The human fleet may have been drifting for three months, but it hadn’t gone very far. The initial outward speed hadn’t been too great in the first place, and the fleet had been using their cold thrusters these last three months to reduce that speed, come to a halt and then slowly start drifting towards World #4. As a result, when the human fleet opened up their thrusters at full throttle, the expected time of arrival was just thirty two hours. With the harvester masking their engine emissions partially, the hope was that the Shaitans would get less than a day’s warning time. The bigger hope was that the Shaitans had bought the ploy, and their fleet was scattered. Otherwise the tremendous sacrifices of the Marines and the civilians alike would have all been in vain.
As the human fleet would discover, their ploy had only been partially bought into. The attempt at deception hadn’t been a wild success, but it had given then human fleet a fighting chance. The Warmaster had lowered his guard somewhat by maintaining a fleet formation of only twenty four out of his thirty two warships at all times. The rest eight ships by rotation would perform various tasks that needed to be done. At the time of the human fleet attack, two of the ships were in the outer reaches of the atmosphere of the gas giant Marissa, refueling their tanks. They would be blissfully unaware of the battle during its entire duration. The violent radio storms on gas giants ensures that any ship refueling in the outer atmosphere is effectively cut off from rest of the universe.
Those two unfortunate vessels would meet a crushing death, as they would be picked off from higher orbit of Marissa by the human fleet, just as those two Shaitan war vessels would become aware of the fleet’s presence, and they would make the desperate bid in vain to quickly climb out of the enormous gravity well of Marissa. Two of the warships had been tasked with routine patrol along the plane of the system where most of the activity usually happens. Four ships were in orbit or close to the space elevator, taking on supplies as well as replacing crew from the surface.
It is next to impossible to be in formation in orbit around a planet or a moon. So the twenty four ship formation of the splinter fleet were hanging around World #4 at some distance from it, where the gravitational influence of World #4 was negligible enough to not have to orbit it. The Shaitan fleet got just over eighteen hours of warning. The two war vessels on patrol had no hope of returning back into the formation, given the inferior acceleration of the Shaitan war vessels. The four war vessels in orbit around World #4 could in theory have made it, if they were ready to set off immediately when the alarm was raised. None of them were ready.
The human fleet hadn’t built up enough speed for the single file Duvall formation to be effective, but the fleet formation followed the Duvall philosophy. After folding back their harvesters, when the human ships were close enough that they were sure to be detected, the human ships approached closer to each other to form a tight formation. The formation had the three civilian vessels up in the front forming an equilateral triangle. Behind each of those three ships flew six warships each in a straight line, resembling a triangular bar. The formation would become famous as the ‘Toblerone’ formation.
The Shaitan fleet was in their conventional square matrix formation, when the human fleet was initially detected. The Warmaster ordered a slight change in the formation to bring a few of the outlying war vessels in his Shaitan splinter fleet slightly behind the rest of the ships, but closer to each other from the line of sight of the approaching human fleet. That way the human missiles would be forced to approach in a much tighter and narrower corridor. The Shaitan missiles would be forced into an even tighter and narrower corridor, because from the line of sight of the Shaitan fleet only three human ships were visible.
The difference between this encounter and the famous encounter of the Hadean fleet with that of Josephine Duvall, was in the speed at which it would take place. This encounter would happen at a much lower speed, which would enable the missiles to target the ships at the rear of the formation in a curved trajectory, thus not being so tightly constrained in terms of the path that the offensive missiles could take. That was the reason that the USC fleet was not in single file but in a triangular bar formation. If a ship at the rear or the middle of the formation was targeted through a curved trajectory by the Shaitan missiles, it would have many more ships nearby which could support it with point defense, compared to a single file formation.
When the human fleet was six hours away from the Shaitan fleet, the skeleton crew onboard the three merchant vessels went to work. The crew on those ships consisted of USC personnel and heretics, who were tasked with releasing three hundred and ninety eight Shaitan missiles from the cargo holds of the three merchant vessels. The cargo holds hadn’t been enough to hold so many of the monster Shaitan missiles. Most of the interiors of the vessels had been gutted, living quarters and other amenities dismantled to make space for those missiles. Many large release hatches had been cut on the sides of those three ships, which were opened.
The Shaitan missiles had been carefully stacked on strong trusses. Those thirty ton missiles exerted a weight of almost thirty tons on those trusses when the ship accelerated at its maximum thrust, which was close to 1 G. It would not have done for those trusses to break, because those trusses also supported guiding rails which led all the way to one of the release hatches that had been cut on the sides of the ship. Human engineers didn’t have fancy equipment in this system, so when they were asked to rig up a reliable system to release those huge missiles out of a ships which wasn’t even designed to carry such missiles, let alone release them in battle quickly, the only method that they found feasible was to do it manually.
Those thirty ton Shaitan missiles didn’t just have a mass of thirty tons on the ship. At that moment, those missiles also had weight, and weighed nearly thirty tons as well, because at that moment the ships were accelerating at 1 G, and that acceleration couldn’t be let up. The human fleet needed to build as much velocity as possible by the time they approached the Shaitan fleet. The only way those thirty ton missiles could be moved at all was by pushing them on guiding rails mounted with ball bearings. The superior strength of the heretics was at display, as each of them was able to provide as much pushing power as three or four of the able bodied crew members of the USC.
Despite those guiding rails and the ball bearings reducing the friction, it was very hard physical work, and it took over four hours for each of the ships to release all of those Shaitan missiles stowed in the cargo holds of the civilian ships. After the release, the gang of thirty sentient beings on each of those ships, some human some heretic Shaitans crammed into the single shuttle that had been left on each of the ships and exited. The three civilian ships out in the fore were now working on remote control from the ships right behind them, operated by the backup bridge on those ships.
The three shuttles that exited those civilian ships headed away from the fleet. The human fleet couldn’t let up on its acceleration, even to pick up the three shuttles, and it was too dangerous for the shuttles to try and dock with the ship while it was on a 1 G acceleration thrust. Instead the shuttles used their thrusters to move as in a perpendicular direction far away from the line of attack of the fleet in the next few hours as possible.
When the shuttles exited the ships, they inherited the velocity of the ship, which was too great for the tiny thrusters and fuel tanks of the shuttles to be able to counter and to slow down, so that they could head for World #4. So the shuttles moved as far away from the line of travel of the fleet as possible, because that line of travel was taking them right to the position of the Shaitan fleet. Just because the shuttles were moving away from the fleet didn’t mean that the fate of the beings onboard the shuttle weren’t linked to the fortune of the human fleet. If the human fleet died, then there would be no ship left that could come to their rescue. If no once came to their rescue, then those three shuttles would float forever into the darkness of space.
The Shaitan make missiles that the crew of those shuttles had
released, in the meanwhile had lit up their thrusters and started accelerating towards the Shaitan fleet. But those missiles weren’t racing away ahead of the human fleet towards the Shaitan fleet, as they could easily have done. Missiles use chemical rocket thrusters which can be designed to accelerate at 20G even 30G if so required. Instead the Shaitan missiles were accelerating at a sedate 1G, the same as the rest of the human fleet, keeping pace with them. Shaitan missiles carried a massive fuel tank, which can last many hours at full thrust. Humans took advantage of this fact and used that fuel reserves to be able to release it early manually.
It would have been massively confusing for the Warmaster of the Shaitan fleet to observe the drive signatures of almost four hundred Shaitan make missiles light up next to that of the human fleet. It would have been obvious that these were chemical rocket thrusters that had lit up. From its size it would have been obvious that the thrusters were too small to be that of any ship. It had to be a missile or a shuttle. Logically it had to be missiles, but why would the humans release their missiles so early and show their hand?
If those were missiles, then why weren’t they racing ahead of the human fleet? Why would anyone waste the missile fuel by making those missiles fly next to the fleet for so many hours? Human missiles weren’t known to possess that long an endurance. Which would have brought the Warmaster to his next puzzle. The drive signatures of those thrusters looked nothing like that of human missiles. Instead it looked like that of that of his own kind of missiles. It didn’t surprise him, because he knew the heretics were fighting alongside the humans, but there was no sign of a ship of their beings, which the heretics should have been flying. Have the heretics and the humans been collaborating so deeply that they have integrated their weapons system, and each can use the others’ munitions?
If the humans had known of all these mental vexations that the Warmaster was going through, they would have laughed. They would have been glad that their limitations in using the Shaitan make missiles had caused so much confusion in the mind of the Warmaster.
The fact that the front row of the human formation was sacrificial, gave the humans a great mental and tactical advantage in the encounter. Taking this fact into account, the first encounter with the splinter fleet went fairly well for the humans. In addition to their own complement of missiles that each USC warship carried, they used three hundred and ninety eight Shaitan make missiles. That was about as much three and a half Shaitan warships would have in total inside their weapon holds.
The admirals of both the fleets had gone for broke in their first encounter. Neither of them tried to conserve their missiles too much. Both the Warmaster as well as the admiral knew that whoever won this round would probably go ahead to win the overall battle. So they didn’t hold back much. The Warmaster ordered each war vessel to launch ninety six out of the hundred and twenty eight missiles that they carried, leaving just thirty two in their holds.
Although the humans had permanently damaged the nuclear weapons factory before leaving, the Warmaster wasn’t too worried about running short on missiles after this round because he had eight war vessels out there in space which would still be carrying their full complement, which could be redistributed amongst the vessels. What was more important was to get as many missiles out there in space, attacking enemy vessels as possible, to compensate for the eight missing vessels in his formation.
This meant that the Shaitan make missiles released by the humans was the output equivalent to that of four of the splinter fleet war vessels, which when added to the fire power of the eighteen USC battle cruisers, made the human firepower equally awesome. What tilted the balance of fire power in the favor the humans was in its versatility, variety and larger numbers, albeit smaller yields per missile.
The humans knew that the rest of the eight war vessels of the splinter fleet were scattered around the system, which could be caught in small grouping and finished off easily without having to expend too many missiles, because such a small group of ships would not be able to pose a credible point defense even if attacked with a much smaller number of missiles per ship. So the admiral decided not to hold back much. He ordered each battle cruiser to launch a thousand out of their total twelve hundred missiles in this encounter.
Those eighteen thousand missiles would target eighteen out of the twenty four ships, racing up ahead in the mathematical swarm formation pioneered in the Alpha Shaitan campaign, which had proved most effective against the Shaitan point defense algorithm. The four hundred odd Shaitan make missiles would stay at the rear of the swarm. It would be the coup-de-grâce in the human attack. As the smaller and more numerous human missiles would tax and harass the Shaitan point defense system, it would be able to plough through the volume of space filled with Shaitan antimissiles, clearing the way for the more massive Shaitan make missiles, a single one of which was enough to mortally wound if not outright kill even a robust Shaitan warship. The strategy worked, and the human missiles were able to destroy seventeen of the eighteen targeted warships of the splinter fleet.
In exchange the humans lost all three of their expendable civilian ships, as the point defense kept getting increasingly overwhelmed and the huge explosions of the Shaitan missiles kept coming closer and closer to the human fleet. Two of the three ships in the row behind the civilian ships were also destroyed, vaporized completely, while the third one escaped unscathed from the encounter. One of the human battle cruisers in the middle of the formation, targeted by curving missiles was also destroyed, while its neighboring ship was badly and probably mortally wounded.
In all the human fleet lost just four fighting ship while taking down seventeen of the enemy. That success in being able to preserve their fleet better than the Shaitans could be largely credited to the formation of the human fleet. Humans had the initiative in this attack, since they initiated it, while the Shaitans were forced to be reactive. The human fleet had had the time to think and plan the attack in detail, working out the appropriate formation, after numerous computer simulations. The Warmaster, after observing the human formation had realized that it was probably a more appropriate formation for the encounter, but like any prudent military commander he didn’t want to experiment at the very last moment without thinking though and simulating all possibilities. He had stuck to the tried and tested formation of his beings, which had stood them in good stead for billions of cycles. As a concession, he had brought some of his war vessels slightly behind and closer to the line of sight of the approaching human fleet, which would force the incoming missiles to bunch up closer and make the job of his point defense easier. It had probably helped, but had not been good enough.
The human fleet wasn’t finished on this run yet. They had spotted a target of opportunity. An opportunity they would not get again, if they missed this one. The four Shaitan war vessels that were in orbit around World #4, and which had been ordered back when the approaching human fleet had been detected, were on their way to meet up with the splinter fleet standing in formation, which the human fleet had just fought and passed. These four vessels hadn’t even formed up together into a formation before they started off to join the rest of the fleet! Instead, each vessel had scrambled the moment they were ready to leave. As a result they were all approaching individually one after the other, separated by a huge distance between each other.
Those four approaching war vessels did not expect the human fleet to be able to take the sharp turn required to head towards them. In theory, that expectation was correct. Given the speed at which the human fleet was travelling, and the angle at which it was approaching, the human fleet would not able to approach close enough to launch missiles at them. The human missiles, which would inherit the velocity of the human ships would cross the approaching four Shaitan war vessels due to that inherited velocity, before they could reach those approaching four Shaitan war vessels.
This is where the inventiveness of the ordinary frontline fighting personnel comes into the fore. There are times when th
e person deploying the weapons can get a lot more out of those weapons than the engineers had ever designed those weapons to do. This was one such moment.
The four Shaitan warships rushing from World #4 towards the splinter fleet formation in order to join it had been detected by the human fleet almost from the moment that those four Shaitan warships started moving out of the orbit of World #4. Just as the Shaitan fleet could detect the thruster emissions of the human battle cruisers, the human fleet could detect the emissions of the Shaitan war vessels. All the battle cruisers were ordered to make appropriate preparations necessary to reach out and touch those four Shaitan warships.
For the last fifteen hours before the encounter with the main body of the splinter fleet, the engineering crew onboard the USC battle cruisers had been making ‘specials’ to tackle the four stragglers, whom the human fleet would cross next, now that the main body of the splinter fleet had been passed by the human fleet.
The problem of physics for the human fleet was that, even if the fleet turned in the direction of those four approaching Shaitan war vessels immediately after crossing the main body of the Shaitan splinter fleet, it would not be able to reach close enough to launch missiles. The human fleet could launch their missiles early, and let the superior acceleration of the missiles to help them reach their targets. Unfortunately human missiles didn’t carry that kind of fuel to last the entire journey.
Human missiles could last just under an hour at full thrust. Usually that amount of fuel was enough for a missile in most situations. Not so in this particular situation. And if the missiles were timed to launch such that their fuel would last the trip to their target, then it would be too late. The acceleration of the missiles wouldn’t be good enough to make them reach their target before the missiles crossed their targets. The missiles would need almost twice their maximum acceleration to be able to reach their target.
Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4) Page 46