It is tight fit, unlike our suits, which have some amount of play. I have a theory why it needs to be tight fit for them, which I will come to shortly. I want you to see the entire model once carefully.” She manually turned the model in every direction including upside down. “Is there something that seems to be missing?” Violet asked.
“The head?” Leanna guessed.
“The head is an artefact of our own evolutionary path. It is not really necessary for it to be in the form we and many animals have, what is important is only the functions the head performs. It could just as easily be inside the body.” Replied Violet.
“The penis? Yeah definitely that and the balls too, or they are seriously under-formed. I bet this dude has some complex issues with the ladies.” Jorge finished with a wince as he got a rough elbow poked into his ribs by his wife sitting next to him.
He grinned sheepishly and Mischa said “Sorry, continue Dr. Manning, don’t bother about this jerk. He forgot to grow up after college.”
Everyone had a good humored laugh as Violet continued. What is missing from the suit, and we have looked very hard, is a transparent window. If this creature needs to see visible or even IR or UV light, it needs something transparent though the suit.
We first explored the possibility that there might be a small hole or holes tucked away somewhere we may not have seen well. But we looked at the close up of the images at the moment la Fontaine was stabbed.
The alien was facing her in the sense, it was the direction it was coming in and could accurately aim and stab her, so there had to be a direct point of view at that point of the alien body. There were none!
So the alien can perform actions as if it is seeing things, yet it has no eyes. That is when I got thinking about what kind of senses a creature living in dark underground tunnels would develop for sensing the world around it and for communication with others of its kind?
Since light was out, that left only the other four sense, all of which work in the dark. When these creatures developed intelligence, they would have discovered that other senses were possible, just like we discovered that electric current can be used for sensing as Sharks do, and later we discovered that radio signals could also be used for seeing the universe and communication.
How did we harness to use these new senses that our body could not sense? We made instruments which would translate these form of signals into a form our body could sense. So we made radio receivers, which would translate the radio signals to sound. We shifted the frequency of infrared signals to colors, so that we could see in IR, something done routinely in our suit helmets.
When the aliens figured out how useful light is for sensing, they would have done the same. I suspect that they use their entire suit which is lined with photoreceptors to capture light and translate it inside into some sense, which their brains can process and create an image.
That may be the reason why aliens were such a poor shot. They did shoot Marie but that was at point blank range. Major Cheng was by his own estimate about 200 meters from the aliens when they started shooting him.
They took several shots at him while he was standing, and even while he ducked, his profile may have been low, but there were eight of them shooting constantly, yet not a single bullet hit him, and most missed him by a wide margin.
I consulted Leanna and she assures me that this is extremely poor shooting by professional soldiers’ standards, especially when they were dug in a low center of gravity position and presumably had the Major in their cross hairs for a long time. It would be, I am told extremely poor shooting even by amateur standards.
They are not directly seeing us. The light from our body is being translated into probably sound or taste signals, which they are interpreting as spatial co-ordinates and shooting. It is bound to be inaccurate compared to our eyes which feed the information from the photons directly to our brain.
The rest of my analysis on their body is fairly speculative and is well known to you all, so I will not dwell on them, you have already seen some of the technical estimations on their strength and speed. They are strong, very strong.
Stronger than many humans put together with those massive six limbs of theirs which can be dexterously used both as hands and leg. Do not, repeat do not ever get into a wrestling match with them.” Violet said with a smile injecting humor into the room. Mischa noted how Violet had changed in the last few days, she was actually making an attempt at humor and being sociable.
“We don’t know their top speed yet, but the footage from the shuttle camera suggests that they can run faster than humans.” Violet concluded.
“Thank you ladies for that informative session. I must say I am always amazed how much scientists can learn from small details we laymen seem to miss. We however still need to decide our next course of action. We have been given the directive to attempt another contact, although they have left it to us how to go about it, so suggestions would be most welcome.” Takamori looked around for any speaker.
“The most important thing I took out from Mischa’s presentation was timing. It seems timing will be everything. The way she put it, they are preparing for war either inside the habitat of theirs, or waiting out for their ship to return. Either case cannot be good for us.
It is better for us to attempt making the contact as soon as possible, when they perceive themselves at their weakest. It gives them the greatest incentive to seek peace, and us the greatest possibility of avoiding a war.” Alex pitched in his opinion. Everybody seemed to be in agreement on that issue, so the timing was settled.
The problem where no one had any definitive answer was how to approach the camp, and what to do if they were able to reach there unmolested. After some debate it was decided that if they were able to reach the edge of the Shaitan camp without any incidence, then they would follow the original protocol.
“I would like to suggest a small modification to the original First Contact protocol in light of the changed circumstances.” Ramesh spoke up after being silent through the entire conversation and all eyes turned towards him.
“My opinion is that the two member delegation approaching the aliens should consist entirely of professional soldiers, and not have any civilians. In fact, we may even want to consider increasing the number from two to a higher number, to be able to give better mutual support in case they have to retreat under fire.
Mischa is one of my oldest and closest friend, and I am worried about her safety, but it is not the reason I say this. It is not that I value the life of a soldier any less. I think in this changed circumstances, they are the best persons for the job.
Any expert opinion that Mischa may have by observing the actions of the Shaitans, she could always give by watching the helmet camera of the approaching delegation.” Ramesh said.
It was an opinion most of the military personnel shared but were wary to air lest they antagonize the civilian scientists. They were relieved that the opinion came from a civilian. There was some debate and some token objection from Mischa but in the end, the logic was undeniable, and it was agreed.
The military personnel debated what would be good tactical number of people who can mutually support themselves if they came under fire, what formation they should use for the approach etc. They had to balance that with the need to keep the number of people approaching to the minimum.
In the end it was decided that they would add one more person to the lead delegation. A single person would be in front concentrating ahead, and two would follow a few meters behind keeping an eye on the flank and rear.
The civilians would be dropped at the 20 Km mark as earlier and be in touch with approaching delegation as before. If things went well they would approach later. That was the easy part to decide, what was far more difficult to decide was how would the First contact delegation of three approach the Shaitan camp?
Should they go all the way by snowmobile, or should they fly in shuttle like last time? Should there be additional firepower backing the
m up, and if so how should the backup troops be deployed?
It was obvious that the shuttle had been detected, most probably by radar, as it approached. They knew the maximum height of the Shaitan camp and the curvature of Titan, they could easily calculate the range of detection of radar.
They decided to land the shuttle beyond the range of the radar. It would be a long walk for the delegation, but with able bodied soldiers and the light gravity of Titan, it won’t be a big problem for them.
Given that the last encounter didn’t go well, and the humans ended up killing a few of the aliens themselves, the aliens were likely to give them a hostile reception irrespective of what their original intentions were.
It was agreed that it would be prudent to have a backup force to help extricate the delegation, in case they got into trouble. The planning for the backup force was left exclusively to the military leaders, primarily Alex, Takamori and Cheng.
They gave themselves 12 hours to finalize the preparations and embark on their mission. It was the military who had to do most of the work, and their three leaders shifted to a newly assembled and functional habitat module to get on with the planning.
They decided to reduce people on perimeter patrol and give the troops maximum rack time, as preparation for the upcoming operation. They also requested the presence of Dr. Yusuke Matsumoto for his inputs on the terrain and likely weather conditions.
Things were going according to clockwork. They had only the Chinese shuttle available to them, and it had to make multiple trips to place troops in preordained positions. The drop off point of the civilians at the 20 Km mark was the last trip.
Five of the scientists had been dropped at the point, and now five of the soldiers remained on board the shuttle all Chinese. Now the shuttle embarked on it final drop.
It was decided that Major Cheng should again be in the contact delegation (they had stopped calling it first contact), since he had walked down the path before literally, and knew better than anyone what to look for.
For better co-ordination and cohesion, it was decided that each unit should be made out of troops from the same armies leaving no chances of misunderstanding between troops. Thus the two remaining members of the contact delegation were also from PLA.
Lt. Cuifen Ma was Cheng’s number two and Sgt. Lao was the senior NCO of the Chinese team. The other two in the shuttle were the pilot and the gunner, who would stay on in the shuttle and wait at the drop off point.
Once the three of them had disembarked from the shuttle, Cheng first confirmed that the support teams were in place. He had to wait for about five minutes before Alex gave him the go ahead. Alex’s position was not as good as they had first thought it would be. He had to make a field decision to shift a bit backwards.
The contact delegation started their walk towards the Shaitan camp, this time not stopping a fixed distances. They did stop occasionally but it was whenever Cheng wanted to take a detailed survey of the landscape.
It was at about the one and a half Km mark from the camp, when Cheng saw the some signs of movement. He stopped and brought his binoculars up. The unmistakable movements of the Shaitans could be discerned, although no other detail could be made out. He could only see them through IR at this distance in the haze of the atmosphere. He would have to get much closer to see them in visible light.
“All units be advised that Shaitan movement from their camp towards possibly ambush positions have been noted. They would have seen us in the last few minutes walking towards their camp. So their range of detection is similar to ours at about one and a half Km. We are continuing at normal pace as planned. Cheng out.” Chen put out in broadcast mode.
“Alpha 1 copies, we are close to the 4 Km mark and we will start moving in with this new information. We will stop at the 2 Km mark.” Alex replied.
“Alpha 2 copies, we are at the 3 Km mark and we will also start moving to the 2 Km mark.” Takamori added.
Cheng continued, keeping his binoculars on his faceplate. Lt. Ma and Sgt. Lao were instructed to face slightly outwards towards the flank as they walked. Cheng noted that the movement all stopped around the 400 meter mark on both sides of his path, exactly at the same distance they had met each other the last time. The aliens were probably occupying the same ditches they had dug.
His heart was pounding as he approached the 400 meter mark, and knew he was passing the Shaitan positions, effectively allowing himself to be surrounded. If things went bad, he would be in a really lousy tactical position. He kept his nerve and continued walking.
He had tried to keep a count of the number of aliens coming to the ditches trying to surround him. He had counted 29 or 30 he could not be sure. They had all stopped in the 300-400 meter range. Nothing closer or further.
It is where they must have dug their trenches, exactly what humans would have also done if they wanted to encircle and ambush. He kept the other two teams appraised of his observations. They were perhaps seeing through his helmet camera or that of Lt. Ma or Sgt. Lao in any case.
Just as they had crossed the 200 meter mark, all hell broke loose. On some unheard signal the Shaitans rushed out of their trenches in unison. Not just from the trenches behind, which they were aware of, but from trenches probably dug along the walls of the camp itself, which they certainly were not aware of.
Cheng did not have the time to count the number of aliens in front of him, but they could not be less than thirty. Add to that about thirty more behind him, and he was surrounded by a total of sixty hostile aliens. But he was assuming they were hostile. Were they really hostile, or was this their way of greeting strangers – rushing out en masse?
That question was answered a moment later with multiple booms of their projectile weapons. All the three soldiers dove instinctively, but this time their dive was different. They had practiced this technique along with their international colleagues, specifically for Titan.
During the military planning phase, Cheng had shared his frustration at his slow dive, the last time he was getting shot at by the Shaitans. It was Alex who had come up with the unique and an ingenious solution.
On Alex’s mission to Mars, during his idle time he had wondered what it would be like to fight a battle on Mars. He had amused himself with the thought of soldiers diving in slow motion, while the bullets still travelled as fast as earth, actually faster on Mars with its thin atmosphere.
He had then further challenged and amused himself, by trying to come up with a good solution to diving fast in the low gravity. Gravity on earth quickly pulls you down thus reducing your profile. In this weakened gravity it does not happen quickly enough.
The gravity might have weakened, but your muscles haven’t. All you need to do is to tighten yourself into a ball and let yourself fall to the ground. The profile presented to the shooter reduces immediately, making it harder for the shooter to aim and increasing the chances of the bullet missing.
There is a technique to doing it however, which needs to be mastered, and hence the few hours of practice all of them had put in. You need to use only your thigh muscles to pull your legs in while curling into a ball. If you use your toes to push your leg up, as some may do instinctively, it would push you up, thus increasing the time it takes to fall to ground.
As they were falling to the ground from their dive, Cheng was secretly happy that the burden of decision, to determine the aliens as hostile, had been removed from his shoulders. The aliens had made that decision for him. Now all he had to do was fight and come out of this alive!
Even at such a dire time, he could not help being amused when he heard Lt. Ma shout out “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. We have been ambushed on all sides by at least 60 hostiles. We are surrounded and need help.”
Mayday calls are only made by vessels in trouble – ships, aircrafts and now space crafts, not by soldiers on foot. She has been watching too many English movies, and not reading enough books. Typical problem with kids of this generation he thought.
Amusing it mig
ht have been, but Ma’s distress call was heard loud and clear by the two support teams and they were not amused. They had seen the rushing aliens as soon as the contact team had, and immediately scrambled. So had the shuttle, which was already on full thrusters lifting off.
“Alpha 1 on their way ETA just over a minute. Hold on contact team.” Alex said first.
“Alpha 2 ETA in less than a minute.” Takamori added. Takamori’s team had already reached the 2 Km mark when the crisis started so they had less ground to cover, while Alex had still been on the way.
“Contact team shuttle on the way ETA 40 seconds. Stay down we will make a hole for you to move back through.” Came from the shuttle.
So they had to hold on for 40 seconds before relief came through Cheng thought. Trouble was they did not have 40 seconds. Their wild random firing from the floor was probably slowing the aliens down a bit, but they would cover the 200 meters in less than 40 seconds. The aliens would probably be upon them in 25 seconds max.
Cheng noticed something strange. The aliens were rushing in from behind, but the ones in front of him, next to their camp, were not rushing in. They were waiting where they had emerged. They were probably defending the camp, and didn’t want to rush in and leave the camp unguarded. In case more enemy came rushing in from the flanks.
It was the smart thing to do, because there WAS enemy rushing in from the flanks. The aliens in front would just wait and block Cheng’s way and let the aliens at the rear finish the job. He also noticed something for the first time.
The aliens rushing in from the rear were a lot bigger than those waiting in the front. He could not understand the reason for this, but for now the aliens at the rear looked a lot scarier than the aliens in front.
Cheng realized that if they had to survive the next 40 seconds, they will have to put some distance between themselves and the aliens at the rear. However much he hated it, he will have to run towards the aliens to his front, standing near the alien camp.
The Battle of Titan Page 31