Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  A lot of permutation and combination of electrical and electromagnetic signals had been tried on captured weapons all over the world in the last few years with no success. Kyle hoped that he and Dana would succeed in doing what no one else had before. His cause of optimism was the fact that he and Dana had had something no one else had before – the owner of the gun captured alive! With the help of Turkish technicians, they had been able to rig up a thin sheet that was transparent to electrical signals, but was able to record any signal passing through it with extreme accuracy.

  They had chosen the demon who seemed less smart amongst the two that had been captured. This demon seemed more dazed, confused and panicked than the other demon, who seemed more like the leader. They had stuck the sheet between forelimb of the demon and the needle gun. Then, in a risky move, they had attached back one of the needle guns on to the forelimb of the demon over the electrically transparent sheet. The forelimb had been restrained enough using shackles that it couldn’t be pointed in any direction other than straight ahead. The drugged and dazed demon had been given juicy targets in the form of human holographic images, live goats etc. The confused and enraged demon had finally fired many rounds of needles at those targets.

  In the end, when those electrochemical signals recorded had been analyzed, it turned out to be an extremely complicated and elaborate sequence of signals, but something that was made very naturally by the biology of the demons. The sequence of signals could be easily replicated by a small hand-held computer attached to the gun. Both the guns of the demon could fire using the same signal sequence.

  At first it was feared that the needle guns of the second demon would not fire using the signal sequence of the first demon. Humans had been using smart gun technology for over a century, which coded each gun to the palm print of its owner. However, that fear turned out to be unwarranted. The second demon’s guns fired just fine with the signal sequence of the first demon. Kyle’s best guess was that the demons could have used smart gun technology if they wanted to – after all the demon technology was far more advanced than humans.

  Kyle’s theory was that the demons deliberately didn’t want to limit the use of a gun only to its owner for the same reason that most human military didn’t use smart gun technology. In a battlefield, a soldier should be able to pick up his injured or dead mate’s gun and start firing. The penalty of not being able to do that was a lot more than the risk of the gun falling into the hands of an unfriendly person.

  There was however a problem in using the demon needle gun. It was next to impossible to accurately aim and target beyond twenty to thirty meters for a human. While recording the signals from the captured demon, the technicians had noted that only a small amount of electrochemical signal had been sent from the demon to the gun to trigger it, but a huge amount of information was continuously being sent from the gun to the demon through the same electrochemical interface. It was most likely that the gun was continuously sending targeting information directly to the equivalent of the visual cortex of the demon through the line of sight of the gun. That way the demon didn’t have to line up the needle gun with its eyes to know where it was pointed. If one thought about it, the demon system was far more sophisticated. They were definitely not shooting from the hip! They were getting line of sight information directly from the barrel of the gun into their brains!

  The best that the technicians could do was to strap a sight along with a laser pointer on top of the gun, then calibrate the sight by firing a few shots. It gave a good marksman like Kyle a fairly accurate range of about hundred meters. There had been time to fit only one of the guns with such a contraption, which Kyle had carried to Istanbul from their hideout. This was going to be the acid test for the weapon. If this weapon worked out, then every dead demon might yield a valuable weapon in the future.

  –XXX–

  The deliberate march of the shoal seemed to have stalled for some inexplicable reason. The upslope march of the shoal seemed to have been going as per plan till that moment. The Master of the Colony had urgently called upon Storm Defier to put together as large an expeditionary force as possible in a very short period to reach a particular coordinate on top of a hill up on dry land, close to the colony. His orders were to secure the perimeter of the landing site of a suspicious object that had landed from space. It seems the human animals were very interested in reaching the place as well, which made the mysterious object from space a subject of high interest.

  The humans had so far been denied access to the landing side by aerial interdiction exercise. However, given the dense built up topography near the landing site, it would not be possible to prevent a single human from sneaking into the landing site for long. It might take just a single human to reach the landing site to attain whatever objective the mysterious package from space may be carrying. Hence it was imperative to reach the landing site as fast as possible.

  Not surprisingly, humans were blocking the way to deny the Bodars from reaching the landing site. What was surprising was the ferocity of the resistance. The human fighters were willing to take far more losses to prevent the Bodars from reaching their objective than usually observed. The kind of losses that had already been inflicted on the human resistance would normally have forced them to retreat. That very fact meant that whatever had landed on that site must be considered important by the humans – important enough to die for. That in turn meant that Storm Defier’s mission was even more important than she had assumed it to be. Something that had puzzled Storm Defier initially was becoming clear now – why the first expeditionary force of fourteen Bodars had to retreat with almost fifty percent losses. Retreat of Bodars on this planet were rare, and such high casualty rates were unheard of.

  Storm Defier had been on an authorized hunt of humans in a nearby island. The rocky mountain, and the loose gravel terrain of the slopes of the mountain on the island made hunting humans a particularly challenging affair. The terrain and the landscape provided the humans many natural advantages. The handful of humans living on that island had developed a reputation for fierce resistance and clever use of natural hiding place to lay ambushes for the Bodars. This made the island particularly sought after for hunting quotas. Usually higher ranked Bodars managed to pull off the rare quota whenever it opened for a hunt on this island. Storm Defier, being one of the highest ranked and skilled hunt masters in the colony had finally managed to wangle an authorized hunt on the island. He had felt mighty irritated when the Master of the Colony had recalled him in the middle of his hunt to attend to a matter of urgency.

  On his way to this place, Storm Defier had been briefed on his mission. He was informed that all Bodars of the colony under the waters that the humans called the Bosporus Straits had been given a gather point. The Bodars arriving from the colony itself would be fully armored and armed, while others gathering from various sites like Storm Defier herself would be armed to whatever extent they carried on their person. Since reaching the landing site was urgent, Storm Defier wasn’t to wait for more Bodars to join the expedition. She was to proceed with whatever number of hunters that had gathered, the moment she arrived.

  When Storm Defier reached the gather point, her situational awareness computer indicated that there was a total of eighty-nine Bodars already assembled. As far as Storm Defier was concerned, that number was more than enough. No human force had resisted a Bodar hunting party with that many Bodars. The only time that a Bodar hunting party this big had been stopped by humans had been on the other side of the planet, when a suicide driver had detonated a tactical nuclear device. That was during the early days of the invasion, and it was a freak incident. Humans themselves were abhorrent of using nuclear devices in populated areas, and the Bodars had specifically searched and destroyed most known nuclear storage depots of humans. Planet Earth was a lot safer place for Bodars to hunt now. There was no way a human force could resist such a large Bodar hunting party. All Storm Defier had to worry about as the Master of this hunt was to ensu
re minimum casualty, while reaching her objective as quickly as possible.

  Storm Defier had chosen a formation that was inspired by shoals of fish in the sea. It was an old formation used by the ancients since as long as records went back. It was a fluid formation that would go up the narrow street, not confining itself to any set pattern and yet move as a whole. Occasionally, the shoal would develop a branch that would flow to the adjacent street and sweep for human fighters trying to flank the Bodars, and then merge back. All the time the shoal would stay fluid, trying to confuse the attackers, and not letting them target any particular Bodar in the shoal.

  The first hundred meters of the progress of the shoal went as planned. The Bodars had met heavy resistance in the front of the shoal, which the Bodars were blasting and ploughing their way through, while side tongues of the shoal kept sweeping attackers from the sides. Storm Defier had placed herself squarely in the middle of the shoal in order to direct the flow of the shoal most effectively. After the first hundred meters or so, Storm Defier found that she and the shoal was effectively not moving forward. For some time now, all the Bodars were busy fending off attack from all sides, but effectively staying where they were. The vanguard of the shoal had essentially stopped moving forward. Storm Defier could not see any quantitative or qualitative change in the resistance from the humans. Hence the cause of the holdup of the shoal was mystifying for her. She communicated with a few Bodars fighting in the van, but got no clue to the reason for the holdup other than figuring out, that the vanguards were not being as effective as they had been initially.

  Storm Defier decided to investigate for herself, so she moved up to the van. She immediately came under heavy fire as she reached the front of the shoal, which wasn’t unexpected. In between returning fire, she rotated her eye stalks 360⁰ to assess the situation. At first glance everything looked as expected, but then she started noticing gaps in the shoal formation. The formation was ragged. It was neither smooth, nor fluid. Bodars were social creatures, who lived and hunted together long before rising from the oceans. Bodars moved and hunted in groups, instinctively making fluid formations very similar to birds and fish on this planet Earth. Bodars didn’t have to think to form a shoal. They instinctively kept note of their neighbors in the formation and moved accordingly, just like a shoal of fish. Somehow, that fluidity of movement was not on display up at the front of the shoal. Within moments Storm Defier realized the reason why this was so.

  In the gaps lay Bodars collapsed! These Bodars were dead or dying, bleeding profusely. Storm Defier had seen plenty of dead Bodars in their hunt on this planet, but these deaths were different! The neighboring Bodars in the formation had not noticed these Bodars being hit! There had been no explosion of RPG to blow these Bodars, which would have brought the death to the notice of others, and the shoal would have adjusted accordingly. These Bodars had died a silent death!

  Storm Defier kept one eye stalk roving to look out for danger, while she focused her other eye stalk on a nearby collapsed Bodar. This Bodar hunter had clearly been taken by surprise. Her rear legs were still wound up taut, ready to spring instinctively at the first sight of danger. Yet danger had clearly come and gone, killing the fallen Bodar who hadn’t been able to sense it, paying the ultimate price. Storm Defier inspected the gaping wound of the fallen Bodar. There was a clean circular hole in the tough shell. Whatever had penetrated the shell had made this entry wound effortlessly, meting through the shell like hot knife through butter. What was more shocking was the fact that there was an exit wound! Whatever had shot through this Bodar had enough momentum or power to be able to go right through a Bodar shell twice! This Bodar hadn’t stood a chance. It must have died instantly as the area housing its brains in the center was fried within fractions of a second.

  The nature of the wound looked hauntingly familiar to Storm Defier, as she racked her memory to recollect where she had seen this nature of wound before. The realization flashed on her, that she had seen this nature of wound from her own weapon on a creature the humans called Shaitans! The planet that the Hunting Shell Ravenous had hunted prior to Earth in the neighboring star system was populated by game animals that the humans called Shaitans. Storm Defier and her sisters on the Ravenous had hunted with gay abandon on that planet until no Shaitan was left alive.

  Most Shaitans wore no armor. or wore soft suit armor., but some came to combat with hard armor. The body mass of a Shaitan was similar to that of a Bodar, and when one of the Shaitan with hard armor. was shot by a Bodar hand gun, the wound was almost identical to that of this fallen Bodar! This Bodar had been shot with a Bodar hand gun! Storm Defier had taken so long to realize it because he had never seen a Bodar shot with a Bodar hand gun before. Why would a Bodar ever shoot her sister with a hand gun?! It was almost impossible to shoot another Bodar accidentally. The hand gun provided constant feedback directly to the brain about where it was pointing. It was almost as if a Bodar could see through the barrel of the gun, with the image being fed directly to its brain. There was no way a Bodar could trigger its hand gun aimed at another Bodar.

  To confirm her hypothesis, Storm Defier engaged the sensor embedded into one of her claws. The sensor was connected to the tactical computer implanted under her shell. The sensor quickly detected and analyzed the mild radioactive decay that follows the annihilation of matter and antimatter. The strength of the trace radioactivity was consistent with that of a shot from a Bodar hand gun. There could be only one logical explanation. The humans had learnt to fire a Bodar hand gun! Storm Defier was no scientist or Engineer, but she knew enough to know that it was not trivial for another race to simply snatch a hand gun from the forelimbs of a Bodar and fire it. The hand gun needed biochemical signals from a live and willing Bodar to trigger. It was not impossible for another alien species to mimic those biochemical signals, but it would take a lot of technological sophistication and a live Bodar in captivity to be able to do that. These humans apparently had managed to obtain one, and the technological capabilities of the humans was never in doubt.

  Being able to trigger a Bodar hand gun was one thing, but being able to aim it was another thing altogether. Interfacing with the data bus of the gun to be able to tap into the line of sight view through the tiny barrel of the gun, then interpreting those signals encoded to be directly fed into the visual cortex of a Bodar brain, and doing all this in real time was far more complex. That part of the engineering was at a level of sophistication almost at par with Bodar technology. Storm Defier did not expect humans to be able to achieve that level of technological sophistication to be able to hack the data stream emanating from the hand gun. Then again, the humans didn’t need to hack into the data stream to be able to aim the gun. They could and most probably did use a far cruder and low-tech approach. They simply must have visually aligned the opening of the tiny hole on the hand gun to aim. Such a technique would have severe limitation on the effective range at which the gun could be fired… which would mean that whoever the shooter is, had to be fairly close!

  Storm Defier noticed that none of her Bodar sisters had noticed this insidious threat amongst them. She had to do two things immediately in order of priority. First, she had to warn everyone in the hunting party about the nature of this new danger they were facing, and order them to specifically search for this human shooter of Bodar hand gun. Second, she had to immediately warn the Master of the colony about this new development. The colony needed to know about this new threat from the humans, which could not be taken lightly, and she needed to warn them fast because she hadn’t spotted the shooter, and the next needle bullet from the human shooter’s gun could be aimed at her!

  Storm Defier deployed her long rear limbs to execute a jump that took her into a narrow alley. Out there hopefully she would be safe from the human sniper wielding the needle gun. She quickly informed the colony dispatcher about what she had learnt and instructed her computer to upload the data onto her. The dispatcher would take care of propagating the information h
igher up the chain of command. Storm Defier next quickly explained the situation to her hunters. She made it clear that it was important to identify the human sniper wielding a Bodar weapon and try to catch that human preferably alive with minimum damage. She gave a sequence of commands to her shoal, which effectively dismantled the shoal formation and made them scramble for cover in the side alleys. Now all that Storm Defier had to do was to dangle a suitable bait in front of the human sniper to draw him out. The frustrating part about this whole affair was that her shoal’s progress had effectively come to a halt. Storm Defier was desperate to resolve the situation quickly for she was running out of time.

  Kyle was watching from his new perch. He had taken down two demons with the amazingly powerful needle gun from his previous perch, when he had intended to hit only one! The needle had gone through the first demon and then burnt a hole into another unfortunate demon who happened to be in the line of fire! He had stuck to his Sniper 101 instructor’s lessons. Never get comfortable in one place however secure the vantage point may seem. A sniper’s biggest enemy is overconfidence. After having successfully hit a target, abandon it however juicy and easy the next target might seem. Above all, watch out for your enemy dangling juicy baits at you, especially after the first few kills when the enemy is likely to be aware of your presence. The current scene reeked of a bait!

  The demons had suddenly gone off the main street through which they had been marching up the hill. While previously the demons had been marching out in the open without bothering to shield themselves behind defensive structures and positions, now suddenly most of them were hiding in side streets and alleys with their bodies snuggling walls and other solid structure in a defensive posture. Not all the demons had gone into hiding though. Five of them remained out in the open on the street, completely exposed to Kyle’s needle gun fire. The strange thing about those five demons were that they were making walking motion by moving their limbs, but they were hardly moving at all! Bait! The rest of the demons were almost certainly scanning in every direction with whatever high-tech equipment the demons had to pinpoint Kyle the moment he shot the next demon. Then the combined wrath of this column of demons would descend upon him. Kyle realized that he had pushed his luck to the limit, any further adventurism would unwind all the gain he and the resistance had made today.