Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (18 page)

“First and foremost is primary objective. We are not to let the enemy ship leave Mars at any cost.” Trisha said with an emphasis.

“There is little danger of that captain, they are holding our camp hostage and they have to hold position over it to do so.” Choi said in a tone that indicated that it was a foregone conclusion.

“They may not bother to hold hostage or position after Third Fleet begins their attack.” Said Trisha.

“But… but… the warning message said…” Choi was now puzzled and sounded confused.

“I know exactly what the warning message said Hugo.” Trisha said softly and a bit sadly, using his first name to indicate this was less official and a more personal conversation between a Captain and her XO. “I have read it over and over again hoping to glean out something more than what it meant on the surface. It is not even a long message for one to read between the lines, I remember it by heart.” Then Trisha recited the Shaitan warning message from memory.

‘If your fleet approaching our fleet attacks, then we destroy the nests of both the old and new spawns of Ka on the 4
^th
planet’.

“That is the translation our computers made. We really don’t know the language of the Shaitans well. It is possible that the computer made grammatical or syntactic misinterpretation and some subtlety of the message or tone has been lost in translation. The basic message however is loud and clear.

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 this 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.