Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  He barely managed to right himself and his addled mind somehow had enough capacity to steer the rockets to get him back on the surface. Chichi saw the flashing red light of depressurization warning on his faceplate display. He realized that more than the pain or the drugs, it was the lack of oxygen in his suit that was causing the delirium. It was then that he noticed that the spray he had been holding had been lost in the tumble, and was now floating away somewhere in space. Chichi realized that he didn’t have minutes, but probably seconds, but there was no one nearby to help him. He knew that each and every Marine right now was grappling with some demon and fighting for his life. So, this was it!

  “I got you buddy! Hang on for a few moments, and you will start feeling fine again. I plugged the leak. Take a few deep breaths if you can.” It was Desmond. He had seen Chichi’s failing vital signs on his display when he tried to connect with him to order his men inside. He had made a mad dash to Chichi’s position and plugged the leak in time.

  “Hey, Des! Never thought I would be this happy to see your ugly mug. Thanks bud.” Chichi was all smiles as he slowly recovered.

  “Yeah! You better remember who saved your sorry ass, next time you steal my chica from a bar! Seriously though, we got to move and get inside. Order your men to fall back inside the airlock. I have got Marines stationed there to cover your retreat. We will fight the rest inside.” Desmond said as he moved away from Chichi. He had instinctively tried to help Chichi stand up before realizing that in zero-G, even the injured don’t need help to stand up!

  “Falling back is easier said than done. Those demons are blocking the way of the Marines. We will have to go through them.” Chichi brought his situational awareness map to the fore and gave a sigh. “We started with twenty-three demons. There are still eleven left, which means we killed twelve of them and lost seventy-three Marines! That is a six to one kill rate. Man, these demons are tough… and this because we are not shooting at them, and they have also refrained from shooting at us. Otherwise they could have killed all of us off without taking a single casualty!

  “Initially the demons were taking us on individually. Surely, they knew that they were heavily outnumbered and should have bunched up together. Something tells me that they initially underestimated us. Now they have realized that we can kill them too, albeit with a heavy toll. Now all those eleven are bunched up, and supporting each other. It has become hard to swarm an individual demon and kill it.”

  Chichi was too much into the battle, but Desmond had been out of it. So, he spoke the obvious. “Those demons are bunched up! Good. That means if we disengage, there will be no Marine tumbling along with a demon! Then the Marines can make a dash by taking the aerial route. All the Marines start at the same time, and hopefully we catch the demons by surprise giving us a few seconds head start. I have Marines waiting at the opening who will block the demons as they come chasing us. That should give enough time for the rest of the Marines to get inside. The opening is narrow, allowing a suited Marine to barely slide smoothly through it. I think the demons would have to shimmy and struggle to get through that opening because they are bigger. If they try to follow inside, then they will be at a disadvantage while trying to negotiate that opening.”

  Their plan explained to the Marines, Desmond gave the signal. It didn’t take too long for the eleven demons to catch on. Only about half the Marines had gotten over and past them, when they realized what was happening. The demons shed their magnetic anchor and rose up to intercept the Marines. In open three-dimensional space, it is very hard to intercept someone if he or she is actively trying to avoid you.

  The Marines had three degrees of freedom to move and avoid the rising demons, thrusting their rocket thrusters randomly to foil the counter moves of the demons. Only two of the demons managed to make direct contact with fleeing Marines, rest ended up chasing the Marines towards the opening of the airlock. The two demons that did manage to grab hold of a Marine were lost in space along with the unfortunate Marine. It is next to impossible for two grappling beings on rocket thrusters not to be thrown into a random trajectory and being lost in the void.

  Desmond’s plan worked to a large extent, but not completely. Out of the eight hundred e-Marines that had embarked on this mission, only six hundred and twelve had managed to land on the Goliath demon ship. Almost a hundred of those Marines had perished till that moment in either fighting the demons or in the suicide nuclear blast of PFC Johnson. That still left over five hundred Marines who needed to go through the narrow opening of the airlock, which took time.

  The remaining nine demons reached the opening before most of the Marines had managed to slip inside. As a result, those nine demons had to be tackled by the Marines. The saving grace as far as the Marines were concerned was that most of the demons got trapped in the narrow opening of the airlock, where they were swarmed by Marines. The demons had very little room to maneuver and bring their size and strength to play. The cramped space meant that the demons caused a lot less casualties to the Marines before they died.

  Once all the Marines were inside, Desmond tasked three platoons to guard the airlock opening, in case the shuttles landed more demons who tried to enter through the open airlock. The Marines had left spy bots outside as they waited with bated breath for the arrival of the shuttles. Two of the shuttles arrived and hovered over the open airlock. After about five minutes, one of the shuttles released a small object which used small inertial thrusters to snake its way into the narrow opening of the airlock. There was no straight line of sight path through the airlock, so the object couldn’t have made a straight-line path inside. Instead it tried to maneuver and negotiate its path inside.

  The Marines had anticipated an incursion, although they had thought it would be in the form of a demon trying to sneak in. It didn’t make a difference, they had booby trapped the airlock entrance with laser tripped triggers that went off and blew the object, whatever it was. The two-shuttle hung around for another five minutes before taking off. The spy bots couldn’t track the shuttles after they went over the curvature of the ship. The three platoons kept vigil at the entrance, but no demon made any further attempt to enter through the airlock.

  –XXX–

  The Master of the Watch was furious. She had expected the Lord of the Hunt to be in one of those shuttles. Where was the Lord of the Hunt? It had been almost a full rotation of this planet since she had informed the Lord of the Hunt about the attack. Why hadn’t the Lord of the Hunt not even responded back? The Lord should have taken the first shuttle back and taken over the responsibility of the Ravenous, which weighed so heavily now on the Master of the Watch. She would be only too glad to hand over the reins of the Ravenous to the Lord.

  She was glad that some of the most experienced and competent of her sisters were on those shuttles, heading back from the surface. At least she would have some experienced advice on how to handle things from here on. However, the procedures laid down for the operations of any Bodar Hunting Shell made it amply clear that a Master of the Watch can hand over those responsibilities to another Bodar sister only when an express command had been issued by the Lord of the Hunt herself. So, she may have expert advice, but she could not hand over command to someone else yet.

  On the request of the Master of the Watch, two shuttles had been tasked with fly-by reconnaissance of the devastated end of the Ravenous. All sensors had been lost on that end of the Hunting Shell, and the Master of the Watch had no eyes there any longer. She didn’t know the fate of the hunters she had dispatched through the airlock. The last that had been heard from them had been just before the blast, which the analysts at the control center had surmised to be a primitive nuclear blast. Primitive it may have been, but it had been effective. The EMP had disrupted radio communications with the suits of the hunter who had survived the nuclear blast. The Master knew that some of the hunters had survived the nuclear blast because their transmission restarted shortly, only to be cut off again.

  The survey
ing shuttles reported that there were no signs of either humans or the hunters on the skin of the shell. The picture and the data of the airlock transmitted by the shuttles gave a clearer picture of what might have happened. It validated the guess of the analysts about the nuclear blast, since the nature of the external damage to the airlock was consistent with those conclusions. The airlock opening was mangled and almost closed. There was no clear line of sight to check things from outside, so one of the shuttles dispatched a probe to try and find a way inside. The probe was destroyed in a blast half way through the airlock, most likely by a booby trapped explosive that these humans so love to deploy. So, it was likely that there were humans inside.

  The Master of the Watch weighed her next move, as the shuttles awaited instructions. She could send more hunters inside, or she could send lots of automated hunter drones that could force their way in and eliminate the humans inside. What would that achieve though? The humans had already managed to destroy that compartment of the Ravenous. There was nothing more to devastate there. Other than grievously wounding the Ravenous, that nuclear blast had managed to kill thousands of Bodars – more Bodars than the humans had managed to kill in all the time since they were invaded; more Bodars than the Bodars had lost in any single incident in a long time. She had already caused a lot of loss today, she didn’t want any more loss of Bodar lives.

  The humans were inside a sealed compartment, isolated from the rest of the Ravenous by a blast wall that was over ten meters thick. There was no weaponry that the humans possessed that could breach it. They were effectively sealed off in that compartment. Let the humans stay there till the Lord of the Hunt returns. She will know what to do with them. So, the Master of the Watch ordered the shuttles to return and dock at the other end, deeming the humans to be no threat at all.

  –XXX–

  Chichi had had the time to recuperate. The Medic had done the best she could within the limitations of being in an airless environment with both their suits on, but it had helped. Chichi felt a lot less pain, and the nanoscale particles that had been injected, had gone into overdrive repairing tissues and reinforcing the enhanced muscle fibers as well as the ribs. He was floating in a position that with trial and error he had found was the least painful. He now had the time to inspect his surroundings and marvel at it. It was completely dark, but the mapping program had completed its survey, and the topography was overlaid on his visor such that Chichi got a feel of how the inside would look if it was lit.

  The scale and the enormity of the demon ship was staggering to the eyes, even though Chichi had always known from the data that this ship was huge. Chichi had to keep reminding himself that he was looking at the insides of a space ship and that he was not out in the open. As he lay floating, up above and far away he could see the devastated structures sticking to the inside surface of the ship directly above him. He traced those string of destroyed structures along the inner surface of the ship as they bent around towards the horizon all the way close to where he was floating. The whole inner surface of the ship had been one continuous stretch of habitat, that must have provided such a large amount of living space within the spaceship unimaginable for a human being.

  From the destroyed structures it could be discerned that most of the habitats were stacked into multiple levels like human multi-storied buildings, but the base of each of those buildings were much larger than a typical human building. This gave most of the structures a bit of a squat appearance, even though many of those structures seemed to be up to six stories high. It was obvious from the devastation, that the habitat structures weren’t engineered to withstand too much of a stress. There was no reason to do so. It wasn’t as if the demon engineers had to protect those habitats against storms, floods or earthquake inside the ship!

  The structural strength of those habitats was just enough to withstand the normal wear and tear of habitation. There was no need to increase the materials cost and weight inside a ship, two of the most precious commodities for a ship builder, by using concrete or any such robust material. As a result, the nuke had torn through most of the habitats, leaving just the stump of the structures anchored to the floor of the ship all around the cylindrical insides of the ship.

  The only place where some of the structures were still left standing inside this compartment of the ship had been at the absolute other end of the compartment, where the structures stood flush with the massive wall that separated this compartment from the rest of the ship. Being furthest from the blast, and gaining support from the massive iron wall, those few structures stood almost intact. Those intact structures made it possible to visualize the magnificent scale and vista of this compartment of the ship before the blast.

  One of the first task that the e-Marines had performed after entering this devastated compartment had been to dispatch drones and spiders to the other end of the compartment towards those relatively intact structures to check for demon survivors. Fortunately for the Marines, no demon had survived inside the compartment including inside those intact structures. It would have been incredible if any living organism had actually survived a nuclear blast inside a closed structure like this one. The heat had nowhere to escape and it must have been thousands of degrees even in the coolest of places inside the compartment during the blast. The fact that they had found a few demon bodies inside some of the structures itself was amazing. None of those demon bodies was inside a space suit or any other protective gear. They never stood a chance.

  Mangled as those few demon bodies may have been, it gave the Marines the first opportunity to get an idea of the physical proportions of a demon. It was sobering. Despite having seen photographs of the demon, seeing actual demons, even dead and mangled ones gave the Marines an appreciation of what human fighters on Earth were up against, and what the Marines were likely to face. When fighting the demons outside with their space suit on, it hadn’t been so terrifying. It had just been like grappling with a large suit clad animal. Seeing them in the flesh brought out something primal that the Marines couldn’t explain.

  All this had been over forty minutes ago, as the Marines had entered and quickly explored this compartment of the demon ship. Their initial caution on entering the ship had given way to exuberance as they realized the absolute devastation they had managed to cause to this portion of the ship. Now that exuberance had given way to slow despair bordering on panic. The Marines had stalled. This portion of the ship was completely and hermetically sealed off from the rest of the ship. There was no apparent door to move from the present compartment of the demon ship to the next compartment, which was crazy!

  Surely the demons would have moved between each of the compartments of the ship! Surely, they would have not done so by exiting the ship at one end, going to the other end of the ship in space and then entering the ship through another external hatch! There had to be an internal hatch connecting this compartment of the ship to the rest of the ship. The trouble was that the Marines had failed to locate such a hatch.

  “Damn it! There has to be conduits or pipes of some kind linking this part to the rest of the ship!” Chichi could hear a lieutenant from the Engineering squad shouting agitatedly over the radio to someone. “However weird the demon engineers may be in their thinking, they have to solve the same engineering problems as the rest of us. They must somehow connect this part of the ship to the rest! Let’s climb up to the very center out to the broken tube out there. It must be a conduit. I don’t care how we get out there, but we have to get to it!”

  Chichi moved his gaze towards the broken tube that the Marine Engineer had mentioned. It was a curiosity alright, and the only structure the Marines hadn’t explored simply because they hadn’t figured out a way to reach it yet. The demon ship was shaped like an American football that was spinning on its axis. The axis was the line that connected the two pointed ends of the space ship. The rotation around this axis provided artificial gravity to the craft.

  The gravity was strongest at the middle of the
craft on the other side of the partition wall that the Marines were trying to breach, where the circumference of the ship was the largest and hence the spin provided the highest gravity of around 1.2 G. As one moved towards the tapering axis of the ship along the inside walls of the ship, the gravity kept decreasing along with the decreasing circumference, until they reached the pointed axis from where the Marines had entered through the airlock, where the effective gravity was zero.

  The gravity the Marines felt near the partition wall was around 1 G. Since there were surviving structures along the partition wall, the Marines had climbed up those structures almost halfway to the center of the circular partition wall. As they climbed up the structures, they had noticed the weird but logical effect of decreasing gravity the higher they went up. The higher they went, the closer they were to the axis of spin of the space ship and the smaller the effective circumference, and hence the lower the effective gravity. If they could reach all the way up to the center of the ship from the wall, they would effectively feel zero gravity. The problem was that the structures didn’t go that high, all the way up to the center of the ship. They stopped short halfway there.

  In a way it was perfectly understandable why the structures weren’t built all the way up to the center of the ship. To humans whose ships were puny, and perpetually space starved, it might look like criminal waste of living space inside a ship. This however wasn’t a human ship, and it certainly wasn’t a puny ship. There was no dearth of living space, at least that is the way the demon engineers looked at it. Instead they had left the center of the ship vacant, which must have given a dramatic effect of an open sky. No human space farer had to be told what a great thing that would be on a space ship. It would make the difference between getting the feeling of living in a cramped spaceship and the feeling of home back on Earth! In one swoop almost all the hardships of living in space could be taken away!