Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  “Amazingly, we haven’t found a single trace or sign of enemy weapon or enemy bullets embedded in Shaitan bodies, unless the enemy used the same weapon as the Shaitans. As of now, we have no idea of the kind of weapon the enemy used. Each and every dead Shaitan we have found has been torn or cut to pieces. A very few of those torn body parts do have burn marks on their bodies, indicating that their bodies received some kind of directed incendiary fire. We don’t know however if they died from those wounds or because they were torn apart.

  “Whatever made those burn marks on the Shaitan bodies is an unknown weapon, which hasn’t been found lying anywhere in the city. It is definitely not a plasma weapon burn, which is shallow. This unknown weapon makes a piercingly deep and narrow burn.

  “We have also done some back of the envelope calculations with the help of the quartermaster onboard the Sacrifice, about the amount of force that would be required to tear apart a Shaitan. The kind of forces involved, indicates that a mini-crane or some similar equipment would be needed to tear apart a Shaitan as we have observed.

  “Cutting Shaitans is easier. The Battle of Titan is legendary, and we humans know how smoothly Gen. Takamori’s Katana could sever a Shaitan limb. These cuts are however, different. These have not been made by a slashing blade like a sword. These cuts have been made two sharp blades pressing against each other, like a pair of scissors!

  “Last but not least is an estimate of the hostile force that executed this atrocity on the city. The sheer amount of carnage, where a city which we estimate had a minimum of a million, but more likely close to three million Shaitans was killed individually, one by one in a sadistic and time consuming manner. We do not have any idea of how much time it took for the perpetrator to kill each of the Shaitan, but our guess is that it would take at least a minute for even the most frenzied machine to tear apart one Shaitan before it went after another one, which it most probably had to catch. The process of catching the next victim could take many minutes if not hours depending on multiple factors.

  “At that rate, an army of a hundred thousand such super soldiers or machines would take many days of non-stop killing frenzy without pausing to eat or sleep, and without getting tired, in order to rip each and every inhabitant of this city. Mind you, this is only one city. This planet had over a hundred times greater population. If as we believe that this is the fate of the entire planet, and the initial shuttle surveys of other cities indicates so, then the sheer hard work involved in individually ripping every inhabitant of this planet is mind boggling. The aforementioned army of super soldiers would have to work non-stop, day and night for years to finish this ghoulish task.

  “I have no idea why someone would go to such lengths to kill the residents of this planet, when there are far easier means to do so. There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason to do it, unless the perpetrators are some long lost cousins of Count Dracula or some similar ghoul.” Hector smiled and finished his report. He looked at Yukio to indicate that he was done, and she should take over.

  “Thanks Lt. Jenkins. I will touch upon the motivation of these ‘ghouls’ as Lt. Jenkins colorfully puts it, as well on the cutting ‘scissors’ that he mentioned in his report. First though let me continue with what I was saying about the lack of destruction in the city. This relative lack of destruction has meant that most of the records of the city are accessible to us. We were able to query multiple computers in the city. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any mention of the attack yet on the computers we were able to access, but we have simply scratched the surface of the massive records of the city. There might be clues on other computer records. It will take time to troll through them before we can say anything definitively about the attack itself.

  “There is one thing from the computer records that we can infer fairly confidently though, the time of the attack! We have sampled the last known entries of sixteen computers in the city, and all of them stop two years, one month, eleven days from the present moment, give or take a day. I know that Lt. Jenkins said that even a hundred thousand super soldiers working non-stop day and night would take days to do what they have done. Yet, the last entry on all the sixteen computers, which recorded some kind of interaction with a live Shaitan ended within one day of each other.

  “Either the attackers somehow managed to disable all the computers, kill everyone, then instead of wiping the computers, simply removed the evidence of them disabling it, because we didn’t find any, and left the computers running for us to find. Else, we have the terrifying possibility that three million souls were ripped apart within a day inside that city!

  “On the point of the cut pieces of the Shaitan bodies, we have examined the cuts, and I and Dr. Mukherjee agree with the lieutenant’s analysis that the cutting tool is some form of a massive scissor, like a paper cutting press that can cut through a ream of paper effortlessly. The only thing that I can add is that the cutting blade is not straight and smooth like a paper cutting press. The shape of the blade is organic, like the opposing claws of a crab, or the cutting jaws of an ant. The blade is curved and serrated at places. These Shaitans, ladies and gentlemen were cut by some monster claws from hell!” Yukio said, as everyone heard in stunned silence.

  It took a few minutes for the listeners to regain their composure, after which the general asked in a soft voice. “You had said something about the motivation for this carnage. I guess you have some theories…”

  “Actually what I had to say about the motivation was not that we have any theory, but the fact that from what we know, we can only rule out certain motivations and hence certain possibilities, and the only theory left after that is a crazy one! I am not even sure if I should spell it out. It is not based on any evidence. It is pure speculation, and would probably be unprofessional of me to even mention it.” Yukio replied hesitantly.

  “We take anything you scientist say under advisement, Yukio.” The General said, with his smile back on. “Please feel free to speculate. Us fighting men, always use our own common sense to come to our own judgment about whatever people with too many degrees tell us.”

  Yukio gave a feeble smile, uncertain about herself for the first time in this meeting, and about what she wanted to say. “I know that initially we had suspected this massacre to be the doing of some rogue group of heretic Shaitans who had somehow carried this operation without the knowledge of us humans. From the manner of destruction of this planet, I think we can all rule out the heretics as the culprit. This is way beyond their capacity and capability. If they had such capacity and capability, then the heretics would have taken us humans on. We know that they haven’t lost their fundamental aversion to us humans as spawn of Ka. The only reason they side with us, is because we are more powerful than them and we are helping them take over from the non-believers.

  “In any case, I have seen the kind of genocide the heretics have perpetrated on the non-believer Shaitans. It is different. This is not their style. They actually try to proselytize to the non-believers before they kill them. Those killing are ritual in form, and involve liquefying their victims. If it is not the heretics, and it is definitely not us humans, then the third possibility is that this is some kind of civil war within the planet. That too seems unlikely. There should have been survivors. I cannot think of a civil war where the victors, overcome by grief and guilt, tear themselves apart, literally.

  “I know what the rumors floating around are. That this is some unknown aliens. It is possible, even plausible since we already know that there have been many intelligent species that the Shaitans have encountered. Many have asked that if these are unknown aliens who did this, then where are they? Why did they abandon a rich and plentiful planet after winning it with so much effort? I have no answers and I am not going to speculate on that. What I am speculating is on the motivation.

  “Lt. Jenkins in his closing remarks mentioned that it seems that the perpetrators were ghouls, who took the huge effort to kill their victims in such sadistic manner, when far ea
sier ways to eliminate the entire population existed. There is a precedence to such behavior exhibited by us humans. No, not the fictional Count Dracula, or some deranged psychopath, but people who were considered fairly respectable. If the carnage of the Shaitans seem to have been done for sadistic pleasure, may be it is because it was really done for pleasure. Not sadistic pleasure, but for sport!

  “We humans have hunted dangerous animals for sport to show off our masculine vigor, or for adventure. There have been hunters in human history, who did it just for the love of it. They did not eat the lion, and the lion did not threaten their home, but they went seeking to hunt a lion for sport, for the sheer pleasure of it.

  “Now, I know some of you would argue that such hunters usually took back the lion home as trophy. In reality, they rarely took back the entire lion. They skinned it, and took the skin and the head, and left the rest of the carcass rotting in the jungle. If someone were to kill a few million lions in a hypothetical jungle, then I doubt he would skin all of them. He would take just a few scalps as trophy and leave the rest to rot.

  “Now, I don’t have definitive proof, but out of the hundreds of body parts that I examined, I found two where the claws were missing. In one of the limbs, the claws seemed to have been pulled out, and in the other, the tip of the limb was cleanly cut, which would have made it easy for someone to carry back the claws embedded to the tip of limb. I know that this does not prove anything. It could be just happenstance, and the claws went missing during a rough fight entirely by accident. But think about it. If I kill a Shaitan, what is the best part of its anatomy for me to take as a trophy? Obviously a hard part of the body, that wouldn’t decay, and which is the primary weapon of the enemy I hunted. Like the claws of a tiger, or the horns of a rhino.

  “I know this sounds wild speculation, and it probably is exactly that. But, there you have it.” Yukio ended her talk with her hand held high in a defensive position.

  The admiral spoke from above for the first time. “It is an interesting theory Dr. Yamagato, but it is just that right now, a theory. As I understand it, the only way to get a definitive answer is either to find some records from the computers down there on the surface, or to find something that the attackers left behind, which might give us some clue to their identity. Does anyone have any ideas on those two fronts?”

  No one spoke immediately, until Hector broke the silence in an uncertain voice. “Although our search hasn’t been comprehensive yet, but the attackers would have needed heavy and large machinery for such a large scale attack, and should have left something big that should have caught our attention. The fact that we haven’t found any makes me suspect that we are not looking in the right place. We have searched all of the surface, but there is one place we haven’t looked, sir.”

  “And where might that be lieutenant?” The admiral asked in a slightly mocking tone.

  “The Water, sir!” replied Lt. Jenkins.

  Chapter XXX

  Eerie Silence!

  Solar System

  2197

  The Patagonia was on radio silence, but its electronic eyes and ears were wide open, straining to listen to the faintest of whispers that may emanate from any direction. USC Patagonia had shut off all of its non-critical systems, as it coasted through space to reduce its own electromagnetic emissions, not just to be stealthy but also to ensure that its own EM signals did not interfere with the high gain antennas it had deployed to listen.

  To Capt. Gorr the unbelievable part was that they could hear nothing! It was hard to imagine that they were almost into the heart of the Solar system, just a few AU from Earth itself and all they could hear in the entire EM spectrum was deafening silence! This was only the second time he was coming to Earth, the last time he was here, he had been a mere ensign.

  Capt. Gorr remembered the amount of cacophony in the EM spectrum he had had to endure as the coms officer then. The Solar system in general, and this close to Earth in particular had been filled with manmade radio emission of all kinds. Human were a very noisy species and nothing typified that more than the inner solar system, the birthplace of human beings. There were signal being emitted in every direction from satellites, earthbound stations and space ships and space yards.

  None of those could be heard at that moment though. The eerie silence was spookier than any scary story his mother told him as a child. Stories about Earth, where his parents had been born, as had most humans alive in the universe. Capt. Gorr knew that he was one of the few people alive, who had not been born on Earth. That ratio could change as humans expanded into other world, but for now people like him were a rarity.

  Hannibal Gorr was one of the first babies to be born on Jehannum, the first human colony to have continuous human habitation. The first extraterrestrial body where human immigrants had settled. Mars had also joined that league of a human colony with permanent settlers, but there were too few on Mars. Mars had just recently become economic enough for humans to settle there, and that too with government subsidies.

  Hannibal’s parents had been Marines, who had come to fight the Shaitans on Alpha Shaitan. His father was from Tunisia and his mother from Vietnam. Hannibal had inherited his father’s looks and the first name of the most famous hero of his father’s land. Beyond that, Hannibal had very little connection or emotional attachment to Earth. If anything he had heard hellish stories about his parent’s experiences on Earth living and growing up in poverty and oppression. His last name was not that of either of his parents. His parents wanted Hannibal to have a new identity in the new world that he had been born into. They didn’t want him to suffer the prejudices of their parents’ origin, so they gave him the last name of their favorite fictional character.

  Hannibal hadn’t had too high an opinion about Earth and its society. That however, slowly changed as he enlisted into the USC. One of the first non-Earth citizen to do so. In the USC he lived and worked with people who were all from Earth, and learnt a different side to the people of Earth. He felt the comradeship and sense of belonging towards the navy, as it slowly became his life. Earth started meaning something to Hannibal Gorr, as the cradle of humanity and a beautiful place. There may be bad people on Earth, but there were a lot of good people there too.

  The only other time he had made the journey to Earth as a young naval officer, he had fallen in love with Earth, especially the women there. If not for the oppressive gravity of Earth, it would have been a perfect place. He pitied the Earthlings, who went about their whole life in the heavy gravity without feeling the exhilaration and freedom of a low gravity world. Still, he had developed an emotional connect to Earth and thought of it as his second home.

  Now Capt. Hannibal Gorr was very worried about Earth and its billions of inhabitants. There was not a peep from that noisy planet, and there hadn’t been a sound from Earth in a few years now. USC Patagonia was very close to Earth now, almost near the Asteroid belt. At this range the Patagonia should be able to hear even radio stations and terrestrial communications with their sensitive instruments. They heard nothing.

  “Approaching navigation point alpha sir. We have to make a decision in the next 8 minutes and 38 seconds sir.” The helmsman informed Hannibal, but her eyes had the inquiring look which expected her captain to give her a decision immediately. She also had a nervous look in her eyes, which Hannibal could understand. There would not be a single crew onboard the Patagonia who was not nervous at the moment, as they slowly crept through the eerie silence of the Solar system.

  The decision the helmsman was referring to, was the decision that Hannibal needed to make about their first destination in the solar system and hence. The Patagonia had been decelerating for over five years now using an experimental reactionless thruster, which could provide only a fraction of the thrust that their main ion plasma engine could. Thus a journey from Alpha Shaitan to Earth of just over 3 years had already taken the Patagonia five and a half years.

  Hannibal recollected the moment he had regained consc
iousness over five years ago, to realize that he had been woken up from his stasis sleep midway to handle an emergency. The Patagonia had been on a routine trip back to Earth from Alpha Shaitan. The Patagonia at that moment had moved about 25 light days away from Alpha Shaitan towards Earth.

  The message had come from Jehannum command HQ on a tight beam laser, encrypted and classified for the eyes of the captain only. Hannibal had opened the message while still groggy from stasis sleep, in his recovery bed. When Hannibal had first read the message, for some moments he had thought that he had not comprehended the message properly due to the stasis aftereffects still addling his brain.

  Hannibal had run a diagnostics on his tech-head implant to ensure that it was functioning properly and that he was in control of it. Hannibal may have had difficulty moving his arms and legs during the 24-48 hours recovery time from waking up from stasis sleep, but his brain was reasonably alert, and the tech-head diagnostics confirmed it. Then Hannibal read the message once again.

  The Jehannum command HQ had received a ‘System-wide Condition 1 alert’ from USC HQ back on Earth. The threat source – unknown! Threat severity assessment – unknown! ‘System-wide Condition 1 alert’ was USC jargon for a situation where the inner solar system was under massive attack and Earth itself was under attack, or in imminent threat of a direct assault. It was the kind of alert that had been designed to be raised if a fleet like the Hadean fleet were ever to reach close to Earth. Such an alert had never been raised before, for Earth had never been under such a threat before. It was the ultimate emergency which humanity had never faced before!

  Even more mystifying was the fact that neither the source of the threat or its exact magnitude was known. Human technology was at par if not slightly superior to the Shaitans in almost all aspects. How had the Shaitans managed to sneak up and mount such a massive attack which the humans had not even been able to assess let alone counter? Was there some secret Shaitan world that the humans didn’t know about, which hid terrible new weapons and technologies?