The Battle of Titan

by Sudipto Majumdar

The 2 megaton level was just the most optimal weight to yield ratio. Bigger bombs would weigh a lot more, and hence far fewer could be carried. It was far better to have more missiles with a greater probability of at least one missile hitting, and the 2 megaton class had proved that it could breach the hull of the enemy ships well.

  The missiles were sending back signals to their respective ships, informing that they were being subject to intense heat, which meant that they were being targeted by some kind of laser point defense system. It was certain that this was not the same death ray laser that has been used on their ships. It would have overwhelmed the smaller AWPS of the missile, which was not tumbling.

  That would mean that the death ray laser had its own limitation on targeting a small fast moving object like a missile. These point defense lasers must be smaller and nimbler, able to keep up with the missiles. So far however the data coming back indicated that the aluminum skin, the rotation and the random jinking, was keeping the missile comfortable enough.

  Daniel had starting to let himself believe that these opening missiles itself will cripple if not kill the alien ship. He should not have let himself do so. Just as the missiles were crossing the 100 Km mark towards the alien ship, it launched two missiles of its own. These two alien missiles were targeted at the human missiles not their ships.

  The human missiles were jinking randomly in every direction, and it was very unlikely that the alien missiles could intercept them head on. The alien missiles met up with the human missiles a fair distance away from the alien ship, and simply exploded. The signals from the human missiles was lost immediately, indicating that they were dead.

  The captains knew how the defending alien missiles had killed the human missiles. The theory was known well enough to humans. You don’t need to crash head on into a missile to kill it. When you come sufficiently close to the missile, you simply explode in front of the incoming missile and let the fragments, which would spread over a large area in front of the incoming missile hit it. The fragments would act as a kinetic kill weapon damaging the incoming missile and kill it.

  The attack may have been a failure, but the purpose of the attack had be served. They now knew some of the missile defense capability of the ship. It was impressive to say the least. Human ships didn’t even have a tenth of this capability. Which is why they needed to get hyperactive right now. It was a ‘use it or lose it proposition’.

  They needed to launch all their missiles before the alien ship launched missiles and killed their ships. This entire situation had been anticipated as a possibility. It had been war gamed on earth as well as on board the ship many times during the last few days. All they had to input was the orbits of each individual ship and that of the alien ship, and the computer programmed the sequence.

  The Charles Martell launched first, since its missiles would take the longest to reach the alien ship. It carried four nukes, none of which were of the focused type. It was an amazing shortsightedness, in the face of obvious danger to carry so few nukes, but given the strong presence of pacifists in Europe, it was a wonder that they carried nukes at all.

  It was mostly attributed to the belligerence and insistence of the Indians, who were funding a third of the mission, that it carried those four nukes. There was so much political intransigence in Europe, even the warheads had to be supplied by the Indians. They however did not have such advanced missiles or AWPS technology, so the US President had to take one time waiver from the congress to supply them with four missiles minus the warhead.

  Three minutes later the Jiānjué started firing missiles, four at a time to empty the rest of the 19 missiles it carried. Full ten of them were of the special focused types, if you could call the Chinese technology focused. It was more like a double slam technology. Chinese had taken a different route to focusing energy on to a ship.

  Theirs was a simple approach. They had two nukes flying in the missile one behind the other. The first one was the heavy thermonuclear one with two megaton capacity, while its little brother riding behind was a simple lower yield fission bomb.

  Just before contact with the enemy, a small explosive bolt would detach the two bombs and hurl forwards the bigger bomb by a few meters before they exploded simultaneously. This helped slam more of the energy of the bigger bomb forward.

  It was not as effective as the US focus strategy, but was far simpler and reliable. With only two bombs to synchronize, the timing rarely failed and even if it did, fifty percent chance would be that it would be the bigger bomb which goes off first, which was a good enough outcome.

  It also meant that the missiles were of the same thickness as other missiles, since the two missiles were riding behind one another. It was just about 15% longer. That enabled the Chinese to carry more of these missiles and fire them more confidently.

  The last to fire was USS Friendship. It had 15 missiles left, two which were of the special types. Due to its thicker width it needed a special launch tube, which left only three for conventional launch. So it fired thirteen missiles in turn from three tubes and the two focused nukes from another tube.

  The alien vessel was not sitting idle either. Just as the Jiānjué was finishing its missile launch, four missiles were launched simultaneously from the alien ship. The humans waited for more missiles to launch but nothing more came. Either the alien captain was confident that these four were sufficient for the human ships, or the alien missile tubes had a long reload time.

  The humans however did not have time to ponder over this. Unlike the alien ship, which had not changed its course, and relied entirely on its point defense, humans would depend first and foremost on evasion. They had to play to their strength, which was also their weakness – their small ships. That along with their chemical rockets gave them far more maneuverability.

  The alien ship had paid special attention to Jiānjué for some reason. Two of the four missiles were heading towards it, while one each was heading towards USS Friendship and Charles Martell respectively. So Jiānjué was in double trouble.

  Each of the captains had prepared a separate evasion tactics appropriate for their particular position and strengths. The Charles Martell did not try to fight gravity. Instead it went down the orbit further. As it went lower, it would be travelling ever faster to maintain orbit, until it reached the upper atmosphere of Titan.

  Kormas was a veteran of a previous trip to Mars, where he had used the aero braking technique to save fuel. It was still a dangerous move, but something that the humans had done many times on Mars. On Titan’s thicker atmosphere however, the danger was manifolds higher. On Mars if you hit some turbulence and sunk a bit lower, the air was so thin that it did not get much denser to throw the ship off balance, and prevent it from recovering.

  On Titan however, air got drastically denser as you moved down, to the extent that it was far denser than even earth on the surface. Even a small turbulence could throw you down to a lower orbit, where the atmosphere would get dense so fast that you could lose control and spiral into the atmosphere and burn up in a fiery death.

  USS Friendship took its chance moving further upwards in ever higher orbit. The missiles had to fight more gravity than Friendship had to, so Daniel reckoned that this path gave his ship the best chance.

  It was Jiānjué who seemed to have no obvious advantage or a refuge to hide in. Capt. Faan had realized that if he dove towards the atmosphere of Titan like the Charles Martell, then he would approach the upper atmosphere at too steep and angle and burn up. If he slowed down to make his approach angle shallower, then the missiles would catch up with him. So he had also decided to run outwards.

  All three captains had decided their strategies long ago based on scenarios they had played in their minds and in their computers. As each ship started running, the computers were navigating on preprogrammed courses.

  The only thing that had not been known earlier, was the speed of the alien missiles. This was however academic. If the missiles were faster and more nimble on turns
that the human ships, then they were doomed. If not, then all they could hope for was that the human ships carried more fuel than the missiles, so they could outlast them.

  While the human ships were running for their lives, they had no time to observe what effect their own missiles were having on the alien ships. The humans had not had the time to wonder why the alien ship had not launched more missile, they were just thankful for it. They should have thanked the number of missiles they had launched, the shortsightedness of the alien ship designers, as well as their first test firing of two missiles for it.

  Many human generations later, when humans had captured enough alien artefacts to get their hands on the Warmaster’s reports of this battle, would they learn the truth to why more missile were not launched.

  Immediately after destroying the first two human missiles, the first four missiles had been loaded and launched. In the meanwhile the Warmaster had noted with alarm, as missile after missile were launched from the human ships. He had noted that his laser point defense were not effective in stopping the human missiles, so he needed all his four missile launch tubes now to launch anti-missile missiles. He aborted the launch of further ship killing missiles, and loaded missile killers instead.

  Chapter 24

  The Nest

  On the long route back to their human camp after the skirmish with the aliens, all the humans had taken some time to recover from the shock of the battle. After some time though, Alex was overcome by curiosity about what Cheng saw inside the alien habitat. He asked Cheng about it. Cheng settled down to narrate his experience to them as they traveled on the snowmobile.

  “The three of us were trapped in a narrow trench dug through the ice, which led into their habitat. We were forced to get inside, although this was tactically a very bad situation to get into. At first, we had not expected to be able to get inside, since we would not know how to operate their airlock, and it was likely that they had security systems.

  We were surprised to find nothing high technology about their door, it was an air tight door, but a simple sliding door. It did not even have an airlock, although we did hear the sound of a fan on the door, which we speculate must be an air filtration system. This has led us to the conclusion that while the air of Titan is not conducive to the Shaitans, possibly even harmful, but it is not outright poisonous to them as it to us.

  We were desperate enough to get inside the door, being under fire as we were. Even a single hit anywhere on the suit would have been fatal to us. The best hope we had was to find another door and try to exit from there.

  Our individual habitats are small and disconnected, and hence can afford to have a single door with an airlock. My thinking was, that since they had one large integrated habitat, prudence will dictate that they have multiple exits. We might get lucky and find another door, which is not guarded.

  Our hopes were shattered the moment we entered. The habitat inside was pitch black, we could not see anything even after switching to infrared sight of our helmet. As you know, even infra-red requires some amount of low light.

  We could see the heat of alien bodies, and from my military experience of having looked through IR for hundreds of hours, I can tell you that their body temperature is slightly lower than ours. Their glow in infrared was fainter than ours, unless they were wearing insulation inside the habitat, which was unlikely because we think we saw at least a few of them without suits later.

  I had not wanted to switch on the helmet lights. It is not tactically a good idea to give away your position like that. Then I realized that the darkness was the natural environment of these beings inside their habitat.

  They either had fantastic eye sights, which could see even when our infrared couldn’t, or more likely they used other senses inside the habitat, and hence didn’t need light. In either case, they can see or sense us already inside, while we are blind. Switching on the light will not give the enemy any advantage, but will even the playing field for us.

  When we switched on the lights, the first thing we noticed was that we were not inside their habitat yet, but rather it was a rather large circular tunnel roughly bored into the ice, which was gently sloping down, leading into their habitat, which must have been dug deeper into the ice.

  The walls and the surface of the tunnel looked like they had been spray plastered with some kind of material, with a texture between plastic and rubber. My guess is that it is some kind of material which is strong as well as insulating, to prevent the heat inside from melting the ice outside. Since nothing is a perfect insulator, some of the heat inside would leak out and melt the ice outside, so the other task of the material was to give the tunnels structural strength.

  I did not want to go inside any further after I realized this. I looked back at the door through which we had entered, but I could already see the crawling silhouette of one of the Shaitans crawling forward, not unlike an Octopus would on the ocean bed.

  We had a few bullets left and could probably have punctured the alien’s suit, but as we had realized some time earlier, a single bullet does not kill the alien, at least not immediately. We also knew that there were at the least five, probably many more following us, we couldn’t have stormed our way out.

  So with no other option left, we continued inside down the slope. I realized that through my IR vision, I had noted the body heat of two aliens inside, but now with the lights on, I could see none! For a wild moment I wondered if the aliens were visible only in infrared light before dismissing the thought.

  I realized they must be hiding somewhere waiting to ambush us. I asked my two comrades to be on the lookout. Since I had very few bullets left, I decided to conserve it and use my sword in the close quarters, where it could be a more effective weapon than guns.

  As you know that I share a passion for swords with Major Takamori” Cheng nodded and smiled at Takamori. “I had taken my ceremonial sword, only as a uniform decoration, for what I had thought would be a historic day.

  I had never imagined in my wildest dreams when I put it on the uniform and the sword, that I would be hacking aliens with it later in the day. My sword is not specially made of cold proof steel like that of Major Takamori. I had not been aware of the properties of steel in extreme cold.

  Luckily for me, Chinese swords do not use as much carbon steel as the Japanese do, which helped in making it less brittle. Also the fact was that I used it mostly inside their habitat, where my suit reading was showing 10° C helped. The sword did shatter in the end when I tried to use it outside, but thankfully it had done its job by then.

  The first lesson we learnt, was that we need to constantly look up. I realized then, why the tunnels were circular in shape. Other than the fact that it is easy to drill a circular shaped tunnel using a boring machine, the aliens used their 6 legs like a spider inside the tunnels.

  They would stretch their legs and use their sharp claws at the base of their feet, with which they can grip the walls of ice and turn around upside down, and still walk forwards. In this low gravity of Titan, it would not even be much of an effort.

  In hind sight they must be used to walking as such not specifically to ambush us humans, but to let each other pass through the tunnel, which would otherwise have been a tight squeeze for their wide bodies.

  But it works well for an ambush as well. The first alien let me pass and then ahead jumped on Lt. Ma. Her shocked scream made me turn around and I instinctively slashed at the alien. This was another type – A alien, as were most we encountered in their camp.

  Only 3 aliens we counted were of type – B. The smaller bulk of the alien and the low gravity of Titan made it possible for Lt. Ma to get up and gore the alien from underneath with her battle knife, while I kept hacking and slashing.

  Sgt. Lao had not shot from behind, fearing hitting the Lieutenant. He had poked his knife a few times at the alien, but otherwise had kept discipline and kept his eyes behind, where our pursuers were creeping in.

  This alien was not wearing a suit
. It was not wearing anything at all. My sword and Lt. Ma’s blades were able to cut and gouge its rubbery flesh enough for it to collapse. As a warrior experienced with blades, I noticed something strange about this experience of hacking into the alien.

  Every strike felt a lot smoother than it would if you were striking a human. It took me a moment to realize why this was so. While the alien had extremely tough muscles, it had no bones that my blade had felt, and I had hacked through two of its limbs completely! Neither had I felt any sudden hit on anything hard while hacking into the body. This alien had no bones at all!

  Unfortunately the alien had managed to puncture Lt. Ma’s suit in a number of places, with its curved claws, some of which had gotten snagged and torn the suit fairly wide. The Lieutenant should have been dead by now. We guessed that the atmosphere inside was not harmful to us, at least not instantly.

  Nevertheless we did not take any chance and quickly applied Mr. Gupta’s foam to patch up all the punctures. To be double sure that we had not missed any of the punctures, I took some time to inspect the suit slowly and thoroughly, while I asked Lt. Ma to keep a lookout in the front while Sgt. Lao kept watch at the rear.

  I noticed then, that the alien had made a lot of puncture attempts all over the body, but it was mostly the upper part of the Lieutenant’s body which had suffered a significant damage. I quickly realized the reason for this.

  Lt. Ma, fastidious as she is, had carefully and neatly applied a reasonably thick coat of Mr. Gupta’s foam on the legs up to the hip on her suit to prevent micro punctures that were plaguing all our suits at the beginning of our mission. This had not just prevented many punctures, but also repaired a few of them!

  This was a god sent protection from the primary weapon of an unarmed Shaitan. The only other way I figured an unarmed Shaitan could kill would be to strangle, squeeze and crush us with those powerful limbs like a Python, if we allowed them to get on top of us.