Resolve had some grim decisions to make about future strategy and tactics, if he was to prosecute this campaign successfully. Round one of this battle had clearly gone to the Ka-Baal Warmaster. He was short of ten vessels due to treachery, and twenty vessels now due to a brilliantly fought battle by the enemy. In return Resolve reckoned that he would get two may be three enemy vessels!
---XXX---
“Admiral, we just crossed the Hadean fleet. The heretic fleet has taken a sharp turn south of the plane of the solar system to veer off the path being taken by the Hadean fleet. The Hadean fleet is making no attempt to pursue the heretics, which is a relief because the heretics would have been dead meat if the Hadean fleet decided to be vindictive and tried to punish the heretics. Those heretics don’t have a single nuke left onboard. The tactical reports confirm that all twenty Shaitan warships targeted were destroyed.
Chapter XXX
Treachery!
World #2
2144
This had never happened before in the nearly 7 billion cycles of their beings’ history! What was this test and trial, being taken of their beings?! What a challenge had Ka thrown at their beings! It was so insidious! It had started eating their beings from the inside! What a deception had the Ka-Baal managed to pull off over a long period of 15,000 cycles ever since their discovery!
The Ka-Baal revealed themselves as a primitive species when they were first discovered and over a period of 15,000 cycles as they were confronted, they kept revealing increasing capabilities as his beings ratcheted up the pressure on Ka-Baal. It was as if the Ka-Baal were fighting with just enough force and capability to ward off every attack. If they had more technological capability and resources, why not attack with all of it and finish off his beings once and for all? It was one of the greatest puzzles amongst the Grand Council of Seers.
At that time the strategy of the Ka-Baal and their reticence to use their full capability did not make any sense to even the wisest of seers. Now most seers were convinced that they knew the reason. It was such an insidiously sublime strategy that, was it not being used against their own beings, the Grand Council could have actually appreciated the deviousness of it all. Such sophisticated deviousness could never have been conjured up even by the Grand Council against its enemies.
Therein lay the problem! Not only had the Ka-Baal till date outfought their beings, but also outthought them. The Ka-Baal had been thinking many steps ahead of them. While his beings kept on ratcheting up the struggle using only brute force, the Ka-Baal had used intelligence about their beings to exploit their weaknesses. It was sophisticated, it was sublime, and it was going to lead to the extermination of their beings from this Universe! The Grand Council had to step up and rise to the challenge thrown by Ka, else their beings would be deservedly exterminated.
The game-plan of the Ka-Baal was clear now. Their objective had never been to engage in a struggle for survival; it was never aimed at complete extermination of their beings! Their objective had been far more ambitious and terrifying! Their objective had been subjugation, making their beings slaves, just like the original Ka had done at the dawn of their civilization in this very world!
After every successive defeat at the hands of Ka-Baal, his beings would retort in despondency that it felt as if they were not fighting a spawn of Ka, but Ka itself. Now it seemed that those thoughts expressed out of frustration had been true all along. The Ka-Baal were a far more sophisticated and powerful than the original Ka had been, and shared the same objective – making them slaves!
The evil machinations of the Ka-Baal hatched and executed over who knows how many tens of thousands of cycles had led to this, something that had been unthinkable within their beings – treachery!
How long had the Ka-Baal known about World #6? Had the Ka-Baal themselves engineered the split within their beings by seeding discontent in World #6? If so, then how did the Ka-Baal do it and when? There were so many questions in the mind of Seer Taste of Solidarity as he slinked into his niche at the council chamber. He noticed that he was the last being to get settled, and the entire council had been waiting for him to proceed. As soon as Solidarity checked into his tasting station, the council meeting began.
Solidarity could sense the virtual presence of the seers of the Origin World who were already logged in. The seers of World #2 were physically present in the council chamber with him. This was a very unusual meeting of the Grand Council not just because it was happening at one of the gravest moments of his beings’ history, but because this was the first time since eons when the seers of only two worlds were involved a Grand Council meeting.
Grand council by definition meant that the council of seers of all the worlds of their beings had to be involved. Ever since the third home world of the Shaitans had been settled all those billions of cycles ago, the Grand council always involved the seers of more than the two worlds. The Grand council meetings always happened on this World #2, the spiritual and political capital of their beings, where their religion had been born. It always involved the Origin World in a real time communication link, although there was a few seconds delay involved due to light speed limitation. In addition all other worlds would have the proceeds broadcast real time, even though there was no way those worlds could have real time communication with the Grand Council owing to the great distance. It was the basic egalitarian protocol of their beings. Usually those far off worlds were consulted before-hand in preparation for any Grand Council meeting.
This was the first time, none of the other worlds had been consulted for preparation. Neither was the proceedings of this meeting being broadcast to any other world. The reason partly, was that this was an emergency meeting and there had been no time to consult. The scarier reason, due to which the proceedings were not even being broadcast was that the seers no longer knew which worlds could be trusted! Solidarity could never have imagined that their beings would one day come to this – mutual suspicion! The concept of deception between two of their beings was almost unimaginable, although at an intellectual level Shaitans did understand the concept. Any Darwinian struggle involves deception, hence any biological entity born out of Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ paradigm instinctively understands deception. Shaitans used it all the time in their military strategy. Socially however, it was unimaginable for a civilized modern Shaitan steeped in their religion, to ever deceive or be suspicious of a fellow being.
Yet, that is exactly what the Grand Council was doing right now. They were being suspicious of every other world other than the Origin world situated in the same system. Even within the Grand Council, Solidarity could not help but wonder more times than he cared to admit, whether they have been infiltrated by a traitor. Curse the Ka-Baal! Not for attacking and destroying our worlds, for that is expected of them and is their duty, just as it is ours to resist and exterminate them. Curse the Ka-Baal for sowing the seeds of suspicion within our beings.
Solidarity pulled himself out of his reverie to concentrate on the report being given by the elder Warrior of the council, Seer Taste of Domination. Solidarity had reviewed the raw data himself, but it helped to hear the summation of a seasoned warrior. They can put these things in better perspective.
“… So let me not waste any more time in expressing my astonishment, for they are endless. Here is the grim report on the situation here on World #2. Sectors 26 of this world has been precision bombarded from the void and hordes of enemy troops have landed. It is surreal for me to refer to those troops as the ‘enemy’ but I find it less disconcerting to call them that than to call them for what they really are – heretics and traitors to their own beings!
“Our current estimates are that between forty to sixty thousand enemy troops had landed in the assault on this sector. Along with these enemy troops, around 1000 Ka-Baal troops have also landed. I know that 1000 seems like an odd number for a warrior unit, but we have to remember that the Ka-Baal seem to do everything in multiples of tens. We think they use ten as the
base for their numerical system, unlike two which is our numerical base. The 1000 Ka-Baal troops seem to be fighting and directing the rest of the enemy troops.
“It is a potent combination. The strength and resolve of our beings present in those heretic traitors, along with the cunning and warrior competence of the Ka-Baal. It hasn’t helped our cause that the heretics know the exact schematic details of every tunnel down to individual niche in that sector. They have chosen sector 26, the holy refuge, which from our own history we know is the easiest for them to defend. They have gone about executing an unholy plan, jointly hatched by the heretics and the Ka-Baal. They have systematically pushed out our defending troops and entrenched themselves in the sector.
“We have sent waves after waves of our warriors to try and retake these sectors, but all have been slaughtered. These sectors favor the defenders massively. We cannot launch an assault from over ground. Any being or equipment that goes over ground quickly gets killed by the void vessels of the Ka-Baal. They hold absolute superiority over us in the skies.
“Surprisingly after taking this sector, the enemy has not made any attempt to push further into any other sector. Resupply shuttles have been continuously plying over this sector from the void, undoubtedly reinforcing the sector with troops and weapons. It would be only a matter of time before we see the next phase of assault. We have tried shooting down the shuttles with missiles, but given the massive air superiority of the Ka-Baal in the skies we have not been particularly successful. The moment a missile of ours is launched, it is quickly hunted down by Ka-Baal antimissiles along with massive Kinetic rounds of bombardment at the site of the launch. We have managed to down two of their shuttles, but at a massive cost.
“Unfortunately we have never prepared ourselves for this kind of a siege. In the history of all our beings we have never encountered such a situation ever before. Our beings have never been sieged before, let alone sieged this overwhelmingly. We now realize that the missiles we are using to target the incoming and outgoing shuttles is probably not the most effective weapon. Our builders and curious caste are working overtime to come up with appropriate weapons that can bring down those shuttles much more effectively, but I am afraid it will take time… time which we may not have.
“The situation in the void above us is even more dismal. The pathetically small defense force of warships and migration vessels had been destroyed by the Ka-Baal in the initial assault itself along with all orbital building stations and other infrastructure in the void. We had a few research and warrior listening posts tucked away in the neighborhood. We had instructed those listening posts to go completely dark and observe the enemy.
“These listening posts in the void were occasionally giving us tidbits of information from time to time, taking the risk to break their silence through a tight beam only if there was something worthwhile to report. The Ka-Baal have used their laser pointing technique to hunt down each and every listening post we had. Effectively we are blind in the void. The only information we have about the void is what we can gather from the surface of the two worlds.
“Our connection to the rest of our worlds is also limited to transmissions from the surface. This means that we can no longer be in touch with the other worlds continuously due to the rotation of our world. It also means that we can no longer be in tight beam laser communication with the other worlds. We have been forced to use radio communication, which can be easily intercepted by the enemy. I am sure the Ka-Baal have been intercepting our radio signals.
“We know that the Ka-Baal have managed to break our encryption before, and now that the heretics are with them, it would be a lot easier for them to break our encryption, since the heretics have the keys to the commonly used encryption on routine communication between our worlds. We would have changed all the keys of our encryption, but there is no way to let the other worlds know the new keys without sending it on a compromised transmission. So we must assume that any communication that we send or receive from another world, and even between World #2 and the origin world is compromised.
“We have now pieced together enough information from the reports of the initial attacks as well as those from the listening posts before they died, to draw a plausible picture of how the Ka-Baal managed this assault at the heart of our civilization, and what we can expect in the future.
“We always knew that the Ka-Baal war vessels have greater endurance. They can travel longer without refueling, and hence can build up greater speed. We don’t know whether their war vessels can do this because of some special fuel which is more efficient than ours, or they have found some refueling technique unknown to us, which does not force them to slow down. Our curious caste believes it is the later. Their drive signature is very similar to our war vessels, so they are most probably using the same fuel. Since they war vessels are similar in size as ours, they must be carrying similar amount of fuel as well. So somehow, they must be refueling as they travel.
“The curious caste have discovered in their archives, various proposals and musings of our beings through history who have wondered if such a way of refueling as one travels through the void is possible. It is known to our curious caste that the void is not completely empty. There is a very thin wisp of potential fuel material spread throughout the void. It is very sparse in some parts of the void, and very thick in the gas cloud regions of the void which, we can taste through our telescopes as stellar nurseries.
“Our beings have never found a practical way to harvest this fuel material, but if one could be found, it would provide ample fuel over a long journey to replenish the fuel that was spent to build up speed. That way the potential range of a war vessel is almost infinite, limited only by the endurance of the vessel and the crew inside it. All the time that the vessel is travelling, it can continue building up speed, potentially being able to reach very close to the speed of light itself, given enough time. We believe that the Ka-Baal have such a technology to harvest the fuel in the void, which is the secret of their vessels’ long endurance.
“This is something the curious caste suspected even before the attack here. We also knew that other than this advantage, the Ka-Baal really had no other significant advantage over our war vessels, as observed from the various encounters we have had with them. Secure in that knowledge, we had made an estimation of how fast the Ka-Baal could reach here in the origin system, should they choose to bypass all of our worlds closer to them and attack directly at our heart.
“Even though the Ka-Baal war vessels could travel in a straight line from their home world to this system, while our defense fleet would have to hop and stop at World #8 and refuel before they could head back here to the origin system, we had calculated that our defense fleet would make it back earlier that it was possible for the Ka-Baal to attack us here. This calculation was made based on the assumption that both ours as well as Ka-Baal war vessels had the same amount of acceleration, as had been observed previously.
“I am afraid many of us, not just from the curious caste, but also warriors like me are coming round to the view that the minority opinion, that the Ka-Baal are actually advancing in technology as we observe them, may be true. We are coming round to that view because once again the Ka-Baal have surprised us with a technological advancement. This time they have surprised us with drastic improvements in the acceleration of their war vessels. Something that can be possible only when you make a drastic improvement in the nuclear power plant technology. To give us a better perspective, I yield to the wisest amongst the curious caste, Seer Taste of Solidarity.” Domination yielded from his tasting station, and the control immediately went to the station of Solidarity.
Solidarity started speaking without preamble, as is the way of their beings. “For eons our beings have used this nuclear power plant technology that we use currently today. All our power plants are of similar size as the ones we use today in our war vessels, as they have been for eons. It is not because we never wanted larger power plants. Far from it. Throu
ghout the history of our beings, there are numerous records of the curious caste experimenting with larger power plants.
“The issue is with the technology we use to make these power plants. The layered technique that we use makes it progressively more difficult to keep the power plant symmetrical as its size grows big. In addition as the size of the power plant grows big, the heat and the energy from deep within the core of the power plant cannot be evacuated fast enough, causing the overheating of the power plant with the risk of a catastrophic melt-down. The only way to increase the size of the power plant is to come up with a completely new design that probably uses a different fusion technique, different materials and different geometry. In all the eons of our beings since we developed this design, we have not been able to find a better design that enables us to make bigger power plant, so we wrongly assumed out of hubris, that this was the best possible design, and lately have even abandoned attempts to improve it. Why do I say that we assumed so wrongly? I will come to that in a moment.
“So when you hit the limit to the amount of power available from a single power plant, how do you supply a war vessel with more power? The answer is obvious, we put many such power plants in a war vessel. As you are aware, our war vessels carry eight such power plants. The number of power plants on a vessel puts the upper limit on the amount of acceleration the vessel can have. So why can’t we put more power plants in a war vessel and give it higher acceleration, which undoubtedly would reduce its travel time as well as performance during a battle?
Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4) Page 41