Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (40 page)

If she had more explosives, she could have killed more Shaitans on their way up without risking the lives of the marines and the civilians. She had managed to kill 250 odd Shaitans with the explosives she had, by booby trapping the way. These last explosives hopefully would give an equally good account for themselves.

The Shaitans were clearly not worried or wary of the tire shaped objects as they rolled down gently. Some of them jumped clear of the rolling tires, but eventually the tires hit the limbs of some of the Shaitans and stopped rolling. The Shaitans blissfully walked over the tires. The controller inside let them walk over it till the tires were somewhere in the center of the mass of the Shaitans. Then she triggered the device.

It was amazing and surreal to watch Shaitans fly out over the edge of the path and fall down the mountain in infrared. It felt to Yusuke like he was in some kind of a psychedelic dream. The pressure wave of the explosions in this thin atmosphere was not much. Yusuke barely felt it through his suit, but it had been strong enough to launch some of the Shaitans into the air.

Nearly a hundred out of the hundred and fifty Shaitans were incapacitated if not killed. The rest picked up the pace even faster if it was possible to make a mad dash towards the plateau. The Shaitans could not see what awaited them, but from a Shaitan point of view, anything must be better than being slaughtered the way they saw their comrades die.

“Raise the fence. Hold your fire marines.” Leanna ordered. The ‘fence’ was nothing as elaborate as the concrete gate. It was, as its name suggested a 4 meter high metal grilled fence made out of tubing and pipes. It was not particularly strong and would not have been able to stand a crush from the bodies of a large number of Shaitans.

It was simply hinged to the ground and the marines pulled a rope and raised it. Then they pulled the poles stuck to the fence and planted them on the ground to make the fence stand. The fence was simply the lid that closed the ‘Kill box’. Then the marines withdrew behind the first line of marines. As soon as they did that, Leanna shouted. “Marines fire at will!”

The fence had a very simple purpose. To slow down and stop the Shaitans for a few seconds. The fire teams stood at such a distance that the Shaitans could not see them through the dust haze, but thanks to the IR lighting on the path, the marines could see the Shaitans.

It was not just the marines blocking the path who fired. There were marines who had climbed 30-40 meter above the path on niches dug beforehand. Then there was the shuttle Eagle 1, which had been hovering for the last few minutes. The Shaitans got shot from the front, top and their left from the shuttle. It was a massacre. It took just a few seconds for the 50 odd surviving Shaitans to be slaughtered. They barely had the chance to shake the fence before they were killed.

The concrete gate was lowered and Shaitans were allowed in again. In truth the flow of Shaitans had never stopped. They had just reduced to a trickle as Shaitans climbed over and from the side of the gate. So the marines were constantly sniping. Once the gate was lowered, a lot more Shaitans were able to get through and the marines got a lot busier, and their guns rang more frequently.

This time the humans did not have their barrel bombs, so they started raising the gate as soon as it had reached its bottom position. That way lesser and a more manageable number would be let through. This time though the Shaitans were not just able to reach the fence, but were able to severely stress it, almost breaking it. Some of the Shaitans were also able to climb over the fence, but they were quickly dispatched on priority by the marines defending the path.

The marines also took their first casualty. One of the marines on top perching from a niche got hit. The plasma fire came as soon as the muzzle flash from the marine’s gun lit up. It was too fast a reaction time even for a Shaitan. It made Leanna suspect that the reason the plasma fire was accurate compared to their bullets was that the plasma gun was somehow controlled or targeted using a computer, while the projectile gun was probably targeted manually.

“Marines be advised that I suspect the Shaitan plasma gun uses automated response to fire back at muzzle flash. Try to keep your guns not aligned to your body. Better to be slightly less accurate than to have yourself shot.” Leanna said over the public channel. Then on a private channel she spoke to the controller. “Sue, reduce the time of gate opening. We need to let in smaller lots of Shaitans at a time.”

The next two batches of Shaitans let in went smoothly enough. The marines suffered one more casualty, this time from the marines guarding the path in front of the fence. The Shaitans had managed to bring down the fence and some of them had come close enough to be able to see and take a shot at the marines. The marines had killed them all and erected the fence back, but not before losing one of their own.

“Lower the gate. Let the next lot in.” Leanna said, a certain amount of smugness creeping into her voice. They had killed nearly 350 Shaitans and taken just two casualty. She was starting to get a good feeling about this thing working out well. She would not feel that way for long.

“Colonel, there are no Shaitans coming in through the gate. Repeat. No more Shaitans coming through the gate.” Leanna’s helmet rang with the controller’s voice.

“What? Have we killed them all already?!” Asked Leanna surprised.

“No colonel. There were over 1200 Shaitans left. We would have killed about 350 of them, and some of them fell over in the crush on the gate, but not that many. That still leaves about 850 of them. The spy cams shows the Shaitans massed just around the bend, waiting. I have no idea what they are waiting for.” The controller replied.

“Eagle 1, could you target the waiting Shaitans and nudge them forward?” Leanna asked the shuttle.

“Negative colonel. That part of the path is not lit with infrared. I have no visibility through the dust. If I get close, the Shaitans would be able to see my hot exhaust a lot before I can see their cooler bodies. I am taking feed from the controller and I will fire blind and hope to hit something in the mass. Let’s see if that coaxes them forward. Eagle 1 out.” The shuttle replied.

“Colonel. Eagle 1 took blind shots and even managed to hit a few of them. The Shaitans simply took the losses but sat tight. They did not budge an inch.” The controller reported to Leanna after some time. What the hell are they waiting for? Wondered Leanna.

“Colonel the Shaitans have suddenly started rushing in at full speed. They are trying to execute a surprise sprint. Permission requested to raise the gate.” The controller shouted.

“I see them. Do it NOW!” Leanna shouted. So that was their plan… eh? Is that all the smart Shaitans could come up with? Try to fool us by waiting and suddenly rush in? Well they have to do better. All they have managed is to trap some more Shaitans in our kill box. Leanna thought.

That smug certainty started waning however when she realized that there was something different about this group that had crossed the gate. They stopped almost immediately after crossing, they were not attempting to charge or even fire back. They were simply standing there next to the gate getting shot once in a while from the sniping marines.

As the gate rose nearly three fourth of its total height Leanna took a feed from the spy cam on her faceplate and noticed that an equal number of Shaitans had gathered on the outer side of the gate. They were not trying to cross over the gate or from the sides as they had done before. They just seem to be gathering and consolidating next to the gate.

The realization came to her a moment too late. She couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. Once enough Shaitans had gathered on each side of the gate, (the computer counted 24 Shaitans on either side, 48 in total) the Shaitans pressed their bodies tightly to the base of the gate which had by now reached almost to the maximum height.

The blast was blinding. It was not the amount of light but the spectrum of light that was different and strange. It was almost completely a blue, deep blue and violet explosion in the visible light. Later computer analysis would show that a large part of the emission was in the ultraviolet and x-ray range.

This was no conventional explosion, at least not as humans understood conventional. It was not a nuclear explosion either. The analysis after the battle would show that the Shaitans had used their plasma weapons, somehow discharging the entire energy carried by the weapon in a flash.

48 such weapons discharged together had created an explosion equivalent to over a ton of TNT. Enough to not just blow the gate, but to turn the stumps of the gate into slag. The Shaitan bodies had helped to quickly pack the explosives in the optimum place. A Shaitan without its plasma weapon was a dead Shaitan anyway, so might as well use the body to make the explosion effective. Such ant like thinking of the Shaitans made it hard for the humans to appreciate them as intelligent beings, but at the same time one had to admit that it was brutally logical for their species.

Leanna realized what might happen soon. They might get overwhelmed. She gave the order when there was still time. “Marines! Mount your bayonets NOW!” She started doing the same herself. She had not fired a single shot from her SG-4 till now. That was going to change now. They needed every gun pumping lead out in the hope of slowing down the Shaitans.

As the marines were mounting the bayonets, the Shaitans turned the corner into the infrared glare lighting the path. The math was very simple. There were 800 Shaitans left who had to cover half a kilometer of path to reach the plateau before all mayhem broke lose.

The Shaitans were known to run at well over 60 Km per hour on Titan. So they had 30 seconds to kill as many Shaitans as they could before the Shaitans could see them and shoot them down. If they were able to get close they might not even bother to shoot. They could rip apart the humans with their metal claws.

“Marines, Eagle 1 fire at will. Fire at will. Kill the bastards. Kill them all.” Leanna shouted. He adrenalin pumped voice was quaking with excitement, fear and anticipation.

The shuttle’s machine gun fired continuously as did the marines and the civilians who had taken up position on the edge of the plateau, firing sideways at the mass of Shaitans charging ominously up the path. There was no need for marksmanship. One just pointed towards mass of the Shaitan bodies and squeezed the trigger, and it was sure to hit one of them.

Unfortunately 30 seconds was not nearly time enough to kill 800 Shaitans, especially since they could not be individually targeted. A lot of bullets were hitting dead or dying Shaitans who didn’t need any more killing while it let other Shaitans escape unscathed.

By the time the Shaitans hit the fence, there were still over 600 Shaitans left alive and in fighting form. The fence did buy the marines precious few seconds, which depleted the numbers of the Shaitans by 10 more, but after that it was free for all. The vanguard of the Shaitans simply leapt over the frontline, leaving them for the Shaitans behind and started tearing at the rear lines.

Fortunately their terrifying plasma gun was a slow firing weapons, but at this melee range their guns were accurate enough. The Shaitans however instinctively preferred to use their claws as a melee weapon. Leanna had long learnt from her NCOs to keep her wits about even in the heat of the battle, especially when it came to keeping count.

Even as she shot and hacked her way through with her bayonet she kept getting the feeling that there was not nearly enough Shaitans on the plateau as she had expected. There should have been more. While both humans and Shaitans were dying, but it felt more like one to one battle. One Shaitan against one human. If her math in the heat of the battle was correct, then it should have been two Shaitans against one human.

Leanna did a flying backflip to avoid the stabbing thrust of a Shaitan and shot it just as she was landing but still in the air. In her youth doing this backflip in this low gravity would have been a child’s play and she would have shot in midair with her eyes closed instinctively. Her acrobatics was one of the things that drove Alex wild. Unfortunately it no longer came naturally with age. She had to struggle to find her footing and winced in pain when her back strained.

Leanna had a moment to herself and turned towards the path to see where the rest of the Shaitans had gone. The rest of the Shaitans were on the path, but they were now rushing down away from the plateau! What the hell were the Shaitans up to?! Why were they running away, just when they have nearly won the battle?

The shuttle could not fire its guns on the plateau with so many humans around, so it was making hay with the Shaitans who were now charging back the way they had come, picking off as many as they could. The shuttle was sure to know what was going on so Leanna shouted. “Eagle 1, what the hell is going on?! Why are those Shaitans running away?”

“It is the first and the second platoon sir. They are taking some rearguard action and taking some heat off you. I am afraid that they may have bitten a bit more than they can chew though. They are too few of them and too many Shaitans heading towards them. My gunner is doing his best to reduce their numbers before they reach the marine position, but there may be too many of them.” The shuttle replied.

God bless the 3
^rd
company and especially the 1
^st
and 2
^nd
platoon. She could now make out the marines were lying prone and had taken cover behind the raised stump of the blown up gate. The charging Shaitans were almost upon them. Brave they may be, but the US marines on that end would not last long outnumbered 5 or 6 to 1, once the Shaitans reached them.

Leanna needed to send the Gurkha marines to their assistance, but they could not move until there were Shaitans left standing on the plateau. The Gurkhas needed an extra dose of inspiration to speed them up, and Leanna knew the right handle, having worked with the British Gurkha regiment. These were the Indian Gurkha, but they came from the same stock and thought similarly.