The Battle of Titan

by Sudipto Majumdar

  If any idiot gets themselves killed with a puncture in their suit or helmet from a bullet before killing an enemy first, I will personally kick them alive and shoot them again. Now go through your own checks.” That should keep them from seeing what is approaching them.

  The enemy line had approached closer and she could make out individual forms. They were the B-type aliens, all of them. Her heart sank again. “My god! We are so screwed!” Where did so many of them come from? The defenders held the high ground, the alien horde was climbing up a gentle slope, so she could see from above, row after row of the type – B aliens, slowly converging from their wide formation into a narrow one as they approached the pass.

  Type-B are much bigger than their Type-A cousins, if they are related in any manner at all. No one knows. They share their broad body plan with type-A, but vary a lot in details, not just in size. Scientists say that they are superficial analogs of cephalopods, but have radial symmetry not bilateral symmetry.

  Leanna did not know what that meant, and did not care. To her these things resembled an octopus but with 6 legs not 8, but when they stood still, their shape resembled that of a jelly fish, but not hollow, their body was solid and substantive.

  The 6 legs were much thicker in proportion to an octopus. They were more like an elephant’s trunk, thick and muscular. They were the size of a pony, and when running as they were now. They constricted their circular body into a narrow ellipsoid shape with 3 legs in front and 3 behind, running like a horse.

  They had no apparent head. She did not know their skin color as they were covered in a dark grey suit. There seemed to be no window for eyes, but she knew that they could see well enough in the environment of Titan.

  The scientist theorized that their entire suit had sensors, which transmitted the data to their sensory organs, wherever inside the suit they may be. Well that is one theory that will be put to the test today, and she hoped for humanity’s sake that they were right.

  The front line was almost there, and even in this mild 14% gravity of Titan he could feel the rumble of the horde. After giving a courageous speech to her platoon, she had none left for herself, and started feeling the nerves.

  In panic she decided to talk to Major Takamori, to give herself something to do and not dwell on the terrifying sight ahead. “Sir, McGraw here. I am sure you are watching the situation… any last minute orders sir?”

  Takamori knew that this brave woman was going through her time of self-doubt and nerves. It was only human to be afraid in such a situation, all she needed was what she had given to her men, someone to tell her that she will fight well.

  “Leanna you are a scot, as are many in your platoon, you have illustrious ancestors like William Wallace. Most of your platoon is European, all of your ancestors have fought and mastered this type of battle. Their spirit lives in you all, you have this type of warfare in your blood. You will know what is to be done, and you will fight well. Just remember no heroics today, stick to the plan and exit in an orderly manner in face of the chaos you are about to face. That is your challenge, and burden of command.”

  “Yes sir, I understand what needs to be done sir… and sir… thank you very much.”

  “Good luck Lieutenant, I will see on the other side.” Takamori concluded and switched to another channel. He understood McGraw’s burden, but he had much more. There were other positions he needed to shore up. This was turning out to be worse that his worst case scenario.

  Leanna looked up again at the advancing horde with a new steely determination. She thought to herself. “Charge like a horse do you? Let me show you what William Wallace did to a charging cavalry.”

  Perhaps all the terrible wars mankind had fought killing each other, may yet have some use to their descendants. Let those long dead warriors’ blood not go waste. Let us take those lessons to these alien bastards.

  “All right men, steady now. Hold steady, no one pulls the trigger before I give the word. Timing is everything. First line remember, you are there for show right now. Those aliens can see you and they are charging towards you. Lay still and keep your profile low. You are upslope, lying down.

  They do not have much of a target for projectile weapons if they have any, but if you move or get up before time, you can bet your ass you will get shot, for I will shoot you. Do not panic, you will not get trampled. Your escape trench is one body roll away, and you will have 4 seconds window at the least, hold your nerves.”

  Leanna watched proudly as 10 men in the First line lay prone as thousand legs/trunks/hooves, whatever you call them thundered towards them. Thinking about hooves, he suddenly noticed the feet, rather the sole of the feet of the marching aliens.

  On the sole of the suit on each feet of the aliens was a set of blades! She could not count how many, probably 3 or 4 on each foot. They looked curved inwards slightly like the talons of a bird or the claws of a lion. She guessed they were about 3 inches long. They dug into the surface ice, which had a consistency of sand and acted as spikes for firm footing, but she had no doubt what their primary function was.

  So that solves the mystery of how they intend to fight, they had been wondering what weapons the aliens would use now that all the modern weapons of both the warring parties were exhausted. There wasn’t too much time, she needed to warn everyone.

  She hit the public broadcast channel. “McGraw to all priority one. Repeat McGraw to all priority one. Enemy has metallic claws 3 to 4 on each feet. 3 inches long, curved inwards seems sharp. Be advised that in my opinion it is their primary weapon targeted at suit integrity. McGraw out.”

  There was no more time the first wave was almost upon them. Oh god, how did we come to this? “Steady… Hold. You heard what I said, don’t let those bastards touch you. Hold…” She did a mental count. Three… Two…. One… “Now!”

  In unison, 20 long pikes came up. Each person stood up with a steel shaft in each of their hands, which were lying flat facing the enemy on the ice and invisible to the approaching horde. These pikes were however slightly different from their medieval European counterparts.

  The business end of the pike did not end in a single spear point. It was more like a leaf rake, but with straight points. The front end of the pike was nearly a meter wide with 20 spikes on them spread 5 cm apart. The objective of these spikes were not to gore but to puncture suit and compromise its integrity.

  The spikes were just 2 inches long. Long enough to puncture any suit and cause flesh wounds, but not long enough for the first body that encounters it to get snagged permanently, thus protecting the second wave of attackers from it. The spikes were shaped like arrow tips, which would cause the suit and flesh to rip when pulled out.

  The scientist hoped that evolution had given the aliens similar reflexes to earth animals and humans. I.e. when you encounter something that has not penetrated and embedded in your flesh, you instinctively rip it apart from yourself. Somewhat like our instinctive reaction when we encounter a thorn bush. So it was hoped that the aliens would instinctively pull out the spikes as they hurt their flesh.

  Theory of convergent evolution means that similar problems eventually force organisms to evolve similar solutions, however far apart they may be; for example dolphins and sharks have evolved similar streamlined bodies, even though they were separated by 350 million years of evolution because they had the same problem to solve, move efficiently in water.

  The scientists reasoned that protecting your body is as basic a problem as there can be, and even aliens in an alien planet will pretty much have to do the same things and hence develop the same reflexes. Well that was about to be put to the test.

  The pikes differed in other ways too. Unlike their European ancestors, no one had put this pike on the ground and stood on it for a cavalry charge. Instead a foundation had been bolted on the ice previously, and the end of the pike was bolted to the foundation on a pivot.

  So one would lift up the pike bolted to the ground at one end. When the pike operator had lif
ted the pike to the right height and pointed it left or right to his satisfaction, he would depress a mechanical switch near the hand hold of the pike.

  The switch would trigger a very small explosive charge powered by oxygen, which would release two struts folded on the pole of the pike. The ends of the two struts would spread out and support the pike like a skewed tripod and keep the pike in place exactly where the operator pressed the switch.

  To ensure that it stays that way, the ends of the struts also have a small amount of oxygen stuffed in them. But instead of an explosive release, it is released slowly over a period of 4 seconds. The hot metal tips of the struts immediately melted the ground made of ice to about an inch, and almost immediately hardened back rock solid due to the -179° C ambient temperature. Now the pike was permanently in place and the operator could move out of harm’s way.

  The pass was 28 meters wide. With 20 such pikes evenly spaced, they had almost the entire pass covered. They had deliberately left about 4 meters on the river side uncovered. This was just enough for 2 of the aliens to squeeze in side by side slowly or one to gallop ahead, otherwise they would risk falling into the fast moving river and being swept away to their death.

  Takamori, the tactical genius he was, had called it his corridor of death. He had special plans for it. But Takamori was not finished with the pikes yet. The first line of pikes is vulnerable from both below as well as above. After the first or second wave, the aliens would be intelligent enough to go below the pike and break the struts to bring it down. His solution was the escape trenches.

  Between each pike running parallel to it was a trench 1.2 meters deep going the length of the pike. The trenches all connected to a long trench at 90° behind the base of the pikes, which connected to the second line of pikes and acted as an escape route for the first line soldiers.

  Soldiers would man these trenches and slash at the legs and feet of anyone trying to go under it. The height was just right to duck in it and evade the momentum of the charging horde, and yet be able to pop up at will and slash at the legs.

  The trenches served another purpose. If somehow the attackers evaded the pikes by going in between them, or the pikes bent or broke, the trenches which were invisible, until you approached right onto it, would act as another layer of trap.

  Initially there was a worry that the defending soldiers might get crushed under the falling aliens and not be able to retrieve themselves, till it was quickly realized that in the low gravity of Titan, the largest type-B aliens would weigh no more than a large pig on earth.

  It was the momentum of the aliens which they had to fear not their weight. Weight changes with gravity, momentum does not. Inside the trenches the soldiers were reasonably safe from the momentum.

  In the low gravity of titan, just 14% of Earth’s, one could jump fairly high. A fit human could easily jump 4-5 meters and clear the pike. Takamori was not sure how much the aliens could jump, though the scientists believed that they had evolved on a planet with lower gravity than ours.

  He was not taking any chances and went with the assumption that the aliens could jump as high as the humans. His solution was the second and the third line. He had gotten one of the engineers to do ballistic calculations on all possible variations of speed of approach and the height of the jump, and placed the second and the third line accordingly at the required angle.

  These lines were also surrounded by trenches similarly. All of the trenches led back to their fallback position next to the human defender’s main line of defense – Thermopylae, a position they have to hold at any cost.

  All this was the theory, now was the moment of truth, after all the planning it all depended on the guts of her men to defend the position for as long as possible and inflict maximum casualties. She just hoped it was the guts of the enemy they were spilling and not their own.

  As she gave the order for the second and third line to raise their pikes, she jumped into the escape trench of the first line where she was standing. After so many weeks in Titan, it was still surreal to watch herself drifting slowly down to the trench at 14% of the gravity.

  It felt as if she was slowly sinking into a swimming pool. She realized that the 4 second window given by the planners for jumping into the trench was not as generous as she had earlier thought. Interplanetary warfare would require open and flexible thinking she realized.

  Her feet had not yet touched the ground when the first wave of aliens hit the first line pikes. She would have loved to see the surprise on their faces, if the bastards had faces to begin with. As the first wave hit and stopped on their tracks, it was here that the last trick designed by the engineers to their credit and forged by the material scientists played out.

  The pikes were forged out of material which flexed with extremely high compressive strength. As the first wave hit the poles, they buckled under the tremendous momentum that the aliens generated. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Sir Isaac Newton had said many centuries ago. The entire momentum was stored in the bent steel, which flung out the first wave like a pole vault, clearing the pike for the second wave.

  Leanna gave a whoop of joy along with the entire platoon when they saw the result, before she quickly realized that two of the aliens had progressed forwards somehow through the pikes. Their suits were torn, that much was clearly visible, but they were not freezing up and dying!

  For all the planning of the trenches, the aliens had a trick up their sleeves as well, when you are anatomically like an octopus. The two aliens initially found a limb or two fall into the trenches, but they did not topple over or fall into the trenches. When you have 6 limbs, you have a lot more redundancy.

  The other limbs quickly took up the weight and prevented them from falling or stumbling. They simply stretched themselves wide across the width of the trench, which was wide enough for two men to pass each other. They straddled over the width of the trench, three feet on each side and walked forward in a crab like gait.

  Leanna did not know who was in those two trenches, so she shouted out at her Non Coms. “McCoy, Roberts, Cho, whoever is closest to those two bastards walking over the trench help in bring them down!” She did not need to give the order, because as she was finishing, she saw Cho leap up from his trench as the alien was passing directly over him.

  It was a fantastic sight. In the low gravity of Titan, even with your suit on, a big and fit man like Cho could easily leap 6 meters, perhaps 7 even. The belly of the alien was less than a meter above his head, and just inches above his raised sword.

  He had squatted down a bit and then in a spring coil motion with his thighs, leapt up with all his might generating tremendous momentum, as his raised sword effortlessly impaled the belly of the beast and went through to the top side of the alien.

  The improvised swords must have been designed by a particularly sadistic engineer. When preparing for this battle the engineers and scientist had paucity of raw material, particularly non-ferratic steel like stainless steel.

  On earth one could use ferratic steel like carbon steel for swords, but here in the extreme cold they would have turned brittle and shattered. They had to find material for all the weapons they had forged, that will not turn brittle in this cold… they had to improvise. And improvise they did, and much beyond. They made implements out of the most unlikely materials into such fine ones at that.

  The engineers did not have any constraints on sophistication of manufacture however. They had the most sophisticated metal printers and cold casting equipment, and the engineers used all of their creativity to forge particularly wicked weapons.

  The swords were slightly curved, which was probably Takamori’s samurai influence. It enabled a smooth slashing cut. Recognizing that most of the soldiers and civilians were not trained swordsman, and that a lot of thrusting style will be used, probably even required, it was not as curved as a samurai sword. It was just slightly curved more like a Damascus sword, so it would not be uncomfortably balanced when thrusting.


  The real wicked part of the sword was its serration at the edges. Ancients could not have handcrafted the serrations on a sword and yet kept it sharp. There is no such limitation when you are using metal printers, which can make things at nanometer resolution.

  Both the edges of the sword had serrations in opposite direction. The outer edge used for slashing had serrations pointing outwards towards the top of the sword, so they would not snag while slashing, while the inner edge had it facing inwards towards the handle.

  Leanna could only imagine the pain (if the aliens felt pain at all) at the way the serrations would have acted within the guts of the alien. As the blade went in, the outer edge serrations would rend the flesh, and as Cho pulled the blade out, the inner end of the serrations would do the same.

  Amazingly the creature did not collapse and die, but she could see that it was no longer moving in a coordinated manner. It lost its assumed elongated shape it had taken to cross the trench, and reverted back to its natural circular shape. By doing that some of its feet fell into the trench and its body listed towards the ground.

  Cho had managed to slide away from under the body of the alien, and he held up his sword. “The aliens bleed, just like us! We can kill them. We can kill them all!!” He screamed over the public channel with his sword dripping pinkish blood. At least it seemed pinkish in the dim orange light of Titan.

  The alien was moving its limbs slowly, and seemed weakly trying to use its claws to dig into the ice and get out of the trench where it was half stuck, but was not succeeding. Leanna had not seen an alien die before but Takamori had, so she took his word for it that they die, clearly this one was dying.

  That thought immediately focused her attention on the other alien which had made it through the fence of pikes. The civilian in the trench the alien was straddling had frozen. Using the connecting trench Leanna ran to the end of the trench where the alien was approaching.