Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (11 page)

Some of the materials we realized we humans would have figured out by ourselves in a few decades and others within a century. So far whatever we have managed to study and understand, we have realized, have all been materials and manufacturing techniques that are not fundamentally any different from what we humans understand.

They are more advanced simply because a lot of permutations and combinations have been tried over I guess a longer period of time. So to that extent the Shaitan materials and manufacturing technology has been able to compress decades or a century of trial and error research for us by pointing us in the right direction.

The good news is that we have been able to replicate both fullerene based carbon nanotubes as well as nuclear reactor composites in our labs using techniques we learnt from the Shaitan replicator. I must warn you that the Shaitan replicators we studied were not designed for the purpose of making a nuclear reactor or a quantum computer. They were designed as general purpose replicators.

It is possible, even likely that the Shaitans manufactured the nuclear reactor and the quantum computer with specialized manufacturing machinery that we have not seen. We have assumed that those machines used similar manufacturing techniques and philosophies as the general purpose Shaitan replicators we have seen.

The Shaitan replicator itself uses fairly conventional materials and metals, which we understand reasonably well. It would have been a chicken and egg situation if the replication techniques itself required advanced materials required to be made by a replicator. So we have been able to fashion a crude machine of our own that mimics the Shaitan replicator techniques.

I am glad to announce that just yesterday we were able to create a cube made of carbon nanotubes that is two centimeters on its sides. It may not sound impressive, but it is millions of times greater in mass than anything that we have created before.

I believe that at the pace at which we are progressing right now, we would be able to manufacture the materials required for a workable quantum computer within a year. The materials required for the fusion reactor are a trickier, but there is nothing theoretically stopping us. It would probably take a few years more of research.

Now I come to the part which requires the particular attention of our government sponsors. As I mentioned, there is nothing stopping us from manufacturing many things like the quantum computer with what we know already. Nothing that is except money, and I am talking about obscene amount of money if we want to do this fast.

We need to research and develop manufacturing machines. Machines which can take the techniques we have learnt in the lab and manufacture on larger scales, so that we can make the things like the quantum computer, and better space ships. I can assure you that we will more than recover the money, when we license the technology to the industry around the world.

Imagine what Wall Street would pay to get that extra edge in trading which would help them make trillions of dollars due to quantum computers. Imagine what the power companies would pay you, when you can give them the ultimate dream of cheap and unlimited fusion power. We need the money now, however. The payback will come much later perhaps a decade from now.

I have put an initial estimates of the budget in the docket for all of you. I urge you to not weigh the survival of humanity in mere budgetary estimates. I can assure you that there is not a dollar in the budget that we have asked for that we really don’t need. With that I would like to answer any questions that you may have.” Mr. Gupta finished.

There were many questions, mostly from bean counters. The military and the scientific community tried to respond as best as they could. By the time they all proceeded for dinner, they hoped that the fate of humanity would not be cut short by the pen of an accountant.

Chapter 7

Overdue

USC Orbital HQ, Earth Orbit

May 2078

The last invasion by the Shaitans had arrived like clockwork as far as humans could calculate. It had been launched immediately after the destruction of their previous scout ship. If the Shaitans follow the same pattern, then the next invasion was overdue.

Humans should have detected the deceleration burn of a Shaitan vessel coming from the direction of their home planet by now, as it begun its nearly 5 years of slow down to enter the Solar system. That had not happened however. It worried Admiral Daniel Cloutier.

It was possible that the Shaitans have had a change of heart and decided to leave the humans alone. Daniel and most humans didn’t think that was likely though. It just meant that the Shaitans were going to adopt some new tactic this time, and it was primarily Daniel’s responsibility to detect and counter this new tactic.

As a newly promoted Admiral and recently appointed chief of the fledgling USC. The burden of defense of Earth and the solar system was squarely on Daniel’s shoulders. He looked back in amusement at what his reaction would have been as a young US Air force pilot, if he would have been told that he would one day become an Admiral in the navy!

Granted that this is not a maritime navy. In fact the name Space Navy is colloquial, the official moniker for his organization is United Space Command (USC). It is not even a US armed forces unit, although it his heavily dominated by the US and a few of the spacefaring nations.

The USC was the arm, which had brought back some semblance of relevance to the otherwise moribund and dysfunctional United Nations (UN). In the past century, the UN had become less and less relevant to international theater as nations ignored it and went ahead with whatever they wanted to do.

The UN had been reduced to a large charity organization and a nodal agency for the few non-controversial activities that most humans could agree upon, like education, health etc. for the poor. Even the task of peacekeeper, which was one arm of enforcement that the UN had was rarely used now. Therein lay the problem with the UN, it was all talk and no action, so nations simply ignored it.

The fundamental problem with the UN had been that it had been built on idealistic principles which do not bear reflection to reality on the ground. It was built on the principles of one nation one vote, similar to a modern democracy. It took no account of the relative power of a nation or the stability of a nation that was voting. It was ridiculous to expect that in real life the US or China had the same say in matter around the world as a tottering small nation run by some military dictator in Africa.

The UN was however the largest multilateral agency that the world had, with infrastructure and over a century of experience in handling such matters. So the USC was formed under the auspices of the UN, but modelled on the only part of the UN that had any political relevance – the UN Security Council. That was because it took into account that some nations are more equal than others and thus should have more of a say, as long as they don’t crush over the interests of the smaller nations.

The USC was an independent arm of the UN, not under the UN Security council, but modelled like it. In the case of USC, it was the spacefaring capabilities of nations and their contribution to the USC fleet and forces that was the determinant to the share of voice each nation had in the USC, not the perceived military might of a nation.

It was a reflection of times when the USC was set up vis-à-vis the UN Security council more than a century ago, that the voting in the USC council was digital, with each member having fractional weightage depending on the last budget contribution and their overall historical contribution to the budget of USC. This complex formula was managed and maintained by computers.

This meant that the USC was not limited to 6 permanent members and 9 rotating members like the simplistic analog world in which the UN Security Council had been set up. All nations were permanent members in the council, but the weightage of their votes varied. The smallest nation ended up having 0.001% of the vote share rendering them almost voiceless unless they allied with more powerful nations. The largest nation, the US in this case ended up with almost 20.03% of the vote according to its current contribution to the budget.

As could be expected in any human system, there was intense politics where various blocks tried to jockey for influence and a say in the functioning of the USC. These politics was however on minor bickering like allocation of budget or recognition of revenue. There were no severe stress within the organization even amongst the so called US bloc and the Chinese bloc when it came to major issues, and that was because the humans had one overriding unity of purpose – its own survival.

That is what made the USC one of the smoothest functioning multilateral agency in the world. It needed to be a smooth functioning organization, for it was not a civilian agency that could accommodate a lot of dissent. It was a military organization and needed to operate on a strict chain of command. The only debates were in the USC council, which acted as the commander in chief of the USC. Once the directives were issued to the Admiral of the fleets, it was completely in the domain of the military organization of the USC to execute it.

That didn’t mean that the USC didn’t have to live with compromises made by politicians. There were many major and minor clauses in the USC charter, which made life difficult and complicated for the military brass of the USC. The minor irritants were mostly caused due to composition and nationality of fighting units especially larger units like a brigade, or the composition of crew of certain ships.

The USC brass tried to solve those problems mostly by trying to keep nationalities together as much as possible, so as to make a more cohesive fighting unit, but it was not always possible to have such neat separation. The other challenge they faced was in standardization of equipment and interchangeability of parts.

Many of the issues had been solved by the brass especially with the arms and suits carried by the USC-GCF, popularly known as the space marines. The standardization of fighting ships was an altogether different matter. The Chinese made their ships to a completely different set of specifications compared to the US, and the ESA-ISRO-JAXA combine had a third set of specifications altogether.

There was one logistical issue faced by the USC though, that was deeper and philosophical in nature, harking back to the days of the Roman Empire and Julius Caesar. The charter of the USC clearly stated that independent USC had operational command over all military resources only from the orbit of Mars and beyond.

Any ship that came closer to earth than the orbit of Mars or the orbit of Venus in the inner part of the Solar system, would technically revert back to the operational control of the respective nation that the ship originated from. This was obviously impractical, and for all intents and purposes the ships remained under the control of the USC all through. However there was a deep seated fear that was addressed with this restriction.

The Roman Senate had mandated that any Roman army that crossed the river Rubicon had to disarm before doing so. The river Rubicon was considered the border of the nation of Rome proper in those days. The senate had mandated so, to prevent the possibility of a coup by a standing Roman army against the senate. Julius Caesar had confirmed those fears of the senate as justified, when he crossed the Rubicon with his Legions fully armed and took over power by force from the Senate.

When the politicians and the people of Earth had agreed to create a unified space force to fight the Shaitans, they had been wary of creating a monster, which might come to bite them back in the future. Thus the politicians had created a Rubicon, a line in the sand of their own in this space age. The line was the orbit of Mars.

In theory every commander of every ships reverted back to the military command structure of their individual countries the moment they came in any closer than Mars’ orbit. This was to ensure that no Admiral or General of USC could ever entertain the notion of world domination. How effective that would prove, only time could tell. It didn’t work out very well for the Roman Senate though.

The practical problem that USC faced was that almost all the command and control structures of the USC was on Earth, Earth orbit or on the Moon. The current level of space competence of the humans meant that their presence on Mars and beyond was still fledgling and tentative. The structures on Mars were still flimsy, and life was still precariously balanced for the few who lived there on a rotating basis.

There was no way that command and control structure of USC could be moved to Mars or beyond till humans mastered living in Mars or beyond far better than they had till this point. Daniel had made it one of his priorities to make a permanent USC base on Mars the moment he had taken over, and his first budget reflected that priority.

However it would take decades for such a shift to happen, assuming humans kept progressing at the current rate. In the meanwhile USC brass had to deal with the weird situation where they were commanding people and resources, who were technically not within their chain of command for most of the operations. That was because, most of the operations and exercises of the USC still happened close to Earth.

Daniel let go of those thoughts. He dismissed them as growing pains for an adolescent humanity’s space ventures. It would sort itself out in a few decades. His immediate problem was to anticipate the next move of the Shaitans.

Are they waiting to gather bigger reinforcements before attacking? Are they going to attack from a different direction? Do they plan to sneak in unpowered? These were the questions going through his mind.

The first option was definitely possible, but it left him no wiser. How long would the Shaitans wait to gather sufficient forces? A few years, a few decades, a few centuries? That didn’t help his planning at all. So he decided to leave that option alone.

USC in particular and humans in general were already preparing as fast as they can, there was nothing much for him to do on that account. The later they come, the more prepared humanity would be hopefully. He was a bit scared of the scenario where the Shaitans attacked after a few decades or a century. While Daniel may not be around at that time, but he knew human nature. Humans would start slacking off with vocal voices demanding money and resources be taken off space program.