“The alien ship has crashed about a 100 Km from here. I was told that there are some big fragments in the wreck. I was thinking that while we scrounge for metals, there sits a potentially huge source of metals if we could only tap it. There might even be materials far superior to our own, lying out there. I am not sure if we could salvage anything, but it may be worthwhile visiting the place.”
That brought a smile to the face of Alex as he said. “And it dovetails perfectly with our next task Mr. Gupta, one in which you will again have to play a key role.”
That surprised and puzzled Mr. Gupta, so Alex continued. “We now come to the tasks that mission control has given us before they can launch the rescue mission. The list of specific questions to be answered falls broadly into two categories. First requires us to survey the crash site of the alien craft. This is where you come in Mr. Gupta.
Other than measurements of the extent and topographical features of the crash site, which would be the primary responsibility of Dr. Matsumoto, a catalog of the prominent pieces along with their composition would be required. This would be the joint responsibility of Dr. Sterner and yourself. I mean Dr. Jorge Sterner.” Alex clarified which of the Dr. Sterners he meant.
“Your report on the materials Dr. Gupta will determine their salvage plans. What to tools to carry, what specialist they need on the trip etc. I am sure you know the whole shebang better than me. I know you are also required here to start the fabrication process. I guess you will have to figure out how to manage your time and delegate.” Mr. Gupta nodded his understanding.
Alex continued. “The three of you will be accompanied by four marines. We don’t expect trouble there, but it never hurts to be cautious. It is not impossible for the Shaitans on the surface to visit the crash site, it is 250 Km from their camp which is not impossible for them to travel. They might have the same idea as us and may want to scavenge material, or simply go to pay their last respects.”
“Ok so that is the first task, which sounds reasonable enough. What is the second task mission control wants done?” This time it was Sasha who spoke up.
Alex looked at the two Majors, who both gave a subtle nod for him to carry on. “The second task is purely a military one. More specifically reconnaissance and intelligence task. I will not bore you with the details, but basically a lot of minute details like the exact circumference of the alien habitat to the last meter, elevation etc. Optional data like estimated thickness of the walls and roof. Material out of which the habitat is constructed. Detailed thermal profile of the habitat etc.”
Yusuke spoke up now. “That should be simple. I think we have most of those information. If I am not mistaken, we have already sent those information to mission control.”
Cheng chose to answer this one. “Far from simple, this is a very dangerous and complicated task Dr. Matsumoto. Alex has simplified the data for the benefit of the civilians. The data being asked is far more precise and meant for military planning. We do not have those and will have to go near the alien camp once again to get that intelligence.
We have also been asked to gather as much real time intelligence as possible including trying to set up a spy cam near their base. This makes sound military sense as it would give us real time warning if they try to mobilize against us.” All the civilians nodded grimly in understanding.
Alex took over once more. “While one snowmobile with take the science personnel to the crash site, two more snowmobiles carrying 14 soldiers will be going to reconnoiter the alien camp. The last snowmobile will carry a few engineers and soldiers to try to recover the machine gun and as much metal as possible from the Shuttle crash site. Mr. Kaminski, we would appreciate your expertise on this one.”
Sasha brightened and smiled widely. He was glad he was going to see some action at last. “Can do boss. Will get to it right away.”
“Sasha, I am not your boss. To you, I am Alex or Capt. Parkinson if you want to be formal. If you feel like calling someone boss, please feel free to call that to Mr. Gupta who is in your chain of command if I am not mistaken.” Alex said and smiled to himself. He realized that the civilians did not understand or care much about chain of command. They simply called anyone in position of authority ‘boss’.
“Sure bo… I mean Alex. No offence meant.” Sasha raised his hand and said.
“None taken Sasha.” Replied Alex. “Since this site is only 30 Km from our base, we will send just the minimum of two soldiers from Leanna’s contingent to accompany you. Please decide how many engineers you need with you, but I will recommend that you keep the numbers to a minimum to leave enough space for salvage.
While you are at it, could your engineers come up with another of those miracle jobs, to be able to attach some kind of sled to the two snowmobiles that would go to the two crash sites? It would increase the carrying capacity drastically.”
“Yes sir! Can do sir!” Shouted Sasha trying to ape the marines and snapped a smart salute. Everyone in the room burst out laughing, and the meeting ended on a light note.
The salvage operation from the downed shuttle went without a hitch and was so quick and successful that they went back three more times and were able to tow back almost all of the shuttle in pieces.
The inspection operation at the alien ship’s crash site was also without an incident, although this took a lot more time. They had taken over two hours to reach the site despite most of the way being just flat ice, and had budgeted 3 hours for the return journey carrying salvage.
That left them only 3 hours left of their 8 hours safe suit time. While Yusuke went around the perimeter along with two of the marines on the snowmobile, mapping and surveying. Jorge and Gupta spent their time in an area about two square kilometer where a lot of large fragments had fallen.
They photographed, added their voice notes with Jorge speculating what parts of the ships they might be, and what purpose they may have been used for. Mr. Gupta concentrated on just a few pieces which appeared to be made of distinct material. He used his tools to do field analysis as best as he could in the allotted time.
In the end Mr. Gupta identified a medium sized block of what appeared to be machine part. It was huge by human standards, about the size of a grand piano. It was far heavier than a grand piano though. The four marines struggled and grunted to lift it and place it on the attached sled. They should have been able to lift a grand piano in this gravity, without much effort at all.
When both the salvage teams had finished their operations, Mr. Gupta determined that they had enough metal for continuous production from their tiny fabricator for a month. That should be enough to arm every human in the camp with swords, spears or anything else they could think of.
The reconnaissance team had decided that they would not go overboard trying to gather intelligence, even if it meant some of the questions asked by mission control were left unanswered. Thus they did not use active scanning at all, and did most of their survey crawling only to the edge of the visible distance, which was between 1.5 and 2 Km in most cases.
They went closest to plant spy cams, which were basically stuck on top of rocks and boulders that were made out of solid ice. Each camera could look from the infrared, visible and UV light. The cameras had long thin wire attached which provided it with power and carried back the feed.
The wire ran for about 3 Km in the direction of the human camp and then terminated in a box, which had a large battery for power and a low power radio transmitter. It was hoped that the low power of the transmitter as well as the 5 Km distance from the alien camp, below the plateau of the alien camp and over the horizon, would prevent the aliens from detecting the signal and discovering their spy cams.
They placed a repeater a further 4 Km away from the small transmitter, which would pick up the signals and transmit it to the base using a stronger radio signal. That stronger signal being 9 Km away from the base camp and definitely well over the horizon on Titan due to its small size should not be detectable. That was the theory.
The b
atteries could last 48 hours of continuous operations or over a month of standby time. They did not intend to run down the batteries by watching video feed. Instead the cameras would take a picture every minute or so.
The pictures would be analyzed by image processing algorithms while also being fed on human terminals. If the algorithms detected motion, then the frequency of images would be increased, going up to 30 frames per second. A human operator could always override by increasing the rate directly to video feed or reduce it back.
Takamori and Cheng had gone on the reconnaissance operation, leaving Alex in charge of the defense of the base. On his return, Takamori was delighted with the designs the engineers had come up with, especially that of the sword. The engineers and scientists were working round the clock under Mr. Gupta’s supervision churning out implements of war.
It was almost two weeks before the first alarm was sounded by the spy cameras. It was nominally night according to the camp time, which was synched with GMT. It was Cheng’s shift amongst the three, and he was doing his inspection tour of the observation posts.
He got the images streamed to his helmet, while Alex & Takamori were being woken up. It took them just a few minutes to get into conference. While the two of them put on their suits to reach the main habitat, which had become the military control room as well as the meeting place for the leadership, they were in continuous communication with Cheng who described what spy cameras were seeing. Cheng was also making a quick hopping advance towards the main habitat himself. They all made it to the main habitat almost at the same time.
The images were ominous to say the least. There was so much motion that the cameras had gone to live streaming mode. To conserve batteries, they had manually toned down the frame rate a bit. The cameras were triggered by suited Shaitans exiting the alien camp in a continuous stream.
First there were a few, slowly adding up to a few tens. They were slowly lining up and the continuous stream of aliens was now forming a second line. The numbers had slowly crossed a hundred.
They had tasked the image processing software to keep a count, and its counter on the top corner was increasing continuously. When they started forming the third line, it was obvious and all too familiar a sight to the three military men. They were watching men fall into a formation! Rather in this case it was Shaitans fall into formation.
Each row had 128 aliens and they formed 8 such rows for a total of 1024. Still the aliens kept pouring out. They started forming another distinct block of 1024 aliens on the other side of the camp. The three of them were stunned when that block of 1024 was completed, and yet more aliens kept pouring out!
The egress of aliens from their camp ended only after the third block of 1024 aliens was completed. They had assembled over three thousand aliens outside the camp! All the aliens were of uniform size, and it was not initially apparent whether they were the type – A smaller Shaitans or the lager type – B ones. It became clear when a few more Shaitans came out of the habitat but did not fall in line, they started moving around the formation.
These were apparently the commanders. Some of the commanders were of the larger type – B, but most of the commanders were of the smaller type – A. When they went next to the formation, it was apparent from the relative size that all the three regiments were composed entirely of the larger type – B!
That was three battalions of infantry of over a thousand each to form a whole regiment of monster alien killers! The hearts of the three men sank collectively. Over three thousand aliens against just about 120 odd humans, and only 70 or so were soldiers. These aliens could just come over right now and slaughter them. There was nothing the humans could do to stop them!
As the three men wallowed in their own personal and private hell, watching the scene unfold, when they got the start of their lives. Without any other visual cue, the three regiments started moving in unison. The parade disciple and synchronicity of movement could not be described as anything but perfect. Any military in the world would have been proud of the performance.
Alex rose in panic to sound the condition 1 alarm, when Takamori put his hand up to stop him. “They are not marching in our direction… yet.” Takamori said. Alex looked again at the screen and gave an embarrassed smile.
As abruptly as they had started moving, they stopped. Then they started moving in a direction at right angles to their original direction. This time they moved faster, and their gait was no longer even spread, using all their six limbs in a circular spread around their circular body. Instead their bodies seem to have become slightly elongated and three limbs had moved to the front and three to the rear, and their movement was similar to that of a horse moving, except with three legs in front and three in rear instead or 2 by 2 in the case of a horse.
That movement stopped again, and they retraced their path back, always staying in perfect formation.
The aliens were marching and practicing! They were behaving like an organized army now. This continued for over four hours after which, just as suddenly as they had come out, they started filing back into the habitat in a single file one after the other. The three men kept staring at the screen long after the last Shaitan had gone back into their habitat. They were too stunned to say anything to each other.
It was finally Cheng who spoke. “They were practicing massed attack in waves.” It was more of a statement. Any military leader worth his salt would know that. The other two just nodded.
“You know what that means don’t you?” asked Alex.
“They are planning a frontal assault on our base.” Replied Cheng. Alex nodded in agreement. Then both of them looked at Takamori, who had a far-away look on his face.
Seeing the stare of his two colleagues, Takamori said. “We have to start the preparations for the assault. I have some ideas.”
Chapter 28
Battle of Stirling Bridge
Lieutenant Leanna McGraw stood at the mouth of a narrow pass facing a vast open plains, in a light drizzle. To her left was a sheer cliff of ice almost a hundred meters high. To her right was a fast flowing river that had cut its way through the ice below their feet and the mountain to the right.
The river bank fell down vertically as one would expect a fast flowing fluid to cut through ice. It was two meters deep at the shallowest. Good enough she thought. That left the narrow pass as the only way into the valley behind. She stood there with her “platoon” of 30 humans. It was a hodgepodge of 15 regular soldiers and Astronauts, Biologist, Engineers of various nationalities.
She could see the enemy Horde approaching over the horizon. They looked a dark blur through her Infra-red binoculars, spread across the horizon as far as she could see in every direction over the plain on the left side of the river. It was good that only she could see them. They were invisible through the eternal orange twilight of Titan.
She could not see individual forms, but she knew that there were just too many to count. She felt strangely calm, her internal fear and panic seemed to have given way to something else. A resolute determination seem to fill her. If this was going to be the day that she was to die in this beautiful but desolate moon, then she will make sure that the enemy pays.
She flicked open her public channel. Her communication gear was civilian exploration grade, not military grade, so there was no way to address just her platoon, it was being heard by all the human defenders. “Steady people, they are just over the horizon. Visibility is poor, which works well for our strategy, but it also means we don’t know their numbers or their formation.
It matters not how many they are, what matter is how many we kill. We shall hold steady, never loose courage, no matter how big they turn out to be, no matter how many they are. We fight here for our fallen comrades that those bastards have murdered, we stand here for humanity. We are the first line of defense, let those bastards know what humans are made of.”
Someone from the line shouted “Oorah!” Probably one of the American marines, for it was their battle cry. It did
not matter who shouted first, the channel was filled with everyone, not just in their platoon but other soldiers, scientists and engineers all shouting at the top of their voice. “Oorah! Oorah… Oorah!”
There was an edge of bloodlust in their voices. Good she thought. The toughest part of the tactics she was given to lead in this opening sequence of the battle, was to do with her men holding their nerves. What she and her platoon were trying did not require skill, just holding their nerves, brute strength and brutality.
She needed their bloodlust to make them forget their nerves, especially with half of them civilians. Many a soldier had lost their nerves in history, trying what she was about to try, in far less intimidating circumstances.
It was another 5 minutes before the enemy front line came into view. They were not close enough yet that their distinct forms could be seen, but you could make out rows upon rows of them. Despite her earlier determination, Leanna’s heart sank. She realized that every man on the line must have a similar feeling, going through them right now.
She needed to fortify their courage further. It would be a disaster if even one of them ran now, for it will create cascade of fear, leading to complete desertion of their best defense position. The best way to take their minds off the terror stampeding towards them is to get them doing something.
“Platoon battle stations. First line, McCoy check the release mechanisms. Cho check everybody’s escape trench. Roberts weapons check on the civilians” All three were redundant orders. They had checked the release mechanism and the escape trench many times over in the last hour, and there was not much to check with the weapons they were going to fight with, but it gave all of them something to do rather than mull the terrible fate that awaited them all.
“Second and third line you are on an elevated position, more vulnerable to projectile weapons if they have any left. Make sure that you are completely behind the battlements, no peeking. There is nothing for you to see till the First line hands over to you.
The Battle of Titan Page 44