They can activate their weapons just by thinking, just as we can. It is very likely that they would be able to activate their nuclear device before a missile of ours can destroy their position. Even if we managed to successfully blow up one such nuclear device, the humans had planted five such device on last count and there had been a detection of a sixth device having been brought in.
One of the devices had been planted right at the hatch of the core. We dare not use our antimatter missile out there and damage the very core we were trying to protect. We had to jump the nuclear devices planted in such a way as to take the humans guarding them by shock and surprise, and be able to do it so quickly that they didn’t get the time to detonate their device.
Our plan was to thin out the numbers of the humans till they were down to their last hundred. This number should be large enough for the human ‘mules’ to not panic and detonate their device, and yet small enough for a big group of Bodars to be placed close to each of the planted device. Once all the groups of Bodars were in place, we planned to use our directed shockwave hunting weapon, that we use on the largest of creatures like the Bothol. We planned to jump all the planted nuclear device positions simultaneously in a coordinated attack.
The shockwave weapon squishes and for small creatures like humans, liquifies their internal organs but does not kill the human instantly. Our hunters have tried the weapon on humans for sport and found that it instantly dazes and paralyzes them, but they take a few minutes to die. We hoped to quickly disable the nuclear device before their operator got a chance to trigger it.
It was a plan fraught with risks. The device could be triggered by someone further away who had not been stunned. We planned to simultaneous put out an EMP blast to jam remote signaling, but jamming could fail. It was also possible that the very act of stunning the ‘mule’ might trigger the dead-man’s-switch. Even with all those risks, it was the best and perhaps the only plan we had.
So, we went about in a calibrated manner of assault, where we would be able to kill and thin the humans down to their last hundred quickly enough before reinforcements could arrive, but not in such an alarming rate as to make the ‘mules’ pull their trigger. Unfortunately, the humans had a plan of their own. Theirs wasn’t as complicated. They planted their nuclear devices where it was hard or forbidden to fire antimatter weapons, made sure that those places were hard to access so that only a few of the Bodars could engage with the human fighters at any time. This made it hard to kill too many of them quickly because only a few Bodars were fighting only a few humans at any point of time. Their objective was to stay alive and bide their time, while preventing us access to the nuclear devices they had planted.
Just as we thought the number of human hunters had whittled down for the final assault, their numbers would be reinforced with newly arrived human fighting ships. I became a battle of attrition, where the human numbers would keep falling, only to be reinforced by newly arriving humans, while the Bodars continuously kept losing their own as well.
It was frustrating and tiring, but I hadn’t given up hope because our numbers were also being steadily replenished by shuttles arriving from the surface of the planet. It was one cycle or about eight human hours round trip from climbing the gravity well of the planet, and back to the surface. It took time but Bodars numbers were being replenished in quantum of about a hundred with each shuttle trip. I was assured that there was enough antimatter fuel in our battery stores to refuel shuttles for as many trips as was needed to get Bodars up from the surface.
The game really changed when the first of the human ships that had attacked had had time to turn back and come to a halt near Earth. The ships held themselves back, just beyond our missile and antimatter range. They had no intent to target the Ravenous, they had another target in mind.
Even though, these human ships were out of our weapon range, their missiles were well within the range of planet. They targeted their missiles at our shuttles climbing out of the gravity of the planet below. A shuttle is neither a swift craft, not is it very highly armored. The humans targeted the shuttles at its most vulnerable moment, inside the atmosphere of the planet just as it had started its climb. It is slow and lumbering as it fights the gravity of the planet and the air resistance of the atmosphere. It cannot make drastic change in its trajectory to evade, and the nuclear missiles when they detonate inside the atmosphere are devastating in their effect.
The first two shuttles stood no chance. The next shuttle managed to escape, only because it abandoned its climb and dived back to the surface, where it stands helpless to take off again. The humans had successfully cut off Bodar reinforcements, while theirs kept on coming despite our desperate attempts to shoot down as many of them with our daughter combat ships in a last-ditch effort despite running dangerously low on antimatter fuel for those fuel guzzling fighters.
Any way I looked at it, it was advantage humans. They have numbers and time on their side, while we only have one Ravenous, and now we are down to our last few hundred Bodars. Our only hope lay in somehow overpowering the humans in the next few of their hours without somehow provoking them to detonate their nuclear device. That would be a miracle. It just takes a thought click from their neural interface for them to trigger anything. If we could do that without harming the core engine, we would then quickly have to repair the cables of the core and bring life back to the Ravenous. If we could do that, then we can take Ravenous out of orbit and destroy even a thousand of those human ships.
Unfortunately, I calculate the chances of us being able to accomplish that is very slim. We are now fighting for our lives, and the humans can look forward towards an eventual victory. I have issued what may turn out to be my last command orders to the hunters of Ravenous. I have withdrawn restrictions on use of antimatter hand weapons. There is no point trying to save the core from a few antimatter punctures, when the humans are trying to destroy it with nuclear weapons.
I have instructed every Bodar on the Ravenous to move to the second compartment and fight like the name the humans have given us – demons. They know this may be the last fight of their lives, and whether we die in a nuclear blast or at the hands of a human hunter, we will die fighting like the hunters that we Bodars are. We will ensure a glorious fight to the end.
As the Lord of this Hunt, I will personally lead this one last hunt! Irrespective of the outcome, I am sure more of you will come and subdue this planet, so I have no regrets. My life was worth it because of all the things I have done before, and on this wonderful planet that I have discovered and hunted on. To you all back at Bodoni, the Ravenous hunted well and enjoyed every moment of the hunt till our deaths – remember us as such.
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Earth Orbit
2205
The Patagonia approached the Goliath ship gingerly. There was no external indication that the ship was dead – or alive for that matter. There were no external lights or any sign of damage on the exterior. It was a giant black oblate sphere that seemed to be floating against the background of a beautiful looking Earth.
The only reason that Capt. Hannibal Gorr could gauge the enormous size of the Goliath ship was because there were human ships orbiting it. Orbiting it! It seemed strange that one spaceship should be orbiting another spaceship! Such was the differential in scale between the two ships that USC Elon Musk, a destroyer class human ship, the second largest class of ships by size of the USC seemed like a tiny shuttlecraft moving around the Goliath ship, which looked more like a small asteroid than a spacecraft.
Hannibal had been in touch with the captains of both USC Elon Musk and USC Kigali. Those two ships had slipped into orbit of the Goliath ship less than half an hour prior to the arrival of USC Patagonia into the scene. The two destroyers by their continued existence around the Goliath ship had confirmed the Marine’s all clear transmission. There truly wasn’t any more danger emanating from the Goliath ship for any approaching human ship. The Marines were the heroes
of the day, they had achieved the seemingly impossible… conquered and captured the Goliath ship from the inside!
With that one masterstroke, they may have saved the Earth and humanity itself! It doesn’t get any heroic than that! Capt. Gorr was sure that every Marine in the campaign, both dead and alive would have paeans written to honor them in the folklore of humanity for a long time to come. Hannibal was also aware that in those folklore, there would be mention of the role of Patagonia and its crew. Their decade long sacrifices and endurance for hiding in the asteroid belt, providing crucial intelligence and coordination to make this campaign a success. There would be a lot of promotions and recognitions due, of that Hannibal was sure. Hopefully there would be plum post-retirement positions to be had for a USC captain like him.
Those thoughts however would have to wait. The campaign was far from over, there was still danger in space lurking that all of them had to be vigilant against. The space battle wasn’t over yet, and the ground battle to retake the Earth hadn’t even started! The lowest estimates of the number of demons on Earth were tens of thousands, while the higher end of that estimate put the figure at over a hundred thousand. No one knew how those demons would react to the news of their mother ship’s disablement and capture by the humans.
Would the demons on Earth mount a campaign to retake their ship, and if so how would they do it? Do the demons have an armada of shuttles parked on Earth, that they would use to mount a campaign to take back their mothership? Are there any more of those terrifying fighter crafts left waiting to ambush USC ships in space? If so, would the rag-tag armada of USC destroyers, frigates and troop carriers be able to stand up to that challenge? If the demons managed to take back their mothership intact, it would be pretty much game over for the rag-tag USC armada, as well as the end of any hope for all humanity on Earth and beyond.
That was the reason that both the remaining compartments of the Goliath ship still had live nukes on hair trigger deployed. If the USC ships lost any counteroffensive mounted by the demons in space, the Marines would make sure that even if the demons managed to win their mothership back, they would only be winning back a completely devastated mothership. Although a hastily drawn emergency evacuation procedure had been put into place, every person entering the Goliath ship knew that they were entering a ship that might be blown up from the inside with a nuke before they got a chance to evacuate it.
Despite those dangers, the science team of the Patagonia was eager and ready inside the shuttle waiting for the go ahead to get inside the Goliath ship! It wasn’t just their scientific curiosity or the chance to see such an amazing Goliath alien spacecraft that made them ignore the risk. Hannibal suspected that after over a decade cooped up inside the Patagonia, the crew would take any opportunity to get our somewhere, even with such risks.
Hannibal switched from visual cameras to schematics on his screen. In this view he could observe a stream of shuttles plying between the two destroyers and the Goliath ship. All the shuttles were making a beeline for one end of the ship – the end that the Marines had initially breached. That was the only entrance to the Goliath ship. The Marine engineers hadn’t been able to open any of the sealed hatches of the Goliath ship. In fact, they hadn’t been able to operate anything inside the ship.
In the schematics Hannibal could also see humans near the breach setting up equipment. Those tiny humans weren’t visible on the cameras, their scale invisible compared to the size of the Goliath ship. Those human engineers no doubt setting up transmission equipment to make it easier to transmit from within the ship to the outside. Transmission from inside the Goliath ship was impossible, with its twenty-meter-thick iron wall blocking all electromagnetic waves. The only way to transmit was through the relay being set up outside the breach by the engineers.
The operations were being set up in a hurry, as were the survey operations carried out by the engineers and the scientists. The objective was to survey and learn as much as possible about the Goliath ship, its technologies, strengths and weaknesses quickly, just in case the worst happened, and they had to destroy the ship from the inside. The two USC destroyers had already sent in a contingent of engineers as well as their science officer inside, but those ships were crewed primarily as fighting ships with very little science crew inside. Patagonia on the other hand had sailed in a different time with a much larger contingent of science personnel. It was for that reason that the Patagonia had hurried to the Goliath ship with their science contingent ready in the shuttle bay.
“Give the go-ahead to the shuttle.” Hannibal ordered his communications officer on the deck. The shuttle left almost immediately with an ETA of 15 minutes to reach the Goliath ship.
Sabina, like all other crew members onboard the shuttle was awestruck by the sheer size of the vessel on the insides once they had entered the third compartment devastated by the nuke. The compartment was still dark, but survey bots had mapped the entirety in three dimensions, and the structures were being projected on Sabina’s faceplate as if she was seeing them in the light. It was hard for her as had been for all humans who had entered the ship to visualize the insides of this ship as an enclosed space! It seemed like the open sky with building hanging upside down from the sky!
Sabina along with her crew were in for an even bigger surprise when they entered the second compartment through the central axis tube. The connecting tube between the two compartments was no longer radiation filled, and the scientists couldn’t have appreciated the dangers and the troubles that the Marines had to go through to breach that tube.
The second compartment was lit with light but extremely dim as if in twilight, but all its structures were intact. To the scientists it was beyond words. It was a scene from a science fiction book that humans had been imagining for centuries. A real generational spacecraft, where generations could be born, live and die on voyages of hundreds or even thousands of years!
The scientists didn’t get much time to gape around. Each one of them had a specific task to perform. Most of her colleagues were assigned to the surface to inspect buildings and machinery. Some were assigned to the first compartment, which had been breached and taken last. That compartment was still dangerous because large portions of it hadn’t yet been swept for demon stragglers. Those proceeding to the first compartment continued along the axis tube to the other end of the compartment to enter the first compartment through a similar tube as the one they had used to enter the second compartment. The tube was the only access that the Marines had managed to the first compartment.
The engineers had figured out the massive hatches connecting the compartments all along the surface of the tube, but those were firmly shut. There was no way to force the hatch, which was more of a plug that was as thick as the compartment walls made from solid iron. So, Sabina’s colleagues had to travel through the dizzying heights of the transparent tube to the other end of the compartment. For those who suffered from vertigo, it was beyond terrifying. Sabina however was almost upon her designated objective. At that moment she was the most qualified human in space to study the massive sphere that dominated this compartment.
The jagged edges at the point where the Marines had broken the central axis tube to gain access to one of the two hatches inside the sphere, were being smoothened and widened by a Marine as Sabina approached the breach. As had been guessed by the Marine engineers, the other hatch had been on the other side of the central axis tube, facing the opposite side. That other hatch had been left alone for the moment.
More lines had been tethered to the open hatch to enable multiple personnel to move in between the breach in the tube and the hatch, covering the fifteen-meter chasm. Magnetic anchors had also been added near the hatch to facilitate more people to hang around the hatch than the alien hand holds around the hatch allowed. Sabina had to wait at the breach for a grim task to be finished before she could get any closer to the sphere.
A Marine in a hardened radiation suit was wriggling out of the hatch, helped by other
Marines outside, who were pulling on tethers to help the Marine in the radiation suit wriggle out of the tight fit of the hatch. It was a real struggle as the Marine along with the radiation suit barely managed to fit inside the hatch. Once the Marine was out, he gently tugged at the tether that he had been dragging along with him. Slowly the body of human emerged from the hatch. Even from fifteen meters, Sabina could make out that it was a ghastly sight. The body had bled from every orifice and the soft white inners that a marine wore inside their suit was drenched with blood.
It was hard for Sabina to even look as the body was brought to the breach, even his eyes had bled profusely, and tears of blood were encrusted on his face! He was the last of the Marines to be removed from inside the sphere. He was an Asian man, but Sabina didn’t know if it was Lt. Rohit Sharma or Pvt. Songathorn. It didn’t matter, he was one of the brave Marines who had willingly walked to his death to give humanity even the slightest hope of survival, when the outcome of what they were sacrificing their lives was not guaranteed. They were willing to sacrifice themselves to provide the remotest of hope to humans, and no gesture could respect that sacrifice enough.
Sabina had never cared about military or military gestures all her life. She was as much of an irreverent scientist as one could get. Yet without even thinking or knowing what she was doing, she straightened herself and stood still with a salute as clumsily as she could manage in the near zero G of the tube. The Marines around her were taken by surprise, and post haste snapped into their own salute positions as the body entered the breach.
When the body of the Marine had moved on to the next compartment, the escorting Marines gestured to Sabina that she could move on. Sabina wasn’t ready, she just stood there frozen. One of the Marine looked at her, tears were brimming all around her eyes. In the zero G, they didn’t run down her cheeks, instead they simply gathered all around her eyes almost forming a blob of liquid over her eyes. Sabina had never seen a person die in combat before. It was a shock that took some time for her to recover. Reluctantly she followed the Marines along the tether over the fifteen-meter chasm. Sabina wasn’t particularly fearful of heights, but the journey was still terrifying.
Game Reserve: Earth (Shaitan Wars Book 5) Page 41