Wrath of the Shaitans

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The course of the Second Fleet had been calculated such that at no point could TC-2 be closer to Earth than the Second Fleet was. No one however had bothered to do such an analysis for the Moon. It was the last place they expected the Shaitans to attack! There was nothing of much value on the moon that the Shaitans could hope to gain an advantage by capturing or destroying.

  It had no atmosphere. It was poor in metals and organics on the surface, and it had very little water on the surface. Just some frozen ice inside a few craters on the poles. The surface of the moon was a desolate and endless sea of regolith made of silica.

  There were a few hundred human beings, mostly scientists and researchers. There was one Chinese run military academy, which primarily trained USC-GCF space marines. The USC charter prevented the academy being run directly by USC, so it was primarily sponsored and run by the Chinese.

  TC-2 was actually slightly closer to the Moon than the Second Fleet when it made the course change. The Second Fleet with its chemical rockets had faster acceleration than TC-2 with its ion plasma engines. TC-2 however had momentum on its side. It had been decelerating, so it already had speed. It simply stopped decelerating and used its main thrusters to effect the slight change in course to head towards the Moon. It would be a close race.

  Daniel realized what the Shaitan game plan had been all along. Just like TC-1, this Shaitan troop carrier TC-2 had been a sacrificial bait all along. While TC-1’s destination had been Mars, which was easily approachable without much challenge from the humans, TC-2’s destination was Moon, closer to Earth and heavily guarded by humans, which required a much more subtle subterfuge.

  TC-2 had calculated its trajectory perfectly to appear as if it was joining up with the rest of the fleet. They had correctly assumed that while the Humans kept a watchful eye on TC-2’s path, they will ensure that the Shaitan ship in no way threatens Earth. The humans were less likely to be so diligent about monitoring TC-2 vis-à-vis the Moon. The Shaitans had been right, and the humans had fallen for the trick.

  If their behavior pattern on Mars was any indicator, then TC-2 would land troops on the ground if holding hostage was the objective. If the objective was to destroy the fledgling bases that humans had made on Moon, then Daniel was afraid USC could do nothing to prevent it. The Shaitans don’t even need to use nukes. All bases except the one on the South Pole were flimsy structures made on the surface. A well-aimed Kinetic Kill missile was enough to obliterate any of the base.

  Daniel decided to do what he could, just in case the objective was to take hostage. He hit the connect button and called out to be connected to Alex. “I hope my old friend had not gotten too old to be leading a fight.” Daniel opened the conversation with a playful taunt that was par between the two friends as soon as Alex’s image appeared on the screen.

  “Marines don’t sit behind a desk and get soft and fat admiral, unlike a few navy pukes I am aware of. We don our boots everyday till the day we die.” Alex gave back as good as he got.

  Daniel could not however indulge in playful banter for too long. His expression changed and he became serious. “You know the situation with TC-2 and the moon I guess.”

  “Yup. Have been following it from my office. I hope you remember that I am also at the station. There is not much that you can do here but work and follow the war.” Alex said. The station he was referring to was the orbital station, which was the command center of the USC. It was large by current human technology standards, but still cramped to be holding a full-fledged command center prosecuting a major war.

  “I need you to go to the Moon Alex with as many marines as you can collect and transport. I have a feeling that we are going to need the marines on the Moon before this thing is over. All the moon shuttles are at your disposal.” Alex said. The moon shuttles were nothing but old Friendship class ships still in service. There were 4 of them still left in service. These old clunker were designed to carry 40 humans on a long journey to the planets, but for the moon trip, which was less than a day’s journey one way, its interiors had been remodeled to accommodate 80 humans.

  “Normally we have one platoon in the station as a matter of procedure, but we are just going through a monthly shift change, so we have two platoon available right now. I will start off immediately with these two platoons admiral. I will get my staff to mobilize the rest of the marines within the next few hours. We should have two companies on their way in the next 8 to 10 hours.” Alex said.

  “Thanks Alex. We can always count on the Marines. Semper Fi Alex… and Alex… just thought I would let you know… Cuifen is on the Moon.” Daniel said. He noticed Alex’s cheeks redden a bit. Alex, Leanna and Cuifen were part of the strangest and longest running Ménage à trois he had ever seen. That was however his friend’s problem, and this was not the time for discussing it anyway.

  TC-2 was desperate, that much was obvious. It had released its shuttle from far away in space, without even waiting to get closer to the Moon, let alone in orbit around the Moon. Releasing shuttles from such a distance put the shuttles in a vulnerable position from the fast approaching Second Fleet, which could take potshots at those shuttles with their missiles. Missiles which the shuttles would be far less capable of fending off compared to the mother ship.

  TC-2 was now firing its ion plasma thrusters at full throttle, trying to slow down and enter into an orbit around the Moon. Despite it slow creeping speed and now its full deceleration thrust, TC-2 would not be able slow down enough to get into a Moon orbit immediately. It would swing around the Moon, continuously bleeding speed, take a long elliptical orbit, before being able to slow down enough to come to a stable orbit around the Moon.

  The orbit that TC-2 was going to make was also interesting. It was not aiming for a conventional equatorial orbit. It was going to make a polar orbit. Whatever the Shaitans planned couldn’t wait for TC-2 to make orbit. So they had dispatched the shuttles, which could use their own chemical thrusters to slow down quickly and descend on to the surface of the Moon.

  TC-2 had beaten the Second Fleet in the race to the Moon. The Shaitan ship would make its first turn around the Moon an hour before the Second Fleet. Rear Admiral Maginot had to take the call and let off on the thrust of the Second Fleets’ rockets. The fleet had to arrive with enough fuel to be able to prosecute a battle without being hamstrung. The limitations of chemical rockets showed in such situations.

  The Second Fleet was now close enough for the USC command center orbiting Earth to have a semblance of a real time conversation with just a few seconds’ delay. “Command, be advised two shuttles have been launched from TC-2 bound for the surface of the Moon. Destination of the shuttles indeterminate at this point. The Second Fleet are not in missile range yet. The shuttles will land on the surface of the Moon unchallenged. Argo out.”

  “Copy that Argo. Will advise the shuttles approaching the Moon accordingly. They are heading into harm’s way. Command out.” The command controller replied back to the flag ship of the Second Fleet after a few seconds’ delay.

  Chapter 33

  Cut to the chase

  Approaching Earth

  May 2084

  Tango 1 and 3 reacted as expected. They could not keep up the deceleration of the Third Fleet and chose to veer away in order to avoid engaging. At least now it was known what the limit of the engines of Tango 1 was. It had been pretty much maxing itself out, so it had almost no spare capacity. So the two Shaitan warships veered out of the plane of the solar system, heading above it at an angle to the z-axis.

  Third Fleet followed suit. Changing their thrust vector to match the Shaitan warships. Every time the Third Fleet changed its course, it made sure that they were still in between the Shaitan warships and Earth, even if it meant giving up some distance to their quarry. It would have been a momentous blunder for the Third Fleet to have been tricked into leaving a straight line of flight open towards Earth.

  The Nautilus class ships had a few percentage point acceleration advantage ov
er the Shaitan warships to begin with. Now that the Shaitan warships were accelerating at only about 65% of their observed capacity, the Third Fleet had one and half times the acceleration of their quarry. Despite the twists and turns that the Shaitan warships made, Third Fleet was closing the gap slowly but surely.

  The helmet of Fabi chimed with an incoming request from Capt. Dar. The crew and the bridge of the Third Fleet were in battle stations and hence in Battle suits as required by regulation.

  “Sir, I have a recommendation on the next course of action. With your permission I would like to add the other captains to the conference as well. Their inputs would be valuable, and I would not have to explain this twice. I think we don’t have too much time and the window of opportunity is narrow.” Hamid said. The permission was granted and Gerald and Capt. Xhin Zhu of the Qūzhújiàn were added on split windows.

  Capt. Hamid had started tentatively and his face showed apprehension. “Sir, I would say at the outset that it is possible that you or the other captains, whose opinion I value immensely might find this proposal risky. It would be perfectly natural to assess the plan so. I myself can see a fair amount of things that can go wrong. If after hearing my plan we decide not to proceed, it will be perfectly understandable.”

  “Please proceed captain. I am sure we are all eager to hear any plan that can possibly advance our cause.” Fabi said. Capt. Dar was being too diplomatic and conciliatory, which meant that he must have come up with one more of his risky harebrained ideas, which were famous for actually working most of the times. Fabi had to remind himself that they didn’t work all the time.

  Hamid started explaining his plan. “Sir, at the rate we are closing in the enemy, it is only a matter of time before we catch up with them. It may take days, a week at the max but barring some unforeseen accident, catch up we will. I am sure that the enemy captains are intelligent enough to realize this as well. Yet they persist in trying to run away instead of facing us in a straight up fight.

  As speculated, the enemy may be waiting for something that we don’t know about. If this is true, then it cannot be in our interest to give them that time, whatever that event they are waiting for may be. It is also possible that the enemy is simply clueless and running helter-skelter to avoid us.

  There is another possibility though. The enemy may simply be trying to wear us down. The nature of our chase is such that we cannot stand down from battle stations. At best we can go to condition two for short periods of time and rotate the crew. It has been nearly 24 hours inside these suits and I can already notice fatigue and degradation of performance amongst my crew.

  We don’t know about the physiological and psychological response of the enemy in such situations. They have the advantage that they can decide to run till the bitter end, or suddenly turn around and come face to face with us in a short time. They can chose the time of the battle, so it possible that they are not going through their equivalent of condition one battle station as we are. We however don’t have that luxury and need to at battle stations throughout this chase.

  I am certain that if this chase ends up being week long one, then when the time for battle comes, we will be fighting with a fatigued crew more likely to be degraded in their performance. While we may not be in a tearing hurry, it is in our interest to bring this chase to an end as soon as possible.” Dar paused.

  The problem with holding a conference suit to suit was that one could not see the gestures and mannerisms of the other parties clearly. All one could see of was a fisheye lens view of the partially lit face of each person taken from inside the helmet. Hamid could not see the nods that the others were giving, which indicated that they agreed with him, so Fabi helped him by urging him to continue verbally.

  Hamid continued. “Given that context, I would urge you take a look at the screen which shows ours and the enemy’s current trajectory. As we have noticed from their earlier course change patterns, we are closing in on a critical point, when they are likely to change their course to try to evade us. Even if they don’t change at that exact point that I have marked on the screen, they would have to change their course somewhere near that point.

  If you notice, this is one of those turns that our fleet will have to take carefully so as to not leave a straight line of flight open for the enemy fleet towards Earth. We have not made that mistake before, but I am proposing that this time we make that mistake. Deliberately. We give the enemy the bait to have a clear run towards Earth.

  If they don’t take the bait, then no harm done, but it tells us something about the intent of the enemy, although it can be speculated in many ways. If however they do take the bait, then here is my proposal on how to trap them.

  TC-2 was sent to the Moon as a sacrificial lamb to tie up a fleet of ours. Unlike TC-1 sent to Mars, we cannot ignore TC-2, since it is so close to Earth. That is why entire Second Fleet is tied up to a single Shaitan troop carrier, while two far more deadly warships are being tackled by just three human warships. In that way, the Shaitans have succeeded in their strategy, and I would like them to continue believing that they have.

  When I read the notification from Command HQ that Admiral Cloutier has dispatched four Moon Shuttles with Marines, it got me thinking. These so called shuttles are really nothing but Friendship class ships. I checked with HQ, these four ships may have been modified to carry more passengers, but they are still carrying their full complement of weapons in their holds.

  Due to the tremendous advances we have made in the last 20 years on spaceship designs, we tend to forget that just 3 of these Friendship class ships fought and destroyed the same class of ship as TC-2 over Titan. And one of them, the Charles Martell, did not even have a full complement of nukes on board.” Hamid paused for effect, but Capt. Xhin Zhu interrupted him.

  “Let us also not forget then, the fate of those three ships. We cannot in good conscience send our men to a certain death.” Capt. Xhin Zhu said. He was conservative, the diametric opposite of Capt. Hamid Dar. Fabi liked to think of the two captains as his Yin and Yang of the fleet.

  Hamid replied “I was going to come to that issue later captain, but since you have raised it, let me address that issue first. As we all know from the analyses of the Battle of Titan, it was not lack of offensive but defensive firepower that led to destruction of all the friendship class ships. The main problem was that our antimissiles were too puny to do enough damage to the Shaitan missiles.

  We have since rectified that shortcoming. Although the antimissiles are now as big as the nukes themselves, and thus the Friendship class carries even less of them now, but they are guaranteed to destroy a Shaitan nuke with a single hit. I would reckon that the Friendship class ships now have enough defensive power to survive two even three Shaitan missiles.

  If four Friendship class missiles were to attack a single Shaitan troop carrier, they have enough offensive firepower to force TC-2 to spend most of its time launching its own missile killers to defend itself and not enough time to launch too many nukes at the Friendship class ships. In my estimation the survivability of the Friendship class ships is reasonably high against TC-2. The survivability is no less for them than the chances the Third or the Second Fleet would take.” Hamid paused to see if he had been able to convince his flag admiral and fellow captains.

  Since the facial expressions could not be seen well in the helmet conference, Fabi spoke up. “Assuming we agree with that estimation of yours, what is it you are proposing Capt. Dar?”

  “Sorry we had to digress, but what I am proposing is simply this. TC-2 is about to take its first orbital turn around the Moon. It has not slowed enough to come to a stable orbit immediately, so it will swing some distance away from the moon on a long elliptical orbit as it continues to slow down, before it approaches the Moon again to fall into a stable orbit.

  The Second Fleet has almost reached the Moon hot on the heels of TC-2 and had convinced the Shaitans that their ploy of keeping the Second Fleet engaged has worked. Tango 1 and
3 are fairly convinced that the only obstacle they face to reach Earth is the Third Fleet. If they perceive that the Third Fleet has made any mistake, they are likely to take advantage and make a headlong rush towards Earth.

  Once Tango 1 and 3 have built enough speed towards Earth, they will not be able to change course to avoid Earth easily to call off the attack at a short notice. They will expect the Third Fleet to give chase, but as long as they calculate that we cannot catch up with them before they have a shot at Earth, they will not bother with us. I think they will be on a suicide run.

  I have sent my calculations on the screen to all of you. At the point marked in purple, Tango 1 and 3 should be at a ‘point of no return’ velocity, after which they will not be able to call off the attack run. When the Tango 1 and 3 reaches this point, Second Fleet starts a sudden run towards the point marked in yellow, which is approximately where it would be able to intercept Tango 1 and 3.

  When the Second Fleet turns towards them, Tango 1 and 3 would be surprised, but they would still fancy their chances of getting past the Second Fleet in a high speed dash. They would be correct in their assessment. From what we know of the Shaitan Warships, Second Fleet does not have enough firepower with its tube based missiles to put enough volume of missiles to stop both the warships. At best what the Second fleet can hope to achieve is hurt or kill one of them, or more likely just be able to harass them. Tango 1 and 3 would continue accelerating and building up momentum.

  Once the Third Fleet reaches the point marked in purple on our chase trajectory, our ships turn on our emergency chemical rocket thrusters. We still have over 2 hours worth of fuel left in those thrusters, which will give us the extra boost required to catch them up at the exact yellow point where the Second Fleet encounters the Shaitans…” Hamid was interrupted once again by Capt. Xhin Zhu.