The Battle of Titan

by Sudipto Majumdar

  He worked his console and got on to public address system. “This is your captain speaking. In little under sixteen hours, we will be commencing our final burn and shortly thereafter coming face to face with the alien vessel.” He paused for effect.

  “We do not know how they will respond, or what kind of a reception we would get. I know this must be on your minds, as it has been on mine. The truth is that there is no way to know and hence no point in worrying about it. We have rehearsed every contingency we could think of, and as professionals, I am sure you would all respond appropriately.

  We are here to be emissaries for human beings. If it comes to that, we are also here to be the first line of defense for humanity. We will not let our country, our people and earth down in either of the situations. I want you all to get a good sleep in the remaining hours, and that’s an order. I want all of us fresh when we encounter the alien ship. Daniel out.”

  He took his own advice and swapped with Lt. Francis Montero his XO, after a few hours; after the XO had ensured that all 49 souls on board had a proper rotation of duties and sleep time. He returned back to the compartment that was laughably called the bridge four hours before the burn was to initiate and immediately ordered his XO to hit the sack.

  He looked at the small confines of his “bridge” and wistfully thought about the expansively magnificent bridges depicted in space movies. It was not just about space constraints, although that was a major issue. Humans could only build that big in space, which was not much.

  Humans had only started construction in space some 25 years ago, and those were unmanned probes. Manned space ship construction in space started only 15 years ago, with the first Zeus program spacecraft capable of carrying a crew of 8 to Mars and back.

  It had been a stupendous jump in human manned space capability, as big a leap as the original Apollo mission nearly a century ago. It could carry a shuttle large enough to land three people on mars, or one person and cargo of roughly half a ton. The shuttle could be re-fueled on board the orbiting space craft, and there was enough shuttle fuel for three return trips.

  It set a record for Mars when three astronauts stayed for 21 days in a flimsy habitat, before returning back to earth. That first spaceship was however not meant for breaking records on mars. NASA had bigger ambitions. It proved (and also disproved) many technologies and techniques required for much larger space ships.

  While the first mission to mars had taken just over six months of one way travel, which in itself was a big improvement over the usual time of 18 months it took earlier for a mars mission, the second generation spacecraft of Zeus program could carry 19 people in a volume of livable space three times of the first generation, within 4 months.

  It had two shuttles strapped on to it, with 33% more payload and ten times more shuttle fuel on board, making it possible to have many more trips planet side, and even have fuel for emergency or ad-hoc missions.

  It was not just that the second generation ships were bigger and hence could carry more fuel. The rocket fuel was being improved by leaps and bounds, and was 33% more efficient than the first generation.

  That second generation had led to this ship the third generation of ships. USS Friendship was the first of the third generation, and had arrived not a moment too soon, for this was the only ship the US had that could reach Titan with the payload they needed to carry. The second ship of this class had just been commissioned on the New Horizons space yard.

  That didn’t mean, it was the only ship available when the aliens came the second time. Other humans had been busy too. The ESA-ISRO consortium, which had by now settled in a good working relationship within its members after decades of working together and budget sharing, had also embarked upon their own spaceship building program.

  They shared the New Horizons space yard with NASA for ship construction, but they had taken a slightly different approach for their space program. To their critics they had taken too much of a long term approach for their space program, that lacked short term military gains.

  The argument of Europeans was that the Americans were already doing a good job of boosting the military capability in space, so the other human effort should be in trying to spread ourselves further, which means being able to settle hostile places, carrying a lot of humans. Consequently their spacecraft design showed their space philosophy.

  The Charles Martell carried 70 people, with 60 of them as passengers, living in twice the volume of livable space per person. The ship was far bigger than USS Friendship but weighed roughly the same in mass. By human standards, USS Friendship was far more heavily armored than any previous spacecraft, while the ESA-ISRO ship had not bothered with armor.

  However the biggest innovations that the ESA-ISRO space program had made were in things that could not be seen immediately. It came to its own when you reached a planet. The two shuttles on Charles Martell were capable of carrying four times the load of the American ones.

  When you reached the ground, there was far more equipment of many varieties to enable humans to live on a hostile planet, including the innovation of the mini fission power plant, making living on Mars or almost any moon of Jupiter or Saturn possible.

  Their suits for planet side living was a marvel of design, and huge R&D budget had gone into it. The NASA had complimented them by licensing it wholesale and copying it. All in all they had made sure that once humans reached a planet, they would not have to cling to life precariously, but could move around with a reasonable amount of freedom.

  The last party in the human jig-saw puzzle of space programs were the Chinese. While they were nominally aligned with Russia and Brazil in their space ventures, it was primarily bankrolled by the Chinese.

  The Russians in fact built both for NASA as well as for ESA-ISRO when the contract was lucrative enough, as in the case of the famous mini fission power plant, also called the “dirty” power plant by its detractors. While the ESA-ISRO had concentrated on livability and comfort of humans in space and the US had taken a balanced approach, the Chinese efforts were all about space warfare.

  The Chinese-Russian spacecraft was one and half times the mass of USS Friendship, but had only half the volume. It was buffeted by the thickest armor humans had put on a spacecraft. It was not just armor that contributed to the mass.

  It stockpiled far more missiles than any of the other two crafts did. Jiānjué also had a fuel tank far larger than USS Friendship, to enable it to push its larger mass, leaving space for only 26 soldiers in the craft cramped together. And they were all soldiers. Chinese space program was all about warfare.

  As the ship approached the final moments before the start of the burn, he saw his XO approach the bridge in the strange floating way, only possible in space. He would have slept less than four hours, and Daniel gave him a reproachful look and said. “You needed more sleep to be at 100%”

  “Wouldn’t have missed this for anything in the world sir, you would have to put me in the brig to keep me away. Oh wait, we don’t have a brig!” Francis joked. They had been working on this mission for nearly five years now and were close. He found a niche and strapped himself up.

  There were no chairs in the bridge or anywhere on the ship for that matter. When you have no gravity, there is no need for a chair. What they had, were small body size niches spread across the walls and even ceilings of the chamber. In zero gravity, there is no true ceiling or floor, you can plonk down anywhere.

  Each niche had a semicircular bowl shaped seat made of strips of nylon, where you could insert your back side to get the feeling of sitting, when actually you were floating. It had safety harness coming out of the bulkheads, where you could strap yourself for safety. The ship’s rockets were not powerful enough for acceleration or deceleration that would seriously hurt anybody, but old military habits die hard.

  As the deceleration burn commenced, Daniel noticed on his console that they were out of the line of sight with earth, being blocked by Saturn’s enormous bulk. It was expected
, but he wished he had the live feed from earth showing the alien ship. He needed as much heads up as he could get. Oh well, we will see it when we get there, which will be in a few more minutes.

  The burn executed without incident, and slowly they could see the small orb of Titan grow larger in size. It was an illusion really. A trick played by the mind. They were not approaching the moon fast enough for human eyes to perceive it growing faster in real time, but the mind knew that they were falling towards the moon, and somehow kept telling the eyes that the moon is growing larger.

  Daniel however was not interested in the size of the moon getting larger, he was watching his console for the moon’s turn. To be more precise, he was watching for the moon to appear to turn on the 3D grid model of Titan.

  It was not Titan which was turning, but they were slowly orbiting it, and would come into a high orbit that will take them above the low synchronous orbit of the parked alien ship. Their mission plan was to initially settle in high orbit, passing over the alien ship several times a day. Wait a few days to see how the ship reacts and then after consultation with mission control take the next steps.

  His transparent 3D grid map was showing a red dot, which was just beyond the horizon near the equator of Titan. He could see the red dot on the console, because the model in the console was hollow and transparent. In real life, the point was still a few minutes away on the horizon.

  As those few minutes passed, he was sure no one in the bridge was breathing. He had to force himself to not hold his breath. He did not want to be oxygen deprived at the most critical juncture of his command.

  As the red dot passed over the horizon, he pushed the model to a corner window and dragged the external camera display on to the main window. He was disappointed because he could not see anything. He realized that space was a large place, and even the large alien spacecraft at this relatively close distance, would still need to be seen with the telescope.

  He was about to order the external front telescope to be focused at the expected quadrant, when he saw Justin was already on to it. He allowed himself a little beam of satisfaction at his crew. They were not panicked, and were acting professionally. Hope we can all stay that way.

  It seems he spoke too soon, for he heard Justin’s panicked voice. “Sir, it is not there! I swear I am looking at the right place. I even panned in all directions. It is gone!”

  Daniel took a deep breath himself before saying. “Take a deep breath Lieutenant. You are saying that the alien ship is not where it was last reported. This may be unexpected, given that they were stationary there for months, but it is not a cause of alarm. It is possible that it may have changed its position.

  Please start an electromagnetic sweep over the entire spectrum across 4π r2. Once you have input that command on your console, I want you to zoom out the frontal telescope to cover the entire visible hemisphere of Titan and let the computer run an image analysis.”

  Daniel had deliberately mentioned the technical term 4π r2 scan instead of the colloquial 360° scan used in the navy, to remind Justin to do his job professionally and not panic. In space you don’t travel in a single plane by which to measure a circle and do a 360° scan. You have to scan the sphere in which you are enclosed with you at the center, and the formula of the area of the sphere is 4π r2.

  “Aye sir.” Lieutenant Justin Dubois replied sharply, embarrassed a bit at his own outburst.

  “XO, your thoughts.” Daniel glanced sideways towards Francis and asked.

  “There are many possibilities sir. They could have simply packed up and gone home, though I think that is unlikely. They could have moved camp to the other side of the moon, or to another moon of Saturn. They could have made a move towards earth or some other planet in the system. Very hard to say which sir.”

  That got Daniel thinking. He agreed that it was unlikely they packed up and left. It is unlikely that they went to another moon or planet. It would have taken them a lot more than 18 hours to do that given they are running on ion plasma propulsion which are not known for good acceleration.

  USS Friendship has been out of contact with mission control for less than 18 hours, they would have let them know. That leaves the possibility that they packed up and went to another part of Titan, or did they have to pack up at all? How do they know that they landed in Titan in the first place?

  Houston was only guessing that they might have landed, given the fact that they were holding position over one spot. There was no way of seeing through the thick orange haze that Titan calls atmosphere, but infrared scan could pick up any heat signature below.

  Unless the aliens can survive in -180° C temperature, which is unlikely for any being dependent on biology. There would be a heat signature if they set up camp below. Even if they have removed the camp, there is a chance of detecting residual heat from the ground.

  Seeing that Justin was busy with the scans he had ordered, he spoke to his XO. “Francis, I want you to point the front IR scanners at the exact spot over which the ship was last holding position and do a detailed IR scan over a 100 clicks radius to start with.”

  “Aye sir” Francis replied, even as he was unstrapping his harness, floating over to the auxiliary console. It took him just over five minutes to shout out “Sir, there is a very large heat signature at the exact co-ordinates on ground, over which the ship was stationed. It seems to be an active signature, not a residual one – the heat is not dying but holding steady.

  The heat is about 80° C above the ambient temperature. If we were to go by the standards of best human insulation, given the ambient temperature is about -180° C, that would put the inside temperature around 0° C. If the aliens have better insulation than humans, which is likely given they are more advanced, it would mean even higher temperature.”

  “That would definitely make the inside temperature livable, even for humans.” Said Daniel, half to himself. “So they did go down and set up camp there. The question is, are they or at least some of them still there? Or have they left while keeping the lights on?” He wondered, before another thought struck his mind. “Can we get an idea of how large the camp is?”

  XO was quick to reply. “Sir as you know IR scanning is not very high on resolution, so the best estimate I can give is that, on an average it seems to be about the size of a football stadium, although it could be about a third that size or twice the size of the stadium too, depending on how much heat they are pumping out, and how good their insulation is.”

  Daniel blew out a soft whistle. “That’s a huge base camp, at least by human standards. That could support as many as a thousand humans, even more if they dug deep underground. We of course don’t have an idea how many aliens it would support. Lieutenant Dubois, any luck on your scans?”

  Justin waved his head in the negative “No sir, nothing on either the electromagnetic scan, or on the image analysis.”

  Thinking aloud, Daniel said. “So if they set up a large base, at least by human standards, down there and have power running, why would the ship leave suddenly? I am assuming that it was stationed over it to land equipment initially and then cover it tactically, if they were expecting an attack. So why the ship would move out suddenly and leave the camp exposed?”

  Daniel could think of only two reasons. First it was setting up a base in some other part of Titan, and needed to move over that spot, to better support the new base in taking equipment to ground.

  The second would be that the ship had started to move to some other part of the solar system, which the mission control was aware and tracking, but could not inform their ship, since Titan and hence the ship was eclipsed from the line of site of earth by Saturn. In both cases the alien ship must have felt confident enough that there would be no attack on the camp below.

  The first option he will have to find out by circling the moon, which his orbit was doing anyway, so it was just a matter of time. The second option Houston would know, and they will have to wait for the signal blackout to end.


  “What is the period of our orbit around Titan Lieutenant?” asked Daniel. “Sir, it is 3 hours and forty two minutes.” Replied Justin, glad to have some answer for his captain.

  Daniel said almost to himself. “We have already seen about two third of the surface, since we have already been in orbit for about 40 minutes Daniel said checking his console, so we will be in the exact opposite end another one hour ten minutes, by when we would have seen the entire surface of Titan. We will know our answer to the question whether they moved to another spot of Titan by then. How long before we come out of signal black out?”

  Justin struggled a bit with his console for the answer to that one. It was not a simple calculation to make. The computer had to take into account the current position of the earth, Saturn and Titan, calculate their respective orbital time and the find out when Titan will get into the line of sight with earth and not eclipsed by Saturn, as it is right now.

  Then it will have to take into consideration the orbit of USS Friendship around Titan, to ensure that Titan itself was not blocking the line of sight. If yes, it would have to find the earliest time when the orbit will take it into a direct line of sight.

  “One hour thirty six minutes sir, but I think it will take a minute of two more. Titan’s atmosphere extends a long way, and it interferes with laser signals, so we have to get well clear of the horizon.” Justin said finally.

  Daniel decided on his course of action. “Alright then, here is what we do. We will get our answers within the next 100 minutes. During this time I want all of us on the bridge to stay sharp, especially on the scanning. Unfortunately we cannot go active, which I would have loved to do right now. It means we have to work that much harder on our passive scans.

  If the aliens saw us coming somehow and they intend to ambush us, this would be an ideal time, so people look and stay sharp. XO, please provide a second set of eyes to all the scans Lieutenants Dubois and Marcello are going through. I will join you too after I make announcements.”