come to rue a year later.
Chapter 15
The Devil’s workshop
AS-d, Alpha Shaitan System
December 2107
Retribution (Shaitan Wars) Page 24