Shaitan Wars 2: Wrath of the Shaitans (43 page)

The Gurkha marines were however maintaining their professionalism, and not cowering at the thought of the plasma guns. The 63 of them were lying prone, using their SG-4 assault rifles and steadily picking off the Shaitans as they were emerging from the hole they had dug in the ground. The hole from which the Shaitans were jumping itself was not visible.

The Shaitans were showing amazingly incompetent tactics, and Leanna understood why after just a few seconds. She had seen only one type B warrior Shaitan amongst the ones who had jumped out. The rest were all type A Shaitans. Alex’s famous ‘technicians and cooks’ category of Shaitans. She suddenly felt a pang and a tug in her heart in the middle of the battle for him. She was annoyed with herself for suddenly getting distracted by Alex’s thought in the middle of a gunfight.

This was not a military site, and these were not soldier Shaitans. They must have not expected any trouble here, thinking the planet was under their control. So now the trapped civilian Shaitans were coming out clumsily to meet their deaths. So be it, he was not going to waste any tears on them. She looked up at the shuttle, most worried about it. That shuttle could wipe all of them fairly easily if it concentrated on them.

The shuttle however was not bothering with them. It was struggling to gain as much height as it could. The minor damage the marines were able to cause with their RPG had not stopped the shuttle, but Leanna could see that it was making the ascent in an uneven and unbalanced way, with one of its eight vertical thrusters taken out. There was a slight trail of smoke coming out of the rear, but knowing the robustness of Shaitan technology, it would not be fatal to the shuttle.

The reason for the Shaitan shuttle’s hurry in climbing and thus ignoring the marines was obvious. It had detected the two human shuttles flying in fast towards it. The Shaitan shuttle wanted to gain as much altitude as it could before the human shuttles reached it. The Shaitan pilot however had made one mistake.

In its hurry to gain as much altitude as possible, it had used the remaining 7 out of the 8 thrusters in its belly to lift off vertically. Perhaps the pilot was reluctant to leave the area in order to try and protects the comrades it had left behind underground. So its powerful rear thrusters did not come into play in those 30 seconds it took for the human shuttles to reach.

If the Shaitan pilot had raced in any direction, its powerful rear thrusters would have given it speed, which the wings would have also been able to convert into additional height. It would have also forced the human pilot to give chase to the Shaitan shuttle. The Shaitan shuttle could have easily escaped for the moment, due to its superior acceleration, and then come back better prepared for a fight.

Instead the Shaitan shuttle found itself at zero ground speed, at a height of just 600 meters, when the human shuttles came racing in at over 350 Km/h and still accelerating at a height of 900 meters. Each one of the shuttles released one guided missile as they approached and then whooshed past the Shaitan shuttle.

The Shaitan pilot belatedly realized its mistake and turned on it rear thrusters at full power to escape the missiles. The Shaitan shuttle had hardly been able to move a few hundred meters before the two missiles homed in on the largest source of heat on the Shaitan shuttle – its rear engine exhaust.

Mysteriously though one of the two missiles failed and just fell to the ground. USC would later be able to analyze the failed missile and realize that the Shaitans had miniaturized their point defense laser to such an extent that even its shuttles carried one.

The other missile however hit the Shaitan shuttle exactly where it had targeted, and substantially added to the damage to the rear engine exhaust caused by the marines’ RPG. The engine however was still functioning, although it could not possibly be operating at its peak capacity.

The human shuttles were turning around for a second pass. This time though the Shaitan pilot had gathered his wits around him. He had some momentum and height, now it was his turn to give back some to the human pilots. The Shaitan shuttle was also turning to face the direction of approaching human shuttles.

Both sides released two missiles each. Each human shuttle had one remaining guided missile, which they released, while the Shaitan shuttle release two missiles of its own. The human missiles were approaching from the front and top of Shaitan shuttle, so they did not have a clear view of the rear thrusters this time.

Both the human pilots were tech-heads, who had instantly reprogrammed the missiles to target the thin and delicate wings of the shuttle. If there was a structure of the shuttle the missile could damage, it definitely had to be the wing. It was the thinnest part of the shuttle. The human missiles were going down and had the advantage, compared to the Shaitan missiles, which were climbing up.

As earlier, one of the human missiles was shot down, while the other found its mark. These small missiles didn’t have AWPS systems like their far more expensive and larger nuclear cousins that humans used on the Shaitan ships. The one missile which found its mark however tore through one of the wings, and the Shaitan shuttle immediately went into an uncontrollable spiral.

The human pilots however did not have time to celebrate. They had taken evasive action. The two pilots had split on either side to try to run away from the incoming Shaitan missile. It was clear however that they had only few seconds before the missiles would catch up with them.

There was no eject mechanism from the shuttle or time to land and get out. In desperation, they copilots of the shuttles used the only defense that was available to them. They started firing the machine gun, manually targeting the Shaitan missile. It was amazing luck that one of them was actually able to hit and disable one of the missiles just before it was about to hit.

The other shuttle suffered the fate, the missile targeting it intended. The explosion was enormous, but thankfully not a nuke. The Shaitan missile was designed to take down something of the ruggedness of a Shaitan shuttle, hence the bigger explosion. The human shuttle disintegrated into small pieces and fell all over the surface.

The marines on the ground watched the far away explosion in the sky with a numbed shock. Then it had an enraging effect on the marines. They stood up and charged at the few remaining Shaitans coming out of the hole with the battle cry of their regiment – ‘Ayo Gorkhali’.

The few remaining Shaitans were cut down by the fire of over 60 SG-4 rifles within seconds. SG-4 were specially made low recoil, high caliber rifles meant for USC-GCF, purpose build to kill Shaitans. Leanna immediately tasked the remaining shuttle to check out the wreckage of other shuttle. There was clearly no hope, but this is what humans do – hope against hope. She also asked the remaining shuttle to check out the wreckage site of the Shaitan shuttle.

Leanna and the marines approached the hole that the Shaitans seem to be jumping out of. They cautiously set up a perimeter around the hole, so that nothing could escape out of it, and then sent in a robotic spider inside.

While the spider was making its way into the darkness, the pilot of the shuttle informed Leanna what they already knew. The other shuttle had no survivors. The Shaitan shuttle amazingly though had survived relatively intact. It had broken into two pieces, but both the pieces were together.

“Eagle 2 retreat back immediately.” Leanna ordered the shuttle. “We have no idea about Shaitan capabilities. They may be able to launch missiles even from a broken shuttle, if anyone is alive or some AI is running the ship. I want you to pick up two fire teams from here and take them close to the Shaitan crash site.

Approach very low, don’t put the last remaining shuttle on Mars at any risk. Not just us, but the crew of USS Resolute are depending on that shuttle. They don’t have enough fuel to return to Earth and will have to come down to the surface till we are all rescued. Let the marines approach the shuttle on foot, and check for any survivors.”

As the pilot was saying his acknowledgment, Leanna heard loud gasps from the marines who were monitoring the spider feed. Most of the marines were watching the perimeter both facing outwards as well as inwards towards the hole. Only 4 marines were tasked to monitor the spider’s feed on their faceplate. It were these four marines who gave a collective gasp.

Leanna quickly switched over to the spider feed and then embarrassed herself, when she gave an even louder gasp, almost a shriek when she saw the feed.

Chapter 28

Ka-let

South Pole of Mars

October 2083

“Col. McGraw to USS Resolute. Could you put me through to the captain please?”

“Capt. Strong here colonel. Please go ahead.” Trisha replied immediately. Obviously she had been following up on the battle personally from overhead.

“It’s a good thing you are weightless right now Trish, so you don’t have to sit down for what I am going to tell you.  Before I do that though, could you please connect to the Kormas base via that satellite of yours and ask them to turn off that damn Shaitan jamming device. Its purpose has been served. We almost managed to catch the Shaitan shuttle unawares, but failed to completely surprise it. Two brave pilots and a shuttle had to pay a price for that failure.” Trisha said, as she herself sat down on the ground near the marine’s perimeter.

“I am aware colonel. Sandy and Jigs were part of my crew for over a year now.” Trisha replied sadly.

“We will mourn them all Trish, but right now we have some important decisions to be taken. Can I request you to please add Dr. Yusuke Matsumoto and that Nutcase marine Major of yours to the conversation? It would save me having to repeat things twice, as well as quickly come to some decision.” Leanna requested Trisha.

When all four of them were tied up in the conference, Leanna opened up theatrically. “They say that seeing is believing, so let me first play back the feed from the spider.”

As she played the feed of the spider over the conference, after the gasps from the other members, the first words came from Ed. “What the hell is that?”

Yusuke was the first to recover amongst the three. “Just notice the scale given below on the legend Ed, it is a chamber, and underground chamber. A very, very, very big chamber! Obviously not dug by the Shaitans in the last few days.

From what I can see, the spider is standing at the topmost balcony of a chamber that goes down hundreds of meters at the least. I cannot make out the bottom of the chamber from the image. Although I can make out certain objects at the bottom of the chamber. Whether that is the bottom, or just something jutting out from the sides, I cannot say.

The chamber is about 220 meters wide, at least at the top from where we are viewing the chamber. As the spider pans left and right across the balcony, the either ends of the chamber are not distinct. So we cannot say how long the chamber is, but it is likely to be more than half a kilometer long. That is not just the biggest underground chamber but the biggest enclosed space in the solar system. Period.” Yusuke concluded.

“So are we looking at an old Shaitan base out here on Mars?” asked Ed.

“First of all, we have not proved conclusively that it is manmade… I mean alien made. Assuming that it is not natural, then yes it is likely that it is a Shaitan base, since they knew exactly where to look for it. There was no obvious opening. From the report, the Shaitans dug a 6 meter diameter hole to a depth of just 3 meters and hit the opening.

They did not have to fish around by digging multiple holes, which means that they knew the spot either from some old reference or there must be some kind of beacon near the entrance. Has any beacon near the entrance been spotted colonel?” Yusuke asked.

“Nothing that our gear can spot, but then we are just carrying basic military equipment meant to detect infrared, radar etc. We will have to run this past some scientific scanners to say anything about beacons confidently either way.” Leanna replied.

“I notice that you have only run passive scans on the chamber colonel.” Yusuke was full of questions. This was as close to his line of specialty as any living human. There were no xeno-archeologists yet. After this discovery though, it won’t be long before there was one. “I think if you ran infrasound scans, you would get a better picture of the large structures of the chamber.”

“I am aware of that fact Yusuke, the decision to stick to passive scans is deliberate. We are not sure of this place being clear of Shaitans yet. There may be booby traps that could be triggered if we used our active scanners. We will need to take it slowly.

The reason you are in the conference Yusuke, is that you will have to take over the exploration and cataloging exercise of this place once the marines certify that it is clear of Shaitans. Marines are not exactly suited for anything delicate like scientific survey and catalog.” Leanna said with a bit of an impatience in her tone.

“That brings me to why I called this conference in the first place. First we now have just one shuttle in the whole of Mars. We obviously need to study this place. If the shuttle breaks down or god forbid has an accident, then all those stuck out here will face death with no long term support.

So we need to set up some kind of semi-permanent base out here. Even if someone is stuck out here, they will be able to ride out and survive a few months of isolation. Trish you will have to take a call about your crew as well. Do you want the crew to evacuate to the surface, now that you cannot return to Earth without refueling?” Leanna asked Trisha.

“I am not sure when Earth will be able to send help out here in Mars. We are not even sure how many ships would survive. Heck we are not even certain we can stop all the Shaitan warships. The Resolute can hold up for over 2 months with the fuel we have to run the ship, but I would rather not take the chance and wait till the last moment for evacuation to the surface.

As you say colonel, there is just this one shuttle. It would be terrible, if when we needed evacuation from the Resolute but we couldn’t because our only shuttle has developed a snag. It is best that we evacuated the crew down right now, when we can. The Resolute will not be doing anything important for some time now.