Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The shipyard was more robustly built with thicker hulls than any Shaitan war vessel. The shipyards weren’t under any constraints of motion or fuel efficiency. They didn’t have to accelerate fast. So the Shaitans carried their credo of robustness to the extreme, when it came to building shipyards. The objective of the mission however, was not to destroy the outside of the shipyard, but the inside. It mattered little if the empty hull of the shipyard floated like a dead carcass, as long as the insides of the shipyard were destroyed.

  When the nuke exploded inside the shipyard, one hundred percent of the energy of the nuke went into blowing and melting the innards of the shipyard. The Shaitans had never designed their ships and shipyards for such an inside attack. On the inside, it was only slightly more robust than a human construction. Not enough to make any difference.

  While it appeared as a single explosion, in reality there were two detonations inside the shipyard separated by some microseconds. When the first heretic warrior released his switch and detonated, the force of the shockwave travelled within microseconds through the shipyard and reached the other heretic warrior on the same shipyard who had not been spotted, and who was now hiding somewhere near the center of the structure. The shockwave killed the hiding warrior instantly releasing his dead man’s switch and triggering his backpack nuke as well.

  It was the second explosion that spread the damage evenly and completely across the complete innards of the shipyard. Everything that the explosions touched, turned first into liquid, then gas and then plasma almost instantly. This rage of plasma fire engulfed not just the shipyard, but raged through the open passageways that connected the shipyard to the warship nearing completion that was docked with the shipyard. The plasma fire singed the insides of the warship while leaving the external hull glowing red in the visible light, but relatively intact.

  The heat blew up the vestibules that connected and held the shipyard to the unfinished warship. The heated plasma emanating out of the unfinished warship acted like a rocket pushing the unfinished warship away from the shipyards and slowly into a decaying spiral orbit down to the surface of World #2, where it eventually crashed. The outer hull of the shipyard itself survived, but was riddled with holes like a Swiss cheese. The demolition job of the shipyard was a resounding success. In all the other four targets, the nukes went off exactly on timer. The other shipyards suffered a similar fate.

  The two nukes used to sever the tether from the counterweights was an overkill, but necessary as a measure of redundancy, just in case one of warriors couldn’t make it. The nuclear explosion at the attachment point vaporized the attachment and the harness along with the carbon fiber tether in the vicinity for good measure. The counterweight, which was relatively undamaged, being a solid block of metal, went flying out of orbit.

  The centripetal force of the tension of the tether no longer constrained it, so the centrifugal force took over and shot the counterweight out into the void on an endless journey to nowhere. The tether along with the elevator cabs went crashing down to the surface.

  Now that the cat was out of the bag, there was no point refraining from trying to contact the other shuttle on the origin world. Lt. Pimenta was dying to find out how the mission had proceeded for them. The strike time was synchronized, so if the other shuttle was alive, it would have also struck at the same time, and possibly would be running for its life as well. So contacting each other couldn’t put the shuttles under any more suspicion.

  Lt. Pimenta routed his link request through the interface the heretics had rigged up for the human computers on the Shaitan shuttle. It contacted the shuttle, where Sergeant Dorji gave him a concise report. Unlike this shuttle over World #2, the shuttle over the origin world hadn’t faced a single complication. The vigilance on the origin world seemed to be more relaxed. The traffic controller out there was taken in hook line and sinkers, and believed them till the moment of the explosions. None of the heretic warriors were spotted, and they were able to cleanly destroy both the ship building yards and both the space elevators. The shuttle on the origin world had been able to make a run for a much longer time due to this fact, and it was just in the last few moments that they had noticed a Shaitan vessel giving them chase.

  Lt. Pimenta heaved a sigh of relief. The mission had been an unqualified success. In one fell swoop the war infrastructure of the Shaitans in their core worlds had been set back by a decade or two. They would not be able to add to the defense of their system in a hurry. Even if the existing Shaitan defense fleet managed to hold off the human fleet currently in their system, a small follow up fleet could finish the job in a few years. Now all that Lt. Pimenta had to do was somehow take his Marines and heretic warriors out of here, back to the safety of the fleet.

  Chapter XXX

  Judas

  Outer Solar System

  2143

  “Warmaster, I am disturbed by one aspect of our strategy.” Seer Taste of Logic said to Seer Taste of Resolve. “We seem to be following our traditional doctrine while chalking out our battle plans. For example we are slowing down to come to a halt as we reach the heart of the Kalshuk system, in preparation for an attack on the home world of the Ka-Baal. Nothing wrong with that. The strategy has stood us in good stead against past enemies, but hasn’t worked very well whenever we have tried attacking the Ka-Baal home world.

  “Instead, we have found that if we were to adapt and learn the innovative techniques from the Ka-Baal themselves, then we have met with better success. The foiled attempt of the Ka-Baal, in their bombing run of World #11 being a case in point. We adopted their laser shining technique to detect the high speed kinetic bombing attempt. Then we copied their simple but ingenious sand missiles as a tremendous foil against high speed attacks. The result was the successful prevention of the bombing run and the destruction of both the attacking enemy war vessels.

  “Admittedly, the losses the two enemy vessels were able to inflict before they died were inordinately high, but that was more due to the eagerness of the Warmaster to destroy the enemy ships at almost any cost. In that eagerness, he surrounded the raiding enemy war vessels with eight of his own war vessels, without the competence to be able to anticipate how he was putting those war vessels of his in peril. To the credit of the enemy Warmaster on that bombing run, he was innovative and inventive, and hence he was able to improvise in order to inflict the maximum damage before he died. But we have come to expect that from the Ka-Baal. Even after we exterminate them, they will be our most cherished and respected adversary, perhaps for all times to come.

  “In any case the loss of those warships was not a very big blow to our offensive capabilities, because none of them could have taken part in an inter-system campaign like this one anyway. All of them had been crippled by the first strike on the Grand Coalition fleet, and had been hastily patched up to act like a buffer between the Ka-Baal and our worlds by being stationed at World #11.

  “In any case that is not the point. The point is that, we adopted non-conventional techniques and we succeeded, while every time we have stuck to warrior orthodoxy, we have failed. In the case of our current battle strategy for example, we will be slowing down with our thrusters pointed towards the enemy for over four hundred cycles. There would be no element of surprise. The Ka-Baal would know for four hundred cycles the exact number of war vessels approaching their system to launch an assault.

  “The enemy would at all times know our fleet’s exact position and speed. They would have enough time to plan a defensive strategy, place their fleet in the appropriate position, and for all we know be even able to place mines in our path. The Ka-Baal seem to be masters of mine laying, and have been able to use that weapon terribly effectively, which unfortunately our beings have been unable to do. Furthermore, we will have no advantage of high velocity, which has been used so effectively by the Ka-Baal as an opening gambit in so many of their assault campaigns.” Seer Taste of Logic laid out his case against the assault plan that had been drawn up by Resolve
.

  Despite millions of years of efforts by the Shaitans to breed out emotional reactions from their beings in an attempt at self-improvement, by making themselves more logical, less prone to emotional outburst and impulsive behavior, Shaitans weren’t completely bereft of emotions, or simple fallibilities like pride. Warmaster Resolve was a bit irritated at having his strategy being questioned. If it had been any other being, then he would have dismissed that being outright. This however was Seer Taste of Logic, who was not just and elder Seer, but his constant companion and confidante through this campaign, which was to last a better part of both the beings’ lifetime.

  In a way the question was not just asked being by a lifelong friend and companion, but by a very logical and competent mind. In a way, Taste of Logic was doing his job by logically questioning everything. If Resolve took the questioning in the right spirit, then it could only lead to an improvement in their plan, or the uncovering of some fatal flaw. In any case the line of questioning of Taste of Logic was completely logical and deserved an answer. It would be better for Resolve to take the question in that spirit, and use the opportunity as a sounding board, to think out aloud.

  “You are right on all counts, seer.” Resolve replied. “Our battle plan is conventional. We will have no high speed advantage when we engage with the enemy, and the enemy is forewarned many hundreds of cycles in advance and is able to track us moment by moment. If looked at the situation through the narrow prism of only those parameters of battle, it is not a very impressive battle plan.

  “There are however many more parameters to contend with in any major campaign, and in a major campaign like this one, where the fate of one of the two species would be decided for good, the number of dimensions increase exponentially. It is the job of the Warmaster to consider all those parameters and dimensions, and then come with the best possible plan. So let me enumerate the considerations that you missed or failed to mention Seer Taste of Logic.” Resolve said and paused for the smallest fraction of time a Shaitan could perceive. It was the equivalent of a pause humans gave for effect.

  “First and foremost you seem to have forgotten, or not taken into consideration, the situation in our core worlds. That seer, should weigh heavily on our battle plans, for this battle is not just an existential crisis for the Ka-Baal, but it is an existential crisis for our beings as well. The fate of the upcoming battle will decide which of our two species lives and which one dies.

  “If this fleet can defeat the defending Ka-Baal fleet in this campaign, and be able to proceed to their home world, we will be able to destroy their void vessel building yards in orbit, along with their void mining infrastructure and all other void infrastructure. We know that this system is the only system that the Ka-Baal have, where they have void building yards of any capacity. It is too early for the Ka-Baal to have built much infrastructure or void vessel building capability on World #12, which is the only other system they have.

  “If our fleet is able to do that, then the thirty two void vessels that spit from the Grand Coalition fleet and are on their way back to the core system will easily be able to defeat the occupying forces in the core system, because the Ka-Baal will receive no reinforcements. With the Ka-Baal void vessel building infrastructure destroyed, and no new void vessel being built, it will be only a matter of time before we slowly attrite all the surviving void vessels of the Ka-Baal. It doesn’t matter how many of our void vessels we lose, because we have void vessel building infrastructure in all the rest of our worlds, which can continue manufacturing and keep hunting down the surviving Ka-Baal void vessels. Essentially it would be game-over for the Ka-Baal.

  “Conversely, if the Ka-Baal are able to fend off the assault of this fleet and keep its void infrastructure intact on their home world, then our beings are saddled with a major strategic disadvantage. Although all our worlds except the core worlds would still retain the capability to produce void vessels, but those void vessels have one weakness compared to the Ka-Baal vessels. They cannot reach the Ka-Baal home world directly from wherever they are produced, like the Ka-Baal vessels can reach directly into our core worlds.

  “I cannot overstate the disadvantage this puts our beings strategically. If we were to add up all the war vessels still with individual worlds of our beings, then we have enough war vessels at our disposal as reserves. If we could bring those reserves into play quickly here in the heart of the Kalshuk systems, to be able to launch a follow up attack, then things would have been different. We could have adopted a very aggressive strategy. Even if this entire fleet of eighty two war vessels were to be completely destroyed, and the Ka-Baal somehow managed to hold us off in this upcoming battle, it wouldn’t have mattered. Our reserves could have been brought quickly into play here in the Kalshuk system for a follow on attack, the Ka-Baal wouldn’t be able to resist a follow up attack if it happened in quick succession.

  “Therein lies the problem Seer Logic, the operative word is ‘quickly’. Because our war vessels cannot reach directly to the Kalshuk system, a follow on assault would take four to five thousand cycles at the earliest. More likely about six thousand cycles. From what I understand from the units of measure of time of the Ka-Baal, that is about sixty years, or sixty cycles of their home world around their star, Kalshuk. Our estimates show that the Ka-Baal are able to build about two void vessels in each of their cycle, which they call a ‘Year’.

  “So in sixty cycles the Ka-Baal would be able to build hundred and twenty war vessels. A fleet almost as big as our original Grand Coalition Fleet! In essence the Ka-Baal would have rebuilt their fleet completely to face any challenge that the follow on fleet might present. A Follow on attack is only effective if executed quickly after the initial attack, not giving the enemy enough time to recover.

  “In the meanwhile, if the Ka-Baal is given six thousand cycles, or about sixty of their own cycles around Kalshuk, knowing the nature of the enemy, they are not going to be content building up there defenses here in the Kalshuk system. They would constantly send reinforcements to the core worlds to ensure that they hold on to that world. There wouldn’t be much of a force of war vessels assembled at a single system near the core worlds, to mount an effective challenge to take back the core worlds.

  “In sixty Ka-Baal cycles, the Ka-Baal would have a reasonable void vessel building infrastructure going on World #12 as well, which will not just bolster their production capacity, but also give them redundancy. Destroying one single world of the Ka-Baal would no longer be enough.

  “In the meanwhile, in those sixty Ka-Baal cycles the Ka-Baal would be able to do the unthinkable – wipe out our beings from the two core worlds! Remember that it took only twenty of their cycles for the Ka-Baal to exterminate our beings from World #12. Worlds #2 and the origin world are far bigger and have greater capacity to resist on the ground, but sixty Ka-Baal cycles should be enough for the Ka-Baal to have spread their poison gas into every niche that our beings occupy on those two worlds.

  “Our beings would slowly lose its capacity to wage war through attrition. Since our war vessels cannot hop directly and reach any of worlds that we choose, all the war vessels that we build in individual worlds will stay isolated, or at best concentrated in a few worlds. The Ka-Baal would send their spy drones to all our worlds to determine which of them is thinly guarded. Their assault fleet would reach that system, just as they did on the core world.

  “The Ka-Baal would pick our worlds one by one, slowly reducing our void building infrastructure. With this attrition of our war making capacity, we would find that we are a smaller force after every encounter, with one less world in our control and lessened capability to take it back. That is the slow and excruciating path towards extermination Seer Taste of Resolve! So as you can see, this upcoming battle is equally critical for the long term survival of our beings.” Resolve was in free flow now, giving a fluid exposition of his train of thought.

  “How does that affect our strategy? Conventional warrior teachings say that
the consequences of failure should not determine a battle plan, because then you are planning to lose, not win. Make a battle plan as if you are certain of a win, and you will make it a self-fulfilling prophesy. So the question I ask you Seer Logic is this: do I follow the conventional warrior teaching and plan with gay abandon as if the consequences of this battle didn’t matter, or would you rather have me abandon that warrior convention and plan the battle taking into consideration a fallback plan, in case the unthinkable happened?” Resolve asked Taste of Logic and was enjoying the delicious irony of his question and the consequent quandary that he had put Logic into.

  If Seer Taste of Logic were to choose the former, then he would be equally guilty of following conventional warrior teachings. If Logic were to choose the later, then he would be advocating for a more conservative approach, which is what he had been riling against in his opening statement about Resolve’s battle plans.

  Seer Taste of Logic was too seasoned a being, and too intelligent to fall into such logic traps. He neatly sidestepped the question by asking a question of his own. “Do you find it plausible that a fleet of eighty two war vessels can face the specter of a defeat, Warmaster?”

  “Eighty two is just a number, Seer Logic. It means nothing by itself. What counts is the relative number. How many we are as against how many of them. I know our estimation is that the enemy would confront us with a fleet only half our size, but remember that it is just that – an estimation. We have no justifiable basis to take that estimation too seriously, or hinge our entire strategy on that estimation. It could be that our estimates are correct, but it could be equally likely that we have made a gross underestimation of our enemy’s strength. If the enemy can match or even exceed our fleet strength, then the number eighty two counts for nothing.” Resolve retorted.