Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (32 page)

The two Shaitan patrol guards had no doubt been able to raise the alarm. The marines had seconds to plant their explosives before they got overwhelmed by a few hundred Shaitans. As Ed got into position, he saw ghost like infrared blobs materialize out of the dust storm, as the Shaitans got close enough for their IR signature to register. Then those IR blobs slowly materialized into Shaitans visible to the eye as they got closer.

The volume of fire from the marines increased as the two fire teams joined the battle, but decreased almost immediately again as the gunners of Demo Teams 1 and 2 withdrew back to help their team plant the explosives. The landing struts were already being used as cover by others, so Ed lay prone and used a small rock as cover.

The amount of fire coming from the Shaitan side was steadily increasing, as more of them must be rushing in. It was getting uncomfortable and dangerous to even peek out and send some suppressing fire towards the enemy. Ed was thankful when two more fire teams joined in from two more sides to double the volume of fire. It gave him some time to assess the situation.

The dust storm had helped. It had let them approach the Shaitan shuttle unnoticed much closer than would have been otherwise possible. They had however ran into a Shaitan patrol just before being able to reach the shuttle. The patrol had been neutralized but the alarm had been raised. At this moment, there must be between 15 to 20 Shaitans firing at them.

The situation was however going to change drastically in the next 10 to 15 seconds. That was the time Ed reckoned that was left before the first Shaitans from the camp would reach the shuttle to reinforce these 15 to 20 Shaitans who must have been nearby. These Shaitans must be other members of the patrol guard or engineers or pilots tasked with maintaining the shuttle.

Ed had to figure out the engagement tactics the fire teams should use to keep the Shaitans busy in this dust storm. It was clear that the Shaitans could sense the IR signature of the marines a few meters before the marines could sense the IR signature of the Shaitans.

As Mouse had said, either the Shaitan suits were better insulated thermally, or they had better IR sensors. It was more likely to be the former, human sensing technology was almost at par with Shaitan. It was human materials technology that had a lot of catching up to do.

So there were a few directions from which the Shaitans were firing, where Ed’s sensors could not detect any Shaitan IR signature, but obviously the Shaitans were sensing the marines. There were some directions where the Shaitans had come close enough that the marines could sense the IR blob patch. One or two the Shaitans had come close enough that the visual outline was visible even through the dust storm.

Another big problem that Ed faced, was the accuracy of Shaitan fire. The stories of poor aim of the Shaitans as observed on Titan were clearly not true. These Shaitans were firing fairly competently, although Ed reckoned that his marines still had the edge in marksmanship.

It was not possible that every Shaitan on Titan was a lousy shot and every Shaitan here on Mars was a good marksman. There was clearly something else at play here, which he did not understand yet. The net result however was that the humans had clearly underestimated the Shaitans on this issue. He will have to modify his tactics to take the better aim of the Shaitans into account.

The other surprise was the weapon the Shaitans were using. There were the large caliber bullets being used here, as they had been on Titan. There was however a new weapon also being used here, that hadn’t been used on Titan.

The downed marine had clearly not been shot by a bullet. Not even a large caliber bullet inflicted that nature of damage. On this mystery though, Ed thought he had a clue. Officers in the USC-GCF have to go through extensive lectures on speculative weaponry that is possible and likely to be seen in future engagements with the Shaitans.

Lasers for example are a very effective weapon in empty space. They can deliver almost all of the energy produced by a weapon to a small spot over long distance without any transmission loss. They are also light speed weapons, so you cannot move out of the way once it has been fired at you. Their biggest drawback is that they are ineffective even in the thinnest of atmosphere like the one on Mars. The air molecules absorb a large part of the energy, leaving the rest of the laser beam ineffective.

Plasma pulse weapons are somewhere in between a laser and a projectile weapon like a gun. Plasma is the fourth state of matter, when something is heated up to such an extent that even the gaseous form of the matter is not enough. The gas atoms get so agitated, that they are stripped off the electrons that surround the positively charged nucleus. This makes the otherwise neutral atoms electrically charged.

Even the coolest plasma is several thousands of degrees in temperature. One can take a blob of electrically charged plasma and accelerate it in the barrel of a gun using electromagnets, very similar to accelerating a rail gun or a particle accelerator. A plasma pulse at its heaviest is a few grams of matter. It can be electromagnetically accelerated to a very high velocity easily.

A plasma pulse does not deliver its killing blow through its momentum, or cause damage through deep penetration. It carries its deadly payload as heat. It transfers that heat to anything that it touches, burning and causing damage to the structure at a molecular level.

A plasma pulse may not be light speed, but it can be accelerated to such high speed that they appear near instantaneous to humans. They are far faster than any bullet can ever be made to travel. The plasma pulse being so light, also means that a plasma gun hardly has any recoil.

There are inherent limitations to the plasma technology though. It is very hard to hold the blob of plasma together. The moment it leaves the barrel of a gun, the plasma starts dissipating even in space, since there is nothing holding the blob of plasma together. The trick is to shoot the plasma pulse at as high a speed and at as close a distance as possible, so that there is not enough time for the plasma blob to dissipate before hitting the target.

This severely limits the usefulness of plasma as a ranged weapon. Humans have been experimenting with shooting plasma in enclosed containers, but that beats the entire purpose of having bullet less weapons, and also the added weight severely limits velocity. That is the reason plasma weapons are still confined to clunky prototypes in human labs.

Plasma also suffers from atmospheric decay similar to laser, although not as bad. The air molecules absorb some of the heat of the plasma pulse as they come in contact, and the pulse loses some of its heat punch. Over short distances in a thin atmosphere like Mars though, they still deliver most of their killing heat.

Ed was very sure, that the Shaitans were using such a plasma pulse weapon. He understood why it was being used here but had not been used in Titan. Titan’s atmosphere had been one and a half times as thick as Earth, while Mars’ atmosphere was a hundredth the thickness of Earth. This meant that Titan had a hundred and fifty times thicker atmosphere, where the Shaitan pulse plasma weapons must have been rendered useless.

It seemed to work fine in the Martian atmosphere, even inside the dust storm, which must be further robbing the heat of a plasma pulse. Then in an inspirational moment of realization, Ed figured out why the Shaitan aim was accurate this time compared to Titan. He looked at the other marine who was the second human to take a hit from Shaitan firing.

He was sitting behind one of the landing struts, foaming over his arm which had been hit by a plasma pulse. The compartmentalized suit design meant that he was not in immediate mortal danger, although he must be in terrible pain and out of the fight for the moment. Two marines had taken three hits by plasma, but none by bullets.

Ed could make out from the muzzle flash IR signature that each Shaitan was alternating between one round of pulse plasma and one round of their gun. Yet from his own experience he had himself been nearly singed by plasma several times already, but he did not recollect a single bullet that had landed near him. His external mikes and his suits would have picked up the sound and the vibration from those massive bullets if any had landed next to him.

This meant that the Shaitans were still lousy shots with their guns, but somehow fairly accurate with their plasma weapons. Why did they even bother to use their guns in that case, why not use the plasma weapon all the time? Any why would the same Shaitan be accurate with one ranged weapons and so lousy with another? It didn’t matter for the moment, Ed had to use this knowledge to his advantage, and he was going to test his hypothesis.

Ed stuck his gun out and mentally gave a command for his faceplate to switch to the gun view. His faceplate started displaying the view from the telescopic camera mounted on the barrel of his gun. While the marines did not have to expose their heads like the soldiers of earlier ages to take a shot out of their cover position, they still had to expose their hands and arms.

He took a shot at the direction from where Shaitan fire had been coming towards him, but did not withdraw his hands, keeping the gun camera pointed in that direction. Almost immediately a muzzle flash of a plasma weapon blazed from that direction and the plasma landed perilously close to near the ground where Ed was resting his elbows.

Ed however was not waiting to ponder over the near miss. If he was going to ask his marines to risk their lives, he was going to test the theory himself. If he came out alive, his marines would follow. Ed had coiled his legs into a springing position before firing. The moment he saw the Shaitan muzzle flash, he sprang forward with as much force as his thigh muscles could muster.

The one third gravity of Mars helped in taking a fit marine like Ed a lot further than it would have been possible on Earth. As Ed was coming down in his slow falling arc of a spring forwards that he had made, he saw the second muzzle flash from the same direction, but this time it was from a projectile gun firing a bullet, not a plasma weapon.

Ed kept his concentration in the direction of the muzzle flash being displayed by the IR, but he still could not see the infrared heat signature of the Shaitan itself yet. As he fell prone to the ground, he slid another meter forward. He must have moved forwards 7 to 8 meters in his leap and subsequent slide. Just as he came to a halt, the fuzzy red blob heat signature of the Shaitan became visible on his faceplate.

Ed’s SG-4 was in automatic mode. He squeezed the trigger and kept it centered on the middle of the red IR blob. The SG-4 was not a very fast firing weapon. It fired at the rate of only 50 per minute. It was partly due to the large rounds that had to be chambered in the relatively small gun. It was also keep the reliability of the gun high, which was firing a very complex bullet that was a half rocket.

Ed had never found the rate of fire of the SG-4 a problem before, but right now he wished it fired a bit more rapidly. He had to kill this Shaitan before it got another chance to fire its plasma round. Ed held his nerve and did not move and kept his gun centered till the third round had left his barrel.

Then he rolled to get behind a small rock that gave him some partial cover. He stuck out his gun barrel camera and watched the result. The IR blob image of the Shaitan became larger and Ed was about to squeeze off another round in panic, when the Shaitan became visible through the haze of the dust storm as it approached nearer. It was moving in its death frenzy.

So that validated Ed’s strategy and proved one theory of his. The plasma gun had a slow rate of fire, probably it had to be charged between each firing to generate the plasma. After firing the plasma gun once, the Shaitans would use their projectile guns till the plasma gun was fully recharged again. That is why they were using inaccurate bullets along with their accurate plasma pulse.

How long the plasma guns took to recharge Ed could not say, but it was definitely more than a few seconds. The marines would have to exploit those few seconds. Why their bullets were less accurate than their plasma guns was a mystery that Ed had no clue about. He would worry about it later if he came out alive.

Ed also knew now that the Shaitans could detect the marines’ IR signature about 7-8 meters before the marines could detect the Shaitan IR signature. That knowledge would help the marines fight better. He now needed to get the word out to the rest of the marines. This seemed like a good time to try to break their radio silence.

It was obvious that the Shaitans were alerted to their presence, so there was no point in trying to hide their presence. Communication between the marines had now become critical. Radio silence would only hamper the marines’ fighting ability. Whether they would be able to break the Electromagnetic jamming of the Shaitans was another matter altogether.

The Shaitan EM jamming was primarily meant to block any communication between the Kormas base and ships or satellites in space, or the base sending messages to Earth. It was strongest near the base, the jamming transmitter probably having been placed close to the base. Like all electromagnetic signals, the jamming had to follow the inverse square law.

Signals get weaker at square of the distance. The signal from the suit of one marine to another on an average was 10 meters away, while the jammer was near the Kormas base which was 10 Km away or a thousand times further. This meant that the jammers signal would weaken not a thousand but square of a thousand, i.e. a million times compared to the signal from the marines’ suits.

Although the signals from the marines’ suit was far lower in power than the jammer, it was hoped that the million times difference in attenuation would mean that the marines would be talk to each other over radio, at least at close distance.

“3
^rd
platoon be advised, we are breaking radio silence. Ensure your transmissions are in relay mode to help your comrades get the message. Repeat break radio silence, switch to relay mode and confirm.” Ed said as he squirmed at a different angle behind the rock he was hiding to get better protection from a new angle of fire.