“My initial speculation had been that these were Ka-Baal warships sent to attack World #11. Then I realized that if these were ships slowing down from their journey from the Kalshuk system, then I would have seen ion plasma engine burn signature, not chemical rockets. They are too numerous in any case. There is no way the Ka-Baal could have over a thousand ships. My current speculation is that these are missiles sent in the direction of World #11, although even that explanation has a lot of holes. Why would the Ka-Baal release missiles from so far away and how can the missiles have enough rocket fuel to travel for so long. I had considered the possibility that the missiles were aimed at our fleet, but it is statistically impossible for a missile to hit us at that angle and at that speed. So I have discounted that possibility. Frankly Warmaster, I have no good explanation.” Scent of Stars said, a taste of sheepishness creeping into his communication.
Warmaster Resolve paused for the tiniest fraction of a moment as he considered all possibilities that could explain this anomaly. “What is the speed of objects?” Resolve asked as he tried to gather as much input as possible to tease out a solution from this puzzle.
“I don’t know Warmaster!” Scent of Stars replied with a sharp tangy taste of panic as he realized that he had missed out something obvious.
“You forgot to do a blue shift analysis?! Do it now!” Warmaster Resolve ordered, incredulous that such a basic step should have been forgotten. Then he realized that he was talking to a novice, and such basic mistakes can be expected from a novice.
When Scent of Stars finally re-established his connection with the Warmaster to report the results of the Blue-shift analysis on the light of the anomalous meteor shower that he had tasked the computer to perform, he seemed uncertain. “I am sorry Warmaster, the analysis seems to be giving a result which is hard to believe. I took time to run the Blue-shift analysis multiple times, but it gives the same result consistently…”
“Just send me the result novice!” Resolve said sharply.
Scent of Stars sent the result and from the taste of Resolve could make out that the Warmaster was as incredulous as he was. “As I had said Warmaster, it is hard to believe, but the figure is consistent – 10 part out of 64 the speed of light. To put it another way, those objects are travelling at seven times the speed of our fastest warships! Even the fastest Ka-Baal warships observed by World #12 have not reached anywhere near that speed.”
Warmaster Resolve ignored the incredulous ramblings of the novice. His mind was spinning in top gear weighing every possibility, trying to figure out this puzzle. There was obviously something approaching this system at incredible speed. It was most likely aimed at World #11 – where else could it be aimed at? It is unlikely to be a natural phenomenon given the speed at which it was approaching and it would be a reasonable assumption that it was something that the Ka-Baal had launched. Thus it was very likely to be something that threatened World #11 in some way. Beyond that piece of deduction, nothing could be said for certain.
“Have you intimated the control stations on World #11 about this?” Warmaster asked Scent of Stars.
“I have the data package ready for transmission, but I wanted to inform you first and take your permission before doing so. If you so command, I will send the data package immediately. We will have to keep in mind that we are still some distance away from World #11, so they will only get our message in about one tenth of a cycle because we are about one tenth of a light cycle away. By the time our message reaches them, whatever the threat is would have reached a lot closer given the tremendous speed at which the threat is travelling.” Scent of Stars said.
“Do it anyway, novice. Delayed warning is better than no warning. In any case, I am sure they would also have observed this phenomenon. I am sure there is a notification from World #11 on its way right now to let us know about this phenomenon. I am keen to hear from World #11 what they think of this. I would also like you to send this data package to all the vessels of the fleet immediately. Let the masters of the vessels know that the Warmaster wishes a conference of all the masters of the vessels to discuss this unanticipated development.” The Warmaster ordered the novice.
“As you command, so shall be done, Warmaster. I would also like to inform you that our course correction burn to steer towards the building station on the nineteenth moon is about to commence shortly. We will be changing our vector as planned and right now there is nothing out of the ordinary to report on that front.” Scent of Stars reported.
The course correction of the fleet went without a hitch. The conference call with the masters of the vessels of the fleet threw up no new ideas other than what Warmaster Resolve had already inferred. The Warmaster was a bit disappointed with the imagination of his vessels’ masters, rather the lack of imagination. He understood that none of the vessels or their crew had ever faced an enemy in their lifetime, let alone an enemy as capable as the Ka-Baal, but he had expected at least a few of the 128 masters of the vessels to come up with some out-of-the box thinking that could have bettered his own. Unfortunately none of that sparkle could be found amongst the masters of his ships. How Resolve wished for a few masters of vessels from World #12 who had gotten battle hardened and knew what it was to fight the Ka-Baal. There is no substitute for experience. Resolve realized that it was just a matter of time before this lot of warriors would get battle hardened themselves, but he was a bit worried that the first few encounters might result in a lot of casualties on their side due to lack of actual battle experience. He just hoped that the cost of inexperience wouldn’t be too great, and that his warriors would be quick learners.
It was sometime after the conference was over that Warmaster Resolve got a call from Scent of Stars once again. This time Resolve wasn’t irritated and welcomed the call from the novice. Inexperienced the novice might be, but at least he had initiative – something he hadn’t yet seen in any of the masters of his ships.
“Warmaster there is a curious thing that I have been noticing about the meteor shower phenomenon. It might be nothing, and I have discussed it with my fellow warriors here at the control room. No one has any idea, so I thought if your experience can throw some light on the matter.” Scent of Stars started. Resolve gave a chemical gesture for him to continue. “We have noticed that the light of the meteor shower has grown more vigorous.”
“Please elaborate by what you mean by more vigorous.” The Warmaster asked.
“Warmaster, the initial light from each individual speck of the meteor shower was fleeting and extremely faint. In fact it was so faint that it was at the edge of the detection capabilities of our telescopes. It took an automated image analysis program to flag it to me the first time because we could not differentiate it with our own tasting senses. Now the light from those individual specks is far brighter. Initially the faint specks of light would switch on and off in very short intervals to give a twinkle effect. Now those brighter lights burn for much longer on an average, only occasionally switching off for short durations before turning on again.” Scent of Stars elaborated.
“And your prognosis of this change of the meteor shower is…?” Asked Warmaster Resolve.
“We think that if those meteor shower phenomenon is really a bunch of missiles, then the missiles are thrusting harder Warmaster.” Scent of Stars replied tentatively, knowing that the Warmaster was testing his analytical abilities.
“A very logical conclusion, and one that I am myself inclined to believe. What however is of more interest to me is the fact that the supposed missiles are continuously switching on and then turning off their thrusters. When would a missile need to do that? If the missile has a clear target then it can burn continuously at the lightest possible thrust that would get it to its target and yet have the lowest possibility of detection. Unless…” The Warmaster could not finish his sentence because Scent of Stars completed it for him.
“Unless the target is a moving target which needs continuous adjustment of vector on the part of the missile as it
gets closer and has more updated information about the position of its target!” Scent of Stars said excitedly.
“Exactly novice! World #11 is not moving. What else is moving in this system?!” Warmaster asked with a tone of urgency.
Scent of Stars quickly scanned his tasting station and shared the situational awareness feed of the system that had real time information of the movement of every vessel in the system. “There are four vessels on routine patrol at high speed on the other end of the system, and another four moving from the 19th moon to World #11 orbit at a very low speed, and… Us!” Scent of Stars exclaimed with a sense of shock at that revelation.
Resolve studied the data sent by Scent of Stars and said. “We can rule out the slow moving four vessels. They are not moving fast enough to warrant the kind of adjustments those presumed missiles are making. Which leaves the other four fast moving vessels and our fleet. The question is which one of the two is that meteor shower which we presume are missiles are heading towards.”
Scent of Stars said uncertainly and sheepishly. “There is another fact Warmaster… I had dismissed it as a coincidence, but it might be significant. The lights from those presumed missiles started burning more vigorously almost immediately after we changed our vector to perform the routine course correction to head towards the 19th moon and the building station.”
“There are no coincidences in a battle young novice… no coincidences. You would do well to learn that fact quickly.” The Warmaster said in a grave chemical signature.
---XXX---
“Sir! You need to see this!” The Weapons officer shouted suddenly in a bridge which was silent and tense in anticipation of the event that would define their long mission and decide the future of humanity. It startled everyone including the captain, at whom the sudden hail had clearly been aimed. The crew were in their combat suit as per regulation and Weapons officer Girish Ramachandran aka Ramu could easily have directed the communication only to the suit of Capt. Guy Nugent. Instead he had broadcast in the default proximity mode for everyone to hear.
Ramu put up the visual, overlapped with the relevant data, on the main screen. He wanted everyone to see it. The visual was the telescopic image of the Hadean fleet, computer enhanced to help identify the indistinct blobs into grouping of Shaitan warships. The Intrepid was still a few light minutes away from the Hadean fleet and in this dark sunless system of Beta Shaitan, the outline of the ships could not be made out from telescope images at that distance. The only thing visible were the engine emissions of the ships as very faint specks of light to the computer, but not to the naked human eye. So all telescope images had to go through computer enhancement and tagging for humans to see the Hadean fleet visually.
The visual of the Hadean fleet looked as unremarkable and unchanged now as it had for the last hour. The crew knew that well because all of them had been glued to those unremarkable images on their personal consoles. The data overlapped on the images however said a very remarkable story. The nature of the data had changed completely. “What the hell are the Shaitans doing?!” Capt. Nugent blurted out.
“They seem to have lit up their emergency acceleration chemical rocket engines, sir. The more interesting thing though is the nature of their acceleration burst with those engine though. If you notice the engines are switching on and off at random intervals and with random variable thrusts. It is a classic ploy to make a ship hard to target for a missile targeting system approaching the ship at an angle at high speed. I believe they are aware of us, or at least of our MKK-1 missiles. I believe it is the missiles they are aware of since we are not emitting anything but our missiles are continually thrusting to adjust their targeting.” Ramu said in a slightly calmer voice compared to his initial excitement.
“Send this data to the Commodore and the Magellan immediately with a priority tag. I am connecting with the Commodore and Capt. Tan now for a conference.” Guy ordered and used his neural interface to set up a conference with Cdr. Justin Brogan and Capt. Daniella Tan within milliseconds. Justin got on to the conference call immediately, but Capt. Tan took a few seconds to respond. When she did, guy realized that her crew had also noticed the issue and come to the same conclusion independently.
“Sir, I believe the Hadean fleet is aware of our presence and intent. I don’t think they have detected our ships yet, but they have detected our MKK-1 missiles for sure.” Guy briefed the other two officers in the conference.
“The Magellan concurs with the conclusion of the Intrepid, sir. We had come to the same conclusion ourselves.” Daniella added.
“Yes… I can see that, and I agree with you both. There is no other logical explanation. Though this situation is not completely unforeseen on unanticipated, we had hoped that the odds against discovery so early would ensure that the Hadean fleet would discover those MKK-1 missiles only at the last minute. That is not to be, it seem… clearly the detection system and the vigilance of the Shaitans is better than what we had hoped for. So what is your prognosis captains? How does this affect the targeting and the efficacy of our attack? More importantly, do we need to make any changes in our attack plan?” Justin said with a faraway gaze, clearly working out all the possibilities in his mind.
“Sir, the MKK-1 missiles are now straining at maximum thrust to target the Hadean fleet. The Shaitan admiral has been smart enough to bring the emergency acceleration chemical rockets of the Shaitan warships into play. The warships of the Hadean fleet are now decelerating hundreds of times faster than they were doing with their ion plasma engines. This has put a strain on the MKK-1 thruster rockets to keep up with that level of deceleration. In addition the random on-off nature of their thrust is definitely going to make targeting harder, along with the fact that the strength of the trust itself is being varied randomly by the Hadean fleet. I foresee a major drop in the hit rate of our missiles. We may even be looking at a situation where a majority of the fleet escapes destruction.” Daniella said in a glum voice.
“I am afraid I agree with that fear of Capt. Tan. There is however a small saving grace… The Shaitan admiral is not decelerating at full thrust with the chemical thrusters. If he had done so, he may have been able to put his Hadean fleet beyond the reach of our MKK-1 missiles. I think the Shaitan admiral expects an attack with conventional missiles which are not as sluggish as the MKK-1 missiles, so he never thought of the possibility of trying to outrun the missiles. Instead he is using the random thrusting to try and make targeting harder, which works well with a single shot missile but will not be as effective against a spread area weapon like MKK-1.” Guy added.
“True… both of you, but there is a decision that we have to take in the next few minutes. Do we stick to our original missile detonation timing and average distance, or do we change it given the changed circumstances?” Cdr. Brogan asked, half to himself.
“Sir?” Daniella asked, urging Justin to elaborate, but it was Guy who realized what the commodore was alluding to and spoke out.
“Our original missile detonation timing is programmed into the MKK-1 missiles is designed to detonate progressively closer to their intended target. We have eight MKK-1 missiles targeting each ship of the Hadean fleet. Those group of eight missiles are programmed to detonate one after the other at intervals such that the first one which detonates the furthest has the widest spread of sand and hence the largest probability of hitting its target ship. But the sand is spread over a wider area and hence is less dense, so it is likely to cause lesser damage.
“The missiles that detonates subsequently closer and closer to the target ship get less time to spread out. These missiles’ sand will spread over a smaller area and thus have lower probability of hitting, but these sand clouds will be denser. So if it does hit the target then it is likely to cause more severe damage. Now that we know that our missiles are going to have a harder time to target the ships, the question is this. Do we detonate them earlier to compensate and give a better chance to the missiles to make a hit by compromising on the am
ount of damage we do to each ship?” Guy surmised and Justin nodded to let him know that is exactly what he meant.
“I don’t know sir, we might not end up killing too many ships that way even if we end up damaging more ships that way. It may slow down the advance of the Hadean fleet because they will be forced to stop and repair their ships at Beta Shaitan, but their fleet would be largely intact. I think it is better to ensure that we killed more ships even if it meant letting some go unscathed. That way we will have a smaller fleet to contend with, when they attack Earth.” Daniella said.
“It is time we humans need above anything else captain. That is the primary objective of our mission – to buy time. Even if we managed to kill half of the ships of the Hadean fleet and let the other half go unscathed, we would not have fulfilled that mission Daniella. The remaining ships of the fleet will not be forced to stop for a long time on Beta Shaitan and along with the reinforcement already available there could then start off almost immediately towards earth with almost a hundred warships. Earth would not have built enough capacity to fight off a 100 ship fleet by the time they reach Earth.
“Earth has just started ramping up the production of the Avenger class ships which can truly stand toe to toe with a Shaitan warship. In fact the Axis powers have just developed the capacity to develop that class of ships in the last few years. It will be a decade from now that Earth will have the capacity to churn out these ships in large numbers every year. If we can buy Earth another decade before the Hadean fleet attacks, they will be in a far better position to defend against a larger fleet than they can defend against a smaller fleet which arrives a decade earlier.
Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4) Page 5