Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (50 page)

Hamid started explaining his plan. “Sir, at the rate we are closing in the enemy, it is only a matter of time before we catch up with them. It may take days, a week at the max but barring some unforeseen accident, catch up we will. I am sure that the enemy captains are intelligent enough to realize this as well. Yet they persist in trying to run away instead of facing us in a straight up fight.

As speculated, the enemy may be waiting for something that we don’t know about. If this is true, then it cannot be in our interest to give them that time, whatever that event they are waiting for may be. It is also possible that the enemy is simply clueless and running helter-skelter to avoid us.

There is another possibility though. The enemy may simply be trying to wear us down. The nature of our chase is such that we cannot stand down from battle stations. At best we can go to condition two for short periods of time and rotate the crew. It has been nearly 24 hours inside these suits and I can already notice fatigue and degradation of performance amongst my crew.

We don’t know about the physiological and psychological response of the enemy in such situations. They have the advantage that they can decide to run till the bitter end, or suddenly turn around and come face to face with us in a short time. They can chose the time of the battle, so it possible that they are not going through their equivalent of condition one battle station as we are. We however don’t have that luxury and need to at battle stations throughout this chase.

I am certain that if this chase ends up being week long one, then when the time for battle comes, we will be fighting with a fatigued crew more likely to be degraded in their performance. While we may not be in a tearing hurry, it is in our interest to bring this chase to an end as soon as possible.” Dar paused.

The problem with holding a conference suit to suit was that one could not see the gestures and mannerisms of the other parties clearly. All one could see of was a fisheye lens view of the partially lit face of each person taken from inside the helmet. Hamid could not see the nods that the others were giving, which indicated that they agreed with him, so Fabi helped him by urging him to continue verbally.

Hamid continued. “Given that context, I would urge you take a look at the screen which shows ours and the enemy’s current trajectory. As we have noticed from their earlier course change patterns, we are closing in on a critical point, when they are likely to change their course to try to evade us. Even if they don’t change at that exact point that I have marked on the screen, they would have to change their course somewhere near that point.

If you notice, this is one of those turns that our fleet will have to take carefully so as to not leave a straight line of flight open for the enemy fleet towards Earth. We have not made that mistake before, but I am proposing that this time we make that mistake. Deliberately. We give the enemy the bait to have a clear run towards Earth.

If they don’t take the bait, then no harm done, but it tells us something about the intent of the enemy, although it can be speculated in many ways. If however they do take the bait, then here is my proposal on how to trap them.

TC-2 was sent to the Moon as a sacrificial lamb to tie up a fleet of ours. Unlike TC-1 sent to Mars, we cannot ignore TC-2, since it is so close to Earth. That is why entire Second Fleet is tied up to a single Shaitan troop carrier, while two far more deadly warships are being tackled by just three human warships. In that way, the Shaitans have succeeded in their strategy, and I would like them to continue believing that they have.

When I read the notification from Command HQ that Admiral Cloutier has dispatched four Moon Shuttles with Marines, it got me thinking. These so called shuttles are really nothing but Friendship class ships. I checked with HQ, these four ships may have been modified to carry more passengers, but they are still carrying their full complement of weapons in their holds.

Due to the tremendous advances we have made in the last 20 years on spaceship designs, we tend to forget that just 3 of these Friendship class ships fought and destroyed the same class of ship as TC-2 over Titan. And one of them, the Charles Martell, did not even have a full complement of nukes on board.” Hamid paused for effect, but Capt. Xhin Zhu interrupted him.

“Let us also not forget then, the fate of those three ships. We cannot in good conscience send our men to a certain death.” Capt. Xhin Zhu said. He was conservative, the diametric opposite of Capt. Hamid Dar. Fabi liked to think of the two captains as his Yin and Yang of the fleet.

Hamid replied “I was going to come to that issue later captain, but since you have raised it, let me address that issue first. As we all know from the analyses of the Battle of Titan, it was not lack of offensive but defensive firepower that led to destruction of all the friendship class ships. The main problem was that our antimissiles were too puny to do enough damage to the Shaitan missiles.

We have since rectified that shortcoming. Although the antimissiles are now as big as the nukes themselves, and thus the Friendship class carries even less of them now, but they are guaranteed to destroy a Shaitan nuke with a single hit. I would reckon that the Friendship class ships now have enough defensive power to survive two even three Shaitan missiles.

If four Friendship class missiles were to attack a single Shaitan troop carrier, they have enough offensive firepower to force TC-2 to spend most of its time launching its own missile killers to defend itself and not enough time to launch too many nukes at the Friendship class ships. In my estimation the survivability of the Friendship class ships is reasonably high against TC-2. The survivability is no less for them than the chances the Third or the Second Fleet would take.” Hamid paused to see if he had been able to convince his flag admiral and fellow captains.

Since the facial expressions could not be seen well in the helmet conference, Fabi spoke up. “Assuming we agree with that estimation of yours, what is it you are proposing Capt. Dar?”

“Sorry we had to digress, but what I am proposing is simply this. TC-2 is about to take its first orbital turn around the Moon. It has not slowed enough to come to a stable orbit immediately, so it will swing some distance away from the moon on a long elliptical orbit as it continues to slow down, before it approaches the Moon again to fall into a stable orbit.

The Second Fleet has almost reached the Moon hot on the heels of TC-2 and had convinced the Shaitans that their ploy of keeping the Second Fleet engaged has worked. Tango 1 and 3 are fairly convinced that the only obstacle they face to reach Earth is the Third Fleet. If they perceive that the Third Fleet has made any mistake, they are likely to take advantage and make a headlong rush towards Earth.

Once Tango 1 and 3 have built enough speed towards Earth, they will not be able to change course to avoid Earth easily to call off the attack at a short notice. They will expect the Third Fleet to give chase, but as long as they calculate that we cannot catch up with them before they have a shot at Earth, they will not bother with us. I think they will be on a suicide run.

I have sent my calculations on the screen to all of you. At the point marked in purple, Tango 1 and 3 should be at a ‘point of no return’ velocity, after which they will not be able to call off the attack run. When the Tango 1 and 3 reaches this point, Second Fleet starts a sudden run towards the point marked in yellow, which is approximately where it would be able to intercept Tango 1 and 3.

When the Second Fleet turns towards them, Tango 1 and 3 would be surprised, but they would still fancy their chances of getting past the Second Fleet in a high speed dash. They would be correct in their assessment. From what we know of the Shaitan Warships, Second Fleet does not have enough firepower with its tube based missiles to put enough volume of missiles to stop both the warships. At best what the Second fleet can hope to achieve is hurt or kill one of them, or more likely just be able to harass them. Tango 1 and 3 would continue accelerating and building up momentum.

Once the Third Fleet reaches the point marked in purple on our chase trajectory, our ships turn on our emergency chemical rocket thrusters. We still have over 2 hours worth of fuel left in those thrusters, which will give us the extra boost required to catch them up at the exact yellow point where the Second Fleet encounters the Shaitans…” Hamid was interrupted once again by Capt. Xhin Zhu.

“Surely you are not suggesting that we exhaust our emergency acceleration rocket fuel captain. We would be left with no recourse to avoid Shaitan missiles. This is not as per prescribed regulations.” Capt. Xhin Zhu exclaimed.

Rest of the men smiled. Capt. Xhin Zhu’s proclivity to stick to the letter of the regulations was well known. Hamid answered. “That is exactly why I am suggesting we use the emergency thrusters, because just like us, we have observed that the Shaitan warships have emergency chemical thrusters, which they have used to try and avoid missiles. I am sure that they have a similar doctrine of using the chemical rocket thrusters only for avoiding missiles.

I am in fact counting on them sticking to that doctrine and not using their chemical rockets to get away from us. I am hoping that the Shaitan captains are not rule breakers. And you are right that by expending our emergency thrusters, our options in avoiding Shaitan missiles would get limited. As I had indicated at the outset, this is an ‘all in’ plan as they would say in Las Vegas.

To get back to explaining my plan, if things go as described, then Tango 1 and Tango 3 would get caught in a pincer move from two fleets approaching from opposite ends at a distance of about 3 million kilometers from Earth. The exact distance Admiral Cloutier had wanted us to confront these Shaitan warships.

Now however with the extra firepower of the Second Fleet, not only do we stand a better chance of completely destroying both the ships, but the survivability of both the second and the Third Fleet increases dramatically. Tango 1 and 3 would have to target 11 individual ships. Each one of us would have a lot less missiles coming our way.

This gentlemen is the most sure shot bet of stopping the Shaitan warships from reaching Earth. As far as TC-2 is concerned, even in the worst case scenario I do not see it surviving a battle with 4 Friendship class ships. At the worst TC-2 may be able to destroy all of them, but more likely most of them would survive due to better missile killers that they have compared to Titan.” Hamid finished his presentation.

Fabi spoke up. “We have heard some of the objections from Capt. Xhin Zhu, I would like to hear Capt. Shannon’s thoughts on the plan.”

Gerald had be quiet throughout the presentation, not having spoken a word. He spoke up slowly and thoughtfully. “I have been evaluating the plan on the basis of what all could go wrong. I agree with Capt. Dar’s conclusion that four Friendship Class ships should be able to stop TC-2, although I am not as confident about their survivability as him. I would think of leaving one or even two Resolute class ships from the Second Fleet to fight along with the Friendship class ships.

There are two things that I can see that can go wrong with the plan, one benign and the other would be a disaster. First, as I see through Capt. Dar’s calculations that he has sent, it is possible for Tango 1 and 3 to call off the attack run towards Earth the moment they see the Second Fleet approaching. If that happens, we would not be able to carry out our plan, but we are no worse off than right now and hence no harm done.

Second is the more worrying possibility that the Shaitan captain disappoints Hamid and turns rule breaker.” Gerald smiled at the thought of a perpetual rule breaker like Hamid being disappointed by someone else breaking the rules.

“If the Shaitan warships turn on their emergency chemical rocket thrusters, then our whole plan goes awry. Worse, it will give the two Shaitan warships the opportunity to try and smash past the Second Fleet and have an unchallenged run towards Earth. In my mind gentlemen, this is the only weak point in the entire plan, otherwise I like the plan.” Concluded Gerald.

They discussed the details, and it kept boiling down to the risk Gerald had mentioned to which there was no answer in the plan, otherwise even Capt. Xhin Zhu could not come out with any objections other than the fact that it was a rash plan. Fabi did not mind a rash plan. He had put Hamid as the lead captain for this chase expecting him to come up with a rash plan, and he had not disappointed.

“There is one way we can mitigate that particular weakness in the plan. It is unfortunately as rash as the rest of Capt. Dar’s plan. Let me put forward the plan to the command HQ first. It would need to be ordered by Admiral Cloutier himself. Let me see what he has to say about the overall plan. If he does not blow it away as a harebrained plan, then we can discuss my idea.” Fabi said and brought the conference to a close.

He was going to have to have a very long conversation with Daniel about the plan. It would not help that there would be a significant delay, which would hamper real time conversation.

Chapter 34

Shackleton

South Pole of the Moon

May 2084

“Lt. General, there has been a change in my orders. I think there must be a modified orders for the marines as well sir.” Alex heard the voice say. He was still groggy from sleep. He had been crashing out on his seat strapped securely. When he was woken up, he thought that he must have overslept and was been woken up for deployment, but that not the case.

He checked his wrist comp and confirmed that they were still many hours away from Moon orbit. Sure enough there was a priority message as well that was flashing on the wrist comp. He preferred to check it on the bigger screen of his scroll, which he took out from his pocket and rolled it out.

In his younger days, he would have been flush with excitement reading the order, but now with age he could think of a million things that could go wrong. He started planning contingencies for everything that he was apprehensive about going wrong. That was the burden of age, one thought too much. A young warrior is a happy warrior, and old warrior is always brooding.