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

While it was a moon of a gas giant orbiting the sun, it was worthy of being called a planet in its own right. It had in fact been a planet at the beginning of its life, but around another star. It was older than even Shaitan gas giant at nearly 7.5 billion years. It had also started life around a sun of similar size as the original parent star of Shaitan gas giant.

It had wandered similarly in space, but had been captured by the gravity of the sun directly and before the arrival of Shaitan gas giant. Orbital dynamics and cosmic coincidence had brought the moon close to the gas giant Shaitan in the Oort cloud, and the larger gravity of Shaitan had captured the moon in its own orbit.

That was the reason that this moon was orbiting in the opposite direction to all other moons of Shaitan. It was also the reason that the moon did not have a circular orbit like the other moons. Being a captured object, as is normal with most captured objects, it had an elongated eccentric orbit around the gas giant Shaitan. This elongated orbit had a marvelous consequence.

The moon would be scrunched slightly in an egg like shape due to the pull of gravity of planet Shaitan whenever the moon approached the closest point of its orbit (perigee). This is very similar to the tides that the oceans on Earth experience due to the pull of our Moon. These tides however changes the shape of the planet itself. It was very small, and would not be very obvious to someone standing on the surface of the moon, but it did exist nonetheless.

When the moon moved back to the furthest point in its orbit (apogee), the grip of the gravity of Shaitan on the moon would reduce and it would move back to its normal spherical shape. This constant deformation and restitution of the planet’s shape had a similar effect as when a rubber ball is regularly squeezed. The energy of the squeeze gets transformed into heat.

The moon had been a rocky planet originally, with a hot core. Over the period of 7.5 billion years, it had however lost most of its heat. Being a planet smaller than earth, it had lost its heat a lost faster than Earth. Now the moon was heated up again, but the profile and distribution of heat inside the planet was different this time.

The core was still the hottest part of the planet, but instead of being at 10,000°C as it had started at its birth, it was closer to a 1000°C now. It was very different in this reheating of the moon however for the thin top most layer closest to the surface. The thin 4 Km crust of the moon was heated almost uniformly between 40°C at the deepest and 10°C at the shallowest just under the surface of the moon.

This had happened because, unlike earlier when all the heat inside originated from the core, this time the entire mass of the moon was generating heat due to the friction of constant kneading that it was going through. This spread the heat much more uniformly and the gradient of heat between the core and the surface was not so steep.

The surface of the planet had also gone through a transformation. During its lonely journey through the dark void of interstellar space, its surface had been frozen completely and utterly. It received no heat from any sun, or even the slight heat that comes from the radiation of a gas giant. The surface had been frozen at a bone chilling temperature of -260°C.

The only reason that the temperature had not plummeted further was because the core still had some residual heat left in it. The surface had been airless for all intents and purposes. The original planet had an atmosphere, but when the planet ejected out of its host star and froze, heavier gasses which could be retained by the gravity froze and settled on the surface, and the lighter gasses which did not freeze were slowly lost to space.

Now there was a metamorphosis on the surface. This had been a rocky planet with some water and a lot of organics on the surface. If anyone could touch the rocks on the surface now, it would measure about 10°C. This meant that the ice that touched the surface melted slowly, any organics like liquid methane sizzled and evaporated into gas.

The surface however was open to space, so it was almost as cold as space. Thus the liquid water would freeze as it came into contact with the upper layers of ice, and the sizzling methane chimneys that had started spouting at various holes, would condense and rain back into the atmosphere as methane rain.

Over a few million years as the temperature of the planet and the surface stabilized, the atmosphere grew thick and rich in nitrogen released from the frozen surface and the rocks, and methane with smatterings of propane and other organic gases. A human scientist could not have helped but notice the similarity of the atmosphere with that of Saturn’s moon Titan.

The crust of the moon, just below the surface was also going through a transformation. The constant deformation of the planet had cracked and reformed the crust in all possible manner, until it had become a honeycomb like structure with almost infinite mazes and tunnels just below the surface running deep almost 4 Km and all across the surface of the moon.

The honeycombed tunnels were the equilibrium that nature had devised to take the constant stress and strain that the surface faced. Tunnels would crush, stretch, flex and deform to take the stress without having to break the crust constantly. Within these tunnels flowed many streams of liquid water. Some that seeped from the surface, while some gushed out of superheated geysers deep below at the lower levels of the crust.

Then the most beautiful of all events in the universe happened. Life began in the tunnels of the moon inside the pools of stagnant water that inevitably formed from the boiling geysers. As anywhere else in the universe, life starts if given even half a chance. This was not however the Shaitan tree of life. That is another story altogether.

These were single celled microbes which are the most common form of life in the universe. They got their energy from the hot springs, ate the chemicals in the rocks and released oxygen as waste product. When these microorganisms had released enough oxygen into the tunnels, it started leaking out into the surface slowly changing the composition of the atmosphere with the presence of oxygen.

In most places in the universe where life starts, it rarely grows beyond the microorganism stage. Many places do have multi celled organisms, but they would still be very small visible only through microscopes. The number of places where life gets bigger gets fewer and rarer as the body size of the organisms increases.

There is a perfectly logical Darwinian reason for this. Larger bodies, higher up in the pyramid and food chain of life, require greater and greater population of organisms lower in the food chain to support them. The evolutionary niches get smaller and smaller as the body size gets bigger and bigger.

You need an incredibly rich and large ecosystem to support the body size of a dinosaur or a whale. Earth is one of those few lucky enough places to have such a large ecosystem available. Majority of life in the universe takes hold in moons. Life starting on planets is rare. On these moons the conditions of life are usually marginal, where life clings on precariously. Thus it is rare to find a large and rich ecosystem like Earth. Most life limits itself to microorganisms that can be sustained by the environment.

This is the condition the Shaitans found, when they arrived on the moon. A moon with warm burrows, streams of flowing water and an atmosphere with reasonable levels of oxygen. They made it their home and have lived there ever since. This is a young colony by the standards of the Shaitan people, the newest and youngest in fact.

It is also the furthest colony from their origin world. Being a relatively new colony, the level of infrastructure of this Shaitan world was rudimentary. Shaitan economy does not run the same way as humans, but they do have the equivalent of an economy. The economy of this Shaitan world is stable but small by the standards of some of their major colonies or their origin world.

That was the reason the Shaitans had come the first time in such an unprepared state. When the Shaitans had discovered the existence of humans, there had been no serviceable migration vessel available to them. The small Shaitan economy could not support the building and upkeep of a migration vessel without any immediate need for one. War ship was something they could only dream about at that time.

Even the sole orbital ship construction facility was in disrepair, incapable of building large vessels. The only vessel available to them had been a tiny research vessel, which had been repurposed as a scout vessel. The situation was not to stay that way for long.

Chapter 2

Ménage à trois

Titan

June 2061

The two friends sat on opposite sides of the passage on the floor, with their backs resting on the rough wall. Both of them had their legs stretched and a coffee mug in their hands. They were not even looking at each other. They were looking down, tired, despondent and defeated.

Mischa just handed them the mugs and quietly moved away. It was best to leave the men alone when they were in this mood, she knew from 20 years of experience. She knew them too well. They were big boys, they can handle themselves.

She had confidence in the brilliance of the two men, they would figure things out eventually. Mischa knew that the men had hit too many dead ends. They had tried everything they could think of, and it had not worked. They were simply out of ideas.

Mischa had tried helping the two men with whatever ideas she could think of about the Shaitan psychology. It had helped a bit here and there in getting minor breakthroughs, but not enough to bring any significant progress. All they had achieved was to rule out a lot of possibilities, but no major breakthroughs.

Significant progress of her own work depended on the success of Ramesh’s work. To that extent she had a vested interest in his progress. So against her better judgment, she turned back and decided to nudge and speak words of encouragement to her husband and his best friend, despite their foul mood.

In her experience of nearly two decades of marriage, her best intentions of comforting her husband when he was in such a foul mood did not usually end well. More often than not they ended up fighting over some silly stupid thing, all because he was in a foul mood.

She went and sat next to her husband, but did not try to get too cozy. She knew that right now it would only irritate him. Ramesh looked up a bit and gave her a half smile to acknowledge her, before looking down again. Jorge had not looked up or given any signs of acknowledgement.

“I hope you boys remember that I am a trained psychologist. I mean not just an alien shrink, but certified to get into a human head.” Mischa said to no one in particular.

Ramesh looked up and gave another half-hearted smile. Jorge raised his arm and put it across Mischa and drew her closer. That was always a good sign. Then after taking a sip of his coffee he said. “I would like to see your license Doctor, before I let you inside my head.”

Mischa leaned into Jorge’s ear and said softly. “I don’t need to see your license to let you inside me Doctor.” She then gave a soft and discrete but suggestive kiss on his ear.

That perked up Jorge like no amount of caffeine could. Sex always worked in getting the attention of a man. God had cursed the human male by linking their brains to their penis. They were too easily manipulated. At a neurochemical level, she knew what was going on in his brain right now.

His brain was releasing some amount of the neurotransmitter dopamine, responsible for both motivation and sexual arousal. The anticipation of sexual gratification was automatically releasing some amount of neuro-inhibitor endorphins responsible for blocking pains and lifting the brain from a state of depression.

Jorge looked at her and gave her a smile and a wink. Men are so predictable! She had done her shrink thing and gotten Jorge out of his blues. She had cheated a bit though and probably broken her Hippocratic Oath, but it was a grey area as far as husbands were concerned she guessed. Now though she had to get back to business, pleasure can wait.

“For the record I am no longer speaking as a shrink, but simply as Mischa. My dad used to bring this huge jigsaw puzzle every Christmas for me and my sister to solve. When we would get stuck at any particular piece, struggling for a long time to figure out where it fit, my dad used to tell me and my sister to simply leave it alone and move to another piece.

That way, he would say, we can come back to the piece later with a fresh mind and figure it out faster. It would also become easier as some more pieces would have fallen into place by then. But I and my sister would be too obsessed with the pieces we were holding. We could not let them go, so we didn’t listen to our dad. Instead we found another trick which helped us solve that particular piece first.

We simply exchanged the piece we were holding. We found that most of the time both of us were able to solve the piece the other was holding and struggling with. It is amazing when a fresh new perspective is shone on a problem. So why don’t you boys try swapping pieces?” Mischa said trying to drum up some enthusiasm.

Ramesh looked at her incredulously and said. “Let me get this straight. You want me a computer scientist to crack how an advanced alien nuclear fusion reactor works. The same reactor which one Dr. Jorge Sterner, leading physicist of earth, along with some of the most eminent physicist in the world including Nobel laureates, working on video and data links have not even been able to scratch the surface of?! Did I miss any new shipment of marijuana from Earth Jorge? For I am sure I have not smoked anything in a while.”

Mischa laughed. Ramesh was joking, that was a good sign that he was also getting out of his blues.

“Nope Ramesh. The wife never shares with me the stuff she smokes. I guess we will have to make do with some moonshine. Mr. Gupta said it is fairly trivial to brew ethyl alcohol from the organics in the Methane Rivers flowing here. Can you imagine a better paradise for alcoholics than Titan?