Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  In a combat situation, it had been thought unlikely that the ship would require more than an hour or two of emergency acceleration. Most battles are over well before that time. The Genghis Khan had about 2 hours of emergency thruster reserves. With the captain giving the orders, that reserves started being drawn down. The process of replenishing that reserves was done by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. This required power, lots of power.

  The dilemma in front of the captain was this. If they diverted power from the fusion reactors to split water, then they would have to reduce their ion plasma thrust, which was the most efficient thrusting mechanism possible. The only reason the emergency thrusters gave higher thrust was because prior energy generated was stored in the chemical bonds by splitting water. To divert energy from ion plasma thrust to split water would not be the best use of the fixed quantity of energy being produced by the fusion engines.

  The captain instead ordered the ship to go into emergency power conservation mode. This power consumption protocol was meant for catastrophic failure of power generation. Other than combat, life support systems, everything else was shut down. Even within combat, only scanners and sensors operated for the moment. Lights and even air circulation was at the minimum. The ship resembled a spooky ghost ride.

  The only thing available in plenty was heat. Human fusion reactors ran at slightly less than 50% energy efficiency, which meant that the rest of the energy was released as heat. This heat was a lot more than what was needed to heat up the ship. Most of the waste heat was ejected out into space by heating up the skin of the ship in non-combat situations, or storing in heat sinks temporarily in combat situations.

  With all internal systems running on batteries, waste heat disposal was not running as well. The emergency power conservation mode was meant to be running, when the fusion reactors were not. So there was no provisions made in the protocol to dump heat from the reactors, which was now circulating in the atmosphere more and more.

  The ship was slowly turning into a sauna. Engineers were struggling overtime to build makeshift heat conduits to dump the waste heat outside, but the temperature was rising despite their valiant efforts. The captain had permitted crew to dress down as much as they wanted. Sartorial propriety was the least of his concerns right now. All he cared about was to split as much water as possible without diverting energy from the ion plasma engines.

  Two hours before contact, Genghis Khan went into condition 1 alert. It must be the first time in USC history that the crew were glad for a condition 1 alert, so that they could get into their suits. Navy combat suits may be light weight affair, but they had everything inside to keep a human alive, including constant temperature. The suits could not cool the crew down, since they did not have air conditioning, but the constant circulation inside made it feel like heaven inside the suit, after the sauna that was Genghis Khan.

  In the 65 hours available to the Genghis Khan, the crew had been able to split most of the water available to them and use it for emergency acceleration, without diverting any power from their ion plasma engines. That made all the difference. It seemed like Tango-6 had used up all its emergency thrust fuel. The emergency thrusters of Tango-6 fell silent half an hour before contact. It had been running constantly for 7 hours. There was no point faking it, so Tango-6 must be completely dry on emergency thruster fuel.

  It didn’t seem like Tango-6 would be able to catch up with the Genghis Khan. The human ship’s superior acceleration and longer endurance on emergency acceleration had ensured that Tango-6, despite throwing every ounce of acceleration it had, would not be able to catch up. Unfortunately the same could not be said about the missiles launched by Tango-6.

  Tango-6 would miss Genghis Khan by a whisker, just a few hundred kilometers according to the latest calculations. However it was not Tango-6 but its missiles that needed to make contact with Genghis Khan. Shaitan missiles which had enough fuel to run for hours, had no problem keeping up with their mother ship, when they started being launched well in advance.

  In all Tango-6 launched 96 missiles, which was all that must have been left in its arsenal after the first engagement at the ‘Watering Hole’. 96 missiles might sound like too little a number for a large warship like Tango-6, but one had to remember that these were monster 400 MT missiles. 96 of those missiles weighed more than a thousand human 2.1 MT missiles.

  This is where the human decision to keep their warheads, and hence missile lower in yield always paid dividend. It takes the same effort to kill a 2.1 MT missile, as it take to kill a 400 MT missile in a combat. It is a better to have lots of smaller missiles rather than a few large ones. There is better chance of some of the getting through.

  It was at that point, about 10 minutes before contact, the captain of Genghis Khan made a decision which would be one of the most debated and second guessed decision in the corridors of the admiralty and the fraternity of the navy. Till this date, there has been no consensus whether Capt. Wen Xu Lai made the correct decision given what he knew at that time. What everyone agreed though, was the outcome was unprecedented.

  Human point defense system had added one new trick to their arsenal since the last time it had been needed against the Shaitans over two decades ago – lasers. Amazingly the ships of the 5th fleet had not needed to use them till now, despite engaging with the Shaitans twice and almost wiping out the Shaitan fleet. It would be needed now.

  Unfortunately Capt. Lai had no precedence to know how effective the laser point defense system would be against the Shaitan monster missiles. To be safe, he had to go with the assumption that the Shaitans would have a counter to the laser point defense system, since they themselves used such a system. Whether that counter was a Shaitan equivalent of an AWPS system, or something else, the captain would find out very soon.

  However he had to go with the operative assumption that 0% of the Shaitan missiles would be killed by the human laser point defense system. It was not an unduly pessimistic assumption. Shaitan laser point defense system on an average was only 5% effective against human missiles due to AWPS.

  Thus Capt. Lai had to ensure that there were enough antimissiles out there in play to ensure that each and every one of those 96 Shaitan would be destroyed by them. Unlike the Shaitan warships, the human warships would not be able to survive even a single hit from one of those monster missiles. The two ships were approaching each other almost at right angles, which made it hard for a missile to target a ship. Unfortunately it made it even harder for antimissiles to target a missile.

  Both the ships had unloaded their offensive missiles first, since these missiles have more fuel, so they would be able to keep up with their mother ships as one decelerated and the other accelerated. Missile duel doctrine dictated that all the missiles get to their target ship at the same time, so they had to gather and be bunched together in space as they are launched. Once all the missiles have been released, then they start towards their target at the same time.

  In the case of the human missiles there was the additional constraint of the missiles needing to be reasonably close to their mother ship, if it wanted the advantage of Q-computer targeting. This meant that it made sense for Capt. Lai to let Tango-6 come as close to it as possible, now that evasion was not an option.

  400 missiles per ship had been more than adequate to foil a 6 Shaitan warship point defense system. It should have been more than adequate for a single Shaitan point defense system. However Capt. Lai did not want to take a chance. He accumulated 450 nukes in the space outside his ship. Unfortunately those missiles were not coasting silently. They could not if they wanted to be next to the decelerating Genghis Khan.

  The missiles were using their thruster, which meant that Tango-6 knew exactly how many missiles were aimed at it. Some argue, that this fact must have forced the captain of Tango-6 to take the decision that he did. One would never know. The reason for the decisions of Capt. Lai however is well documented, for he documented it in his voice logs.

  H
e had decided to release 6 waves of antimissiles, each wave consisting of 96 antimissiles. That way he could ensure that he would almost certainly get each and every missile. The probability of a missile surviving 6 antimissiles one after the other is extremely low, even when approached at a 90° angle. He expected that a lot of the antimissiles would remain unused after the battle, which he would need to recover. Otherwise he would be dangerously low on antimissiles after the battle. He was confident of winning this battle and expected to survive, and hence was planning ahead.

  In order to ensure that both his offensive missiles as well as his antimissiles got their Q-computer calculations as fast as possible from Genghis Khan, he ordered cessation of deceleration about 10 minutes before contact. This would enable Tango-6 to come within tens of kilometer of the Genghis Khan. There was no danger of collision, unless the captain of Tango-6 was a suicidal Jihadi. Even then the probability of the two ships colliding was so low as to be essentially zero.

  Another bonus of ceasing deceleration as far as Capt. Lai was concerned, was that the antimissiles he was releasing right now, would not need to expend their fuel, so that any that remained after the battle, would have enough fuel to return back to the ship.

  The Shaitan missiles arrived first, about 5 minutes before Tango-6 was to cross the path of Genghis Khan. The Shaitan missiles had far faster acceleration than their mother ship, so they had raced ahead by design, to keep some distance with from Tango-6 as they exploded. The 96 missiles were arranged in a rough matrix, each missile being two kilometers apart from its neighbors, to ensure that even if one of them exploded on being killed by an antimissiles, the neighboring missiles would not be damaged by the heat. The tough exterior of a Shaitan missile could take another of its brethren’s explosion, as long as it was more than 2 Km away.

  The humans were pleasantly surprised with the result of their laser point defense system. The Shaitan missiles did have a foil against laser attack as had been suspected. The outer skin ablated to expose a shiny coat of metal, which reflect most of the light. This was very similar in concept to the coating on human ships which would ablate way to expose the shiny skin underneath.

  However the missiles did not spin like the AWPS system to try and equalize the temperature. Instead the missiles depended on their tough exterior skin to hold on long enough for the metal skin to spread the temperature all around the body. The skin being tougher and thicker, as well as the entire missile being bigger gave them ample leeway to take the punishing effect of the laser’s heat that was not reflected away by the shiny skin.

  Despite this, the human laser point defense system killed 10 of the 96 missiles. That was a 10% effectiveness, double of the effectiveness of the Shaitan laser point defense system on human missiles. For a change, the humans had an advantage in some aspects of weaponry. All but one of the remaining 86 missiles were killed by the time the 4th wave of antimissiles hit. The lone missile was killed by the 5th wave, a bit too close for comfort, but overall the human point defense system had been spectacularly successful.

  This one on one battle proved that the Avenger class ship had not just achieved parity with a Shaitan warship, but had probably exceeded it. This fact was only going to be further highlighted by the 450 human missiles which had now started racing towards Tango-6. The problem of the Shaitan warship was not that its point defense system was less capable. The problem of Tango-6 was that to stop 450 missiles, it would realistically need thousands of antimissiles, a number which it clearly did not have.

  Any captain watching those 450 missiles approach his ship would know that he is looking at the face of approaching doom. A human captain would have taken the opportunity to address his crew and perhaps said something in the vein of “Gentlemen, it has been an honor serving with you.” Perhaps the Shaitan captain did the same, but what he did next was a shock and a surprise. Something that he must have prepared with his engineers as an extreme contingency.

  The crew of Genghis Khan rarely looked at the external telescope view displayed on a screen in the Bridge ever since they had entered the Alpha Shaitan system. It was so dark in the spectrum of visible light out here, that the screen almost always was dark. There had rarely been anything worthwhile to be observed on that screen. That changed now, and the bright orange glow on the screen caught everyone’s attention.

  The telescope had been automatically focused on Tango-6 by the computer, as part of its program. In that glow, Tango-6 was now clearly visible. It was the rear section that was glowing the hottest parts were towards the stern, which was almost white hot, while as one progressed towards the bow it got cooler. About one third of the ship was glowing, with the coolest parts glowing red.

  “Someone talk to me! What the hell is happening?!” Capt. Lai shouted.

  “Sir, Tango-6 seems to be on fire. It ain’t us sir. We have not even touched it yet!” The weapons officer shouted.

  “I can see that lieutenant. I want answers. What the hell is happening to Tango-6?” Capt. Lai shouted back irritated with Lt. Da’ Silva.

  “Sir! My scopes show that Tango-6 is accelerating at a rate… it is off the charts! It is almost like a… like an explosive acceleration… but a controlled explosion… a barely controlled explosion!” It was the navigator, who must be reading the data in his head, for his eyes could not tear themselves from the screen showing the spectacular sight of a glowing Shaitan warship.

  As the crew watched the glowing ship for a few more seconds, in an epiphany of sorts, Capt. Lai realized what was happening. He pulled the schematic diagram of the updated trajectory of Tango-6, which was refreshed by the computer second by second. One look at it and he was convinced he knew what Tango-6 was up to.

  “Emergency thrust, full speed now!” He shouted to the helmsman.

  “Which direction sir?” He asked.

  Capt. Lai gritted his teeth and shouted. “Any damn direction, damn it, just go… go… go…!”

  The crew of Genghis Khan felt the mild gravity of emergency acceleration, a few seconds before the human missiles were about to reach Tango-6. Some of them had been killed by the Shaitan antimissiles, but there were hundreds remaining that would annihilate Tango-6. The captain of Tango-6 however did not give humans that pleasure.

  Tango-6 spontaneously disintegrated with hundreds of micro explosions all around its entire length and breadth. It almost looked like a scene from a controlled demolition of a building with hundreds of small charges placed at critical structural supports to bring down a building gracefully. In this case the small explosions had the effect of tearing the Shaitan warship into tens of thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand pieces.

  The pieces were surprisingly even sized, as if someone had engineered them to be so. The pieces of Tango-6 gracefully spread out slowly roughly in a spherical cloud. That cloud was coming directly at Genghis Khan!

  The emergency thrusters of Genghis Khan were straining to take it out of the path of the cloud, but it was too late. The probability of Tango-6 while intact, being able to hit Genghis Khan may have been next to zero, but at least one of those pieces of Tango-6 hitting Genghis Khan was almost certain.

  At half a percent of the speed of light, a single piece weighing a ton or more would blow Genghis Khan to smithereens. In the end, two pieces managed to hit Genghis Khan. Two clouds of ghostly debris went their own way, as if two ghost had met at a crossroad, and then gone their own way again. No piece of Genghis Khan would ever be found, as it floated away in empty space for eternity.

  A few hours later, the crews of the Avenger and the Redeemer watched the feed of the Genghis Khan in stunned silence, till it cut off abruptly. Tango-6 had come prepared for a suicide mission if need be. The Shaitans had overloaded the fusion reactor by changing its geometry deliberately. It had turned everything inside Tango-6 at the aft section into plasma, which got channeled through the stern of the ship, converting it into temporary explosive thrust. This had enabled Tango-6 to catch up with the Genghis Khan.

&nbs
p; As Tango-6 reach the right point, the demolition charges were triggered. They were demolition charges in the true sense, engineered and planted to break the ship into uniform pieces big enough for a single one to kill a ship, and yet small enough to have tens of thousands of pieces. The Genghis Khan never stood a chance.

  Capt. Brogan was devastated. He did not care about his clever plan any longer. He had just lost his best friend that he had within a trillion miles distance, and his clever plan had not been able to save his friend. Something very deep had changed within Capt. Brogan that day. He started looking at war, tactics and command in a very different light. That day Capt. Brogan grew a bit older.

  Admiral Dar had many regrets in life, this incident would be one of the most notable of them. He was mentally tortured by many ifs and buts. Only if he had done this or that differently… All of that second guessing was a waste, for none of that would bring back the crew of the Genghis Khan. He didn’t want to speak to anybody at that moment. He just wanted to go back to his bunk and curl up, but duty demanded that he speak to Capt. Sequeira.

  “Captain. You will have to finish Wen and the Genghis Khan’s unfinished business. You will have to chase down that bogey. I know this must be a hard time for you and your crew too Bruno, but duty calls. Please prepare to set out within the hour captain.”

  Chapter 21

  Stranded on the other side

  Jehannum, Alpha Shaitan System

  November 2109

  It is now generally accepted by historians that due to their overconfidence, and the fact that they had not had a difficult alien race to fight for many eons now, the Shaitan played their hand too early. If not for that simple fact the outcome of the struggle between Humans and Shaitans would have been very different. Humans would have been one more race added to the long list that the Shaitans ‘exterminated’ as their holy duty.