Sarah decided to take her mind off death, which could visit her any moment. She set her eyes at this strange, dark and yet beautiful gas giant Alpha Shaitan. She had her faceplate display in wireframe mode, which drew a wireframe representation of all the planets and moons around her in this dark place. She removed the wireframes and marveled at the fact that there was a huge gas giant larger than Saturn right in front of her, and yet it appeared pitch black to her eyes.
Sarah switched the display to infrared and was stunned once again by the beauty of the planet. She had seen the planet in this light many times in the last few years and yet every time she saw it she could not help her breath being taken away by the sheer artistic beauty of the gas giant. She wondered how beautiful this gas giant would have looked in visible light. It would have probably been far more beautiful than Jupiter or Saturn had it been close to the sun to be illuminated by it.
Alpha Shaitan had bands just like all other gas giants. What was unique was the patterns within those bands. Some phenomenon not yet understood by scientists on board or on Earth who had been sent the data, caused crudely symmetrical patterns of random types to be formed on those band of clouds. It made the entire planet look like a psychedelic batik print of a planet.
Sarah sighed and brought her attention back to the task at hand. Her HUD was flashing a countdown to the end of the backpack rocket burn. She checked her speed and noted that she had slowed down within acceptable parameters. Once the rocket fuel exhausted and stopped burning, she thumbed the release mechanism on her chest and loosened the backpack.
She issued mental command and her suit retro rockets turned her back towards AS-d. The backpack however was not to be jettisoned completely yet. It still had one more function to perform. As Sarah’s suit kept slowing her further, albeit at a much slower pace due to the tiny thrust of the suit, the momentum of the backpack took it further ahead towards AS-d than Sarah.
The backpack was reeled out on a thin tether attached to the suit, till it was 100 meters ahead of Sarah. Then the tether went taut and the backpack maintained a 100 meters separation from Sarah. The backpack was now a decoy and a shield for the Marines as they hurtled towards the surface of AS-d. If they got fired upon from the surface, the backpack would present a similar profile as the suits of the marines to the defenders on the ground.
The backpacks would halve the chances of a marine getting hit, and being in front should take the first hit, thereby providing the marines with a warning that they were being shot. The warning was especially important if the defenders were to use lasers which were light speed, or plasma which were tremendously fast weapons as well. Kinetic weapons provided longer warning due to their muzzle flash and slower speed, as did missiles.
The marine company was on EM silence, so Sarah could not turn on her IFF to figure out where the rest of the company was, but she knew that most of them would be floating around her within a few kilometers radius. Now that she was facing AS-d, and had her back to Alpha Shaitan itself, she dared turn on her IR scanner at full sensitivity without worrying about being blinded by the glare of Alpha Shaitan.
In the reflected infrared light of the gas giant, AS-d came into detailed view. This moon was an oddity amongst all other moons of Alpha Shaitan, other than Jehannum itself. The odd thing about AS-d was its size to mass ratio. It was far too heavy for its diminutive size. It was more massive than Earth’s moon and yet was less than half the diameter of the Moon.
This meant that AS-d was far denser than moons of any planet normally are. It was denser than any of the moons that humans knew in the solar system or on Alpha Shaitan itself. The scientists on board the ship speculated that AS-d may have iron-nickel core, or the entire moon was very rich in heavy metals spread relatively evenly across the entire layers of the moon.
If this speculation turned out to be correct, then AS-d was one of the most valuable resource rich body known to humans. Heavy metals formed the bulk of any space ship and contributed most to the cost and effort of construction of a ship. Unfortunately metal rich bodies like the Earth were huge gravity wells, raising metals out of them cost a lot of fuel and money.
Humans had built metal extraction plant on Earth’s Moon which had lower gravity, but such bodies are poor in metals, and the cost of extraction and refinement ate up all the savings made due to the lower gravity. There were proposals to hunt for metal rich asteroid to mine them, but current human technology made such ventures economically unviable.
The Shaitans it seems had been given a gift by nature. They had a moon in their neighborhood rich in metals, and yet low in gravity. They could mine and construct ships at far lower cost than would have been possible by humans. And the Shaitans had made use of this natural resource. When the Avenger had struck the first time, there had been two space elevators on this moon.
The space elevators had undoubtedly been attached to facilities that refined metals and other minerals and sent it to space. It was possible that the facilities also manufactured some of the parts instead of simply shipping the metals. The elevators were now destroyed and the facilities hit badly. “Hopefully not much of the facilities or their defenses if any, had been left standing.” Sarah thought to herself, for the 4th company was heading straight towards one of those facility complex.
Sarah spoke too soon about the collapse of Shaitan defenses, for the moment she had said that to herself, she saw her backpack glow and explode into pieces. Lasers! The bastard Shaitans were using lasers, or probably plasma. It didn’t matter. They had been discovered. Stealth was no longer an option, time to do the exact opposite of stealth.
She pulled up the mission menu in her head and selected ‘Active decoy’ option. Immediately 10 tubular objects half a meter in length and a few centimeters in diameter ejected from her backpack. As the decoys ejected and spread around her, they started emitting electromagnetic signals similar in profile to what a typical human radio communication would send.
The decoys in addition raised their temperature slightly over the ambient temperature of space to glow in the infrared. The last thing the decoys did was to literally roll out the tube, so that a thin foil of shiny metal spread out a few meters providing a bright visual profile for anyone looking at the decoys. From a distance, the decoys would be a juicier target to an electronic eye than the suited marine.
As the decoys were deploying, Sarah selected the next option in the mission menu. It radioed a coded alarm to the rest of the marines floating around her as well as to the Avenger. EM silence was over, now that they had been discovered. The alarm instructed anyone who had not noticed the incoming fire to start the decoy and evasion routine.
The evasion routine was the suit thrusters firing in random directions to jink the path of the marines as they headed towards the moon. It would not be able to evade the lasers, which travelled at light speed, but might be able to evade plasma weapons. The jinking would definitely foil any projectile weapon fired by the Shaitans.
The last thing the coded alarm did was to instruct Avenger to start looking for the source of the incoming fire and try to neutralize it. Sarah’s suit sensors had not been able to track the source of the firing, which is why she suspected lasers. Plasma weapons leave a trace, which the sensors can track. In an airless environment like this, the only person who can track a laser is the person getting hit, but it is too late for that person by then.
It seems Sarah’s coded alarm was the first one to have been raised – advantage of being a tech-head. However Sarah had not been the first Marine to become aware of the defensive fire of the Shaitans. Unfortunately for many of those marines who became aware before Sarah, it was because they had been hit by the lasers. Sarah had been lucky that it was her decoy backpack that had been hit first and not her, many had not been that lucky.
Now that the EM silence was over, Sarah had switched on her IFF and counted the number of marines. 6 marines’ id were missing. Damn she thought. Six casualties, and we have not even set foot on the moon.
It wasn’t the worst case scenario yet, she reminded herself. She checked the packages floating along with the Marines. In a way, those packages were not just their supplies and support, but also a shield for the Marines. More the number of targets, less the likelihood that a Marine got hit. Most of the packages could anyway take a hit from a laser, and yet be functional to a great extent.
Avenger, high above the marines had not been able to locate the source of the laser fire either, so it had done the next best thing it could. It fired 5 missiles in the direction of the surface the marines were heading. The missiles were not nukes. They were antimissiles used to kill Shaitan missiles. The task of the antimissiles was however not to kill any missiles or anything for that matter.
The antimissiles were simply fat juicy baits, which the Shaitans could not afford to ignore. The missiles were equipped with AWPS systems, which made them fairly immune to point defense lasers. For such small targets as missiles and individual marines, only point defense lasers could be used. If however the missiles were targeted with lasers, the AWPS would immediately become aware of the location of the laser source and relay it to the Avenger.
While the missiles were trying to draw out the enemy fire, one more marine ID winked out of existence in Sarah’s IFF. The decoys and the packages were helping protect the marines, but inevitably someone had to get unlucky. The marines had another 5 odd minutes to run the gauntlet before they would reach the surface. If the laser sources were not found fast, not too many would reach the surface alive. The decoys were getting destroyed fast and the real targets would soon be next on the firing line.
The first indication that Avenger had located some of the Shaitan firing positions came with the muzzle flash of the spine mounted rail gun. The rail gun alternated between firing pure kinetic kill crowbars and plasma capsules. Plasma fire was not very effective in taking out an entrenched enemy gun position, but it could reach there a lot faster owing to its greater velocity. This would hopefully help in suppressing the enemy fire immediately by forcing the enemy to take cover. If it was an automated firing station, then plasma might not help in doing that.
What would definitely help would be the kinetic kill projectiles, but they took many minutes to reach their targets. Minutes that the marines may not have. The Avenger was desperate enough to use its main laser as well, although there was not much hope of destroying an entrenched bunker with a laser.
“4th company be advised. 8 enemy firing positions identified surrounding the objective. Crowbars dispatched, ETA another 65 seconds for the first one, two minutes for the last one. You will have to hold on till then, I am afraid. Good luck marines.” Sarah heard on the com. Avenger was working as fast as it could. There was nothing she could do but pray. For herself and her Marines.
The target landing zone of the marines had been nicknamed ‘Lucifer’s Anvil’. It was basically a rectangular plateau less than half a kilometer wide, about 2 Km in length and 150 meters in height, with one end protruding out into a small hill peak. In the wireframe, it looked spookily like an anvil used by iron smiths in history.
In keeping with the theme of naming everything in the Alpha Shaitan system on some variation of the Satan/devil/hell theme in some human language, the plateau had been named ‘Lucifer’s Anvil’. Some literature buffs had given that name as a tribute to an old classic book over a century old.
The sides of the plateau were remarkably and suspiciously straight forming an almost perfect rectangle. The shape of the plateau was thought to be as a result of Shaitan mining. There were gigantic machinery that had been detected next to the plateau, so it was a plausible theory. Why the plateau was being mined was obvious.
Tomography scans had confirmed that the plateau had an unusually high concentration of heavy metals. It is a lot easier to mine a plateau, than dig it out of a pit. Just dig at the base and let gravity do rest of the work. Why the plateau would be so rich in heavy metals was also obvious by looking at another plateau in the process of forming just a few kilometers away.
The ground had opened up and from deep within the crust of the moon, molten slag rich in heavy metals and minerals mixed with silica was bubbling over. The slag would overflow out of the opening and instantly cool and harden in the surface that was freezing cold, being open to space. The slag layers would slowly build up forming a plateau few hundred meters high, before the opening on the surface was permanently plugged by the plateau.
As Sarah came closer to the surface, she could see such openings on the surface as far as her eyes could see, overflowing with molten metals and slag. She had to turn down her IR vision and then completely shut it as the heat from the pits started overwhelming the IR vision. She switched to enhanced light vision, and for the first time since coming the Alpha Shaitan system, she could see things in visible light!
It was a dark, dingy and desolate landscape pockmarked by open lava pits. The glowing lava dimly lighting up the landscape where silhouettes of the landmarks were visible in the dim light of the lava. The moon AS-j, the home planet of the Shaitans may have been named Jehannum, but AS-d was the vision of Hell.
Lucifer’s Anvil had been chosen as the LZ for a simple reason. It was a raised piece of land with no visible Shaitan presence. There was no visible path to reach the top of the plateau from below, and once on top, it should be easily defensible by the Marines from any Shaitan who tries to climb on top.
The plateau was being mined, and hence it was unlikely to have underground tunnels from which the Shaitans could emerge from below to ambush the marines. The most important reason to select Lucifer’s Anvil however, was that it was right next to the bombed out complex which was the marines’ ultimate target, once they had established a beachhead on the plateau.
By the time the 4th company was on top of Lucifer’s Anvil, the 8 Shaitan firing positions had been taken out by the Avenger, but not before 3 more marines had their body fluids heated and their flesh blown to bits by the lasers. The Marines had lost 10 of their own just in the landing process. 10% loss wasn’t the worst case scenario, but it was far from a good one.
The 4th company got a hot receptions as expected. Sarah got busy assigning the three platoons their defensive positions along the perimeter of the plateau, and gave five NCOs specific sectors to recce and map out the perimeter. She needed detailed map of the entire plateau as fast as possible and needed to know the possible points that the Shaitans may use to climb up. She had to set up defenses as soon as possible.
Direct fire was not so much of a problem in this plateau. It was the reason why the Lucifer’s anvil was selected as a LZ in the first place. The plateau was fairly safe from line of sight attack like snipers as long as you did not stick your head out. There were no higher ground close by, from where such an attack could be mounted. The Shaitans may have air power, but it would be quickly shot down from space by the humans standing by to support the assaulting Marines.
The only other way the Shaitans could cause harm to the humans on the plateau would be through non-LOS means. Non-LOS attack could come in the form of artillery, guided missiles that could rise up and then come down from the top, or through ‘air-burst’ weapons, where bombs were exploded on top of the plateau. ‘Air-burst’ was a misnomer in this airless moon, but although a bomb exploding on top would cause no concussion damage due to lack of an atmosphere, shards and shrapnel could still kill Marines.
The raised ‘horn’ of Lucifer’s Anvil did provide one point of refuge from aerial attack, but it was only at the south end. If the Marines were going to hold this place, areas of refuge would be needed in every direction of the plateau. There was absolutely no feature in this flat plateau except the ‘horn’ to the south end, so the only way to build shelter would be to dig.
The platoon commanders reported back from every direction. The machine cut faces of the walls that made up the plateau were almost vertical. Even a Shaitan with its steel claws and the low gravity would find it difficult to claw up those vertical walls. Howev
er no assumptions were being made about the Shaitan ability to climb up the walls. Such assumptions made on Titan had cost human lives, when the Shaitans had inserted pitons on sheer cliff walls and climbed without harnesses. Every wall was being guarded from top by the Marines.
“Sgt. Jalloh. We need the Moles working as of yesterday. We need covered shelter for the Marines NOW! I don’t expect the Shaitans to be stupid enough to use artillery in this gravity, but I am expecting missiles any moment now.” Sarah shouted in her inimitable style at one of her most trusted NCO.
“Two moles unpacked and have just started their job LT. The third one didn’t make it unfortunately. The Moles are working flat out ma’am.” Sgt. Jalloh replied in his heavy Central African accent.
Sarah had mixed feeling about being called a ‘ma’am’. She had gotten used to being called ‘sir’ in the US Marines, but once she transferred to USC, she had to get used to being called ‘ma’am’ once again. She understood both sides of the argument. She was torn in her preference between the two. One represented being treated exactly like a man, and the other made the distinction of her gender, it made her aware that she was equal but not the same as a man. It was an issue that had torn her for a long time.
“Not good enough Sgt. Jalloh. Have a few Marines assist the Moles. I don’t want to lose a single Marine on my watch because we couldn’t dig a shelter for them. Is that understood sergeant?” Sarah shouted.
“Loud and clear ma’am.” Sgt. Jalloh shouted back like a drill sergeant, which he was.
While Sarah was organizing the defense of the plateau, Capt. Song got busy with surveying and planning the primary task of the vanguard Marine force – sanitize the area for shuttles to land. That would enable the main invasion force to land. He was lying flat at the edge of the plateau surveying the landscape, when Sarah joined him, slowly creeping to the edge next to him.
Retribution (Shaitan Wars) Page 26