Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The Admiral had liked the idea so much, that he proposed to commit more resources to the plan than Justin had dared ask for. The admiral could also afford to commit extra resources because humans had not been sitting idle since their strike on Alpha Shaitan.

  Human space construction facility had improved since the first Avenger class ships had been made for the campaign of Alpha Shaitan. The Western alliance had doubled its capacity by adding another space elevator to their lunar construction site, as well as expanding the mining facility there. It was a misnomer to call it a ‘Western Alliance’, Japan, India, Australia and many other East Asian countries were part of the alliance, but it was called so for historical reasons.

  The Chinese-Russian-Brazilian Axis facilities on the Moon had also been substantially expanded to be able to construct the larger Avenger class ships, which they previously couldn’t. The capacity of the Axis shipyard was only half of that of the Western Alliance shipyard, but it constituted a third of human ship building capability and it certainly helped.

  The only other space elevator humans had managed to construct had been on Mars, but it was used for cheap orbital lift, not for ship construction. Mars was too undeveloped and remote from Earth to get into industrial activity yet. The Mars space elevator had helped tremendously in the last few years since it had been constructed in reducing the cost of travel to Mars from Earth and had spurred the private sector to invest massive sums of money into Mars settlement activity. The conditions had been set and it was possible in a decade there would be a full-fledged self-sustaining settlement on Mars.

  With the Axis shipyard upgraded and capable of producing Avenger class ships, the production of the smaller Jerusalem class of ships which were based on the venerable platform of the Nautilus class of ships had been discontinued. The smaller ships had served humanity well but now human ambitions had grown bigger and consequently their warships needed to grow bigger.

  Nothing was going to waste. The older Nautilus class ships, some of which were over 30 years old and not considered battle worthy were being sold to the private sector. There still wasn’t any profit to be made for the private sector in space, but the situation was changing. With the opening up of Mars due to the space elevator there, and the discovery of some extremely rare mineral and rare metal rich asteroids in the asteroid belt, it was a matter of a few decades before private corporations started venturing into space to make a profit. Till then the largest corporation were buying off old USC ships as an investment in R&D to get to develop space mining and space travel expertise.

  The shipyards over the Moon meanwhile were getting proficient in their capabilities and it now took just under 3 years to develop an Avenger class ship, down from the first one which had taken over 7 years. Thus with three shipyards, on an average one Avenger class ship was being churned out within less than a year. Unfortunately it wasn’t fast enough if humans had to meet the challenge of the Hadean fleet.

  The Hadean fleet could reach Earth theoretically within 25 years, although more realistically they would stop for some time at Beta Shaitan, which meant they would take a year or two more. Humans had a total inventory of 18 Avenger class ships including the ones fighting the campaign on Alpha Shaitan. At the current production rate the maximum number of Avenger class ships that the humans would be able to field would be 45 when the Hadean fleet arrived.

  This could be supplemented by the 40 smaller Jerusalem class ships, which really weren’t a match for the Shaitan warships. Moreover this already ageing platform would be 25 years older. It had become clear within hours of the discovery of the Hadean fleet that the human warship construction capacity had to increase, but it may still not be able to match the 160-170 Shaitan warships expected in the Hadean fleet.

  That is why the audacious plan of Justin had been latched on to by the Admiral so lustily. It gave some hope of correcting the odds stacked against USC with relatively low investment. There were two Avenger class ships parked in Earth orbit at that moment. The USC Intrepid was a new ship recently off the shipyard which had just finished its trial run. It was being readied for a mission to Alpha Shaitan to relieve ships stationed there. USC Magellan had returned from a long mission to Alpha Shaitan and was being re-hauled and refitted with necessary repairs and upgrades.

  Both the ships could be ready to set sail within a month. Admiral Choi had decided to commit both the ships to ‘Operation First Strike’. In the end it took the ships over 2 months to start their mission, not because the ships were unready, or crews were unavailable. The delay was due to the development and testing of the specialized munitions that were needed for this operation.

  When Justin had volunteered for Operation First Strike, it had taken everyone by surprise. Justin was certainly qualified to lead the mission, probably the best qualified in the navy. A two ship strike force did not need a rear admiral to lead it. A commodore was a sufficient enough rank. Moreover Justin was the original architect of the mission, and he had spent almost all his career and a good part of his adult life fighting Shaitans in Alpha Shaitan.

  There were very few in the navy who had as much experience striking the Shaitans deep into their territory as Justin had. That was also the reason no one like him was expected to go on a second tour of duty which was expected to last over 16 years. Now in his mid-forties, it would mean that Justin would have spent almost his entire life on a naval warship.

  Admiral Choi had called Justin to his office. The Admiral had felt that Justin was doing this out of a sense of duty and responsibility because Operation First Strike had been his idea.

  “It is not what you think sir. Sure, I would like to see this operation executed personally, but I am confident there are others who can do the job equally well. I want to go because I have realized in the past few years I have been on Earth that my real home is on the ship. The only family I have left is my sister, who has decided to settle on Alpha Shaitan. I tried settling down, but after a few failed relationships I realized that I have very little in common with anyone outside the people who sail on long voyages. I am most at home when I am in deep space.” Justin said, and Hugo realized that he was being honest.

  ---XXX---

  The Hadean fleet was on its final approach to Beta Shaitan. It was barely eight light-hours away from the Shaitan colony, and had reduced its speed to a relative crawl compared to its top speed of over 2% of light. Its ion plasma thrusters were on full throttle to bleed the residual speed and come to an absolute stop at Beta Shaitan.

  So far the two ships of the strike force of ‘Operation First Strike’ had timed their approach perfectly. They were going to intercept the Hadean fleet exactly where they had planned in 184 minutes, just over three hours. The special munitions for this operation had been released and was free floating alongside the two human ships.

  The munitions had been released an hour ago and were now separated from the ships by over a hundred kilometers as they slowly drifted away on the slight momentum imparted by special ejectors designed for these munitions. These special weapons designed for this operation were shaped unlike any other weapon that humans had used in space before, thus they could not be deployed from the conventional pneumatic ejectors.

  The MKK-1 missiles were spherical in shape. MKK stood for ‘Micro Kinetic Kill’. The crew had nicknamed the spherical mines simply as the ‘Sand Blasters’. The name was appropriate, for the MKK missiles were literally filled with sand! Technically the ‘sand’ was made out of lunar regolith mined near the Axis mines on the Moon. The Russian engineers had taken the onus of mining and filtering over six thousand tons of lunar regolith that went into the MKK-1 missiles to very exacting specifications.

  The sand of the lunar regolith is a very fine powder littered with tiny beads of glass formed as a result of impact shocks of meteorites on the surface of the moon over billions of years. The sand was filtered to ensure that each grain was approximately a few millimeters in diameter and approximately 5 milligrams in weight.

/>   The MKK missiles were spherical in shape for a reason. The missiles had a Q-computer based guidance system, like all modern human missiles. That is where the similarity with missiles stopped. Each MKK-1 missile weighed over five tons, almost all of the weight being sand. The sand filled the outer shell of the missile. Beneath this shell of sand sat a thin layer of high grade conventional explosives.

  Beneath this layer of explosives was the core of the missile which contained solid rocket fuel and an extremely powerful but unusually designed rocket engine. The rocket engine had not one but 36 exhaust nozzles which were spread out evenly on the surface of the spherical missile in all directions. The computer could open and close nozzles to provide powerful thrust in any direction instantly. That was the reason the MKK-1 had to be spherical, otherwise trusting in any random direction would impart a spin to the missile, causing it to tumble uncontrollably.

  The MKK ‘Sand Blaster’ engines were not meant to propel the missile towards the direction of the enemy. The missiles were KK weapons and hence would already be under tremendous speed. The engines and the vector of the thrusters were instead designed to react fast and quickly make minor vector changes to make last minute adjustments targeting their objective. That’s why the engines needed to be extra powerful to quickly change the momentum of the 5 ton mass of the missile.

  The Intrepid and the Magellan had released 512 MKK-1 missiles each. Those 512 MKK-1 missiles had constituted nearly 12% of the laden weight of each craft. Not surprising, given each missile weighed over 5 tons, and not unwarranted given that this was the main purpose of ‘Operation First Strike’. The 1,024 MKK-1 missiles had slowly drifted away from their launching ships and started firing their thrusters in micro-bursts.

  The missiles were continuously correcting their path with the micro-bursts. As the missiles got closer to their objectives, the time lag between the light from their objective got shorter, and hence the certainty of position of their targets got higher. The missiles adjusted their trajectory accordingly to take advantage of more accurate information. Things were going fine, when the Hadean fleet put a minor spanner in the works.

  The Hadean fleet’s path was pointed squarely at the Beta Shaitan gas giant till that point. It was anticipated that at some point the fleet will correct its course and point to one of the moons of the gas giant, most probably Dante. However the human planners had expected the fleet to make the course correction much later, when they were closer to Beta Shaitan. Dante was fairly close to the gas giant Beta Shaitan, so the minor change in course was not expected to cause any substantial hindrance in targeting.

  As luck would have it, the Hadean fleet decided to change course just a few hours before zero hour, and that too it changed course to one of the outermost moons of Beta Shaitan, which in hindsight was probably a more logical choice, since it was the hub of the Shaitan space activity in this system. It had two space yards or space ports, and two space elevators to take advantage of the low gravity and relative mineral riches of the moon.

  The relatively larger than expected change in course was manageable, but pushed the MKK-1 missiles to go into full thrust burn mode to keep up with the change. Since the missiles were travelling at 14% the speed of light, even a very minor change in their target’s course resulted in the missiles having to expend a large amount of thrust to get back on target, especially this close to the impact time.

  A 5 milligram grain of sand does not sound like much, but when it is travelling at 14% the speed of light, it carries kinetic energy equivalent to just over a ton of TNT! When such a grain of sand hits the hard armored skin of a ship, it embeds itself less than a millimeter into the external hull before annihilating itself and releasing the entire kinetic energy as heat. Such an impact of grains of sand on the hull of a Shaitan warship was not expected to cause any structural damage, but would heat up the hull and if enough grains fell on the hull should hopefully melt the warship into a ball of metal. That was the theory anyway.

  So why had the USC abandoned its tried and tested Kinetic Kill munitions like GK-1 Hammer in favor of a new and untested weapon, when the GK-1 hammer had been used so successfully against Shaitan ships and orbital assets in the Alpha Shaitan campaign? The reason was twofold.

  First, as Commodore Justin Brogan had mentioned to Admiral Choi when he took the idea to him in the first place that the very speed of the USC ships which was its greatest advantage over the Shaitan warships also had a downside. The GK-1 Hammer missiles travelled at 2% to 3% of the speed of light, while the Intrepid and the Magellan were travelling at over 14% of light speed. That faster speed made it five to seven times harder to hit a target. Thus to hit the same number of targets it would require about seven times more missiles.

  That in itself wouldn’t have been a reason enough to try a new munition. The second and bigger problem was the target itself. All high speed kinetic attacks on Shaitan ships and orbital assets till date had been carried out when the targets were stationary or moving at very low speed in orbit such that they could be considered almost stationary. That was not the case with the warships of the Hadean fleet. While the Hadean fleet had slowed down considerably, it was still moving at a significant speed. If the human attack on the Hadean fleet had been head on, the speed of the Hadean fleet would not have been a great issue, but the attack would be at an angle.

  If the targeting systems mistimed even by a few picoseconds (a trillionth of a second), the missile would miss the ship. Even with quantum computers installed on the MKK-1 missiles, it was not possible to get that kind of timing right. The quantum computers might be near instantaneous, but the sensors and switches that sent data to and from the quantum computers were still made out of silicon which responded in milliseconds or at best in microseconds. Even if you somehow got all that right, the engines and the thrusters were physical devices which could never respond and correct that fast.

  In all the simulations of the weapons scientists, the probability of a GK-1 Hammer type of guided kinetics being able to make a direct hit on a Hadean fleet warship was next to zero. So the weapons scientists decided to change the killing paradigm of their missile and convert the great speed of the missiles from a disadvantage to an advantage.

  ---XXX---

  “Warmaster, I would like your indulgence in a seemingly wild speculation of mine.” The taste of the communication was sharp and jarring for Seer Taste of Resolve as he was forced to come out of the stupor of the mild hibernation that he had allowed himself to fall into. It was the last chance Seer Taste of Resolve would have for many cycles to catch some rest before they reached World #11. Once they reached that worlds, the Grand Coalition fleet would be a hive of activity and he as the Warmaster was unlikely to get any rest. Hence Resolve had forced himself to get as much hibernation time as he could in these last few cycles.

  The tasting station attached to his niche has sent the jarring communication signal that had woken up Warmaster Resolve and he focused on it again after shaking off the haziness to realize that the message came from Scent of Stars, one of the many novices being trained at the control stations of the warship. Warmaster Resolve vaguely recalled Scent of Stars as one of those overeager novices that he had seen far too often in his life.

  If it had been in the nature of Shaitans to be irritated, then Resolve would have exploded by now because the novice had bypassed his supervisor and directly approached the Warmaster despite the fact that Stars’ tasting station must have clearly indicated that Resolve was in hibernation. It was fortunate for the overeager novice that such tendencies as irritation had been bred out by the Shaitans over their long history. The youngling novice had tendered no apology for waking up the Warmaster, for just like greetings and goodbyes, there were no such concept of an apology in the way of their beings.

  Warmaster Resolve focused a bit more and soaked in the data that the novice was sending to his tasting station. Resolve could not understand why this data was being sent to him. It tasted like a recording of a meteo
r shower. “What is your speculation, and what has it to do with the data you are sending me, which tastes like a meteor shower?” Resolve asked with a sharp taste. Despite historical attempts, emotions had not been completely bred out of Shaitans. Resolve’s question did have a taste of mild irritation.

  “It does taste of meteor shower doesn’t it? Except that this is a recording of a position in deep space with no atmosphere! Meteor showers like this can only be tasted if meteors hit the air in an atmosphere and burn due to friction. They cannot occur in deep space!” The novice exclaimed in excitement, oblivious of the irritation of the highest ranking Shaitan in the largest fleet his beings had ever assembled.

  Resolve wanted to retort that he knew how meteor showers occurred, but he restrained himself, piqued by what the novice had mentioned. Younglings like Scent of Stars are far more susceptible to emotional outburst compared to mature adults like Resolve. One has to give some latitude to younglings. “If you remember your training, then wouldn’t it be your duty to report this fact to your supervisor first, who can decide whether it needs to be reported to the Warmaster?” Resolve replied in a far less patient tone than he would have liked.

  “That course of action was what I was about to do, till I realized the direction from which this meteor shower was coming. It is in an absolute straight line to the Kalshuk system and the home world of the Ka-Baal! I did an immediate spectral analysis on the mild light of the meteor shower and what I found is surprising to say the least. The light spectrum analysis confirms that it is the signature of the burn of ammonium perchlorate, the substance used both by us and the Ka-Baal in their missile propulsion system as well as in our emergency acceleration system!” Scent of Stars responded.

  Resolve studied the data once more, but this time far more carefully. His irritation gone, replace by a mild anxiety. It was a feeling that was also supposed to have been bred out of his beings, but something that no sentient species that had gone through a Darwinian struggle could be bereft of completely, for it was an essential survival mechanism. He asked in a far softer tone. “So what is your speculation Scent of Stars?”