Retribution (Shaitan Wars)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  AS-d, or the Devil’s Workshop was the richest store of metals and heavy elements that humans had found in this universe till date. There was no shortage of iron, nickel, aluminum and other such metals that an advanced civilization needs to build its implements. The Mule Trains had gotten a lot of advanced fabrication equipment to use those metals. Little comforts of life from metal tables and chairs, cutlery and piping were made on AS-d.

  Most of the consumables like bullets and even guns were now manufactured there. It would not be long before complex items like missiles and electronics would also be fabricated within the Alpha Shaitan system. The biggest bonus coming out of AS-d was thanks to the abandoned Shaitan nuclear reprocessing plant. Engineers recently arrived from Earth had figured out how to run the plant, and it was producing 99% enriched weapons grade uranium.

  Humans did not have the facility to make nukes in Alpha Shaitan, but weapons grade Uranium was one of the first exports back to Earth. At one point in human history over a hundred years before, humans had thought that they had more nuclear fissile material than was realistically needed. With humanity going back from the brink of nuclear confrontation, uranium production was not a top priority on Earth for some time.

  Then came the nuclear renaissance from 2020 till about 2060, when humans once again turned towards nuclear fission power plants to reduce the dependence on coal and lower the carbon footprint. Uranium and Thorium production had increased in those years, but with the advent of the new fusion power plants learnt from the Shaitans, those old fission nuclear power plants were once again being slowly retired.

  Nuclear missiles and uranium had been thought of as relics of the past. Far from it, with the Shaitan wars, USC was consuming more nuclear missiles than could be produced on Earth. Once again human uranium production facilities were not being able to keep up production with the demand. Alpha Shaitan campaign was now producing its first commercial dividend, highly enriched uranium worth billions of dollars.

  Fissile material was not the only thing that was going back to Earth by the Mule Trains. ‘Jehannum Mushrooms’ by the tons were being sent back. Mushroom cognoscenti swore that Mushrooms grown in the tunnels and caves of Jehannum tasted very different from those on Earth. The ‘Jehannum Mushrooms’ distinguished themselves due to their different shape as well, thanks to the lower gravity of Jehannum. Most people bought Jehannum mushrooms simply because they were exotic, grown in a faraway planet!

  With all the activity going on, one would have thought that humans were well on their way to conquering the Alpha Shaitan system. Far from it. It had been over a year since the humans had gained any significant ground that they had been able to hold on Jehannum. The Shaitans had withdrawn from all the parts of Jehannum which were hard to defend. Whatever remained now, was very hard for the humans to take, and even harder to hold. What the Shaitans controlled was still 80% of the area of Jehannum.

  In this milieu emerged an unlikely and unsung hero. She was not a Marine, or a Navy personnel, or any other military branch. She was not even in the USC. She was a private contractor employed by a private company, and sent on the first human long distance journey to ensure that the technology developed by the company for USC worked properly.

  Dr. Mary Kramnik was one of those few people from the first wave humans that had decided to stay. There was nothing for her back on Earth emotionally to go back to. That was one of the reasons she had volunteered to come to Alpha Shaitan in the first place. She found the professional work she was doing at the frontier of her field in medical research here on Alpha Shaitan fulfilling.

  The most important reason however for her to stay here was that she had finally found love. To Mary that was all that really mattered, physical hardships of staying on a frontier planet was nothing compared to the joy of being with the one you love. As far as comfort was concerned, things were only getting better here, in what she had started considering as home.

  The journey of Dr. Kramnik from a militant pacifist and committed green activist to what she is today was an unlikely one. From being with a fanatic leftist, pro-aliens partner who abandoned her because she asked logical questions about the holocaust, to now being in love with a hardened military person, who hated the Shaitans from the core, was quite a turnaround in life for her.

  Dr. Mary Kramnik had become the de-facto head of the biosciences department of USC command headquarters in the Alpha Shaitan system, after her senior and boss Dr. Ghosh opted to return back to Earth. She had been in that position for a long time, when she made a seminal discovery. A discovery that would be hailed by many, but all her life she would be filled with doubts about whether she had done good or evil.

  Dr. Kramnik by specialization was a neurologist. She had gone into the area of long term human stasis research due to that fact. The biggest issue with putting a human being into long term hibernation was reviving the neurology, more specifically the brain. During the years in her makeshift research lab at the human headquarters on the Amundsen Base, she had been exposed and required to study much more of Shaitan neurology compared to human.

  She had started developing a fascination for this alternate and completely independently evolved neurology, which worked as well as the human one did. In many respects it worked better, although human neurology had its strengths as well. She had become as much of an expert on Shaitan brain, nervous system and neurology as any other human back on Earth.

  Dr. Kramnik was given a specific and pointed task by the brass. Develop a Shaitan truth serum. Interrogation of captured Shaitans formed a vital part of the intelligence gathering operation. At that time, an extremely ham handed method of interrogation was used, first developed over two generations ago by the first humans who had ever captured a Shaitan on Titan.

  Shaitans were not wired to feel pain in the same way as humans. One could cut off a limb of a Shaitan, and it would not be in agony in the same sense as a human. There would definitely be a physiological reaction, but it did not affect their cognitive or rational abilities. The Shaitan body would immediately go into overdrive to try and repair the damage as best as possible, very similar to a human body.

  However the severed nerves would send signals via the nervous system, which would not induce any pain or panic in the Shaitan. It would instinctively try to withdraw itself and minimize further damage to its body, in a reflex response as all living being anywhere in the universe would evolve, but it would not send the Shaitan into throes of pain, which it would get desperate to try and stop.

  Thus it was a waste of time to try and torture a Shaitan, as the first interrogators on Titan had found out. The Shaitan would give no better response on the threat of its limb being cut off. There were only two ways to get any information out of a Shaitan. Either you tricked the being into giving you the information, or you indulged in a crude form of Shaitan lobotomy.

  The Shaitans had a distributed brain system. They didn’t have a single brain case where the brain resided. As the Shaitans evolved to grow more and more intelligent, their brain size increased, but not in a central place like us humans. Instead, they had nodes of dense nerve connections at various parts of the body, prominent amongst them being the base of the limbs. These points evolved into ever complex set of connections to become part of a distributed brain.

  Each part of these brain nodes holds information in a distributed manner, but they make sense only when the interconnections make the brain function as a whole. If one were to sever connections to one or more of the nodes, the capacity of the Shaitan brain keeps degrading, until it becomes incapable of making intelligent thought or decisions. If all the nodes were disconnected from each other, the Shaitan would revert to an almost instinctive version of its self, which could only respond to basic instinctive stimuli.

  The data in each of the node however is still intact, only it does not make any sense unless combined with the data from other nodes of the brain. It is possible to extract these disjointed data from individual nodes using neurochemica
l signals, which the interrogators would then have to piece together and try to make sense.

  Almost 99% of the data usually made no sense, the only reason that interrogators indulged in this form of lobotomy was because, once in a while some technical scrap of data was identified within the stream, which had meaning in itself, and things could be inferred from that technical data. For example if a certain coordinates were encountered multiple times within the data stream of a lobotomized Shaitan, it could mean that something significant could be happening on those coordinates.

  There were no guarantee for this kind of data. Most of the times such data turned out to be nothing. For all one knew the coordinates appearing in the data stream of a lobotomized Shaitan could be the coordinates of his nest. Clearly this was a poor method of interrogation. So Dr. Kramnik was given the task to find out a ‘Truth serum’ that could be administered to the Shaitans, which would force them to spill their guts out.

  While setting out on this task, Dr. Kramnik was amazed at the toxicology of the Shaitan biology in general, and their neurology in particular. The Shaitan biology was hardy and could take a lot more abuse than humans. This was nothing new, everyone knew it. What was amazing to Dr. Kramnik though was the robustness of the Shaitan nervous system.

  The Shaitan nervous system could be destroyed by acids, cyanides and a plethora of other poisons just like any biological system. What was very hard to do was to fool the nervous system. It was extremely hard to send spurious signals through the Shaitan nervous system, which had a chance of being interpreted by another part of the system as a valid signal, and hence get tricked.

  Humans had myriads of molecules that could trick the human nervous system, starting from the common alcohol to LSD, cocaine, marijuana, and perhaps a thousand other such drugs both clinically legal as well as illegal that could do a hundred different things to the human nervous system and the brain. Mary spent over a year and could not found a single molecule that could induce any such effect on the Shaitan nervous system.

  Out of sheer frustration, Dr. Kramnik decided to try a drastically different approach. One night, she asked Sarah as they were about to go to sleep. “Is there any place on Jehannum, which the Shaitans avoid?”

  Sarah raised her head from her pillow, her eyes half closed and asked in surprise. “Eh… Pardon me?” Sarah was surprised because they avoided discussing about Shaitans in their private time, and almost never discussed the war. Mary had not left her pacifist youth behind completely, and she was squeamish about discussing the war. Mary almost never initiated such conversation with Sarah in the few years they had been together.

  “I mean… is there some area of Jehannum, where you know… the Shaitans could live, but they don’t?” Mary rephrased her question.

  “As a matter of fact there is, but why does the peacenik suddenly develop interest in matters of war?” Sarah was now fully awake and asked Mary in a teasing tone.

  “No… nothing important, it is just a project I have been working for over a year without any breaks, so I was trying to approach the problem from a different angle.” Mary said a bit sheepishly.

  “Aha… your ‘Truth Serum’ project! You know love, I was very surprised that you took the project in the first place. I would have thought that someone like you would be opposed to such methods.” Sarah said, further needling Mary. Sarah was in a teasing mood now.

  “Yes I know it is bad, but it is far better to give them a truth serum than to lobotomize them. Don’t you think? I was hoping I would be able to save the Shaitan prisoners from that terrible fate.” Mary said in her defense.

  “You got a point there love, but what has all that got to do with where the Shaitans live and avoid?” Sarah asked.

  “I have been trying to study the toxicology of Shaitan biology for some time now, and I have come up croppers. I think that it stands to reason, that if there is something that harms the Shaitans, then the Shaitans themselves would know about it. There are many places on Earth we humans avoid because something in the environment is harmful to us, like poisonous smoke from a volcano, or radioactive dump etc. I was wondering if there is some place on Jehannum, which has something that is harmful to the Shaitans and hence they avoid it. One easy way to find such a place would be if could identify an area which looks suitable for Shaitan habitation, but where there is no Shaitan habitation.” Mary explained.

  “Now that you mention it, I can think of two such regions. Some of us have always wondered why those regions were uninhabited, but we didn’t give it much thought. Initially we thought just like you, that there must be some issues with those regions. We have scouted those regions, and they are neither geologically unstable, prone to flooding or lava flows or radiation or any other known hazards any more than any other region on this moon.

  In fact we have a forward intelligence base in one of those regions, which we use keep an eye on neighboring sectors. We have had the base almost since the beginning. As far as I can recall, the Shaitans have never attempted to attack that base. It is one of the quietest forward posting a Marine can get. Nothing dangerous ever happens out there.” Sarah said thoughtfully.

  “Is it possible for me to go out there and collect some samples? I know nothing might come of it, but what the hell? I have tried everything else, it can’t hurt if I try a few more dead ends.” Mary asked.

  “I don’t see why you can’t get there. It is a relatively easy to get there by air, if you willing to risk the odd SAM that the Shaitans keep launching from time to time. There is a fairly easy access from the surface to the sector, and as far as I know the area is perfectly safe. It is beyond the pay grade of measly Major like yours truly to arrange such a trip, but I am sure you can get an OK from the General.” Sarah said.

  “And…” Mary hesitated before asking again, “Would it be too much to ask if I wanted to take a few test subjects… I mean a few Shaitan captives along with me there? I know transporting captive Shaitans over air must be a lot of trouble. I will understand if it is refused, but it would help a lot.”

  “If you need it, you have to ask a lot more confidently than that, love.” Sarah said as she planted a light kiss on Mary’s forehead. “Just say with conviction that you need it for your research, and I am sure that the General will get it organized.”

  It took over a month for the General to get it organized. It wasn’t the highest priority item on the General’s list and air transport was at a premium. Till a year ago, the only air transport available had been the shuttles of the spaceships. It was a very expensive way to travel, and those shuttles were irreplaceable, so they could not be put in harm’s way in a combat zone. It was only in the last one year, that the Mule Trains had been sending disassembled choppers and VTOL aircrafts.

  Mary had to use a VTOL aircraft, since the distance to be travelled from Amundsen base was a long one. They would be going from the North Pole, past the equator to a point in the southern hemisphere of Jehannum. Mary’s aircraft could not take the straight line route, since it had to evade a lot of sectors. The aircraft had to make two refueling stops at human held sectors before it reached its destination.

  Mary had been able to get just two Shaitan captive subjects for her study due to space limitation on the VTOL aircraft. The only safe way to transport captive Shaitans was in a hardened plastic box with breathing holes. Cages were no good since the Shaitans could squeeze themselves through an amazingly small aperture, which one would not think possible from the size of the Shaitans. Still Mary felt sad that intelligent sentient beings were being transported like dogs.

  Hardened plastic boxes used a lot less space, and the Shaitans did not mind getting squeezed into a small box and did not suffer any physiological or psychological side effects. Mary had brought one Type-A and one Type-B Shaitan for variety. She had a three day scheduled activity planned with a whole host of experiments on the reaction of the Shaitans to the environment, as well as sample collection.

  The aircraft landed on a plain covere
d with ice that was featureless and flat in every direction except one. In that one direction was a small worn out hillock barely a hundred meters high. The hillock and the area around it was bereft of ice, indicating that area was warmer than the rest. A mild icy breeze blew constantly towards the hillock area trying to equalize the temperature, and wearing out the hillock over millions of years.

  Two squads of Marines had been assigned to Mary for the operation. The Shaitans would have to be taken out of the boxes and handled manually. 8 Marines would be needed to manhandle two Shaitan prisoners. In addition the forward intelligence post had a few Marines posted permanently. Between them all, the Marines should be able to handle the experiments on the two captive Shaitans.

  Mary approached what looked like a small depression in the ground. She realized that the depression led to an ancient lava tube, which disappeared somewhere below the hillock. The hillock was the result of volcanic activity millions of years ago. The area must have since gone dormant, but residual heat must still be seeping out of the core of the moon out here, which caused this place to heat up enough to be free of ice at the surface.

  Mary had been relaxed ever since she realized that the Marines were not in their armor. Just like Mary, they were in a light weight plastic coverall, which had emergency breathing equipment. It was the standard outdoor work suit for humans in a non-combat zone. The two Marines who were pulling the Shaitan carts were the only ones who had put on their oxygen masks, the others were walking ahead and behind Mary with their faces uncovered.

  Mary asked if it was OK for her to remove her mask as well. “It is perfectly fine ma’am as long as you do not exert yourself. The air is thin, but easily breathable. It is a bit cold, but warmer than springtime in Siberia. I come from Novosibirsk and this place is warmer than my home town.” The cheerful Russian Marine said. Mary should have noticed that he was being escorted by the Slavic brigade. One could make them out from the vests they wore under their standard USC-GCF uniform – white and blue horizontal striped vests.