I am assuming that we humans are the ‘spawns of Ka’. It does not sound a very complimentary name as far as I am concerned, but it is not an unexpected insult. After all they intend to hurt a lot more than our feelings. I am a bit puzzled about the ‘both old and new spawns’ part of the message. We have only one camp on Mars. It is probably a translation mistake or some quirk of their language.”
Trisha was lost in her thoughts as she was saying this. Then she looked up and said even more sadly. “When the Third Fleet attacks, that Shaitan ship over Mars is likely to bomb our base and then move out of orbit to join the rest of their fleet to give battle.”
Choi was now incredulous. “We know this and yet the Third Fleet is going to begin its attack as planned?!”
“I know it sounds cruel Hugo. Why sounds? It IS cruel. But then war is cruel. You know as well as I do XO, that there are tough choices to make in a war. In the overall scheme of things if we don’t attack that incoming fleet now, we stand to lose far more human lives if not the future for humanity itself.
Let me be honest with you XO, it is not just the people on the surface of Mars, but even our lives are expendable in this mission. We have to hold them near Mars at any cost. We don’t need to kill or even hurt them, but we have to hold them here.” Trisha finished by looking straight into the eyes of Choi.
She wanted to make sure that this young officer did not hold out any unrealistic hope about their fate. It is far better to be prepared for death and then celebrate if you come out alive in a battle, than to hold out hope of life and hesitate in battle. The later one is more likely to get you killed. Trisha was slowly preparing herself mentally, and wanted her XO to do the same.
Choi nodded looking down. “It must have been a hard decision for the admiral to make.” He said sarcastically.
“Don’t think less of the admiral for his decision XO, think better of him because of it. Yes it was hard for the Admiral to come to this decision. Some of his closest and oldest friends, some whom he considers family are out there. Yes it was a hard decision for him, it was a bloody hard decision. And yet he took it because it was the right decision for human survival.” Trisha said in a mini outburst.
Choi looked up reasonably chastised. He spoke to change the subject. “And what is the other objective?”
“The second objective is to try to protect and if possible rescue the hostages.” Trisha said with an air of resignation. She knew even before Choi opened to register his objection what he was going to say.
“You realize captain that the secondary objective is almost impossible to achieve if we are to pursue our first objective?” Choi said the obvious anyway.
“Yes XO, I am painfully aware of that fact. We have to try anyway, don’t we? We are humans we try till the last to save our comrades, we can’t write them off like the Shaitans do. Yes Lieutenant we are going to try, and we are going to try very hard. No halfhearted, half measures. We will put everything on the line including our lives to save our comrades, just as they would have done the same for us. Which brings me to my plan.” Trisha’s eyes now reflected a resolute determination, that of someone who had decided a course of action.
“First order of business is to get rid of those two Shaitan satellites around Mars that gives the enemy a 360° view of the Mars’ surface. Keep in mind XO that it is possible, though not likely that there is one more satellite hidden from our view by Mars at exactly the opposite end. If the enemy captain is particularly paranoid and has a satellite to spare, he may do that. Ideas XO” Trisha asked.
“If we launch missiles, the Shaitan captain is sure to retaliate. He might nuke our base below. It should be fairly easy for the enemy captain to destroy the incoming missiles too.” Choi brought up the obvious objections with the strategy.
“Exactly my thoughts. Before I lay out my proposal, let me come to the second order of business. The Shaitans blew up all our satellites orbiting Mars. So we are effectively blind to anything happening on the opposite side of Mars. I want to have a 360° view of the surface of Mars at all time.” Trisha put in her second demand.
“With due respect, given the fact that the Shaitans blew up our existing satellites, I don’t see how they are going to allow us to put up more satellites Ma’am.” Choi deliberately addressed her as Ma’am instead of Captain to indicate that any captain should know the obvious.
“Spoken truly, but thought conventionally XO.” Trisha said with a smile. “What is the definition of a satellite?” she asked Choi.
Choi was confused at the obvious question, the answer to which is known to every school child. “Any object that orbits another object is a satellite.” He said plainly, without being able to see where this was going.
“Exactly XO, but does it say anything about the distance the object needs to be in that definition?” Trisha asked with a twinkle in her eyes.
Choi now got the meaning of what his captain had in her mind, he brightened with that realization. “No captain, there is no limit on the distance indeed. We may not have sharp pictures at a distance, but we will know what is going on. It would need to be very far from Mars for it to be safe from the Shaitan death ray laser and missiles. You do realize that putting up a satellite at such a huge distance is unprecedented, primarily because no one would find it useful to put a satellite at such a huge distance.”
“Until now Lieutenant. Until now. And we will not just be putting one such satellite, but two, which would give us a complete coverage of the entire surface of Mars.” Trisha said a bit triumphantly.
“Two captain? I thought we required minimum three satellites to cover the entire surface. Are we planning to ourselves become the third satellite, in a similar configuration as the Shaitan ship has done with its satellites?” Choi asked, wondering what he was missing.
“No XO, we are not planning to remain standing still at any point of time in this coming skirmish, so we will not be the third satellite. Normally you would be right. Two satellites positioned on opposite faces of the planet would be blocked by the planet itself from communicating with each other and made ineffective. That is why satellites are placed minimum of three in an equilateral triangle configuration. That way they cover the whole surface of the planet and yet are in communication with each other all the time.
However as you mentioned yourself, no one places satellites at such a distance. At this huge a distance, the planet is tiny sphere, blocking a very small portion of the view of the satellite. If we placed the two satellites slightly off the direct opposite direction, say at a 178° angle instead of 180° exact, then they would be in each other’s view and we would only lose visibility over a tiny sliver of the surface of Mars, about 2° of latitude.
Even this small blind spot is not permanent. Remember that these two satellite being so far away cannot be in synchronous orbit. This means that between the two satellites, the view will be slowly rotating although whatever view one satellite loses, the other one gains as they are rotating in tandem at the same speed. So this tiny sliver of blind spot will also rotate, so we will have no permanent blind spot.
That saves us time, effort and a satellite. We definitely are short on time. The laying of the satellites also gives us the opportunity to take care of my first order of business – getting rid of the Shaitan Satellite.” Trisha finished her lengthy discourse.
“How is that so captain? As far as I can see the problem with launching missiles at the satellites still remain. What has changed?” Choi asked curiously but he no longer doubted as earlier, that the captain would not have thought through the problem.
“Yes the problem remains as long as we are seen to be launching a missile. We however don’t intend to be seen doing so.” Trisha said with a mysterious smile.
“And exactly how do we intend to do that captain?” Choi could not help but be sarcastic.
Trisha replied. “We are what, about a light minute away from Mars and that Shaitan ship right now? We are even moving closer to the Shaitan ship at t
his very moment, albeit slowly and gingerly. The Shaitan ship could launch a missile at us even now if it wanted, although we could easily evade it at this distance.
The reason it has not and will not launch a missile or attack us in any form, unless we get much closer and threaten it, is the very reason why they are holding hostages. They are playing for time. I don’t know what they are waiting for, but the entire purpose of their exercise of diverting this ship to Mars and holding the humans hostage is to delay the engagement of the forces.
That Shaitan ship will not precipitate matters until we threaten them in any way. We release a satellite reasonably far, say at 45 light second distance. The Shaitan ship would notice that but will not try to attack it. The enemy captain gains nothing immediately by destroying the satellite, we can observe them anyway.
Then we swing and revolve round Mars at the same 45 light second distance to the other side of Mars and release the other satellite. The enemy captain will be aware of our activities, since he has satellites orbiting mars covering it 360°.
By this time the enemy captain will realize what we are up to – trying to gain a 360° surveillance coverage of Mars. Since the enemy has no activity going on at the other side of Mars, the enemy captain would feel that it loses nothing if we get surveillance to the other side of the planet.
It would definitely not be something over which it is worth initiating hostilities. We are still behind Mars from the enemy’s view, now we move away from Mars.” Trisha stopped to check if Choi was following the plan so far.
Choi was following her, but was puzzled. “You want to retreat backwards from Mars!”
“Well… Lieutenant, when you want to jump over a ditch, don’t you take a few steps back to give yourself some room to build up speed for the jump?” Choi nodded, and Trisha continued. “That is exactly what we need to do, so we retreat back to a distance, which I will ask you to calculate through the computer once we have finalized the plan. When we reach the calculated distance we trigger the satellites.”
“Trigger the satellites? I don’t get what you mean.” Said Choi.
“Sorry I am getting carried away, I have played the scenario so many times in my head that I forget that others are not aware of it. Ok the first thing we will have to do is to ask the engineers to encase both our satellites in a Faraday cage.”
Trisha had more to explain, but Choi interrupted her. “Faraday cage? If you give me a moment to look it up captain…” his eyes started fluttering as he accessed the information.
“Faraday cage is a protective cage that the engineers will rig up to protect our own satellite from electronic damage, when our Electronic Counter Measure (ECM) package activates. Don’t bother looking up the net right now, you will be neck deep in it anyway in a short time.” Said Trisha impatiently wanting to move on with describing her plan.
“The satellite we release on this side of Mars, facing the Shaitan ship will have a single wrath missile strapped on to it. This missile will be modified to replace its conventional warhead with the ECM package. The ECM package is designed to fit into the old wrath missiles.
The satellite we release on the other side of Mars, not visible to the Shaitan ship will have two similarly configured wrath missiles attached. When we trigger the satellites, they switch themselves off to prevent damage to themselves and turn on the ECM package in the missiles. To the Shaitan captain, it appears that the satellites we have launched are not meant for surveillance, but for electronic countermeasures. The enemy captain feels that in essence our satellites are trying to blind the Shaitan satellites and disrupt the Shaitan radio communications.
At this point the Shaitan captain would probably decide to destroy our satellites. Our ECM is now turned on, and it is also shining a blinding light on the two Shaitan satellites as well as on the ship, hampering their visibility. I am hoping that it will be enough for them to not figure out that the wrath missiles have slowly been launched out of the satellite.
As our missiles move away from our own satellites and closer to the enemy, focusing the ECM on the satellites and the enemy ship, the ECM effect on the enemy increases while it keeps decreasing over our own satellite, to the extent that at some point our own satellites can be switched on, and we start getting some information out of them.
The missile on our satellite facing the Shaitan ship, will glide out very slowly towards the Shaitan ship, just far enough to let our own satellite function at a basic level and then stop. It will not try to reach the Shaitan ship, in fact it will try to keep the appearance that the ECM is still coming out of the satellite. It is there to keep up a deception. A deception on our intent.
The two missiles mounted on the satellite on the opposite end of Mars, not visible to the Shaitan ship directly, will rush head on at full speed towards the two Shaitan satellites.
The Shaitan ship will launch at least two missiles. One in the direction of each of our satellites. I am assuming that at this time the enemy captain would still not risk escalating the situation by launching a missile in our ship’s direction. Even if he does, we will be very far should be able to evade such a missile fairly easily.
Given the distance at which our satellites are from the Shaitan ship, the missiles will take several hours to reach, but reach they will. They will be able to destroy our satellites once they reach. The ECM is not good enough to confuse the missile once it reaches close visual range.
The satellites would have however done their job. They would have given us the hours of enemy blindness we require for the next part of our plan, and they have blinded the Shaitan captain on the opposite side of Mars permanently, without the enemy captain suspecting so.
Once the enemy missiles reach our satellites and destroys them, the enemy captain will realize that we didn’t just blind their satellites temporarily as he suspected, but also attacked and destroyed them. He would suspect rightly that we have maneuvers planned on the other side of Mars. However by that time the dice would have been rolled and it would not matter.” Trisha finished and looked up at Choi to ensure that he had understood.
Choi had understood this part of the plan, but he was now curious about the next part. “Ok. So this tactics will buy us about 6-8 hours if my rough calculation is correct. During this time the enemy will suspect that we are up to something probably behind Mars, but will be blind to see anything.
We also do it in such a manner that it does not warrant the enemy captain to see it as an act of outright aggression and bomb our base to dust. This will mean that it will still be holding position over our camp and not running away to join battle with its fleet, thus ensuring our primary objective. So what do we plan to do in those 6-8 hours we have bought with this elaborate plan?”
And so Capt. Trisha Strong explained the steps of her plan one by one, but she called in the commander of the Marines into the meeting as well. His role would be as important as that of the ship. With each move explained, Choi’s eyes went wider in amazement, excitement and respect at the brilliance of this woman. He wondered how this captain ever got the reputation of not being aggressive. This plan was so bold, that it was scaring the shit out of him, and he was loving it.
Chapter 12
Third Fleet
Approaching Rendezvous point beyond Pluto
September 2083
Rear Admiral Fabi Kalinin was sitting on this chair not because he was a Russian, but despite being a Russian. The Russians had fallen behind as a spacefaring nation especially in the last fifty years. About a century ago they had been at the forefront of space exploration. They were even considered the human space pioneers, who took humanity to space.
They were to be eclipsed by the US and then by the Europeans, Chinese and lately even by the Indians and the Japanese. The decline of Russians had nothing to do with lack of ingenuity, it was their economy and their political system, which held back their economy that did them in. It was amazing what the Russians had achieved in space despite their lack of resources.
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br /> The nationality of the personnel in USC roughly reflected their percentage vote share. The higher the percentage vote share of a nation, the higher the number of its nationality in USC. It was not a rule, but it tended to happen so. The share of senior personnel in USC tended to be skewed even more highly in favor of the dominant nations like the US and China.
It was a measure of Admiral Kalinin’s brilliance that he had risen to the number 3 position within the USC despite being a Russian. He was widely liked for his jovial nature, and made even the junior most officers comfortable in his presence with just a few words. On this mission however being Russian had turned out to be an advantage. To be more precise, not being an American, Chinese, European or an Indian had become Admiral Kalinin’s advantage.
That was not the reason Admiral Daniel Cloutier had given command of this fleet to Rear Admiral Kalinin. Fabi Kalinin’s nationality was a happy coincidence that solved a tricky political problem for Admiral Cloutier. Admiral Kalinin was given the job because he was tailor made for this job.
The task of the Third Fleet was a strategic, not a tactical one. During the discussions of the two Admirals, Fabi had used a chess metaphor to put into perspective the objective Daniel had in mind for the Third Fleet. “You want to force exchange of queens, no? The opponent don’t mind exchanging, thinking equal piece exchanged – no harm done. Only you know, your queen not in good position compared to theirs, the opponent don’t know that. You have more pawns in the game, you win with pawns.”
Fabi had given a wicked smile, and Daniel had smiled back confirming that was the exact strategy. No one in USC could beat Fabi Kalinin when it came to chess, but Daniel was no slouch either. They had become friends in the last 15 years at USC and spent hours playing and strategizing. They understood each other’s chess metaphor completely.
“You want the Third Fleet and me to be that queen, no? Don’t worry my friend, I will be that piece on this chessboard, and I will force an exchange. I will make sure that it is equal exchange. Even though the forces are not equal. Who knows I might even return back alive to bother you again! You came back from the dead on Titan, and I might do it also.” Fabi said jovially in his typical gallows humor.
Wrath of the Shaitans Page 14
