USC Sarah Brogan didn’t have any Shaitans on board currently. There had been Shaitans on board with the Beta brigade on its previous mission, but that mission had long been abandoned and the Shaitans had been left on Beta Shaitan. The ship now carried about a thousand humans – eight hundred Marines and two hundred crew, support and medical staff. The Beta brigade was still and experimental arm of the USGCF, popularly known as the Marines. That was the reason for an inordinately high number of medical and support staff. There were medical practitioners and researcher to both look after the health of the e-Marines as well as observe and research the long-term effects of various enhancements. The eight hundred Marines were divided into two battalions – the 5th and the 7th battalions headed by Chichi and Desmond respectively.
The ‘Shaitan area’ of USC Sarah Brogan had gone through a drastic transformation in the last one month. It had however not been modified for any of the above-mentioned purposes that the designers of the ship had envisaged. In fact, is was better for those designers not to know the purpose the engineers had modified the section. It would have horrified them if they had known. The entire section was jam packed in a loose honeycomb fashion with ‘Coffin’ pods. There was no more open space available on the ‘Shaitan area’. It was possible to squeeze through between those pods.
The layout had been made in such a way that Marines and Engineers could access all the pods by squeezing themselves through the gaps. The Engineers had placed a huge number of small pieces of stuff in between the pods, some of which looked like plain junk. It was no surprise that some of the stuff looked like engineering junk, because that is exactly what they were – spare plating, welding equipment, etc. Not everything place in between those pods was junk though. There were carefully placed cylinders at well-chosen spots, although a casual look would mistake those placements as random.
There was nothing random about anything in all the arrangement, neither the junk, nor the placement of the cylinders and not even the oddly random and irregular shapes of the pods. While the pods were all roughly hexagonal, no two pods were alike. There were slight differences in height or slight crookedness in some and such deformities. All the arrangements were about to become part of a well-orchestrated chaos. At least that was the hope of the planners and every Marine inside those pods. It had taken thousands of manhours to plan something that had a specific objective, and yet had to look so convincingly random as to fool and extremely advanced alien species.
Desmond changed channel once again to local broadcast. “Marines, as you can surely see on your displays, the Sarah Brogan is about to go into its emergency thrust mode. After so many hours of weightlessness, you are about to experience some bitch of a G-force. Brace yourselves, and enjoy the ride for soon we fight the demons. Semper fi Marines!” Desmond placed himself right next to side of the pod, which was about to become the nominal floor. Chichi opened a private channel to Desmond. “I will see you on the other side Desmond. Good luck.” Desmond smiled to acknowledge and then the two men retreated into their own private thoughts. Both knew that despite the bravado they displayed for the benefit of their men (and a few women), they were hurtling towards the unknown, facing unimaginable odds and most likely to their deaths.
The preparations of the last few years, and the frantic activity of the last few months since their arrival into the solar system were all culminating into this, where at any moment they could be opened up to space and die a horrible death. Their only hope lay in a series of improbable events happening in sequence, and the enemy co-operating at each turn. The activities of the last few years played in Chichi’s mind.
Chichi, Desmond and the entire Beta Brigade had left Earth on USC Sarah Brogan just over a decade ago. The young volunteers of the Beta Brigade were humanity’s answer to the problem of the high gravity Super Earths, which had become the last refuge of retreating Shaitans. As the Shaitan wars had progressed increasingly in favor of the humans, especially after the human alliance with the heretic Shaitans, humanity had taken over world after world formerly possessed by the Shaitans. By the end of the twenty second century, there were only two worlds that were still held by the Shaitans.
These were the Super Earth worlds of Beta Shaitan and World #9. Both these worlds had a gravity that was too high for humans to even be on the surface comfortably for more than a few hours, let alone prosecute a war and defeat the extant Shaitans entrenched and well acclimatized to the high gravity of those worlds.
Even the heretic Shaitans, who were physically the same as their Shaitan kin, and far stronger than humans needed a few weeks of acclimatization on these high gravity worlds. Humans didn’t trust the heretics enough to just let them land on these two worlds and take it over on their own. Heretics would fight alongside humans, as they had done on all other worlds (except Alpha Shaitan, which had been won by humans alone).
Even the toughest Marine couldn’t live and fight on these worlds. Beta Shaitan had a gravity close to 2.4 times that of Earth, while World #9 was even higher. World #9 had gravity exceeding three times that of Earth, which made it hard even for Shaitans on that world. According to the heretics, the resident Shaitans of World #9 spent a fair part of their lives in water to rest and recuperate, a lot more than Shaitans in any other world.
World #9 was very far away on the other side of the former Shaitan Empire, in the Proxima Centauri system. It fell on the route to and the last stop before the world of the Ka-Let. When the Beta Brigade and USC Sarah Brogan had sailed, there was already a large human mission proceeding towards that fabled world of the Ka-Let in Proxima Centauri. That mission had stopped over at World #9, which had very little in terms of space resistance left to offer the humans. The human fleet had destroyed the space infrastructure of World #9 and stranded the Shaitans on that world, but had not dared to land on that planet. Instead they had moved on towards the more promising world of the Ka-Let in Proxima Centauri.
Beta Shaitan however was right next to Earth metaphorically. It was the Shaitan world that was discovered at almost the same time as Alpha Shaitan, humanity’s first off world colony. Beta Shaitan was almost the same distance as Alpha Shaitan, albeit in the opposite direction. With the vast improvement in propulsion technology in the twenty second century, beta Shaitan was just about three and a half years’ journey. As technology progressed, it was anticipated that colonies like Alpha Shaitan and potentially Beta Shaitan could be reached by human with a travel time of just two years in the near future. The biggest promise of Beta Shaitan though, were its rare minerals.
Super Earths generate far more heat at their cores due to radioactive decay compared to Earth. As a result, their volcanic activity is far greater than Earth, which turns out precious and rare minerals from the core of the planet a lot more than it does on Earth. A planet could have a thick seamless crust like Venus, which when put under stress and pressure from underground heat of the core, fractures catastrophically and releases copious amounts of magma that might flow from pole to pole creating a hellish unlivable environment.
Alternatively, a planet could have a thinner crust broken up into tectonic plates like Earth, which periodically releases the pressure from beneath by releasing small amount of magma, keeping the surface environment livable and at the same time bringing precious minerals from the core to the surface. Beta Shaitan belonged to the latter category, which made it that much more valuable to humans. The only bummer was the high gravity, which prevented the descent of humans to take over the planet.
The pioneering Beta brigade had just about started its maiden campaign on Beta Shaitan, when Earth went silent! It had taken the brass in Jehannum high command a few years to figure out what had happened thanks to yeoman work done by USC Patagonia. Jehannum HQ was now the de facto high command of the USC. It had gathered intelligence, planned and even tested new defenses and tactics. It had taken them a few more years to do all that.
The culmination of all those efforts was this mission that Chichi and Desmond were lea
ding. They were the sharp end of the spear, which was arriving from the direction of Beta Shaitan. There were many more ships on their way both from the direction of Jehannum as well as from Beta Shaitan. Those ships would show their hands at the appropriate time. That appropriate time would be determined by how the mission of the Beta brigade unfolded. For the moment three human ships would have to run the gauntlet of the demon superweapon and their Goliath ship – The troop carrier USC Sarah Brogan and its two escorts, USC Elon Musk and USC Kigali. The weight of responsibility weighed down Chichi even more than the sudden acceleration when he recalled that the primary task of all the three ships was to deliver the Marines of Beta brigade on to the surface of the Goliath ship at all cost, even if it meant that the ships had to sacrifice themselves!
“Captain, the Goliath ship hasn’t moved yet. The timetable for approaching the estimated range of the superweapon remains the same. It is six minutes twenty seconds and counting down.” Brigadier Osbourne heard the navigator tell his captain. The Brigadier was standing on the backup bridge of the Kigali. It had been many hours since the last of the engineers and technicians had shuttled over to the Kigali. USC Sarah Brogan no longer had a crew. It was being remote piloted from the backup bridge of the Kigali.
The only humans left on the Sarah Brogan were the e-Marines ensconced within their pods. The last of technicians had ‘tucked’ the e-Marines within their pods, made one last check of everything before taking the shuttle to the Kigali. All three vessels – USC Sarah Brogan, USC Kigali and USC Elon Musk had coasted for many hours with their engines turned off to enable smooth transfer of the roughly two hundred crew members of USC Sarah Brogan to be transferred to the other two Destroyer vessels. Once the transfers were complete, the vessels had fired up their engines once again, but not to pick up speed but to slow down further. The vessels needed to be within a very specific speed window when they entered the range of the Goliath ship’s superweapon.
Brig. Osbourne was in his suit as were every crew in both the Destroyers. It was regulation requirement to be in suit entering a battle or during level 1 emergency alerts. On the helmet screen, Brig. Osbourne saw the captain of Kigali give the command to release the first salvo of missiles. The missiles were meant as a distraction. No one had any expectation that the missiles would actually be able to hit the Goliath ship. Even if by some miracle, one of those missiles did manage to strike the Goliath ship, it was doubtful if it would be able to do any meaningful damage to the ship. The missiles would enter the calculated range of the superweapon before the three vessels did. The missiles were meant to keep the Goliath ship’s superweapon busy by providing an immediate and more urgent target than the USC ships themselves.
The ploy was to buy as much time as possible before the ships faced the brunt of the super weapons. The mission required USC Sarah Brogan to be able to reach a certain minimum distance to the Goliath ship for there to be any reasonable chance of success. To be able to let the Sarah Brogan reach that distance, the escorting Destroyers would not just deploy all their missiles, but would also offer themselves as bait to relieve the pressure of the superweapon on the Sarah Brogan for a few critical minutes.
After the deployment of their missiles, eight hundred each, the two escorting Destroyers turned ninety degrees away from their line of approach and cranked up their engines to full thrust. USC Sarah Brogan continued its original course headlong towards the Goliath ship. The Destroyers started separating out from USC Sarah Brogan just before all the three human ships were about to enter the calculated range of the superweapon. The new thrust vector of the destroyers couldn’t prevent them from entering the range of the superweapon. The momentum the destroyers already had in the direction of the Goliath Ship would carry them into that range.
The idea was not to avoid entering the range, in fact entering the superweapon range and providing a juicy bait was part of the plan. The idea was for the destroyers to enter the range of the superweapon at its periphery and stay in that range, not getting too close to the Goliath ship. If the destroyers survived that long, then they would be able to exit the range of the weapon just as they crossed the Goliath ship, cutting the circular range of the weapon with a parabolic arc of their trajectory.
When the three human ships entered the range of the superweapon, they were happy to note that the sensors hadn’t detected the ships being targeted by the superweapon yet. The untried and untested sensors had to be right because the ships were still alive! Untried and untested would be a bit inaccurate adjective to use for the latest additions to the USC ships and missiles’ defenses mounted all over their hull and skin.
The Kourbania mission had tested all the technologies being used, but to keep the element of deception, it had to switch off its defenses after just a few seconds and sacrifice itself. The technology had been improved based on the data sent back by the Kourbania, and to that extent the defenses were a newer version that was being tested for the first time against the superweapon. Brig. Osbourne was most interested in the defenses of the Sarah Brogan carrying his e-Marines. Those defenses had to hold for long enough to carry the Sarah Brogan closer than any human ship had managed to approach the Goliath ship.
Since the Sarah Brogan was not yet being targeted, Brig. Osbourne turned his attention towards the missiles rocketing ahead of them, which were certainly being targeted according to the sensor reports being sent by them. Brig. Osbourne was happy to note that while those missiles were dying, they were doing so at a slower rate compared to the human missiles during the original invasion as gleaned from the data dump of USC Majorca. So far, the predictions of the engineers and the scientists was holding.
The defenses were not a complete foil for the superweapon, it could protect against it for a limited amount of time especially if one stayed at the periphery of the weapon’s range. If one got too close, or had a thinner skin the antimatter from the superweapons would eventually get through the defenses with devastating results. The missiles were getting closer to the Goliath ship by the second, and they had thin skins compared to the Sarah Brogan. If they were being able to hold on as predicted, then the Sarah Brogan also had a chance to survive long enough.
According to the analysis of the data dump of USC Majorca, the Goliath ship should have deployed between fifteen and twenty-five independent streams of antimatter beams. The sequence of death of missiles and USC ships in that initial invasion battle suggested such a number. The current computer analysis reviewed by Brig. Osbourne seemed to validate those estimates. Their missiles seemed to be dying roughly in batches of twenty. This meant that when the Goliath ship was done with the missiles, each of the USC vessels would be targeted by six or seven of those antimatter streams.
This was a terrifying thought given that most USC vessels had been devastated by a single stream of antimatter. The engineers had assured the brass that as long as multiple streams are not concentrated at a single spot, they would be no more effective than a single stream. Entire surface of the vessels was lined with antimatter defense, so that even if multiple streams came to bear upon a ship, each surface area should be capable of handling its own stream. The probability of being able to concentrate two beams at the same spot from so far away was unlikely even for an advanced alien technology like the demons. That theory was soon put to the test because about eight minutes after the USC ships had entered the range of the demon superweapon, the Goliath ship was done with all the missiles that had been launched. It turned its attention towards the puny pesky human ships that had appeared from the wilderness.
“Multiple antimatter beams targeting the Kigali!” The panic in the voice was clearly discernible by Brig. Osbourne as he monitored both the bridge of the Kigali and the backup bridge where the captain of USC Sarah Brogan was operating. “Six beams targeting the Sarah Brogan! Sensors are detecting traces of two more beams, but we are not sure where those two beams are falling.” Brig. Osbourne heard someone in the backup bridge shout out.
“Those two ant
imatter beams are most likely falling on the exhaust of the ion propulsion drive, which is good. Those positively charged ions being expelled would strongly repel the positively charged positrons keeping the engine safe. The ion plasma propellants are a mega version of our antimatter defense. The Sarah Brogan should be safe from those two beams.” It was the science officer who spoke up from his station.
From whatever Brig. Osbourne understood about science of the antimatter defense, that analysis seemed just right. The Kourbania had been hit by positively charged antimatter only, which meant that the demon superweapon consisted exclusively of antielectron or also known as positron beams. Whether the demons were limited to being able to produce only positrons in large numbers was unknown.
It could also be the case that the demons could produce both antielectrons and anti-protons in equal numbers but preferred to use antielectron beams simply because like their counterparts – the electrons, the antielectrons were light and small relative to an anti-proton and hence could be accelerated and projected in a tight beam more easily. That was one of the unknown factors about their defensive strategy against the superweapon. If the reason was the former, then the current defensive strategy would work fine. If the reason was the later, then the demons could switch to anti-proton beams at any time to foil the defenses of the human ships.
The defenses were designed to switch polarity in case that happened, and in theory the defenses should be able to repel anti-protons by reversing their charge. This hadn’t been tested though, and the efficacy of the defense would depend on how strong the anti-proton beams were. Protons and their counterpart the anti-protons were many order of magnitude heavier than electrons and their counterpart antielectrons, so they would be that much more difficult to deflect. By the same token though, being heavier would mean that they would be that much more difficult to throw an anti-proton beam at the same speed and focus compared to antielectron beams. That was the hope anyway.
Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5) Page 19