Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  “Sir I know that tone. You have an idea sir, and it is guaranteed to be wicked! Does the LT get the privilege to be privy to your plans sir? I mean if it is not classified or anything.” Sarah was excited and forgot the proper decorum of addressing her superior officer properly.

  Capt. Song was cool. “Of course you can be privy to my idea. In fact I need you to hold the fort while I supervise this personally. I am coming down with the 3rd platoon. Sgt. Jalloh will oversee things up here. He can manage the snipers of the 1st platoon up here. Give me a secure perimeter around the point I just sent you, and make sure that we are not overrun by any surprise Shaitan action in the next few hours.”

  “Aye sir, you got it. I am on my way to that point to oversee the setting up of the perimeter myself, sir… but what exactly is your plan?” Sarah asked.

  “Watch the elevation chart Kali. Especially from the point I sent you. It is all about slopes and inclines.” Capt. Song said mischievously.

  “Sir, you are not thinking what I am thinking?” Sarah asked excitedly.

  “We will know very soon won’t we lieutenant?” Capt. Song said as he carefully lowered his two ‘packages’ which were the lynchpin of his plans.

  “I hope Hargreaves that you are not claustrophobic.” Capt. Song asked after nearly 4 hours of putting his plan into action. It had taken a lot more time than he had anticipated, but it was done now. The Shaitans had fired intermittently from behind the habitat, as well some missiles fired blindly at the plateau as well as towards the heavy machinery behind which the Marines had taken cover. One more Marine had been injured in those blind firings.

  “Not in the least sir. A demo expert cannot afford to be claustrophobic. Going into narrow rabbit holes is demolition 101 sir, it is the first lesson we are taught in training.” The cheerful Canadian replied and promptly squeezed into the hole dug by the Moles in the last 4 hours.

  It had taken some effort to pack the two Moles back into their transport crates and slowly lower them down the plateau. Sneak them into the spot chosen by Capt. Song, unpack them and then program them to work in tandem. The Moles were essentially mini TBMs (Tunnel Boring Machines), giant version of which have been used for over 150 years on Earth to make tunnels from the English Channel tunnel to ones under the Swiss Alps to the latest human achievement of connecting North America to continental Asia with the grand tunnel under the Bering Straits.

  The Moles were however not designed to dig long tunnels. They were essentially designed to dig holes for Marines to dive into and shelter in battle or to tunnel into entrenched enemy positions at a short distance. The Moles didn’t have a long conveyor to carry the dirt all the way back to the mouth of the tunnel. After it had bored through a meter or so, it would have to push back the loose dirt all the way back to the mouth of the tunnel. This made a long dig extremely slow for a Mole.

  Capt. Song had used a clever way of using both the Moles in tandem to keep them digging continuously. The first Mole would keep boring the tunnel and throw the loose dirt behind it. The second Mole behind would then quickly dig through the loose dirt pile till the dirt pile was behind it. Then the second mole would push the dirt pile all the way to mouth of the tunnel, where Marines would scoop it up and throw it away. This enabled the lead Mole to keep boring the tunnel continuously.

  The only hitch they faced was that the Moles went low on power at about the 70% mark, and a heavy power pack had to be muscled down and the Moles’ batteries replaced. That was one of the reasons the operation took much longer than anticipated. Now, Capt. Song monitored the slow progress being made by Sgt. Hargreaves as he crawled 400 meters in a tunnel barely wide for a suited Marine to make a tight fit.

  It took Sgt. Hargreaves 25 minutes to crawl the length of the tunnel, and barely 10 minutes even in the cramped confines to set up the charges. It was one of the simplest demo jobs, complicated only by the confined space. The sergeant had to set up charge to blow up a meter of compacted regolith soil with almost no moisture to bind the soil. Piece of cake.

  It just took just 5 minutes for Sgt. Hargreaves to exit the tunnel as he was pulled out by his mates. The charges on the other side of the tunnel had been planted while Sgt. Hargreaves was being pulled out. Everything was ready, and the Marines were ordered back behind a large excavator. Capt. Song gave the order and Sgt. Hargreaves triggered the charges. The explosive on the near end of the runnel went off immediately, while the charge on the far end of the tunnel went into a countdown timer of 2 minutes.

  The Shaitans had chosen a reasonably safe place for building their habitat. It was 400 meters from the nearest lava lake, which was a safe enough distance, but close enough to the mining areas which were all next to lava lakes. There was no risk of lava ever overflowing into the habitat, since there was a 20 meter high elevation from the level of the lava lake to that of the top of the habitat.

  What the designers of the habitat had never anticipated was that one day some crazy species would come to this moon and dig a tunnel from the lava lake gently sloping down to meet up with the sloping entrance of the habitat. Almost all of the habitat and its tunnels were 30 meters or more below the surface, while the top of the lava lake was only 20 meters below the surface of the ground on which the habitat had been built. It was all in the gradients.

  The tunnel on the near end had been stopped 2 meters before the edge of the lava lake. The explosives blew a huge gaping hole connecting the tunnel to the lava lake. Even in the low gravity of AS-d, the molten rock and metal brew made its way down the tunnel at a fairly fast clip. The glowing hot molten rocks were visible through the hole that the Marines had dug in the ground to insert the moles.

  By the time the molten lava was half way through the tunnel, the explosives on the far end of the tunnel detonated. Sgt. Hargreaves had used too much explosives in his anxiety to ensure that a hole was opened up inside the habitat. One could never be sure how much reinforcement had been used to build the walls of the passage. It opened up a gaping 4 meter wide hole on the floor of the sloping passage into the habitat.

  75 Marines covered all the four exits of the habitat. The closest exit facing the plateau, under which the humans had dug the tunnel was most lightly guarded. No one expected the Shaitans to walk over the lava and come out of that exit. The Marines understood the risks. The big guns were still operational. As they fired on any Shaitan trying to exit the habitat, the Marines would give away their positions. The big guns will open up on them. The missile could and probably would blow away the excavators and heavy machineries behind which the Marines had taken cover.

  Still this was the best chance to get the Shaitans as cheaply they ever could. If the Shaitans were allowed to get out, the Marines would possibly have to combat thousands of Shaitans on even terms in the Shaitans’ own domain. Sarah could well imagine the scene that must be going on inside the Shaitan habitat right now. A scene to utter confusion and total panic as the Shaitans find lava creeping into every tunnel and chamber, instantly incinerating anything it touched. Hundreds if not thousands trapped with the exit routes blocked by lava.

  It took several minutes for the first panic stricken Shaitans to stumble out of the exit. These must have been the defense team of the Shaitans who were already suited up and waiting somewhere near the exit for an emergency response. The Shaitans exited in their twos and threes and were promptly shot by the waiting Marines with their plasma rifles.

  Capt. Song had considered trying to blow up and block the exits immediately. He had however instructed the Marines to use heavy rockets to blow up the habitat exit only if the number of Shaitans exiting the habitat became overwhelming, which the Marines could not handle. If the Shaitan habitat plan was consistent, then it was always possible for the Shaitans to blow up the roof of the habitat and try to exit from the roof, as Major Cheng had done on Titan.

  If the exits were left unblocked, it might lure the Shaitans to exit the easy way and hence prevent them from finding another exit, till it was too late. T
he Shaitans never exited en masse from the habitat. Most of them seemed to have been trapped somewhere or the other. It took over half an hour for the lava to slowly seep into the lower most recesses of the habitat, as it slowly cooled and clogged the exits, trapping and eventually entombing the Shaitans inside.

  The big guns had fallen silent within minutes of the lava entering the habitat. The guns themselves wouldn’t have been damaged, since they were fairly close to the surface, but their operators were either dead or had abandoned their posts.

  Capt. Song sent the status of the mission back to Avenger and requested another Company of Marines to be sent down by a jump. If there were any more guns in the neighborhood, not connected to the habitat, they may still be operative. The next jump would prove if this was the case, and the additional Marines would be required to hunt down those guns, now that they had a successful template for destroying the Shaitan entrenched positions.

  There would be one image that would remain etched in the mind of the Marines as they kept their vigil for the dwindling number of Shaitans exiting the habitat. A group of about 20 Shaitans had somehow managed to reach a set of environment suits within their habitats and somehow managed to reach the exit without getting completely incinerated. Perhaps they had clung on to the roof of the tunnels and walked, as the Shaitans were capable of doing.

  However they had not gone completely unscathed as they clung to the walls and the roofs with lava bubbling within their habitats. As this group of Shaitans scampered out of their habitat desperately, lava globules had stuck to their suits and the slowly cooling and hardening lava had burnt through their skins exposing flesh. A few of their suits were on fire. The Shaitans emerged from their habitats, already in their typical death frenzy.

  Not a single Marine fired at them. They just watched in awe as the 20 thrashing creatures some with their limbs missing, some on fire and others dripping molten flesh moved in random directions. All that the Marines chanted was “Burn baby burn!”

  Chapter 16

  Cookie Cutter

  Over Jehannum, Alpha Shaitan System

  February 2108

  There was a grim silence hanging over the meeting room. Major Joshua Lowenstein had finished the presentation minutes ago, but no one had spoken. Most were lost in their own thoughts at the grim possibility of either having to retreat back and let all the sacrifices made by the Marines and the Navy go to waste, or engage in an offensive which could lead to a massacre of the Marines.

  The room was full of the military personnel, the entire top brass of the Alpha Shaitan campaign. Rear Admiral Hamid Dar the head of the campaign expeditionary force, the captains of all the four ships along with their XO, the legendary Maj. General Edward ‘Nutcase’ Bassinger the head of the Marines’ brigade, who refused a promotion so that he could come on this expedition, Col. Uzi and Col. Wen who headed the two marine regiment that made up the marine brigade, and their staffs.

  Maj. Lowenstein had laid out the grim and depressing analysis of the biggest Marine debacle of the campaign so far. He had also painted the graphically depressing picture of an entrenched enemy on the Moon that could not be flushed out, killed or defeated from space even by nuclear or kinetic bombing. There were tens of millions at the least and as much as a few hundred million Shaitans on the Moon below, protected in their burrows over a kilometer below the ground.

  The enemy was completely in its elements in the dark tunnels and caves of the Moon, just as humans would be on open land. The enemy could dive down and disappear into the ground anywhere in the millions of burrow openings on the Moon and pop out of any place to kill the Marines in a ground war. The spy bots sent to the ground below had given the Marines a fair idea of what lay below, but the real foreboding of what lay ahead had come from the fate of the expeditionary force.

  An entire platoon of Marines had been wiped out in a matter of an hour despite valiant attempt at rescuing them and supporting them with unceasing bombardment from space. The platoon of 30 Marines had been harassed, cornered and forced underground by thousands of Shaitans, until each and every one of them had been hunted and killed.

  Even an expeditionary force of ten thousand Marines would not be safe in making a beachhead safe enough for Marines to run a campaign in that hornet’s nest below. There was no safe area on the entire surface of the Moon. The two thousand Marines of this campaign did not have a hope in hell to prosecute a ground campaign on the surface of Jehannum.

  Out of the 25 men and women in the room, three were odd men out, for they were the only civilians. Each of them had a story of their own, and a reason to come on this expedition. Two of them were here for retribution and one for love.

  At 56 Dr. Ken Kimura was one of the older members of the expedition, although as in the case of every member of this expedition, physical age was a dubious number to quote. Every person on the expedition had gone through a hibernation of 4 years on an average, so their biological age was probably less. How much the humans had really aged in the 4 years of hibernation was something that was not known at the moment. It would take humans decades of observation to figure out the relation between hibernation and aging. These were the first humans to undergo long term hibernation.

  Dr. Kimura may not have biologically aged to 56, but he physically looked that age. There was an impression of neglect in his appearance. He wasn’t dirty or unhygienic. Unhygienic and Japanese just don’t go together. It was the impression that he did not care about his appearance or his health. He had probably not bothered to comb, or moisturize his skin in this dry atmosphere maintained on the ship. He was in the regulation uniform of the ship, but somehow it looked unkempt without being dirty.

  Dr. Kimura had not always been that way. As a brilliant professor of geology in the University of Sapporo, he was considered one of the foremost authorities on tectonic movements of Earth, the prime cause for most earthquakes. He was respected in his field of study across the world, and his opinion valued especially by the Japanese government who consulted him regularly on earthquake predictions.

  He had a beautiful wife and two lovely daughters, and his life was as perfect as could be. That was till he left for a field trip to Africa the day before the Holocaust. Like tens of millions of people across the Pacific Rim, Dr. Kimura’s life changed on the day of the Holocaust when most of Sapporo was devastated and he lost everything he held dear in his life.

  After the mandatory days of mourning, Dr. Kimura went to the head of his department, thanked him for all the support he had given over the years and handed his resignation. Then he packed a single bag containing few clothes, some memories and the ashes of his family. He left for New York and went straight to the USC building in the Bronx.

  “I have come to take you up on your open offer.” That was all he said to his friend, and esteemed member of the geology community Dr. Yusuke Matsumoto, who himself had just returned from Mars a few days prior. Despite Japanese cultural aversion to touching, the two men simply hugged each other, no words needed to be exchanged any further. That day on, Dr. Kimura had just one passion – the study of the planet Shaitan and its moons. If there was an expert on the geology of the moons of Shaitan, it had to be Dr. Kimura.

  It was now Dr. Kimura who spoke up in a timid and uncertain voice to the room full of despondent humans. “There might be a way…”

  24 pair of eyes turned their gaze towards Dr. Kimura and he seemed to sink down a bit further in his chair due to that scrutiny. Admiral Dar realized that the scientist needed further encouragement to speak up. He was probably intimidated by the assemblage of top brass in the room. He put on his softest voice possible and said. “Go on Dr. Kimura, we would very much like to hear from you. It doesn’t matter if the idea comes to a dead end. It is still better than what we have right now, which is nothing.”

  Dr. Kimura cleared his throat in nervousness and said. “I did not understand all the military terms the Major used, but if I understood correctly, the biggest problem for ground invasion
of Jehannum is its geology… Let me explain what I mean. You might be thinking that being a geologist I can only think of geology.” Dr. Kimura paused for confirmation and Hamid gave him an encouraging nod.

  “The first problem mentioned by the Major was that the Shaitans live in underground chambers interconnected with each other with an unending labyrinth of underground passages. These underground structures start from the surface and go very deep. My estimate is that the crust of the planet is about 4 Km deep, and these honeycomb structures go all the way down to that depth.

  This prevents us from bombarding them from space to… I think the word used by the major was ‘soften’ them, which I assume means that they can hide inside and we cannot hurt them. The only way to get to the Shaitans in the Major’s word is by ‘going into the rabbit hole’ and see how deep and dangerous it is. Even though I am not a military man, I can clearly see how risky that would be. The tunnels would be dark, and it would open up in three dimensions from all sides. The enemy can hide and come from any direction. The enemy can even walk the tunnels upside down on the roof.

  The second problem mentioned by the Major was that it is impossible to find a safe place on the surface of Jehannum, where we can establish a beachhead. Any part of the surface that we capture, can be surrounded from every side by the Shaitans by going underground and emerging from any direction they choose, including coming up directly from underneath. Without a beachhead, we cannot proceed towards a full scale land invasion of Jehannum.

  It is the second problem to which I am proposing a solution. I think there is a place and a way to establish a beachhead on Jehannum.” Dr. Kimura paused to look around. Everyone was all ears now, and Dr. Kimura got confidence from their body language and continued. “This is where the geology of Jehannum comes into the picture. If you excuse me I would like to rewind a bit and give some context.”