The need to have fluid motion meant that the Predator could not have a metal skin. It had raised doubts about the survivability of a Predator in a battlefield environment. Synthetic muscles could however keep functioning even if they were pierced by a bullet, albeit at a lower efficiency and force. That was the advantage of using materials rather than machines for motion. A machine either worked or didn’t. Materials on the other hand, degraded on being damaged but kept functioning.
The skin was made out of hard rubberized metal meshes, which other than being flexible had advantages of their own. The skin may have had only a third of the stopping power of equal weight metal, but gave a huge amount of shock resistance to the drone.
The Predator could take blunt force impact much better than a comparable metal drone, as well as jump from a much higher height without any damage. The Predator was as close to the locomotion of a living animal that the humans had created to date. It was amazing and at the same time disconcerting to see machines deploy their claws from their paws and dig them into the sheer walls they were climbing down, just as a cat would do as it climbed down a tree.
The two Predators slid down the wall at a fair clip because of another surprise – their weight. Despite the appearances of a cheetah, the predator weighed nothing like it. They weighed more like a bull. The Predator was not made out of organic material. Inside, the Predator was packed tightly with ammunition and fuel. The Predators slid down the first 100 odd meters, occasionally lifting their paws and placing them at a better vantage point to get a better grip. The last 50 odd meters of the wall, the predators simply jumped.
In the fifth of Earth gravity, it was like jumping 10 meters, which was an easy task for these drones. They landed on their feet with almost a similar elegance as a cat, which was not surprising because the human engineers had modelled their motion on a cat. The predators went into a crouch immediately on landing and each found a rock behind which they hid themselves, again eerily like a cheetah would do on an African savannah.
There had been no potshots taken at the predators as they climbed down, which gave the Marines confidence that no one was observing inside this hollow vertical tunnel like structure. They made their way down as fast as the low gravity of the moon would allow, scraping their boots on the wall to slow down their fall once in a while.
The moment the Marines hit the ground and had found cover, they released their spiders working on a human hair thin leash through which it communicated back. The target of the spiders were the nearby structure from where some of the firing was originating. There were large excavation machines parked over 200 meters from where the Marines had taken cover, and a typical mound structure behind the machines, which the humans had come to recognize as the entrance to a Shaitan made habitat, just like the ones the Shaitan had made on Titan and Mars.
There were four Shaitans hiding behind those enormous machines. The machines were too huge for RPGs to blow them up. There was only one way to ferret out those Shaitans. There were only two tech-heads in the group, Sarah was one of them. This was a job for the tech-heads. Humans are wired instinctively to be able to judge and throw objects for Earth’s gravity.
It takes months, years or forever for a human to adjust to another gravity and yet be able to throw accurately. This the Marines had found out from their training camps in Mars and the Moon. A tech-head can however let their neural pathways be controlled temporarily by their suit computer to be able to throw accurately as the computer calculates. The two tech-heads did exactly that.
The frag grenades lobbed by the Marines flew in a slow arc of low gravity, high above the machines and landed very near the four Shaitan hiding behind. The Shaitans were aware of the grenades being thrown. They must have sensed the slowly falling grenades, but couldn’t shoot down something so small, so they scooted and scrambled from their positions.
Two of the Shaitans ran back in the direction of the habitat entrance, while the other two ran in a perpendicular direction towards another set of machines, not as large as the ones behind which they had been hiding. The two Shaitans running towards the habitat entrance came into clear sight of the Marines on top of the plateau, and were easy meat for the plasma rifles of the Marines.
Plasma rifles were a more effective weapon in an airless environment to kill a Shaitan than bullets. The plasma capsules weigh just 30 grams, far lighter than the extra heavy caliber bullets needed to kill a Shaitan. A Marine can carry a lot more of these plasma capsules. Being so light, they can be expelled from the barrel at over five times the speed of the fastest bullets. There is no air to slow down the lightweight object. The fast speed and the low gravity means that there is hardly any curve in the trajectory of the bullet. It almost feels like a light speed laser weapon.
When the plasma hit the two Shaitans, it hardly penetrated their robust flesh, but a large part of its suit was burnt and opened up to empty space. Each of the Shaitans received three hits. Amazingly one of the Shaitans still managed to make it to the entrance of the habitat. Sarah sent the two Predators after the other two Shaitans. She realized that the two Predators were as much of a bait as they were hunters.
The Predators came into their element in this chase. This is what their creators had designed them for – hunting down Shaitans. A human could never hope to match the agility and speed of a Shaitan, but the Shaitans in turn could never hope to match the agility and speed of a Predator.
Within four seconds, the Predators were sprinting at their top speed. On Earth that top speed was 120 kilometers per hour, out here it was about the same. Lower gravity does not help speed up horizontal motion, it actually produces more difficulty in turning, since the foot and paws no longer have the same amount of purchase to change direction.
Within seconds of the Predators exposing themselves in an open chase, all hell broke loose. Every Shaitan hiding in every nook and corner on that side of the plateau opened up their plasma guns. This was exactly what Sarah had hoped for. Interestingly the Shaitans still used their projectile guns firing bullets, alternating with their plasma guns in a pattern that had been observed on Mars and the Moon.
Humans now knew the reasons for this. Unlike the human plasma rifles, which used plasma capsules that were ignited just before firing, the Shaitan plasma guns generated the plasma from their suit battery pack. This meant that it took some time to recharge the plasma before the Shaitan plasma gun could be fired again. Following standard doctrine, the Shaitans alternated their projectile guns with their plasma gun.
The human system had the advantage of being able to rapidly fire plasma rounds, while the Shaitan system had the advantage of not having to carry ammunition and essentially having and inexhaustible supply as long as the suit could be charged.
The Predator skin had the same plasma armor as the marines, and as such were able to take the hits that it was receiving without being slowed down. It did not experience any pain. The synthetic muscles would however take damage if this rate of fire continued, which would degrade the Predator’s speed and motion. The two Predator drones were however recording every hit they received and back calculating the point of origin, which was being relayed to the Marines. That was the primary objective of sending the two Predators out in the open.
The amount of fire on the Predators started reducing, just as they turned the corner to catch sight of their quarry. The suppressing fire of the Marine RPGs and plasma rifles were having its effect. Till now the Predators had helped identify over 15 Shaitan firing positions. It was a pity that the Shaitans could not be terrified the same way as humans could be, it would have been a very good psychological weapon otherwise as to what followed. The fate of the two Shaitans would be etched in the minds of the rest of the Shaitans for some time to be sure.
The snout like protrusion on the ‘head’ of the Predator was the extension of barrels that emanated from the torso of the Predator. There were three barrels in all. One was gun barrel that could fire the same caliber bullets as the Marines’ g
uns, the second was a plasma rifle barrel and the last one below these two barrels was a shorter but thicker grenade launcher barrel.
The Predators opened up their gun and their plasma rifles simultaneously on their individual quarry. The machine gun could fire at an alarming rate for such a large caliber bullet, possible because a Predator could dig its claws into the ground to anchor itself from the recoil. The ten odd bullets and the six plasma rounds that each Predator pumped into each of the Shaitans was an overkill in itself, but the Predators didn’t stop there.
Like a bloodhound in a hunting frenzy, it rushed forward and leapt on the dying Shaitan and opened up its melee weapons. A Predator had two three inch claws curved behind and two three inch claws curved forward on each of its four paws. The opposable claws enabled it to grab or cut through things. Those 16 claws were also a very adequate weapon to slash through the flesh of a Shaitan.
Somehow not satisfied with the chunks of flesh it was gouging out of the Shaitans, the Predator had also deployed its Gladius and its spikes. The one meter long blade reminiscent of the eponymous Roman Gladius short sword impaled into the flesh of the feebly struggling Shaitan, while the spikes which had emerged from all around the body of the Predator kept puncturing the suit in a hundred different places.
When the algorithms inside the Predator had determined that the Shaitan was dead, it moved to look for the next closes Shaitan hiding in the darkness. It was a common misconceptions that Shaitans fought like robot feeling no fear or pain, who would simply stand and fight until they died. This misconception was further strengthened by the way Type-B warrior Shaitans fought, when given orders to stand ground.
The Type-B warrior Shaitans had been bred for war and trained in warrior discipline, and then further given orders to hold a position. Only then did they fight without withdrawing even at the cost of their lives. It is true that the Shaitans did not feel fear and pain the same was as humans did, but as any organic being, self-preservation was programmed into their genes. As intelligent beings they were well able to evaluate a dangerous situation and retreat to a safer situation.
AS-d was primarily a mining and a heavy industries complex populated by what the Shaitans called ‘Builders’. These were the equivalent of engineers, metal and construction worker etc. All of them were Type-A Shaitans, who had no training in warfare.
Till about two months ago, there were hardly any warriors on this moon. It was only in the last two months, after the defeat of the Shaitan fleet on the Water hole, a few thousand Type-B warriors had been transported here from Jehannum to shore up the defenses in the unlikely case that humans attacked AS-d. Most of the warriors had concentrated their defensive positions on Jehannum, which was the logical target.
The Shaitans had been surprised and dismayed when humans chose to attack AS-d instead of Jehannum. The Shaitans no longer possessed any space capability to support the moon, so the few thousand warriors were all that was available to them. As a result a lot of the Shaitans fighting were Type-A civilian Shaitans.
Unfortunately for two of those civilian Shaitans, the next target chosen by the Predators were them. The two Shaitans were all by themselves hiding in a niche with no backup from their comrades. It didn’t take a tactical genius to figure out what chances those two Shaitans stood against the Predators. The two Shaitans broke cover and ran for the entrance to the habitat.
“Damn, those Predators are in their default settings. Dial down their parameters to wound. We don’t have time for those babies to indulge in a gore fest… and put them back into stealth mode, we can’t have them destroyed so soon.” Sarah ordered.
The Predators became super-efficient after the command. The two predators chased the two Shaitans only till they could put four bullets and four plasma rounds into them, and then went into a crouch behind a piece of machinery, surveying from their vantage point silently, waiting for their next command.
Sarah and her two fire teams started their progress on all fours, towards the point where the four Shaitans had been hiding, assisted by suppressing fire from the Marines high above on the plateau. Once they reached the heavy machinery they were able to take better stock of their objective, the habitat. They sent their spiders forward to recce the habitat.
The habitat was about 150 meters from the heavy machinery behind which they had taken shelter. There was no cover in between. If they had to approach the habitat, they would have to risk running in the open, which was definitely not advisable. The spiders revealed that the entire habitat was surrounded by hatches, which were not visible till one was right on top of them. Sarah suspected that she knew their purpose. She consulted with Capt. Song, and they decided it was worth the sacrifice of the two predators to confirm their suspicion.
The spiders went round the entire habitat to recce it completely. It had the same layout plan from the outside as all other Shaitan habitats they had observed before on Titan and Mars, except for the hatches. All the six spiders then descended to the habitat entrance visible to the Marines and waited in front of the airlock. If the Shaitans were consistent in their habitat construction as they have been till now, then this would be a simple sliding door with no security check.
The airlock would not be a double door affair like human airlocks. Rather the air pressure behind the door would be extremely low, so only a small whiff of air would be lost when one opens the door. The air pressure would gradually increase as one went lower and deeper into the habitat. There would be individual doors in various chambers which would act as the second door of the airlock, behind which Shaitans would maintain the proper air pressure.
The problem was that the spiders didn’t have the strength to open the doors. The predators would either remedy that situation or prove Sarah’s suspicion right. She gave the orders to activate the two Predators. The Predators sprang to life taking light steps to ensure that they don’t rise too high in this low gravity. Flying in the air makes one’s trajectory predictable, which cannot be changed until one lands back on the surface. This make the object an easy target to shoot down.
The Predators made their way towards the entrance of the habitat randomly twisting and turning in an uncanny imitation of a cheetah. The Predators had hardly gone 15 meters when the hatches dotting the circumference of the habitat popped up. Automated gun turrets as well as point defense lasers that had been used against them as the Marines had landed emerged and started shooting at the two predators.
The Marines had been ready for this, although the gun turrets deployed a lot faster after the hatches popped out than they had hoped for. A stream of heavy rockets, the heaviest firepower that the Marines had, were targeted at the gun turrets. The gun turrets surprised the Marines.
Within fractions of a second of the Marines launching their rockets, the guns snapped back into the hatches and were gone! The rockets ended up blasting on the top of the hatches on the floor harmlessly. At the same time, other hatches popped up to launch missiles which were headed straight for the Lucifer’s Anvil plateau. It was the turn of the Marines to duck for cover and release countermeasures.
The few seconds that the gun turrets and lasers had been active, they had shredded one of the Predators to pieces, while the other one had lost two of its limbs. Surprisingly, it was still able to crawl and made it to the depressed entrance of the habitat. It was able to perform one last act before it died completely. It was able to open the sliding door with its opposable claws for the spiders to enter.
“Kali. I am sending a platoon down to support you, along with a few Predators. Clear the 15 identified Shaitan positions. Those Shaitans are directing the missiles. I want them taken out. Without them the Shaitans will be firing those missiles blind.” Sarah heard her commanding officer’s orders.
“Aye sir.” Sarah replied as she sensed from the corner of her eye two more predators who crouched right behind her eerily like two hunting dogs waiting behind their master to be unleased. Sarah made sure that the Marines remained behind heavy machinery a
nd out of the line of sight of those big guns surrounding the habitat as they went about their task of ferreting out the hidden Shaitans directing the missiles.
“Man down!” Sarah heard and she looked around to check who had gotten hit, only to realize that the shout had come from someone on the plateau not below. Marines were getting hit by those missiles and dying. It brought a sense of urgency to her task. Thirty Marines and six Predators fanned out to hunt and kill the 15 identified Shaitan positions. Unfortunately not all entrenched Shaitans had been identified, especially on the opposite side of the plateau.
It took the Marines over half an hour to clear the entire area of Shaitans. In total there had been 32 Shaitans surrounding the plateau, out of which Sarah and two fire teams had initially killed 6. The Marines lost 4 of their own in killing the rest of 26. Sarah’s heart sank every time she heard a ‘man down’, but realized that the human casualties were actually low given the fact that they were assaulting hidden Shaitan. After she had seen all the dead Shaitans, she realized why. Only 8 of the 32 Shaitans were warriors, the rest were all Type-A. This Shaitan force had been composed mainly of amateurs.
On top of the plateau the Moles had finished digging shelters for all the Marines, but not before 4 had died there and two were injured and out of action. The Shaitans had stopped launching missiles from the silos for the moment, so the Marines had a reprieve.
Sarah took the lull to contact Capt. Song. “Sir I believe that under those hatched we have identified the Shaitan defensive batteries. If we can somehow neutralize those then we would have completed our mission and cleared the way for the shuttles to land. Problem is that I can see no way with our light weaponry to be able to do that.”
“You are almost right Kali. I guess with your fire fight, you were too busy to look at the picture being drawn by the six spiders. There are some more scattered hatches further out from the habitat, but they are all connected through underground tunnels from the habitat. You are right, I can’t see a way to frontally assault those guns and silos without getting slaughtered. Then again we don’t have to always think conventionally do we?” Capt. Song replied.
Retribution (Shaitan Wars) Page 28