“Yeah. Even I was wondering the same. I have no clue, but I know someone who might have answers, and she is sitting right in this bar. Why don’t we get ourselves some female company, for a change?” Chichi asked Desmond with a wink, picking up his beer from the bar counter.
“Female company always welcome, especially in a bar. Any answers I get, will be an added bonus!” Desmond replied with a grin as he picked up his drink as well and headed towards the corner of the room, where two women were seated by themselves in benches facing each other, with a narrow table in between them.
“Mind if we join in ladies?” Desmond asked one of the women, who was in uniform. The other woman was a civilian.
“If you must, Lt. Col. Ngwambe. I can tell you though, that interrupting girl-talk is usually not a very good strategy if you are attempting to get anywhere with a lady in a bar!” Lt. Emile Nash looked up and replied with a tone of mild irritation.
Desmond held his hands up defensively, and almost spilled his drink in the process. “Hey! It is not what you think Emile! We genuinely need to talk. Not that I would pass up an opportunity to flirt with two gorgeous ladies, but this is strictly business… besides this wasn’t even my idea. Chichi suggested it!” Desmond pointed towards Lt. Col. Jiǎng, who was a step behind Desmond.
“Ahh… Lt Col. Jiǎng! Why didn’t you say so?! Welcome to our table sir. Just for your company, we will tolerate this compulsive flirt of a friend of yours.” Emile addressed Chichi, leaning to look past the huge African. “So how are your preparations going? I heard the boss is putting you through the grinders!”
Chichi grunted “You heard that right Emile! Through the grinders and then a bit more. That is one of the things we wanted to talk to you about. That, and any plausible excuse to enjoy the company of you ladies. I am sick of watching the ugly mug of this guy.” Chichi replied, while pointing at Desmond. Then he reached out his hand towards the other woman sitting on the bar bench. “Hi. I am Lt. Col. Jiǎng. Chichi Jiǎng. I have seen you around, but I don’t believe we have spoken before.”
“Oh, how rude of me, not to introduce you! Guys this is Dr. Strauss. Helen Strauss, our deputy science officer on this board. Helen, this is Lt. Col. Jiǎng the CO of the 5th battalion, and this is Major Ngwambe, CO of the 7th battalion.” Emile quickly introduced them around.
“Hello Dr. Strauss, or should I call you Helen? You do that name justice! I can’t believe that we have been in this boat together for so many years and haven’t met before! Please call me Desmond.” Desmond grabbed Dr. Strauss’s hand as he made his own introductions.
“Desmond, keep your paws off my friend! She is not your type anyway, and there is a good reason that you two haven’t been acquainted with Dr. Strauss. She is on a different stasis shift compared to you two. She has been asleep while you two were awake and vice versa.” Emile admonished Desmond, then addressed Chichi is a softer tone. “So, I guess you want to know why the boss is putting you through such a rigorous regime.”
“Rigorous regime! I guess you can say that, although I would call it an understatement. I mean… I understand that our objective has been observed to be spinning at a high rate, and we can expect as high as 1.2G gravity out there, but he is making us go through these drills at 1.5Gs! I can’t even begin to explain to you how much it takes out of you. It might sound like just a little bit extra gravity, but believe me that extra bit of gravity makes things exponentially difficult. By the end of it all, you feel as if you are about to have a heart attack.” Chichi complained bitterly.
“I can’t say that I know what you guys must be going through. I have never been through such a regime, and I can never go through it either. I am not enhanced, as you guys know. In fact, no unenhanced human can go through those regimes of yours, especially the high gravity routines. I am fairly certain though, that it must be very tough, even for you e-Marines. But then, this is a mission that can be done only by the e-Marines of the beta brigade, if it can be done by any human at all! In fact, there are serious doubters among the brass as to whether even the e-Marines can pull off this job. This mission is at the theoretical limits of even the e-Marines’ endurance and capabilities. That is why the boss is training you guys so hard, to give you the best possible chance.” Emile tried to defend her boss. She acted as staff for Brigadier Osbourne and handled a bulk of the administration of the Beta Brigade, which was headed by Brigadier Hagar ‘Mad-dog’ Osbourne.
“Hmmph… he could still go easy on the gravity! Cranking it up to 1.5G is just sadistic.” Chichi said under his breath, not convinced completely with Emile’s argument.
“Cranking it up to 1.5G may turn out to be the most valuable part of the training for your mission.” Dr. Strauss spoke for the first time, and everyone on the table turned towards her, giving her an inquiring look. Even Emile wasn’t sure why such high gravity would be valuable, other than tiring the Marines faster. All of them turned with an inquiring gaze towards Dr. Strauss, which forced her to explain hurriedly.
“You see, from all the data and analysis sent from Earth we are pretty certain that the demons come from a high gravity planet. We cannot be certain about how high the gravity is on their home planet, but from the analysis of jumps made by the demons in Earth gravity, experts on Earth believe that the demons could come from a planet with somewhere between two to four times the gravity on Earth.
“You may ask – if the demons come from a planet with such a high gravity, why have they kept their space ship at only 1.2G? Frankly we don’t have a definitive answer, but our best guess is that it is for the same reason that we keep most of our space ship at 0.4G to 0.5G gravity, even though our home world is at 1G. If we find 40% to 50% of our Home World’s gravity as the most comfortable option, it is likely that the demons have also chosen a similar option for a similar reason.” Dr. Strauss looked at the three Marines sitting with her. They still looked confused.
It was Emile who spoke up to ask the obvious question. “OK., so the demons are from a high gravity planet, so what? The objective is still at 1.2G!”
Helen understood the source of their confusion. She gave an impish smile and said. “Ahh… that’s why!” She gave a naughty pause to heighten the suspense and then asked a rhetorical question. “Suppose you were the captain of this ship, with the usual access to all overrides. This bar currently is rotating to produce 0.4G. Now suppose for some reason you wanted to increase the spin and hence the gravity in this bar to 1G in an emergency. How long do you think it will take you to do so?”
Emile was the expert on ship protocols. She replied. “Assuming that I do not bother to warn anyone, and tolerate minor injuries that may occur, I could send an override to the bridge controls in seconds using my neural interface. It would further take thirty to fifty seconds for the attitude rockets to increase the spin momentum. Basically, in less than a minute I could increase the gravity.” The moment she replied, Emile understood what Helen was driving towards.
“Bingo!” Helen said. “So, within a minute I could bring this bar to what we humans consider as normal gravity. Humans could continue to function normally within the bar but any weakling species, say from Mars who might be used to a third of our gravity would suddenly find the going extremely difficult. They would be bogged down by their own weight! Now transpose this situation to your objective, the demon’s ship. If you can board their ship, and that is a big if, but if you are able to get inside, one of the tricks that can be easily employed by the defending demons is to crank up the gravity to their normal, and leave you at a disadvantage.
“In such a situation you may find that your training at even 1.5G may have left you inadequately prepared for what you may face. I believe the science analysis team had recommended a training regime at 2Gs. It is Lt. Col. Osbourne I believe who put his foot down and resisted such a punishing training regimen.” Dr. Helen Strauss finished her discourse with a smile that said that the two Marines should thank their stars.
“Yeah! I guess I should be th
ankful to the Mad Dog for being so considerate, but somehow I am not being able to bring myself to feel gratitude.” Desmond replied sarcastically, while gently rubbing his neck muscles. Every part of his body was aching, despite his enhancements. He hadn’t felt this tired and sore for years. Not since he had gone through with his enhancements. His body was now being pushed to edge of endurance of even an enhanced Marine on a daily basis.
Chichi changed the topic. He turned to Dr. Strauss and asked her. “So, what do you do for a living Dr. Strauss?”
“As my title suggests, I am a doctor – a real one, not the PhD types.” Helen replied with a smile, and just to be sure that the two Marines understood, she added. “I mean I am a doctor of medicine – a medical practitioner.”
“Helen is being modest.” Emile added. “She is an expert of bio enhancements, and one of the top specialists in the field of synthetic muscle implants. She is the one who gives you all your big muscles, so you guys better be nice to her.” Emile gave a wink to Helen.
“I cannot even imagine being anything but nice to her.” Chichi said softly under his breath to no one in particular.
Emile raised her eyebrows and looked askance at Desmond, asking the question with her eyes – ‘Is it my imagination, or is there some chemistry developing here between those two?’
“Hey, it is not just me! There is a battery of doctors, surgeons and scientists onboard who specialize in their own niche areas. Together we provide stable and safe enhancements. I play my part.” Helen said defensively.
“So, is it not possible to make the e-Marines any stronger or faster than they already are, Doc? It would certainly help in the mission we are about to undertake.” Desmond asked Helen.
“I have heard this question so many times from the e-Marines! It is as if we medics get any pleasure in holding back something from you guys. Let me give you the low down to disabuse you of that notion.” Helen started animated. She was passionate about what she did, and was always irritated by such ignorant questions from the Marines. “Given our current understanding of the human body and the technology of our implants, most of you are already at what we consider optimal limits of your enhancements. The use of these implants as enhancements is so new, that we are still learning their side effects both good and bad on a healthy human body. Some of the implants have been around for over eighty years, but initially they were only used as prosthesis, and that too when there was no other alternative.
“Some of these technologies, like the synthetic muscles were originally developed for use in robots and drones. It took many decades to adapt them to be implanted into human bodies safely. There can be many complications, rejection of foreign objects by the body, infection – you name it. The first few decades implants would cause more problems than they solved. It was only with the advancement of programmable nanoscale-machinery that we could keep the human immune system in check and get the body to accept foreign implants. Reinforced bones are particularly tricky and even to this day can cause complications. It is only in the last decade that USC authorized the e-Marine program for healthy volunteer Marines like you to opt for enhancements.
“We are still testing the limits of what can be done without hurting your body overall. We need to do it in slow increments and observe the effects. If we increased your synthetic muscle mass massively, you might start fracturing your knuckle bones because they may not be strong enough to take the impact. If we increased the bonded reinforcement on your bones too much, they might crowd out healthy bone tissue replacement causing bone cancer.
“If we tried to supplement and mitigate that effect with more injectable nanoscale machinery in your blood stream, they may harm your kidneys. The body is an intricate and delicately tuned machine, we need to tread carefully when we try to improve on mother nature. So, to answer your question, you are already in the most enhanced state that our knowledge and technology allows. Attempt to enhance any further would most likely screw up your body in some way or the other!”
That little speech shut up Desmond for the evening, who concentrated on his drinks and small talk with Emile. Chichi and Helen on the other hand continuously found new topics to engage in animated discussions. The two didn’t even notice when Emile and Desmond quietly slinked away hand in hand.
Chapter 10
Sneaking Up in Plain Sight
Near Earth Orbit
2205
“Be advised, the demon’s Goliath ship has definitely taken note of our presence.” Desmond broke radio silence by speaking over the com in an open broadcast mode. His words wouldn’t just reach the suited Marines of the Beta Brigade packed in oddly shaped special pods that filled the front section of the heavily modified USC Sarah Brogan. His words were being transmitted by the ship on radio frequency out into space, ostensibly directed towards Earth.
In reality, the transmission was meant for the benefit of USC Patagonia hidden in the asteroid belt, whom they couldn’t directly communicate without risking the Patagonia’s discovery. The transmission would also be picked up by all the USC ships following USC Sarah Brogan, who were all braking into the system with their reactionless drive, and hadn’t made their presence known to the demons yet.
“Even if they weren’t aware of our presence before, you can be sure that they have taken note of our approach now. The automated sensors on the bridge reports that we are being actively scanned by our objective on all frequencies, including X-Rays. The demons sure are curious about us. The good news is that the sensors reports that we are being scanned on frequencies and methods that we understand well, and to that extent the technology is not that far ahead of us. The bad news is that if we are being scanned with technologies that we don’t possess like neutrinos or gravity waves, like some of the egg heads have proposed, then we wouldn’t know about it anyway!” Desmond finished with a wisecrack.
Desmond glanced at his helmet screen to see Chichi shake his head inside his suit. Desmond gave Chichi a playful smile and a shrug which Chichi wouldn’t see, suggesting that he couldn’t help making the wisecrack. Individual suited Marines of Beta Brigade were packed inside irregular shaped pods, which in typical Marines gallows humor had quickly been nicknamed as the ‘Coffin’. The pods weren’t meant to provide environmental support to the individual Marine inside each pod. That was the function of the suit that the Marine was wearing. Instead the roughly hexagonal pods that barely managed to fit a suited Marine inside it was in the words of the boffins who had constructed them supposed to provide ‘thermal insulation’, ‘blast protection’ against ‘shockwaves’ and ‘high velocity fragmentation objects’. If those words sounded ominous to the e-Marines, they were not alone.
The Marines of Beta brigade were about to take part in the craziest maneuver ever tried not just in space, but possible in the history of warfare. The coffin sized pods completely sealed a Marine inside it in darkness. The helmet screen was the only light that the Marines could see. It was the special training of the Marines that prevented them from suffering bouts of claustrophobia sealed in such a pod. The pods had two other functions to perform, which would be tested shortly if the pods could survive their initial test.
USC Sarah Brogan was a troop carrier, one of the latest generation of spacecrafts built for the task of carrying Marines to Shaitan worlds for ground assaults. Specialized troop carriers didn’t exist in the USC fleet prior to this generation. Till that point in time, USC was sharply focused on winning the battle in space. The battle in space having been more or less won, the action had shifted for the past few decades on to the surface of the Shaitan worlds. The new battle arena required large number of human and heretic Shaitan troops to be hauled from one world to another.
This new requirement had given rise to the design of the troop carriers like Sarah Brogan. The troop carriers were relatively lightly armored, carried very few offensive weapons but had ample number of defensive antimissiles in it armory. They were not designed to go toe to toe against a Shaitan fighting ship. They
were expected to run in such situations, or fall back behind the protection of USC Destroyers and Frigates. As an indication of how crazy this mission was, USC Sarah Brogan was leading the charge while its escorts – USC Elon Musk and USC Kigali were shielding themselves behind the Sarah Brogan!
USC Troop carriers’ interior design was very different from other human fighting vessels. It had fewer individual cabins, just enough to house some of the top officers. Most of the Marine accommodation was shared – in twos for junior officers and barracks that came in two standard sizes to house six or twelve Marines. The lack of heavy armor or large cache of offensive missiles, along with shared accommodation enabled the troop carrier to pack a lot more humans inside the ship than a USC destroyer. The standard complement of crew in a Destroyer was four hundred, six hundred could be crammed with shared bunks.
A troop carrier could carry a thousand humans in the ‘Human area’. In addition, the troop carrier had a relatively open area in the bow section, which was referred as the ‘Shaitan area’. This section of a troop carrier had relatively few built up structures inside, and hence appeared open. There were structures built along the spine of the ship in this section. Those structures radiated towards the inner surface of the ship, but stopped at a distance of over ten meters. There wasn’t any construction on the inner surface of the ship in this section. As a result, walking on the inner surface of the slowly rotating ship in this section gave one the illusion of walking in a relatively open space with a ceiling over ten meters high.
When there were no Shaitans to be ferried, this section was used by the Marines for their exercises. This is where Chichi and Desmond’s battalions would be subject to a punishing training regime in high G by rotating the ship faster. If more troops needed to be accommodated in the ship, this section could be modified to add barracks to house an additional five hundred Marines. When heretic Shaitans needed to be ferried, the section could be modified according to the requirements of the Shaitans. It would then be able to accommodate a thousand Shaitans. The Shaitans despite being physically a lot bigger than humans required surprisingly little space to live. The drone soldiers liked to live in large communal quarters, where they preferred to live or hibernate snuggled next to each other, or sometimes even on top of each other. Only the seer caste of the Shaitans required individual accommodation.
Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5) Page 18