The bastard Shaitan is being uncooperative. We plan to start ratcheting up the pressure on him and start using more persuasive methods very soon. We have the logs of Violet and Mischa from the last Shaitan interrogation. This one will break soon enough. For now I am slowly starting to send in volunteers meter by meter inside to check if we can enter till the top balcony where the spider was. I will keep you all posted. Yusuke I want you here on the next trip the shuttle makes.” Leanna finished.
The next one week went in a blur as the marines and the civilians got on with the business of reconstruction of the Kormas base as best as they could. The fact that the engineer’s primary mission was to build a permanent base on Mars using local materials helped a lot in the reconstruction. They finished the structures they had partially constructed, and built new ones. They had the construction equipment to do it.
Yusuke and his team had managed to erect a temporary shelter on the south pole capable of supporting a few people for a month in case of an emergency. It was not enough for the number of marines and civilians currently situated there, but the marines would leave once they were absolutely certain that no Shaitans were still hiding inside and there were no booby traps.
Yusuke had suggested a plan to transport the power plant in the Shaitan camp here to the South Pole, which would enable them to have a full-fledged camp capable of supporting large number of humans for indefinite periods of time. The engineers were studying the feasibility of using the Shaitan electric supply. It had never been used for anything other than research before, but there was nothing stopping one from using the power theoretically.
Humans now understood the workings of a Shaitan fusion plant fairly well. Transporting the huge reactor on their relatively small shuttle was another issue. Those matters could wait as far as Yusuke was concerned, for today was the big day. Today was the day Yusuke would be the first civilian to enter the hole and go up to the top balcony. The furthest point they had seen till now.
Marines had already been till that point to certify that it was safe to go there. It was now Yusuke’s turn to go in and start using active scanning. He planned to start with the oldest active scanning that humans have done since stone ages, something we humans appreciate instinctively – shining light on the cave.
There was a thin fiber line trailing Yusuke’s suit feeding the outside world with huge amount of data of everything that was being scanned by the various equipment he was carrying. Yusuke might start with shining light into this gigantic chamber, but it was not going to be like taking a huge floodlight and lighting up the walls of the chamber. It was much more subtle and effective. If there was something or someone inside this place that was monitoring, it would hopefully feel a lot less threatening as well.
It is not possible to shine a light from a floodlight to light up a chamber that is kilometers in width and hundreds of meters in depth. So Yusuke was going to use computer compositing to get a full picture by lighting up small patches. He released a telescopic boom from the edge of the balcony. It extended out nearly 30 meters and sagged from the weight of the equipment at its tip.
At the edge was a spherical mount on which currently was placed a laser assembly that would transmit a beam of light in various colors starting from Infrared to red, green and blue. The narrow beam of light could illuminate a patch of the wall many kilometers away brightly, and then the reflected light could be clearly recorded by the computer.
The spherical mount would slowly and meticulously illuminate and record patch after patch by rotating and swiveling and the computer would stitch up the images to create a grand and crystal clear picture. The chamber would be scanned in red, blue and green to create a full color picture along with many intermediate colors as well as sonar, and microwave. Layer by layer, they would be able to create a detailed 3D model of the chamber as visible from this vantage point.
The first few moments were the most tense, as the laser switched on and started cutting across the chamber patch by patch. If something had to react to them shining the laser, it would likely do now. Thankfully nothing happened and the computer continued building up the image. The image was being superimposed on the faceplate of Yusuke such that he could turn in the direction which he wanted to see and the computer image would be superimposed on the otherwise dark walls that he was seeing right now.
The first thing that Yusuke noticed was color. One had to expect the walls to be of some color, but it was not what he had expected. These were bright bands of color that almost glowed in a fluorescent manner. The colors seem to be painted in horizontal bands from the little patch that had been illuminated till now. The scanner was scanning vertical patches from roof to floor and only a small patch of the entire wall had been illuminated till now.
This was however very different from anything they had seen about Shaitans. The habitats, ships and shuttles were all coated with some dull uniform color. It was the natural color of whatever material had been coated on the surface or whatever material the ship or shuttle was made from. There had been no attempt to paint any surface that the Shaitans built. It was natural for a being that is blind and lives in darkness not to care about painting color on their surface. This was the first time they were seeing bright and varied colors on an alien surface.
The scanner was doing a full 360° circle before swiveling slightly and scanning an adjacent patch, so they had view of a patch of two walls, the floor and the ceiling. Yusuke gasped as he read the figure of the depth of the floor. The floor was 310 meters deep, but at places the bottom read 240 meters deep. He looked carefully at the small patch of the picture that had been illuminated till now and realized the 310 meter depth was a flat floor, whereas the 240 meters depth was curved and looked metallic.
The depth of the floor was 310 meters, there was some object placed on the floor that was nearly 70 meters high. As the scanning progressed and the image patch got bigger, Yusuke realized that the object on the floor was massive. It may be 70 meters high, but it was nearly half a kilometer in length. After 10 minutes more of scanning, Yusuke heard the collective gasps of all the people connected over the com, who were also watching the scans real time.
The object was the largest ship they had ever seen. More the twice the length of the largest Shaitan vessel they had observed yet. It was resting at the bottom of a canyon like chamber. The chamber was slightly curved and they could not see the ends of the chamber, by whatever they could see it was about a kilometer in either direction.
The most amazing part beside the gigantic ship was the walls on either side of the covered canyon. It was hard to visualize this any other way. It would be an insult to this structure to call it a chamber. It was a canyon with a ceiling. The walls of the canyon were filled with neatly stacked rows upon rows of balconies just like the one Yusuke was standing on, extending all the way down to floor of the canyon. There were many objects on the floor of the canyon dwarfed by the gigantic ship, but fairly large in their own rights. None of the objects were recognizable.
The view was made even more marvelous by the vibrant rainbow colors in which the walls were painted. It was not just bands of colors as it seemed initially. There were geometric patterns some complex like the Fibonacci series. The canyon was a celebration of colors that would make any human artist proud.
The best of the paintings was yet to come as the scanner continued to illuminate the walls. Just above the ship there was a patch of the wall that did not have any balcony, and in that circular patch was a painting which was unmistakably of an organic being. Its outline shape and features left no doubt about that fact. It was however not the image of a Shaitan!
Yusuke had scraped a bit of paint from the wall near the balcony and fed it to the analyzer. He looked at the result and drew in a huge breath to calm himself. Then he spoke on the com. “Before I pass out due to excitement, let me report my findings till now. There is trace amount of radioactive material on the paint, which gives it the fluorescent glow. Nothing harmful, but conve
nient marker to measure the radioactive decay and get an age.
I hope you all are sitting down, when you hear this. The paint on the wall is between 75 to 80 thousand years old. Now I am no Shaitan expert, but that painting out there on the wall sure does not look like a Shaitan. Neither does that ship resemble the Shaitan ship design remotely. That ship is unlikely to be a water ship or a submarine. There has been no surface water on Mars for 4 billion years.
So that is an alien space ship. I have a theory about how it reached where it is standing. I have been looking at the structural scans of this place done by sonar and microwave while you guys were gaping at the visual images. This place really is a canyon. A natural formation like many others on Mars. It formed hundreds of millions probably billions of years ago when Mars was still active geologically.
The only thing that is not natural is the roof. There are metal arches, struts and other load bearing structures that are holding up the roof. My guess is at some time when this canyon was open on top, this space ship was lowered into the canyon and then a roof was built on top. The roof was then covered with soil and rock so that it appears a flat plain from above.
The only marker left on the roof was the opening through which we entered. It took some time for the computers to crunch the millions of possibilities to figure out what was different. The rock samples taken from near the hole have similar characteristics as rock samples taken from anywhere in the vicinity up to a few kilometers.
There are trace radioactive elements here in the rocks as there are all around the place as it is in various parts of Mars. However there is a very subtle difference in the rock samples near the hole, something that does not occur naturally. The ratio of the isotopes of Uranium and Thorium, both of which are radioactive are reversed from what occurs naturally all around Mars.
This is only possible if someone took the soil and rocks around the hole, sanitized them of these two elements, and added a reverse mix of the isotopes and spread it around. Only someone who knew what to look for could have figured out the opening of the hole. There would be no obvious sign from space, but if someone were to take a shuttle and fly low scanning the neighborhood and look for this subtle difference they would be able to pinpoint this place accurately.
Obviously the Shaitans must have known what to look for, but I seriously doubt that they built this place. If you notice the balconies, they are too small for a Shaitan to squeeze through comfortably. I would say ladies and gentlemen that we are looking at an 80 thousand year old archeological remains of the second alien species that humanity have discovered.” Yusuke finished his report sounding overawed.
Ed broke into the public channel after Yusuke had finished. “People be advised that as part of our interrogation, we have been feeding key pictures of the site to the scientist Shaitan investigating the site. He had been very uncooperative till now despite us using very persuasive tactics, if you know what I mean.
On being fed the portrait of that weird alien painted on the wall though he started the Shaitan equivalent of babbling on his own. Dr. Mishra says that his neural and hormonal reaction is the equivalent of a Shaitan laughing and I am copying the computer translation of what he keeps saying over and over again.” Ed said and transmitted the text over the public channel.
‘The Ka-let is no more. The Ka-let are dead as they should. The Ka-let has been exterminated by our ancestors, as they said they would. We can vouch for the honor of those ancestors that they did their holy duty right. The Ka-let are dead and they can defile no more. Your masters are dead and they can help you no more. The spawns of Ka are born to test our people and to make us strong. Every generation so tested have proved themselves worthy. We the custodians of our beings’ essence will also not fail in our holy duty.’
Chapter 29
First Fleet
Approaching the Asteroid belt
October 2083
The asteroid belt in real life is not what it is depicted to be in popular fiction and movies. The asteroid belt visually looks empty. An observer approaching or crossing the asteroid belt would not even be aware of the fact, unless he looks at the radar. There are just about a 100 thousand sizeable asteroids that can be measured in kilometers. This over a volume of nearly 50 trillion times trillion cubic kilometers that is the asteroid belt. That is a lot of volume and too few large asteroids.
The distance between two asteroids with a size of a kilometer is millions of miles on an average. Standing on one of those asteroids, you would not even be able to see the nearest neighboring asteroid. The probability of a spacecraft colliding with an asteroid is so low, that no special protocol is followed when crossing the asteroid belt. The standard collision avoidance system radar used for tracking any nearby object does just fine.
In the history of human space exploration for the last 100 years, no spacecraft has ever had to take any collision avoidance measure while passing through the asteroid belt. Observing a large asteroid on radar passing by a few thousand kilometers away was rare for a spacecraft crossing the asteroid belt.
However observing smaller asteroids the size of a car or a bus was not that uncommon a few thousand kilometers away. These smaller rocks were much more numerous. Though still not dense enough to present a navigational threat, these smaller rocks when seen a few thousand or even a few hundred kilometers away does not elicit any surprise from astronauts. It is expected.
Gerald hoped that the Shaitans thought the same way. The Shaitans lived in the Oort cloud and the Kuiper belt, which had similar distribution of rocks and asteroids. The Shaitans are experienced space faring civilization. So surely they should also expect similar distribution of rocks in the asteroid belt. Their plan hinged greatly on that fact.
The Third Fleet had spent the last few months leading the Shaitan fleet inwards towards the inner solar system. They had scorched through the distance from outside the orbit of Pluto, all the way past the orbits of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter. Their plan of herding the Shaitans through the tunneled corridor had worked so far.
The Shaitans had made no effort to break away and approach Earth from a different direction. The Third Fleet had given the Shaitan fleet no reason or incentive to do so. Third Fleet had kept a non-threatening stance all the way through.
The Shaitans probably thought that the Third Fleet was scrambling ahead of the Shaitans to meet up with reinforcements before taking on the Shaitan fleet. There was nothing much the Shaitan fleet could do about that at this point, since the human ships were marginally faster in acceleration than the Shaitan ships, so the Shaitan fleet could not have caught up with the Third Fleet to take them on right now.
So there was no point leaving the straight line approach at the moment. Once the Shaitan fleet reached closer to Earth, probably after the orbit of Mars, then things might change. At that point, the Shaitan fleet might deviate from the straight line approach in order to evade the defending human fleets in space.
The halfway point from their starting point to Earth was somewhere just after the orbit of Uranus. The Shaitan fleet had turned and started decelerating at that point and the human fleet had followed suit, always ensuring to maintain the 100 thousand Kilometers separation.
As the two fleets approached the asteroid belt neither of them was at any risk from the missiles of the other. They were travelling at the same speed, so in effect they were at rest relative to each other. They were separated by a distance of 100 thousand Kilometers. Any missile launched would be detected immediately by the other fleet and there would be ample time to shoot the missile down.
The Third Fleet’s job however was not to shoot missiles at the Shaitan fleet. Theirs was to deliver the Shaitan fleet at a certain point in the asteroid belt within a maximum margin of error of one thousand kilometers. That might seem like a big margin of error, but if one considers that the third fleet was herding the Shaitan fleet from a distance of almost 6 billion kilometers, then one starts to see what a bull’s eye it is.
T
he Third Fleet almost achieved the task. When the Shaitan fleet entered the asteroid belt, they were just 1,100 Km from the designated spot. Rear Admiral Francis Montero could not complain. The Third Fleet had accomplished a herculean ask remarkably well. It was now the turn of the First Fleet to contribute its part.
100 Km out of the bound of their planned dragnet will have to do, because that is all the First Fleet will get. It will reduce the effectiveness of their attack a bit, but they will adapt. This was far from their worst case scenario. In fact it was not that far from their best case scenario. Francis was going to oversee the final execution of operation Orb Weaver.
The ships of the First Fleet were limited by their range and the time in space and the amount of mass it could carry, being older generation space ships that didn’t have a fusion reactor. This meant that the number of missiles it could carry was far less per ship compared to the Nautilus class. The First Fleet made up for this shortcoming somewhat with numbers.
The First Fleet, like the Second Fleet consisted of eight ships each, instead of the four that made up the Third Fleet. The USC, which was the human space navy, consisted of 17 Resolute class ships divided into 8 each in First and Second Fleet. The last ship USS Resolute, the namesake of the class was unattached. Plus the four latest Nautilus class ships, which constituted the Third fleet, which was now down to three after their battle with the Beta Shaitan fleet.
It might look like the humans had built too few ships in the last 21 years that the Shaitans had given them. It would have looked like tardy preparation for a battle which would determine humankind’s survival. The reality was that the Resolute class ships had started being built only 12 years ago, and their production stopped completely 2 years ago.
In 10 years, humans had built 21 Resolute class ships, four of which were lost or crippled due to accidents and malfunctions. Space ship technology was still in its infancy, and space crafts were still not extremely reliable, there were plenty of accidents and malfunctions. Space travel was still a dangerous undertaking. It was likely to remain so for the foreseeable future as humans continuously pushed the envelope on space technology and kept introducing newer ships with technology that hadn’t had time to mature enough.
Wrath of the Shaitans Page 34