The human ships had approached a lot closer to the Goliath ship since the first volley had been launched by the demons. As a result, the volley of eighty-eight missiles had a lot less distance to cover and were soon at the distance where antimissiles could be launched by the two destroyers. All the antimissiles were launched at a frenetic pace.
The offensive nuclear weapons were kept ready. Barring some miracle, they would almost certainly be needed as well, but their launch window would approach when the demon missiles were a lot closer. To maximize the chances of being able to destroy demon missiles with nukes, they would have to be intercepted at as close a distance as the humans dared. In the end, the antimissiles fared slightly better than what had been anticipated. They could destroy seventy-one of the approaching demon missiles, leaving seventeen to be tackled by the nukes.
The nukes had a miserable time trying to destroy the incoming missiles. The kill ratio of the nukes was pathetic. Perhaps the only reason that the human nukes could kill the demon missiles was because at their final approach towards the human ships, the demon missiles had no option but to travel through a narrow volume of space, and the nukes were all packed in this volume of space to the brim. It was more due to sheer probability rather than any targeting that each of the demon eventually ran into a closely exploding human nuke and its antimatter containment failed. Three of the last demon missiles destroyed in the thirty to thirty-five-kilometer range.
While muted cheers went around the crew, all were aware that they may have picked up lethal dose of radiation. Most of the humans were so busy trying to stay alive today, that they really didn’t have time to be worried about the fact that they may die tomorrow. The brilliant flashes of the demon missiles dying were nothing if not spectacular. While the human nukes weren’t visible from Earth even with a binocular, each of the demon missile explosion was visible to the naked eye. This was the first space war that humans on the surface of the Earth had been able to see and record. In the centuries to come, those recording would go down as enduring meme of human struggle in space.
Of the seven hundred and ninety-six nukes that had been launched, only forty-seven remained. Such had been the pathetic kill ratio that it had taken seven hundred and forty-nine nuclear missiles to kill just seventeen demon missiles! The crew didn’t dwell on those statistics, they were just happy to be alive. In addition to that happy fact, the other encouraging news was that the human ships had reached their nearest point of approach to the Goliath ship. From now on, they would be increasing their distance from that terrifying Goliath ship.
That thought was enough to bring a smile on most of the crew’s face. It also provided an opportunity for the Science officer to file in his analysis report with the captain. “Sir, we have a theory on why the blast from the demon missiles is less vigorous when they are destroyed, than when they detonate deliberately.” Nagata nodded as a gesture for the Science office to go ahead.
“We know that the antimatter they have used so far has all been antielectrons, also known as positrons. They are the same size and weight as electrons, which we know is extremely small and light. When the demons’ missiles detonated deliberately, we believe the internal mechanism holding the antielectrons at bay would have configured itself in such a way as to quickly let all the electrons find normal matter within milliseconds of each other. That way all the energy of the antielectrons would be released simultaneously, giving the weapon close to hundred percent efficiency.
“One way to achieve this would be to provide a strong negatively charged surface to the antielectrons, which would ensure that all the antielectrons rushed to that surface at the same time. When the same missiles were destroyed by us, this priming mechanism was not in place, the antimatter containment failed chaotically. Most of the antimatter still found normal matter and exploded catastrophically, but a fraction of the antimatter was blown away into space in the explosion before it could meet up with normal matter. It is only a slight reduction in efficiency, about twenty percent, but noticeable enough.” The Science office gave his best guess.
Before Nagata could thank his Science Officer for the information, the weapons officer raised an alarm. “Bogey’s launched by the enemy!”
Capt. Yoshihiro Nagata’s heart sank as he switched his attention back on the screen. He knew that the demons could always launch more missiles. Such a Goliath ship was unlikely to be running out of missiles soon, but he had clung on to the forlorn hope that as the human ships moved away from the demons’ ship, the demons would leave them be alone. That was not to be. The missile count kept rising on the screen until it reached forty-four. At that point either the demon commander or their AI had decided that the number of missiles was more than enough to finish off the two puny human ships. They were right! The missiles had greater acceleration than the human ships, there would be no running away from those demon missiles. The remaining forty-seven nukes had no hope in hell of stopping all the approaching missiles.
“Well, I guess we are not going to be having that beer after all my friend.” It was Capt. Johan Sorensen on the screen.
“We will drink in Valhalla my friend. We have fought honorably, and achieved our primary objective. While the demons were busy trying to kill us, I can see on my screen that the Marines have almost reached their objective unmolested. Our deaths will not be in vain Johann.” Capt. Nagata replied grimly.
Capt. Sorensen nodded in silence for a moment, taking his time to adjust to the reality of facing death. Then he spoke softly. “The tactical officers on the Hammer have taken the time to make perimeter calculations for that Goliath ship. We now have a fair idea of the likely maximum range of those demon missiles, and given the fact that the Goliath ship is not moving anywhere, there is a spherical perimeter beyond which the missiles of the demon ship cannot harm human ships. That distance is about three quarter of a million kilometers, over twice the distance from Earth to the Moon.
“Human ships can launch Marines from outside that perimeter reasonably safely. It will be a bitch of a journey for the Marines though. They will have to float in space for half a day to reach their objective, and would be completely unprotected during the course of that journey. We haven’t seen anything other than missiles coming from the Goliath Ship, and I don’t think even the demons would be crazy to expend missiles trying to take out an individual Marine floating in space. The Marines can spread themselves thin.
“I am going ahead and sending it to all the other vessels. USC Patagonia in particular can immediately be brought into action. It is close enough to dispatch Marines quickly, although it doesn’t have a large contingent. The Patagonia hadn’t dared to approach because it wouldn’t last more than a few minutes within the perimeter. We need to be able to continuously send in Marines, if the sacrifice of the Sapporo and the Hammer are to count for anything. I will get on with facilitating that…” Capt. Sorensen hesitated, and then with a hint of moistness in his eyes, he concluded. “It has been an honor serving with you Hiro.”
“The honor has been entirely mine, my friend! The honor has been, mine.” Capt. Nagata managed to croak in reply, as the link switched off.
Capt. Nagata stood up to give his final order. He faced his crew, who looked at him with faces that varied from being terrified to ones that had a stoic acceptance of their approaching fate. “We will program the remaining nukes to intercept the approaching missiles at a distance of fifteen kilometers to give them the maximum chance of interception. Given the numbers stacked against us, the radiation fallout would be the least of our problems. We will try to maximize the number of demon missiles that we shoot down. Let the demons get the message that we humans go down fighting till the end, we never give up!”
The order was being broadcast to the entire ship, as well as the Marines floating in space about to reach the Goliath ship. “Gentlemen and ladies, it has been an honor serving with you all, and to the Marines – Farewell and god speed. Give them hell. Nagata out.”
Because of
the suicidal distance at which the incoming missiles were being intercepted, the demon missiles didn’t have a very wide window to avoid the intercepting human nuclear missiles. Each of the demon missiles had to run the gauntlet through a window just a few kilometers wide. As a result, the first six of the missiles targeted at the Sapporo were successfully intercepted, but the inevitable happened and the seventh missile slipped through. USC Thor’s hammer met with a similar fate.
For the human crews and their ships, the only saving grace was that it was instant painless annihilation into constituent atoms. It would also be the most photographed and recorded destruction of any human ship in history, as the moment of death of the Sapporo and the Hammer was observed and recorded by countless people on the surface of Earth.
Major Rosie Jordan felt numb. The Sapporo was gone even before she could respond back to her captain’s farewell message. Her eyes brimming with tears were blurring her vision. The damn tears refused to flow down her cheeks, accumulating instead on her eyes. In anger and frustration, she shook her head violently to get rid of the tears, some of which splattered on her faceplate screen to make stain marks. The enormity of the responsibility she had inherited started dawning on her. The Sapporo and the Hammer had sacrificed themselves to place the Marines on the Goliath ship.
It was now up to the Marines to make the sacrifice of each and every one of those crew members – her friends’ lives mean something. Her first task was to get her Marines safely on the surface of the Goliath ship. As of now, Rosie noted that the Marines were on course, less than a hundred kilometers from their objective, slowing down gently. The Marines would crash on to the surface of the ship at a relative gentle pace of about thirty kilometers per hour, bounce back in most cases, and then use their retro rockets to get back to the surface of the ship.
“Marines, be advised that the remainder of the demon missiles are turning back towards us. We do not know their intention yet. The could simply be RTB like our missiles, or they may target us. Maintain your separation as much as you can.” It was Col. Joseph Lord, Rosie’s counterpart from the Hammer and the overall expedition commander. Col. Lord had the operational command of the expedition. He was the quintessential fighting man, having refused promotion to be able to fight on the ground rather than be kicked upstairs as an armchair commander. Col. Lord was many years senior to Rosie. She and every Marine in the expedition felt comforted just knowing the fact that Col. Lord was leading them.
A private channel opened on Rosie’s screen. It was Col. Lord. “Rose, I want you to take charge of leading our boys and girls as quickly as possible on to the surface. The timetable has suddenly moved up. I don’t like the looks of those demon missiles. If the demons decided to explode a few of those missiles ten to fifteen kilometers away from their own ship, it would do very little damage to the demons inside the massively shielded ship, but if the Marines are caught on the outer surface of the ship, we will suffer massive radiation damage.
It is all a matter of how desperate the demons are, and how much damage they are willing to risk to themselves. In any case we need to double time to our objective. The last message from the e-Marines was very desperate. They are down to less than a hundred Marines, and they might be forced to detonate the nuke in the second compartment any time. It is critical for the long-term survival of the human race that we take the second compartment intact.”
“Understood and acknowledged colonel! Working out and conveying accelerated arrival vectors to all.” Maj. Rosie Jordan replied.
It took her suit computer just a few seconds to work out the new parameters that she fed. The new vectors would force the Marines to crash on to the surface of the Goliath ship at a speed of seventy kilometers per hour. The Marines of the Sapporo and the Hammer were not enhanced like the e-Marines. They didn’t have reinforced bones or artificial sinews grafted to their muscles. Despite the best efforts of their suit armor to dampen the crash, a few bones would be broken. The Marines would have pop pain killers and put up with it, there was nothing much that could be done about it. If the job required the risk of a few bones broken, so be it.
The new vectors were transmitted to the Marines, and almost immediately all their retro rockets stopped firing. The Marines hurtled towards the Goliath ship without slowing down any further, hurrying them towards their objective. Their retro rockets would open in the last few minutes to slow them down to the target speed.
“All Marines, be advised that USC Patagonia has opened up its ion plasma engines, no longer creeping towards us with just their reactionless drives. They are now visible to the demons. They will be dispatching Marines from just outside the perimeter. ETA for the Patagonia to reach the perimeter is two hours, and the travel time for the Marines from the perimeter to the objective is just over eleven hours. We will have reinforcements in thirteen hours from the time we land. Oo’rah!” Col. Lord’s voice boomed over the channel.
Rosie noticed a hint of forced enthusiasm in the colonel’s voice, no doubt to boost the morale of the Marines. Thirteen hours was a long time to hold on, especially given the difficulty the formidable e-Marines were having holding their own against the demons.
“Bogeys launched from the demon ship!” It was a warning from another of the Marines monitoring their objective.
“Those must be missiles launched towards the Patagonia, now that it has made itself visible to the demons.” Col. Lord guessed.
“No sir, the profile of these bogeys is different! These are bigger, and they are headed towards us!” The voice over the channel replied betraying more than a hint of panic.
Rosie’s tactical screen on her faceplate counted twelve bogeys that had emerged from the Goliath ship. As had been observed, the bogeys were heading straight on an intercept course with the Marines, and would be upon them in less than thirty seconds. It took another fifteen seconds before the bogeys were close enough for the computers on their suits to be able to resolve the bogeys into any distinguishable form.
Rosie was in no doubt about what these bogeys were. These were fighter ships! They were snub nosed cigar shaped things five meters in diameter and about eighteen meters in length tapering off at the rear – about the size of a large trailer truck. They had the same propulsion engine as the demon missiles, only larger. As far as the instruments could make out, there were no glass bubbles for some demon to stick their head out. It wasn’t expected either. The fighter was enclosed completely in metal.
“Evasive tumble. Expect lasers and antimatter till we know better. Vent gas intermittently. Third platoon, lock a few DU rounds on the closest bogey to sound it out.” Rosie rattled off commands at her Marines as the adrenaline kicked in, and she got into her professional mode as a badass Marine. She forced herself to follow the same commands that she had given to her Marines. Her suit’s retro rockets kicked into a routine, that never failed to give her a sense of mild nausea even after so many years of practice.
She went into a tumble such that an enemy would never be presented with a predictable profile for them to target. In addition, the retro rockets fired at random intervals and in random directions such that it was hard to predict the Marine’s exact location at any given point in time. While this part of a Marine’s routine had been tried and tested maneuver during countless Shaitan boarding operations, the next part of the maneuver was completely new, developed specifically for a terrifying weapon that Rosie didn’t understand, but had seen its devastating power.
The Marine’s oxygen tanks had been filled with oxygen that contained a high amount of ozone gas. It was easy to fabricate in the engineering section of any ship, and harmless to humans to breath. Ozone (O3) easily decayed into normal oxygen (O2) over time. The natural process of decaying from ozone to oxygen left these gasses with charged ions that famously helped protect Earth’s atmosphere by their proclivity to absorb harmful radiations. Thin wisps of gas were deliberately vented from the Marine’s gas tanks, shrouding the Marines in a sparse and temporary cloud of gas.
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The demons hadn’t used lasers as a weapon for such a long time that it didn’t form part of their arsenal any longer. Most of their enemies that were worth fighting were way past the technological curve to be affected by short burst of high powered lasers. In any case, antimatter beams were such an effective and devastating weapon, that nothing else was required.
The first demon fighter on the scene opened a faint stream of antielectrons, deeming it more than adequate to destroy such a soft target, as well as mindful of the fact that antimatter needed to be conserved. Their antimatter production inside their Mothership had been shut down, and the fighters’ antimatter store wasn’t going to be replenished in a hurry.
The demon inside the fighter was surprised to find that the antimatter beam had no effect on the human hunter floating through space in its flimsy space suit! An analysis query to the computer revealed the reason for the ineffectiveness. The human hunter was surrounded by a thin cloud of ionized gas! These humans had anticipated the Bodar’s weapons and devised such a simple yet such an effective foil for the same! These humans may be a prey species, but they were really worthy of respect. They made such good use of their primitive technologies! Surely this must be one of the best hunter species that the Bodars had ever met!
Unfortunately for the human, his primitive foil worked only to an extent. Crank up the power of the beam, and it would still get through the thin ionized gas cloud. That is exactly what the demon did. The Marine literally winked out of existence!
Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5) Page 37