Wrath of the Shaitans

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The First Fleet had stopped behind this asteroid, hidden from the Shaitan fleet’s line of sight to deploy their missiles. The First Fleet had however been a few kilometers away to give themselves ample clearance to eject the missiles. Now they drifted slowly towards the surface of the asteroid to close that small gap and hug the asteroid. There should be no way the Shaitan Fleet would be able to detect the First Fleet till it crosses the asteroid.

  The First Fleet itself had been blind to the progress of the Shaitan fleet and the Third Fleet leading them, since they entered the shadow of the asteroid. It was impractical to depend on monitoring from Earth. The roundtrip time for the signal was over 80 minutes. So the First Fleet had released a deceptively simple object to help them see round the corner – a mirror.

  It was not as simple as a mirror used in our bathrooms, but simple enough. It was a cube 25 centimeters on the sides, with mildly polished aluminum skin. The aluminum skin was smooth enough to reflect laser beams without scattering for a few million kilometers, but tarnished enough to look like a piece of floating space debris.

  Inside was a small tank filled with compressed helium, a tiny battery and a single chip radio receiver. Only a receiver, no transmitter. The cube emitted no electromagnetic signal, unless you came within a few meters with a very sensitive detector. The helium could be released in a tiny jet from any face of the cube to turn it around appropriately, by observing the cube from a telescope on the ship and sending it appropriate command.

  The First Fleet was reflecting a tight laser beam through the cube to the Third Fleet, which was now the eyes of the First Fleet hidden behind the asteroid. The sensors of USS Nautilus was feeding all the ships of the First Fleet, the distance count for the Shaitan fleet was now coming down rapidly as they approached at high velocity.

  The roughly circular pattern of the missile deployment was not flat and two dimensional. It was a mild cone. The ones which were closer to the center and hence had to travel less distance had been pushed back a bit out of the place of the circle to give the entire deployment a conical shape. The distance to be travelled for these missiles was still less than the ones at the periphery. The three dimensional distribution, made the deployments less obvious as a circled pattern.

  The plan was for the Shaitan fleet to go through this 1000 km diameter circle and all the missiles closing in on them from every side. The problem was that the Shaitan fleet was going to miss the circle and go outside of that circle by some 100 km. This contingency of missing the circle was anticipated. The targeting programs were given modified parameters, and the opening salvo of the First Fleet began.

  Just as the Third Fleet was about to cross the position of the First Fleet, the missiles which were the furthest and had to travel nearly 1,100 Km opened up their package, turned and raced towards a particular point in space. This was the point where the Shaitan fleet was expected to be, when they crossed the spider web.

  The human missiles were not racing in the direction of the approach of the Shaitan fleet, which was already coming in at a considerable speed towards the web. There was no need to go in that direction. In fact more the speed of approach, less accurate the targeting. The approaching Shaitan fleet’s speed was already at the limits of accurate targeting for the missiles.

  The missiles were racing at a perpendicular direction to meet up at the point where the Shaitan fleet would cross the spider’s web. The missiles were at a relative rest. Even with their solid fuel rockets burning at full thrust, the furthest missiles had about 15 minutes to reach the specified point. One by one the missiles closer to the point started lighting up and racing towards it.

  The missiles delayed the lighting up of their engines to the last moment possible. That way it was hoped that it would give the Shaitan point defense computer the least amount of time to prioritize targets. Unfortunately all the missiles would be coming in from one general direction now, instead from all directions as had been planned, since the Shaitan fleet had not entered the circle. Being inside the circle would have made the job of the Shaitan point defense even harder.

  The human missiles were not going to have an easy time targeting the Shaitan ships either. Unlike the missiles of the Third Fleet that were heading directly head on more or less towards their target, these missiles were heading at a 90° angle to the line of approach.

  If the Shaitans could have been pinned down to an exact point, then it would have been preferable to make the approach straighter, but that was not possible. Even when give a target 1000 Km wide, the Shaitans missed it by a hundred kilometers. The only other option to make the approach straighter would have been to light up the missile much earlier, which would have warned the Shaitan earlier and helped them pick off the missiles one by one.

  So there was no option but to approach at the 90° angle. It would be as much a test of timing as a test of targeting. The missiles had to arrive at the same spot as the Shaitan ships within a few milliseconds of margin of error. The Shaitan warships had a powerful tool in throwing off that timing, which the Beta Shaitan fleet had displayed in the previous battle – their solid fuel rockets.

  Just like the human Nautilus class ships, the Shaitan warships had retained solid fuel rockets for emergency acceleration. Since it had not been present in the Shaitan troop carrier that humans had observed over Titan, humans had assumed that the Shaitans had gotten rid of Chemical rockets in their ships. The humans should not have underestimated the Shaitans so.

  The solid fuel rocket of the Shaitan ships were being turned on intermittently in erratic patterns. Since the Shaitan vessels were turned to decelerate, the solid fuel rockets were further adding to the slowdown whenever they were turned on, thus delaying the time of arrival at the spot in the hopes of throwing off the timing of the missiles.

  It would have worked well with purely ballistic weapons like the humans had evaded the plasma rail guns with their CADBE system. However the human missiles could recompute and adjust their course. The intermittent slowing down made the missile’s work difficult but not impossible.

  Fortunately for the missiles, the Shaitan solid fuel rockets could only point in one direction, where the main rocket was pointed. It was not like the human CADBE system which could change vector in any direction in milliseconds. So the Shaitan ships could only slow down, not accelerate. They could only make the slowdown less predictable. That made calculation and course corrections less difficult than they would have been with a CADBE like system.

  The human missiles on their part were offloading the calculations to the faster quantum computers on board the ships of the First Fleet to give them an edge. The Shaitan fleet was still not in the line of sight of the First Fleet, but the missiles were. They were all connected by tight laser beams to their mother ships getting the services of the faster quantum computers.

  The flip side of the 90° approach was that the Shaitan missile killers had an equally tough time targeting and timing the missiles. So while a lower percentage human missiles were expected to be able to accurately target the Shaitan ships than the previous battle, but a lower percentage of the human missiles were expected to be shot down too.

  There were 320 missiles in the fray this time compared to 360 that were used on the Beta Shaitan fleet. That would mean that if all the three Shaitan warships were targeted, then it would be 107 missiles targeted at each ship. Given the slim margin by which missiles were able to destroy the Beta Shaitan ships in the last battle when 120 missile were thrown at each ship, this attack would get dicey.

  In fact the last ship was hit by only 5 missiles, if it had been attacked by only 107 missiles, it would have most probably survived intact being able to shoot down all the missiles. Even the second last ship got hit by only 15 missiles. It might have survived with a hit or two if only 107 missiles were used. This is not even taking into account the fact that the current missiles were approaching at a 90° angle, so lot more of the human missiles are expected to miss.

  Thus Admiral Daniel
Cloutier and his old friend and subordinate Rear Admiral Francis Montero had made an important decision. The missiles of First Fleet here in the asteroid belt would target only two of the three Shaitan warships.

  That would mean that each Shaitan warship targeted would be attacked by 160 missiles together, which even taking into account poorer hit rate should be able to destroy two of the three ships for certain. It was far better than all three escaping and getting past the First Fleet.

  If the First Fleet was able to achieve its objective, then the Third Fleet moving ahead of the remaining Shaitan warship, along with the Second Fleet waiting in Earth orbit, should be able to move and prevent the last Shaitan warship from reaching Earth.

  It was amazing how time slows down in a battle, Francis thought. He had ran through all these thoughts about their strategy and tactics, trying to second guess what could go wrong, and not even a few minutes had passed. The missiles closer to the expected path were still lighting up as he was watching his terminal.

  Francis could see on his terminal that the Shaitan warships had started using all of their point defense arsenal. The Shaitan point defense lasers were operational, because the data coming back from the missiles was saying so. The AWPS systems missiles would be able to withstand most of the laser assault. With so many missiles launched not more than a few percent should be lost to the lasers. The lasers weapons, being light speed weapons, were not reduced in effectiveness by the angle of approach though.

  The Shaitan warships had started launching missile killers. They had even started using their plasma rail guns, although such purely ballistic weapons had little hope of hitting even one of the human missiles.

  Rear Admiral Francis Montero was known as the ‘by the book’ soldier. A diametrically opposite of Rear Admiral Fabi Kalinin. Daniel joked that his two admirals were his yin and yang. Even the improvisations of Admiral Francis Montero were by the book. He rarely took chances, especially in matters of process or safety.

  Today however Francis was going to break that rule. In fact he was going to pretty much throw the rulebook out of the airlock. He was now going to take the boldest decision of his career and the biggest gamble in his life. If his gambit failed, he would have doomed the entire First Fleet and written the epitaph of each and every crew member on those ships.

  The Resolute class ship carried 20 missile killing antimissiles. These were the same ones used by the Nautilus class ships, with the minor difference that they were designed to be launched from tubes and not from pneumatic ejectors like the Nautilus.

  Initially they had planned to remove those missile killers and place additional offensive nuclear missiles in its place. The thought had been that the First Fleet would stay hidden behind the asteroid all the time till the Shaitan fleet passed by, and even then if the First Fleet maintained EM silence, the Shaitan Fleet may not notice them.

  Even if the Shaitan fleet noticed the First Fleet, any missile launched behind by the Shaitan fleet would already have so much velocity in the opposite direction that it would find it hard to catch up with the First Fleet. The First Fleet should be easily be able to run and hence would be reasonably safe.

  The antimissile holds of the Resolute class ships however were specialized to hold just that kind of missile killers, which were thinner and shorter. It was also in a very different section of the ship, from where it would be difficult to take the nukes out to the pneumatic ejectors. It was too much trouble and would take too much time to modify.

  It was not thought worth the trouble and time for an additional 4 or 5 nukes that it would be able to accommodate. Admiral Cloutier was also loathe to leaving the First Fleet completely defenseless. Thus it was decided to leave the 20 antimissiles untouched. They were still sitting in their missile holds.

  Francis had sent a message to Daniel informing what he intended to do. Daniel had been surprised at the aggressiveness and rashness of the plan. He had never known his old friend to be this rash. Daniel had not liked it, but Francis was the man in the battle, and he did not want to second guess him.

  A small countdown on one corner of his terminal went to zero, and Francis could feel the vibrations as four tubes of his ship released their payload of missiles, and the auto loader immediately started loading the next batch of missiles. Each ship quickly cycled through their tubes to release all the twenty missiles in just under a minute.

  The payload of 20 antimissiles from each of the 8 ships totaling 160 missile killers raced out behind 320 camouflaged missiles that were slowly coming to life. The human missile killers were targeted at the Shaitan missile killers. It also served the purpose of confusing the Shaitan point defense system.

  The Shaitan point defense system could not be sure that these 160 human antimissiles were not nukes. The engine exhaust signature of the antimissiles was subtly different from the nuclear missiles, but the point defense system could not risk completely ignoring them. So the Shaitan point defense system now had 480 targets to shoot down rather than 320.

  It was also a very dangerous game. The 320 nuclear missiles emerged out of thin air and may confuse the Shaitan captains, but when they see 160 missiles emerging from behind an asteroid, it would be logical to guess that there might be a ship behind the asteroid launching those missiles.

  The Shaitan fleet had not yet crossed the asteroid, it would be far easier for them to send a single of those monster 400 megaton nuke their way right now. It would still have to fight its own velocity to reach the asteroid, but it had better chances of doing so than after the Shaitan fleet had crossed the asteroid. Worse still was the fact that there were no more antimissiles left in the arsenal of the First Fleet to defend themselves.

  The first of the Shaitan antimissiles started to arrive and kill human missiles, even as the last of the camouflaged human nuclear missiles were coming to life. The bad news was that there was no appreciable drop in the accuracy of the Shaitan missile killers even though they were approaching at a 90° angle. They seem to be killing human missiles at the same merciless rate.

  The good news was that the Shaitan missile killers were also targeting the human missile killer, thus wasting a missile killer, which otherwise may have killed a human nuclear missile. This let more percent of the human nukes pass through than would have been otherwise possible. The 160 human antimissiles could not hope to hunt down all the Shaitan antimissiles, which were far more numerous, but it did act as a force multiplier.

  The ships of the First Fleet were parked side by side in a fairly tight formation. While the Resolute class ships were not as big as the Nautilus class, but hiding 8 ships side by side on an asteroid just over a kilometer wide was still a squeeze. The ships were in communication through laser, since they were still on EM silence.

  Francis hit his helmet to turn on his channel to all the captains. “Watch those displays like a hawk people, shout at the first sign of any Shaitan missile deviating towards this rock.” It was an unnecessary order, every captain was not just watching, but hoping and praying that they don’t see such a missile. So far their prayers were being heard.

  The Shaitan fleet was almost upon them, but the human missiles were being killed at an alarming rate. Francis stopped himself from gripping the edges of his terminal. He was afraid that he might break it.

  When the intersection between the Shaitan fleet and the human missiles happened, the results were surprising to say the least. One of the Shaitan ship had been defended so lightly that 32 human nukes were able to get through. Only 23 of those nukes however were able to detonate close enough to do any damage. It was enough. The Shaitan warship was literally blown to bits.

  The other ship targeted however must have been disproportionately defended. Only two human nukes could get through, and only one exploded near enough to cause damage. The Shaitan ships were too far even for the telescopes of the ship to see the exact nature of the damage, but the ion plasma engines switched off. The remaining intact ship started falling behind, as it was still decelerati
ng. Within a few seconds the intact Shaitan ship also switched off its engines to keep pace with its wounded comrade.

  There was a whoops and cheers going around on the com channels. Clearly the crew thought that operation Orb Weaver had been a success. Admiral Francis Montero held his judgment. There was no indication how badly the other ship had been hurt, and how battle worthy it remained. Till that assessment could be made, the operation could only be called a partial success. Still it was better than letting all of the Shaitan ships through.

  The First Fleet had not been threatened or attacked by the Shaitan fleet. They were likely to have noticed the fleet once they passed the asteroid, but they were probably too busy with the damaged Shaitan warship. The First Fleet waited for just over half an hour. The Shaitan fleet was too far by that time for any of its missiles to have any hope of reaching the ships of the First Fleet.

  Then the First Fleet fired up its engines for its long trudge back home. They could not even hope to catch the Shaitan fleet, let alone try to beat them, refuel and rearm to get into the fight again. The war for the First Fleet was over. It was now all up to the Second and Third Fleet. Francis hoped that the Second and the Third Fleet were able to stop the remaining two Shaitan warships and the two troop carriers. If not, the First Fleet would not have a home to go back to.

  Now that Francis relaxed and no more command decisions to take, he decided to satisfy his curiosity. The outcome of the missile strikes on the Shaitan warships was most unexpected, he wanted to run some analysis. Humans could not keep track of the melee of missiles flying around in space in a battle, but the computer kept unblinking record of every missile. Which ship it was launched from, where it was presumptively aimed, and if shot down, which missile and from which ship shot it down.

  Francis was out of his suit now and more relaxed. He went to his terminal and asked for a breakup. Shaitan warship designated Tango – 1, and Tango – 2 had been targeted, while Shaitan warship designated Tango – 3 had not been targeted. Tango – 2 had been destroyed while Tango – 1 was wounded.