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Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

Page 47

by Sudipto Majumdar


  Some of the best minds on Earth had worked on the problem, theorized, and experimented for many years now. They had come up with a solution which was impossible to test practically unless there was another KK Ship attack by the Shaitans. Despite the curiosity of the engineers and scientists who had designed the system, they all prayed that it would never get tested, for the consequences of failure were unimaginable.

  “Sir, sorry to disturb you in the evening, but I think you should see the message I just forwarded to you. EmCom wants to get in touch with you.” It was Gerald’s staff assistant.

  “Thanks Ayesha, I will check and get back in a moment.” Gerald replied. He was a bit irritated by the call at that moment. He got to see his daughter and her young family so little that he cherished every visit they made. He wanted to have some quality time with them without being disturbed, especially from the jumpy EmCom, who had raised 28 false alarms in the last 15 years of the Lighthouse program.

  Gerald sighed. His duty required him to check any flag that the ‘Lighthouse Emergency Committee’ raised. So he pressed his wrist com on the shaving mirror on top of the bathroom basin, where he was standing. He had come inside the bathroom next to the guest room to take the call from his office. His scroll was lying in the study, and the only com equipment he had was the wrist com on which he had talked.

  Now in his mid-fifties, Gerald had succumbed to the ailment most humans entering their middle ages suffer from – reading glasses. Surprisingly there was no quick fix surgery discovered by medicine for this most common of human ailments. He could not read off the small screen of the wrist com. So he took off his wrist com and pressed it on the mirror and let it project on the glass. He could control the com with his thought, although he still had not got complete hang of the spinal interface.

  Gerald and most top brass of the USC had eventually gotten the spinal interface implant. It would not do for the leadership to ignore a USC policy that they had put in place themselves. They had to lead by example and the brass of Gerald’s generation had opted for the spinal implant with an air of resignation.

  There were rare personnel in the Admiralty like Rear Admiral Hugo Choi who were tech-heads, but most senior navy personnel of Gerald’s generation had resisted implants as long as possible. When they had no option, almost all of them had opted for the less invasive spinal implant, thus becoming a mini tech-head.

  Gerald scrolled down the detailed EmCom report with increasing alarm. This was not the report of some young operator who had jumped into a conclusion at the first anomaly indicator. There was data analysis for over 20 minutes of observation and the indicators were unambiguous. There was something heading their way for certain, and it was moving fast.

  At times like this Gerald missed physical buttons to slam. Instead he used his spinal interface to call the EmCom. He added his staff assistant to the conversation. The call was answered immediately, everyone had been waiting on the other end of the line anxiously for the Admiral and Chief of Staff of USC to call back.

  “Talk to me, what do you need and what do you know till now?” Gerald asked the young EmCom shift operator who was being projected on Gerald’s shaving mirror. Before the young ensign could answer however, Gerald spoke again. “Ayesha! The Command HQ is now in a condition 1 alert on my authority. You know the routine, get the staff started on the protocol. I want the brass connected to this conversation now, especially Admiral Strong and Choi. Have we notified the civilian emergency response?” Gerald was almost shouting, he wished he had his old friend Hamid with him right now. God knows Gerald could have used his tactical genius right now, but he knew that Hamid was trillions of kilometers away right now, fighting the good fight having sacrificed everything that was dear to him.

  The EmCom shift operator finally got the chance to speak up. “We have notified the USC emergency response center as well as most of the individual government response liaisons, sir. We are at this moment being bombarded with queries from everywhere. Since I sent the message to you, we have gotten Lighthouse 3 and 6 to bear on the same object that was originally detected by lighthouse 4.

  The data confidence level is now greater than 99%, so we are now fairly certain of the facts. We don’t know the mass of the object yet, neither its shape or size but its profile is certain to be larger than 50 square meters, which means it definitely bigger than a small probe or a rock, something that must weigh at least a few hundred tons if not more.

  It is coming at us straight from the direction of Alpha Shaitan and travelling at 2.6% the speed of light with an error margin of 0.2% speed of light. I feel that it must be moving at 2.7% speed of light, just like the last KK device which caused the Holocaust. We must go with the assumption that this one is as massive as the last one if not more.” The operator finished.

  “How much time?” Admiral Choi asked the all-important question. He had just joined into the conference, as had a few other top brass.

  “Sir we have detected the incoming object at about 13 light hours away from Earth. That gives us about 480 hours of time given that the KK ship is travelling at 2.7% the speed of light. That’s 20 days, but it has taken light over 13 hours to reach the Lighthouse and another 3 hours to reach from the Lighthouse to Earth. In addition another hour has gone in our analysis and response, so effectively we have 463 hours left, give or take an hour.

  I will be able to give you more accurate ETA in a day’s time sir. We have designated the object as SH1, as you can see in the chart I just uploaded to you all. SH1 is still dark and only illuminated by the lighthouse, as it comes in and gets illuminated by the Sun, we will have better estimates.” The operator replied apologetically.

  “That is good enough for the moment ensign, thanks and keep us updated if you get any more details. Dismissed for now.” Gerald waited for the operator to disconnect and then continued. “Well Admirals, we have prepared for this moment, so we go according to plan. Admiral Choi, I assume that your ships have been mobilized.”

  “Yes sir, the Dragon’s Scales has started its mobilization. I am actually having two simultaneous conversations right now, one in this conference and the other in my staff conference. I will be able to give you a complete readiness report in another 10 minutes, but it looks good so far…” Hugo said in his distinctive southern drawl, but from the way he ended, it seemed like he wanted to say more.

  “Out with it Hugo. God knows, you are not the kind to keep things to yourself. This is hardly the time to clam up.” Gerald said impatiently.

  “Sir, I have war gamed this moment hundreds of time ever since I was given the responsibility of KK weapon defense. If I were in the position of the Shaitans, it would not make sense for me to send just one KK ship. It does not fulfill any strategic objective of the Shaitans to send just one KK ship. The Shaitans would have observed the fact that we recovered from their first KK attack fairly fast.

  That KK ship would have sent its report even as it was plunging into Earth, and the Shaitans would know that a large part of the attack was wasted in the oceans. Granted that we got lucky and the Pacific Ocean face was turned towards Alpha Shaitan at that time, but still this time they would have changed their attack pattern.

  At the very least the Shaitans would want to attack both sides of the planet. To do that at least another KK ship should follow 12 hours behind, although sending one 36 or 60 hours behind would also do the job. You know my views on this sir, I have raised it a number of times…” Hugo said.

  “… and I and the entire admiralty agrees with you Hugo. What more would you have us do Admiral? You know that the Umbrella technology was developed only a year ago, and we just started building dedicated deployment ships then. The Dragon’s Scales is only the first of many to follow, but unfortunately right now we have only the one, which is at your disposal admiral.” Gerald said more in frustration than with the intention to shout at Hugo. Gerald himself would have liked a few more deployments ships, but the damned technology came too late, or the attack came
too early, whichever way one wants to look at it.

  “There is something more we can do sir…” Hugo started hesitantly. Gerald and the rest of the admirals gave Hugo the expectant look, so he continued. “We may not have more deployment ships, but we do have a large supply of Umbrellas delivered to us recently. As you may recall, in one of our routine meetings we had decided to maintain a reserve stock of umbrellas for the new deployment ship that is overdue.

  The umbrellas are in the orbital stockyard, and so is Shiva on routine maintenance schedule. I am proposing that we load as many packages as possible on Shiva and dispatch it to follow the Dragon’s Scales. Even if there is no second ship behind the first one, the Shiva can form a second line of defense.

  We have never used this in real life, so we have no idea how this thing is going to perform, I think it may be a good idea to have a second line of defense. In case there is a second ship, then the packages carried by Shiva may not be enough, but something is better than nothing. Shiva may at the least be able to blunt the effect of the strike, sir.”

  “I don’t see any problem with that approach Admiral, does anyone here see any potential issue with what Admiral Choi is suggesting?” Gerald asked the assembled brass. No one had any objections, so Gerald said. “Make it so, on my authority, Admiral.”

  It all started innocuously for the crew of USC ‘Dragon Scales’ with the First shift noting a regular official intimation from the Lighthouse ops team that a first level, preliminary analysis, automated alarm had been raised at a certain sector.

  First level alarm was just the computer sounding off an alarm to get the attention of human operators. All it really indicated was that out of the billions of objects that it tracked using the reflected light of the lasers of the lighthouse, it had found an object that was previously not know about, or an object that should not be in the place it has been found. In addition it indicated that the object had anomalous characteristics in terms of the spectral analysis of the reflected light, which indicated its composition, or the object was moving in an anomalous manner. Enough anomaly to not be able to say conclusively that it is a natural object moving in space.

  First level alarms were no big deal. In the last decade, there must have been many hundreds of first level alarms raised by the computer. There is at least one every month. Once the human operators had a closer look, and used additional resources to illuminate the object, it all resolved into a false alarm. All but one first level alarm in the last 2 years had failed to escalate into a level 2 alarm. The only one which did, was a surprise inspection mounted by the USC to check the readiness of the lighthouse team. They had basically sent a ship at high speed unannounced towards Earth.

  The XO of the Dragon Scales was on the bridge, and the coms officer informed her about the level 1 alarm simply as a matter of military procedure. The atmosphere was so casual that all she replied was “Duly noted” and continued sipping her coffee.

  “There is something strange about this alarm though ma’am.” The coms officer said tentatively. The XO raised her eyebrows in a questioning gesture and he continued. “The sector of the alarm is the same as that of Alpha Shaitan… Let me check…” He said and his eyelids fluttered in the typical tech-head gesture of accessing data. When he spoke again, it had increased considerably in volume and urgency. “In fact ma’am, that coordinates of the alarm on a direct line to Alpha Shaitan to the last arc of the last degree that can be measured!”

  The complacency was gone from the demeanor of the XO as she sat up and accessed the data inside her own head. Within seconds she was shouting to no one in particular on the bridge. “Raise the captain and get him here to the bridge.” Then to her coms officer she said. “Send a dispatch to the lighthouse operation center with a formal request to instruct all their assets tracking that object to directly stream the data to the Dragon Scales as well.”

  “Aye ma’am. Just to remind you we are two light hours away from the lighthouse ops.” The coms officer said.

  “All the more reason for you to send the request right away instead of wasting time talking don’t you think?” the XO snapped at the coms officer, then instantly regretted it and said softly. “Look Shamil, we are here in that exact direct line of approach for a reason, you know it. Instead of a two plus two hour round trip, we can act four hours faster on any info from those lighthouses.”

  Ensign Shamil Muharatovic was only partly listening to his superior officer, he was simultaneously composing the dispatch message in his head. By the time the XO had finished, he said. “Understood ma’am, and the request has been dispatched.”

  The reason that the XO was alluding to was an obvious one. Ever since the humans had broken their own offer of truce by launching the Alpha Shaitan campaign, which involved opening up with kinetic bombing of Jehannum, the humans could justifiably expect a retaliation. Not just from Alpha Shaitan, but from Beta Shaitan as well.

  When the captain entered the bridge, he had to look at his screen as the XO vacated the seat, to get a grip of the situation. Like most USC officers of his generation, the captain was only a half tech-head, forced to take the spinal implant due to regulations. He grimly looked up at his XO and nodded, indicating that he agreed with her prognosis.

  The Dragon Scales did not have to wait for a full round time of 4 hours to get a response to their request. In fact barely 15 minutes after the Dragon Scales had received the level 1 alarm, they received the level 2 alarm along with a direct feed from lighthouse 1 and 4. Someone in the lighthouse ops center had come to the same conclusion as the bridge of the Dragon Scales, but they had done so with a rich variety of data confirming the hunch.

  Fortunately the ops guys had the presence of mind to start streaming the data from the lighthouse satellites directly to Dragon Scales, without waiting to get their request. It meant that within a few hours as the satellites get the instruction, they would start streaming the data directly to Dragon Scales thus forwarding their updates by 4 hours.

  The operations procedure manual said that the Dragon Scales would have to wait for the final level 3 alarm, which came with detailed instructions calculated by experts on the exact position and disposition of deployment. This was the first time this was ever being done, so there were really no ‘experts’ in this thing. The experts were basically the engineers and scientists who had designed the system, hoping and praying that every calculation they had made was accurate, and things panned out as they hoped it would.

  The level 3 alarm came almost an hour before the actual live streaming from the lighthouse satellites began. The Dragon Scales got detailed instructions on the most optimal position for them to move to and yet have a whole day to complete their deployment. Since the Shaitan KK ship had been detected just 13 light hours out of the solar system, there was not enough time for the Dragon Scales to move too far out and increase the safety margin, but they could move about 0.3 AU further out.

  In addition the Dragon Scales was informed that USC Shiva, which was currently in maintenance dock in orbit around Earth, was being loaded up with the same equipment as the Dragon Scales and sent to follow her as a backup. While it was good to know that the Dragon Scales would have some backup, it was a moot point what more the Shiva would be able to do if the Dragon Scales’ deployment failed.

  When the Dragon Scales reached its designated deployment point, the computers took over the navigation and the pneumatic ejectors of Dragon Scales. Using the precise mathematics sent by the engineers from the ops center, the computer started deploying its package in a definite pattern as it slowly used the pulse thrusters to position the ship along the line where the deployment was to take place.

  Since this was the first time, live deployment was being done, although the crew had gone through plenty of exercises, extra time had been provisioned in case of any unforeseen issues. Nothing unforeseen happened, and the Dragon Scales was able to finish its deployment in 6 hours, which was bad for the nerves of the crew, for they had to wait 18 hours
with nothing to do but watch those live feeds as the Shaitan KK ship marched inexorably towards Earth.

  The worst part was that even when the KK ship met up with the deployment of the Dragon Scales, the crew were mere spectators. There was nothing they could do to alter the outcome in anyway. If that wasn’t bad enough the entire thing happened so fast that no human sense could have kept up with the pace. The computer instrumentation however was tracking and recording the event at over 200 thousands frames per second, which was the fastest human instrumentation could work.

  The first problem the engineers had to neutralize was the fact that the Shaitan KK ship was not some dumb piece of rock that had been thrown towards the Earth. It was controlled by an Artificial Intelligence that was almost as good as an organic mind and infinitely faster. The AI would actively try to avoid any obstacles and reach its objective.

  As long as the AI remained in control, the difficulty of the Engineers would be compounded on an already difficult job. The second problem was that they could not just hit the KK ship with something and shatter it into pieces. That would be Game Over.

  The first package in the line of the path of the Shaitan KK ship used its powerful chemical thrusters to try to position it as close to the line of approach as possible. The packages had a very small reserve of fuel, but the rockets were extremely powerful relative to the size of the package to give the package a lot of thrust that it could use to position itself in the last few seconds.

  The packages used the services of the quantum computer on the Dragon Scales floating a few kilometers away, to get their targeting as precise as possible. Still it had no hope of hitting the Shaitan KK ship, especially with the KK Ship actively using its own thrusters to move out of the way. It didn’t matter. Because hitting the KK ship was not part of the plan.

  As the KK ship approached the first package and was just a few seconds away, the rim of the cylindrical package exploded in 12 equally spaced directions all around the circumference. The force of the blast for the first package was set to the maximum, so that within the few seconds that it had, 12 bolts flew and radiated outwards in 12 different direction around the package to a distance of 3 kilometers.

 

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