Wrath of the Shaitans

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The concrete gate was lowered and Shaitans were allowed in again. In truth the flow of Shaitans had never stopped. They had just reduced to a trickle as Shaitans climbed over and from the side of the gate. So the marines were constantly sniping. Once the gate was lowered, a lot more Shaitans were able to get through and the marines got a lot busier, and their guns rang more frequently.

  This time the humans did not have their barrel bombs, so they started raising the gate as soon as it had reached its bottom position. That way lesser and a more manageable number would be let through. This time though the Shaitans were not just able to reach the fence, but were able to severely stress it, almost breaking it. Some of the Shaitans were also able to climb over the fence, but they were quickly dispatched on priority by the marines defending the path.

  The marines also took their first casualty. One of the marines on top perching from a niche got hit. The plasma fire came as soon as the muzzle flash from the marine’s gun lit up. It was too fast a reaction time even for a Shaitan. It made Leanna suspect that the reason the plasma fire was accurate compared to their bullets was that the plasma gun was somehow controlled or targeted using a computer, while the projectile gun was probably targeted manually.

  “Marines be advised that I suspect the Shaitan plasma gun uses automated response to fire back at muzzle flash. Try to keep your guns not aligned to your body. Better to be slightly less accurate than to have yourself shot.” Leanna said over the public channel. Then on a private channel she spoke to the controller. “Sue, reduce the time of gate opening. We need to let in smaller lots of Shaitans at a time.”

  The next two batches of Shaitans let in went smoothly enough. The marines suffered one more casualty, this time from the marines guarding the path in front of the fence. The Shaitans had managed to bring down the fence and some of them had come close enough to be able to see and take a shot at the marines. The marines had killed them all and erected the fence back, but not before losing one of their own.

  “Lower the gate. Let the next lot in.” Leanna said, a certain amount of smugness creeping into her voice. They had killed nearly 350 Shaitans and taken just two casualty. She was starting to get a good feeling about this thing working out well. She would not feel that way for long.

  “Colonel, there are no Shaitans coming in through the gate. Repeat. No more Shaitans coming through the gate.” Leanna’s helmet rang with the controller’s voice.

  “What? Have we killed them all already?!” Asked Leanna surprised.

  “No colonel. There were over 1200 Shaitans left. We would have killed about 350 of them, and some of them fell over in the crush on the gate, but not that many. That still leaves about 850 of them. The spy cams shows the Shaitans massed just around the bend, waiting. I have no idea what they are waiting for.” The controller replied.

  “Eagle 1, could you target the waiting Shaitans and nudge them forward?” Leanna asked the shuttle.

  “Negative colonel. That part of the path is not lit with infrared. I have no visibility through the dust. If I get close, the Shaitans would be able to see my hot exhaust a lot before I can see their cooler bodies. I am taking feed from the controller and I will fire blind and hope to hit something in the mass. Let’s see if that coaxes them forward. Eagle 1 out.” The shuttle replied.

  “Colonel. Eagle 1 took blind shots and even managed to hit a few of them. The Shaitans simply took the losses but sat tight. They did not budge an inch.” The controller reported to Leanna after some time. What the hell are they waiting for? Wondered Leanna.

  “Colonel the Shaitans have suddenly started rushing in at full speed. They are trying to execute a surprise sprint. Permission requested to raise the gate.” The controller shouted.

  “I see them. Do it NOW!” Leanna shouted. So that was their plan… eh? Is that all the smart Shaitans could come up with? Try to fool us by waiting and suddenly rush in? Well they have to do better. All they have managed is to trap some more Shaitans in our kill box. Leanna thought.

  That smug certainty started waning however when she realized that there was something different about this group that had crossed the gate. They stopped almost immediately after crossing, they were not attempting to charge or even fire back. They were simply standing there next to the gate getting shot once in a while from the sniping marines.

  As the gate rose nearly three fourth of its total height Leanna took a feed from the spy cam on her faceplate and noticed that an equal number of Shaitans had gathered on the outer side of the gate. They were not trying to cross over the gate or from the sides as they had done before. They just seem to be gathering and consolidating next to the gate.

  The realization came to her a moment too late. She couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. Once enough Shaitans had gathered on each side of the gate, (the computer counted 24 Shaitans on either side, 48 in total) the Shaitans pressed their bodies tightly to the base of the gate which had by now reached almost to the maximum height.

  The blast was blinding. It was not the amount of light but the spectrum of light that was different and strange. It was almost completely a blue, deep blue and violet explosion in the visible light. Later computer analysis would show that a large part of the emission was in the ultraviolet and x-ray range.

  This was no conventional explosion, at least not as humans understood conventional. It was not a nuclear explosion either. The analysis after the battle would show that the Shaitans had used their plasma weapons, somehow discharging the entire energy carried by the weapon in a flash.

  48 such weapons discharged together had created an explosion equivalent to over a ton of TNT. Enough to not just blow the gate, but to turn the stumps of the gate into slag. The Shaitan bodies had helped to quickly pack the explosives in the optimum place. A Shaitan without its plasma weapon was a dead Shaitan anyway, so might as well use the body to make the explosion effective. Such ant like thinking of the Shaitans made it hard for the humans to appreciate them as intelligent beings, but at the same time one had to admit that it was brutally logical for their species.

  Leanna realized what might happen soon. They might get overwhelmed. She gave the order when there was still time. “Marines! Mount your bayonets NOW!” She started doing the same herself. She had not fired a single shot from her SG-4 till now. That was going to change now. They needed every gun pumping lead out in the hope of slowing down the Shaitans.

  As the marines were mounting the bayonets, the Shaitans turned the corner into the infrared glare lighting the path. The math was very simple. There were 800 Shaitans left who had to cover half a kilometer of path to reach the plateau before all mayhem broke lose.

  The Shaitans were known to run at well over 60 Km per hour on Titan. So they had 30 seconds to kill as many Shaitans as they could before the Shaitans could see them and shoot them down. If they were able to get close they might not even bother to shoot. They could rip apart the humans with their metal claws.

  “Marines, Eagle 1 fire at will. Fire at will. Kill the bastards. Kill them all.” Leanna shouted. He adrenalin pumped voice was quaking with excitement, fear and anticipation.

  The shuttle’s machine gun fired continuously as did the marines and the civilians who had taken up position on the edge of the plateau, firing sideways at the mass of Shaitans charging ominously up the path. There was no need for marksmanship. One just pointed towards mass of the Shaitan bodies and squeezed the trigger, and it was sure to hit one of them.

  Unfortunately 30 seconds was not nearly time enough to kill 800 Shaitans, especially since they could not be individually targeted. A lot of bullets were hitting dead or dying Shaitans who didn’t need any more killing while it let other Shaitans escape unscathed.

  By the time the Shaitans hit the fence, there were still over 600 Shaitans left alive and in fighting form. The fence did buy the marines precious few seconds, which depleted the numbers of the Shaitans by 10 more, but after that it was free for all. The vanguard of the Shaitans simply leapt o
ver the frontline, leaving them for the Shaitans behind and started tearing at the rear lines.

  Fortunately their terrifying plasma gun was a slow firing weapons, but at this melee range their guns were accurate enough. The Shaitans however instinctively preferred to use their claws as a melee weapon. Leanna had long learnt from her NCOs to keep her wits about even in the heat of the battle, especially when it came to keeping count.

  Even as she shot and hacked her way through with her bayonet she kept getting the feeling that there was not nearly enough Shaitans on the plateau as she had expected. There should have been more. While both humans and Shaitans were dying, but it felt more like one to one battle. One Shaitan against one human. If her math in the heat of the battle was correct, then it should have been two Shaitans against one human.

  Leanna did a flying backflip to avoid the stabbing thrust of a Shaitan and shot it just as she was landing but still in the air. In her youth doing this backflip in this low gravity would have been a child’s play and she would have shot in midair with her eyes closed instinctively. Her acrobatics was one of the things that drove Alex wild. Unfortunately it no longer came naturally with age. She had to struggle to find her footing and winced in pain when her back strained.

  Leanna had a moment to herself and turned towards the path to see where the rest of the Shaitans had gone. The rest of the Shaitans were on the path, but they were now rushing down away from the plateau! What the hell were the Shaitans up to?! Why were they running away, just when they have nearly won the battle?

  The shuttle could not fire its guns on the plateau with so many humans around, so it was making hay with the Shaitans who were now charging back the way they had come, picking off as many as they could. The shuttle was sure to know what was going on so Leanna shouted. “Eagle 1, what the hell is going on?! Why are those Shaitans running away?”

  “It is the first and the second platoon sir. They are taking some rearguard action and taking some heat off you. I am afraid that they may have bitten a bit more than they can chew though. They are too few of them and too many Shaitans heading towards them. My gunner is doing his best to reduce their numbers before they reach the marine position, but there may be too many of them.” The shuttle replied.

  God bless the 3rd company and especially the 1st and 2nd platoon. She could now make out the marines were lying prone and had taken cover behind the raised stump of the blown up gate. The charging Shaitans were almost upon them. Brave they may be, but the US marines on that end would not last long outnumbered 5 or 6 to 1, once the Shaitans reached them.

  Leanna needed to send the Gurkha marines to their assistance, but they could not move until there were Shaitans left standing on the plateau. The Gurkhas needed an extra dose of inspiration to speed them up, and Leanna knew the right handle, having worked with the British Gurkha regiment. These were the Indian Gurkha, but they came from the same stock and thought similarly.

  The Gurkha were nothing if not emotional beings. When emotionally motivated, they were known to abandon all care for one’s own life and do things no human being would normally do. That is what made them so ferocious and scary to the enemy. That is what impressed the British so much that they invited the entire clan to move to Britain to serve in his majesty’s army.

  “Gurkha! Your brother marines came to your assistance to save your lives. They have drawn half the enemy to their sides so that you can fight and live. Now the enemy has surrounded them 6 to 1. They are now fighting for their lives. Let us not be the first Gurkha in history to live with the burden of our Brother’s blood. Let us not be the first Gurkha who watched his brother bleed to death from far and did not go to bleed along with him.

  Gurkha, we need to reach our brothers fast. We need to end this here and now. We need to say the name of ‘Durga’ and shout ‘Ayo Gorkhali’. Leanna added an extra note and quiver of emotion. She invoked the name of the goddess of war ‘Durga’, which in Indian culture when invoked by a woman is an especially potent call to war.

  The effect on the Gurkha marines was electrifying. It wasn’t as if they fought harder or braver. They just fought madder. They stopped bothering to evade, and abandoned any attempt at caution. It probably resulted in a few more casualties than would have happened otherwise. Even though the Shaitans did not have a face which could express surprise, their body language said it all.

  The Shaitans on the plateau were surprised, puzzled and shocked at the same time. They had never experienced humans launching themselves headlong at them with their guns blazing and their bayonets thrust out, when there was a high probability that they would get shot or skewered by the Shaitans.

  The net result was that in 10 seconds, while there were many Gurkha lying on the ground, every Shaitan on the plateau was dead or in its death frenzy. The Gurkha still alive were seen running down the path screaming like mad men.

  The Gurkha who actually reached the US Marine position first though were the ones who were perched on the niches. They had expertly rappelled down when they could no longer target from top once the Shaitans reached the US marines. The two platoons of US marines were in a grim fight for survival, as they were overwhelmed by 300 Shaitans. Every Gurkha who reached the fight and attacked from behind increased the life expectancy of the US Marines a bit.

  Despite the seeming slaughter of humans on the plateau, only 50 humans had actually gone down, many of them civilians while killing 300 Shaitans; proving once again that humans were superior fighters even when they fought as crazy as a Gurkha.

  Thus within a minute of the rousing speech delivered by Leanna, over 200 Gurkha had reached the US marines’ position attacking the Shaitans from the rear, while the 60 marines fought in the front. When Humans and Shaitans are roughly evenly matched in numbers, the Shaitans have little chance of winning or even causing casualties.

  The US marines survived with 5 casualties. The Gurkha actually took more casualties. 9 of them went down in the skirmish, but they killed each and every Shaitan. There was a deafening cheer that went through the public channel. Shouts of men who had faced and cheated death once more.

  Leanna however could not let the men rest yet. She had to send them to face death once more. There was a brave platoon or whatever might be left of that platoon, which was fighting and running desperately for its life from a force which was nearly 20 times their size. They had succeeded in their mission of keeping the Shaitans on the plains occupied. It was now time to go to their rescue.

  Chapter 26

  Storming the enemy base

  Mars

  September 2083

  Ed was so tired and his heart was beating so fast that it felt that it would burst any time. The marines were some of the fittest human beings, but even the fit had their limits of endurance. They had been now running continuously for almost 24 hours. They had jumped from space and flown a quarter the length of Mars.

  Then they had hiked 5-10 Km to contact Kormas base. Then they had hiked another 20 Km to reach the descent point. Had made a treacherous descent down a 5 Km high plateau overnight. After a half hour rest, they had hiked another 10-15 Km to sabotage the shuttle. Since then the marines have been continuously running. Fighting, retreating and running, occasionally losing a comrade, which did not help morale.

  They were now down to 15, half their original number. They had been running in circles literally and taking the Shaitans along with them in a merry chase. They had now reached the limits of their endurance. Yet it was not the endurance of the Marines that was worrying Ed. It was the endurance of their suits that was the cause of his disconcert.

  The suits were rated for 24 hours of use in combat conditions. His display showed that they were coming up on that 24 hour mark very fast in less than 15 minutes. His battery level was showing low, but not critical yet. Ed however knew that battery capacity display was notoriously unreliable.

  Even after centuries of use of batteries, no one seems to be able to fix the problem of getting a precise and reliable measur
ement of batteries. The batteries may show 24% for a long time and suddenly jump down to 10% directly without going through any intermediate value. Then as suddenly it will initiate a shutdown at critical 2% without getting to any intermediate value.

  Ed wondered why humans would spend billions of dollars on battery research to increase capacity but not spend a few million dollars to reliably measure the capacity. Ed’s grandfather used to complain that his childhood computers and something called cell phones which were similar to com equipment would face the exact same problem.

  So Ed could not rely on the battery reading. If a suit failed in the middle of a skirmish, it would not be possible to evacuate that marine and he would die. It was best to end the mission now. It would no longer be possible to continue it much longer anyway, so there is no point endangering any more lives.

  They had a good run so far, although they had paid a heavy price with the lives of their marines. The shuttle had been the lynchpin of their strategy so far. It was perhaps the only thing that had kept them alive so long, and it would be what would save them from death now.

  After the marines had been driven away from their fiery ghosts, and then rescued from certain death by the arrival of the shuttle. Ed had devised a strategy to keep harassing the Shaitans without taking inordinate risks. The marines would leave one of their spiders as they ran.

  The Shaitans would eventually reach the spot or close by tracking them from the heat of their foot prints on the cold Martian surface. The spider would be controlled by the marines from nearby. They would sneak the spider as close to the Shaitans as possible and then emit a loud radio squawk and then scoot. Occasionally the Shaitans would detect the spider and kill it, but it didn’t matter. Each marine carried a spider. They had plenty of them.

  The shuttle would be sitting somewhere close by within a few Km conserving its fuel. The radio squawk from the spider would act like a beacon. The shuttle could not see the Shaitans through the dust storm, just as the Shaitans could not see the shuttle. The shuttle would home in on the position of the radio squawk at high speed. As it approached the position the Shaitan heat signature on the IR would become visible through the dust for a few moments.