The Battle of Titan

by Sudipto Majumdar

The alien had advanced more than three quarter length of the trench, and the man was literally sitting inside the trench looking up at the belly of the alien and scrambling backwards with his hands and his ass. There was something wrong with the way the alien was moving, she realized but could not put her finger to it. Then it came to her. It was not the way it was moving, but the speed with which it was moving.

  These aliens are fast, and by now it should have moved way past the second line, but here it was plodding along the first line. He realized partly the reason for this. The beast was moving a feet or two, and then using its first pair of limbs from each side, it would thrust them inside the trench with its claws pointed out, searching for the man below to stab.

  The thrust however was sluggish and even the terrified man could easily manage to scramble away. The aim of the thrust was not exactly on top of the man but somewhere around it, almost like a blind man thrusting a sword by hearing the sound of the enemy.

  So the torn suit was having its effect. They did die with exposure to Titan’s atmosphere, whether the air was poisonous to them like humans or not no one knew, but the cold did get them. They became sluggish and probably lost their sight or whatever sensory organ they use, but these bastards fought to the end.

  The helmet of the man said Franz, he didn’t know him well, but knew he was a microbiologist from Germany. “Franz! Use your sword! Slash at the feet!” She screamed, but to no avail, Franz was frozen and scrambling back towards her.

  Instinctively Leanna did something possible only in the light gravity of Titan. She gently pushed her toes down, causing her to leap about her hip height. As her legs were going up, she let her head fall coming to an almost horizontal position, slightly tilted upwards.

  Then using the wall of the trench, as a swimmer would use the walls of a pool, she pushed herself forward with all the strength her thighs could muster. She exploded forwards in a trajectory that would make her fly under the belly of the alien. She slashed at the two legs on the right side of the trench that was still supporting the weight of the alien.

  The engineers had told her that the metal printer used to make the sword could print at nano scales, and that the edge was just a few molecules thick. These were the sharpest swords ever made by humans, though they would not stay that way after battle.

  Leanna’s sword was new and had not been used yet. The alien suits were tight fit unlike the humans, and it did not absorb any of the impact. The sword went through the first leg like hot knife through butter and then embedded itself half way through the second. Leanna pulled the sword along the grain of the serration and the rest of the leg came off.

  Leanna was now falling to the ground and would slide all the way to the end of the trench and probably bump nastily. She dug her sword on the floor of the trench and held on tight. Her body swung across the sword now anchored to the ground, and she came to a halt.

  The alien had started listing towards his cut legs, and like the previous one, was losing its elongated shape and reverting back to its natural round shape. The fight for this one was over, but she did not have a moment to catch her breath. The second wave should be coming in to impact any time now. She risked standing up and taking a peek. She guessed she had about 10 seconds.

  She had to shake this civilian out of his daze. She caught hold of Franz’s shoulders and jerked him violently. She did not open a channel, not that she had the time, but in the dense atmosphere of Titan, it was not needed. All she had to do was touch helmets and the voice would carry over.

  Besides, she wanted to scream at him in private, not let his comrades know he had frozen. “Franz! Snap out of it. Get up, pick up you sword and fight Franz. Fight for your life. Fight for your friends. Fight for humanity Franz!” She screamed hysterically.

  That seem to do it, and Franz sheepishly said, “Ugghh… Sorry commander. Yes I will fight, I am not afraid anymore.” She shook her head at the lack of civilian comprehension about military rank, and the difference between a lieutenant and a commander.

  She would have corrected him, but she was getting a tug mentally that something was wrong. She realized what it was. The second wave should have hit the pikes by now. She should have head the clang of the metal pike flexing through the thick atmosphere.

  She raised her head risking a peek in the direction of the enemy. Nothing. There was no sign of the second wave. Far in the horizon she could see the third wave. They didn't look like they were marching, and seemed to have stopped. Where is the second wave?

  The answer came to her over the screams and shouts she heard over the public channel. It was coming from the second line. The aliens had leapt over the pikes as anticipated, after seeing the fate of their first wave brethren. Well these type – B aliens were not completely brainless after all, although they showed remarkable lack of sophistication in their tactics so far.

  She scrambled through the trenches towards the second line. When she got there, she could see running battles in 6 or 7 places. Two of aliens were partially in the trenches, but they seem to have no clumsiness in their motion due to that.

  The aliens didn’t seem to have bones, but they more than made up for that with strong musculature limbs and body. Their limbs were like the trunks of the elephant, dexterous and strong. How strong they were about to find out.

  Those 6 limbs enabled them to spread their body in any configuration they liked and navigate any terrain. Even partially sunk in the trenches. She could see no obvious rip in the suit of the closest alien, so this alien must be fully combat effective.

  She could see Cho scrambling in front of her from the first line. Roberts and McCoy should also be somewhere here. They had been patrolling the second and third line. With her Non Coms out there, she relaxed at bit. She trusted them completely and knew that they could do a better job in a hand to hand fight than she could ever do. All of them were big men.

  With that thought, she took a second to survey the situation around her. The aliens had shown some intelligence in not blundering en masse into the pike line. The second wave had paced themselves almost a minute behind the first wave, having enough time to study the defense against the first wave.

  The second wave had all jumped over the pike as the humans had anticipated some might do. The interesting thing was that all of them had jumped, not some. This showed communication amongst themselves and probably some command and control structure directing the battle.

  All of this was expected, after all they were aliens who had come from another star system. If anything had surprised them till now, it was how primitive and herd like their military strategy had been. Even now, their military tactics and cunning was far inferior to a human general five thousand years in the past.

  For all she knew, humans fought more smartly than this with rocks and clubs in the stone ages. Takamori and the scientists had theories on this strange lack of tactics from an otherwise advanced aliens, but they were not going to bet their life on them, they had taken precautions.

  While Takamori was confident that the aliens would charge through the well-defended pass, since it was the only navigable route to their base, he had still put six of their already inadequate number of humans at the ridges of the caldera surrounding the base in every direction.

  Humans would have sent guerrilla forces from unexpected directions to attack the defenders from behind, and he wanted early warnings if the aliens did the same. So far it had not happened and she hoped it would stay that way.

  She jerked herself out of her reverie. She couldn’t afford to lose focus in the middle of a battle. Instead of immediately getting into the fight she took another moment to look at the tactical situation out here.

  Some of the aliens who jumped over to the second line, did not land on the pikes and have their suits punctured. That was to be expected, they did not have 100% coverage, but she wanted to know the ratio.

  They might need to shore up their platoon or retreat if the number of suits punctured was not high. How many jumped
over the fence to the second line? There was only one way to know, ask Roberts who was here when they jumped, but before she could ask him, she had to help him kill these six or seven remaining bastards.

  With that objective set, she jumped into the fight and turned her attention to the nearest alien. Cho and another soldier, whom he could not immediately make out were already struggling with it. But it was a soldier and not a civilian, which she could make out from the way he moved.

  They had wounded two of the front legs of the alien with gashes, but there was no bleeding from them. Either the blood froze instantly with the cold, or these alien’s pink blood coagulated instantly. She had no way of knowing. But surely, its suit integrity must have been compromised.

  The other alien she fought, have become visibly slow and could not see properly. All they had to do was to wait till the same happened to this one as well, but that was easier said than done. The alien was slashing and thrusting away with those deadly 3 inch metal claws. All the two soldiers could do was lie almost flat and evade the thrusts.

  A rupture in their own suit would be as deadly to them as it is to the aliens, actually more, for they would die within seconds unless they or one of their comrades could quickly spray the seal foam clipped to their belt to seal the suit (assuming the rupture is small enough to seal), and not enough Hydrogen Cyanide has entered the suit from Titan’s poisonous atmosphere.

  “Cho, you have already ruptured its suit, just hold on, it will start getting sluggish and blind.” She shouted from the end of the trench. “It isn’t happening sir.” Said the soldier, whom she recognized as Mark. He had slid below the creature towards its rear and was trying to distract it from behind, while Cho tackled the front.

  They were not succeeding in the distraction. The thing had no eyes, and from their first encounter, scientist thought that they saw through their skin all round. So they had a 360° vision, and the brain wiring to process it. Humans would not be able to process information that way, even if they were to lash a camera at the back of their head and try to feed the images directly to the visual cortex.

  Our brains were just not wired that way. Military research had tried this in the last few years with the developing field of neural interfaces, but it had not worked. Soldiers were more disoriented and their awareness got so confused, that their combat capability would reduce to less than 50%.

  “I slashed both his front legs the moment this monster landed, that was a long time ago. This thing is still going as strong and fast as when it landed.” Grunted Mark as the parried with the two feet at his end slashing their claws.

  In an amazing feat of balance, the alien was standing on just two feet, one on each side of the trench. He had extended the front two feet slashing at Cho, while also extending two feet at the rear slashing at Mark. The alien was squatting slightly to reach further down to the trench.

  In battle, time slows down and stretches, so Mark felt he had injured it a long time ago. Leanna calculated it could not be more than 30 seconds. Still it should have shown some effects 30 seconds after exposure. What was she missing here?

  In an epiphany of sorts, Leanna realized that both the aliens with punctured suits that she had seen before had been ruptured on their bodies and not their legs. Could it be possible…? There was only one way to find out.

  She needed an angle to attack from. Mark and Cho were at each end of trench. Even if she could step on them, there was no way she could attack it frontally. Those pair of slashing legs with claws would rend her suit if not her flesh in an instant.

  She could get out of the trench and attack from the side, but there was not much space between the trenches and they were occupied by the long poles of the pikes. She would not be able to move or maneuver there, and the alien could just easily bring one of the legs in play out there and slash her.

  The only place that was unprotected was the top. She decided she would make Mrs. Crenshaw, her school gymnastics teacher proud after all. Mrs. Crenshaw had tried hard to make Leanna lady like and to make her learn gymnastics, which exposed a lady’s grace and fluidity of motion. But all she was interested in was fencing and boxing. But today Mrs. Crenshaw would be proud.

  Leanna had the wall of the trench to her back, she raised her heels to touch the wall while keeping her toes on the ground. She let her head fall while she squatted slightly. When she was at a 60°angle to the ground, she let herself jump.

  This time the jump was not as hard as when she had slashed the last alien. If she had done that, she would have flown out to the first line. She had put a deliberate amount of force. She was getting a hang of the low gravity very well. It is said some people take to low gravity like fish to water, while others struggle for their entire life, however many times they may go to space.

  Leanna was of the former kind. She had started off in a high arc parabola, which would take her about three meter over the squatting alien. For the moment she was safe from its slashing feet. She did not think the feet could reach the top of it carapace.

  The problem, was that she was not going to land on the top of its carapace. She realized that even as she was ascending up the air. She had misjudged the angle. It needed to be a bit steeper. There was only one way to fix that.

  Well Mrs. Crenshaw, hope you taught me well, despite my reluctance to learn from you. Leanna stretched herself to the max in a vertical spread eagled fashion so she would face the maximum air resistance. The atmosphere of Titan was one and a half times thicker than earth’s and the effect was good enough.

  She would still miss, but just. She would be able to strike on top. It worked better if she approached the rear end from top. If she approached the front end from top, the alien might still be able to raise its clawed front foot and gore her.

  It would have to raise its rear foot on top and bend its foot back to do the same, as she approached the top towards it rear. It didn't seem like it should be able to do that. Such thickly muscled legs would have to have its limits on flexibility.

  As she reached the top of her flight, she realized that she was a sitting duck (flying duck maybe) for enemy sniper. She hoped that they had run out of ammunitions just like the humans had. She had not seen a projectile weapons used in this battle, but she could get unlucky and be the first victim. There was nothing she could do about it, so decided to concentrate on her decent.

  The good news was that she was falling at only a seventh of the speed she would on earth, giving her ample time to aim and adjust. The bad news was that the alien was moving forward towards Cho. She would miss the top of the alien by a much wider margin. Leanna did Mrs. Crenshaw proud a second time.

  She flipped herself in midair, so now she was facing in the opposite direction to her jump. She would now have her front towards the alien rather than her back, as she missed it. Now she flipped her sword in her hand so that the inner edge with its serration pointed towards her was facing outward.

  As she approached the top of the alien, she stretched her hand fully and struck her sword like a long handed hammer on top, wanting to dig in the serrations. Then she pulled, still keeping the pressure down. Her backward and downward momentum from the jump assisting her.

  She watched with satisfaction as there appeared a half meter long tear on the alien's suit. The reaction from the alien was immediate. The two rear limbs that were continuously thrusting to find Mark, rose up and started slashing wildly to find the source of the attack.

  Now she was thankful that she had missed the alien by a wider margin, otherwise one of those claws would have slashed her. One of the claws did graze her faceplate and she heard its clang inside her helmet. She checked her faceplate for a panicked moment and relaxed when she found no damage. She was surprised at the speed of the alien's reflexes, much faster than a human. She would have to be more careful in the future.

  As she landed on her feet, barely missing Mark, she fell on her back ungracefully and kept sliding towards the end of the trench. She quickly flipped face down and du
g the heels of the palms to stop the motion. Mrs. Crenshaw would definitely not be proud of her landing. Why am I thinking about my childhood school teacher at a time like this? She wondered a bit irritated.

  As she stood up and turned to look at the alien, she noticed that the speed of the slashes and thrust had increased, not decreased! After a few moments, she realized that the thrusts were no longer aimed accurately. The two soldiers no longer needed their swords to block the limbs, but they kept low. So the Shaitans lost their vision or whatever senses they used to detect enemy, much faster than their reflexes.

  She needed to put this out to the platoon fast. She flipped from vicinity channel to public channel. Their com gear could switch between three modes. The vicinity mode was the default mode. In this mode the communication would only be carried to the immediate vicinity of the speaker, much like a conversation on earth though its atmosphere.

  This made the interface natural as if you were having the conversation on earth through air. Every conversation packet was tagged with the spatial coordinates of the speaker by the com gear, which was constantly updating its position as the speaker moved.

  The receiver's com gear was similarly updating its position. When it received a conversation packet, it would determine how far the speaker was from it, and how loud the voice was. Using its algorithm, it would then determine if the voice would have been heard in an open room on earth if spoken with the same loudness.

  If the answer was yes, then the packet would be played in the ear of the receiver, but not with the original loudness. It would be attenuated to the same degree as it would on earth. This made it not only sound natural, it gave the receiver an immediate clue about the distance of the speaker.

  This was an advantage especially in combat, where you could know where your comrades are without having to see them visually or round corners, as in the trenches. The com gear went further. From the spatial coordinates of the sender, it knew where the speaker was relative to the receiver.