The Battle of Titan

by Sudipto Majumdar

  We had not gone too deep yet and the radio was still working, I immediately let this discovery be known to all of people outside, as you are aware, while ordering Lt. Ma and Sgt. Lao to quickly apply most of the foam to their suit as evenly as possible, leaving only a fifth in the bottle as reserve. I did the same.

  Our pursuers had started firing at us again, and we were pushed further inside. This time though we made sure we kept as much of an eye upwards as anywhere else. I remembered that there was another alien unaccounted for.

  The slope finally eased off, and we reached a junction with passages in five different directions. The one we had come down was the sixth passage. This seemed to be anthropomorphism, reflecting the layout of their own limbs.

  If the aliens followed any design and safety logic, at least one of the five passage should lead up back to the surface. The problem was that all of them seem to slope up to an equal degree, so there was no obvious choice to make.

  It was not possible that all of the 5 passages led out, for then what is the point of having the entrance to the habitat, if you can’t enter it from at least one. Since the aliens did not use visible light, I had not expected any signs, and even if they had posted one, I am sure I don’t know Shaitan’s language.” Cheng gave a smile at his own joke and then continued.

  “I figured that if the aliens followed any principles of symmetry, then the passage directly in front of the one we had come through should lead us out at the opposite side. This was as good a bet as any at the moment. I figured out soon that the aliens didn’t design to a symmetry the way humans would. The passage went up only a third of the way before it flattened out. It was now too late to turn back, our pursuers had already crossed the junction, so it was not reachable.

  I wondered why they had built the junction lower than where they wanted to go, when the picture of a commode toilet came to minds. Of course! They were not incompetent architects, they had built a flood protection mechanism, a standard precaution when building underground.

  The junction and possibly a few of the tunnels, which might be dead ends would take up the flood waters and protect the habitat. Now I was no longer cursing my choice of tunnel. At least I had not picked a dead end and gotten myself cornered.

  Very soon we started encountering openings on each side of the straight tunnel in a staggered fashion. The openings were not horizontal, but sloping further upwards. More flood protection I thought, but likely to lead to a closed chamber and get me trapped. I desperately needed a clue to help me decide where to go next.

  If humans were to build in such large enclosed space underground, then we would need an air circulation and filtration system. These aliens were biological beings, who definitely breathed, and I had noticed what I thought was an air filter at the door. If that mini air filter exchanged gasses with the atmosphere here, wouldn’t they have a similar large system somewhere inside, with an air duct leading out?

  Hopefully they would need to clean the air duct, so they would make it accessible. Hopefully if it is accessible to aliens, somehow we could use the same ducts to escape. I know there were many ifs and buts, but it was the best we had at the moment.

  Now how does one feel the air flow if it even exists, through an environment suit? If I could burn something, then I could see the flow of the breeze from the flicker of the flame, just like on earth you would do to find an opening in a tunnel.

  I wondered if it could be done. There must be some oxygen in the air, else Lt. Ma would have died. I brought up my HUD display menu and dialed the air composition option. After a few seconds of analysis it gave me the analysis. There was 16% oxygen in the air, about the same as on a high mountain on earth.

  So things would burn here, albeit a bit slowly, which suited me perfectly. Next I needed fuel, this was tricky. I could not think of anything I was carrying which would burn. This moon was slushing with liquid methane on the surface, there was plenty of fuel there. It doesn’t burn on the surface because there is no oxygen. There is oxygen out here, but no methane, or is there? I wondered.

  They had built this place to handle flooding, but what was there to flood out here? Water of course I thought initially, after all this place is built inside ice. Then I realized that exactly for that reason there can never be a flood of water here, just a trickle of it as some of the ice from the walls slowly melt behind the insulation and seeps in.

  You don’t need massive flood traps like the lower passages for that. The main liquid on the surface is Methane, it would also seep through the walls, but the moment it seeps in, it would turn to gas due to the higher temperature inside. This would be dangerous, and I was sure that an advanced alien would have taken care of it the same way humans would have.

  They would have sunk in relief tubes at regular intervals to let the methane seep in preferentially from there, and then channel it out. Sure enough when I looked carefully at the walls for the first time, I could see protrusions in the wall at regular intervals, which looked like covered pipes, all of them merging into a central thicker pipe running along the length of the tunnel just under my feet.

  It was not really a pipe, but was made of the same plasticky/rubbery material as the wall surface, as if it had been shaped at the same time as the wall was being plastered. That made enormous sense if one could engineer it. So there could be liquid water along with methane gas running through those pipes. To test this theory I needed an igniter.

  It was tougher to find something to ignite a flame with, than one would think. Firing a gun would not ignite it unlike what popular movies show, and it was not like anyone smoked here on Titan to be carrying a cigarette lighter. It was Sgt. Lao who reminded me of the chemical heater in our emergency pack.” Cheng paused and looked at Alex to ensure that he remembered the Chemical heater’s basic construction.

  Alex nodded his helmet to indicate that he did. The chemical heater was basically a tin foil bag with chemicals that Alex didn’t remember the name, which has energy stored in them. In case of power failure in a suit, or the suit heater failing, this bag could be put the insulated pouch and activated.

  Once activated, the chemicals would slowly release its stored energy as heat, in theory keeping the suit warm. If its energy ran out, then you could throw it, take your friend’s chemical heater and put in the insulated pouch.

  The insulated pouch is used to carry things, which need to be kept warm, but at the same time used in the external environment. Things like the old anti suit puncture foam that they had brought from earth. This meant that the pouch was insulated from the outside, but transferred heat from inside.

  Realizing that Alex knew the basics, Cheng continued. “The chemical heater as you know, is activated by flash heat generated from a small device, similar to one on a car cigarette lighter. It even had a heater coil.

  I ripped the ignition device from my emergency pack, then took my sword and gave a huge thrust at the central pipe as if I was planting a flag into the ground. I was silently praying that this worked. We were cornered and needed a way out desperately.

  I could see a gash in the rubbery pipe, but there was no way to make out if methane was leaking through it. Methane is colorless, though not odorless, as anyone who would have happened to pass a dung pile would know, but we could not smell the air outside our suit. There was only one way to find out, and now I gave an audible prayer. I took the lighter, putting it next to the gash on the pipe, I clicked it.

  I had never been happier seeing a flame coming out of a gas leak. And it was not a timid flame at all. It flared up and almost reached the ceiling of the tunnel. This was not just a direction indicator I realized, it was a potential weapon if used intelligently.

  The flame immediately tilted forward in the direction ahead. That was the direction the breeze was blowing, and our best hope of getting out. I asked Lt. Ma to quickly scout ahead and to defend if we are attacked from the front, while Sgt. Lao kept our rear covered. I warned both of them not to ignore the openings on each sid
e of the tunnel.

  It was likely many aliens were in the chambers inside those opening. It was in fact puzzling why they had not yet ambushed us from one of those openings, it would be an ideal place to do so as we passed them. I went about the task of making a puncture in the pipe after every few openings in the passage and lighting the gas.

  The breeze was getting stronger as was obvious from the gradual increase in the turbulence with which the flames were burning. There were a two unintended but fortunate side effect of all the flames burning down the tunnel. First we no longer needed our helmet lights.

  The helmet lights were not very bright and lit only a small area ahead. It was not really adequate to see all around, up and about in this dark tunnel in a combat situation. Now the passage was lit fairly brightly, and no one could sneak on us, without us seeing them first.

  The second fortunate side effect was that it slowed down our pursuers. It was not as if the aliens were afraid of fire. They seem to have similar tolerance to fire as we have. It was the width of their body that created a problem for them. They had been pursuing us crouching crab like to keep a low profile and not present a target.

  The pipe ran through the center of the tunnel, so the fire was burning at intervals over the pipe. Humans would have no problems side stepping the fire and proceeding. However given the width of the alien’s body, they could not do that. They had to cling to one of the walls on the side and scamper across the fire, similar to how a spider would scamper across the wall.

  This made them an easy target for Sgt. Lao to hit, especially with the tunnel well lit now. He shot two of them multiple times, just enough to slow them down. We were trying to conserve bullets, and if they stopped pursuing, then our objective would be met, we didn’t need to kill them.

  About 60 meters inside, the flame turned in the opposite direction towards us, indicating that we had just passed the opening we were seeking. There were two openings between the two flames where the direction had changed, so it had to be one of the two openings. I ordered Sgt. Lao to halt and not yield any further ground, and pulled back Lt. Ma a bit at the vanguard.

  Then I gashed the pipe in front of the first opening next to me, and the flame immediately started violently tilting towards the opening indicating this was the one we were seeking, but just to be sure I gashed in front of the other opening as well and made sure that it wasn’t the one. I asked both my comrades to slowly pull back towards the opening we had identified, keeping their ends covered, while I switched my suit lights on again as I entered the darkness of the opening.

  The first thing I noticed was that there was one thing different about this opening. This opening was not sloping up like all the other openings we had seen till then, and it made me wonder why. I got my answer in the next few moments, as the opening led to a chamber.

  And what a chamber it was! It was the largest underground chamber I have seen in my entire life. Come to think of it, it must be the largest artificial chamber any human would have ever seen. It took me a moment to realize that I should not even be able to see the great expanse of the chamber, my helmet lights were just not that powerful, but there was ambient light which made the entire chamber visible.

  I realized then why this chamber’s entrance had not been sloping up. This chamber was high, the ceiling probably went all the way up to the surface. The entrance couldn’t have sloped upwards and still maintained that height.

  I should have been looking for vents and the exit, but I was fascinated by why there was light in this chamber when every other place was pitch dark. On a hunch I switched off my helmet lights and switched on my IR vision. The entire chamber was glowing so bright in the infrared that it was blinding me. This place was hot, and the source of heat was probably generating the soft ambient light.

  The ambient light was dim however and the lighting was extremely gloomy, still once your eyes got adjusted, you could make out shapes at a fair distance. This chamber was filled with softly glowing transparent vessels. That is what was giving the heat and light. Rows and rows of them stacked as high as one could see.

  The vessels were not lit, but my IR was showing that they were heated, well above the temperature of human body which I am used to seeing through IR. The light was coming from the fluid inside which was glowing in some sort of bio luminescence. Inside each of those vessels was a Shaitan!

  At that moment I thought they were type A Shaitans, but now I think that most if not all were type B Shaitans, still growing! I should have gotten the clue from the amount of space still available inside those tubes. The Shaitans were floating gently in the fluid.

  One of the things I wonder now, is why would an essentially blind species build a transparent vessel? It is not like they can see inside to monitor progress, and a metal vessel would be a lot less fragile than a transparent one, even made out of plasti-glass. But I am thankful they did, because we used that light to move around and find our way.

  If there was a vent, then it would have to be high up close to the ceiling. We could not see anything from down here, but a lot of our view was blocked by the stacked rows of tubes. So we had to find our way up. The aliens obviously maintained the tubes up the stack, so they must have some way to access them.

  What mechanism would a six legged creature like the aliens use to climb up? A ladder or stairs would probably to be uncomfortable to them, may be an elevator then? I and Lt. Ma started looking around, while Sgt. Lao kept a look out. This place was more dangerous than the tunnel for ambush. It could come from any direction, including someone jumping from the racks.

  In the end, it was not very difficult to identify their climbing mechanism. Supporting the huge chamber’s ceiling were gigantic columns. Wound round those columns were spiral slopes. These spirals I realized would not only be comfortable to the aliens’ anatomy, but were also easy for carrying equipment up or down. At every rack level, there was a break in the wall of the spiral for access to that level.

  We decided to climb up the nearest spiral. That is when our real trouble began. Seeing us move towards that spiral ramp was almost like a signal. There must have been a hundred aliens hiding inside the chamber, all type – A as far as I could tell. I didn’t count, and in my panic, it may have looked a hundred, but I can confidently say that there were a minimum of 20 – 25 of them.

  They had been there inside the chamber hiding all the time, but we never noticed them! Looking back, it wouldn’t have been very difficult for them to remain unnoticed, in the dark chamber filled with Shaitans in a bottle. If a live Shaitan stood next to or behind a Shaitan in a tube, we would hardly have noticed it in the dark.

  Tactically we were in an indefensible position. They were coming from all directions, and the three of us were low on bullets. With one sword and two knives, we could not defend against so many of them from all directions. Trap or not, there was only one refuge for us, the spiral ramp.

  All of them will have to come from only one direction, if we could beat the Shaitans to the ramp. The three of us could cover the entire width of the ramp, and we had a hope of escape in that direction. Anyway that was the only path we could run, every other path was blocked.

  We ran as fast as we could to cover the rest of the distance to the ramp. The Shaitans are unbelievably fast. Much faster than us, but we were closer to the ramp and we made it there first… just about. We realized during our run to the ramp, that we cannot hope to keep running up the ramp.

  The aliens will catch us far before that, probably before the first level itself. We had to face them, fight and slowly back our way up. If we need to do that, then we had a problem with our weapons. We had too few bullets to be able to kill even some of them at point blank range. I had given my gun and all the remaining bullets to Sgt. Lao., I was planning to use my sword exclusively.

  I realized that a sword in this type of close quarter battle was a better weapon, than a gun. The stopping power of a sword was better than that of an automatic gun, when used against these
aliens. These aliens were all type – A without suits, probably working in this chamber or living nearby.

  They were not on patrol duty and hence had no guns. They were using their natural claws on their limbs to try and slash and stab us. Our pursuers, who had been on patrol duty carried projectile weapons, which were like guns but suited for their anatomy. Thankfully for us, they were nowhere to be seen at the moment.

  Slashing at them with a sword kept them at bay, while we slowly backed our way up. The problem was that I was the only one who had a sword. This was one time I was thankful that the PLA had hung on to some archaic traditions, which we all used to ridicule. One of them was that all guns issued to us, even automatics, had a bayonet attachment on their barrel. The standard issue knife that we all carry, snaps on to this attachment to act like a bayonet.

  Lt. Ma and Sgt. Lao attached their knives on to their gun barrels. I took the center of the ramp, while they stood on either sides of me. I would slash with my sword, while they would thrust with their bayonet. Between the three of us, using this strategy, we were able to not just keep the aliens at bay, but also injure a few of their limbs.

  I was even able to hack a limb or two, but realized that the aliens can function almost normally even after losing a limb. The aliens either don’t feel pain, or have compete mastery over it. After getting a limb wounded or even hacked, they would step back for a few seconds, but then be back again as if nothing had happened.

  The only good thing going for us was that the aliens being so wide, could come at us only one at a time. They did try to squeeze in a second alien a few times, but their swinging limbs would get in each other’s way and become ineffective. As we were about to reach the first level, I realized that we had forgotten to cover our backs.

  There could be a Shaitan working on a higher level, who might sneak on us from behind. These were intelligent creatures. Some of them should be scampering over to a different spiral ramp, climbing a few levels and then coming over to this spiral ramp from a higher level. It could then ambush us from behind.