Wrath of the Shaitans

by Sudipto Majumdar

  Even a Kilogram of mass slamming the Earth at 2.7% the speed of light would release kinetic energy of 8 Kilotons of TNT. Nearly half the size of the Hiroshima blast. 120 Kg of mass would release over a megaton of energy, the yield of a typical Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). 6 tons of mass would release a yield of over 50 Megatons of TNT, the size of Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear bomb ever made by humans.

  100 tons of mass would release a yield of 8000 megatons of TNT. That is more than the yield of all nuclear explosions that humans have ever exploded. It is even more than the yield of all explosions of all bombs that humans have ever exploded in entire history!

  This object at the minimum had the mass of a few thousand tons if it was an artificial object and hollow. If it was a dense natural object like a rock, it could even weigh a few million tons. At the top end of the estimate, it would release almost as much energy as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs! It was far smaller than the dinosaur killer asteroid, but it was travelling far faster.

  There was a surreal atmosphere which went beyond panic in the military and administrations around the world. They realized fairly quickly that there was nothing they could do to prevent the object from crashing into Earth. It wasn’t due to the inferior technology of the humans. The laws of physics and mechanics were against them. Even the advanced Shaitans may not have been able to do anything to prevent such an object from crashing into their home planet.

  The problem was momentum. Even if the humans could put one of their spaceship in front of the approaching object, it would simply vaporize the human spaceship, with no discernible change in the momentum or the direction of the momentum on the massive object travelling at such a massive speed.

  It was a moot point anyway, since there was no human spaceship that could reach the line of approach in the four odd hours left. Even if a human spaceship could reach to intercept the line of approach, it would be next to impossible for it to place itself exactly in collision course of such a fast moving object. The precision required of the engines and the computers were a million times faster than what was available, thus the odds of being able to do it was a million to one.

  Most of the administration and the military of the world concentrated on the only thing they could do. Organize to minimize the loss of human lives. How does one protect oneself from bombardment, when they don’t know where on earth it would impact? The good news was that it would only impact in one place on earth. The bad news was that no one knew where.

  So they did the only thing that the governments could do. Rush the people to the shelters that had been built over the last 20 years. Humans had known for the last 40 years that a day might come when aliens may attack Earth. After the battle of Titan, and having seen the incredible 400 megaton yield missiles of the aliens, the humans had been preparing for the last 20 years.

  They had built shelters that could withstand the incredible sized bombs. Most shelters would not probably survive a direct hit overhead, but it was expensive building a shelter that could stand a 400 MT bomb direct strike. It was certainly not possible to build that many for the 10 billion population of the world. The people in the poor countries were especially vulnerable. Half the population of the world did not have any shelter at all. Not even basements. Most homes in poor countries don’t have basements.

  The fact that the world had just come out of an alert for imminent alien bombardment just a few hours ago helped the local administrations a lot. People were used to it and knew the routine. A lot more people could be brought into the shelters due to this fact.

  This did not mean there were no looting for supplies in local markets and malls. That was one characteristics that was common in both rich and poor countries. The good part was that the shelters were already decently stocked and maintained, having been evacuated just a few hours ago after a brief occupation.

  The shelters would help people survive the fire storms and the hurricanes that would rage across the world. There would be rations to survive the first few days or weeks after the nuclear winter set in. Unfortunately there would be no guarantee of long term food supply for the many years it would take for the skies to clear and the weather of Earth to return back to normal.

  There would be crop failure and starvation for many years, perhaps decades to come. Many humans were going to die of starvation and depravation. Others would die of food riots and people killing each other for food. The numbers who would die of starvation would be many times more that those who die in the actual bombardment. The government just prayed that the total toll would be in millions and not billions.

  The only reprieve this impact had given to the humans was that there would be no radioactive contamination. Humans would not die and get sick on that account, and the land would recover within a decade.

  When the ETA of the impact reached 3 hours, astronomers were able to identify confidently what the object was. They were thus able to also get a fairly accurate estimate of the mass of the object. It was an exact replica of the original scout ship that the Shaitans had sent 40 years ago!

  That ship had travelled at the maximum speed of 0.7% of light. The purpose of the previous ship was different. It had left approximately half its fuel for deceleration to arrive at a stop near Earth. The purpose of this ship is different. It is a missile. A Kinetic Kill device. It had no need to conserve its fuel for deceleration. It could use all the fuel it had plus any reserves so the ship could have travelled at 1.5% the speed of light unmodified.

  This ship had been purpose built for one and one purpose only. So it had been modified. It probably carried more fuel to give it more speed. The kinetic energy an object carries increases by the square of its increase in speed. So by making this ship nearly twice as fast, the Shaitans had given it four times the energy and killing potential.

  The fact that the first scout ship was a drone was confirmed with the hack on the Shaitan computers. That meant this one was also a drone. Its purpose was thus left in no doubt. It was meant for a suicide mission. It did not need to carry any bombs. The ship itself at that speed would be far more deadly than any nuclear bomb it could possibly carry.

  The military understood the cruel simplicity and effectiveness of this attack. The ship would be accelerating all the time facing its nozzle away from Earth. There would be no direct light visible to humans as it approached Earth. The ship would have finished its fuel well before reaching the solar system proper i.e. the orbit of Neptune. So there was no hope of even noticing the residual light that can be observed from the nozzle emissions.

  So the ship would come in silent and cold at 2.7% the speed of light. Humans would get no more than a few hours warning if they were vigilant. If they were not, then the humans would not even know what hit them. Even if the humans were warned, unlike the conventional warships of the aliens that they had recently fought, there was nothing that the humans had, which could prevent or even attempt to thwart this attack. It would deliver 100% guaranteed death.

  They wondered about the timing of the attack. Was it deliberately timed to attack earth this way as a revenge for the defeat of their war fleet? That was not possible. This ship must have been launched many years ago. Depending on the demonstrated acceleration capability of Shaitan ships, it would need to have been launched at least 10 years ago and possible as far back as 16 years ago.

  So this Kinetic missile ship must always have been part of their attack plan. If this attack had been part of their coordinated attack plan, then why did the Shaitans attack early? Why did they not wait for this ship, their ace and trump card? Tactically it would have made much more sense for them to wait for this devastating attack on Earth to soften the enemy, perhaps deal a crippling blow. Then it would have made sense for the warships to swoop in to finish the job.

  The military guessed the reason for this, which would only be confirmed after a few generations when humans would force their way into the archival computers of the Shaitans. The Shaitans had made their war plans
according to the demonstrated capabilities of the humans from their previous encounter.

  The Shaitans had modelled their war plan based on response time from humans fighting with chemical rocket powered ships. Thus when the first formation of Shaitan ships was detected, the humans surprised them with the speed of their ship and the quickness of their response. This must have thrown their timetable off balance as the second formation from what was now being called Beta Shaitan, must have been forced to hasten their timeline and attack early.

  It made eminent sense now, as to why the attack force did not proceed en-masse towards Earth to attack. They were waiting for this attack! Humans put paid to that plan with their surprise counterattack.

  So now with their main attack defeated and their ships destroyed or disabled, this attack which was the planned opening attack of the Shaitans had turned into their revenge attack. Still it would be a devastating revenge. It might even turn out to be the decisive blow in the Shaitan wars. For humanity would be crippled after this attack. Its human capital depleted and demoralized. Its industrial production capabilities probably in ruins, humans struggling to survive for basic necessities like food.

  If the Shaitans were to attack again after a few years, then humans would not have the power to resist them again. Heck they did not even need to send another warship. They could just keep sending a few more of these Kinetic Kill ships and humanity would be extinct.

  That was a gloomy thought, but there was a steely determination forming within Admiral Daniel Cloutier. Humanity is not going to die. Not today, not ever. He and his fellow human warriors from across the world would not let that happen. If today was to be the beginning of the end, then it would be for the Shaitans. There would be no quarter given now. No thoughts of coexistence entertained. It would be extinction for one of the species, and he would make sure that it the Shaitans. He was now squarely with the Darwinians. Dr. Ramesh Srinivasan had found a new convert to his party.

  The humans watched the Shaitan ship with a mix of despondency and fear, as it approached inexorably towards its terminal destination heralding the doom of humankind. Human communications had taken an incredible leap over the last 100 years, and yet there were people even to this day and age on earth who could not be reached within a matter of hours. With half an hour left for the impact, there were still over 10% of the human population that is over a billion people who were not aware of the terrible fate that awaited Earth. Over a quarter of the human population or about two and a half billion people hadn’t taken shelter or simply didn’t have a decent shelter.

  About an hour before impact, the Shaitan ship threw a surprise and a horror. It was now close enough for it to be visible with some amount of detail. The ship seemed to open up from all sides, and cube shaped objects seemed to come out of the ship from all sides. They slowly drifted away from the ship, but kept travelling along with the ship side by side due to their shared momentum.

  They kept drifting very slowly away, and very soon one could see that the cube objects were forming a disc formation centered on the ship. The cubes which had been released first were the furthest away and formed the rim of the disc. The subsequently released cubes formed ever smaller concentric circles, filling up the disc fairly densely with these cubes.

  Daniel shouted at the top of his voice. “Size, mass, composition, trajectory and expected impact pattern of those cubes NOW!” His command staff as well as his technical staff had been gaping at their terminals or at the big screen transfixed in horror and morbid fascination.

  Even the few tech-heads they had in the control room had abandoned their neural interfaces and were watching along with their colleagues on the screens or peering over their terminals. No one wanted to watch this horror alone, they wanted other humans sharing the communal experience. It probably made the experience less surreal, or perhaps they needed the assurance of another human being next to them as Armageddon befell humankind.

  Everyone scrambled back to their terminals to give answers to the admiral. It was one of the young tech-heads who answered first within a few seconds. Damn, these tech-heads are fast. He was not comfortable with either the technology or the people with those things plugged into their brains. It did not feel natural. It was however politically incorrect to express that opinion in public.

  Still the tech-heads had their uses, especially to the military. There were things they could do, not ordinarily or easily possible for non-boosted humans. They were also very fast in information retrieval, as this tech-head just proved again. It is a pity that they had to lose a bit of what Daniel considered natural humanness to be able to do that.

  “Admiral they appear to be perfect cubes with each side measuring about 2 meters. There might be an error margin of 10% sir. Those things are still very far away and they are small in the context of space. The composition and the mass of those things are unknown at the moment sir, but I can give you a speculation.” The tech-head hesitated, wondering if a lowly Lieutenant should dare speculate in front of the legendary Admiral Cloutier.

  “Speak freely Lieutenant, we don’t have the time.” Daniel said impatiently.

  “Sir, we are seeing it through reflected sunlight. The light spectrum analysis rules out any kind of silicate or any kind of silicon based material on the surface. So it is most probably not a space rock carved into a cube. The luster of the surface is consistent with metal, specifically metal that reacts with corrosive elements fast. The most common such element and metal available in space is iron. We may be looking at rusted iron on the surface, and that cube may be a solid block of iron sir.” The tech-head paused to check how the admiral was reacting to his speculation.

  So the Shaitans were going to throw solid blocks of iron at nearly 3 percent of light speed on earth. Simple, cheap and brutally efficient, thought Daniel. He wanted more details and asked the tech-head to continue.

  “If that hypothesis on iron is correct, then given the typical density of iron of…” the tech-head’s eyes fluttered for a second as he gave the typical faraway look that his kind often gave as they immersed their brains into computers via their neural interface “7.87 tons per meter cube. So each of the cubes should weigh about…” his eyes fluttered again as he connected with the computer to do the calculation “60 tons sir.

  That much mass travelling at 2.7% of light should release about…” eye flutter again “470 Megaton of TNT yield. That is almost ten times as big as the Tsar Bomba made by the Russians over a hundred years ago, whom for some reason the computer is referring as Soviet Russia. That was the biggest nuke made by us humans sir!”

  The tech-head paused for effect, but indicated that he had more to say. Daniel nodded him to continue. “The trajectory of the spreading disk suggests that its circumference is designed to spread evenly to equal the circumference of earth just as it impacts. The objective seems to be evenly spray one of those killers across one side of the hemisphere of the Earth that is visible to the ship right now.”

  “How many of them!” Demanded Daniel urgently and impatiently.

  “128 of them exactly sir, but there is one more. The ship itself. The ship would probably still weigh a few thousand tons after offloading its cargo of death. The impact of that ship would probably make Armageddon look like a firecracker. It would have a yield of tens of thousands of megaton. My computer models do not even have a prediction for that kind of a yield sir. You would probably see a typhoon of fire hundreds if not a thousand kilometers across. The earth where the ship impacts will be thrown out into space.

  My god, this was slaughter thought Daniel as he imagined the rain of death unleashed on one half of the earth. He made sure that a copy of the diagnosis was going directly to all Earth governments. The trajectory specialist got up, unsure of herself to speak to Daniel. Daniel gave her an encouraging look, while internally irritated with his larger than life reputation, which prevented officers from speaking freely to him. “Sir, I have calculated the exact impact zones. I am not sure if it i
s good new or bad news”

  Later historians have looked back at this period and noted that human species survived the Shaitan wars by the skin of their teeth. Despite the valiant battles and innovations, humanity may yet not have survived, but for a few lucky breaks it got during the Shaitan war. The odds in each of those lucky breaks was stacked against it happening. The first break humanity got was over 40 years ago when the Chinese spaceship the Hàoqí managed to find a hole inside the first Shaitan scout ship beating a five to one odds.

  It would be broadly agreed that humanity got their second lucky break today. It was cruel to call it lucky. It would definitely not feel lucky for the millions of humans who died, some of whom were literally vaporized. It would offend the even more millions who struggled to survive as everything they had was destroyed, as was the infrastructure for the governments to help them.

  Any child playing with their interactive hologram at school would tell you that the globe of the Earth has thick prominent lines drawn every 30° longitude to divide the globe into 12 equal slices. The bulk of USA for example falls in the slice between 90°W - 120°W.

  The same child would tell you that when spin around the hologram of the globe, on one side they can see only water very little land. They can see a glimpse of the west coast of North America, they can see Japan at a very acute angle and the eastern coast of China. The only countries they can see clearly are Australia, Indonesia and New Zealand. There are many tiny islands they can see, most notably Hawaii. What fills this half of the globe almost entirely is the Pacific Ocean.

  Any statistician would tell you that a dart thrown randomly on a spinning globe would have one in a twelve chance of hitting this particular slice of 30° of the globe somewhere west of Hawaii near the equator. Somewhere almost in the middle of the Pacific, where the least amount of land is visible and hence targetable from space.

  Yet this is where the Shaitan ship was heading for a crash, beating the 12 to 1 odds. In later generations when human historians would be able to access the Shaitan archives and read the last report packets from this Shaitan ship, they would learn that the AI of the ship realized the unfortunate direction it was heading from its own perspective.