Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  Well it would be a setback, but all would not come to an end. The world of his beings would still be safe, at least most of them. If the Ka-Baal were capable of attacking all the worlds of his beings, then they would have done so by now instead of indulging in this elaborate deception. That incapability to reach all his beings’ worlds clearly put an upper limit to the Ka-Baal technological capability.

  In the long run his beings would prevail. They would prepare for a hundred thousand cycles if needed and come back with an unimaginable force that no one could resist. His beings were an old species that had outlasted every other species. They had time and historical perspective on their side. His beings would outlast the Ka-Baal.

  His beings however had to be extremely cautious of the deceptions of the Ka-Baal. Everything they said and displayed was deceptive. These spawns of Ka were the embodiment of deception, as they have been from their very first encounter with his beings. That thought brought Solidarity back to the deceptive broadcast by the Ka-Baal just before their pathetic attempt at Ka-ma-khya.

  In an amazing display of dexterity in the holy language, never before displayed by any other spawns of Ka, the Ka-Baal had broadcast in pristine dialect. In essence they had said that if his beings attacked the Ka-Baal home world, then the worlds of his beings would be attacked with twice the amount of force. This had implied that if his beings left the Ka-Baal alone, then the Ka-Baal in turn would not attack his beings. At least that was the way his beings had interpreted the message.

  The best case scenario planning had been made based on the Ka-Baal keeping their word. His beings would refrain from attacking the Kalshuk system while they built up their force for a final and decisive attack. The Grand Council should have known better than to take the words of the treacherous Ka-Baal at face value. In a way the Grand Council had not completely trusted the Ka-Baal words. They had provisioned for one or both the nearest worlds to Kalshuk being attacked and incapacitated.

  So when the Ka-Baal unilaterally broke their word and attacked World #12, it did put a kink in the plan of the Grand Council but did not come as a huge surprise. The only regret was that no other world of his beings could come to the aid of World #12. They would have to face the attack all by themselves. Since the contribution of World #12 was not critical to the overall plan of the grand fleet, it did not make a substantial impact on the overall extermination plan of the Grand Council.

  Initially Solidarity and most of the Grand Council had been confident, that World #12 would be able to fend for itself. At worst World #12 would not be contribute anything to the coming offensive, but other than that it would do fine. No one in their wildest imagination expected the outcome that came to pass, especially given the small size of the attack that the Ka-Baal had mounted. That single fact filled Solidarity and every other member of the Grand Council with doubt and anxiety. If such a small military force of the Ka-Baal could be that effective, what would a much larger force that would meet up with the grand fleet be able to achieve?

  Solidarity realized that there was no point having self-doubts any longer. The die had been cast, and for better or worse the grand fleet’s battle plan had been set into motion. Even as Solidarity lay in the feeding pool soaking up much needed nutrients, the grand fleet was performing its deceleration burn to reach World #11. A halt lasting no more than a hundred cycles, during which refueling and restocking would be undertaken along with any regular maintenance and repairs on the vessels.

  Then the grand fleet enlarged with the vessels waiting on World #11 would embark on their holy duty. 12 migration vessels would also start off at the same time towards the Kalshuk system. Since the migration vessels were slower, they would lag behind and follow the main fleet. Once the Ka-Baal had been defeated in space, the 12 migration vessels would have the onerous task of sending warriors down to the 3rd planet to exterminate and sanitize the planet of the Ka-Baal infestation.

  It would be a tough task given the fact that there must be hundreds of millions if not billions of those spawns of Ka on that planet. The migration vessels would have to set up huge habitats and spawn probably millions of warriors to be able to exterminate each and every one of those miserable spawns of Ka. It would probably take generations and a hundred thousand cycles to be able to achieve the objective, but his beings had all the time in the world. This was what they existed for, to perform their holy duty.

  Chapter XXX

  Tidings of War

  Solar System

  2017

  When does an attack fleet let its guard down? When does it feel most secure and safe from an ambush? Any fighting admiral would tell you, it is when the fleet believes it is in home territory. When an admiral is behind his own forward post, which has never been attacked, an admiral can make the fair assumption that he is in his home territory.

  The Warmaster of the fleet that USC had designated as the Hadean Fleet, would be forgiven by history in making the same assumption. Unfortunately for the Shaitans it would turn out to be an erroneous assumption. A fatal mistake in letting their guard down. A mistake that would have tremendous consequences for the course of Shaitan history.

  The Hadean Fleet was the name given to a fleet of 128 Shaitan warship that had been detected by the drone Beagle as it approached Beta Shaitan. The Beagle had been the first of its kind drone capable of stealthily approaching an enemy system and keeping tabs on it providing ‘real time’ intelligence on the enemy’s activities in the system. ‘Real time’ being a relative word in space, for it still took nearly 4 months for the light signals to reach back to Earth.

  Still, the Beagle had proved its usefulness as an intelligence gathering tool. Without it, humanity would have been blissfully unaware of the doom approaching them in the form of the Hadean Fleet until it was too late. The pretense of scientific research, under which the Beagle drone had been developed stealthily in a conspiracy between Admiral Gerald and some of the Western scientific establishments, was forsaken. The USC was now constructing spy drones to be sent to all the Shaitan worlds.

  The new spy drones were however not a copy of the Beagle class drones. The new spy drones represented a dramatic new technology, which if proven would represent a huge leap in human space capability as great as the rocket engines had been for the early pioneers. The drones would be the first human ships to run on reactionless engines.

  At that moment however, the Beagle was the only asset USC had in an enemy system that could provide any kind of real time intelligence. The news it had given so far was not good. There had been 26 ships detected parked in the Beta Shaitan system as the spy probe had sent ‘space rocks’ flying close to the system. The high speed surveillance was sure to have missed some ships parked. It was more than likely that there were many more ships parked in the Beta Shaitan system.

  How many of those were warships could not be distinguished, but a majority were expected to be warships. If that was not bad enough news, the Beagle had detected the Hadean Fleet coming in from Shaitan world #8 to reinforce the gathered enemy ships. It would be the Hadean Fleet that would break the back of any defense that the humans hoped to put up in case of an attack on Earth, which was sure to come.

  It was painfully obvious what the Shaitans were doing. They were not going to repeat the mistake their brethren in Alpha Shaitan had committed. They would not underestimate the humans in anyway. It had been the underprepared nature of the first two attacks by Alpha Shaitan that had enabled a primitive human race to repel them.

  Although the Shaitans couldn’t have known it, but it were those same attacks which had gifted humans many technologies which had enabled them to advance to almost par with the Shaitans on technology. What had not killed the humans had made them stronger. This time however the rest of the Shaitan race was trying to ensure that they killed the human species for good, once and for all.

  It was clear to the military after the Beagle’s information, why there had been no attacks from Beta Shaitan. They were accumulating their forces!
Whenever they finally decided to attack Earth, it would be in overwhelming numbers. The Shaitans would throw whatever they had to ensure that the attack counted and they destroyed humanity.

  USC estimated that there could be as many as 40 warships already on Beta Shaitan system. Given what could be estimated about the size of the economy of Beta Shaitan based on initial observation and their experience on Alpha Shaitan, not all 40 of those ships could have been produced by Beta Shaitan. There must have been ships that had come from other Shaitan systems.

  However it was the Hadean Fleet that panicked the human establishment. The USC had managed to build up its fleet in the few decades since the last attack on Earth. The First and the Second Fleet consisted of the ageing Jerusalem class of warships, which had been built on top of the venerable platform of the Nautilus class of ships.

  The Jerusalem class of warships had the same tonnage as the old Nautilus class warships and were built on the same chassis. The Jerusalem and its sister ships were meant to be an evolutionary upgrade to the Nautilus class ships in the 2090s when the Nautilus design had already become an almost two decade old design. The Jerusalem class was designed to incorporate new developments in propulsion and weapons which had been discovered since then. It even had its own mini harvester, enabling it to collect hydrogen atoms for fuel as it travelled through space. This enabled it to reduce the amount of fuel it carried, thus increasing the amount of weaponry and ammunitions it could carry.

  Unlike the old Nautilus class vessels, which were dual purpose spaceships designed to carry both troops as well as battle in space, the Jerusalem class ships’ interiors were designed for only a small compact crew of 20 navy personnel for the express purpose of battle in space. The consequent reduction in life support equipment was also used to carry more weaponry, and doubled the number of ion plasma engines to two, thus giving them better redundancy as well as doubling their acceleration.

  The workhorse of USC, Jerusalem class ships were the equivalent of the corvettes of old Marine Navies of the world. Just as the corvettes of the seas were tasked with littoral protection of the coast line, The First and the Second Fleet, which were formed largely of these class of ships were tasked with the protection of the Solar system. The First and the Second fleet had since the beginning of USC always been home fleets tasked with the defense of the home world. Over half a century later, the task of these two fleets had not changed.

  Each of the two fleets had a full complement of 18 Jerusalem class corvettes. Each of these two fleets also had two larger ships each to round off the total number of ships in each fleet at 20. Both the larger ships in each of the fleet were built on the platform of the Avenger class of ships. These larger ships were however not built for long voyages as the Avenger. They were built for relatively short patrol tours of the time frame of about a year, although theoretically any of the ships of the First and Second fleet could last in space for years and even a decade if nothing critical broke down on the ship.

  It was tempting to think of these larger ships as the battleships being escorted by corvettes, extending the naval analogy a bit further. That analogy would not be entirely accurate though. The larger ships were slightly better armored than the Jerusalem class corvettes, owing to their larger size and more powerful engines, but when faced with a Shaitan missile, that slight extra armor would not make any difference.

  The larger ships did carry more missiles and launchers, owing to its larger size. It also had a larger crew capacity required to run the larger ship, but the only things that the larger ship had, which were not present in the smaller corvettes were the spine mounted rail gun and the large offensive laser. Other than that the technology of both the ships was almost the same.

  The reason that the larger ships were present along with the corvettes was because all the human shipyards had been upgraded and were capable of building the larger Avenger class of ships. As a result the production of the smaller Jerusalem class of ships had been discontinued. The First and Second fleets were slowly replacing their smaller ships with the larger Avenger class ships. Despite the upgrades, one had to keep in mind that between the First and the Second Fleets, there were only 40 ships available to defend the solar system. The home fleet could have defended Earth from the ships gathered around Beta Shaitan, but they would stand no chance against the Hadean Fleet – the 128 new Shaitan warships that were joining those existing ships parked at Beta Shaitan.

  Clearly the Fourth and the Fifth fleet had to get involved and contribute to the effort. There was no Third fleet in the USC. It had been disbanded and its ships had been reassigned to the First and Second fleet. The Fourth Fleet was the offensive fleet with dual responsibility of supporting the home fleets as well as supporting the Fifth fleet as required. The Fifth fleet specialized in deep space offense and very long missions. It was the home to the legendary Tyagi Legionnaires. If offense is the best form of defense, then clearly one had to let the offensive fleet do what they did best – strike deep into enemy territory.

  The campaign on Alpha Shaitan had turned in the favor of the Humans, and it was only a matter of time before the Shaitans on Jehannum would capitulate or be wiped out. The Fifth fleet, which was the specialist deep strike force was no longer needed on the Alpha Shaitan system and was completely withdrawn. Fourth Fleet was given the responsibility of the prosecution of the Alpha Shaitan campaign.

  Fourth fleet consisted of eight Avenger class warships while the Fifth fleet was down to six after losses. USC doctrine required that Avenger class ships work in a minimum grouping of a pair. So at any given point of time, the Fourth fleet would have a pair of its ships at Alpha Shaitan, another pair back on Earth for replenishments and repairs and two pairs moving in either direction of the long journey from Earth to Alpha Shaitan or back the other way. The fourth fleet along with the mule trains ensured that the human campaign on Alpha Shaitan was well supplied with troops and supplies.

  It was the Fifth fleet which was to strike the first blow in the opening chapter of what would later be chronicled as the ‘First Battle of Beta Shaitan’.

  Chapter XXX

  Behind Enemy Lines

  Near Beta Shaitan System

  2121

  “Easy does it… Easy does it…” Capt. Guy Nugent said, half to himself and half to his helmsman. There was no real need to ask Ensign La ’Roche to be careful. It was sign of the captain’s own nervousness. Ensign La ‘Roche was adjusting the lateral thrusters, stepping them up by the smallest amount possible digitally, that too using the fine-tuned precision of control that only a tech-head could have over computerized interfaces.

  It wasn’t as if the machines were controlled by some manual stick, using nothing but the dexterity of hands, as one saw in those old space movies. No one controlled machines that way any longer, least of all an Avenger class spaceship. There was hardly any chance of the helmsman’s hands slipping and the thrusters going haywire as a result.

  It was an indication of the amount of tension in the bridge that even the normally ice cool captain was nervous enough to show it to his crew. The captain and the crew of USC Intrepid had good reasons to be nervous. This was the culmination of their over four yearlong mission – a mission to literally save humanity, or at least to give humanity a fighting chance. If they failed here, it was unlikely that humanity would get another chance like this to damage the single largest scourge advancing towards Earth – the Hadean fleet!

  As if that wasn’t pressure enough, there were so many firsts to what the Intrepid and its crew were trying that it would be a surprise if nothing went wrong in their plan. What would Capt. Nugent do then? Would the young captain of the Intrepid be equal to the task? Would he, one of the youngest captains in the history of USC be able to salvage the situation and measure up to his illustrious predecessors in the USC? These were the thoughts going through Guy’s mind.

  Guy forced himself to push these useless musings out of his thoughts and concentrate on the situation at hand if he
really wanted to measure up to the high standards of the captain of a USC warship. The situation in itself was not unanticipated, although Guy had hoped he would not have to face it. Other than the risk of making his strike less accurate and hence less effective, the maneuvers he was being forced to undertake risked premature discovery, which would enable the enemy to take some amount of evasive action.

  This was the first time that humans were trying such a space offensive tactic. Guy realized with some amount of excitement and pride that they were making up the book of human space warfare tactic as they went along. Someday some young cadet would be reading the tactics of the Intrepid and its captain at the academy. If Guy was successful that is. Else there may be no academy or space cadets in the future of humanity!

  Guy and his crew had long got over the euphoria of being the fastest human travelers ever. So many months ago, when the Intrepid and its sister ship USC Magellan had finally shut down their ion plasma engines and folded up their harvesters after over three years of continuous acceleration, they had been able to accelerate to just over 14% of the speed of light. It was the same velocity at which the two human ships deep into Shaitan territory were still coasting.

  This didn’t just make them the humans who had travelled faster than any other human, but also faster than any Shaitan as well. The Intrepid and the Magellan were now travelling at well over seven times faster than the fastest observed Shaitan warship. It was amazing when one considered that all this had been achieved by humans within 80 years of first contact with a Shaitan drone, and within 60 years of first face to face contact with the Shaitans on Titan.

  Humans would not have been able to gain the speed advantage over the Shaitans had it not been for the parting gift of the extinct Ka-let civilization – the harvester technology. The dead Ka-let had reached out from their graves to give this advantage to the humans, almost as if urging them to avenge the massacre of their species at the hands of the Shaitans.