Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (35 page)

The last fatal and most inexcusable mistake was that the Shaitan captain fired 4 nukes in his tubes to clear the tubes for antimissiles when he saw Bogey 1 coming towards him after the Resolute had crossed TC – 1. He could have fired one of them at Bogey 1 or the sucker punch missiles. That Shaitan nuke explosion of 400 megatons would have happened at about 6 Km if he had targeted the sucker punch missiles. It might have damaged TC – 1, but it probably would have survived enough to continue fighting.

The historians would also be unduly analytical of Capt. Trisha Strong’s tactics. Although they would admit that it was brilliant, but they would point out that it depended on a lot of luck going her way, and a lot of mistakes committed by the Shaitan captain. They would not give much credence to the gut feel analysis and profiling Trisha had done about the aggressiveness and impulsiveness of the Shaitan captain, thus being able to predict his actions.

In the popular lore however Capt. Trisha Strong and the crew of USS Resolute would remain as the heroes of the ‘Sucker Punch Battle’, who fought and won against incredible odds.

Chapter 20

Sneaking behind enemy lines

Mars

September 2083

Kormas base could not signal using radio. The jammer was right next to their base and their transmitters were no match. The storm had reached the base and all its surroundings, so a laser signal would also have been doubtful. There was nowhere to bounce the lasers signal in any case. The satellite released by USS Resolute had long been destroyed by a Shaitan missile.

Fortunately all of the above situations had been anticipated, and provisions made accordingly. Leanna and Ed had coordinated with the two shuttles when then satellite was alive using lasers and set up an alternative. The marines’ shuttles had been able to creep up almost to the edge of the plateau overnight, since the Shaitan position was 5 Km below on the plains and the ravines of the canyon, which had no radar line of sight on the top of the plateau.

The shuttles had pulled a thin fiber optic cable from the position where Ed and his marines had lowered the spider for about a kilometer off the edge where the two shuttles were waiting. When Kormas base signaled, the shuttles started off on their designated positions. The gloves were off, so there was no point in avoiding radar any longer, but Shaitan Surface to Air missiles (SAM) could still be a threat, although they hadn’t seen one being fired by the Shaitans in Titan.

The shuttles took off and went back away from the mouth of the canyon parallel to the edge of the plateau for about 10 Km to avoid SAMs, before taking the plunge into the largest canyon in the solar system. It did not even feel like they were diving into a canyon. The opposite wall of the canyon here close to the mouth was almost 200 Km away. The opposite wall felt like a very distant mountain range.

It was a good thing that the pilots had taken the precaution, because within 20 seconds of the shuttles plunging off the edge, their radars detected two profiles that could be nothing but missiles. Human shoulder mounted SAMs did not have range greater than 10 to 15 Km. The larger truck mounted SAMs did have range of 100s of Km.

Kormas base had not seen any vehicle mounted weapons. In fact no vehicles had been observed with the Shaitans laying siege. So it had been reckoned that if they had any SAMs, they would be carried by the Shaitans, equivalent to their shoulder mounted missiles. Such missiles should not have much more range than the human ones. That was the theory, which was going to be tested now. At stake was the lives of 66 marines.

The shuttles banked and turned away from the Kormas base and the approaching missiles. Then it opened up its throttle and at the same time started descending down. The shuttles got an extra boost of speed over their top speed by trading height for speed. The shuttles could not hope to outrun the rocket powered missiles on speed, but sure hoped to outlast them on distance.

The shuttles had almost reached the bottom of the canyon, and travelled 16 Km., the Shaitan SAMs were just about a kilometer away when they ran out of fuel. 66 marines heaved a collective sigh of relief. In hindsight they realized that they should have plunged into the canyon further away from the Kormas base. However no one had ever seen a Shaitan SAM or even known if they had one.

Now they knew not just that the Shaitans had SAMs, but exactly was its range – 25 Kilometers. The pilots would now approach the Shaitan siege position being aware of that fact and better prepared. The pilots turned 90° and started off towards the direction, which would take them behind the Shaitans laying siege on the Kormas base.

They were flying low at less than 100 meters through a raging dust storm at high speed. Visibility was low and they had to depend completely on their radars to guide them across ragged ravines that formed the base of the canyon. Radio silence had been broken, so the shuttles could talk to each other, but communication with Kormas base was impossible due to jamming. The marines of the first and the second platoon hoped that things were going according to plan, for there was no way of knowing if the plans had changed.

The six Shaitan siege positions had been well chosen. There was no way a marine from Kormas base could have sniped on any of the positions, even if they could have seen through this dust storm. Sniping however was not on the agenda of the marines inside the Kormas base. They were going to use a less subtle method on the Shaitans.

One of the units General Takamori, the then head of USC-GCF had started was the light infantry unit. He had had to fight a lot of battles internally with the brass as well as civilian administrators trying to justify an infantry unit is a space fighting force. His logic had been simple. If you have to fight a ground battle, then you have to fight it by the rules of ground warfare.

It does not matter how and in what spaceship you reach a planet or a moon. Once you are on the surface, the rules of ground battle rule supreme. If there is one type of warfare the humans know best, it is ground warfare. No ground pounder would ever think of going into battle without infantry. Alex, as the successor to Takamori had expanded the unit, and now there was a full company of light infantry in the USC-GCF.

Mars was considered an ideal training ground for the infantry, where you could leave the usual ballistic assumptions of Earth behind. The gravity of Mars was somewhere in between what one would find in a heavy rocky planet like Earth or Venus and a light moon like Titan. The training and ballistic calculations done out here would give a feel for both low and high gravity environments.

The Kormas base currently hosted one of the platoons of the infantry unit. It was also heavily stocked with mortars of all types. Mortars, which in expert hands are extremely effective in going over the top of defensive walls and rocks and hitting the enemy from the top. Once the humans would start their shelling, they knew that the external structures on the plateau of Kormas base were forfeit.

The Shaitans laying siege were sure to retaliate in kind. Whether the Shaitans themselves would use mortars or they would use missiles was another questions. It would depend on whether Shaitans used mortars as part of their military doctrine or relied entirely on missiles.

From the point of view of the Shaitans though, mortars would be a more effective and efficient weapon to use. They were located below the Kormas base and did not have a direct line of sight to most of the external structures on the plateau. A smart missile could however do the job by rising up and then slamming down. It just costs more to make a smart missile compared to a dumb mortar.

The marines had accordingly salvaged and moved anything that was moveable from the structures on the plateau of the Kormas base, to the insides of the extensive caves of the ‘Glass worm’. Six teams of two infantry men were spread around the plateau. They had taken position, the moment they got the signal.

An infantryman from a century ago would have instantly recognized these mortar tubes, and yet not known how to operate them. The tubes had anchors which could be slammed into soft mud to embed them, or an internal battery could heat it up to melt into an ice surface like Titan. It even had adhesive glue pouch that could be used to anchor it on hard rock.

Then it had three tripod legs stuck to the tube with computer controlled actuators. The tripod legs would be controlled by a targeting program in the infantryman’s tablet, scroll or if the soldier was a tech-head, then from his or her neural interface. The mortar tube had well calibrated gravity, air pressure, temperature and wind sensors which would feed those data to the program.

The targeting program needed to be fed the current location of the tube, which if GPS was available it could find out on its own. In this case the infantrymen knew the exact location of the Kormas base to the last meter where they were standing. There were no GPS available right now in any case.

Then all one had to do was to feed the targeting program the exact coordinates and elevation of the target along with the characteristics of the mortar being fired like its weight, acceleration etc. The program would then adjust the tripod using the computer controlled actuators to the last fraction of a millimeter and give the exact angle of fire. All the infantrymen had to do was feed the mortar.

Each of the six teams had already fed in their respective targets of the six individual siege positions. As one member of the team set up the tube, the other member laid out the mortars carefully in a particular order. These mortars may be dumb, but they had one simple feature which when combined with the intelligence of the targeting program, made them very smart.

Each mortar had a simple ring notch. It was a mechanical device and fairly reliable. When turned to one extreme it would fire the mortar at the maximum velocity possible by burning the full propellant. At the other extreme of the notch, it would cut off almost half of the propellant thus making it launch at about half the maximum velocity. There were 10 settings on the notch which could propel the mortar at 10 different velocities.

The targeting program was fed the facts and it expected the mortars to come in a particular sequence. The fastest velocity first and gradually slower mortars next, ending with the slowest mortar. This is the order in which the team member was setting and laying out the mortars. The mortars were not fired immediately on dropping into the tubes. The firing pin was pricked at the end of the tube on its own, timed and controlled by the targeting program.

The 6 tubes fired the first round in unison controlled by the computer. The infantry men fed the next round as quickly as humanly possible but the targeting program waited a precise amount of time before firing the next round. All the 10 rounds of mortar were quickly fired this way and the infantrymen plucked out their firing tubes and hastily retreated back towards the tunnels. Not a single mortar had reached their target yet.

The targeting program had fired the fastest mortar the highest so that it would travel in a high parabola arc taking the longest time to reach the target. Then it had successively lowered the tube to fire each successive round at a lower and shallower angle, ending with the last which had the shallowest parabolic trajectory and would reach the target in the least time.

The net result was that all the 10 mortar rounds would reach the same target at almost the same time within less than a fraction of a second. This multiplied the effect of 10 small mortars ten times into the effect of one large shell round fired from a tank. It also did not give the enemy any time to react and retaliate.

The lower gravity of Mars helped the infantrymen further. The mortars travelled that much higher and gave them that much more time to retreat. By the time the shells exploded simultaneously, the infantrymen were almost back towards the blast door of the tunnels.

It was hoped that the mortars would damage and kill a few of the Shaitans. The primary objective was however to harass and get them out of their entrenched siege positions. The best case scenario for the humans would be the Shaitans attempting to storm the Kormas base.

The base favored the defender so strongly at the Kormas base, that it would lead to a slaughter of any force attempting to storm it. The Shaitans were not expected to be so stupid. The then Major and now General Cheng had found out to his own peril on Titan that the Shaitans may sometime give the deceptive appearance of being stupid and suicidal, but there is always a hidden agenda.

Chapter 21

Taking the radar

Mars

September 2083

The shuttles were making their last drop. They had already made two drops each offloading 10 or 11 marines with each drop. The shuttles had crept as close as they dared to the point the marines needed to be. They had been flying low and slow, barely 10 meters above the rough terrain of the canyon floor. There were rocks and mounds jutting out of the ground everywhere and the shuttle could crash into any one of them if they were not careful.

The sand storm was not helping the pilots. Visibility was just 15 meters, not enough to avoid obstacles visually but the pilots had to navigate visually. The dare not switch on their own radar for navigation. It could be caught by the Shaitans and used to target them. The storm had little effect on radar, so the shuttles were as visible on the radar as without the storm, but the shuttles were flying almost blind.

The marines were dropped 12 Km from their quarry. They would have to hike the rest of the way. The shuttles then slowly backed away to wait at a safe distance. This group of marines had a very specific task to perform. One of the marines carried a long telescopic antenna attached to his backpack for that purpose. As he hiked, he touched the shoulder of the sergeant of the squad to speak.