Anyone who has seen a gazelle being chased by a cheetah would know, that the gazelle waits till the last possible moment before making a sudden turn in its attempt to throw the cheetah off its tracks. It is not just a contest of speed, but also a contest of their mastery over momentum.
This is the game the humans had also wanted to play, testing the capability of the missiles to make a sudden turn at the last moment, which meant letting them come as close as you dared. Well that distance has suddenly increased a lot, limiting their ability to outrun the pursuing missile.
The missile had not been gaining on Friendship much initially, as it fought gravity much harder than Friendship. Now however it was closing in much faster as both of them were slowly getting out of Titan’s gravitational influence, and Friendship’s advantage was disappearing.
Justin called out glumly again. “Sir at 50% of the volume being fuel, the missile has enough fuel to run at the current rate of burn for hours. We could also do the same with our store of liquid fuel, which is much more efficient, but we will have very little left for the return journey if anything at all.”
“It won’t come to that Lieutenant. At the current rate of closure, the missile would have caught up with us far before that. It seems running is not an option from that missile, we will just have to face it. Let’s hope we have the tools to do it.” Daniel said with an air of resignation.
There were 38 missiles streaking towards the alien ship from three different directions, all timed to arrive within one second of each other. To say that the alien ship’s point defense system was taxed would be an understatement.
Unlike the last attack by just two human missiles, the alien ship had not waited to let the enemy missiles come close before firing his missile killers. The alien ship had started firing them as soon and as frequently as possible. The laser point defense system had actually been able to disable two of the missiles. It was a testament to the AWPS engineers that the lasers had been able to kill only 5% of the missiles.
Firing the missile killers early may have allowed the alien ship to pump out more of them, but firing any missile defense early has a disadvantage. It has a longer distance to travel, over which the incoming missile has a higher chance of changing its vector, and over longer distance, even a small angle of variance of the vectors of the two approaching missiles means a larger distance of miss, which the explosion of the missile killer may not be able to cover, thus letting the missiles pass through.
This is what was happening with many of the human missiles, as they were able to get through the alien’s missile killer shield. The alien ship had scrambled to send additional missile killers against the missiles that were able to get through, but in the end there were just too many and not enough time to launch missile killers.
Four human missiles got through and exploded next to the hull of the alien ship. None of the two US focused bombs had been able to get through. They were too thick and far easier targets for the missile killers and the laser point defense.
Two of the missiles were the Chinese double slam type missiles, while the other two were US conventional thermonuclear missiles. The Chinese missiles by necessity, had to target the front of the alien ship, since that was the only profile of the ship visible to them, while the US missiles struck the side of the ship. One dead center, while other towards the stern.
The alien ship was not aerodynamic in any way, and in space it didn’t need to be. It was shaped nominally in a cylindrical form. The front end of the ship, where the Chinese double slam missiles had struck, had opened up very messily like someone having torn off the top of a beer can with a screw driver and pliers.
The alien ship had a gnashed and gnawed look around the front. While the sides of the ship where the US missiles had hit had two neat almost circular holes similar to what they had observed in the previous Shaitan ship. The two areas of the ship probably had different hull construction.
If the humans on their ships had the time to observe, they would have been hard pressed to make out if the ship was alive or dead. It would take a very astute observer and some serious sensor data number crunching to figure out that the energy of the nukes had slowed down the alien ship very slightly and also pushed it down towards Titan by a few meters.
It was not visible with the eyes, but the laws of physics meant that the ship was in a decaying orbit. It was not much and was easily corrected by small burst of the thrusters, but no thruster burst was coming from the ship. If left on its own, the ship’s orbit would decay over months or even over a year and eventually crash and burn into Titan’s atmosphere.
The Jiānjué was in trouble from the start. It had two missiles on its tail and no advantage like Friendship or no hiding place like Martell. It had simply started running flat out at the maximum speed possible. Unfortunately it would not be enough. The missiles were catching up fast.
The only saving grace was that the Jiānjué had been further away from the alien ship compared to USS Friendship. With the insight provided by the USS Friendship about the safe distance to keep from these missiles, it was no use trying to outfox them by twists and turns. They would have to use their last resort, and pray it works.
Human planners had anticipated and planned for missile defense. They had to however make some unenviable choices. Other than the fuel, the heaviest items on the ship had been the missiles. Within the engineering limitations of the human ships, and the maximum mass it could push, almost all the spare allowance of weight had been allocated to missiles.
Other than critical items like life support etc. there was nothing optional that the ship was carrying, other than missiles. So the planners had to make a choice between carrying more offensive missiles against defensive missiles.
The defensive missiles in space could not depend on explosive concussion, or pressure waves to damage the incoming missile. It had to depend on exploding in front of the missile, and use the spread out shrapnel to crash into the incoming missile and damage it.
This meant that it had to have a reasonable amount of mass in terms of depleted Uranium pellets, which could spread out in front of the incoming missiles to have a good chance of not just hitting but also doing significant enough damage to disable the missile.
The planners had to assume that alien missile would have better technology and hence would be more robust, so would need heavier pellets to do damage. This increased the weight of missile killers. For every two missile killers, you could accommodate one nuke.
One school of thought had proposed that if the missile killers were turning out so heavy, why not simply use nukes to kill the missiles? That way all of missiles would be nukes, and the captain would have the option to use them for offense or defense.
However one could have two missile killers for the weight of one nuke, while the nuke would have no better targeting capability, and hence would still detonate far from the incoming missile, making its effectiveness similar to the kinetic kill anti-missile missiles in space. Thus it was thought better to have specialized missiles for killing missiles.
They had to ask themselves some unenviable ethical question. What would give the maximum chances of destruction of the alien ship? More offense or defense for the ship? Human ships were so flimsy, that they figured that it could not survive to perform a second strike in a missile shootout. They had to expend all their offensive missiles at one go and hope to overwhelm the defenses of the alien ship.
So once the ship had expended all its offensive missiles, what is its value for the defense of humanity? What is the value of helping the human ship survive further? Wouldn’t it give better chance of destruction of the alien ship, and hence the survival of humanity if all the missiles loaded were offensive?
That was the cold hard logic, but humans could not let fellow humans fly to their deaths without giving them some semblance of protection. Hence a few missile killers had been added to the arsenal of the ship, more to make the planners feel less guilty than any military logic. The Cha
rles Martell carried the maximum number of missile killers at 12, while the Jiānjué carried the least of them at 4. USS Friendship carried 6 such missile killers.
It had become clear to each of the captains that they now had to use this last option and hope their missile killers are up to the task. The Charles Martell fired first from the longest distance, since it had the most to spare, and only one missile pursuing it.
The missiles were fired four at a time, in parallel trajectory heading towards the incoming alien missile in a square formation, separated from each other by about a 100 meters of distance. This should make a wall of metal nearly half a Kilometer in diameter in front of the alien missile, which should be impossible for it to dodge.
The second round of four missiles were launched a few moments later as a backup, which would meet up the incoming missile at the 10 Km mark that the humans considered the safe zone boundary, in case it went past the first round.
The third round of four missiles were loaded into the tube, but not launched. If the alien missile got past the first round, then it would be launched as the last ditch desperate measure in sets of twos.
The first volley of four missile killers spread their wall of depleted uranium pellets, and there was no doubt that many hit the incoming missile, but as later generations of humans would be able to capture and study the missiles, they would understand that the heavy armor and robust construction of the aliens required more kinetic force to kill than what was delivered in the first round. The alien missile continued inexorably towards Charles Martell.
The alien missile was fatally damaged by the second round at the 10 Km mark. The alien nuclear warheads may use the same basic design as the humans, but that didn’t mean that the technology around it could not be improved. Human missiles despite their fearsome reputation were really very delicate pieces of engineering.
Its electronics would fail with the slightest damage, failing to trigger the bomb. The alien’s warheads had a backup. Once armed, it was set up with a secondary triggering mechanism, which worked like an electro-mechanical dead man’s switch.
Any failure of the triggering mechanism, would cause the electro-mechanical switch to lose power. It was this power that was holding back the secondary triggering mechanism. On power failure the electromagnetic field holding back the secondary trigger would collapse and bomb would be triggered.
When the alien missile was seriously damaged at the 10 Km mark, the secondary trigger exploded the bomb. Later analysis would determine, that the bomb had an even higher yield than had been estimated. It was closer to 400 megatons. At 10 Km mark in space, even that much yield wouldn’t have been a problem for Charles Martell.
The problem was that Charles Martell was not exactly in space. It had reached the wispy and extremely thin upper atmosphere of Titan. It was still very thin atmosphere, not even generating enough drag to be effective, but a 400 megaton blast generates a lot of heat. Every molecule of air in the surrounding space instantly turned to plasma.
It spread outward with a shock wave that was crippling even in this infinitesimally thin atmosphere. It hit the Charles Martell at several times the speed of sound dealing a crushing blow. The crew inside actually heard the metals of the hulls and the spine creak.
What prevented the Charles Martell from instant destruction, was that the shockwave and the ensuing random turbulence threw the ship outwards away from Titan, rather than inward. This prevented the ship from spiraling into the atmosphere and burning up. It really didn’t help the ship much because it looked dead in space and floating slowly away from Titan.
Daniel wasn’t aware of the fate of the Charles Martell. He was busy. He had launched his set of missile killers in sets of two. The first wave would meet up at the 12 Km mark, and the second would meet up at the 10 Km mark.
He would have liked to put more distance for interception, but they suffered from the same problems of physics and geometry, that the alien interceptor missiles had suffered. The further out you send your missile killers, the lower the chance of interception.
The last two missile killers he had held in reserve to be fired one by one as they got closer, since the probability of intercept increased geometrically as you got closer. One was programmed to intercept at the 8 Km mark, while the last was to intercept at the 6 Km mark. He reckoned that at 8 Km, a single missile killer had about the same odds as two had at the 12 Km mark.
As with the Charles Martell, the first wave at 12 Km did hit the incoming alien missile, but could not do enough damage to stop it. The second wave also hit the missile, but the combined damage was still not enough. The single missile at the 8 Km mark also hit and added its damage to the missile, but it kept on coming.
Daniel had watched old war movies and found the lines spoken by a doomed captain of a warship really corny. “It was an honor serving with you Gentlemen”. Yet he unbuckled his harness and rose to speak those same words now. He had opened his mouth to speak those words, when the 6 Km mark missile killer did enough damage to tip the dead man’s switch on the enemy missile and it exploded. Daniel didn’t get the time to regret, that he couldn’t say those final words.
The Jiānjué never really had a chance. Its captain however got the chance to speak his final goodbyes to his crew, as the four missile killers struck the two incoming missiles and failed to stop them. The two alien missiles came with a 100 meters of the Jiānjué and exploded releasing a combined yield of 800 megatons. Every atom and molecule of the Jiānjué disintegrated and returned back to space in its raw elements, from whence it had come.
Daniel was sure that St. Peter was asking him something, and he needed to answer it honestly to be able to get through the pearly gates. He just couldn’t understand what he was asking. He realized he couldn’t hear what St. Peter was speaking, just a faint far away echo of his voice.
He regretted that he had not shared the strong faith of his religious family. He should have gone for Sunday mass more with them as a teenager. It may have redeemed him better out here. He kept swimming in this thoughts and delusions for an amount of time, which he knew not and cared not. After all time had no meaning in this place.
It was only when the face in front of him slowly started resolving into that of Francis that he realized that he was in this life and not his afterlife. The voice of his XO started getting clearer although he was still dazed. The only comprehension Daniel had, was that he was alive. Once he could move his hands around, he felt his head and realized it had been bandaged. He also saw some blood on his sleeve.
“Stay still and keep lying around for some more time sir. You have suffered a bad concussion and lost some blood, otherwise you are fine. Staying still will help.” Francis told him as gently as he could. “Here have this pills sir. It’s just pain killers and anti-radiation medication.”
Francis Montero was not just Daniel’s XO but also one of the designated medics in his crew. It was natural that he would be giving medication to the crew, but what has happened of them? That was the first thing the Daniel wanted to know.
“Our situation?” Daniel croaked and asked.
“Sir you have been out for more than six hours now. The top of your head hit somewhere in the bulkhead, and caused the bleeding and the concussion. You were the only one unstrapped at the time and hence suffered the most injury” Francis said in a tone of mild admonition, “although Lt. Marcello’s wrist may have a hairline fracture if it has not been dislocated, it is swollen right now.”
Francis looked around and continued. “Otherwise all seven crew is alive, which is more than what we can say about the ship. The plasma burst that hit our ship and threw us around may have caused some external damage, but that couldn’t have been much. The real damage has been caused by the EMP.
The Electro-Magnetic Pulse profile of the blast must have been really huge, much larger than what human nukes generate. It may have been designed deliberately so, by the aliens as part of the weapon to disable ships.
I cannot give
you a definitive answer, since I no longer have any computers to analyze. From the top of my head, all I can say is that even a 300 megaton blast at a distance of 6 Km should only have interfered with our electronics for some time, not fried it completely.”
“Our space ships anticipate radiation in space and we are reasonably shielded. If humans had designed a 300 megaton bomb, it would not have generated so much EMP to disable this ship at 6 Km distance. The net result is that every piece of equipment which has electronics, which is basically everything, is dead and unusable. This ship is dead in space sir.” Francis said grimly and left a lot of the implications unsaid.
Daniel noticed that he was strapped to his bunk. Despite what Francis had advised, he started unstrapping himself. He needed more information, so he asked in a croaking voice. “Life support?”
Francis looked disapprovingly at Daniel unstrapping himself, but didn’t attempt to stop him and said instead. “Life support is dead too. Our immediate problem is the build-up of Carbon-di-oxide (CO2). We have enough oxygen (O2), including several emergency bottles, which would last the seven of us many weeks, so that’s not an immediate worry.
The CO2 scrubbers have stopped working like everything else, which is building up in the air. If allowed to build-up, it will start causing headache and nausea at first, then hallucinations, finally asphyxiation and death.
Fortunately for us, the CO2 scrubbers is the only piece of equipment we found, which has a manual backup. Justin said something about some lesson learnt from an accident, which happened on the Apollo program a hundred years ago. The crew is taking turns to crank the blowers manually over the CO2 scrubbers.
CO2 problem seems to be in check for now, but our next immediate problem is going to be heat. No machinery or electronics is running, and the ship is not generating enough heat to replace what we are losing through our insulations on the hull. The heaters are also controlled by the life support system, the brains of which is fried.”
The Battle of Titan Page 40
