Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  Sarah had to remind herself that this place may look dark in the visible light, despite the dim illumination from the lava pits. To the Shaitans however, this place was as bright as daylight. This was part of their natural environment, light did not play a major role in the Shaitan world view. She needed to be as careful about snipers as if she was in broad daylight.

  She decided to remind her marines once more about this fact. More soldiers died in battle due to their own carelessness or self-confidence, than due to the bravery or skill of the enemy. “LT to every marine in the company. I want you all to keep your heads low and wary of snipers. Remember the Shaitans see in this place as clearly as daylight. If I see any Marine raising their heads carelessly, I will spare the Shaitans the trouble and blow off their heads myself. LT out.”

  Capt. Song couldn’t help smile, although no one saw it inside his helmet. “You can’t stop being a hard ass can you Kali?” After a pause he continued. “We both have suffered similar tragedies Kali, although on opposite sides of the Pacific. We both have similar life stories, and we have both been motivated to come here leaving everything in our lives for the same reasons. So I can say with some degree of confidence that I know what burns within you. But you don’t have to singe yourself and everybody who touches you with that fire Kali. Use that to burn the Shaitans. That is what we are all here for.”

  Sarah was about to argue with her superior, but thought better of it and just said “Yes sir.” She downloaded the map that Capt. Song was building meticulously. Being a tech-head, he was as fast as Sarah and had built a fairly detailed scan with labels of Shaitan mining, refining and manufacturing facilities as best as could be guessed.

  The complex was far more elaborate and spread out than had been thought by the planners who had bombed it. As a result it was obvious that a good part of the complex was still functional. Another realization was that the Shaitans had built smelting plants right next to the lava pits, which extracted the lava directly from the pits.

  It made eminent sense. The ore was already molten, thus saving energy in heating and melting the ore. This saved cost and time. The problem for the humans was that these smelting plants being right next to the lava pits had been invisible on the first scans that were not high quality to start with. As a result they had been missed completely by the kinetic bombs. They were all intact and fully functional.

  The map being constructed by Capt. Song showed kilometer after kilometer of refining and manufacturing factories in a dark and hellish world. If this world was as close to hell as Sarah could visualize, then surely this complex was the Devil’s workshop.

  “I will take a few more minutes to construct this detailed map and upload it back to command. In the meanwhile I want you to proceed with step two, the moment you have this place secure.” Capt. Song said.

  “Yes sir.” Replied Sarah and started sliding back from the edge, when Capt. Song added.

  “And Kali… check out the North East face, overlooking that vast lava pit. I think that is the safest egress point.”

  “Yes sir, will do.” Sarah replied and was quickly off to ensure that Step one of the plan had been completed.

  As Sarah was scampering off to kick some more Marine ass, she heard the insistent whining tone of the radar inside her head. She didn’t even have to look at the warning. She knew what it was. “Incoming! Take cover.” She shouted, and realized that she herself didn’t have a place to take cover. She didn’t have time to find one, so she dived and cursed the low gravity. She placed herself next to a rock, which barely covered her torso on the right side as she lay flat. If the missile fell close to her, then hopefully it would do so on the right side. If it fell on the left side, then she was toast.

  Sarah concentrated on the radar feed as she hit the ground. It was a missile as she had suspected. The Shaitan missile made no attempt at stealth. In fact it wasn’t in a hurry either. The missile was still rising high up, somewhere on top and middle of the plateau. Sarah knew what the purpose of this missile was. It was not meant to kill. Not yet. It was meant to scope out the Marine deployment to obtain targets. The following missiles would then finish the job.

  “Sgt. Nwosu! Where the fuck are my countermeasures?!” Sarah shouted. Sarah suddenly realized to her horror that she had forgotten to give express instructions to the sergeant to unpack the packages and deploy the countermeasures. If the sergeant had not yet unpacked them, then she would be as guilty of negligence as the sergeant.

  “Computer acquiring lock ma’am… and here they go!” Sarah heard the reassuring voice of Sgt. Nwosu to her relief.

  One of the biggest benefits of the capture of the Shaitan assault force in Mars, and especially on the Moon, was that the humans knew exactly what kind of weapons they could expect the Shaitans to use. The Shaitans had been fairly rigid in their assault doctrine, and it was hoped they would be similarly rigid and consistent with the defense doctrine. This was not the time for the enemy to get all creative on the 4th Company. So far the Shaitans were playing along with the script.

  The Shaitans didn’t use artillery, not because they were stupid or didn’t understand physics and trigonometry. The Shaitans had developed their military doctrine on low gravity worlds. Artillery depends on gravity to bring it back to the ground. On a low gravity world, artillery stays in the air far longer, and comes down far slower than Earth. In the case of this moon, at 20% the gravity of Earth, artillery would come down at a fifth of the speed of Earth.

  At that slow speed, it gives the enemy ample time to duck for cover or try to shoot the artillery down, making it an ineffective weapon. Hence artillery is not part of the Shaitan ground warfare doctrine. The same couldn’t be said about missiles. Missiles were more effective in a low gravity world, although in this airless moon, the missiles could not depend on aerodynamics to maneuver, making them sluggish in their maneuvering.

  The captured Shaitan equipment had revealed a wide array of missiles in the Shaitan armory. Thankfully there were no tactical nukes in those missiles, probably because all the ground assault missiles were short range missiles with maximum range of 15-18 Kilometers. Some weapons specialists argued that was not the reason for not having tactical nukes.

  Tactical nukes could be deployed as close as 2 Km reasonably safely, especially in an airless world. They believed that it was cultural abhorrence of the Shaitans to use nukes on an inhabitable planet. It was possible, although there was no proof of that fact. Humans hoped it was true though.

  Other than nukes though, the Shaitans had every type of missiles conceivable. They varied from small ones launched by individual Shaitan warriors, meant to hit a small target behind a thin wall, to large missiles with dedicated missile launchers that were meant as bunker busters to take out an entrenched enemy.

  The Marines and the weapons designers had used this knowledge to prepare defense strategies and countermeasures to be used in the Alpha Shaitan campaign. This is where the rubber met the road, this was the moment of truth to find out if those countermeasures really worked on the field.

  Countermeasures worked well in fooling machines, but not if there was an intelligent biological being directing the missiles. Almost all Shaitan missiles had the capability of being directed by Shaitans through a pointed laser link and a backup radio link. The first order of business for countermeasures were to disrupt that link between the missile and the Shaitan directing it.

  The small countermeasure rocket fired by the Marines streaked out at a very high speed to meet up with the Shaitan missile which had reached high above the plateau. It was now turning itself clumsily due to the absence of an atmosphere to fall down vertically on top of the heads of the Marines. The Shaitans controlling the missile would have gathered a fairly decent view of the layout and deployment of the Marines, and must have chosen a target by now.

  Halfway through its path, the countermeasure rocket started spraying atomized liquid, laced with microscopic metallic crystals. In this cold, airless environment, t
he atomized spray turned into solid and became a trailing cloud of dust that would stay in place for several minutes as its upward momentum and the low gravity balanced each other out, till gravity finally won. During those few minutes, any Shaitan missile passing through the cloud would become opaque to lasers.

  As the countermeasure rocket reached close to the incoming Shaitan missile, the rocket separated into two parts by a small explosive burst. The front half of the countermeasure rocket pushed ahead and exploded the rest of its atomized liquid forming a massive cloud that enveloped the Shaitan missile completely, cutting off laser communication between the missile and its Shaitan controller. The Shaitan missile however could still be controlled with the backup radio controls.

  To block the radio waves, the rear portion of the countermeasure rocket exploded after just over a second. The explosion would have been unimpressive to the naked eye. It did not generate too much of a bang. That was because most of its energy went to generating a massive EMP. It was not as massive as in a nuclear detonation which could fry the electronics of al nearby circuits, but massive enough to disrupt any other radio waves in the neighborhood. The metal laced cloud, only helped in enhancing the effect of the EMP on anything that the cloud shrouded, which in this case was the Shaitan missile.

  There was another silver lining to the cloud of the countermeasure rocket shrouding the Shaitan missile. The controlling laser beam was now visible in all its glory, enabling the targeting computers to trace it back to its origin. Before something could be done about the controller though, the incoming missile had to be taken care of. That is what the rockets following the first countermeasure rocket were for.

  The Shaitan missile was on its own now, and would revert to its programming to find a target. These missiles didn’t have a quantum computer or an AI running on them. Even the Shaitans couldn’t produce a Q-computer so cheaply to be able to put them on these missiles. Humans had hacked captured Shaitan missile’s firmware from their previous encounter. The programming language may have been alien to the human hackers, but the underlying logic was not.

  Any human missile programmer would have recognized the logic. The Shaitan missiles were programmed to look for very much the same things that a human missile is programmed to look for – heat differential, motion, geometric shapes, shadows and perspectives etc. Two follow on countermeasure rockets had the job of confusing the missile with a sophisticated version of flares used to confuse heat seeking missiles for over 150 years by humans, while two more rockets went to meet the Shaitan missile head on in an attempt to bring it down the old fashioned way as any other antimissile.

  Whether the Shaitan missile was confused or not, wasn’t clear, but the second antimissile was able to take it down. Sarah immediately turned her attention towards the coordinates being highlighted by the targeting computer. The coordinates of the missile controller may not be the coordinates of the missile launcher, but at the least it would be one less Shaitan combatant.

  Three smart RPGs streaked out from three different positions of Lucifer’s Anvil as the humans retaliated. The advantage of RPGs used by humans compared to larger missiles favored by the Shaitans had become obvious in their previous engagements. While missiles could carry heavier payload and wreak destruction on a larger radius, they were slower due to their mass and easier to shoot down also due to their larger size.

  A light mobile force could at best carry a few large missiles, or none at all, but RPGs could be carried in plenty owing to their small size. RPGs had rudimentary guidance compared to missiles, but they made up for it in numbers. RPGs had shorter range and lesser effective blast radius, but a skilled Marine could overcome those limitations with precise targeting.

  The Shaitans had no way to stop RPGs, and all three found their target. The huge digging machine behind which the Shaitan had sheltered was severely damaged. Whether the Shaitan was hit or not could not be known, but it would give the Shaitan pause before using that position again.

  The gates of hell seemed to have opened up, the moment the Marines fired. The area surrounding Lucifer’s Anvil, which had seemed quiet till that point of time opened up in all direction with missile fire trying to hit the Marines on top, whom the Shaitans couldn’t see in their line of sight. Some of the missiles were of the larger type as the first one, but most were smaller ones, most likely targeting based on whatever images the first missile had provided.

  Sarah could hear the platoon commanders shouting at Marines to take cover. There was no way to defend against so many missiles. Enough refuge pits had not been dug yet. Marines took cover wherever best they could.

  “Kali! We have to get a team of Marines and Predators down below now. We cannot sit this one out, we will be slowly killed one at a time if we let them launch those missiles unchallenged. Start with neutralizing the Eastern side of the plateau.” Sarah heard Capt. Song order her.

  “On it sir.” Sarah replied, then changed channel. “Sgt. Nwosu, I want two fire teams with two Predators to come with me. We climb down from the North East face. Have two more fire teams support us from the top.”

  Capt. Song as usual had been on the money with his observation and logic. Sarah admired and valued her superior officer’s observation power and tactical thinking. With a fleeting glance, Capt. Song had identified the best place to climb down the plateau. The machine cutting down this plateau had gone about its business by cutting down one vertical sections of the plateau at a time.

  The machine would cut down a small portion of a vertical column right at the bottom, such that the column above no longer had any support at the base. The weakened column, barely hanging on by sticking to the side wall of the plateau could then be easily brought down by gravity, with a little help from a small explosive if required.

  Such a column had collapsed in this sector of the plateau, leaving a concave vertical gap. If one climbed down through that concave vertical gap, one would be protected from sniper fire on either sides. The only side a climber would be exposed would be at the front. Overlooking the vertical concave gap however was a huge lava lake bubbling continuously barely 150 meters beyond the base of the plateau. There was no position for a sniper to hide in the front, unless they stood in the open in front of that lava lake.

  The two fire teams had arrived with their Predators at the same time as Sarah and immediately started driving their pitons into the ground to hold up the cables that would take them down. In this age of carbon nanotubes, a Marine’s climbing cables could be made ridiculously thin and yet support the weight of a fully armored Marine, especially in this low gravity environment.

  However the cables were 3 mm thick for two reasons, even though it meant a Marine could carry only a few hundred meters of it as part of their standard equipment. First, carbon nanotubes may be strong when pulled but are fragile when bent or when they experience shearing forces. So the carbon nanotubes were sheathed in a thin foil of titanium. Second reason was that the cables become dangerous even to an armored Marine, if they are too thin. A Marine resting his weight on a human hair thin cable by gripping it could cut right through his hands.

  The Predators went down first. They didn’t need cables to lower themselves. They had specialized equipment in their paws to climb down vertical walls. The Predators were amazing machines, the zenith of current human technology. From far, one would be forgiven if they mistook it for a cheetah or a large hound dog by watching its silhouette. Its body was of a similar size, it had four very tall legs, a snout on the forward section that could be mistaken for a head. It even had a tail!

  The Predator would be obvious as a drone, if someone saw it close enough. It had not been consciously designed to mimic any animal. It was a tribute to evolution and its amazing engineering perfection, that humans had not been able to better its design when they wanted to find solutions to problems similar to what a cheetah faces – an all-terrain surface drone that would be light on its feet with a tremendous burst of speed when needed, being able to chase a
turning and twisting prey. The tail on the Predator in fact had no other function that to give counterbalance and stability to the Predator during a high speed chase of twists and turns, exactly as a cheetah uses its tail.

  The Predator was the first mass produced human robot, which did not use a purely mechanical means of locomotion. The Predator had one of the latest human innovations built into it – piezoelectric organic plastics, or as the layman called them, synthetic muscles. It had originally been developed by the medical industry as an experimental addition to bionic arms.

  Although they are known as ‘organic’ plastics, they have very little in common with biology. The word organic came from organic chemistry, since benzene and its derivative molecules were used heavily to fabricate the material. The amazing property of this material was that it could store chemical energy, not the kind biological beings use via sugar and the ATP cycle, but a different sort altogether.

  The ‘Synthetic muscles’ could be charged by applying electrical energy, which was stored inside by changing the organic molecules inside the squishy material to higher energy less stable organic molecules. A piezoelectric excitation of the material would cause it to contract with great force, thus releasing some of the energy. This was exactly like a muscle. Contrary to popular belief, muscles can never push anything. They can only contract and pull. Our entire body is made up of muscles that can only contract and pull. Despite this we can push objects due to clever engineering.

  The synthetic muscles were an ideal choice for a drone like the Predator. They were light and more energy efficient for the kind of motion on the type of terrain the Predator was expected to move. It gave the Predator a smooth fluid motion which was extremely spooky and disconcerting to watch. Something that looked like a machine, but moved like a biological being was not an expected sight.