Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  It was rarely reliable or accurate, but in a non-combat situation, it gave a human the best ‘feel’ of the land as humans have naturally evolved to understand. In a combat situation though, it was advisable to stick to IR if lighting up the battlefield was not an option. It was safer for a Marine to know that a patch of ground had an unknown texture and be careful about it, rather than to have the computer ‘guess’ it as solid, only to fall into a ditch.

  The moon below looked like a black and white patchwork that reminded Sarah of the skin of a Holstein cow. There was no life on the surface of Jehannum, nor any biological features that imparted it color, like on Earth. The dark patches Sarah knew were the places where the surface rocks and soil of the moon had been exposed due to heat melting away the snow and ice layer on top of it. Some of the dark patches were hardened lava that had emerged on the surface, although it was rare on Jehannum, unlike AS-d.

  The white patches were snow and ice in places where the surface was not heated enough to melt the ice. There were long channels of deep blue cut through the ice, where melt water had flowed from higher regions to lower ones, but such ‘rivers’ were few on Jehannum. Water tended to flow below the ice on Jehannum, since the source of heat was below and not above on this world.

  Most of the large patches of ice could be thought of as gigantic glaciers, slowly moving to lower elevation. Almost all the liquid water on Jehannum was below the ice. Jehannum in a sense had shallow lakes and seas, but buried under thick ice that could be a few meters to a few hundred meters deep. The other thing that looked vaguely familiar and yet alien to Sarah’s eyes were the mountains of Jehannum.

  The entire moon was covered with mountains. In fact the texture of the surface of the moon looked very similar to the skin of a wrinkled old lady. None of the mountains were very high. It was more appropriate to call them hills. They were a few hundred meters high on an average, with the tallest less than a kilometer.

  The alien part of those mountains was not just the fact that they covered the entire surface of the moon, unlike Earth. It was weird to see a definite pattern in which the mountain ranges extended across the face of the entire moon. It almost looked like someone had squeezed a spherical dough and wrinkled its surface. That analogy was not very far from the truth. The mountains of Jehannum had not formed due to tectonic plate movement, as they do on Earth. Jehannum did not have any tectonic plates. The mountains were formed due to the constant squeeze that the moon felt in its orbit around Alpha Shaitan.

  The sharp raised mountains would then slowly be weathered by the thin atmospheric breeze and the flowing water of the surface. Jehannum did not have a very active weather system, since it had no power source other than the feeble heat escaping from below the surface to power it, unlike Earth where the energy of the sun powers a very vigorous weather system.

  Sarah turned her attention towards the LZ. The landing zone was a complete patch of white, which reassured her a lot. It meant that the entire surface of the beachhead they had carved on the North Pole for themselves was covered with ice. Tentative estimates by sensors had put the thickness of the ice well above 200 meters on an average. This meant that it was less likely to have an underground opening from where Shaitans could pop up.

  The poles of Jehannum were covered with thick ice for a very different reason than Earth. It wasn’t colder on the poles compared to the equator of Jehannum. The air temperature was almost uniform across most of the surface of the moon, varying by only about 10°C across the surface. The reason for the thick ice sheets on the poles of Jehannum was due to lack of vents and tunnels under the surface, which could transfer heat from the core.

  Sarah knew that the Shaitans had an extremely sophisticated monitoring system across Jehannum, and would surely be aware of the Marines plunging down the Shaitan atmosphere. Yet there wasn’t a single attempt made by the Shaitans to shoot the Marines down, unlike the last time the ill-fated expeditionary force had made a landing.

  Sarah was thankful for the lucky break. Probably the Shaitans had realized the futility of trying to shoot down individual Marines from their previous experience. They would attempt to kill the Marines on the ground, where they had been so successful with the expeditionary force.

  The alarm dinged inside Sarah’s head and let her know that it was time to deploy her parachutes. The violence of the jerk with which her chutes opened was almost the same as that on Earth, despite the Jehannum atmosphere being only 70% of Earth. That was because, the terminal velocity was proportionately higher due to the same thin atmosphere, ensuring that the chutes opened at a higher velocity.

  Sarah guided her chutes manually, although her suit anchor to the parachute was interfaced with the suit computer, and was capable of steering the chute automatically. That was how the packages going down along with the marines were being steered by the computer. Sarah however preferred the exhilarating experience of steering and soaring on a chute.

  The Marines were on radio silence, only to be broken on reaching the surface, and that too on orders by the CO or Sarah. Sarah aimed for a mound, too small to be called a hillock jutting out of the ice sheet. It was probably the pinnacle of a hill typical of Jehannum, which had been almost completely buried by the ice sheet. It was the only source of cover nearby in the otherwise flat ice plain.

  Sarah had switched to IR and noticed that a number of Marines had the same idea. That was good as far as Sarah was concerned. She would prefer not to switch on the IFF system to locate the Marines and break the radio silence as much as possible. The Marines started assembling near the base of the mound. They had landed scattered in a radius of two kilometers, as had the packages.

  “Lieutenant, I want the packages located and stacked here ASAP. Locate the Kites on priority and have them unpacked. I want an eye in the sky in the next 15 minutes… and Lieutenant, get the men to scout around the mound for an appropriate place to make a temporary base.” Capt. Song said to Sarah.

  “Aye sir, on it.” Sarah replied and then on a thought asked. “Sir, we need a name for the base don’t we? What do we call it?”

  “Well… let’s think… The base on the South Pole of the Moon is called Shackleton base. It is only appropriate that this base on the North Pole of Jehannum be called ‘Amundsen base’. What do you think?”

  “Perfect, sir. Amundsen base it is!” Sarah replied with enthusiasm.

  While a few of the Marines set up base, a whole platoon of Marines were tasked with the job of mapping out the neighborhood in detail. The Marines fanned out in a circular pattern, drilling small holes in the ice and inserting a small amount of explosives. The echo of the explosive sound was captured by the hydrophones and the computer mapped out the ice sheet below their feet as well as the surface features below the ice sheet.

  The exercise was important, not just to ensure that there were no tunnels and Shaitans lurking under their feet, but also to ensure that there were not treacherous ice ravines that could cave in and plunge the Marines to their death.

  The four Kites were assembled and up in the air within 30 minutes of the Marines landing. The Kites were the nickname for the oldest kind of drones that humans have used in warfare for nearly 130 years since the last decade of the 20th century. The Kites were basically small airplanes with extra-long wings and endurance to stay high up in the air and provide an ‘eye in the sky’ for the Marines.

  After nearly 6 hours of continuous search from the sky as well as on foot, the 4th Company didn’t find any evidence of Shaitan occupation on the ice shelf of the North Pole, which was now cut off from the rest of the ‘mainland’ of Jehannum by a spectacular moat of cooling lava nearly a kilometer deep and two kilometers wide in every direction.

  The objective of the humans in setting up a beachhead and a safe haven on the surface of Jehannum had been a success. The only minor hitch for the Marines was that the same moat which kept the Shaitans out, also kept the Marines confined to the North Pole. Shuttles would have to ferry Marines to the mai
nland every time they wanted to do an operation.

  It was a minor logistical irritant, which the Marines would slowly overcome. In the months to come, the Marines would slowly clear out and seal tunnels on the other side of the moat, making shuttle flights safer. Within 15 days of the 4th Company landing, Amundsen base had become a sprawling camp housing over a thousand Marines.

  Chapter 19

  Where are the tanks?

  Amundsen Base, Jehannum, Alpha Shaitan System

  March 2109

  Major Gen. Edward Bassinger stood ramrod straight. No one out here dared call him by his handle ‘Nutcase’. No one within a trillion miles at the least, other than perhaps the admiral himself, but he was not on the surface right now. The years had greyed his hairs and increased the wrinkles on his face, but other than that this old warhorse was as fighting fit today, as he had been the day he jumped from space at breakneck speed into Mars, to take on two battalions of Shaitans.

  This was a different Ed Bassinger though. Gone was the easy going jovial Marine. In its place was a hard eyed stern General who could bore a hole in your head with just his stare. The burden of losing people under his command over the years had taken its toll. For people who knew him closely like Col. Uzi, having been a fellow Marine and subordinate for nearly 25 years, it was a remarkable transition. Perhaps this is how the legend of a stern General is born from a jovial and easygoing soldier.

  He was addressing the full officer’s meeting. That meant every commissioned officer from every company of both the brigades along with the brigade commanders was present. After all the skirmishes, this was going to be the biggest push into the Shaitan heartland. That meant pretty much every marine that had come and survived in the Alpha Shaitan system was committed to this offensive.

  “Gentlemen I will get to the point straight away. There is no point beating around the bush. This is going to be our first major offensive into a Shaitan stronghold, and it will be mighty surprising if we don’t suffer casualties. Our job is to make sure that those casualties are kept to the minimum. Everything about this campaign is designed with that objective in mind.

  We would love to hold the territory, but that is not our primary objective. Our primary objective is knowledge, and we better not lose too many good marines gaining that knowledge. The knowledge we need is the actual situation and the feel of the tunnels and passages crisscrossing this damn moon. We have not gone deep into one of those till now, but that is exactly what we will be doing in this campaign.

  We want to know the feel of fighting in those tunnels, how big they are on an average. What kind of weapons we can take down there, what kind of positions we can build, and how best we can defend them. The whole shebang of ground ops tactics, except it is not going to happen on ground, but under-ground.

  To test the waters, we have chosen this sector.” Ed thought clicked an icon inside his head and the table in front of him lit up. Forty Marine officers gathered closer to the table to view the 3D image of the North Pole where their base was located. The image was zoomed till only a few hundred kilometers around their base in the North Pole was visible. Artificial zigzag lines were drawn all over the surface.

  “Those lines are seismic cracks and fault lines that we have surveyed. That map is the end result of all the poking and drilling on the surface your platoons have been doing these last few months. It was possible because we dominate the surface, thanks to the absolute domination of space. Unfortunately our domination of the surface is not as absolute as we would like.

  There Shaitans can pop up to the surface at will, and scuttle back before our rail guns in space can hammer them. Our ships do not dare come into low orbit around Jehannum till we can neutralize the surface to space missile menace, which is going to take a long time I guess. Still fairly safe for us to move around the surface, as long as we keep our eyes open.

  That is not going to be the case as we go down the rabbit hole into their territory. That is the reason we have chosen this particular sector – sector 6. If you carefully observe sector 6, there are a few notable highlights about this sector. First it is almost triangular in shape and its base is the wall of the chasm that we created with the cookie cutter. So it is isolated and inaccessible from one side.

  Second, the cookie cutter did not cut as cleanly as it looks on the surface. There are many cracks under the surface that radiate out for tens of kilometers, sometimes for nearly a hundred kilometer away from the North Pole. The thing about sector 6 though is that there is an additional crack that has developed along a stress zone, which meets up with one of the cracks to make a triangle.

  These cracks I have been given to believe by Dr. Kimura are as deep as the chasm that we have created, for that is how deep the stress of the crust of Jehannum goes due to its constant squishing. So in theory if the cracks are wide enough, they should cut off all access by tunnels from other part of the planet. I have to stress the ‘theory’ part, for that’s exactly what it is – theory. We do not know for sure, and would not know until we get down there and check for ourselves.

  These mappings of tunnels I am adding to sector six,” Ed zoomed the model to just show sector six and its surroundings now “were charted by the tiny explosives dug into those holes your marines were digging all around the surface. The reflected sound from those tiny explosions have mapped the insides of the crust, just like we get to see our bodies’ insides through sonogram.

  The tunnels are color coded such that the deeper they are, the grayer they get, but the most important thing to remember about the color is that the grayer it gets, the more uncertain we are about its exact dimensions, openings or cave-ins. I want you all to all to turn around this model and have a real good look at the interconnections between the tunnels.

  Those of you who can, take it inside your head and give it a virtual spin by going inside those tunnels. I want you all to get extremely familiar with the lay of the land. Of particular note for all of you should the amount of inter-connections between the various levels. One can pop in and pop out from any level fairly easily. This is going to be a 3 dimensional battlefield.

  It would do well to remember that the Shaitans have evolved to take advantage of this 3D battlefield far more than we humans have. Use your tech-head gear liberally out there, don’t skimp on using it in this battlefield. There will be far worse consequences than a headache if you fail to use it.

  Coming back to sector 6, we believe that the apex of the triangle is the pinch point, which is the only access to sector 6 from the rest of the land mass of Jehannum. Now remember that we believe so based on the data we have, but we could be wrong. Once we go in, we may find that the Shaitans have somehow managed to get in reinforcements from another direction simply because there was another connection to sector 6 that we didn’t know about.

  You all know the operational plan and your individual deployment, so I am not going to repeat that here. Any questions?” Ed asked as he turned and face the assembled officers.

  “Sir, I have one… Where are the tanks?” It was Major Lowenstein. He looked around and saw the puzzled faces of the officers around him and rushed to clarify. “I mean… think about it, sir. If this were the Shaitans invading Earth, we would have the entire machinery of ground, air and naval warfare pitted against the Shaitans by now. We would be rolling tanks, APC, howitzers… you name it from every nation of the world, and attacking the Shaitans.

  The only attack on this base has been a set of missile attacks. The missiles were not even specialized surface to surface missiles. They were the same surface to space missiles that they had tried using earlier against our landing crafts, just reprogrammed to hit a land target. As a result the missiles have to go halfway up the atmosphere before they point towards this base. Thus all of them have been easily shot down by our missile defense system. The missiles were not even nukes, which they could have easily used on this isolated beachhead without putting any of the Shaitans at risk.

  All the skirmishes we have
had with the Shaitans in the ground battle so far, have been infantry battles. Marines on foot, fighting Shaitans on foot or tentacles or limbs, whatever you want to call it. I can understand the few skirmishes inside the tunnels being on foot, but even in the skirmishes we had on the surface, the Shaitans did not use any heavy machinery or mobile heavy weapons. Not even small truck mounted guns, which even petty criminal gangs and terrorist organization of Earth possess! That just seems strange, sir.” Major Lowenstein looked at Ed with an enquiring face.

  Ed looked at Col. Adina Uzi and asked. “You want to take that colonel?”

  Col. Adina Uzi was not just a first rate Marine, but an expert in Xeno-psychology. She was a student of the legendary Dr. Mischa Stenger, and a recognized scholar of Shaitan sociology. She turned towards the officers in general, and looked at Major Lowenstein in particular before answering. “I know the situation looks strange from a human military point of view. It had me puzzled a bit as well, I must admit. But if you think about it logically it won’t look very strange to you.

  First, a fact about the Shaitans that we know with a fair degree of certainty. The records of the Shaitans we have hacked so far, and the interrogation of hundreds of Shaitans have so far not revealed a single instance of warfare between the Shaitans. The only mention of any conflict between the Shaitans themselves comes as some mythological metaphor during the time of the ‘Great leap into the void’. We believe that it was some historical event very long time ago.

  So think about it. If this entire world is one single nation with a single administration and no country to fight, why would they need tanks or even an army? Crazy as it may sound, but we on Earth are better prepared for a ground battle because we continually keep fighting between ourselves.

  Second, if we have got the density of Shaitans living inside the tunnels right, then we estimate the population of Shaitans in Jehannum to be somewhere between 10 million and a 100 million. Now that might sound like a lot, but for a Moon with almost as much land surface as Earth, where they can live in 3 dimensions, it is an extremely sparsely populated world. Even at the top end of the estimation, the population of this world is less than 1% of that of Earth.