“Airlock, airlock, airlock!” That was all the Marine could utter before he slammed into a closed gate inside the portal almost fifty meters inside. From the painful grunts of the first group of Marines, it was obvious that they crashed painfully hard upon the obstacle, but it was also obvious that they were reasonably OK for the moment.
This situation had been anticipated. The engineering solution for any ship designer who had to make an airtight ship, and yet have openings for ingress and egress were likely to be similar. Unless the demons were so advanced that they had some magical force-field or material that would allow the demons to pass through, while keeping the atmosphere from escaping, their solution was likely to be very similar to that of humans and Shaitans – a double door airlock. That seemed to be exactly the case.
At one level Desmond was relieved. The demons weren’t that far ahead of the humans, that they had technologies that would seem magical. At a more practical level though, he had a major problem at hand. He had to force open a door of a species that was far ahead of the humans in technology. If the robust construction of the rest of the ship was any indicator, then the door was likely to be a robust one as well.
The only bright spot was that the door was the inner door of the airlock. If the demon engineers had the same kind of obsession with optimization and efficiency of design as human engineers did, then the inner door should be a lot weaker than the un-breachable outer door. The inner doors on human airlocks were flimsy compared to the outer one because the inner doors didn’t have to face any external bombardments or breach attempts.
At least the mystery of why the portal had such a big opening was clear. The airlock was designed to exit demons in batches, and given the larger body size of the demons had to be large in area and depth to hold a reasonable number of demons that could exit at one go. The inner door of the airlock was about fifty meters inside. Even if the outside door was very thick, it still left enough space for thirty to forty demons to be crammed into the airlock.
Most of those demons had already exited the airlock, only a handful of demons were still inside the airlock, when the Marines had started entering the airlock. The laws of momentum in gravity-less space was such that one tends to keep moving in the direction one is already moving. Thus, it was hard for the demons that had exited the airlock to turn back to confront the transgressing Marines. It would take those demons minutes to turn back and return inside. However, there were still demons inside the airlock, six of them at last count. Those six demons floating in the zero-G environment of the airlock, turned around to face the Marines who had whizzed past them.
Desmond was still about thirty seconds out from the portal. His situational awareness display on his HUD displayed that ten Marines had already made it inside the airlock, and five more were about to enter. Even with fifteen of them, the Marines stood no chance against six demons, enhanced or not. If the demons got to bear their weapons, especially the dreaded needle gun, then the enhancements of the Marines would count for nothing. They would die just as easily as regular Marines. He needed to get more marines inside the airlock quickly, and he needed to take desperate measures outside the rulebook.
“Floaters, abandon bunched entry protocol! Enter airlock ASAP. Tackle the demons inside the airlock! Ram into them, if you must. Its zero-G, the demons are floating around just as much as you are. Their strength counts for nothing if they are floating and spinning. Disorient them, and stay out of the line of sight of their guns!”
It would turn out to be an inspired piece of fighting advice. The demon space suit conformed to the contours of their body, but their pincers lacked the cutting edge over the space suit for the same reason as one cannot put a cover over a pair of scissor and yet retain its cutting edge. The pincers retained their crushing strength though, and could perhaps crush an unarmored human body. They were however not a killer for an armored enhanced Marine, although a smack from those arms could send a Marine flying. Ramming a demon in space sent them spinning and disorienting them just as much as the Marine himself would be disoriented, but it kept the demon from being able to point its needle gun in the direction of the Marine.
Those tactics didn’t prevent the six demons from killing three of the ten Marines in the first few seconds though. By the time the next five Marines entered the airlock, they were confronted with the scenario of six demons spinning wildly along with three dead and seven live Marines. Neither the spinning Marines, nor the spinning demons were in a position of taking a shot at each other. The five Marines were however in a perfect position to take advantage of the situation. They were not spinning. All of them concentrated their fire on the closest demon, as they had decided they would do for the opening shots of the battle. Human firepower was untested against demon space suit armor. It was best they find the efficacy of their firepower before they went any further. It was a wise decision.
It was impossible to target any specific portion of the suit armor of the wildly spinning demon. The Marines simply kept firing both their recoilless rifles and their plasma guns continuously at the demon. The rifles shot a rocket powered ‘bullet’ that had an explosive round. It was known as the Shaitan Killer by the Marines because it could pierce a Shaitan armor. It was clear that it was not capable of piercing the demon armor, at least not the hard shell. The only exposed and vulnerable part of the demon armor was the flexible neck of the armor. It was at the neck of the armor, that the suit was breached and the high-pressure air escaping from the rupture further spinning the demon in the zero-G environment. The helmet cam view of the Marines was passed to the others outside the airlock.
It was apparent to the rest of the Marines that shooting down a demon from afar was going to be difficult, if one had to aim for the slender neck portion only. The demons on the other hand would have no such issues shooting down a Marine from afar. The best bet for the e-Marines seemed to be to try and take on the demons up close and personal. If the demons stuck to their battle code in space that they had displayed on Earth, then they would not shoot at a Marine until the Marine shot at them. According to Earth Intel, the demons would readily engage in a hand to hand, rather hand to claw combat with humans.
While the Marines on the outside were figuring out the best strategy to take on the demons that had climbed out of the airlock, three more ‘Floater’ Marines had managed to enter the airlock to add to the numerical superiority of the humans in taking on the disoriented demons. Desmond was almost upon the airlock himself and had started entertaining the hope that the Marines might just be able to overpower the six demons quickly enough to plant heavy explosives and scoot before more demons are able to reinforce the airlock. The optimism turned sour a moment later, as one of the ‘Floaters’ shouted from inside. “Portal closing! Repeat, airlock outside door closing! My God! That is a really thick door!”
Desmond had reached close enough to the airlock to see for himself the outside door of the airlock closing. It was closing at an alarming speed. That by itself would not have amazed Desmond, until he checked out what the Marine inside the airlock had mentioned about the thickness of the door. His HUD estimated the door to be twenty meters thick! A rectangular section of the outer skin of the demon ship that was just over ten meters wide, about thirty meters long and twenty meters thick was sliding over the square outer opening of the airlock. The ‘Floater’ Marines inside the airlock were about to be sealed off underneath a twenty-meter-thick iron tomb!
–XXX–
The Master of the Watch was in a slightly disturbed state of mind. It was a state of mind the demons shared with humans and with many sentient creatures across the universe. Humans would have called it a state of mild panic. The Master of the Watch was having self-doubts about her decisions. She wondered once again if the fact that her peers had deemed many of her actions as incompetent were true. Maybe they were! She realized that that there was no point mulling over past decisions. She had to take a decision at that moment. Should she do it, or should she wait?
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With hindsight, she realized that she should have expected what the humans did. She should have known that there would be some humans who would wait for the opportunity for the airlock to open and attempt to storm past the emerging Bodars. It was such an obvious and elementary thing to do if you are attempting to board a ship. She should have instructed her hunters emerging from the airlock to block the entire opening, shoot down any humans floating above the airlock first to ensure that no one can storm past them. Only then should she have instructed them to emerge out of the airlock quickly for her to close the outer door. It was such an elementary precaution, that she was amazed that she didn’t think of it earlier.
Now it was too late. There were humans swarming into the airlock, their numbers growing by the moment. There was an outside chance that they might be able to overcome the few Bodars still left in the airlock. The inside doors were flimsy, and there was always the possibility that the humans may be able to breach it. Should she have faith in her Bodar hunters in being able to overcome the puny and weak humans? Or should she not take that chance and close the outer doors, just to be sure. In the end she decided that she had underestimated the humans to her detriment for the past few hours too many times. She should learn her lesson and start being cautious. It was perhaps better to overestimate than underestimate in battle.
With those thoughts in her mind she made the decision to close the door. It was a decision that would have unexpected consequences. It would push the humans to do something that they had never intended to do – group suicide!
–XXX–
“My God! That door is un-breachable even by a nuke! Floaters! Get the hell out of there. That’s an order.” Desmond shouted.
“That’s a negative, sir! All of us in a tumble in here along with the demons, and they are blocking our exit in any case. I am afraid we will not be able to make it out in time sir.” The HUD display identified the slightly panicked voice as PFC Johnson. Desmond barely knew the kid. He was the quiet thoughtful type, who usually kept to himself.
Before Desmond could say anything, PFC Johnson spoke again, but this time his voice was calmer. Deadly calm. “If we are going to die here, we might as well die making a difference. A nuke may not be able to breach that door, but it just might jam it.”
Desmond belatedly realized that the red icon next to the name of PFC Johnson in his HUD indicated that he was the platoons’ ‘Mule’. For this mission every platoon of each company of both the regiment had been provided a tactical nuke with a six-kiloton yield. It was like the tactical nukes strapped by the heretic Shaitans in their suicide missions on their core worlds. The nukes were too heavy for normal humans to carry as backpack nukes, but not unmanageable for enhanced Marines. The objective for this mission of the e-Marines had been simple enough – gain access inside the demon Goliath ship, place the nukes on timer and get the hell out of Dodge.
The assessment from Earth sent back to Jehannum HQ via USC Patagonia had been straight forward. As long as the Goliath demon ship orbited above Earth supporting the demon invasion force, there was no way humans could take back Earth. If the Goliath demons ship could be taken out of the picture, and no back up demon ship arrived in a hurry, then the demons stranded on Earth could be worn down and humans would eventually be able to take back Earth even if it took them a few years to get rid of the last of the demons that had landed on the planet.
Everyone believed that a single nuke with a 6-kiloton blast inside the demon ship was good enough to destroy it completely, however advanced and robust its construction might be. It wouldn’t matter how thick and hard the external shells of the demon ship might be. In fact, it would be better if the demon ship’s external hull was strong enough not to crack from the blast. That would concentrate the entire energy of the blast inside the ship, turning everything inside into plasma. Surely no ship interior could survive that, however advanced their construction might be.
What couldn’t be predicted was how many of the Marines would be able to actually land on the demon ship. Even if some of them managed to land on the ship, how many amongst them would be able to fight their way into the ship, and which platoon that might be. All that the beta brigade needed was for just a few of the Marines to be able to gain access to the insides of the ship, as long as one of them was carrying a nuke.
To ensure that if and when any of the Marines gained access to the insides of the demon ship, they had at least one nuke handy, the nukes were evenly distributed among the two regiments of the boarding party commanded by Chichi and Desmond. The eight hundred men and women who had embarked on this mission were divided into two regiments of four hundred each. The regiments were further divided into four companies of hundred marines each. Each company was further divided into three platoons of roughly thirty to thirty-five Marines commanded by a Sargent or a Second Lieutenant.
Every company had at least one ‘Mule’ amongst them – the Marine tasked to carry a nuke. Some of the platoons with primary breach responsibilities like the ‘Floaters’, had two ‘Mules’ with them. The beta brigade was carrying thirty tactical nukes in total for this mission. Triggering the device required very little training, since the neural interface computer took care of all the details once the authorized ID of the Marine triggered the command. The ‘Mules’ had the authorization to trigger the device, as did CO of the company of the ‘Mule’. The chain of command of the company inherited the authority to trigger the device in case both the Mule as well as the CO of the company went missing or were KIA. This liberal triggering authorization regime ensured that if a nuke could somehow be put inside the demon ship, there would be someone available to trigger it.
“I need your permission, and the forgiveness of my brother Marines, Sarge.” Desmond heard PFC Johnson’s calm and sad voice. It took a moment for Desmond to realize that PFC Johnson was not asking for his permission, but that of his immediate superior Sergeant Pavlov.
“Wait! What…” There was another voice over the radio, shouting in panic.
“You have my permission, Marine. Semper fi!” Everyone heard those grave words of Sergeant Pavlov.
“No, no, no, no…” Were the last words heard from the same panicked voice over the radio, before it was filled with static.
Chapter 12
A Generational Craft
Inside the hunting shell ‘Ravenous’
2205
Bodars weren’t sure how or when the standard design of their hunting shells had been perfected. The design was probably very old, honed into its current optimal configuration through generations of travel and warfare in deep space. If anything, it was designed to take a hit and continue fighting albeit at a lower level of fighting capability due to whatever destruction the enemy may have wrought on it. It was a design concept that the humans termed as ‘graceful degradation of performance’. Through the many wars that the Bodars had fought, they had learnt to design compartmentalized hunting shells.
The Bodars designed their hunting shells to be robust on the exterior, able to withstand all but the most powerful weapons that could be thrown at it. If, however the worst happened and a section of the external shell of a Bodar hunting shell was breached, it would not lead to a catastrophic failure of the entire vessel. The entire vessel was compartmentalized into sections that had almost as thick separation walls between them as the exterior. It was similar in concept to the compartmentalized habitats that the Bodars built when they had to build very deep under sea in extreme high-pressure environments. The Bodars had noticed similar design concept used by the humans as well in their underwater submarines.
Engineering trade-offs meant that the Hunting Shell could not have too many of the compartment walls that were extremely thick, capable of withstanding a direct nuclear blast. That would have made the hunting shell ridiculously massive, too much even for their otherwise powerful engines. Most compartment walls were designed to contain atmosphere on breach of the external shell. The prolate spheroid shaped hunting shell, wh
ich reminded the humans of an American football, had two massively thick walls inside that divided the vessel into roughly three equal sections.
Those two ten meters thick circular walls inside the hunting shell not just divided it into three individually impenetrable sections. Those walls also provided structural strength to the vessel’s exterior, enabling the external hull to take a battering and yet not collapse easily. Even the biggest of human nukes could only have scratched the surface of that ten-meter-thick iron compartment wall.
The football shaped demon hunting shell was spinning on its long axis to provide artificial gravity inside the ship. The airlock that had been opened was located at the narrow converging end of the ship, where the gravity remained zero even while the ship was spinning. The airlocks at either ends of the ship were the only ones that could be opened for the demons to exit without stopping the spin of the ship. Any other airlock would have flung the exiting demons out and away from the ship at a high velocity.
The other alternative would have been to order an emergency stop of the spinning of the ship. That would have taken many minutes, and the lack of gravity would have disrupted operations within the ship. The pools of water inside the ship, which were the only source of comfort and solace on a punishment posting in orbit, while the rest of the Bodars enjoyed down at the surface hadn’t been drained, since no one had put the hunting shell into battle mode. Sudden cessation of gravity inside the ship would have made a mess of the internal habitat with all that water floating around.
The massively thick twenty-meter external hatch of the airlock had closed almost completely when PFC Johnson triggered his nuke. That was probably the only reason why Desmond survived despite being almost right next to the airlock. The blast of the nuke was almost completely contained by the external hatch, except for a tiny sliver of the airlock that was still open. One Marine and a demon weren’t as lucky as Desmond. The raging plasma shockwave emerging from the tiny sliver of open airlock caught these two unfortunate beings, vaporizing them instantly. Since the shockwave blasted out into space, there weren’t any sideways blow back, saving Desmond and the other Marines. It also saved the rest of the demons.
Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5) Page 22