Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (24 page)

Leanna had no way of striking back at the Shaitan ship though. In a monumental oversight, the camp was not equipped with any surface to orbit missiles. She was sure that if she survived this, then that would go as a recommendation to the brass of USC. Every human base needs to be equipped with defense from orbital bombardment.

Leanna could however prepare for defense against ground assault if the Shaitans decided such a course of action, and prepare she did. She had spent the last two months consulting her officers and NCOs and working her people, both military and civilians to exhaustion. She had taken inspiration from the methods of Takamori and become an ardent student of ancient battles. She had realized on Titan that the blood spilt by their ancestors could yet help in their survival.

The Shaitans had arrived in orbit and to her relief did not start bombing right away. The external base was abandoned, but for a few marines on patrol around the plateau. All the humans of the base were hunkered down deep within the tunnels. From her control center in those tunnels, she watched as two shuttles descended towards them.

One of the preparations Leanna had done for the coming assault had been to put an extensive spy cam coverage around the entire base for tens of kilometers within direct visual range. The spy cams covered every pass and gorge within the canyon, on the vast plains below, and even the top of the canyon five kilometers above.

She had them connected with multiple redundant fiber connections, as well as radio and laser backup. These spy cams were encased in EMP hardened cases. If there was anything moving within kilometers of the bases, she would know from inside. The enemy will have to go and hunt out the hundreds of spy cams scattered individually to render her blind.

She saw the shuttles land near the mouth of the canyon on the plains. Her image processor counted exactly 1024 Shaitans emerge from each of the shuttles, totaling 2048. The cameras were calibrated, so she knew their size. All of them were type – B warrior Shaitans.

That was amazing. The Shaitans had crammed over a thousand warrior Shaitans into a shuttle the size of a large bomber or a large airliner. Humans would have crammed no more than half the number, and the warrior Shaitans were nearly 3 to 4 times the size of humans by volume. They must have been packed like sardines inside, and they had no issues about it. It probably had to do something with their physiology and psychology. Octopus for example were very comfortable squeezing into the narrowest of tubes.

Leanna saw with dismay as the shuttles unloaded crates of what was clearly arms, ammunitions and equipment. These were not unarmed Shaitans like the ones she had fought on Titan. They were carrying weapons which were probably far superior to what she and her soldiers had.

She saw one of the shuttles take off. The radar tracked the shuttle going over the horizon, but not back to the orbit and towards the Shaitan mother ship. It was going off to some unknown destination on Mars. Leanna was blind beyond the horizon. The Shaitan ship had destroyed all the satellites orbiting Mars even before closing in towards its own orbit.

Leanna and her people braced for the assault that was to come, but it never came. Instead the two thousand Shaitans spread around and covered all possible routes that could be used for exiting the base, including treacherous paths that humans could only progress using rock-climbing gear.

They established a temporary base next to their parked shuttle, and set up equipment to jam radio signals and signals on every possible electromagnetic spectrum. The jamming signal was so strong and effective, that Leanna had interference even inside the shielded tunnels.

There was no way any signal was going to leave or reach Mars unless using pointed laser. This was not an option for Leanna to communicate with Earth or any rescue ship they may send. So for all practical purpose, the Kormas base was cut off from the rest of the universe.

Chapter 15

Maskirovka 

Rendezvous Point, beyond Pluto

September 2083

“Velocity, vector and attitude are all check captain. We are on our programmed course, with no deviations.” The navigator spoke over the com. Gerald gave his mandatory ‘copy’ acknowledgement. It was uncomfortable operating the ship from inside a suit. It were at times like these that he envied the tech-heads, who face very little problems operating without their hands.

Suiting up before a battle was one of the changes in operational procedure in the Navy since the battle of Titan. It was probably a direct result of the lessons learnt in that battle. The crew of the Charles Martell may have survived if they were suited up. The standard USC operational procedure meant that every crew suited up on a condition 2 alert, and right now they were even higher on a condition 1 alert.

The suit Gerald was wearing was a specially made suit for the Navy. It was not designed for rugged use on the surface. It did not attempt to provide any armor for protection. It was not even meant to last a long time in the vacuum of space without external power. The primary purpose was to give temporary protection to the crew in case of a hull breach and loss of atmosphere.

It would help a crewman survive to be able to reach a part of the ship that has not lost integrity, or to effect repairs to the hull breach. For longer and more specialized jobs there were specialized suits for space walk or surface missions. This suit’s life support lasted only 2 hours on its batteries, as a result the power of the suit needed to be plugged in while at battle stations, so as to not deplete the battery.

Fortunately Gerald did not actually have to pull out a wire from his suit and plug it in. The suit charged by induction from the power mats placed all over the battle stations, very similar to an induction heater used in a coffee pot. All Gerald had to do was ensure that some part of his body and hence the suit was touching one of those mats. Every time he went out of his harness and the suit lost contact with power, it would chime irritatingly to warn him that the suit was now running on batteries.

The payoff that this suit reaped in exchange for all the compromises, was the thinnest space suit that had ever been designed. It was fairly comfortable to work within the suit, and the joints were far less stiff and constraining than normal suits. However it was still not ideal to be operating terminals with your fingers for running a space ship. The only people who remained unaffected were the tech-heads, who rarely used their fingers to operate terminals anyway.

Gerald thumbed his helmet to connect with the Admiral. “Sir, USS Nautilus reports in with all systems at 100% and on the planned course.”

“Thanks Gerald. That makes four, so all of us are in our expected position. I want to let you know that I have just sent the signal to Capt. Strong. She should get it in just under four hours, so the die is cast and now there is no turning back.” Fabi replied.

“Acknowledged admiral, our acceleration program is now counting down. We should be cutting off our acceleration in about 15 minutes.” Gerald replied.

“Yes, I am monitoring it. The message packet has been programmed and scheduled. It will be dispatched at the same time as planned. You and the other captains take care of your part of our Maskirovka, and I will take care of my part. Udači captain.” Fabi signed off.

The Third Fleet had come to a full halt at the point where the two parts of the Shaitan fleet would have met up. Then it had turned to the selected direction chosen by the admiral, and started full acceleration. The Nautilus class ran on the new variable geometry nuclear fusion reactors and were powered by ion plasma engines. So the acceleration could not be expected to be stellar. It was just shy of 0.05 m/s
²
.

To put that in perspective, a ball dropped on earth fell to the ground with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s
²
. So the ships could accelerate at less than half a percentage of the gravity on Earth. So the crew hardly felt the acceleration. When you left something hanging in the air, it still felt like it was drifting. Only now things drifted consistently in one direction – towards the aft.

For the crew on the bridge it still felt weightless, but they now had a weird sensation as one feels when a light breeze pushes the body in a lateral direction towards the aft. When you weigh a few hundred grams in this acceleration, the pull of gravity feels like the pressure of a light breeze.

Slow as the human ion plasma engines were, they still appeared to be faster in acceleration than the Shaitan warships they had observed. It is possible that the Shaitan war ships were not decelerating at full capacity, but that was unlikely given the desperation they were showing in getting to their rally point in a hurry.

The Shaitans would have started their deceleration as late as their engines allowed, to reach their rally point as fast and possible and try to beat the human ships to it. They didn’t succeed though, the Third Fleet made it there first. It however meant that the Shaitans must be burning their engines as hard as possible, and it still measured an acceleration rate of 0.04 m/s
²
, compared to the Nautilus class’ 0.042 m/s
²
.

This meant that the Nautilus’ acceleration capability was a few percentage points faster than the fastest Shaitan ship. The Shaitan troop carriers had displayed even slower acceleration capability of 0.03m/s
²
. Why this should be so would not be known for another two generations. Not until a working Shaitan engine could be studied.

Humans had learnt the technology of variable geometry fusion engines from the Shaitans by studying the intact piece they found on Titan. So the humans had copied the power source of the Shaitans. There was however no ion plasma engine of the Shaitans that humans could study from one of their ships. So humans had used their own design.

Ion plasma engines were almost a century old technology. What it had lacked was an abundant power source which was now provided by the new fusion reactors. The ion plasma engines had been adapted for this new power source, utilizing the heated and ionized helium molecules coming directly out of the fusion reactors for propulsion. Somehow, humans must have hit upon a more efficient design. It was lucky that the humans did not get access to a Shaitan engine to copy, we ended up making a better design.

What the ion plasma engine lacks in acceleration, it more than makes up in endurance. It can run continuously for years. Even with such low acceleration, if given time the ship can build huge speed that can be measured in fractions of light speed, and can cover unimaginable distances.

The engines of the Third Fleet had been running at full blast for nearly 2 days and seven hours. It had just begun to pick up serious speed. It had just reached a speed of 10 kilometer per second, and crossed the million km mark from their starting point.

This distance had been carefully calculated by the Maskirovka conspirators. It was just enough distance towards the fleet coming from Beta Shaitan that the other Shaitan fleet coming from the opposite direction would not be able to meet up even if the Shaitan war ships stopped decelerating right now and started accelerating.

The human fleet will be able to encounter the Beta Shaitan fleet all by itself at least an hour before the Shaitan fleet from the opposite direction in the worst case scenario. If the two Shaitan fleets continued their deceleration at the current rate, then the human encounter with the Beta Shaitan fleet will be more than a day before the Shaitan fleet from the opposite direction can come to their aid.

The Third Fleet now turned around and started decelerating. They would try to bleed off as much of the 10 Km per second velocity as possible. The objective was to encounter the fleet from Beta Shaitan at the lowest possible velocity. How low, would depend on the response of the Shaitan fleets.

All scenario and parameters had been programmed, and the computer would control the amount of time the ships would decelerate to ensure that the Third Fleet encountered the Beta Shaitan fleet alone without the possibility of the other Shaitan fleet being able to come to its aid. If the Shaitans did nothing then the Third Fleet would decelerate a lot longer and meet up with the Beta Shaitan fleet at a lower velocity.

The Shaitans could always stop decelerating or even start accelerating in order to meet up faster. It would not be of great use to them however. They would then cross each other without being able to stop and meet up. If the Shaitans did that anyway, the Third Fleet would stop decelerating, and still meet up with the Beta Shaitan fleet first, albeit at a higher velocity.

The Shaitans must also have realized the futility of trying to meet up faster, only to pass each other without being able to stop because they did not do so. They kept to their steady deceleration. The Third Fleet was able to bleed off most of its velocity traveling at just 3 Km per second towards the Beta Shaitan fleet. The Beta Shaitan fleet itself was decelerating all the way through. It was traveling at 2 Km per second towards the Third Fleet.

So the two fleets were approaching each other at 5 km per second. It was still a very high speed. This would be a one shot encounter. Admiral Kalinin had always known that and had prepared for battle accordingly.

In war they say, as in everything that the military does, it is always the case of ‘hurry up and wait’. The entire fleet had worked frantically in the last few days, preparing for this event, and now they had nothing much to do but wait and watch their monitors.

It was the waiting that is the most difficult, especially when wearing suits, however thin and flexible they might be. It still made various bio functions difficult and unsavory to say the least. It was not possible to have a decent meal, unless you call sucking goo from a tube as a meal.

The XOs of all the ships gave rotating breaks to the crew for their various bodily functions that needed one to remove the suits. That was until T minus one hour, for at that time the Third Fleet went from condition 2 to condition 1. The tension in the bridge of the Nautilus was palpable.