Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4)

by Sudipto Majumdar

  “Why should it be surprising that there were just two Ka-Baal ships novice Taste of Stars?” Resolve asked. “The computer counted 1024 as the number of missiles or whatever the munition they released. Depending on the mass of those munitions, even a single warship may be able to release that many munitions. That is the value of battlefield intelligence novice. If you know the enemy position deep within their territory, then even a small force can inflict devastating damage to the enemy fleet. Somehow the Ka-Baal knew and could predict exactly where the Grand Coalition fleet would be at this exact point in time. If you want to marvel at something, then marvel at that fact. It is the intelligence gathering capability that did us in, and it is the source of that intelligence I fully intend to get to the bottom of.”

  “Warmaster, the computer has calculated the trajectory to suggest that the two vessels of the Ka-Baal strike force are not slowing down to return back home. Instead, they are changing vector and are headed towards World #8! It looks like they intend to attack that system as well!” Scent of Stars added.

  “At least World #8 will not be caught unawares. Dispatch a report to that world forewarning them.” Resolve said. Resolve was not that confident about the abilities of World #8 to fend off the attack as he sounded. He knew that the defense fleet of all the worlds of his beings had been hollowed out to assemble the Grand Coalition fleet. As he recalled, World #8 had been left with just one war vessel and three migration vessels for its defense when the Grand Coalition fleet left from that world. In the interregnum, at best World#8 could have built two more vessels. Just two Ka-Baal war vessels could do substantial damage to that world.

  That was someone else’s problem for the moment. Resolve had his problems to deal with, starting with the disturbing fact that there was either a spy vessels somewhere within their beings’ domain, or the unthinkable fact that there was a traitor within their ranks. The second possibility would not even have been considered, because no being had ever committed any treachery knowingly in the long history of their beings, but given the fact that the Ka-Baal could steal souls, as they had done in World #12, it could not be completely ruled out. More likely there was a spy vessel somewhere within this system or World #8 which had observed and reported the movement of the Grand Coalition fleet to the Ka-Baal.

  How does one find out a spy vessel sitting cold in the dark recesses of the void surrounding a system? It would be nary impossible to find such a vessel. Even tens of search vessels could not find such a spy vessel given the vastness of space around any system. Their beings would need the same kind of fantasy device that he wished to detect a fast moving strike force like the one that had attacked them, and he knew such early detection was a fantasy… or was it?

  “Seer Logic, if I am not mistaken, then the curious caste has a hypothesis on how the Ka-Baal detect an incoming Ka-Ma-Khya attack. That is how they are able to intercept and destroy such an attack as I understand.” Resolve asked.

  “The curious caste has more than just a solid hypothesis, Warmaster. We are fairly certain of the methodology of the Ka-Baal detection mechanism because we have detected the laser beams that do it. The detection mechanism is simple and a bit foolish if you were to ask me, but it works.” Seer Taste of Logic replied.

  “Why do you call the mechanism foolish, Seer Logic?” Resolve asked, curious how a successful detection device could be foolish.

  “You will realize why I term it foolish once I explain the mechanism. In fact our beings have proposed such a mechanism in history to detect cold dark enemy vessels, but the dangers have always been deemed to outweigh the potential benefits. So we have never deployed such a system. The system is essentially a very powerful laser, similar to the main laser weapon on our war vessels. This laser is rotated in every direction in the void. If the laser encounters any object, however dark and cold, out in the void, light would bounce off this object and return back to sensors placed next to the laser to collect such light. With these sensors one can get a fair idea of what is out there and act accordingly.” Seer Logic explained.

  “Alright, I can see the simplicity of the device and also its danger. Such powerful artificial light shone continuously across the entire void is likely to reach far and attracted unwanted attention from hostile beings we may not be ready to face. You have to admit however that when one is already at war with such a being, the advantages can outweigh the dangers.” Resolve said thoughtfully.

  “That is debatable, Warmaster, but I do see you point.” Replied Logic.

  “If we were to decide to build such a system, how long would the curious and builder castes take to build it?” Warmaster Resolve asked.

  “As a matter of fact the basic design of such a system was drawn up and tested by the curious caste on World #2 to validate the hypothesis. The designs can be sent to any of the worlds and it should take anywhere from 32 to 64 cycles to assemble such a system. You would need the permission of the Grand Council before you could start assembling such a system though, Warmaster.” Seer Logic replied.

  Warmaster Resolve replied ponderously. “I am aware of that fact Seer Logic, and I will be working on my report accordingly. For the moment let us get down to what needs to be done to salvage the fleet, starting with a detailed damage analysis…”

  ---XXX---

  “Damage analysis?” Cdr. Justin Brogan asked his flag staff seated on the other side of the flag bridge.

  “The analysis is still very preliminary, sir. The computer has just finished its basic processing of the data and labelled each ship according to its estimate of the damage, but the analysis needs human eyes to sharpen and validate the data. I have sent it to you anyway, you can have a look at the initial estimates.” The staff replied.

  “Thanks Lieutenant.” Justin acknowledged and stared at the data both on the screen in front of him, while augmenting it with his neural interface. Neural interface programming had turned towards making it easy, less tiring and less confusing for users to be able to assimilate complex data as quickly as possible. After many decades of development and evolution of the neural interface, during which time more and more features were crammed into the neural interface, engineers and psychologists had turned all their attention to making it easy and natural to use the neural interface.

  Neural interfaces had developed a notorious reputation as being complex, clunky and extremely taxing on the brain. Thus it would leave the user extremely tired and often with a headache after intense use. Human brains had not evolved to be fed information directly through neural interfaces. Once all possible features had been crammed into the neural interface in the first two decades, the designers had turned to making it easy and less taxing to use.

  One of the techniques to make the neural interface less taxing, was to let the brain get some basic information from the traditional input sources like the eyes, ears and nose and then augment the data with direct neural inputs to the brain. One application of that interface philosophy was augmented 3D display on 2D screens of computer consoles. The computer displayed an image on the 2D screen and the neural interface intercepted the signals each of the eyes sent to the brain of the screen. The signal from each of the eye was altered subtly to let the brain naturally interpret the two dimensional screen as a three dimensional object. Since this let the brain interpret depth naturally as the brain had evolved to do so, it didn’t tax the brain.

  To Justin it felt as if the screen on the wall was a window to an aquarium inside which a lot of Shaitan ships were swimming. He could use his hands and fingertips to turn the image around. The position and movement of the fingers were tracked by the neural interface directly taking the feed from the eyes and it would change the image accordingly. Justin could pull out the fishlike image of the aquarium, out of the screen to float in air as well, but then the brain got taxed because the neural interface would have to feed ghost images floating in the air. Most people preferred to keep the images inside the screen when viewing by themselves. Only when many people wanted
to discuss a battle strategy by moving around the battlefield, did they make the images float in air inside their heads.

  Justin could see that the status of each of the Shaitan warships in the Hadean fleet was being updated. The percentage damage and its battle readiness were being changed from the status the computer had assigned. The Lieutenant along with other collaborators were inspecting the data of each ship and updating each ship’s status as more damaged or sometimes less damaged than what the computer had guessed. Occasionally that would change the color of the ship from Blue/Green to Yellow or Yellow to Red or sometimes the other way round.

  Reds were the Shaitan warships that had been outright destroyed or were so badly damaged that there was no hope of repairing them. Yellow were the ships which had suffered extensive damage and would require major repairs in the order of months if not years each, to get battle ready again. Greens were the ones with some battle damage that could either be repaired quickly or ignored before getting into another battle. Blues were the ships that had emerged unscathed from operation first strike.

  In total, there were 10 reds, 42 yellows, 61 greens and 15 blues. Justin could not make up his mind whether operation first strike had been a success or a failure. The sight of hot glowing Shaitan warships turning into slag had warmed the cockles of his heart, but now on seeing the actual statistics, he realized that the strike had not been as crippling to the Hadean fleet as he had thought or hoped for.

  There were 76 warships which were still in fighting shape. Taking the 30 to 40 ships waiting at Beta Shaitan itself into account that would still make a fleet of 106 to 116 ships. That was almost the same strength as the original Hadean fleet of 128 warships. If they decided to collect the ships parked at Beta Shaitan and proceed immediately towards Earth, it would be almost as bad as the original Hadean fleet.

  Yet the strike did have an effect of attrition on the Shaitan fleet. It might affect their psychology and force them to pause. Justin doubted that the Shaitans would think the same way as humans. Who knows, they might actually get more aggressive! Justin threw up his hands. Whatever was done was done. There was nothing more he could do out here. He had given his best shot for humanity, now the rest of USC would have to pick it up from here… and if his best was not good enough, he had one more chance at redemption, as his tiny fleet of two vessels proceeded towards the Shaitan world they called World #8.

  Chapter XXX

  Ka-let’s Bounties

  Mars

  2121

  “Good morning Mr. Parsons. It is nice see you back on Mars after such a long time sir.” Mr. Uhuru the portly, middle aged administrator greeted Benedict as he walked into the administrative block cycling through the airlock. Benedict noted amusedly how far things had progressed on the path to the colonization of Mars that such a physically unfit person could now become eligible to work on Mars. In the early days when Benedict worked on this planet, there were strict criteria on the physical fitness of every human being who qualified for the arduous and long journey to Mars and then the physically demanding conditions in which one had to stay here.

  In those days a majority of the tiny population on this planet were military personnel, and the handful of civilians were always the best of the best, both in their professions as well as in terms of physical fitness. Now the journey time to the red planet from Earth had reduced and the living conditions on the surface had improved drastically thanks to an ever expanding infrastructure on the planet, bolstered by the newly commissioned space elevator – the epitome of human engineering at the moment.

  The easier living conditions, lesser dangers and cheaper travel from Earth had opened up the planet a wee bit, with civilians now outnumbering the military personnel on Mars. Mars was still the primary and technically the only base owned by USC. The Kormas training facility had expanded, and now resembled a full-fledged military academy. Two more bases had sprung up on other locations of Mars, where USC had expanded its administrative and research facilities. USC still retained a portion of its lunar base, but being under Chinese administrative control, it was no longer a major base of operations for the USC. Most off-Earth activities of the USC happened on Mars.

  It was USC which had opened up Mars for humanity, but now it was the civilians who were slowly taking over the mantle of development of planet. The development rights, ownership and taxation of Mars was based on the lunar model, which in itself was loosely based on the Antarctica model. Like Antarctica, no nation owned the land surface of Moon or Mars. Any nation or international body was free to set up research activity on the surface as long as it did not impinge on the rights of any other nation or body. In case of disputes on any research project, a special body of the UN was the sole and final arbitrator, although no serious disputes had arisen thus far. There was too much land, and too few people reaching those two places for such conflicts to arise yet.

  Like Antarctica, private commercial exploitation of natural resources was prohibited on Moon or Mars. The reason for this however was different from that on Antarctica. While the treaty of Antarctica signed over 150 years ago had been with the objective of preserving the environment and the pristine beauty of Antarctica, the reason for ban on commercial exploitation of Moon and Mars was a bit more ominous. The nations of the world could not agree over land rights, mining rights and other economic exploitation rights on the Moon and Mars. It wasn’t an immediate problem, but everyone knew that his was an issue that would heat up one day, as mining activity became commercially remunerative on those bodies.

  Moon was mined only for USC activities which was a joint endeavor of all humanity, and there was nothing commercially valuable enough to mine on Mars that would be worth the cost of lugging back to Earth. The only thing worth mining commercially on Moon at that moment was Helium-3, needed for the new generation nuclear fusion reactors. Already some amount of friction had developed on this issue between the Western powers and the Axis. The real test of humanity’s ability to work together would perhaps be tested on the asteroid belt, where some incredibly rich asteroids containing material extremely rare on Earth had been found. In fact, the first test commercial drilling stations had already been tried out on some of the asteroids, although it was still too expensive to mine the asteroids, to be commercially feasible.

  Benedict didn’t have to bother about those civilian activities. He was concerned about Mars and its civilian activities. Therein lay the problem for Benedict. The USC had expanded the number and scope of activities for the civilians tremendously in the last decade on Mars, especially on the Ka-Let site, with the expectation of tremendous yield in terms of science and engineering, which would help humans live better and fight better in space. Many incremental improvements had been achieved by the scientists and engineers on Mars for sure, but there had been no breakout development from the civilians to really justify the kind of expense on them.

  It was Benedict Parsons’ job as the head of the USC research arm, to ensure that the money being spent on the residency programs on Mars yielded adequate returns. In particular he had put a lot of his hopes on the Ka-Let program on the South Pole of Mars, and specifically on the magnificent Ka-Let space ship. To be sure the program had yielded many technological benefits, as engineers and scientists learnt may of the Ka-Let technologies. Nothing substantial however had been learnt in terms of technology from the Ka-Let that could be termed game changing ever since the discovery of their Harvester technology, which had given human spaceships an almost unlimited range and a crucial edge over the Shaitans.

  Benedict had returned back to Mars after a long time not just to visit and appraise himself of the state of R&D at this facility, but also to take a call, whether it was worth continuing to make that kind of expense in keeping this facility going. Had humans learnt everything that could be learnt from the Ka-let? Or was there more secrets and goodies to be unearthed from that Ka-let spaceship? From his first impression, if going by the physical fitness of the facilities administrator, then th
e start to his inspection tour was not very encouraging.

  After the usual exchange of greetings and pleasantries, Benedict softly started giving Mr. Uhuru the bad news. “Jeju, this is not another routine inspection tour. Frankly I am here to take a call, if this facility is still worth keeping open, at least in its current form and size. You know it better than I do Jeju, since you do the actual accounting, what it costs us to keep this place open. Frankly, we have not been getting commensurate returns on that investment lately. I have to run on a very tight budget Jeju, and sometimes I have to do the thankless job of shutting things down.”

  Jeju Uhuru’s face fell a bit, but he recovered quickly and replied. “I had guessed the nature of your visit Benedict, and frankly I cannot begrudge your assessment. Things have dried up at our end lately. All of us here are acutely aware of this fact… not that I am trying to make a desperate last ditch attempt, but there is something I think you need to see. I know it sounds like hyperbole, but if it works out then it would be the single biggest technological breakthrough we humans have had in many decades… but don’t take my word for it. I know how I must be sounding – a desperate administrator clutching at straws to keep his job. So I will let you judge for yourself. If after hearing the presentation we have lined up, you feel it is just not worth it, I will understand.”

  Benedict looked circumspect. He had not been briefed on any new research on his way here. Something potentially as large as Uhuru was claiming would surely be known to him. He decided to play it by the ear and gave a shrug and replied “Sure…”