The Battle of Titan

by Sudipto Majumdar

  It would use its stereo mapping and increase or decrease the volume in one or the other ear, and also delay the sound in the ear that is further. It did this by constantly updating the direction the helmet is pointed at in 3 dimensions. This was very important in battle.

  Military scientists had tried various ways to feed tactical information to the modern soldier, but the limitation was usually the wiring of the brain. Over hundreds of millions of years, our brains had evolved to have this particular wiring, we have to live with it and use to its maximum potential. Sound is the only sense we have, where the brain can process 360° information, so you feed through sound every possible tactical information.

  Overall it felt like you were almost talking to someone on earth in an open room. Almost because, the software did not take care of the echoes surrounding structures would create or the sound attenuation due to objects blocking the line of sight. Still it worked fairly well.

  The second mode of the com equipment was the public mode. When a sender broadcast in public mode, it went to everyone. The sound would be overlapped with any vicinity conversation that the receiver may already be listening to. That way you heard both and decided which one to concentrate on.

  To distinguish the public mode broadcast from the vicinity sound, public mode broadcast were deliberately made tinny, with a little scratch, so that they sounded a lot like the analog radio communications one had in the last century, over what was then called wireless.

  To switch between vicinity mode and public mode, one would hit the round dial on the helmet on the right side where the ear would be. Ergonomists figured that it was the closest they could get humans to a natural place to switch communication mode.

  Humans instinctively touch their ear when they want to hear something better. You pushed the dial, and it went into public mode. While there was a very small icon on a corner of the HUD (Heads up display, which is nothing but a projection screen on the inside of the faceplate of the helmet which the computer could use as a display screen), indicating the current com mode being used, soldiers can’t keep track of that in the heat of the battle.

  So the com gear fed back a tinny, analog radio version of the speaker’s voice back into their ear, mimicking the kind of sound the receivers are hearing. That way the speaker was always aware that he/she is in public mode, and switch it off when not needed.

  The com gear in any case would switch back to default vicinity mode if the speaker did not speak and the system detected silence for more that 8-10 seconds. It was intelligent enough to distinguish between human speeches, be it in any language, and grunts and screams that would be common in battlefield.

  That is not to say that the system understood human speech, but it could understand reliably well when someone was speaking in any language, and when someone was grunting or screaming in pain. Speech recognition was notoriously unreliable, humans could still not make themselves understood to computers well outside the lab, especially not with so many tongues and accents of English now spoken across the world.

  Speech however was used extensively to feed information to the soldier on battlefield. In the middle of a battle, a soldier could understand and retain a lot more information if spoken to them, than shown at the corner of their vision in a HUD. In fact HUD display was minimized as much as possible.

  Only things like maps or color overlays, which needed to be shown visually were fed to the HUD, otherwise the soldier was distracted to the extent of lowering their combat effectiveness. Just another quirk of the way our brains are wired.

  The last mode was a bit complicated to use in the middle of fighting a battle, so usually used only by field commanders who are not actually fighting with their hands at that time. It was the conference mode. You rotated the round dial on the helmet and the HUD would display the names and pictures of persons with assigned com ids.

  The name displays would rotate in a revolving door fashion. When you reached the person you need to speak to, you pulled the dial, and the persons’ icon would get pinned to the corner of the HUD. This way you could have a one on one conversation, or if you kept rotating the dial and pulling it, you could add more people and have a conference.

  Leanna deliberately added a tone of urgency and increased her volume almost to a shout. She knew many were fighting for their lives and she would need to get their attention with her voice, if she wanted to help them live.

  “McGraw to all. Slashing the alien’s feet does not breach their entire suit’s integrity. Repeat. Holes on their feet suit will not slow them down, or make them die at least not immediately. You have to rip their suits on their body, and you would see the effect within 5 to 10 seconds.

  They almost immediately lose their vision or whatever sense they use. They will still slash and thrust violently for 15 to 20 seconds, before you start seeing them slow down and become sluggish. Their suits must be compartmentalized on their feet. It is possible that they can still operate effectively even after you cut off one of their feet.”

  On earth many animals could operate effectively even after losing a limb, like octopus, and the aliens were a close analog. Almost all reptiles could also do the same, and even grow back the limbs. Most of them did not even feel a significant trauma while losing their limbs, so they could go on fighting.

  It is possible, even likely that the aliens shared a similar characteristic. If that was the case, it would make sense to have compartmentalized suits, where each limb was separated from the rest in its own cocoon. If they hurt one of their limbs or even lost it, not only will it save the life of the alien, perhaps it can go on fighting.

  She wished they had compartmentalized suits. It would save a lot of lives. It has been discussed both in civilian and military space suits, though it is needed more by the military. The thing is, humans had never fought a war in space, let alone a land battle in another world, before this. The issue had just not been urgent enough. Well that will change soon enough now, if humanity survives that is.

  The alien had advanced towards Cho slashing madly. Mark had taken advantage of this and stood up. He had managed to cut off both the feet that were slashing at him, and was now in the process of hacking into one of the feet that it was standing on.

  The alien was trying to reconfigure its body to free up one of its standing legs to point towards Mark, but he cut through one of its legs just as it shifted its weight from another one. This caused it to lose its balance and fall on its side. This enabled Cho on the other side to stand up, and all three of them made short work of the alien by hacking into it. Within a few seconds, it had stopped moving.

  She didn’t have to tell them to go help the others, they were on their way the moment the alien had stopped moving. Leanna also decide to do them same, but first she needed to see what was going on at the enemy front out there. She decided to do something risky.

  She jumped from the trench she was standing, to the nearest one where she could still see an alien standing. She was increasingly getting convinced that the aliens had run out of projectile weapons, just like the humans had run out of bullets, but it would suck to find out that she was wrong the hard way. She jumped not just to save time, but to get a glance at what the next wave was doing.

  As she rose in the air and glanced sideways towards the enemy front, she noticed that the front line had not advanced. It was still in the same place. What were they waiting for? She had a bad feeling about this. No time to worry right now. She concentrated to land inside the trench and in finding her footing.

  She crashed into the wall of the trench anyway despite her efforts of a graceful landing. What she found on reaching the trench was a scene of chaos and a man down! There were already three soldiers fighting the alien, and she did not want to add to the chaos in that confined space trying to help them. Instead she concentrated on the person lying on the trench.

  He was a soldier. A US marine she could make out from the markings on his helmet. He was one of the three US Marines assigned to her h
ere at the Stirling Bridge position. The rest were positioned at the hot gates, where they needed the toughest of the tough and the biggest of the big soldiers.

  That is why she had been saddled with so many of the civilians. Her position was the toughest in a way especially on your nerves, but it was only meant to slow down the enemy and cause them initial losses. It was not a position they expected, or even needed to hold.

  It was designed to give the enemy a pause to consider the threat, maybe even discourage the enemy from further advance, although no one thought that likely. That is why there were all those escape trenches.

  She had been put in command to make the decision when to retreat. She had to assess when the tide was turning, before she took too many casualties, but having caused maximum casualties, and then order a retreat to the lines behind, where they can bolster the numbers on lines which they needed to hold.

  She knew why the astute Major Takamori had put her in command out here. He needed someone here who would take command decision about the withdrawal, by thinking using their mind rather than their balls. She had wondered if this would be considered gender discrimination. If it was, then it were the men who were the victims for a change.

  She had also recognized that whether she had the piece of equipment on not, it did require balls to be standing here in front of the charging hordes of the enemy. Was that the reason that almost all the people under her command were men?

  Private Delgado had been assigned to her platoon because he was a small man by US marines standards, less suitable for duty at the hot gates, but a tough US marine nonetheless, who could help hold together the morale and the nerves of the civilians here.

  As she approached, she could see through the Private’s helmet, which had not just fogged, but icicles were starting to form inside. He had not just lost suit integrity, but also the heat inside the suit. She could see the dazed faraway look on his face as he had his mouth open and involuntarily gasping, trying to breathe.

  He was in a shock, but alive. She quickly looked around his suit on the front from head to toe to identify where the suit had been punctured. While there were a few gouges in the foam here and there, nothing that indicated a major tear. Nothing that Pvt. Delgado couldn’t have fixed himself, and he was a professional soldier.

  That meant it had to be somewhere on his back, which would explain why he couldn’t fix it himself. She quickly lifted him and turned him around. In this gravity, even a fully suited and laden soldier weighed less than a child on earth.

  The moment she had turned him, she saw a large tear just under his backpack from left to right almost the entire width of the small of his back. She saw that he had attempted to repair it. There was poorly aimed foam all around the tear, but the tear was in such a place, that no one could repair it on their own, it required a partner.

  The man had been smart. When he realized he was not going to be able to repair himself, he had lain on his back, thus shutting it off to the poisonous air of Titan, as well as saving his oxygen. The backpack however prevented him from lying exactly flat, so he had shoved snow ice from the ground into the gaps using his hands, and then tried to top the shoved ice with some foam to make it as airtight as possible.

  All this he had done while lying flat on the ground facing up and struggling to breathe. It must still be leaking slowly, hence his gasps. That quick thinking had saved his life for the moment. But the price he had paid was that he had been lying in ice at -180° C, which had slowly robbed his suit off all the heat, and it would be surprising if it hadn’t severely damaged his skin and tissues due to the extreme exposure at the back.

  Pvt. Delgado’s foam canister was lying next to him, and Leanna applied the foam liberally to block the rupture for the moment. She knew that this man needed a medic and a change of suit. This one was beyond repair. One of the other two marines assigned to her happened to be a corpsman and the medic of her motley platoon. She didn’t have time to tune to Corpsman Riley, so she just slammed the knob on her ear and shouted on the public channel.

  “Corpsman Riley needed at the second line, trench…” she looked around for the marking on the trench “trench three immediately. Repeat Corpsman Riley needed on second line trench 3. Man down. Man down. Pvt. Delgado needs immediate assistance and evacuation. Please acknowledge.”

  She did not hear any acknowledgement from Corpsman Riley for a few seconds and had started tuning her HUD to get a direct line to him. While she repeated once again. “Corpsman Riley please acknowledge.”

  This time she got the response immediately. “On my way sir. Just dropped of Mr. Zhoravi, he is in a bad way sir. I will be there in less than a mike.” Riley was panting, obviously he had been busy, which was not a good sign. I hope Zhoravi makes it, she did not know him well, but he was a civilian but not a scientist.

  Probably an engineer or a technician of some sorts. She was also irritated with this American habit of calling her sir. She knew that it was US marines’ norm to call every ranking officer a “Sir”, but it was a weird norm. What’s wrong with calling a woman “Ma’am” she wondered?

  She noticed that Pvt. Delgado’s breathing was stabilizing. His breath was still heavy, but it was no longer gasping involuntarily. At least the environment controls of the suit are working and had started replenishing the oxygen and started scrubbing the poisonous Titan atmosphere from the suit, now that it could keep up after the leak had been plugged.

  He was still in shock though. She decided to help the suit in the reheating process. She opened the emergency pouch of his kit and took out the chemical heater, clicked the activation button and then put it inside his insulated pouch. This should speed up his reheating process and save further tissue damage.

  Corpsman Riley arrived faster than he had promised, and immediately got around to his job. She decided to let him do his job and take care of Pvt. Delgado, while she did hers – running her platoon. She however needed to interrupt Riley to get one critical piece of information to help her do her job. “Corpsman… How many and how bad so far?” She asked in a somber tone.

  “Three sir including Delgado here. The other two are bad sir, really bad. I don’t think they will make it. Delgado here on the other hand, will probably be fine. He will definitely make it. What I need to see is how bad the tissue damage is on his exposed back.

  He might be in tremendous pain when he recovers from the shock. We might need to put him under to save him from the worst of the pain. If he can bear the pain, then he can be combat effective as soon as we can get him a spare suit, and he has recovered enough from the shock.” Riley said.

  “Ok thanks corpsman, please carry on.” Leanna stood up from her crouch and realized she had not thought of the alien those three were fighting in the trench. She looked down the trench and saw that they were busy applying foam patches to each other’s suits and the alien warrior was in messy pieces all across the trench and above it as well.

  She looked around and saw that there was no combat effective alien across the trenches any more. Someone was madly hacking a nearly dead and barely moving alien more in anger than anything else.

  The second wave had been dealt with. We have had 3 casualties, two probably fatal. Not bad ratio Leanna thought before she realized the ratio of aliens waiting to attack her defenders, was even worse. The aliens could send wave after wave and even with such favorable kill ratio, they will still be all wiped out.

  It was not a cheerful thought, but she had to consider it to make her command decision, when to withdraw? Clearly the time had not yet come, but she knew it will. She just hoped she recognized the time when it came. Too late would be a slaughter for her people, too early would rob them of a tactical advantage, and right now they needed every advantage possible.

  She needed to know what those enemy lines out there were doing, so this time she casually jumped about 3 meters and had enough time on her way up to pull out here IR Binoculars and press it against her faceplate.

  The Binoculars
did not have an eyepiece in the conventional sense. It had an interface with the faceplate, such that the image would be displayed on the HUD screen on the other side of the faceplate. The image felt as if it was being projected on a TV in front of her, and the Binoculars was a camera, which in a sense it was.

  It even had a wireless mode, where you didn’t need to touch the binoculars to the faceplate, it sent the images wirelessly at a short distance to the HUD. This was especially handy if you are under fire round the corner and don’t want to endanger yourself by sticking your head round the corner.

  This was an Israeli innovation which had been adopted initially by the Americans when they wanted solutions to many ordinary things that become cumbersome or impossible once you wear a suit. Like looking through a Binoculars for example.

  Leanna got a good look as she slowly rose up and then equally slowly came down. The third wave line had not moved. They were waiting. Waiting for what? Nothing good, she was sure as far as humans were concerned.

  She spotted McCoy walking through the trenches, and she called him out. “Hoy McCoy. Over here.” She waved towards her direction. Once McCoy was near, she asked. “You have a rough count of how many jumped over the fence in the second wave?”

  “Sixteen ma’am, and that is the exact count ma’am not a rough one. It is the same as the first wave, which was also sixteen exactly ma’am.” She was thankful that someone still called her ma’am and not ‘Sir’. She just hoped they would not get corrupted by the Americans.

  She was also thankful that her NCOs were keeping sharp and their wits around. She had forgotten to count the numbers, which was her job. She guessed she had been nervous. “Yes Dr. Sterner had said that the aliens like to do things in powers of 2. Usually in 4s, 8s, 16s or 32s, something akin to us working in multiples of 10. When I reached here I saw six or seven aliens intact with their suits is that estimate correct?” Leanna asked.

  “I think five of them reached the second line without a scratch, but there were eight aliens effective in the initial moment if I am not mistaken. I reckon the other three had tears in their limbs, which don’t bother them so much as you had broadcast.