Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  ---XXX---

  Lt. Pimenta had been woken up by his suit computer an hour ago, because it was time to do another minor course correction. The suit computer’s navigation algorithm was programmed to do course corrections as early as possible, and as frequently as required, even at the expense of a bit extra propellant. The idea was to require as few course corrections as possible closer to the destination, when those bursts of thrust emanating from the suit were more likely to be noticed by someone, if they had telescope pointed in the direction of the floating marines.

  The painful part of this programming as far as Lt. Pimenta was concerned, was that the computer kept on waking him up from his sleep to do a course correction. The wearer was expected to keep his suit in a particular rigid position, when the computer calculated and executed a thrust burn. If the person was asleep, then this would not be possible and the course correction burn was likely to go awry. After the computer had woken him up, he found it impossible to go back to sleep. So he had kept his gaze on the false dotted depiction of the target overlaid on his visor. The target moon was still invisible.

  In fact it would remain invisible even when Lt. Pimenta was right upon it, because there was almost no light in the Hades system. The moon would however become visible and start growing on the horizon in Infrared light. Lt. Pimenta was already through about fifty five hours of his expected sixty hours journey. His target moon should start appearing as an infrared dot shortly. In the meanwhile he had nature’s call to attend. Despite his training Lt. Pimenta found it disgusting and revolting to have to do it in his suit. He had no other option though.

  ---XXX---

  The ding of the computer focused back Lt. Pimenta’s attention back on to navigation. He had been mesmerized by the view of the moon, featureless as it was. He had been observing it on his faceplate IR sensors and somehow found that slowly growing orb hypnotizing. Despite the moon being classified as ‘small’, it was still huge by human scale. That perspective of being dwarfed by any heavenly body was driven home by the fact that the target space station could not be observed by the naked eye. It was still too small compared to the moon. The computer had to draw a dotted line false overlay to indicate where the space station orbited the moon.

  Lt. Pimenta tore his gaze away from the moon and the space station and concentrated on the display of the navigational parameters on the side of his faceplate screen. He was going to enter the sphere of influence of the puny gravity of the moon at 102% of the target velocity. A tad faster than the target, but not bad considering the velocity he had jumped. His position was almost on the dot, within a few meters of the target.

  It was an amazing feat of navigation, made possible by the new generation of Q-computers, which had been built into this new generation of combat suit that Lt. Pimenta was wearing. It was hard to imagine that just a few decades ago, a Q-computer was so large that it could be fitted only on a large warship, and consumed so much power that it had to be fed directly off the nuclear reactor generator.

  Everything was nominal as far as Lt. Pimenta’s trajectory was concerned. All he had to do was to keep himself in the designated rigid position, and let the suit computer execute the massive burn behind the moon to slow him down enough to be captured by the gravity of the moon in an eccentric orbit. The Intel from the heretics was that there should be no eyes on the other side of the moon, so their suits could thrust at maximum thrust and yet not be noticed. Lt. Pimenta hoped the Intel was right. Getting blown out of the sky would ruin his entire day.

  When behind the moon and on full thrust, the marines had been instructed to briefly switch on their IFF transponders. If there was anything observing on the other side of the moon, then their thrusters were good enough to give them away. Switching on their IFF would pose no additional risk. It would, however, give the other marines and the heretic Shaitan suit computers a chance to make a tally of the marines and the warriors. It would give the commanders situational awareness on how many of them made it, and who all were nearby.

  Before his own thrusters and IFF simultaneously came to life, Lt. Pimenta started hearing the dings of other marines and heretic warriors’ IFF being registered by his computer. Many had reached ahead of Lt. Pimenta, and their IFF had turned on. Lt. Pimenta instinctively held his breath as the thrusters turned on, although he had no need to do so. The backpack thrusters weren’t that powerful to knock your breath away. In fact the force of the thrusters was fairly underwhelming.

  Lt. Pimenta concentrated on the IFF count, while he held himself rigid. He knew he couldn’t expect all the headcount to appear on his screen. Some may already have gone ahead of him to the other side of the moon, while others may still be on the way. Whatever he saw on the screen gave Lt. Pimenta some amount of comfort. A reasonably fair amount of human and Shaitan IFF signals had been registered on the computer. All seems to be going well so far.

  The marines hadn’t been detected or shot at so far. The heretics’ Intel had been holding good so far. The moon didn’t seem to have any high power detection equipment. His suit had reported that the Marines had been shone only with low power, long wavelength radar so far. That kind of equipment was only good at tracking metallic ships and shuttles. They were no good at tracking an individual soldier suited in non-metallic material.

  There didn’t seem to be any space based defense platform orbiting the moon. In fact other than the space station, no other satellite had been detected by his suit at all. Not even a tiny communication satellite. Lt. Pimenta guessed that if there was only one surface installation on the moon, then a communication satellite did not make much sense. Lt. Pimenta was fairly confident that his marines and the heretic warriors were fairly safe from surface based fire.

  The deceleration burn of his suit stopped suddenly without warning, then the navigation computer made minor adjustments to his suit orientation by flaring the micro-thrusters on his hip in a few bursts, and then flared the deceleration thruster at full blast again for a few seconds. After that the thruster stopped for good, along with a notification ding inside his helmet indicating that his suit had switched back to radio silence. Lt. Pimenta guessed that he was turning around to the populated side of the moon again, so he turned his head inside the suit to catch a glance of the space station again.

  He was still not close enough to the space station to see it directly, but his faceplate visor had some amount of telescopic capability. Setting it to maximum zoom, Lt. Pimenta could see the faint blob of the space station in the infrared. Unfortunately he had not come to a stable orbit yet. The first thrust burn behind the moon was designed to just enable the gravity of the moon to capture the marines. The marines would still be in a very eccentric egg shaped orbit around the moon, which will take them very far away from the space station, before returning back for another turn around the moon.

  It would be on the second turn, the deceleration thruster would slow the marines down enough to get into a roughly circular orbit. They would still be in too high an orbit to be anywhere near the space station. It would be on their third and final turn that the thrusters would lower the orbit to get it close to the orbit of the space station. Since the space station was in a geostationary orbit, the marines couldn’t descend to exactly the same orbit height, because then the marines would also get into a geostationary orbit, and it would never meet up with the space station.

  Instead the navigation computer would put the marines in an orbit slightly higher than that of the space station. That orbit would make them slowly drift towards the space station at a very ‘gentle’ pace of nearly hundred meters per second. The marines couldn’t jump on to the space station at that speed, because that was still three hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. The entire slowdown and lowering of the orbit would take the marines another eight hours.

  Lt. Pimenta yawned, as he thought of another eight hours of drifting in space. He was feeling sleepy and took advantage of the fact that his suit would not thrust for many hours now, till he tur
ned back behind the moon. So he settled into another nap, secure in the knowledge that the computer won’t wake him up till then. He woke up in panic, showing this battlefield nerves, before realizing that he had slept for hours and it was time for the next slowdown burn.

  This time he awaited eagerly for the burn to finish, because even though this was not their final orbit, he would now be in a position to get a fairly detailed view of the space station. Judging distances by vision in space can be very deceptive. There are no familiar reference points and human sight and brains have not evolved to take in the view of such large objects.

  Lt. Pimenta had thought that he was fairly close to the moon on his last orbit. It was on this, his second orbit, he realized how far and high his first orbit had been. The moon was much closer and loomed over most of the horizon. He could make out some of the largest surface features on the moon on this orbit. He realized that on the next and final orbit, all he would be able to see on the horizon would be the moon surface, it would block out his view space completely in its direction.

  Lt. Pimenta waited for the ding of the computer to indicate that his suit has gone into radio silence again. That would indicate that he was turning towards the space station. When the awaited ding came, he turned his neck as much as he could inside the suit and instructed his computer to locate the space station. Once the computer had done so, he zoomed his faceplate as much as possible on to the spot indicated by the computer.

  Initially he was disappointed at the resolution of the image. Although it was a far better image than the few pixels wide image that he could make out on his first pass, this image was still tiny and grainy, revealing little details. The size, shape and schematics of the space station was fed into his computer and he could review it anytime he wanted, as he had done uncountable times before and during this mission. Seeing with one’s own eyes though, was a different and a more satisfying event.

  Just as he was about to turn away in disappointment, he saw one of the small shuttles undock from the space station, no doubt making a training run down to the surface, piloted by a novice pilot learning the ropes of his trade. The light of the thrusters of the shuttle shone for a brief moment on the space station, and the computer caught that moment and froze the image in visible light. Lt. Pimenta was delighted. If a picture was worth a thousand words, then a picture in visible light was worth a million infrared frames as far as he was concerned.

  What he saw previously as an amorphous shaped blob with no specific features on that blob, was now a crystal clear picture of a perfect cube. The cubical space station was dotted with small structures sticking out of it, no doubt that each of them had some utility or the other. Shaitans never put anything as an ornamentation. Amongst all those fixtures lining the space station, there was one thing that was conspicuous by its absence – windows.

  Human space stations’ main hallmark was large plasti-metal windows. The windows had no survival or scientific utility. If anything, windows introduced structural weak points into a space station. Yet windows were usually the highlight of any human space station and a magnet for social gathering. They were simply made for humans to gaze out with their own eyes. It just underlined how much of a visual creatures we are, and how much of our primeval instincts we still carry with us.

  Unfortunately for Lt. Pimenta and his marines, windows had no utility for a blind species like Shaitan. Lt. Pimenta was fairly certain that even if the Shaitans could see, knowing the Shaitans, they wouldn’t have let visual gratification get in the way of function. They would still have made windowless space stations. No windows on that station was a bummer for the marines, because it meant no structurally weak point of forced entry for the marines. They would have to force their way through a hatch or cut their way through the tough hide of a Shaitan space station. Fortunately for the marines, they had a secret weapon. A weapon, which Lt. Pimenta could bet his bottom dollar, had never been anticipated by the planners of the space station!

  On the last orbit round the moon, Lt. Pimenta started scanning the IFF display anxiously. The suit navigational computers of all the marines and the heretic warriors were working in cooperative mode, meaning they were providing each other with information, without any of them acting as the central computer. With the shared information, each computer knew whether that marine was ahead of the pack having reached earlier than the rest, or behind the general mass of the pack.

  Unless a suit computer couldn’t receive signal from any other computer while they were behind the moon and out of radio silence, each computer knew whatever every computer knew. With that information each navigational computer calculated how hard the suits needed to brake, to be able to bunch up together on the third and the final orbit. The ones that were ahead would brake harder and get into slower orbit to let the rest of the mass catch up with them, while the ones behind would brake less and get into faster orbital velocity to catch up with the general mass.

  In theory if everything went fine, then all of the marines and the heretic warriors would be bunched up together, just as they were exiting from behind the moon on their final orbit. This was the time of the final tally, when Lt. Pimenta would have an authoritative figure and know who made it and who didn’t. It wasn’t as bad as he had feared. One marine and three heretic warriors were missing. In statistical terms it was an acceptable loss after such a daring maneuver, but he knew the marine who was missing. To the lieutenant, the missing marine was not a statistic.

  No one would ever know what happened to those four. Perhaps their navigation was faulty, or perhaps their suit thrusters malfunctioned, or there was some human error. Whatever be the case, those four sentient beings would float and drift frozen forever in the cold of space. Lt. Pimenta gave a sigh. He had started counting losses of the mission, and the fighting hadn’t even begun! He noticed that he still had two minutes before they came out from behind the moon and got back into radio silence.

  So he used the time to reiterate the plan quickly with Master Scent of Swiftness in broadcast mode so that all the marines and the heretic warriors were in the loop. There wasn’t anything new to plan or discuss. Everything had gone like clockwork till now, except for the missing four, which had been factored into the mission planning as well. The Intel had proven true till now, so there was nothing to improvise. Lt. Pimenta simply reiterated each groups’ task to ensure that everyone was clear.

  “The Chief had said that the package had been dispatched, and would follow as planned. Let us hope that the Chief got the timing of the package right. I am sure he did. We will come to know about it in a few minutes in any case. If the package is not where it is supposed to be, wait for my orders before we go to plan B. Repeat, do not switch to plan B without my orders. If we stick to our original plan, you all know that we will be in forced radio blackout after the package arrives. Just go about executing your part of the plan. Do not look to see what other are doing. We will all be incommunicado, so there is no way you will be able to find out how others are doing in any case. Just everybody do your part, and we will get the job done. Semper fi marines, and good luck to you warriors.” Lt. Pimenta finished just as the computer switched off his radio.

  Lt. Pimenta turned his attention towards the space station once again. This time it was visible clearly even in the infrared. He had to remind himself that they were closing in on the station at a fairly fast clip. If he were to collide with the space station at this speed, they would have to scrape him off the walls of the station. Thankfully that wasn’t a possibility because he was at a higher orbit. That didn’t mean he was safe, because somewhere in the mass of the marines and the heretic warriors, Sergeant Dorji was prepping the special radio attached to his suit that would sound the opening bugle of the Battle of Hades!

  Rangjo Dorji was concentrating on his faceplate display, which was giving him the countdown on the time and their position. The moment the countdown hit zero, he thought clicked the transmit button. The radio attached to his suit immediately gave
a loud but extremely brief, milliseconds brief, short wave squawk. Even if no one was specifically listening for it, the control station on the surface as well as on the space station would surely be able to hear it and the computers down there would note it. Perhaps the computers would flag it for the operators to investigate.

  The short wave radio squawk was designed to mimic similar frequency radio squawk that emanates naturally from all gas giants including Hades from time to time. The hope was that it wouldn’t be noticed immediately. A computer analysis of the squawk was unlikely to fool the Shaitans, because even a basic analysis would have revealed that there was data encoded in it. The hope was that it would not get analyzed immediately on priority, thus giving the assault party the time they needed. If that wasn’t the case, it would not just be the lives of the marines and the heretic warriors that would be jeopardized, but the entire game plan of the human campaign on Hades would be compromised.

  The humans couldn’t be sure whether the Shaitans had noticed the squawk or not, but they were sure that something floating silently towards them had. The packages had been released with negative velocity, which was the military operational parlance for saying that they had been released in the opposite direction to the ship’s motion with a certain velocity. The pneumatic ejectors were the ideal tool for such a job. They could impart momentum and release a package silently without the need to light up the rocket thrusters of the package and advertise it to the enemy. The packages would still travel in the direction in which the ship was travelling but at a slower velocity than the ship itself.

  This enabled the packages to arrive much later than the marines, but heading directly towards the direction of the academy on the surface and the space station above it. The packages were supposed to be between one and two thousand kilometers from the moon when the squawk was sounded. The first snafu of the mission started at this point. Despite the extreme accuracy with which the momentum to be imparted to the packaged had been calculated, the accuracy of such calculations could only be executed to a certain number of decimal points by the pneumatic ejectors. This left a margin of error, which over such huge distance ended up with the package shorter than where it was supposed to be.