Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  “Open up the cold thrusters, change vector towards Asimov and start decelerating lieutenant.” Hannibal said.

  Lt. Svetlana Marcos looked at her captain in surprise. “Do you want me to use the cold thruster all the way to decelerate sir?!”

  “Yes helmsman that is exactly what I want you to do.” Hannibal replied, addressing her by her role on the bridge to remind her of her position, but trying to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  Svetlana blinked a few times as she let her tech-head implant connect to the ships mainframe to do some quick calculations. “But sir… that would deplete out water resources dangerously, and… and it won’t even be enough to bring us to a complete halt at Asimov, sir!”

  “I am just as capable of connecting to the mainframe and doing those calculations lieutenant. Just calculate the vectors and execute the order.” Hannibal couldn’t help sarcasm slip into his voice. The moment he had said those words though, he regretted it. Putting down a crew member in front of others on the bridge was not the sign of a good captain. It was abuse of power. Damn, he was letting the pressure get onto him.

  Hannibal decided to remedy his mistake immediately. “I am sorry to snap at you like that lieutenant. You and the crew need to know the rationale behind my decision. I am loathe to deploying the reactionless engines and becoming a big fat radar target. We are too close to whatever danger that lies ahead near Earth and possibly Mars.

  “The emergency combat acceleration engines are only a slight improvement over ion plasma engines when it comes to stealth. The hydrogen-oxygen combustion releases steam at well over 700⁰ C and the exhaust nozzles flare at over 2700⁰ C. IR sensor pointed towards us could pick up that kind of heat signature. So that leaves only the cold thrusters.

  “I know they are puny and only meant for maneuvering in and out of space docks, but they are undetectable beyond a few kilometers. Water is boiled at low pressure, so the steam coming out is just above room temperature and quickly cools in space. The jets of steam are tiny, unlikely to be detected by anyone unless they are right on top of us.

  “The fact that we will not come to a complete halt at Asimov is actually a good thing as far as I am concerned. I am far from certain that we would find anything useful on that tiny mining outpost. If we come cropper out there, then at least we would not have to build up our entire velocity back again, by deploying the reactionless engines.

  “We will do a flyby of Asimov and depending on what we observe, we can take a call on the further course of action. If we sense any danger there, then it would be good to have residual velocity on our side, it would help in a quick getaway.” Hannibal looked at Svetlana to check her reaction. She was nodding in understanding and had a priceless smile on her face. The smile made the apology totally worthwhile for the captain.

  Then almost as an afterthought Hannibal added. “Oh… and by the way… I am acutely aware of the dangerously low water reserves this maneuver would leave us with. We will face the situation as best as we can. It is a far more preferable situation compared to being detected and blown out of the sky.” Hannibal gave a wink.

  The Patagonia continued its journey for over six days, slowly bleeding its residual velocity, but also bleeding its water reserves as it prepared to do a close flyby of Asimov. At T minus one hour before the Patagonia was scheduled to fly past Asimov at just under two kilometers per second, the sensor officer called out over the general channel for everyone on the bridge to hear, although he was informing the captain.

  “Sir we are close enough to Asimov for the telescope images to provide a distinct and clear outline of the asteroid. Computer analysis confirms that the shape and outline of the asteroid matches exactly with those on our records. The asteroid is tumbling at the expected rate and we have inspected all facets of Asimov. It rules out any major nuclear blast on the surface of the asteroid.”

  “Acknowledged. Keep a hawk eye over those sensors Dzherinsky. We would want to know anything that can give us the remotest of clues.” Hannibal replied through his helmet mike. The crew of the Patagonia were now in condition 2 alert, and in their suits as per regulation.

  “Unfortunately the sun is ahead of us sir, so we are only being able to see the dark side of Asimov. The image analysis program is not getting too many details to analyze. Like everywhere else, there is no radio signal emanating from the mining outpost, not even the mandatory IFF signals, so there is not much more to go by. We will get to see the details of the surface much better when we cross Asimov and get to see its sunward side lit by the Sun.” Dzherinsky replied apologetically.

  The rest of the tense hour went by without any event or any further illumination on the fate of the outpost, or that of humanity. As the sensor officer had promised, the view from the telescope got drastically better as they passed Asimov. However, they had learnt nothing new, and Hannibal was not inclined to explore the mining outpost any further and waste time and precious velocity on this line of pursuit. Hannibal reckoned that he would have a much better chance of finding intelligence further inwards towards Earth.

  Hannibal was debating what should be his next destination in this cautious approach towards Earth, when he heard Dzherinsky call out again. “Sir… maybe you should have a look at this. I am not sure if it means anything. Could be just mining markers, but looks somehow weirdly familiar.” The sensor office had put up the picture on the main screen of the bridge.

  The picture had been taken by the telescope just as the Patagonia had crossed over to the sunward side of Asimov and exposed the illuminated surface of the asteroid. Hannibal could make out the pattern of dots and dashes that had been painted on the surface of Asimov. It was a large sign, perhaps covering as much area as football field. It seem to have been made on the surface of the rock of the asteroid with some sort of white marker spray paint. Like Dzherinsky had said, it looked random and yet hauntingly familiar to Hannibal.

  “Run it through image analysis.” Hannibal ordered.

  “I just did that sir, as I was calling you out. The computer thinks it is some script called ‘Braille’. Let me look up which country’s language that is.” Dzherinsky replied.

  “It is used by the blind. It is not used much these days but for the poorest of countries where there are still substantial number of blind people. Most kinds of blindness can be cured these days, but the script used to be used a lot till even 50 years ago, when most blindness didn’t have a cheap cure. I remember this from my history lessons in college.” Hannibal replied, and then ordered. “Get the computer to interpret it lieutenant.”

  “Coming up on the main screen... right about… now!” Dzherinsky replied and on the screen there were three bold words interpreted by the computer – SOS!

  “Helmsman! Deploy the reactionless drives and compute a vector to bring us back to Asimov and this time we will come to a complete halt on that rock.” Hannibal shouted out his order, and then softly added to himself, “… we will have to take the risk if we want to save whoever wrote that message.”

  It took the Patagonia 14 hours to reverse direction and creep back towards Asimov, then reverse thrust again and come to a complete halt next to the asteroid. As far as the crew could make out, the increased profile of the reactionless engines did not attract anyone’s attention and they were able to reach within a kilometer of Asimov and come to a complete halt without any incident.

  “It feels spooky, almost like watching a haunted house.” Lt. Göker Terzi the XO of the Patagonia said in a hushed tone, almost whispering as if afraid that someone on the silent asteroid in front of the ship would hear them. “I can make out the shuttle dock and even the observation dome. The outpost looks completely intact and untouched, and yet there is not a peep that can be heard. The outpost is not even emanating any residual heat. It is as cold as space. Nothing seems to be powered up on that outpost. It is as if they shut off all the machines and simply left.”

  “It is possible that the miners were rescued. After all it has been
well over five years since Earth went silent, may be some passing ship saw the SOS and rescued the miners. We will have to investigate. Are the Marines ready?” Capt. Gorr asked his XO.

  “Yes sir, Lt. dos Santos is personally leading the team. He and seven of his Marines are in the shuttle bay awaiting your orders for deployment.” Lt. Terzi replied.

  “I want to speak to Joaquim before I send them in.” Capt. Gorr said and thought clicked the icon of the Marines Lieutenant.

  “Sir!” Capt. Gorr heard the young Lt. Joaquim dos Santos reply as he accepted his captain’s com request.

  “Joaquim, you have already been briefed on the mission objective, so I have nothing new to add before you leave. I just want to remind you of two things. First is that things look peaceful out there, but we might be in hostile territory. We just don’t know, and that is what you are going there to find out. Till you know otherwise, assume you are entering an ambush or a booby trapped installation.

  Second, I want you to remind each and every Marine how important it is to ensure that all their personal data streams get uploaded real time onto the ship. We want to see all they are seeing, and all the electronic data their suits are sensing. Remind them that it is not just for us to monitor them, but we will be sending all that data back real time to Jehannum HQ, so that if something were to happen to the Patagonia, HQ would know what happened till the very last moment. Understood?” Capt. Gorr asked.

  “Loud and clear, sir!” Lt. dos Santos replied in the typical Marine fashion.

  The shuttle approached Asimov at a crawling speed as a measure of abundant precaution. Throughout the journey, the shuttle pilot kept straining at the telescope picture of the approaching mining station to glean out any sign of danger, which would give him the excuse to abort. He had a bad feeling about this whole business. Nothing changed or moved on Asimov however, and they were able to reach the dock uneventfully.

  The pneumatic docks on the Asimov station, very similar to the ones on their own ship, the Patagonia, were not working. It was not powered, and there was no way to get it working from the outside. The station looked completely dead, and probably there was no way to get it working from the inside as well. The Marines were expecting this eventuality and had come prepared for it.

  The mining station was relatively new and had followed standard space evacuation and safety protocols in its design and construction. The surface structures on the mine had brightly marked portions of their metal walls with the universal markings of ‘Cut here in emergency’. The Marines used their cutting equipment to cut through the metal as instructed. Metal walls marked for cutting were always behind double doors to prevent the entire station from being exposed to space.

  Once the Marines had cut through the wall, they glued on a temporary access door on top of the hole, which would ensure that air does not escape from the hole once they had entered. Lt. dos Santos reported his progress, although it was unnecessary. Everyone on the bridge could see whatever the Marines were seeing. The inner door, which acted as the airlock could be forced open manually using standard tools. It still took three big Marines all their might to force the door open.

  “We are inside, sir. The air pressure is low inside the station…very low. Almost a partial vacuum. Looks like the air has been slowly leaking from somewhere inside this mining station for a long time, and no one has replenished the air… I think this place has been abandoned for a long time.” Lt. dos Santos kept up his running commentary. Then he held up his hands to signal his Marines to halt. “We wait here. Release the spiders… let them recce ahead before we proceed any further inside.”

  The gravity of the asteroid was too feeble to be felt. For all intents and purposes the Marines were in a weightless environment. Hence the spiders had to be deliberately attached to the floor, walls and ceilings of the passage. The spiders had micro fiber based hairy pads on their tiny feet very similar to that of a gecko, which allowed their feet to stick to almost any surface.

  Just like a gecko’s feet, the hair on the fibers branched over and over again till the last branches were almost nanometers thick. Such minute fibers’ atoms come close enough to the atoms of the surface that the spiders walk on, to stick to the surface using ‘Van der Waals’ force. This ingenious method ensured that the spiders could stick to any surface in almost any condition irrespective of whether the surface was slippery, wet or in vacuum. Humans hadn’t invented this brilliant technique, nature had invented it in the form of a gecko’s feet. Humans had simply copied it.

  The Asimov mining station wasn’t a very big place. It was one large corridor partially sunk into the Asteroid, with doors on four sides of the corridor. In the zero-G environment, it was perhaps more appropriate to think of the corridor as a vertical elevator shaft which had doors on its surface on four sides at regular intervals. All the doors were locked as per standard regulation. The default setting of all doors on losing power is usually locked in space installations, and this station seemed to have been without power for a long time.

  The spiders didn’t find any hidden booby traps or any other sources of danger, and the Marines began the process of opening each door one by one and inspecting the rooms behind those doors. It was at the sixth door that the crew of the bridge heard a shriek of terror from one of the Marines. “Sorry for that… I got startled.” She quickly spoke out apologetically. “Sir, we have made contact with the miners… sort of.”

  The main screen of the bridge changed to the camera view of Pvt. Bridget Ng. The scene was nightmarishly ghoulish. The dark room was lit by the headlight beams crisscrossing each other from the suits of three Marines. In that light were visible two corpses partially decayed floating in mid-air. The skin and flesh of one of the female corpse had fallen off from her face exposing the jaw bone and bare teeth giving her a scary appearance. After a careful inspection, six corpses were found floating in the room.

  “Doc. Your opinion?” Capt. Gorr asked the ship’s chief physician, who was also watching from his station at the med bay.

  “When these poor souls died, there was air and most importantly oxygen in the atmosphere. That much is for sure. From the pictures it looks pretty certain that the flesh started bacterial decay which would not have been possible without oxygen.” Dr. Goetz said, then paused and continued. “However at a certain point the decay stopped without being able to consume all of the flesh, most likely because the bacterial growth no longer had enough oxygen.

  I will need to inspect the cadavers closely, but from what I see, I can say that they have been dead for a long time… perhaps years. I also don’t see any obvious signs of trauma on any of the bodies. My preliminary analysis based on the helmet cam pictures is that these six died a long time ago, but they most likely did not die of any kind of trauma or any such violence. There was oxygen present at the time of their death, but they could still have asphyxiated if CO2 buildup in the atmosphere was too great.”

  “Thanks doc. You will get to inspect the corpses as soon as we can ascertain it is safe to go down there. We need answers, and how they died is part of that answer.” Hannibal thanked the doc.

  Over the course of the next two hours, the Marines had opened up all the door and discovered many more corpses. When the final door at the very end of the passage was opened, Lt. dos Santos opened up a private channel with the captain and said. “Sir, you better check out my helmet cam. This one is wearing a suit and it is not a civilian one, this is a USC military grade battle suit.”

  Hannibal could see through the clear faceplate of the helmet of the corpse that Lt. dos Santos was viewing. He could see the partially decayed face of a male red head that was clearly twisted in agony. It was the expression of someone who had died a painful death, most probably of asphyxiation.

  “That suit is obviously dead, but check if you can get the helmet off lieutenant. You should be able to query the smart chip inside his implant if he is one of our own.” Hannibal ordered Lt. dos Santos.

  Almost all USC
navy crew were full tech-heads. A majority of the Marines were also full tech-heads. Whoever was not a full tech-head, was by regulation required to get a spinal implant. Without one of the two implants a person could not operate most of the USC equipment required to perform their job. The bio-implants of the USC personnel may have been cutting edge 22nd century technology, but they also contained a low tech late 20th century technology – an NFC smart chip.

  The smart chip contained a highly encrypted code unique to each personnel, assigned by USC mainframe on enlistment. USC equipment could decrypt the code and reliably ascertain the identity of the person. It was meant as a fool proof identification of USC personnel, even if the body was disfigured beyond recognition. In a way it was a high-tech version of the 20th century dog-tag.

  The bio-implants themselves would stop functioning the moment the person died, since they drew their power from the heat and glucose of the body. The NFC smart chip however, was a passive piece of technology, which drew power from the radio waves of the chip reader itself. It would continue to operate for years, decades and in theory even centuries after the death of the person.

  Lt. dos Santos got two more Marines to help him, since it is extremely awkward to work in zero-G without getting one’s self anchored, especially when the dead man’s helmet seemed to have jammed and would not budge. Once the Marines managed to open the helmet, the smart chip embedded in the back of the neck of the dead man was fairly straightforward to read with a chip reader.

  The encrypted number was ran through the ship’s computer and Capt. Gorr let the Marines know. “He was one of us lieutenant. He was Lt. Ragnar Knutsen. Last assignment – XO of ‘USC Restless’. It was an old Jerusalem class ship tasked with routine patrol and transport duties.”