“I remember your disgust at the cowardice of those vessels which were keen to return back with the splinter fleet by taking the position vacated by the three vessels of World #6. You had also expressed you admiration at the vessels of World #6 for their dedication to the cause of our beings… In the light of their recent actions though, it would seem that the motivation for being so eager to join the assault fleet was something very different.” Seer Taste of Logic conjectured.
The realization started dawning upon Warmaster Resolve, as he spoke. “So this plan was hatched a long time ago! It still doesn’t tell me their motivation, but it is important information nonetheless. It tell us that this is no spur of the moment madness but a deep conspiracy, which had been hatched a long time ago. Perhaps this is not the only instance of treachery of the conspirators. It is possible, even likely that instances of sabotage, betrayal and even active rebellion may have been taking place all throughout the battlefront, and we didn’t even suspect it.
“Actually that is not completely true. There is at least one place I know where our beings have been suspicious. The invasion of the core worlds has been constantly reporting the presence of beings who were completely undocumented. The mysterious sabotage of the building yards and the space elevators on the core system was reportedly preceded by the detection of a few such undocumented beings, whose records couldn’t be found on either of the core worlds, and their taste records were denied by every other world that those records were sent for verification.
“In the ground battles on the core worlds, we capture and kill many native resident beings of the core worlds, who have been turned into zombies by the Ka-Baal; but we also encounter captured or dead beings, who have no identification records on the core worlds. We have always been mystified about this, since none of the worlds has come forward and claimed any of those unidentified beings as being from their own world. Now we have a suspect world, from where those beings could be coming. If the whole of World #6 is bent on betraying their own beings, then they would never own up to anyone fighting on the core worlds.
“Why a world of our being would do such a thing, and what they can hope to achieve from it other than their own extermination, is beyond me. It is amazing that I am even considering the possibility of a whole world of our beings betraying the rest of our beings. If someone had suggested this to me a short time ago, before the treachery of those ten vessels, I would have dismissed that being as a raving lunatic. In any case, I have more urgent matters to concentrate on right now. I will cogitate and discuss this with you after the battle.
“This information is extremely important, though. There is no guarantee in any battle that the flagship of the fleet would remain intact. I don’t want this information to be lost in case something unfortunate happens to our vessel in the upcoming battle. I want you to send this information immediately to the Grand council on my authority and seal, Seer Logic. I will be busy, but you know my thought process. Annotate as best as you can in the short time available before the Ka-Baal missile barrage reaches our fleet.
“On further thought, send a copy to the Council of Seers of all our worlds directly – except World #6. Let all our worlds be forewarned to what we have learnt here. It might save lives and prevent our beings from being taken unawares to any more act of betrayal. Our beings might even be able to lay a trap for World #6, to confirm their treachery. Although I think that after this act of betrayal, World #6 would be aware, that their treachery would be known to the rest of the beings. Do it Seer Logic. I am depending on you.” Resolve ordered Taste of Logic and cut off the channel to concentrate once again on the tactical situation developing in space.
“Warmaster. I don’t know if you have been monitoring your feed, but the Ka-Baal fleet has finally come to a stable formation at the last moment. I don’t know what to make of it or what their intentions are with that formation, but it is unconventional, strange and weird to say the least.” The master interrupted Resolve’s presumptive assessment of the forthcoming battle that he had been playing in his mind.
Resolve looked at the formation and for a moment was baffled. Then in an epiphany of sorts, the realization dawned upon him. He realized the tactic of the Ka-Baal Warmaster, and he realized the overall game plan to which the Warmaster was playing. At the fag end of his life, and for the first time in his life, Resolve felt humbled and humiliated at being outthought at pure warrior tactics and strategy by another warrior. If he didn’t up his game, he would be outfought as well by his opponent, whose brilliance as a tactician was no longer in question.
---XXX---
“Admiral, I know that this is not a good time, but is it too bad a time to ask something?” Captain Tuvalu asked sheepishly. He had just finished giving an update to the admiral before the point defense systems stated firing. Every human onboard the fleet had intellectually known that when they finally encounter the dreaded Hadean fleet, they would face an unimaginably large barrage of incoming missile fire. Most of the young crew of the fleet had probably lived their entire life in the shadow of the anticipated doom approaching towards Earth in the form of the Hadean fleet. These young crew members would have grown up almost their entire lives fearing the arrival of this day. Even the senior most officer of the fleet, the admiral herself had spent her entire military career under the shadow of the approaching Hadean fleet. She had been a greenhorn ensign when the Hadean fleet had been detected.
It was no surprise then that almost every human in the fleet had withdrawn into their innermost thoughts, probably remembering the highlights of their lives, and reliving memories both bitter and sweet. Many were probably saying a silent prayer, or asking forgiveness from the Maker. Some may have been bidding a silent goodbye to their loved ones or thinking about all the regrets in their lives which they may never be able to redress. It was only human to be afraid, when you see four thousand six hundred and eight monster Shaitan missiles heading towards you. That was the exact count being shown by the tactical computer.
Humans now knew the number of missiles a Shaitan warship carried. It was one hundred and twenty eight. The number might look small compared to the number of missiles carried by human warships, but if one considered the fact that each of those monster missiles weighed over ten times that of a typical human missile, then one realized that the Shaitan warships actually carried a higher proportion of their overall tonnage as weaponry compared to the humans.
The Warmaster of the Hadean fleet had released exactly half of his total inventory of missiles at the human fleet. Each of the seventy two Shaitan warships had released sixty four of their one hundred and twenty eight missiles, totaling four thousand six hundred and eight. Those 4,608 missiles were heading inexorably towards the human fleet, and all that the crew could do now was wait. The computers had been programmed, and it would be the computers which would actually fight the war. They would command and guide the minutiae of the battle that would last less than a minute.
It would be the computers that would decide the next priority target for each individual offensive missile that had been released by the humans. If a particular target was destroyed, then it would be computer which would reprioritize the rest of the missiles towards another target. It would be the computers which would control the antimissiles trying to destroy the incoming Shaitan missiles, and if a particular missile got taken down, then it would be the computers which would assign another Shaitan missile as target to the antimissiles, in accordance with the algorithms that had already been fed by the crew.
This battle, like all space battles, would be fought at too fast a speed for humans to control anything real time. All that the humans could do was wait and watch. They had nothing to do themselves. Having nothing to do at a time like this, inevitably makes the human mind delve into the darker recesses of their minds. Josie knew that this is what Capt. Horo Tuvalu was going through when he added. “I know these questions have nothing to do with our immediate situation, but I couldn’t help asking. It is an itch
I had to scratch. I couldn’t bear the thought of not knowing the answer before I…” Horo Tuvalu bit off his word midsentence.
“Before you die?” Josie exclaimed with a laughter that sounded like a giggle. Horo had never heard the admiral sound like this before. Clearly the nerves were showing on her too. “Relax young Horo Tuvalu. I don’t think that today is the day for you to die. No sir! Not today! Not if I can help it. Shoot your questions captain. There is nothing that we are doing anyway, just watching the screens and getting increasingly anxious. Might as well take our mind off it for a moment. It can only do good to our state of mind.”
“Actually, there are two questions. First, if the heretic Shaitans were going to betray the fleet, then why not simply fire all their missiles at the rest of the fleet without warning, while they were still in formation, just a few kilometers from their nearest neighbors. You know…. Commit a battlefield treachery, the way Richard III was attacked and hacked to death by his own knights from behind, in the middle of a battle while he was charging in and had almost reached Henry Tudor, and would have won the battle.
“The missiles of the heretic warships would have been much more effective, and would have caught the rest of the fleet by complete surprise. The closest of the ships to the heretics wouldn’t have gotten the time to respond before the missiles hit them. I am sure that they could have destroyed far more of the Shaitan warships that way, than they can hope to destroy with the current strategy.” Horo asked.
“The heretics may be willing to commit treachery, but I never said that the heretics were willing to commit suicide! According to their own estimation, the ten heretic warships on that fleet could have killed as many as twenty warships, may be even twenty five, if they had opened fire on their neighbors without warning. The closest Shaitan warships’ automated defense systems wouldn’t have had time to react before they were destroyed. Those monster explosions of the Shaitans missiles would have also ensured that all the heretic warships would have also been blown to pieces.
“If by some miracle a few of the heretic ships did survive, then they would have been finished off by the rest of the fleet within seconds. The Shaitans themselves wouldn’t have to react, the automated defense algorithms that are active all the time on all Shaitan warships would have taken care of it. Targeting ships flying further away in formation wouldn’t have been very effective, as it would have given more time to reach, and all the ten heretic ships would still have been dead. So yes, it would have been more effective from our selfish point of view, but the heretics want to live just as badly as we do.” Josie replied.
Then she added. “Take it from me captain, the people who negotiated this deal with the heretics a long time ago, tried their best to get as much as we could out of the heretics. In my books, those spooks and negotiators did a splendid job. I can easily imagine how hard a job it must have been for them. We got the best deal that was possible. I have had long correspondences with one of the main negotiators, a remarkable woman, Colonel Sandra Montgomery. I hope to meet her in person one day. I am told, she is on her way back to earth after a lifetime of service to USC and humanity.”
“Thanks for letting me know that fact admiral. The heretics are not as suicidal fanatics, as we have pictured them, I guess.” Capt. Tuvalu said.
“Oh, the heretics and all Shaitans for that matter are perfectly capable of sending their warriors to death. The warriors themselves will not question their commanders’ orders either. They have absolute faith and trust in their commanders. In a way the Shaitan chain of command is absolute and unquestioned, and their military discipline is something no human commander can even dream of. That doesn’t mean that the Shaitans or the heretics are keen to send their warriors or their ships to their deaths at the drop of a hat.
“Remember that they are an extremely intelligent and rational species. In many ways more rational and less emotional than us humans. Till recently they were also the more advanced of the two species. The Shaitans will weigh every military sacrifice against the potential benefit and the risk. So the heretics are willing to send a few of their warriors as suicide bombers because the potential benefit is huge, and the cost is low. The Shaitans value the lives of their people, just not the way we humans do. They don’t have any problems sacrificing a few lives, if it benefits their people as a whole. Something we humans usually cannot do.” Josie reminded Capt. Tuvalu that they were fighting an intelligent and advanced species, not some mindless animals.
“Talking about sending people to their deaths, ma’am, I have another question, but I am not sure if I am crossing the bounds of propriety, by asking it…” Capt. Tuvalu hesitated to proceed further.
Josie gave an audible sigh, as she looked at the screen to see a young and promising officer, who was deeply curious about command decisions and yet scared to ask what Josie already knew he was about to ask. If they got out of this alive, then it would be officers like young Horo Tuvalu, who would one day be admirals and lead the humans out in space. She owed it to her mentors, who had guided and taught her the intricacies and burdens of command, to teach the next generation. So, despite the painful nature of the discussion, she forced herself to have it.
“You are probably transgressing the bounds of propriety, but this is one burden that would get a bit lighter by talking to someone about. We have been in this campaign for over a year together now, and I like you young Tuvalu. You show promise and the rarest of commodities: the willingness to learn, so go ahead and ask your question.” Josie braced herself.
“Just that ma’am… I mean… I mean how did you decide which ship goes to the front of the formation and who goes behind? I mean, it is almost like deciding who lives and who dies. I don’t mean to suggest that there is anything mala fide in your decision ma’am! Please don’t get me wrong. It is just that if I had to make such a decision, it would tear me apart!” Somehow Horo Tuvalu was able to stutter out the question that had been eating him.
“And you think it didn’t tear me apart, captain?” Josie’s voice had turned soft, and a bit sad. “I am not going to give you the sob story about the burdens of command. You have enough time left to suffer your own burdens in your career. May it be distinguished! Unfortunately, the more distinguished it is, the more likely are you to suffer from burdens of command. This decision was different. It was not about sending the only available resource to their death to achieve an objective. That would have been easy. This decision was like playing favorites and playing god.
“Those young men and women in those first few ships in the formation could have been replaced by any other set of ships and crew, and it would have made no difference. Yet I had to put someone in front, knowing fully well that whoever I put in there was most likely to die. I wish I could give you some elaborate logic behind the choice of ships to put in order. The truth is that there is none. I let the tactical computer choose a random order of ships based on the formation we had fed. I ensured that our flag vessel is somewhere in the middle of the straight line.
“If we, here in the flagship die from that oncoming barrage, then that would mean that my battle tactics has been proven very wrong, because half of our ships have been destroyed. It is then time for someone else to take up the command of whatever is left of the fleet. I also ensured that USC Kathmandu was at the absolute rear of the formation. If something were to happen to our ship, then the vice-admiral on board the Kathmandu can take over, and there would be no leadership crisis in the fleet. That is about it captain. I was tempted to play favorites for a moment, but I resisted that urge.
Whatever is to happen to USC Sakhalin standing right in front or to USC Zenith right behind can be blamed on me for choosing the strategy that I chose, and on chance, that those unfortunate ship and their crews’ name turned up to be in the forefront.” Josie replied and realized that she was already feeling a lot better having told her ordeal to someone. She was no longer dreading to track those four thousand monster missiles coming their way.
&n
bsp; The tactical computer had ensured a perfect lineup of the human fleet. It was continuously adjusting the position of individual ships, firing micro thrusters here and there to maintain that perfect lineup, as the two fleets approached each other at a distance. The lineup was so perfect that even though the two fleets were over three thousand kilometers from each other, the ship ahead in the lineup occluded the sensor view of the ship behind. Each ship was exactly eight kilometers behind the ship ahead. It was the minimum distance that needed to be maintained between ships of the formation to ensure that a monster Shaitan missile with over four hundred megaton yield, hitting the ship in front did not affect the ship behind, other than temporary blindness of the sensors due to the EMP burst of the explosion.
The temporary blindness itself would not affect the capability of the next surviving ship, which would become the ship at the forefront, because all the ships were tied up to floating sensors that held position at a distance of about ten kilometers from the straight line formation, which provided all the ships with an unimpeded view of the Shaitan fleet and their terrifying missile barrage. Those sensors floating around the straight line formation were the collective eyes of the fleet at that moment, so the ship ahead occluding their view didn’t make any difference.
If the Shaitan missile barrage was looking terrifying to the humans, then what would be the feeling going on through the distributed brains of the Shaitans in the Hadean fleet, Sigrid wondered. Each human warship’s full complement of nuclear missiles was twelve hundred. Every missile carried by the defense fleet had been fired at the Hadean fleet. Sigrid wondered how it must feel on the skin slime of the masters of those Shaitan vessels, as their tasting stations tracked and continuously reported the fact the forty eight thousand missiles were heading their way! That didn’t even take into account the one thousand two hundred and eighty monster Shaitan missiles released by the heretic ships, which could do far more damage than the human missiles.
Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4) Page 39