Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  The antimatter defense was simple enough that even Brig. Osbourne didn’t have much difficulty in understanding it conceptually. Entire surface of the ship was lined with electromagnetic coils that created a strong electromagnetic field around the ship like the electromagnetic shield surrounding the Earth generated by the rotating iron core inside Earth. Just as Earth’s electromagnetic field deflected charged solar wind away from Earth, the electromagnetic field around the ship would deflect most of the antimatter away from the ship, acting like a shield.

  The electromagnetic field was however only the first line of defense. Just as some of the solar wind gets past Earth’s electromagnetic field, especially if there is solar flare, some of the antimatter would get through the electromagnetic shied, especially if the demons cranked up the intensity.

  The second line of defense was also simple and cheap, but it had a limited time usage. The entire skin of the ship was lined with plastic pouches filled with Argon. The pouches were packed like tiles just above the electromagnetic coils. Argon was the gas used by USC ships as propellant in their ion plasma engines. Essentially the entire ship was lined with ion plasma propellant! Argon was a gas at room temperature, but out on the outer skin of the ship exposed to space it froze to a solid.

  If a significant amount of antimatter fell on any of those Argon tiles, the argon would heat up so quickly that it would turn from solid straight to gas and explosively burst out of its plastic container. The gas would become a shield for a fraction of a second as it would absorb most of the antimatter that got through the electromagnetic shield. Before the argon gas could dissipate into space, in the first five to ten milliseconds, it would have absorbed enough antimatter to have converted a part of the gas into plasma.

  Argon was chosen as the material of choice for this shield because of its property to form a plasma quickly on being heated. The plasma in turn would interact with the electromagnetic field, temporarily providing a thin film of free electrons over the surface of the ship. The negatively charged electrons would act like a magnet for the positively charged antielectrons, rushing out to collide and annihilate them in the process. All that energy gets dissipated outside the ship without being able to heat the skin of the ship. Unfortunately, if the antimatter beam kept its focus on that tile for longer durations, the argon tile would have evaporated away and eventually the antimatter would be able to get through to the skin of the ship and do its damage.

  Whatever the theory, the good news was that in practice the antimatter defenses were working, to a point. Antimatter beams were being able to get through the electromagnetic defenses regularly to burst an argon tile here and there at a frightening pace. The ships were turning very slightly on their axis for this reason so that no argon tile was targetable for a long enough time to be able to get through completely. Still, it was only a matter of time before one of the antimatter beams got through and punched a hole into the ship.

  Once inside the ship, antimatter heats us the atmosphere so explosively that the air catches fire! This was a lesson that had been learnt too graphically from the death of USC Majorca for anyone to forget. To prevent such an eventuality and to be able to survive a bit longer even if a hole gets punched through the hull of the ship, all the three ships had initially reduced the pressure inside the cabins and then vented the rest of the atmosphere into space. The crews of the destroyers as well as Sarah Brogan were riding in hard vacuum!

  “Sensor failure detected on the aft end of Sarah Brogan! We are still thirty seconds away from entering the window.” A junior officer whom Brig. Osbourne didn’t know shouted over the com.

  “Acknowledged and watching the situation myself. I have my finger on the trigger, will pull it prematurely if the bow section starts failing. Keep a watch on that section.” The captain of Sarah Brogan, operating from the backup deck of the Kigali replied.

  Many tension filled seconds later the same junior officer shouted once more. “Sir! The bow sensors are starting to fail, but we are almost there – five seconds away from wind….” The officer couldn’t finish his sentence. The captain had pulled the trigger! USC Sarah Brogan played the last trick of its life. It was a trick that the humans had learnt from the Shaitans, who had deployed it famously and successfully against USC Genghis Khan in a legendary battle during the campaign of Alpha Shaitan almost a century ago. The Sarah Brogan exploded, shattering into tens of thousands of pieces!

  A careful observation of the explosion would have revealed that the explosion came from the insides of the ship, and it wasn’t one single explosion. It was a carefully orchestrated and controlled explosion that unleased a carefully choreographed sequence of destruction of the troop carrier. The explosives inside were timed and placed to ensure the ship broke into the largest number of pieces of a certain size, roughly the size of the pods that carried the e-Marines. The ship broke up without spreading its constituent pieces over too large a volume. To a careful observer, the ship suspiciously kept its overall arrangement even as the debris slowly started spreading apart.

  The aft section of the ship, which had been facing the Goliath ship stayed roughly ahead, while the bow of the ship carrying the Marines stayed behind. All the pieces of debris of the former troop carrier USC Sarah Brogan floating towards the Goliath ship like flotsam as the momentum of the ship carried them forward. Most of the debris would miss the Goliath ship by ten to fifteen kilometers. While a few odd outlier pieces might hit the craft, but given the size difference between the pieces and the Goliath ship, they would be of no concern. The floating debris gave no reason for the Goliath ship to have to take evasive action by moving from its orbital position around Earth.

  The only reason that the Goliath ship might suddenly move would be to chase the two destroyer escorts. If the Goliath ship moved now or in the next seventeen odd minutes, it would render the entire mission plan waste. That couldn’t be allowed. So, the two destroyers continued advancing towards the Goliath ship, offering themselves as bait and giving no reason for the Goliath ship to move. The two USC destroyers couldn’t have done anything but move towards the Goliath ship in any case. Even though both the destroyers had turned ninety degrees and fired their engines full thrust some minutes prior, their forward momentum would continue to carry them towards the Goliath ship.

  The only difference was that while the Sarah Brogan was headed directly towards the Goliath ship and would have passed it just a few kilometers to its port, the destroyers were on a sluggish parabolic arc of a trajectory that would make them pass about five hundred kilometers to the port side of the Goliath Ship. If the Goliath ship decided to move five hundred kilometers to meet the two USC destroyers head on, then the plan was most likely screwed. The hope of the planners was that five hundred kilometers would be like an arm’s length for the Goliath ship, which shouldn’t give it a cause to move from its orbit trajectory. The Goliath ship would try to kill the destroyers from where it was, and only if the destroyers managed to move away further than the lethal distance of the Goliath ship’s weapons after crossing it, and still survive, would the Goliath ship bother to give the USC destroyers the chase.

  Surviving the crossing seemed doubtful. Brig. Osbourne could hear chaotic and panicked shouts over his open channel. Sensors had failed at multiple sections of the hull, although there had been no reports yet of a breach in the hull. From all indications, the Argon tiles on most of the surface had been used up. The only protection left to the Kigali was its electromagnetic shield, which could only mitigate the effects of the antimatter beam, but could not stop it altogether.

  The captain had ordered the ship’s spin rate to be increased slightly to ensure that no spot on the outer surface of the ship could be targeted by the antimatter beams for more than a fraction of a second. That had spread the energy of the antimatter beams over a larger surface area preventing a breach for the moment, but the outer hull temperature had shot up to a few hundred degrees as some places. The crew spaces on the outer part of the ship alon
g the hull had been evacuated. All the crew was crammed themselves into the inner section of the ship close to the core at the level of the bridge or one level above, where the backup bridge was located.

  The inevitable eventually happened. “Hull breach in the aft section!” Brig. Osbourne heard on his com, as his screen showed the schematic of the Kigali with the relevant damaged portion flashing. “Cameras show massive damage to storage section and the aft living quarters. No fires, no critical systems damage indication yet!” The announcer over the com continued his damage report.

  There could be no fires, there was no air and hence no oxygen inside the ship to burn a fire. Instead the portion of the ship where antimatter beams had managed to enter was littered with heaps of molten slag, structures inside the ship were twisted, bent and disfigured beyond recognition. Most human fighting ships placed their critical systems right at the core, where the crew was also huddled along with equipment in machine rooms. The Kigali could take a bit more of such battering and yet survive, but if the damage reached one more level down, it would start cutting into the bone.

  “Starboard bow section is open to space! Cameras nonfunctional, sensor indications only!” A different voice announced this time. The Kigali was being mauled, it was only a matter of time before the worst could be expected.

  Brig. Osbourne wondered how the Elon Musk might be faring. If things on Kigali were any indication, then they couldn’t be faring much better out on the other ship. The captains of the two destroyers out of desperation played the last card that they had left. They launched their antimissiles, all of them! It was possible that the Goliath ship would recognize from far that those antimissiles were no threat to it and completely ignore it. Even if the Goliath ship stopped to deal with those missiles, the antimissiles had no antimatter defense. They would be wiped out in a matter of minutes. The USC destroyers were desperate. They would gladly take even a few seconds of respite.

  Brig. Osbourne forced himself to concentrate on the progress of the Marines. That was the prime object of this mission, the reason the brave navy lads were putting themselves as bait, and might end up sacrificing their lives. There was nothing he could do about the progress of the Kigali. If the ship died right now and he died with it, that would be an expected occupational hazard of being a soldier. The Marine operation was his duty, that is what he had to follow. The progress of the e-Marines displayed on his helmet screen was going surprisingly well, as opposed to the deep troubles of the two USC destroyers.

  The debris of the Sarah Brogan was floating towards the Goliath ship in the best possible direction, less than ten kilometers to the port from the Goliath ship. The speed of approach was a bit on the higher side because the trigger had to be pulled a few seconds before the earliest launch window. It would probably cause some grief to the e-Marines. Some broken bones, some injuries while landing. Hopefully no deaths. The low bandwidth ‘pings’ from the pods floating along with the debris, disguised as flotsam reported that all but one e-Marine was on track out of eight hundred. The ‘pings’ had been initiated manually by the Marines, which indicated that they were alive, hopefully uninjured, although that couldn’t be discerned from the pings.

  The pings were extremely low bandwidth signal disguised as noise within the overall carrier signal used by USC. They would appear as nothing but faint white noise without the right decrypting device. The pings couldn’t be used to communicate anything except signal that ‘I am alive’. The pods had done their job and protected the Marines. The engineers had also played their part in skillfully placing the charges to break apart the ship and yet not hurt the Marines inside. Brig. Osbourne knew that the e-Marines were at that very moment staring eagerly at their helmet screen and counting down along with the display. The navy had played its part and the act of the e-Marines was about to begin. The ‘coffin’ pods which had done their job well so far would be called upon by the e-Marines to perform one last service before the Marines could jump into the fight.

  As the countdown reached zero, Chichi gave a mental command to engage. His odd shaped pod, had taken a beating during the controlled explosion of the Sarah Brogan and bent a bit more. Despite the beating taken, the pod didn’t disappoint. On Chichi’s mental command the pod deployed a set of thrusters. The pod had thrusters on all sides, but most were small like the thrusters on Chichi’s suit. These small thrusters were meant to just control the attitude of the pod. The main thruster of the pod was located underneath. The solid fuel thruster had very little fuel. It was designed to burn for just about three hundred seconds or five minutes. What it lacked in endurance, it made up in power. When the main thruster fired, Chichi could feel almost half a G force on his feet. All the Marines had engaged the main thrusters of their pods almost simultaneously. Suddenly, the lazily floating debris of the Sarah Brogan came alive!

  Like bees exiting their hive, eight hundred pods flew out of the floating debris, spread out in seemingly random directions and then turned towards the Goliath ship, racing to cover the distance as quickly as they dared. The pods already had considerable speed and hence momentum towards the Goliath ship. There was no need to accelerate in that general direction. If anything, the speed was a bit too much, which would cause some difficulties in targeting the Goliath ship and then landing softly enough to not die or be injured. The pods accelerated roughly at right angle to the direction they were travelling to correct for line of approach to the Goliath ship.

  The Sarah Brogan had deliberately maintained a course that would miss the Goliath ship by a large enough distance to not give them a reason to take evasive action and move from their current position. Yet the line of approach would also ensure that the pods didn’t have to travel too great a distance in course correction to be able to land on the Goliath ship. The gap to be covered was less than ten kilometers, and the pods quickly corrected the course and then turned their thrusters towards the Goliath ship to slow down. Plasma was supposed to be the best foil against antimatter beam. Although the feeble thrusters of the pods couldn’t protect the entire pod against antimatter beam, it could protect the small area where the thruster expelled its propellant. Every small bit helped.

  The thrusters turned to face the Goliath ship not a moment too soon. The Goliath ship had started targeting the pods which had anomalously emerged out of the floating debris of the Sarah Brogan and started steering towards the Goliath ship. The pods didn’t have fancy electromagnetic shields to protect themselves against the antimatter beams. That didn’t mean that the pods were entirely defenseless. The pods were constructed with multiple layers of linings like the lined doors and walls of a refrigerator. The outer layer consisted of hardened plastic designed to withstand the shockwave and heat of the initial blast that disintegrated the Sarah Brogan.

  The outer layer had an air gap beneath it to provide insulation against the heat of the blast and to let the outer layer blacken and crack if necessary without affecting the structural integrity of the pod. When exposed to extreme heat like that from a welding torch or antimatter beam, the hardened plastic of the outer layer would melt and ablate away, exposing the middle layer of the pod lined with the same argon tiles that protected the USC ships.

  The argon tiles had the same lifespan on exposure to antimatter as the ships’ outer linings, but the pods weren’t expected to have to withstand the searing antimatter beams for too long. The pods would have to run the gauntlet for just a few minutes before they literally crashed on to the Goliath ship. If the argon tiles were spent completely, then the pod would be done for, because the inner layer of the pod wouldn’t be able to provide any protection against antimatter beams.

  The inner layer was designed for a different purpose. Made from rigid polymers like materials used in bumpers of vehicles, this layer was designed to crumple and absorb shock. The e-Marines would be crashing on to the Goliath ship at speeds exceeding hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. This was a deliberate strategy. Crashing into their objective at high speed would mean tha
t the pods didn’t have to spend a lot of time facing antimatter beams. To be able to survive the crash landing, the e-Marines needed crash protection.

  The e-Marines inside the pods became aware of their pods being targeted by antimatter weapons quickly, as the temperature inside the pods jumped up from near absolute zero to close to the boiling temperature of water in a matter of seconds, a jump of almost four hundred degrees Celsius. There was nothing that the Marines could do but hope and pray. The fact that the outer plastic shell had ablated away, and the argon tiles were hissing out gas and plasma could not be heard inside the pod, for there was no air inside to transmit the sound. It could be felt though, if one touched the vibrating inner lining of the pod. The only defense of the Marines was slowly evaporating away while some of the Marines at the rear were still minutes away from their objective.

  It was clear that some of the Marines wouldn’t make it. Brig. Osbourne monitoring the sensor reports on the Marines’ progress could see the UV sensor signatures of a few pods that had been breached. These pods appeared to have spontaneously combusted, when in reality the antimatter beams had turned the water and organic molecules of the Marine inside into gas and plasma so fast that the resultant increase in volume and exploded their bodies, which in turn had blown the pod into smithereens. The glowing heated pod parts gave the illusion of being on fire for a few seconds.