Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The most chilling aspect, was that within 40 minutes of the Jehannum HQ receiving the ‘System-wide Condition 1 alert’, data streams from Earth started shutting down. It took less than half an hour for all of the various data streams from Earth and the inner solar system to shut down. This in itself was inexplicable. The Alpha Shaitan system had over 20 direct data connections from satellites over Earth and Mars.

  These data connections over tight beam lasers and focused microwave links provided the communication channels and the source of entertainment and information for the citizens of Alpha Shaitan. The military had 10 connections that streamed data from Earth and redundant connections that streamed from Mars, both on Laser as well on microwave. They were designed to be uninterruptible and redundant, such that contact with Alpha Shaitan would never be lost, however large a catastrophe that might strike either Earth or Alpha Shaitan.

  In addition there were an equal number of civilian links that constantly streamed personal and business messages, information and entertainment of every kind from songs, movies to soaps. All the links had gone silent almost simultaneously. It was as if the entire Earth had fallen silent suddenly!

  Whatever had happened to Earth had already happened over 4 months prior to the signals form earth being cut off. Jehannum was getting to know about it only now, due to the speed limit of light. It had taken over 3 months for the signals to reach Alpha Shaitan and another 25 days for Jehannum command HQ to alert the Patagonia. Hannibal had been instructed to be on standby, as Jehannum command HQ formulated a response plan in the next few hours and transmitted it.

  In the end it, took over 24 hours for the orders from Jehannum command HQ to reach Hannibal after the initial wakeup message. Hannibal could well imagine the confusion the Jehannum command HQ must have been thrown into, as it formulated a response. Hannibal’s orders were simple. Find out what the hell had happened to Earth and the entire inner solar system.

  The objective may have been simple, but the Patagonia’s routine mission had turned far more complex. First the Patagonia had to assume that the inner Solar system was hostile territory. Second it would be logical to assume that the Patagonia would be incapable of resisting the hostile forces in that territory. This meant that the Patagonia had to approach the inner Solar system and Earth stealthily, avoiding detection if it wanted to stay alive and complete its mission.

  Approaching Earth from Alpha Shaitan without detection would have been impossible till just a few years prior. It was as impossible for the Shaitans with their ion plasma engine technology, as was it impossible for humans with the same technology to slip into the solar system undetected. The ion plasma engines shone like a beacon pointing in the direction of its travel for years as the ship decelerated. That is how humans, even with their primitive technology, had detected the first Shaitan probe over a hundred years ago, and the same principle held today as well.

  Humans had often bypassed this problem by approaching the system at high speed without decelerating to mount an attack on the Shaitans. However, in this mission approaching Earth at high speed was not a good option, when you wanted to collect information. The Patagonia had to creep in slowly to get maximum intelligence on the happenings in the inner solar system. Perhaps if the Patagonia were to be unsuccessful, then the Jehannum command HQ might send such a fly by mission, but for now the Patagonia had to decelerate.

  It was providential that the Patagonia was fitted with a piece of new technology, untested though for the job that it would now be asked to perform. The reactionless engine was not really a new human technology. The very first demonstration engines had been built in the first decade of the 21st century. While originally the technology was thought to be more efficient than rocket engines, but with the advent of ion plasma coupled with nuclear fusion, the technology had been abandoned.

  Space warfare and the need for stealthy approach of drones had rekindled interest in the technology, but now it was to be used in an entirely different class of ship. The specialty of the reactionless engines was the fact that they were undetectable because they emitted no light and a minute amount of radiation, which was undetectable at a distance. The reactionless engines pushed against the fabric of space-time itself to provide thrust. The reactionless engines had proven their worth in the spy drones that USC had deployed on all the Shaitan worlds in the just concluded Shaitan wars.

  The reactionless engines had one major drawback though. It was their power to size ratio. A reactionless engine of the same size as an ion plasma engines could provide only a fraction of the thrust. The reactionless engines weren’t that much less efficient, but the size required to provide the same amount of thrust as ion plasma made them impractical. Reactionless engines were OK for spy probes which could afford to accelerate slowly and take its own time, however a warship required a lot of acceleration. It was life and death situation for a warship, and the size of the reactionless engine required for a warship made it impractical.

  Still, the reactionless engines had a very important property – stealth, and there are times that a warship needs that stealth to stay alive or to conduct reconnaissance, as was the case with Patagonia. Thus human engineers had tried to come to a compromise design on reactionless engines.

  The reactionless engines were bulky because it required a large cavity chamber of a specific shape to function. The engineers created a foldable design, which could be tucked inside the belly of the ship when not in use. When deployed, it would stick out of the hull of the ship and unfold itself to form the large cavity chamber outside the ship.

  It was not an ideal solution. The foldable cavity chamber design were not as energy efficient as the fixed chamber designs. The bigger issue though was that the large protruding cavity chamber completely screwed up the carefully designed radar profile of the ship, making the ships vulnerable to detection in the medium to short range. It was however, an additional option available to the captain of a human warship.

  If the captain decided not to deploy, then he or she was no worse off. However if long range stealth was important while maneuvering, then the reactionless drive gave the captain an additional option. The foldable reactionless drives were originally designed for the new Sentinel class of ships that were replacing the ageing Avenger-E class ships like the Patagonia, but since the drives were relatively cheap to make, many of the Avenger-E class ships that still had a long service life had been retrofitted with them. The Patagonia happened to be one them.

  Four large extension could emerge out of the hull of Patagonia at 90⁰ angles to each other. The extensions folded out into large cavity chambers that almost encompassed the entire hull of the ship, impeding many lateral sensors and scanners. Thankfully the forwards sensors and scanners, which mattered the most were unimpeded. Once fully deployed, the four reactionless drives more than tripled the radar profile of the ship. For all that bulk, the four reactionless drives could provide barely 40% of the thrust of Patagonia’s ion plasma engines.

  On receiving the orders, Hannibal had quickly ran the calculations with his navigator and helmsman, validated it and then immediately cut the Patagonia’s ion plasma engines. The Patagonia had not yet reached its maximum velocity possible for a journey between Alpha Shaitan and Earth, which was a good thing because otherwise the Patagonia might have had to turn and slow down using the ion plasma engines, thus risking discovery.

  The Patagonia was now on a slow ride to Earth. She would use her reactionless drive and its lower thrust to slowly decelerate as it travelled towards the inner solar system and Earth. Instead of the planned three and a half years, the journey would take over five and a half years for the Patagonia. That was the price she and its crew had to pay for creeping into the inner solar system, hopefully unseen.

  Hannibal had rescheduled the stasis sleep time of the crew to take into account the longer travel time of Patagonia in its new mission. For most crew members their waking time on board the ship would not change significantly, they would simply have
to spend more time in stasis sleep. For Hannibal himself however, the mission had just gotten a lot longer, he would not go to sleep for another year.

  Hannibal waited for further instructions from Jehannum command HQ, which took almost 4 weeks to reach. He had been instructed to await any further information that might become available. Eventually command HQ had gotten direct signals from Beta Shaitan USC outpost garrison. It took signals nearly six months to reach one way from Beta Shaitan to Alpha Shaitan.

  Jehannum command HQ had pinged Beta Shaitan the moment they had lost contact with Earth, and had expected to hear back from them only a year later. It seemed that Beta Shaitan garrison had the same idea and had pinged Alpha Shaitan directly on losing contact with Earth themselves, so Jehannum command HQ got to know about the welfare of Beta Shaitan garrison a lot before the anticipated year delay.

  Beta Shaitan USC garrison and all human forces further down the line into former Shaitan territory were fine and equally mystified about the sudden loss of signals from Earth. Like Jehannum command HQ, they had followed protocol and stopped active pinging of Earth after 24 hours, to avoid detection if Earth was indeed surrounded by hostile forces. If Earth had been overwhelmed by Shaitan forces, then they were sure to know about human presence on Alpha and Beta Shaitan, but military had to follow established protocol.

  Hannibal had gone to sleep once it was clear that whatever had hit the inner solar system had not hit the peripheral expansionary human forces and human settlements in former Shaitan territories. Before he went to sleep, the plan of action had been firmed up and coordinated between the human forces on either ends. Beta Shaitan was recalling all forces deep into former Shaitan territories engaged in mop up operations and resettlement of their new ally, the heretic Shaitans.

  The heretics could not yet be trusted enough to ask them to join forces in space. They couldn’t yet be trusted to give them access to their spaceships and space assets, but they could be trusted enough to entrust the Shaitan worlds to them, for keeping up order in their own way, which more often than not involved genocide. However the USC could not afford to concern itself with Shaitans killing Shaitans at the moment. It had bigger problems.

  Beta Shaitan would refrain from sending any ships Earthwards and await news from the Patagonia, which was in the best position to obtain information about the fate of Earth. Alpha and Beta Shaitan would accumulate all the forces at their command and be ready for whatever the Patagonia may find out.

  Hannibal had woken up to find out that thankfully there had been no unforeseen emergency during the time that he slept. He had been woken up at the planned time, about 9 months before the Patagonia entered the inner solar system. The biggest relief had been the fact that the reactionless drives were still working fine even after five years of continuous operation.

  No one had tested the reactionless drives to operate continuously for this long on the field. The reactionless drives had been tested extensively and even used in a few combat situation, but had never been operated this long continuously. The reactionless drives did not have any moving part to suffer wear and tear, and thus breakdown. However, the reactionless drive did have electromagnetic radiators that operated at high energy continuously. It was always possible for those electrical circuits and coils to break down under constant usage.

  The other news was more ambivalent. The status of Earth had not altered during the time he slept. There was still no communication from Earth.

  The flight path and timing of Patagonia was such that both Saturn and Jupiter were further away behind Earth in their orbit, so there was no scope to stop over on either Titan, Europa or Enceledus before approaching Earth. All those moons had manned outposts which could have been checked out. The Patagonia had tried hard to listen to the automated monitoring stations orbiting Uranus, Neptune and in the Kuiper belt, but had found no signals from them.

  Their mission parameters prevented them from active scanning, so they could not determine the fate of those monitoring stations other than the fact that they were no longer transmitting IFF codes. Even the six lighthouse systems which should have been screaming at them by now were not detectable. It was as if every human system in the outer solar system, that had been launched and installed in the last century had all gone silent at once.

  The first possible encounter with a human settled outpost would arise as the Patagonia entered the Asteroid belt. Humans had long fantasized mining the asteroids, but it wasn’t till a decade ago that the first serious attempt at commercial mining of metal rich asteroids had been attempted. The technology to mine asteroids had been available to humans for many decades, but the Shaitan wars had ensured that all spaceship building capability had been tied up with the military.

  The only spaceships available for civilian use had been the old model USC ships, which had been retired from active service and refurbished. These ships were not suitable for mining operations, and in any case the limited number of such ships available for civilian use were tied up to other duties like tourism, scientific research and government use. What the mining industry needed were specialized space vessels meant for exploration, exploitation, in-situ refining and transportation.

  It was only with the winding down of the Shaitan wars, that space yards started devoting time and energy to designing and manufacturing specialized spaceships for the mining industry. In the last decade prototype mining ships had been designed and developed by both the Western alliance as well as the Axis powers. Some designs had been a success, while others had been failures.

  The asteroid mining industry was still in its infancy. The economics of mining asteroids was far from clear. What metals and minerals were so rare and also in demand, that it made sense to mine them far away in an asteroid at tremendous cost? Metals mined in space could only be used for space constructions as of now, since there was no economically feasible way to send heavy metal ingots down to Earth. The only logical use of asteroid mining as of now was in building spaceships and habitats on other microgravity asteroids or moons.

  Despite such odds, governments and large corporations were subsidizing exploratory mines on some of the particularly metal rich asteroids in the hope of reaping large dividends in the future. One such metal rich asteroid was ASV-2064-0V in the asteroid belt. This peanut shaped lump of solid body was lovingly known as ‘Asimov’ by its small number of inhabitants, usually 16 in number in any shift.

  A ‘shift’ on Asimov lasted about a year for its inhabitants. The occupants of Asimov usually consisted of mineralogists, drilling engineers, space engineers, support functionaries and other assorted civilians. The ‘mine’ on Asimov was more of a test dig to develop mining techniques, while living in the hostile environment of the asteroid, rather than a full-fledged commercial mine.

  The corporation which paid lease to the USC for the mining rights to the asteroid, hoped to develop enough knowhow to someday mine the asteroid in a commercially viable manner and sell the minerals to USC itself for their ship construction yard being planned over Mars. The only thing keeping a full-fledged ship yard from being constructed over Mars, which was under the full control of USC, was the relatively poor availability of heavy and rare metals on Mars.

  According to the last roster available to Jehannum command HQ transmitted by Earth before all communications were cut off, Asimov had been host to 24 souls on the day Earth stopped transmitting. It was a period of shift change and 8 of the personnel on Asimov were scheduled to rotate back to Earth shortly.

  Asimov was not exactly on the path of the Patagonia’s line of travel, but just over a million kilometers away from the point where the Patagonia would intersect the Asteroid belt. On the vast scales of space travel, that is almost on the way. It was just a small diversion. The critical decision was whether the Patagonia should stop to inspect the mining outpost or just make a flyby inspection. It was not such a simple decision as it might seem initially.

  The Patagonia still had a lot of residual velocity left despite
having slowed down to a crawl relative to the speed it had travelled most of the journey. If it wanted to come to a complete halt at the asteroid belt, then it would have to open up one of its propulsion systems and thrust hard. The ion plasma engines were out of the question. It would be like shining a bright light on oneself and telling everyone ‘I am here’.

  The reactionless drive had been folded back into the hull of the Patagonia a long time ago in order to reduce the radar profile of the ship and minimize the chances of detection. If the reactionless drives were to be used, then keeping in mind the lower thrust capacity of those drives, they had to be started a lot earlier than ion plasma engines.

  The point at which the reactionless drives had to be deployed if the Patagonia wanted to come to a halt at Asimov was ‘navigation point alpha’, which the Patagonia would approach in just over 8 minutes. Thus the helmsman’s enquiring gaze towards her captain. Capt. Hannibal Gorr however could not help but feel irritated at the pressure that gaze was putting on him to make a decision.

  It was easy for her to put pressure for a decision. It was Hannibal who was carrying the can for any consequences of that decision. Every option in front of Hannibal was fraught with risks, or with missed opportunities. Was it worth the while to stop at a minor inconsequential mining outpost in the asteroid belt? What could he hope to learn about the fate of Earth from such an outpost, if it was even occupied in the first place? If he stopped on Asimov and learnt nothing, then he would have to build up speed again, which meant opening up propulsion which risked detection.

  If on the other hand, if he bypassed Asimov then there was no other low profile outpost on his path, from where he would have the opportunity to gather intelligence. He would have to then take the risk of approaching Earth itself or take a diversion to Mars, both of which might have a large presence of unknown hostile elements. No, he had to stop at Asimov, but he would do it in his own unconventional way.