This means that it could not be place you could permanently place a sentry. It is cold and poisonous out here and the aliens also must be using suits for survival which have to have limited battery life. This was an assumption of course, but from whatever they had seen so far about alien technology, the aliens were more advanced than humans, but not incredibly far ahead.
The Shaitan’s engineering solutions were more efficient and robust than human engineering, but they were not that drastically different and were constrained by the same limitations as human engineering. Their suits may be better and longer lasting, but they would still run out of power and need charging.
So if there is no permanent sentry in that ditch, it would have to keep watch from the camp and quickly get there when they see someone approach the camp. Now came the tricky questions. How far could they see? When were the aliens warned about our approach? How fast can they run or whatever they do to move without being see by the approaching humans?
Those calculations will determine how far out they would have made the ditch. They would have made the ditches with those calculations in mind so that the ambusher could quickly scramble to its hiding place without being seen by the approaching humans, wait for them to pass the ditch and then ambush from behind.
Cheng decide to use human parameters for the calculations. That was the only data he had. He would later add a safety margin to it assuming that the aliens were slightly better than humans. It never hurts to overestimate the enemy, but it sure does, to underestimate them.
The first sign the aliens would have got indicating human approach would have been by radar tracking the shuttle that dropped them. He looked at the alien camp and found no tower sticking out, so the radar tracking dish has to be inside the dome, which at the maximum would be 4 to 5 meters above the ground.
The aliens had not built their sensors for ground tracking or warfare. The sensors must have been built for space tracking and communications, hence they were not set high. The shuttle was approaching at about 4 to 5 meters above the ground.
Given the smaller radius of Titan and hence sharper curvature of the horizon here his rough estimate was that they would have been able to track the shuttle not before they were about 4 Km from the alien camp.
They couldn’t however assume that the humans would stop at 2 KM and start walking. If the aliens assumed that the humans would come all the way in the shuttle, and had scrambled immediately on the radar warning, then they would have to stop no more than 200 meters before they were seen, even assuming that they move faster than us.
We humans may have surprised them when we stopped and set out on foot. Their commander from the camp could not have seen us before we were about one and a half Km away even with IR in this thick hazy atmosphere.
After initially being confused and then estimated our rate of approach, the commander could have risked his troops approaching another 200 meters closer without risking being seen themselves. That’s a total of 400 meters about the same distance he was now from the alien camp.
The aliens however wouldn’t have put ambush ditches in the exact line of approach and risked being stumbled upon by the enemy. They would have placed it wide of the anticipated line of approach. So he had to look left and right. Slightly ahead and slightly behind and sweep the entire area.
He started doing exactly that with an infrared overlay on his normal vision. However good the insulation of a suit is, there was always some leak into the environment. There was no perfect insulator in this universe, so said science.
The aliens could improve upon human insulator, but it would still leak heat, and IR was perfect in this icy cold place to detect even a degree of difference from the ambient temperature. He could actually see their own footsteps giving a faint glow in IR in the snow and ice along the path the two of them had walked.
He kept panning his field of vision. As he swept them towards the side of Marie la Fontaine, he could see her wave in irritation at the delay. Cheng ignored her and willed himself not to be distracted by her antics. He was sure she was gabbing away on the channel complaining about the delay. He was thankful that he had switched off the channel.
What was that?! He swept back to what appeared to be a small black spot. That was strange, he had not seen a black spot through IR on Titan. He saw the spot with his IR binoculars and realized it was not a black spot but a dark blue patch.
That is strange indeed. The way they have calibrated their IR settings for Titan, a blue patch means a lower than ambient temperature. Here he was looking for higher than ambient, and ends up finding a lower than ambient temperature. It was an anomaly nonetheless.
Cheng removed his binoculars and watched through his helmet, but this time he switched only to IR, cutting out the visible light. Around the dark blue patch, in extremely faint amber was a much larger patch, and the blue patch was in the center.
He now realized what he was seeing. A heat shield or a heat sink! The heat shield was taking heat generated and spreading it evenly across a much larger area to dissipate the heat in such a way that the ambient temperature in one spot would not be high, but a much larger area would have a very slight increase in temperature, which is easily missed, just like he had almost missed himself.
The faint amber area indicated the slightly increased temperature area where the heat was being shed slowly, while the blue spot was the heat shield which was actively sucking the heat out and hence was at lower temperature than the ambient.
Now that he knew what he was looking for, he quickly rescanned the entire area again and started counting such spots. One, two, four, five… he stopped at eight. There was no more point in counting and wasting time, they needed to move. He slammed his hand over the ear knob to bring him back into conference mode and interrupted whatever la Fontaine was droning on.
“Attention possible ambush detected!” He said with an urgent tone to his voice. “Major please review the IR scans”, as he quickly scanned the areas again for everyone’s benefit. “Possible heat shield/heat sink device suspected. The positions are consistent with the amount of distance they could have travelled after spotting us on radar, running and digging in without being seen. We are at about 400 meter mark. Please advise.”
Takamori replied “One moment please major” as he reviewed the recording again. All inputs to the helmet are automatically recorded in the suit for about half an hour and can be played back using a touch interface for the HUD screen.
It is similar to the ubiquitous touch interface on any screen, the only difference is that you are touching on the outer surface of the faceplate while viewing on the inner surface. The HUD recording is just like recording live TV. It continuously records data while erasing anything older than half hour, and you could rewind and review just like time shifted TV.
Cheng had already done the hard work of calculating the distance and the logic, and identifying the heat shields, so Takamori did not take more than 5 seconds. He turned to look at Alex, who gave a nod as well.
Takamori then spoke. “Both Capt. Parkinson and I concur with your assessment and advise that you withdraw slowly so as to not create any immediate trigger for them. We shall review once you are back at the base regarding our next course of action. Takamori out.”
“What are you people talking about? What ambush? I don’t see any shield or sink out here! There is nothing and no one out here! Are you people going crazy? This is no time to play war games. We need to go to the aliens and talk to them. That is our mission!” Marie la Fontaine was rambling almost incoherently.
Major Cheng despite himself was slowly losing his temper. “Madam get a grip on yourself. There are aliens waiting in ambush both to the left and right of us. We shall withdraw slowly and not give them any cause for alarm. We will report back this new disposition of the aliens, review if their intentions are hostile or if they are just being careful and then come back.”
Marie la Fontaine was now out of control. “Who are you or Takamori to make t
his decision? I am in-charge of this mission and I take the decision to go. In fact I am the only elected representative on this planet, and I am telling you right now we will go, and no more of this soldier games! No more looking for imaginary ghosts to fight. Where are these aliens of yours waiting to ambush us? Huh? There?” she pointed to the left. “Or there?” She pointed to the right.
“Oh… maybe my eyesight is poor so I can’t see. Maybe I need to go closer and see. Hey Mr. Alien!” With that Marie la Fontaine turned to the right and started running towards her death. Her move was so unexpected, and Cheng was so surprised that he did not have the time to grab hold of her and stop her, but his training told him not to follow a mad rambling woman towards danger.
He and almost all the members of team waiting behind shouted and urged her to turn back, but she kept running in leaps in the low Titan atmosphere towards the hidden aliens. Cheng had instinctively started retracing his steps anticipating trouble. There was no worse way to instigate an edgy hidden alien, not expecting to be seen, than to madly rush towards him.
Cheng did not see la Fontaine getting shot but they all heard her mad howl. It was a cry of pain, disbelief and anger all in the last moment of madness when the minds start to clear again as you face imminent death.
Cheng was still facing in the direction of la Fontaine stepping backwards and feeling guilty of abandoning the woman, however mad and distasteful she might be, when he got sight of his first alien. It was nearly 200 meters away but he could make out it was big.
It had jumped out of a ditch and in the low gravity of Titan had risen to twice the height of Marie in front of her. As the alien slowly rose and then slowly fell in an arc, Cheng had a clear sight of the shape of the alien, though not many details.
Its shape was somewhere between that of an octopus and a Jellyfish, though it reminded him more of an Octopus with its tentacles. There were many of them, he could not count from this far in his moment of surprise and panic.
From this far he could not get an estimate of the alien’s size but it was many times bigger than Marie in width and slightly taller on his legs than Marie. Marie was the only reference he had to estimate the size.
Marie la Fontaine was falling in a slow arc into a sprawl, and she was still screaming in pain, when the alien dropped in front of her and lifted her with one of its arm/limbs/tentacles whatever you called them. Cheng realized that the alien had not wrapped its limbs around her to lift her.
It was holding her lifted at an angle with the tip of his arm, which was possible if it had stabbed and gored her and was holding her with its blade. This was evident because her screaming had stopped with a shocked gasp. Marie de la Fontaine was clearly dead now.
Cheng got jolted out of his shock with a booming sound and a sharp twang somewhere near him. A soldier didn’t need to be told when he was being shot at. He immediately dived for the ground and cursed the gravity of Titan for taking ages to get him down.
He heard two more booms but not the corresponding twangs. Those bullets would have struck further away from him. The advantage of the thicker atmosphere of Titan, was that sound travelled very well and further in the atmosphere, better than earth in fact.
His external microphone was set to very high sensitivity for the First encounter, in case the aliens communicated by sound, so he could hear each gunshot clearly and judge the direction and distance well through his stereo microphones.
He knew he was getting sniped at from both left and right by many aliens. He had counted eight aliens hidden, but there could be many more. There was no way he could run back the one and a half kilometers to the shuttle without getting shot first. He needed extraction. There was no point holding back the shuttle now. There was no danger of startling the aliens any longer, they were shooting at him. So he made the call.
“Cheng to shuttle, Cheng to shuttle do you copy?” He said out of habit, before realizing that he was not using an earth military communication equipment. Lt. Ma and the shuttle pilot were already hooked on to the conference and were seeing and hearing everything that he was.
So he continued without waiting for a response. “I need extraction with suppressing fire. Hostiles on both left and right of the approach, at least 8 in number possibly more. Enemy at about 200 meters distance from me on either side, possibly approaching closer.
Be advised, enemy guns are heavy caliber, shuttle damage is possible. Marie la Fontaine is dead, shot and stabbed.” That was that, now all he had to do was lay down where he was and hope the aliens took their time in approaching him, and the shuttle arrived here fast enough.
“Shuttle acknowledges Major, we have already been on the way the moment you dived. We realized you were being shot at or already shot. Are you hurt Major?” Thank god for Lt. Ma. The kid is too smart and efficient. “No Lieutenant, and thanks for the quick thinking.”
The shuttle must have been there in 20 seconds, but it still felt like ages to Cheng. He did not hear the engines of the shuttle, but the roar of its machine gun. His heart leapt with joy at the prospect of rescue. The 50 caliber rounds of the machine gun were a match for whatever bullets the aliens were shooting with.
He had his mini sub-machine gun with him, which was not any match at all to the alien weaponry, but as he got up to run to the slowing and lowering shuttle, he decided to add his firepower to that of the shuttle’s. As he got up, he realized how badly surrounded he was. He had counted right.
There were exactly eight aliens surrounding him. I would have taken them only a few more seconds to reach him. His random blind firing in all direction over the top of his head as he lay down, had slowed down the aliens and bought him a few seconds, which probably made all the difference.
The shuttle’s machine gun was however extracting a toll out of the aliens. He could see two of the aliens were clearly down, and another two seem to be hit. Lt. Ma was at the turret doing the shooting while the pilot was struggling with the shuttle to try to bring it to a halt and land at the same time after making a mad dash at high speed.
He made a mad dash of his own towards the shuttle which was going to stop perhaps 30 to 40 meters in front of him. He was however careful in breaking his steps so as to not jump too high and present a large profile for the aliens to shoot.
It is surprisingly difficult to run fast on Titan without being propelled high. You have to scurry on your toes. He swung his arm backward and fired a burst, without looking, not in hope of hitting anything, but to add to the noise and confusion to help him escape.
As he reached the shuttle he jumped the two odd meters height to the shuttle that it was yet to descend and caught hold of the hand grab near the door. Lt. Ma who was on the other side of the same door manning the turret, saw Cheng having got on board and shouted to the pilot “Clear! Go. Go. Go. Major on board.”
The pilot didn’t need any further persuasion. He increased upwards and sideways thrust so hard that for a moment Cheng was in the danger of losing his grip and falling back, which would have been a disaster. He managed to hold on and get inside, and they were on their way flat out to the pick-up point of the eight who had been left 20 Km behind. The eight were picked up without incident and all of them rode back all the way in stunned silence.
Chapter 22
Second Contact
It had been two days since the fateful first encounter with the aliens. A full report with all the video logs had been sent to mission control. They had heard back informally through the grapevine from mission controllers that there had been recriminations flying around after the whole incident had been analyzed.
Most of the recrimination had been directed at the Europeans for sending an unqualified and probably unbalanced politician, that too as the head of the mission. It had obviously been a political decision, and everybody knew that the politics of EU was more Machiavellian than any nation.
All three mission controls had individually and collectively endorsed the course of action Takamori and Cheng had wanted to take as
the most sensible and prudent one. But for the unfortunate la Fontaine incident, they may have peacefully gone back a second time better prepared.
The incident however has occurred, and the next course of action had to be determined. A lot of expert opinion and recommendations had come in from mission control. It gave a lot of leeway to the team on Titan on how to execute, but there was the overriding directive that they had to try again to make contact. Exactly how had been left to the team on the ground.
So here they were two days later in exactly the same room where they had made the plans for their First Contact, minus one woman. Obnoxious and officious she may have been, but she still was a member of their team. There a somber mood in the room.
Takamori, who had now become the leader of the ESA-ISRO team opened the meeting with another round of condolence and prayer for the soul of Marie de la Fontaine. Then he started with the question that everyone was dreading to openly ask. How do we try to make the second contact and not expect to be killed?
“I think it is best if we start with speculation on Shaitan psychology. Dr. Sterner if you would please. I mean Dr. Mischa Sterner.” Takamori emphasized the first name with a smile. It was a regular joke in the camp getting the two Dr. Sterner mixed up resulting with hilarious outcomes.
Mischa started tentatively. It was hard to get back to business as usual after the events two days back. “I have had lots of opinions from earth xeno experts, some I agree with some not so much. I will try to put forwards a balanced opinion and not try to get my biases in.”
“We would actually like you to hear your opinions more than any other expert Dr. Sterner.” Takamori interrupted. “I am sure I am speaking for everyone in this room when I say that we value your opinion here on Titan more than any expert sitting on earth. If I am not mistaken you are earth’s leading expert anyway.”
Mischa was slightly flushed and flattered. She looked around the room at all the people gathered here with fondness, she was starting to like each and every one of them. They were slowly becoming a team, not just functionally but also emotionally.
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