Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (28 page)

Ed rolled his eyes, this was definitely the Indian Gurkha unit. Ed had to recollect hard the rank hierarchy of the Indian Army to figure out that a Lance Naik is the equivalent of the US Army Private First Class. The USC-GCF seriously needed to get their own uniform rank system. Carrying over ranks from the native countries’ armed forces was seriously confusing even for a seasoned veteran like him.

The Gurkha marine directed the spider to the blast door’s data interface and Ed was able to make contact with the control center inside. Leanna was on the line in a matter of seconds, probably because the Gurkha marines at the door would have warned about the approaching spider.

“Major Bassinger, welcome to Mars. I am afraid our hospitality is lacking a tad bit due to circumstances, but I promise to make it up to you once we have kicked the asses of the Shaitans.” Leanna started relief clearly audible in her voice. Ed could see her face, and she looked haggard with dark circles under her eyes. Right now she looked far from the immaculately dresses colonel. Ed had met her a few times and most in the marines were awed by her reputation as the hero of the battle of Stirling Bridge.

“Thanks colonel, I will hold you to that promise once we have won the battle.” It was good to display some bravado thought Ed when facing such impossible odds. “We are currently right on top of you, as it must be displaying on your tac-sit map. We should have two shuttles that should be waiting with a platoon each waiting behind.

The reentry and the landing would have been extremely rough and we are on EM silence, so we don’t know if they made it. I am praying that they did, but we lost two on our jump, and the shuttles had to brake far more violently to stay behind.” Ed paused on the thought of his two dead marines and the possibility of two whole platoon of marines perishing on entry into the atmosphere.

Leanna responded. “I am sorry about the two marines Ed. We will go and get them once this is over.” Leanna truly felt every USC-GCF soldier was her marine. She had personally trained the first few batches, and over the years as she became in-charge of training and personnel, she was like the mother hen, and all of USF-GCF were her chicks. “So where is the expected waiting position of the shuttles?”

Ed replied. “Their orders were to land and wait beyond the horizon to avoid detection. Originally that would have meant on the other side of Mars, since the Shaitan troop carrier was positioned overhead. However Capt. Strong has been successful in luring the Shaitan ship out of synchronous orbit. We detected that as we were coming down.

I don’t know the current position of the Shaitan ship. The shuttles will keep coming closer if they can avoid being seen by the ship. They will probably stop somewhere around the 50 to 70 Km mark over the horizon to escape detection from ground based radar. They are listening on radio frequency. Whenever we break EM silence, we can ask them to move in.”

“Understood major, we don’t have radio tracking with this bloody EM jamming of the Shaitans, but we have visual tracking. The Shaitans are hard on the heels of the human ship. Since you mentioned Trisha, I am assuming it is the Resolute. It may be hard if not impossible to send a radio signal to the waiting shuttles though with the EM jamming.” Leanna said.

“Yes sir, it is the USS Resolute that the Shaitans are chasing. And we have a backup to the radio signal at least for the next 6 odd hours, sir. We have released a satellite at a distance, which a Shaitan missile is heading towards. It will reach in 6 hours, till then we can bounce laser signals off it. I just sent you the satellite coordinates in the briefing package.” Ed replied.

Damn there goes again thought Leanna. Will someone please teach the US Marines not to call a Lady ‘sir’? This is carrying gender neutrality to ridiculous limits. Women are equal but different. There is nothing wrong in call a lady ‘ma’am’. She let it go for the moment, there were more serious issues to tackle.

“Well we better ensure then that we wrap this up before 6 hours don’t we? I have just uploaded a detailed tac-sit to you. Takes some time to study it, I want your opinion.” Leanna said.

Ed took about 15 minutes to study the Shaitan deployment as shown from various cameras deployed all along the canyon and the plains. Ed was impressed by the meticulous preparation done by Leanna, although he should have expected as much from the colonel.

There were 6 Shaitan positions as his own recon team had reported. They had not missed any, but what had not been apparent had been the size of the positions. There were over 200 Shaitans in each position. Most probably exactly 256. That was a round number to them, two to the power eight. Exactly 2048 Shaitans had landed for this siege, so that left 512 of them in their base camp on the plains as reinforcement.

There were 176 marines and 46 civilians on Kormas base. That is about 220 odd human combatants if everyone fought, which Ed knew they would have to. Add to that 90 odd marines assuming the shuttles had made it down, still made a grand total of 310 human defenders against over two thousand Shaitans.

Ed reminded himself that humans had fought worse odds at Titan, and two of those humans were down there below. The colonel and the chief administrator of this facility and NASA’s head of planetary research, Dr. Yusuke Matsumoto. If they could do it, so could he and the US marines. He caught himself from thinking narrowly. They were the marines of the world, not just the US.

The difference was that the Shaitans had been poorly armed in the previous encounter, but so had the humans. In this case both sides are well armed, so there is no huge advantage on that front, unless the Shaitan weapons turns out to be hugely superior. The battle of Titan had not been won with superior arms, but with ingenuity. Ed realized he had to win this battle similarly.

“Bassinger to colonel.” Ed opened up.

“Go for it Major, what do you think?” replied Leanna immediately, she must have been waiting for him.

“Sir as I see it, your topographical position is both an advantage and a weakness. You have the high ground if you wanted to get into a shootout, but you cannot move around in that small plateau. Worse if they decided to bomb, then there is nowhere you can run except the tunnels, which may or may not protect you depending on whether they use nukes and if so how big. It will definitely bury you in either case.

However the advantage we have, is that the Shaitans are most probably not aware of the 30 of us here on top. We could use the element of surprise. I have studied the guerilla tactics used by Lt. Gen. Parkinson’s on Titan outside the Shaitan base. It had confused and befuddled them for some time, before they caught on to it.

It seems they are normally not used to such means of warfare, or have not faced it often enough for it to be something that they suspect instantly. Since all the Shaitans who faced Lt. Gen. Parkinson’s tactics are dead, the Shaitans may not be any wiser even now. So that is an advantage we could use.” Ed finished his line of thought.

“I like your train of thought and agree with it in principle, but how do you propose to bring that into practice? Also to what end do we use your harassment tactic? The thirty of you would be able to do no more than harass them. At some point we inside the base and the marines on those shuttles will have to get into the game.” Leanna asked.

Ed took a few moment to compose his reply as well as iron out a few kinks to the plan that was forming in his mind. “Well sir, the first thing that struck me was the question – why did the Shaitans not occupy the high ground, just above your base here, where we marines are standing. From whatever we know about the Shaitans, they are not that poor in tactical thinking.

The reason I think, is that they are not looking to attack the base and destroy it. At least not immediately. They simply want to ensure that no one escapes from the base. This is consistent with their hostage demands. Thus there is no point guarding this position 5 Km above your base. There is no way anyone can climb up that much sheer vertical wall.

That means that the Shaitans should not bombard the base with nukes or anything that drastic, the moment some of us start harassing them from behind. I am hoping that right now they have their eyes glued to their front watching the base, while hopefully neglecting the rear. We take advantage of that situation.” Ed said and was about to continue, but Leanna interrupted.

“Don’t be so sure about the ‘eyes glued’ thing captain. These bastards can see equally well in all directions simultaneously. They have no backs, and I can tell you from personal experience, you will never find their back turned to you metaphorically or literally.”

Ed smiled when he saw the expression on Leanna’s face. Obviously she must have tried to sneak in on the Shaitans a few times on Titan, only to find that she couldn’t because they are watching all 360° simultaneously. “Duly noted sir, I was not counting on being able to creep in on them literally though.” Ed said and then continued.

“So as you asked, to what purpose the harassment? I have three objectives in mind sir. First I want some of the forces from the 6 Shaitan positions to be sent out on a wild goose chase, hunting for the point from where they would assume we must be escaping from the base. When they get hit from behind, they will assume that we must be from the base and somehow we have escaped.

The second objective is to somehow incapacitate their ability to view and attack aerially, which means taking out that shuttle. It’s a joke to call it a shuttle, looks more like a large airliner. If we can somehow make sure that thing can’t fly, then we would know that they can’t use the shuttle for bombing aerially. That should keep them from bombing the base with nukes. It would also deny them an aerial platform from which they could rain down bullets at us.

Third objective would be for the 30 of us to tie down the 512 Shaitans in the plains, so that they cannot come to reinforce any Shaitan position that may need that reinforcement. I am hoping that the marines inside the base will make sure that the Shaitans positions cry out for reinforcements.

If the Shaitan shuttle is disabled, then we can call in our two shuttles, not just to deliver the 60 marines behind the Shaitan lines, but also to use them as platforms to deliver high volume fire support. So in summary the 30 of us fight in the plains, 60 marines harass the 6 Shaitan positions from behind their lines, while the marines and civilians inside the base use their high ground advantage to pound the 6 Shaitan positions, slowly fighting their way out if we see an advantage in doing so.

That is the plan sir, it is not as meticulous or elaborate as the plan of General Takamori on Titan, we will have to improvise and take decisions as the situation develops, but that’s all I have got.” Ed finished.

“That is a good plan captain, both tactically and strategically sound plan. The General had a month to plan and you have had only 15 minutes, don’t beat yourself up. You did a good job. It so happens that I had been thinking of some of the elements of the plan in similar direction, so I broadly agree with the plan. So now we discuss the details, shall we?” Leanna said, and then the two discussed the details for the next one hour.

Ed got his two noncoms into the discussion, while Leanna got in some of the senior officers in the base. At the end of the hour, they had something that looked like a plan. It had a lot of ifs and buts, and depended on the weather God blessing them. The only regret that Ed had was that the 60 marines in the two shuttles would not know about the plans till the last moment, hope they can internalize it as they scramble the in their shuttle.

As they broke up their conference, the marines on top of the canyon and the ones inside the base started preparations for their parts.

Chapter 17

Battle of Pluto

Beyond Pluto

September 2083

There were 360 human missiles streaking towards the 3 ships of the Beta Shaitan fleet. That was 120 missiles per ship. If there ever had been an overkill in the solar system, this surely had to be the one. It was not as ridiculously high a figure as it might seem at first glance.

The Shaitan troop carrier ship over Titan had been attacked with a 38 missile salvo from 3 different ships from 3 different directions. Yet only 4 had made it through, and had barely been able to disable the ship. In fact the ship had not died completely and required the sacrifice of the Charles Martell and its crew to completely destroy it.

Now they were dealing with a Shaitan warship, which was presumably far more capable with its point defense system to be able to defend itself. The three ships were also in formation, which could enable them to better support each other mutually. Moreover these ships were definitely better armored. Their mass was the same as the Shaitan troop carriers, but the size was smaller. The extra density would have gone into thicker armor.

Taking all these into consideration, it was thought prudent to have at the least twice the number of missiles in the salvo, so that at the least 6 missiles got through. That was the number of hits Fabi had guessed would be required to kill these Shaitan warships. Fabi however did not want to take any chances. They had a single shot at this engagement. They had to ensure that this part of the Shaitan fleet died, else there was no hope for the Third Fleet to take on the combined might of both the parts of the Shaitan fleet together.

It must not have been an easy sight for the captains of those Shaitan warships to watch. 120 missiles bearing towards them from barely 50 Kilometer. The momentum of their own ship and the hard acceleration of the enemy missile closing the gap alarmingly.

The Shaitan warships were launching missile killers from their 16 tubes as fast as they could reload. The smaller and nimbler lasers were continuously tracking and trying to kill the missiles, spinning with the AWPS system. Even their plasma rail guns, which had no real hope of shooting down a fast moving and evading missile were being fired in desperate hope.