“Antimatter beams! Pvt. Pishevar Cyrez is gone!” The cry came from a Marine close in formation to the unfortunate Marine.
“Switch on infrared! The gas cloud around you glows before the antimatter gets through. You will be able to see if you or one of your buddies is being targeted. Stop your tumble, they aren’t using lasers anyway. Just keep your jinking motion going, make it hard for the bastards to target you. If possible point the top of your shoulder or your head towards those demon fighters. The gas vent is built into your collar near your helmet attachment. Pointing it towards the fighters might thicken the ozone cloud in that direction, giving you a better chance.” It was one of the Engineers shouting over the general channel.
“DU rounds completely ineffective against those fighters Major.” Another of the Marines reported something that Rosie had noticed herself on her screen. The fighters hadn’t even bothered to try and evade or shoot down the depleted uranium shoulder launched missiles that the Marines had launched at them. The rounds, which were good enough to punch through human tanks, and even more easily through human space ships didn’t even scratch the surface of the demon fighters.
There was nothing more that could be done, but try their best and evade. The Marines only had a few more kilometers to go. There would be losses, Rosie knew, but as of now cruel as it may sound, but Rosie didn’t find those losses alarming for the overall mission. She had much more sympathy for the Marines of USC Patagonia, who would have to make an eleven-hour run through space. They would be picked off like flies! May be the captain of the Patagonia should rethink putting his Marines in the way of so much harm. She took Major Lord’s permission and then broadcast all the data the Marines had collected so far to the Patagonia.
By the time the Marines crashed into the Goliath ship and then made a hurried dash towards the breached open hatch of the Goliath ship, twenty-two of the Marines had been picked off by the twelve demon fighters. Initially it looked like a bad kill rate on part of the demon fighters, till one remembered that the fighters had confronted the Marines for only about five minutes. If given enough time, they would have been able to pick off most of the Marines.
Everything was going well of the demon fighters, when one of them committed a mistake as the last of the Marines was ducking inside the ship. It strayed too close to the Marine it was targeting in its enthusiasm for a kill, and in its urgency to prevent that Marine from ducking inside the ship. Unfortunately for the fighter, the Marine it targeted was a Mule. The Marine had noticed the glowing infrared halo around him. He knew he was being targeted. He had observed many of his buddies die in a similar manner, and he knew it was his turn, just seconds away. He thought-clicked his trigger, blowing up almost in the face of the demon fighter. The Marine also took two of his buddies along with him.
The unauthorized use of a nuke by an ill-disciplined Marine had a few unintended consequences. First, it proved that the demon fighters were not immune to a nuke, even a small back pack nuke. Second, it made the rest of the demon fighters wary and a lot more careful when trying to pick off Marines floating towards their Goliath ship. They would keep a healthy distance from the Marines in their next encounter, reducing their kill rate.
Third, it gave Capt. Hannibal Gorr a deterrent to shield his Marines during their long float towards the Goliath ship that he hadn’t considered seriously. The backpack nukes that the Marines carried were originally mounted on short range missiles, carried by USC vessels to be used on surface expeditions in their efforts to blow up entrenched Shaitan positions in their home worlds. These tactical nukes were never meant to be used in space against ships. The warheads of those tactical missiles had been modified as backpack nukes for this mission.
Hannibal ordered all the warheads to be put back into their tactical missiles. The missiles were too bulky to be carried by Marines on the surface, but in space a Marine could easily attach to it with a tether and float along with it.
–XXX–
The Marines of USC Patagonia were surprised in a happy way for sure. They had been floating towards the Goliath ship for over ten hours, and had held their breath all the way in anticipation of the dreaded moment when the Goliath ship would launch its fighters to pick them off with those terrifying antimatter beams. They still had just under two hours to go exposed to open space like sitting ducks, so they were not out of the woods yet, but surviving every moment felt like a gift.
Various theories were floating around about the non-appearance of the fighters. May be the fighters didn’t have the range to stray too far from their mother ship. May be the fighters had been scared off by the use of the nuke, and the resultant loss of one of the fighters. As human analysts would learn later, it was neither. The fighters were simply conserving their antimatter fuel used both for propulsion as well as a weapon by not moving too far from their mother ship.
The demons understood physics of space dynamics just as well as the humans, and they knew that at a certain range, the Marines would have to fire their retro jet thrusters to slow down. As they slowed down, the Marines became more vulnerable as it became easier to target them with antimatter beams.
Almost as soon as the Marines of USC Patagonia fired their retro rockets to slow down, the demon fighters emerged from the Goliath ship rushing to intercept the Marines as far away from their mother ship as possible, which also gave them more time to pick off floating Marines. Compared to the previous two contingents of Marines that boarded the Goliath ship, the contingent from USC Patagonia was small – only two hundred. That was all the Marines who had sailed on the Patagonia a decade ago. The Patagonia hadn’t manned itself for war when it had sailed, its crew had many more scientists, engineers and even artists and maintenance crew compared to Marines.
Still, what the Marine contingent of USC Patagonia lacked in numbers, it made up in terms of the timing and hence the morale booster it would provide to the Marines already inside the Goliath ship, fighting for their lives. Steady reinforcements, however small is always a morale booster. That morale booster could only be achieved if most of the Marines could reach their comrades on the Goliath ship alive. To be able to do that, the two hundred Marines of USC Patagonia would have to run the gauntlet through the demon fighters for nearly an hour, slowing down all the way and making it easier to target them all the time. The fighters had shot down twenty-two of the Marines from the Sapporo and the Hammer in five minutes, one hour would be an eternity. The prospects didn’t look too bright for the Marines of USC Patagonia.
There was one thing that the Marines had going for them – a surprise weapon! It came into play in the first minute of the battle and set the tone of the battle. No one had failed to notice that the demons had dispatched twelve fighters again. They had replaced the one fighter lost by the nuke detonation with a new one. This meant that the demons had fighters in reserve. How many was anyone’s guess. Such a goliath mothership could possibly hold hundreds such fighters inside its hold. Why then send only twelve of them? Why not dispatch a hundred and ensure that none of the Marines reached their mothership?
Humans would learn the reason after a few years. It was standard operating procedure to keep a squadron of fighters charged with antimatter and hence battle ready at all times irrespective of the alert level on the Goliath demon ship. A squadron of demon fighters consisted of twelve fighters. More fighters could be charged with antimatter and kept battle ready on the orders of the Lord of the Hunt or the Master of the Watch depending on whether the Goliath ship was in battle mode and the perceived level of threat.
In this case, the Master of the Watch hadn’t bothered to order more fighters to be in a state of battle readiness before the sabotage of their antimatter generator. The Master of the Watch hadn’t anticipated that the fighters would need to be used for battle. As a result, only twelve fighters had been available to confront the boarding Marines, when it was finally decided by the returning Lord of the Hunt to use fighters. The replacement fighter had to be fueled out of antimatte
r kept in storage batteries as a buffer for the ships’ operations.
From their previous encounter with the Marines of the Sapporo and the Hammer, the demons had settled on an optimum distance to a Marine before firing their antimatter beam safely, without being stupid as one of the fighters had been in getting too close to the Marines. The twelve demon fighters reached that optimum distance and immediately got down to the business of firing their antimatter beams at their chosen targets.
That optimum distance of less than two kilometers may have been far enough to avoid any damage that can be caused by a Marine detonating his backpack nuke, but it was striking distance for the nuclear missiles. Even though the demon fighter had faster acceleration capability than the nuclear missiles, all the nukes needed was a few seconds of head start on the demon fighters before the demons switched on their ignition to take evasive action. That head start would ensure that the missiles got close enough to the demon fighters to cause damage even with their puny six kiloton blast yield.
The Marines had ten battlefield nukes with them. That was all that USC Patagonia had carried in its arsenal. Ten battlefield nukes were the standard complement carried by USC ships. Only if mission specific plans required more, did a USC ship carry more of those battlefield nukes. All the ten missiles were launched at the same time, just as the demon fighters had matched speed with the Marines and had started their own attack. This was going to be a one-shot surprise opportunity to get so close to the demon fighters. Once the first nuclear missile detonated, the demons weren’t going to get so close to the Marines after that.
Not all the demon fighters were caught by surprise. Three of the fighters lit up their thrusters almost immediately to take evasive action. Whether it was the attentiveness and skill of those demon pilots to have identified danger so quickly was not known, but those three fighters were able to move out of the danger zone almost immediately, forcing those missile operators to cut thrust and let those three missiles float along with them. There was no point trying to chase the fighters, the missiles would never be able to catch them. At least by conserving their fuel, the missiles could be kept in play and act as a future deterrent for the fighter coming too close to the Marines. One of the demon fighters was quick enough out of the block that the chasing missile, even though it detonated at the closest point of approach that it could get to the fighter, was unable to harm it in any way.
The other six nuclear missiles launched by the Marines were a different story. The AI on those fighters were slow to recognize the fact that these were bigger missiles with a different engine thrust profile than the hand-held RPGs and shaped charges that had been launched by the Marines of Sapporo and the Hammer. In addition, the demon pilots took seconds to act on the delayed realization and warning of the AI.
None of those six fighters could move out of the way in time to avoid total or partial destruction. One fighter actually let the targeting missile strike its’ hull the same way they had let the RPGs strike them. Big mistake. Only one of those six demon fighters limped back home to its mother ship. The other floated as wrecks, which in itself was a testament to the hardiness of those fighters. Even the best armored USC battle ship or destroyer would have sustained more damage and would have been a bigger wreck from a nuclear explosion this close to their hull.
The six surviving demon fighters were clearly shell shocked. They had retreated to a safe distance from where they could easily outrun any missiles launched at them. Even though the fighters could target the Marines from that distance with antimatter beams, albeit with less accuracy and more expenditure of their increasingly precious antimatter, they fighters didn’t fire for over five minutes. Either the remaining fighters were waiting for instructions from their mothership, or they were simply collecting their wits.
When they resumed firing though, they went about their business with a vengeance. It was as if they no longer cared about conserving their antimatter. The beams were stronger than before, partly to offset for the fact that they were firing from a longer distance where it would be harder to keep the beam focused on the tiny profile of a Marine for a longer duration. The Marines couldn’t but help suspect that part of the reason was pure vengeance. Despite their best effort at shielding and evasive actions, the Marines started dropping like flies.
Within twenty minutes of the start of this renewed savage attack, the Marines had lost more than half of their comrades and were down less than a hundred. Almost half an hour remained before the Marines would reach the Goliath ship, and the grim reality stared at them that by that time each and every one of them would be wiped out. Just as the Marines of USC Patagonia had given up all hope, the savage attack stopped!
All six remaining fighters headed back to their mothership at a noticeably sedate speed. Analysts would later confirm what the commanders suspected then. The fighters had run out of antimatter! The humans now had a rough estimate on the amount of antimatter each fighter ship carried, and more importantly that amount was finite. Those fighters were not as omnipotent after all!
That initial euphoria would quickly be sobered down as the USC ships ran the numbers through their computers. If a single demon fighter was up against and entire human fleet of destroyers, it would have enough antimatter to destroy every ship in the human fleet and still be left with antimatter to spare. The only reason the six fighters had run out of antimatter was because they were using antimatter beams in strengths that were designed to kill ships and madly spraying it at tiny human figures from tens of kilometers distance. This caused them to waste 99.99% of the antimatter.
As the Marines floated the rest of their journey towards the Goliath ship, it was their turn to be shell shocked having lost over half their comrades even before the actual fighting on the enemy ship had started! The deaths of so many of the Marines wouldn’t go in vain.
The savage encounter convinced the Lord of the Hunt that it was too inefficient a method to try and stop the Marines using fighters. It wasted too much antimatter, which was no longer being produced at the core of the ship. The Lord of the hunt would have to be mindful of how the remaining antimatter is used till they could get rid of the human boarders and restart the production. This enabled the subsequent USC ships’ Marines to approach the Goliath ship unchallenged and unmolested, potentially saving thousands of lives.
Chapter 17
One Last Hunt
This is the final report of the Hunting Shell – the ‘Ravenous’ from star system 8390. With this report, I fulfill my duty as the Lord of the Hunt on this mission. After this, I set off on my final hunt. I realize that this message would reach you only after about 70 rotations of our Home World. Unfortunately, that is the best that can be done at this moment. The instantaneous Ether communication system has either been damaged or destroyed by the prey species. I do not believe that these primitive indigenous species have the knowledge to actively switch off power to such a sophisticated system. They have randomly blown off parts of our great Hunting Shell, and gotten lucky in taking out the Ether communication system.
As a result, the message of this disaster – the destruction of the Ravenous, will travel at light speed and only reach you after 70 rotations. You would take a slightly longer time to send a response back to tame these wild animals. The prey species, which as I had mentioned in my previous report calls themselves Humans calculates its time interval both by the rotation of their home world as well as the revolution of their home world around their star! One rotation of this planet around its axis that these indigenous species calls Earth is termed as a ‘Day’.
One revolution of this planet Earth around their star is called a ‘Year’. I know that this sounds weird having two different units of measure of time, which do not have any direct correlation to each other. In fact, it gets weirder. This species has shorter measures of time called ‘Hour’, ‘Minute’ and ‘Seconds’, which are not even based on their normal Base10 counting system. Then again, this indigenous species is not a very logical spe
cies, and is weird in many respects.
This planet Earth takes about three of our rotations to complete a revolution around its star, so very roughly, a human ‘Year’ is the equivalent of three of our rotations. So, by the time you get this message, over twenty-three of their human years would have passed. The technical details of the astronomy and the cultural details of this planet are being dumped via the light speed link even as I speak. Very soon this glorious Hunting Shell – Ravenous shall no longer exist, and I want all the information that we have learnt so far to reach you before that.
Borrowing a human parlance that I learnt recently on this planet, this day began well enough that I had no inkling how badly it would end. I had gone hunting with a small group deep into the oceans. The oceans on this planet have some semi-intelligent species and some deadly predators which are fun to hunt. These ocean-based creatures may not be as fun to hunt as the land based humans, but some of animals which the natives call Dolphins are reasonably intelligent and fast predators which test our physical prowess underwater. There are other amazing game animals in the oceans like the gigantic blue whales, which are almost as large as the Bothol in our own oceans. There are fast and cold-blooded predators called Sharks that are not only intelligent, but are a perfect killing machine. Some sharks have enough bite force to puncture even our hardened carapaces.
All in all, I was having a great time hunting in this un-spoilt underwater wilderness untouched by the humans, who have hunted most of the big game on land to extinction. We had descended to a depth where the light was comfortable and near the levels of light in the shallows of our waters. As you are aware, the star is extremely bright on this planet, and the waters are bright here to a greater depth than our world. It is possible to hunt by sight to a far greater depth on this planet. The best part of hunting under water is that the lower gravity of this planet ensures that the oceans cannot generate too much pressure. We can hunt without protective shells to far greater depths in this planet’s oceans. If we were to deflate our body’s internal air sacs to hunt, we could almost go down to the ocean floors on this planet. Of course, we would not be able to stay too long in that state.
Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5) Page 38