The Battle of Titan

by Sudipto Majumdar

  He could not however help but wonder, whether it was humans’ fault, that they had started off the first face to face encounter with the aliens with a conflict. He still hoped that it will all be resolved as a terrible misunderstanding. The alternative was too scary to contemplate.

  He was floating around literally, in the common area now for over half an hour trying to calm his mind. This was the only area in the ship which had any semblance of space, unless he wanted to float around in his bunk, or float in the bridge. He was missing gravity already. The romance of space was starting to wear thin.

  How he wished he was the captain of one of the ships they have in the movies, with its artificial gravity and a lavish captain’s cabin to pace around. That thought made him smile a bit, and lifted his mood from the dark thoughts he had been dwelling on. He decided to review his tactical situation for the hundredth time, just to give his mind something else to do.

  There were three human ships in synchronous orbit over Titan. By human standards, one ship the Jiānjué was heavily armored and armed. It was as close to a battleship as humans had made in space. It was currently stationed directly over the alien camp.

  The next in military grade was his own ship USS Friendship. It was moderately armored but well stocked with missiles. Both the ships had similar rate of acceleration and maneuverability. The last ship and the weakest link in a space battle would be the Charles Martell, with no armor to talk about, and just a handful of weapons. He could not however begrudge the ship.

  It was due to Charles Martell that they were able to live so long on Titan, fight and hold their own on the surface. Daniel had come to think of the Charles Martell as the troop carrier of their rag tag fleet. USS Friendship and Jiānjué were the escorts who would have to protect the Charles Martell.

  There had been no sign of the alien ship ever since their arrival. If Dr. Sterner’s theory was right, then it was refueling on Saturn. The scientist had even deduced the amount of time it would take for the alien ship to refuel, from the type of fusion engines it had, which was amazing to him. According to Dr. Sterner, it was good news that the aliens were taking so long to refuel. It meant that while they were more advanced than humans, they were not impossibly ahead of us.

  There was however an issue which any military strategist would point out. The humans in space did not have a unified command. There was unity of purpose amongst the ships and their captains for sure. There was something about being millions of miles away from earth, facing hostile aliens, which made humans forget affiliations to country, race and political affiliations.

  He had no doubts that the Chinese captain would fight shoulder to shoulder with them. But the three captains would consult each other. Each would have their own interpretation of the situation, try to negotiate the best course of action, and then each would hope that the others did their part. Not an ideal situation militarily in the middle of a battle.

  Ironically, they now had a unified command structure on the surface. Daniel suspected that the shock of losing some of you comrades, and the threat of the enemy facing you down, hammered some sense into all humans and forced them to cooperate, like no amount of logic could. Maybe the same would happen here in space, although he seriously hoped it would not come to that.

  With their tactical superiority up here in space they could easily bomb the alien camp to smithereens, however hardened they might have made their camp. There wasn’t any raw material to harden the camp anyway. The hardest raw material available on the surface of Titan was ice.

  Unless they went hundreds of meter deep, which was unlikely, human missiles would bust the bunkers. The nukes that they carried could damage bunker of ice even hundreds of meters deep. Even if they did not destroy all of the alien camp from space, the hostile environment would get the rest, and what Titan did not claim, could be finished off by the ground forces.

  All of them had considered that option, and it was still on the table. Earth control had however made it clear that it was absolutely the last option. All the captains had agreed that if the land contingent was threatened substantially, then it would be a trigger for them to bombard from space.

  The devil as usual however lay in the details. What would be considered as a substantial threat? What tactical move by the enemy would be considered a threat in the first place? Would the massing of enemy troops outside their own base be considered as a threat? Or will the massing of enemy troops outside the human base be considered as a threat?

  What if the aliens are Kamikazes? They may just rush out to kill all the humans in their camp, and not care if we destroyed their own base from space. There wasn’t any unified opinion amongst the ships and their captain on all these questions. Daniel was worried that if the actual moment of crisis came on the surface, the lack of a unified command would turn the decision making process in space into a cluster fuck.

  All this planning did not even consider the elephant in the room. What if the big alien ship returned back, as the scientists believed it would? The original plan when they had approached Titan, was to try to initiate a radio or laser communication protocol with the ship. Landing on Titan was only part of the contingency planning, to either help establish further communication with the aliens, or in case of an accident. If the communication efforts with the aliens went south, then the captain would make decisions based on his judgment, to either fight or retreat. That was the original brief, but it had all gone down the bin, the moment they came into the system and found the alien ship missing.

  No one was sure if the alien camp was in contact with the ship. If the ship was in the atmosphere of Saturn, then the scientists thought that it would be cut off from radio or visual contact for any communication to happen, due to the strong electromagnetic noise of Saturn, though no one could be sure.

  But if the alien camp had been in contact with the alien ship, then wouldn’t they have called for help? Wouldn’t they have reported that there were three human ships on top of them, who can bombard the alien camp?

  The alien ship may have gone to refuel for an interstellar journey, but the scientists assured him that the alien ship had enough fuel to travel anywhere within the solar system. The alien ship should have come back immediately to support and defend its surface camp.

  So the current thinking was that the alien ship was out of contact, but it is highly probable that it will return after refueling. The moment it is back, it would be in radio contact with the camp, and was sure to know that there has been skirmishes with the humans on the surface.

  How is it likely to react? Would it still be patient and wait for communication from the human ships, or would it attack the human ships straight away to prevent them from bombarding the camp? Logic dictates the later course of action, and a highly intelligent alien is likely to be very logical.

  All this was playing in Daniel’s mind as he was floating when he suddenly started falling to the floor! That was not possible he thought for a moment before the realization came to him. Of course it was possible and it could mean only one thing and that was not good news. As if to confirm his dark thoughts the condition 1 alarm rang out ship wide.

  So it is true, the Ablative Weapons Protection System (AWPS) had been brought online. AWPS or simply called the laser shield by lay people, was the only speculative piece of equipment that had been built into the ship. It was also the only thing that was untried and untested. That is because humans could not try or test it yet. If it ever got its test, it would be today. He just hoped that if it was needed, it would work as advertised. It would suck, figuring as a cross mark on some weapons tester’s checklist.

  Humans did not have laser weapons (yet). Despite a lot of science fiction weapons being pilloried as either impractical or scientifically impossible, this was one weapon which was actually possible. Humans had produced lasers that could project temperatures up to millions of degrees Celsius at a distance.

  The practical problem with making those lasers into weapons was twofold. Firs
t was the power requirement. The lasers required humongous amount of power, which could not be provided on a mobile platform to make as a weapon. You needed to carry a decent sized power plant along with the laser. The second problem was the bulk of the equipment required for the laser. The laser and its supporting equipment weighed a hundred tons. It occupied a decent sized hall in the labs.

  The mission planners had realized that both these were human technology limitations, not necessarily shared by the aliens. The aliens had already demonstrated that they have a nuclear fusion plant inside their ship, which immediately solved the power problem.

  The reason humans don’t have a fusion plant inside their ship is that human fusion plants are the size of few very large football stadiums. If the aliens have miniaturized the fusion plant to fit inside their ship, miniaturizing laser equipment is an easier job. There is no reason they couldn’t have achieved it.

  Being light speed weapons, there is no way to evade it. If you can see your enemy, then you can target the laser instantly and unfailingly. The planners bothered to develop and install the AWPS simply because it was a fairly simple and hopefully effective solution.

  Aluminum is one of the most reflective metals known, with good reflective characteristics across wavelengths from deep infrared to high ultraviolet. On most light colors it can practically reflect 98% of the light back. The entire hull of the ship was covered in a thin layer of Aluminum.

  So if the laser weapon pumped a million joules of energy on the ship’s surface, only 20 thousand joules would be absorbed, and the rest would be reflected back. However when you are projecting temperatures which are ten times that of the core of the sun, even 2% absorption is enough to punch a hole.

  So the second part of the solution was to ensure that the laser could not hit any one spot of the ship continuously. In AWPS mode, the ship simply spun on its axis. Anyone shining laser at the ship will not be able to target any particular spot, as it will move away with the spin. This will distribute the heat of the laser across a wide area, making it ineffective.

  This was one technology that was freely shared between the three ships and some aspects were even developed jointly by US & Chinese scientists. Humans didn’t have laser weapons, so there was no military benefit in keeping this from one another.

  The problem with spinning the ship was that it played havoc with your external sensors and communication equipment. This is the reasons ships are never spun, even though they can generate artificial gravity.

  Except for the exact center at the front and rear of the ship, through the axis, every external surface of the ship is in motion. One can never point the sensors or the communication equipment attached on the surface to any direction any longer, they just keep moving out of angle.

  The compromise solution during AWPS mode was to place as many sensors as possible in the unmoving axes. Not all sensors could be placed only at the front and rear, and suffer from tunnel vision. So the multiple sensors on the sides of the ship were routed through the computers, which kept switching between sensors on the sides to give a semblance of a steady view.

  It was not perfect, but it was the best that could be done. Unless a ship was exactly in front or rear of you, the only way you could communicate was through omnidirectional radio. They would be under radio silence right now, but the ships were lined up in a straight line exactly for this eventuality.

  Only the operational crew of the ship was on board. All the rest were down on the surface, the ship was practically empty. The sound of the alarm was echoing through the walls of the ship with a jarring effect.

  Fortunately lateral thrusters were used to spin up the ship, which were not very powerful, so it would take about 20 seconds for the ship to come to its maximum spin generating half a G of gravity. Gravity would not turn on fast enough for anyone to get hurt seriously.

  Daniel turned himself around since he was falling on his back, caught himself gently on the walls of the room, which were now the new floor and scrambled through the hatch. The same handrails in the short corridor, which had assisted in floating around were now dangerous obstacles on the floor, easy to trip on. His heart was racing, and he was hoping this was not one of the worst case scenario he had just been playing in his mind.

  When he reached the bridge, it took him just a few seconds to get appraised of the situation, and his heart sank. It WAS the worst case scenario he had been playing in his mind. And he had been complaining about all the action being on the surface, with no action in space! Be careful what you wish for Daniel, because you just got it!

  “The Shaitan ship’s trajectory is consistent with it coming out of Saturn, to make Titan’s orbit sir. I think the scientist were right about the refueling thing. Since we are on the opposite side of Titan, to that which faces Saturn, we could not see it approach till it turned into orbit, and came over the horizon of Titan sir.” Justin gave him a rushed briefing.

  We need to release satellites over planets and moons when we go into such missions Daniel made a mental note. It needs to be part of standard space warfare doctrine, to give us complete visibility of both the surface and the space around the planet. They shouldn’t have been blindsided like this. He was sure to make this part of his recommendations, if he survived this.

  It was not as if releasing satellites were not thought of, as part of this mission. The problem was that a minimum of three satellites would have to be released and deployed in a triangular configuration across Titan for any one of them to be effective.

  The amount of extra effort, space, weight and hence extra fuel required for doing that was not considered worth the effort, especially when the entire mission had been planned in a hurry, with hardly any time available due to the sudden arrival of this second alien ship.

  There was also the issue that humans had always launched satellites over moons and other planetary body from a mission control. It was a complex affair, not easily done from a military ship with military personnel aboard. Military personnel may not have the necessary know how to put a satellite in stable orbit.

  Since it had never been done before, it was considered too risky and burdensome on the ship’s crew to ask them to launch the satellites. Moreover capable military grade satellites were not cheap, so you would want to retrieve them for reuse. Right now there was no technique or technology, which the fledgling human space military had, that knew how to do that.

  Yes humans are new to space warfare. Heck, the humans are new to space itself. We are learning new lessons, and still evolving our space warfare doctrine. This is just a new lesson they had learnt. The ship’s crew will have to learn to launch satellites in the future. They will have to build cheap throwaway satellites or learn how to retrieve them, and they will have to find space for them in their ships.

  Daniel just wished it wasn’t him who had to learn the lesson the hard way. In a way he felt it was unfair that human captains of future space warships, will have all the advantages, because poor fellows like him have suffered. If there was a future for humans that is, he thought with a shudder.

  He realized that having been blind to the approach of the alien ship has left him, and other human ships in a very bad tactical situation. They were in low synchronous orbit, while the enemy ship was at a high orbit looking down at them.

  So the enemy had the high ground literally. Their missiles will have to fight Titan’s gravity to reach the enemy ship, while the enemy’s missile will drop into Titan’s gravity, thus being at an advantage. So the enemy had the advantage on this count.

  “Captain, Charles Martell and Jiānjué are in conference as per our pre-decided contingency protocol. All of us have gone into radio silence as decided.” Justin called out just as Daniel was strapping himself in.

  “Thanks Lieutenant.” Daniel replied and touched his terminal interface to put himself into the conference as well. He could see the tension in the faces of the other captains and realized he must be looking the same to the others.

  C
apt. Damalis Kormas was the first to speak and he was agitated. “Charles Martell was about to launch its shuttle in a few minutes, for the rescue of the injured pilot, he may not have much time. We should let it launch. We don’t need to break radio silence, just let it slip into the atmosphere. The other soldiers are also in danger from a counter attack, they need to get back to the base quickly as well, and the civilians are just standing in the cold out there. They may freeze to death.”

  Capt. Shou Faan replied. “I appreciate your concern for the Chinese pilot captain, but they are soldiers and know the risks involved. Just by launching the shuttle, we are putting everyone on the surface at risk, by directly pointing out their location. We have to stick to our plan and first tackle the enemy ship above us. If we fail in that, which is our primary task, then all of them on the surface, as well as all of us in space are dead anyway.”

  Kormas nodded his understanding, but his face said that he didn’t like the logic anyway. Daniel took his turn to speak and said. “Captains, I know we have a set response for this contingency worked out between us, but I would like to propose a modification based on what I see as the actions of the alien ship.”

  The other two captains nodded, indicating Daniel to go ahead. “We are overhead the alien base rather than our own base so as to not give away the location of our own base, as we had agreed earlier. This puts us in position to be able to intercept communications between the alien ship and their own alien base if done through radio. My communications chief has just indicated that we have intercepted a large amount of burst radio communication between the two.” The two captains nodded indicating that they were aware of the fact.

  Daniel continued, “We of course don’t know what they are saying, other than the mere fact that they are communicating over radio, rather than laser which we couldn’t have intercepted. This also is expected given the thick atmosphere of Titan, which prevents laser communication.