The Battle of Titan

by Sudipto Majumdar

  He shouted to Ma and Lao and let them know they will have to run, but instead of running straight towards the aliens in front, they will run in an angle about 30° off. That way they would be able to put some distance from the pursuing aliens, without heading directly towards the aliens in front.

  The direction would make them miss the circular camp, and if he thought optimistically, may be the aliens in front would not give chase and let them escape.

  As they ran in a random zigzag manner trying to evade bullets, which is second nature to any trained soldier running from an enemy. Two things became clear to Cheng. The Shaitans were indeed fast runners, and that they were lousy shots, just as Violet had said.

  If 30 human soldiers were giving chase to them at the current distance which was about 100 meters, at least one of them would have landed a shot on them by now, despite both of the parties running and the humans turning randomly.

  Cheng’s one optimistic hope was coming true, and he thanked his stars for this small break. The aliens in front were not giving chase, despite it being obvious now that the three humans were sidestepping them and trying to run away.

  Then he looked back at his pursuers and realized that he really had no cause for joy. The pursuers would catch them in a matter of less than minute. His only hope was the cavalry rushing in at this very moment. Hopefully they would be able to distract the pursuers enough to enable them to escape.

  And the cavalry did come in. It came in the form of a thunderous sound of the machine gun fire from above, as the shuttle streaked in. This time it was not trying to land for rescue, so it did not have to slow down. There was no way the shuttle could have stopped to pick them up in the middle of an ambush.

  It streaked in and flew over them in a matter of seconds but caused a lot of devastation on the ground. The pressure did get relieved for the three soldiers running for their lives, but only just. Instead of nearly thirty aliens chasing them, now there were only five.

  Cheng could not see what happened to the others, but he guessed some of them would be down, hit by the machine gun fire. He could see one alien aiming at the shuttle, so he guessed some may have stopped chasing them in order to try and shoot down the shuttle, while the rest may have fallen into disarray, but would soon pick up the chase again. Cheng and his team could not afford to slack, because the five remaining aliens could kill them just as easily as thirty.

  If the shuttle has arrived, then Alpha – 2 would be here in 20 more seconds, and Alpha – 1 in 10 more seconds after that. He needed to get away from the habitat to a place where the shuttle could extract him, but right now as he was crossing the habitat perimeter, he realized the aliens had anticipated his intentions.

  The five pursuing aliens had started chasing them in a flanking manner, anticipating his path away from the dome of the habitat and running to block them. He could not get away in that manner, so he decided to run straight past the dome towards the direction opposite to the one he had approached the habitat from.

  This sudden change in direction surprised the pursuing aliens and managed to purchase Cheng a few precious meters of distance, but their triumph was short lived. As they were passing the dome of the alien habitat, with its walls almost right next to them, a group of about 15 aliens sprung up from the far end of habitat and spread out to block them from going past the dome.

  They were truly and thoroughly trapped this time. There was no direction to run where they would not meet an alien, and they had one side of theirs blocked by the habitat itself.

  Cheng looked around wildly, and then had a wild thought. Could they do it? There was no time to debate, and no option either. He quickly instructed Ma and Lao and they turned 90° facing towards the habitat, dug in their heels and took two hard running steps and jumped.

  The alien habitat’s ceiling was a gently curving dome. It was about 4 meters high at the highest point and about Cheng’s height, less than two meters at the edges. It was surrounded by a trench, the depth of which he did not know, but was only about 3 meters wide, enough for two aliens to squeeze past each other, similar to the human trench width philosophy, which made them wide enough for two humans to squeeze past.

  In the low gravity of Titan, they should be able to easily jump on top of the roof. The trench and the height of the roof should not be an issue for them. They should be able run over to the pinnacle of the roof and see which direction has the least concentration of aliens, then run towards that direction.

  By that time he was sure the shuttle would have returned back for another round of strafing and at least Alpha – 2 would have arrived to create enough distraction for them to get away from the habitat.

  That was the plan anyway. However there is an old saying about the best laid plans, and this plan was as desperate as can be. The moment their foot landed on the roof, they knew they were in trouble.

  This habitat had been constructed by an advanced alien species, not some primitive Eskimo tribe. They had designed the roof in such a way that snow would not accumulate on top of it, burying the roof in tons of snow, and threatening to crush it down.

  There were micro filament heating elements woven and embedded into the roof material. This slow heat melted an extremely thin micro meter thick layer of ice to water providing a lubricant, and the weight of the ice would slowly make it slide towards the edges and off the roof. That was the reason the roof had a dome shape – to shed the ice, Cheng realized.

  They stepped on the roof and started slipping right away. They desperately tried gripping the roof with their hands and body, but the roof was extremely smooth, and there was nothing to hold on to. They kept slipping until they fell off the roof straight into the trench below.

  As Takamori approached the camp, he surveyed the scene of chaos. From what he could see, the aliens were rallying to face his two snowmobiles with 14 humans on them. The snowmobiles were originally meant to carry three people. One rider in front and two behind.

  Its tricycle shape gave it enough width for two to sit side by side at the rear. Instead of passengers, the seats could be collapsed and equipment loaded on it. They had asked the engineers to do a quick and dirty job to enhance the carrying capacity of the snowmobiles, as preparation for this mission. They had only four of them and they needed to transport a lot more troops than the snowmobiles allowed currently.

  The engineers had done a quick but not a dirty job. They had done a really good job. The engines did not lack power in the first place. It was designed on the platform of an existing earth snowmobile and used a similar engine.

  Reducing the power of the engine did not significantly reduce the weight of the engine, so the designers did not bother to design a new engine, and had used the existing one. Lower power would have helped save some fuel, but the engineers got similar results by simply tuning the engine lower to consume less power.

  So there was considerable power available to the engineers to tune up. Weight of extra people was not a problem. Three people on earth weighed the same as 21 people on Titan, and the engine was designed to carry three on earth.

  If anything the extra weight on the snowmobile helped in getting extra traction on Titan. They needed to design it to carry only seven people, so the engineers decided to use the extra power available, along with the extra traction available due to the weight of seven rather than three people.

  They gave it all to speed. It got a bit unstable at high speed, because 7 people were still not as heavy as three on earth, and the speed was far greater that what was possible on earth, but nothing a skilled driver could not manage.

  They did not bother much with fuel efficiency, which would go for a toss. They lengthened the chassis, shifted the seat and the engine placement a bit to ensure the center of gravity remained squarely in the middle, and then released the engines governor to give it full power.

  Now there were two rows behind the driver, each carrying three people for a total of seven. The vehicle could do over 120 Km per hour on the flats of Tita
n, and could reach that speed in little under 10 seconds.

  Takamori was sure that it was not the snowmobile that had surprised the aliens, but the direction from which they came. Let not the aliens think that we humans are tactical imbeciles. If you are rushing in to rescue someone, one of the most important thing is to be able to reach the people you are trying to rescue as unimpeded as possible, so that you can quickly join forces with the entrapped people, rally together thus adding the overall firepower and giving a better chance to fight your out together. So you try to sneak in as much as possible.

  In the open flats where the alien camp lay, there was no possibility to hide and crawl to sneak in. There was no time in any case, they needed to get to Cheng and team as fast as possible, before it is too late. So the only surprise they had was the direction of approach.

  They had transported themselves almost behind and to the opposite side of the camp from the direction the Contact delegation was approaching. Alpha – 1 was approaching 20° off their Alpha – 2’s own angle of approach. Both of them would approach from the rear on either sides of the habitat and hopefully the element of surprise will be enough for them to reach the contact team.

  He knew that the Contact team was alive and running for their lives. His HUD was feeding him the status data of the Contact team, although he had switched off their live video feed to concentrate on his own coming battle.

  He realized that Alpha – 1 and Alpha – 2 would not arrive at the same time, which would have maximized the surprise. That had been their original plan, but no plan survives the first contact with battle, so goes a famous saying.

  Takamori could not afford to slow down and synchronize with Alpha – 1. Every second counts in getting Cheng and his people out of there alive. He could see that there was a line of aliens formed at the rear of the habitat in the direction from which they were approaching.

  It was almost like they had formed a fence to prevent someone from escaping. Of course they have! They were preventing Cheng and team from escaping, which means they must be somewhere close to the habitat itself.

  Well, it is good that they got their backs turned towards me, let me surprise these bastards. Then he realized that if Violet is right, then these bastards didn’t have a back. They saw all around at the same time! As if to prove this point, the aliens started coming towards the approaching Alpha -2 task force and taking up rallying positions.

  The aliens further proved the point of not having any front or back, by simply starting to walk towards the approaching task force, they did not need to turn around. They had no preferred sides!

  There was no point holding back now Takamori realized. They were clearly in a skirmish with the aliens, if not an open war. There was no sense in risking any more lives trying to play nice with the aliens.

  They had already risked three lives, which even now was at stake, and they may have to pay a price with many more lives by the end of the day, so he said. “Alpha – 2 you are weapons free, you can fire at will. Good luck to all of you.”

  “Huzzah!” was the immediate response by the entire task force as they started getting ready to disembark at speed. Takamori realized that if the contact team has already reached the habitat and started crossing it, then it may no longer make sense to stick to their original vector.

  He looked at the GPS data of Cheng’s status display. On his HUD right now it was being displayed as co-ordinate numbers, which by itself didn’t mean anything. If he clicked on the data, it would show up overlapped on a map.

  He did not have the time to orient himself and figure out where the map pointed, so he did the other option available. He held the data on the faceplate, and dragged it to the open area, which was clear for him to see through to the outside world. The computer immediately understood that he wants the data position overlapped with the current view he was seeing through the clear glass.

  This is harder than one imagines. Even a few years earlier this would not have been possible, with the tiny power a suit embedded computer carries. First the computer had to switch on the helmet camera of Takamori, which is aligned as closely as possible to the wearer’s eyes.

  From there it had to figure out what Takamori is seeing, and what would be the rough GPS co-ordinates of certain significant blocks, that the image processing software can recognize. This it would do by judging the distance, direction and elevation of those blocks and then adding them to the current GPS co-ordinates of Takamori.

  After that it would calculate if the GPS co-ordinates that Takamori dragged are anywhere in the frame. If they are, then it would highlight them with a false red dot overlaid on the glass over the actual view that Takamori is seeing. This entire computation was not instant, and it took three seconds before Takamori got the red dot on the glass in front of him.

  Cheng was still behind the habitat from his perspective, but to a side of it, not exactly behind. The problem was it the wrong side to the one he was heading towards. There was no point going on his original vector, he would end up fighting aliens, but Cheng might still die. He needed to reach Cheng.

  He immediately ordered “Alpha – 2 change vector immediately to the other side of the habitat. Everyone take real time location of the three on your screens, as I have done. I have taken Cheng’s. Roberts you take Lt. Ma’s. and McCoy you take Sgt. Lao’s. Everyone else take the location of one of them, and have the real time display on.

  That way if the three get separated, someone will have track on each of them. Alpha – 1 be advised, we have changed our vector and will be coming to your side of the habitat. Contact team is near the habitat on that side.”

  “Acknowledged Alpha – 2. Our ETA is 15 seconds, we have our real time display tracking the rescue targets. We will be right behind you. Best of luck.” Came Alex’s voice from the other end.

  Takamori realized that there was no way to flank and bypass the line of Shaitans, who had taken notice and were now advancing towards them. The only good outcome of this unwanted notice, was that they no longer blocked the way for Cheng and his team, hopefully helping them escape.

  The two snowmobiles had spread out wide, aiming to flank the line of aliens on either side. This way the aliens had two targets to shoot instead of a couple of bunched up targets. When they were about 100 meters from the line, fourteen humans opened up their firing in unison.

  For a few moments it drowned out the louder and deeper booms of the enemy projectile weapons. The aim of 14 human at 100 meters, even from a moving vehicle was true. Almost every round found its target.

  That was no surprise, these were professional soldiers after all. What was a surprise, was how little effect the bullets were having on aliens, compared to what it would have had on a human.

  With every bullet hit, only the slightest of stagger could be noticed on the aliens, as the momentum of the bullet was transferred to their body. They could see that the bullets were puncturing the suits of the aliens, which would have put a human in a panic, if not out of oxygen.

  The aliens however continued firing their weapons. The only saving grace was their pathetic aim. Takamori wondered if the snowmobile was better off heading straight, instead of the random pattern it was following now. Their aim was so poor, that the aliens had a better chance of hitting a randomly moving enemy by chance, than a straight moving enemy deliberately by targeting.

  It took too many bullets to stop an alien soldier. They did not drop down and die immediately, but they slowed down and acted disoriented thrashing their limbs, becoming combat ineffective.

  The soldiers had stopped at about the 75 meters range. They disembarked and went down flat on the ground reducing their profile and lowering their center of gravity. At that distance, and now not moving, each and every shot of theirs hit true and tore through the suits of the aliens.

  The aliens were fighting surprisingly unprofessionally and incompetently. They stood their ground, displaying the entire profile of their large bulk, and tried to fire at the reduced profile
of the prone soldiers despite their poor aim. It took between 30 to 40 seconds before each and every one of the 16 aliens was either down or thrashing incoherently. Not a single human soldier had been hit.

  “Alright people, move… move… move.” Shouted Takamori setting out on foot to cover the balance distance to the edge of the alien camp using deliberate steps, so that he would not bounce high up in the air. Rest of Alpha – 2 followed.

  As Alex approached the camp, he could see Alpha – 2 in a straight out gunfight. The number of enemies looked manageable, and decided to let Alpha – 2 handle them. He headed to the position of Cheng instead, hoping for a quick extraction and withdrawal. When he was about 150 meters from the wall of the alien habitat, he got the shock of his life.

  On some hidden command, probably radioed by the alien commander, innumerable aliens suddenly appeared from nowhere. Some seemed to appear out of the ice, probably hidden in trenches, while other rounded the habitat, probably hiding and waiting behind it to spring a surprise.

  “Halt… Halt… Halt. Dismount… firing positions!” Alex yelled.

  The snowmobiles were still on a reasonably high speed approach, and it took them several meters to slide and come to a halt. Several painful seconds, during which the aliens had started using their projectile weapons.

  “Incoming! Down… Down… Down.” Alex shouted again not waiting for the snowmobile to come to a complete halt, and diving using his own patented technique, that he had taught everyone else on Titan.

  If he was not being shot at, it would have been a fun experience, as he slowly kept flying forward with the residual momentum of the snowmobile, on his way down to the surface in the low gravity, and then sliding a few meters on the ice. Alex was however busy shooting, even as he was still airborne and then sliding. So were his fellow marines.

  They kept shooting, and each bullet kept finding its mark. Too few of the aliens were going down however. There was no subtlety in the alien’s tactics. Alpha – 1 was being rushed with overwhelming numbers.