Wrath of the Shaitans

by Sudipto Majumdar

  This severely limits the usefulness of plasma as a ranged weapon. Humans have been experimenting with shooting plasma in enclosed containers, but that beats the entire purpose of having bullet less weapons, and also the added weight severely limits velocity. That is the reason plasma weapons are still confined to clunky prototypes in human labs.

  Plasma also suffers from atmospheric decay similar to laser, although not as bad. The air molecules absorb some of the heat of the plasma pulse as they come in contact, and the pulse loses some of its heat punch. Over short distances in a thin atmosphere like Mars though, they still deliver most of their killing heat.

  Ed was very sure, that the Shaitans were using such a plasma pulse weapon. He understood why it was being used here but had not been used in Titan. Titan’s atmosphere had been one and a half times as thick as Earth, while Mars’ atmosphere was a hundredth the thickness of Earth. This meant that Titan had a hundred and fifty times thicker atmosphere, where the Shaitan pulse plasma weapons must have been rendered useless.

  It seemed to work fine in the Martian atmosphere, even inside the dust storm, which must be further robbing the heat of a plasma pulse. Then in an inspirational moment of realization, Ed figured out why the Shaitan aim was accurate this time compared to Titan. He looked at the other marine who was the second human to take a hit from Shaitan firing.

  He was sitting behind one of the landing struts, foaming over his arm which had been hit by a plasma pulse. The compartmentalized suit design meant that he was not in immediate mortal danger, although he must be in terrible pain and out of the fight for the moment. Two marines had taken three hits by plasma, but none by bullets.

  Ed could make out from the muzzle flash IR signature that each Shaitan was alternating between one round of pulse plasma and one round of their gun. Yet from his own experience he had himself been nearly singed by plasma several times already, but he did not recollect a single bullet that had landed near him. His external mikes and his suits would have picked up the sound and the vibration from those massive bullets if any had landed next to him.

  This meant that the Shaitans were still lousy shots with their guns, but somehow fairly accurate with their plasma weapons. Why did they even bother to use their guns in that case, why not use the plasma weapon all the time? Any why would the same Shaitan be accurate with one ranged weapons and so lousy with another? It didn’t matter for the moment, Ed had to use this knowledge to his advantage, and he was going to test his hypothesis.

  Ed stuck his gun out and mentally gave a command for his faceplate to switch to the gun view. His faceplate started displaying the view from the telescopic camera mounted on the barrel of his gun. While the marines did not have to expose their heads like the soldiers of earlier ages to take a shot out of their cover position, they still had to expose their hands and arms.

  He took a shot at the direction from where Shaitan fire had been coming towards him, but did not withdraw his hands, keeping the gun camera pointed in that direction. Almost immediately a muzzle flash of a plasma weapon blazed from that direction and the plasma landed perilously close to near the ground where Ed was resting his elbows.

  Ed however was not waiting to ponder over the near miss. If he was going to ask his marines to risk their lives, he was going to test the theory himself. If he came out alive, his marines would follow. Ed had coiled his legs into a springing position before firing. The moment he saw the Shaitan muzzle flash, he sprang forward with as much force as his thigh muscles could muster.

  The one third gravity of Mars helped in taking a fit marine like Ed a lot further than it would have been possible on Earth. As Ed was coming down in his slow falling arc of a spring forwards that he had made, he saw the second muzzle flash from the same direction, but this time it was from a projectile gun firing a bullet, not a plasma weapon.

  Ed kept his concentration in the direction of the muzzle flash being displayed by the IR, but he still could not see the infrared heat signature of the Shaitan itself yet. As he fell prone to the ground, he slid another meter forward. He must have moved forwards 7 to 8 meters in his leap and subsequent slide. Just as he came to a halt, the fuzzy red blob heat signature of the Shaitan became visible on his faceplate.

  Ed’s SG-4 was in automatic mode. He squeezed the trigger and kept it centered on the middle of the red IR blob. The SG-4 was not a very fast firing weapon. It fired at the rate of only 50 per minute. It was partly due to the large rounds that had to be chambered in the relatively small gun. It was also keep the reliability of the gun high, which was firing a very complex bullet that was a half rocket.

  Ed had never found the rate of fire of the SG-4 a problem before, but right now he wished it fired a bit more rapidly. He had to kill this Shaitan before it got another chance to fire its plasma round. Ed held his nerve and did not move and kept his gun centered till the third round had left his barrel.

  Then he rolled to get behind a small rock that gave him some partial cover. He stuck out his gun barrel camera and watched the result. The IR blob image of the Shaitan became larger and Ed was about to squeeze off another round in panic, when the Shaitan became visible through the haze of the dust storm as it approached nearer. It was moving in its death frenzy.

  So that validated Ed’s strategy and proved one theory of his. The plasma gun had a slow rate of fire, probably it had to be charged between each firing to generate the plasma. After firing the plasma gun once, the Shaitans would use their projectile guns till the plasma gun was fully recharged again. That is why they were using inaccurate bullets along with their accurate plasma pulse.

  How long the plasma guns took to recharge Ed could not say, but it was definitely more than a few seconds. The marines would have to exploit those few seconds. Why their bullets were less accurate than their plasma guns was a mystery that Ed had no clue about. He would worry about it later if he came out alive.

  Ed also knew now that the Shaitans could detect the marines’ IR signature about 7-8 meters before the marines could detect the Shaitan IR signature. That knowledge would help the marines fight better. He now needed to get the word out to the rest of the marines. This seemed like a good time to try to break their radio silence.

  It was obvious that the Shaitans were alerted to their presence, so there was no point in trying to hide their presence. Communication between the marines had now become critical. Radio silence would only hamper the marines’ fighting ability. Whether they would be able to break the Electromagnetic jamming of the Shaitans was another matter altogether.

  The Shaitan EM jamming was primarily meant to block any communication between the Kormas base and ships or satellites in space, or the base sending messages to Earth. It was strongest near the base, the jamming transmitter probably having been placed close to the base. Like all electromagnetic signals, the jamming had to follow the inverse square law.

  Signals get weaker at square of the distance. The signal from the suit of one marine to another on an average was 10 meters away, while the jammer was near the Kormas base which was 10 Km away or a thousand times further. This meant that the jammers signal would weaken not a thousand but square of a thousand, i.e. a million times compared to the signal from the marines’ suits.

  Although the signals from the marines’ suit was far lower in power than the jammer, it was hoped that the million times difference in attenuation would mean that the marines would be talk to each other over radio, at least at close distance.

  “3rd platoon be advised, we are breaking radio silence. Ensure your transmissions are in relay mode to help your comrades get the message. Repeat break radio silence, switch to relay mode and confirm.” Ed said as he squirmed at a different angle behind the rock he was hiding to get better protection from a new angle of fire.

  The com system of the suits was completely digital, so you either heard the transmissions or you didn’t. There was no gradual degradation like one would get in old analog radio transmissions. The advantage of digital mode was that
the same digitized sound and data packets could be retransmitted by the receiving suit without interfering with the original signals.

  It was somewhat like packets of data going from router to router on the internet. It was the relay of such packets of data that was enabled in the relay mode and allowed conversation from one end to the other even if the two ends were not in direct transmission range as long as each end had one node (suit of a comrade marine in this case), to relay it to the next node.

  Ed waited for enough ‘checks’ and ‘rogers’ as confirmations from marines to ensure that a large majority were listening. Then he quickly let them know his discoveries about the Shaitan weapons and sensor. “Demo Team 1, Demo Team 2 it is getting hot out here. What is your schedule?” Ed asked.

  “Demo Team 2, 15 seconds to trigger.” Demo Team 2 responded.

  “Demo Team 1, 10 seconds to trigger.” Demo Team 1 responded.

  “Demo Teams 1 and 2, you got 10 seconds before we all bug out of here to the ghost point. Get the job done by then.” Ed pushed the demolition teams. The he addressed one of his NCO. “Molina call the retreat at your discretion the moment it starts getting too hot. Ed out.”

  Before Molina could however call the retreat, Demo Teams 1 and 2 simultaneously declared their triggers were hot, and the marines started retreating towards their respective ghost points. The marines just had 15 seconds to get to a safe distance. The explosives were timed not radio triggered. With radio jamming in place, timers were the only reliable way to trigger the explosives.

  It was a good thing that the demo squad had finished when they did, because the rest of the marines were about to get overwhelmed in the next few seconds as the first wave of reinforcement had started arriving from the Shaitan camp.

  The retreating marines took one more casualty as one of them got shot on his backpack as he ran. It was a plasma pulse, which meant that it did not penetrate the suit, but fried the life support system. The marine was able to quickly switch over to a backup source placed in the chest area, but it would last less than an hour. He was unlikely to get into the Kormas base in less than an hour. So he was a dead man walking.

  The marines had not yet reached their fall back points yet when the explosion happened. Even in the thin atmosphere of Mars, the pressure wave of the blast threw a few of them off their feet. There was a bonus for the marines however. A large number of Shaitans were crossing the Shaitan shuttle as they gave chase to the marines. Some of them were in fact under the shuttle at the time of the explosion.

  The marines had used enough explosives to ensure that the shuttle would not have structural integrity and had placed it evenly, especially on the thin wings. They had however not used as much explosives as the extent of the actual explosion. Clearly something in the shuttle had also exploded. It would be a more than ample signal to the Kormas base, which they could not miss. The Kormas base will now move into the next phase of the operation.

  As far as the marines were concerned, they were going to depend for their survival on their fiery ghosts.

  Chapter 19

  Sucker Punch

  Orbit of Mars

  September 2083

  Capt. Trisha Strong had a plan… sort of. It hinged heavily of a lot of ifs and buts, and depended more that she would like on a prayer or two. This was the best she could come up, with the hand she had been dealt. She would make it work somehow.

  For the moment the first part of her objective was getting fulfilled as she had hoped. She had been able to draw out the Shaitan troop carrier TC – 1 away from its synchronous orbit around Mars. As far as she could tell it was none the wiser about the marines that were sneaking up from behind the Shaitans on the surface, who lay a siege.

  She prayed that Nutcase and his marines had actually made it to the surface. She had felt guilty asking the dashing Major of the marines to take his men down on such a suicidal jump. But then, they all were taking suicidal risks out here, including her crew. In any case wasn’t his name ‘Nutcase’? He was tailor made for this job.

  Now she had to complete the next stage of her plan. It was very simple – stay alive.

  USS Resolute had not turned on its main engine after the flyby past Mars. She had turned on its engines at the beginning to give itself the momentum to approach Mars. Then the Resolute had coasted in space on a ballistic course, approaching the planet as slowly as physics would allow, and yet be able to power themselves out of the clutch of Mar’s gravity without crashing into it.

  The main engines had been powered up just after the Marines had jumped. That enabled USS Resolute to gain enough velocity to perform a gravity assist maneuver gaining substantial velocity from Mars. Then they had been slingshot away out to an extremely eccentric orbit around Mars. The elongated egg shaped orbit will take them many hundreds of thousands of Kilometers away from Mars before turning back towards Mars to complete the orbit.

  She had anticipated the possibility that the Shaitan captain might send one preemptive missile each in both directions around the planet to try to catch the Resolute, just as she was turning around the planet. That is what an aggressive captain who had no constraints on the number of missiles would do.

  If the missiles got lucky, then one of them would be able to catch the Resolute just as it was turning around the planet from any of the directions. Realistically the chances of the timing of the missile and USS Resolute matching were very low, since the Shaitan ship was firing blind. The Shaitans did not have a satellite on this side of the planet any longer with which to observe the trajectory of the Resolute and adjust its own trajectory and timing accordingly.

  Yet the Shaitan captain had fired the missiles in either direction. It told her a lot about this Shaitan captain. He was aggressive and willing to risk and waste precious missiles on a slim chance of hitting the enemy. She had to keep that trait of this captain in mind, and if an appropriate situation arises, use it against him.

  The USS Resolute was never in any danger, even from the slim probability of the timings of the missiles coinciding with the turn of the ship around the planet. Trisha would never take even such a slight chance. Trisha still had her two satellites she had launched at a great distance. They may not give detailed information, but they were more than adequate in tracing the engine signature of a large Shaitan missile. They were constantly supplying Trisha with the location of the missiles. If the Resolute had been in the slightest of danger, she would have changed vector immediately.

  When the Resolute emerged on the other side of the planet, boosted in speed by the gravity assist. The missile on the side where Resolute had emerged followed her. The missile was lower in the gravity well of Mars, moving in the opposite direction. It had no hope of catching up with the Resolute. Unless the Resolute kept its engines off and let the missile catch up with her in the long run.

  No one had ever tested the fuel range of a Shaitan missile to check if it would have enough fuel to catch up with USS Resolute eventually. The Shaitan missiles were huge, it was possible that they carried enough fuel to be able to catch up, if the Resolute did not light up its engines. Trisha was not going to put that to the test today. She would light up her engines, just not now.

  The Shaitan captain must have seen the trajectory USS Resolute had emerged. There was no point wasting a missile at this range. He may be aggressive, but not stupid. He gave chase to the Resolute. He would close the distance before launching missiles. Trisha knew that as well.

  Trisha had limited amount of fuel, while the enemy had virtually an unlimited amount. She could not hope to outrun her enemy in open space. She will have to keep maneuvering around Mars, if she wanted to live. Even that tactics put her at a disadvantage due to her limited fuel.

  She will use up and eventually run out of fuel even doing maneuvers. She will have to use the cover and gravity of Mars to her advantage as much as possible. The only advantage she had while her fuel lasts was that she could accelerate a lot faster than the Shaitan ships and be a lot more
nimble.

  Trisha let the Resolute coast in its orbit till it reached its apogee, the furthest point in the orbit. USS resolute was still opening up the gap between itself and Shaitan ship TC – 1. The distance will start narrowing as USS Resolute turns around in its orbit and starts back towards Mars. The rules of orbital mechanics however don’t allow TC – 1 to simply cut across and head in a straight line towards the Resolute.

  Every object near any planet has to follow a nominal orbit. A ship or a missile can only use its engine power to change that orbit. TC – 1 and the missile chasing Resolute can only follow her in a curved trajectory that traces an orbit around Mars.

  The Shaitan missile launched by TC – 1 had finally started catching up. It had been fired blind by TC – 1 in the hope of catching the Resolute as it turned around Mars. The missile may had found itself in a hopeless position at that time, but now after hours of relentless acceleration, it had turned around, climbed up the gravity well and was getting threateningly close to the Resolute.

  Resolute could no longer keep coasting, it had to fire its engines now if it wanted to stay alive. The timing worked well for Trisha. She did not want TC – 1 to get so far from Mars that it would have trouble turning around. Mars and its bulk was very much part of her plan, and she wanted TC – 1 far enough from Kormas base, but close enough to Mars for her plans.

  Trisha could see all the data on her terminal, but asked as a matter of procedure and habit. “Distance from Bogey 1.”

  “The distance of Bogey 1 approaching the danger mark of 10 thousand Kilometers captain. The distance to TC – 1 is at a comfortable 186 thousand kilometers and still rising.” The navigator added anticipating Trisha’s next question.