Wrath of the Shaitans Read online

  Index

  Interlopers in the dark

  Ménage à trois

  Mimi and Sheba

  Cracking the code

  Requiem

  Variable Geometry

  Overdue

  An Admiral’s internal battles

  Change of plan

  Buffalo and the Dogs

  The Resolute

  Third Fleet

  Nutcase

  Valles Marineris

  Maskirovka

  Making contact

  Battle of Pluto

  Clipping the enemy’s wings

  Sucker Punch

  Sneaking behind enemy lines

  Taking the radar

  Fiery Ghosts

  Escorting the enemy

  Shell Shocked

  The Kill Box

  Storming the enemy base

  Hole in the ground

  Ka-let

  First Fleet

  Orb Weaver

  Slippery customer

  The Second Fleet

  Cut to the chase

  Shackleton

  Pyrrhic victory

  Ka-ma-khya

  Remember us

  Chapter 1

  Interlopers in the dark

  Interstellar space

  Many Eons ago

  Scientists had been fascinated by the orbit of the dwarf planet Sedna at the turn of this century. Its orbit had earned it the nickname ‘The impossible planet’ or ‘Planet which shouldn’t exist’. That fascination was dwarfed when two young scientists at Hawaii University discovered the home planet of the aliens named Shaitan. It was a gas giant far out in the Oort cloud orbiting the sun.

  Now that was a planet that certainly should not exist. The astrophysicists realized that whatever they knew about star and planetary formations would have to be revised drastically. More likely they will have to throw it out into the bin, and draw out a new theory altogether. The inadequacy of their theories got further highlighted when they were able to chart out the orbit of the planet Shaitan.

  When you find out the distance of a planet from the sun or any other star, you can predict its orbital period (time taken to make one orbit around the sun). This is a simple calculation of Newtonian mechanics. If the planet were to orbit in a perfect circle, then one can even calculate its speed in orbit. No real life planet however orbits in a perfect circle. All planets observed have an elliptical orbit, an egg shaped orbit where the planet is closer and moves faster around the sun at a certain point, and then goes further and moves slower at other times.

  Thus to figure out the orbit of a new planet, one needs to observe its motion for some time. Humans had been observing the planet Shaitan for a few decades now, and had figured out the orbit of the planet around the sun. The eccentric orbit of the planet Shaitan puzzled the scientists, and drove home the point that we humans understand so little about the formation of our own solar system.

  There was one answer however which became fairly obvious from the orbit of the planet Shaitan. Why did the Shaitans discover us humans now? Even if they were aware of us humans earlier, why did they choose to come to the heart of the solar system towards earth now? The answer lay in the eccentric orbit of their planet Shaitan around the sun and the amount of time it takes the planet to orbit the sun.

  The planet Shaitan is so far away that it takes it an incredible amount of time to complete one orbit around the sun – over 5 million years! At its furthest distance from the sun, in its eccentric elliptical orbit called the aphelion, it is at a distance of nearly 40,000 AU or nearly three quarter of a light year away. At its closest point to the sun called the perihelion, it is at a distance of nearly 14,000 AU or less than a quarter of a light year away.

  At its current distance from the sun of 14,924 AU, it is approaching the closest point (perihelion) of its orbit to the sun and hence also to earth. This makes it possible for its fastest ship observed so far, to make the journey in nearly 20 years, which is still a very long time for a space journey. No one knows the natural lifespan of a Shaitan. Whatever that lifespan may be, it cannot be a short journey for them either. The current distance of the planet Shaitan probably makes the journey to earth just at the edge of feasibility for the Shaitans.

  That closer distance to earth also probably helped in the Shaitans receiving stronger radio signals from earth. The hacking of Shaitan computers has hinted at them becoming aware of us through our radio signals. The first scout ship of the Shaitans is believed to have been launched around mid-1990s. Humans had been pumping out radio signals into space for less than a hundred years prior to that. It was some time during those hundred odd years that the Shaitans picked up our radio signals and became aware of us.

  The Shaitans couldn’t have done it earlier. The last time the planet Shaitan was this close to Earth was five million years ago, when humans didn’t exist and the closest relatives of humans were struggling to survive in the grasslands of Africa as primates.

  The Shaitans themselves may not have existed in their current form either. Unless their species has frozen evolutionarily. Even if they existed in their current form, they probably would not have been technologically advanced, unless their society has been static for millions of years. Even if they were technologically advanced, there were no humans to send radio signals for them to have any incentive to come here.

  While that was one mystery solved, human scientists would have been amazed to know the reality of the Shaitan gas giant planet and the moon orbiting the planet where they lived. In a few hundred years, when human knowledge about the universe increased, and their theories on planetary formations got more advanced and sophisticated, they would be able to guess the genesis of the Shaitan planet.

  The gas giant Shaitan was old, very old. It was nearly 7 billion years old, far older than the sun it was currently orbiting. The sun is thought to be slightly less than 5 billion years old. So how did this renegade gas giant come to orbit the sun, albeit at a huge distance? The clue as scientists suspected lay in its eccentric orbit.

  The orbit pointed to the fact that this planet had been captured by the sun’s gravity, not constructed out of remnant gasses as Jupiter and Saturn had been. That fact was already suspected by the scientists. How and where the planet Shaitan came from was another matter altogether. To that no one had a clue. They would have been amazed if they knew the truth.

  All stars die. That much we know. The stars run out of hydrogen fuel at the end of its lifecycle. Most stars turn to a red giant at this last phase of their life. They grow to an enormous size, thousands of times their normal diameter, engulfing the inner planets. This is the future fate of planets in our own solar system.

  Mercury, Venus and most likely Earth are going to be engulfed by the Sun in some 7 billion years when our sun starts dying and turns into a red giant. The gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune however will hardly be affected, being so much further away from the sun.

  Then after a brief period of being a bloated red giant star, the outer layers of the star are puffed away slowly as the giant grows so big, and the outer layers so far away from the center of the star, that gravity can no longer hold it together. The star sheds a significant portion of its mass in the process of shedding its outer layer, and rest of the matter shrinks and collapses into a white dwarf.

  All this is well known to science for over one hundred and fifty years. What was amazing was that not much thought had been given to the outer planets of such stars. What happened to them? Did they keep orbiting the slowly cooling star forever?

  What was even more amazing was that a simple thought experiment and some basic calculation of Newtonian physics would have given them the answers. For example what would happen
to Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus after our sun dies? For that matter what happens to the dwarf planets like Pluto and billions of objects orbiting in the Kuiper belt?

  One thing is obvious, they cannot continue to be in their current orbits after the sun has puffed off its outer layers to become a white dwarf. Why? Because after shedding its outer layer, the sun has lost some of its mass. The white dwarf is still very massive, but slightly less massive than the old star was.

  Every object in space orbiting another object is like an extremely fine-tuned piece of precision machinery. It is orbiting the other more massive object because the centripetal force of gravitational attraction of the massive body is exactly balanced by the centrifugal force of the speed of its orbit.

  If the speed of the object were to decrease by even a fraction of a Kilometer per hour thus decreasing the centrifugal force, or the mass of central object were to increase fractionally, thus increasing the centripetal force, the object would slowly spiral into central massive object.

  Conversely if the speed of the object were to increase by even a fraction of a kilometer per hour, thus increasing its centrifugal force, or the mass of the central object were to decrease fractionally, thus decreasing the centripetal force, the object would slowly spiral out and free itself from the orbit of the central massive object.

  Once a star loses a fraction of its mass as it sheds its outer layer transforming from a red giant to a white dwarf, any planet far away from the center is now moving too fast for the current mass of the star to be in orbit. It had been moving at the exact speed for the star’s old mass to hold it in orbit.

  Now with the speed faster than required for the current lower mass of the star, the planets slowly start spiraling out away from the star. They become free floating planets travelling the void within our galaxy. There have been at least a few tens of billions of stars in our Galaxy which have died as a white dwarf by conservative estimates. Each of them would have many rocky planets, gas giants and dwarf planets orbiting them which would have been freed from orbit.

  Conservatively there are at least a few hundred billion and possibly a few trillion roaming, orphaned gas giants in our Galaxy itself. The number of rocky planets and dwarf planets orphaned and lurking in the dark could be many times higher.

  Almost 300 million years ago, in a sector of our galaxy a few hundred light years away, a star almost 7 times the size of our sun was coming to the end of its lifecycle as it shed its outer layer as a red giant and transformed into a white dwarf.

  This star had started life almost at the same time in stellar lifecycle terms along with the sun. However being much bigger, it had burnt itself out much faster. It had a much bigger retinue of planets orbiting it. Many of them were gas giants.

  One of the closest and hence fastest orbiting planets to survive was the planet Shaitan. Once freed of the star’s orbit, the planet spiraled out at a fairly fast clip and became an interstellar wanderer for the next 100 million years. During this time it covered a distance of a few hundred light years, until it encountered the combined gravity of typical binary star system.

  We humans call this binary star system Alpha Centauri. The angle and distance of approach was such that it was not captured into the orbit of that binary star system due to the planet Shaitan moving at a fast clip. However the path of the wandering planet was altered and the speed slowed down by the combined gravitational attraction of the stars.

  The planet Shaitan then veered to a neighboring single star, and having been slowed down enough, was captured into an eccentric orbit around this star. That star was Sol, our own sun. The fact that Shaitan was deflected from Alpha Centauri system before being captured by our sun determined its current orbit.

  It had a very elongated and eccentric orbit around the sun, which pointed straight at the Alpha Centauri system at its furthest point (aphelion) in the orbit. This would have major consequences for the history of the Shaitan and Human history.

  Amazingly Shaitan had retained 15 of its moons out of the 80 odd it had initially started with on its epic journey. The home world of the Shaitans was not one of those moons however. The story of the home world of the Shaitans was equally amazing.

  While it was a moon of a gas giant orbiting the sun, it was worthy of being called a planet in its own right. It had in fact been a planet at the beginning of its life, but around another star. It was older than even Shaitan gas giant at nearly 7.5 billion years. It had also started life around a sun of similar size as the original parent star of Shaitan gas giant.

  It had wandered similarly in space, but had been captured by the gravity of the sun directly and before the arrival of Shaitan gas giant. Orbital dynamics and cosmic coincidence had brought the moon close to the gas giant Shaitan in the Oort cloud, and the larger gravity of Shaitan had captured the moon in its own orbit.

  That was the reason that this moon was orbiting in the opposite direction to all other moons of Shaitan. It was also the reason that the moon did not have a circular orbit like the other moons. Being a captured object, as is normal with most captured objects, it had an elongated eccentric orbit around the gas giant Shaitan. This elongated orbit had a marvelous consequence.

  The moon would be scrunched slightly in an egg like shape due to the pull of gravity of planet Shaitan whenever the moon approached the closest point of its orbit (perigee). This is very similar to the tides that the oceans on Earth experience due to the pull of our Moon. These tides however changes the shape of the planet itself. It was very small, and would not be very obvious to someone standing on the surface of the moon, but it did exist nonetheless.

  When the moon moved back to the furthest point in its orbit (apogee), the grip of the gravity of Shaitan on the moon would reduce and it would move back to its normal spherical shape. This constant deformation and restitution of the planet’s shape had a similar effect as when a rubber ball is regularly squeezed. The energy of the squeeze gets transformed into heat.

  The moon had been a rocky planet originally, with a hot core. Over the period of 7.5 billion years, it had however lost most of its heat. Being a planet smaller than earth, it had lost its heat a lost faster than Earth. Now the moon was heated up again, but the profile and distribution of heat inside the planet was different this time.

  The core was still the hottest part of the planet, but instead of being at 10,000°C as it had started at its birth, it was closer to a 1000°C now. It was very different in this reheating of the moon however for the thin top most layer closest to the surface. The thin 4 Km crust of the moon was heated almost uniformly between 40°C at the deepest and 10°C at the shallowest just under the surface of the moon.

  This had happened because, unlike earlier when all the heat inside originated from the core, this time the entire mass of the moon was generating heat due to the friction of constant kneading that it was going through. This spread the heat much more uniformly and the gradient of heat between the core and the surface was not so steep.

  The surface of the planet had also gone through a transformation. During its lonely journey through the dark void of interstellar space, its surface had been frozen completely and utterly. It received no heat from any sun, or even the slight heat that comes from the radiation of a gas giant. The surface had been frozen at a bone chilling temperature of -260°C.

  The only reason that the temperature had not plummeted further was because the core still had some residual heat left in it. The surface had been airless for all intents and purposes. The original planet had an atmosphere, but when the planet ejected out of its host star and froze, heavier gasses which could be retained by the gravity froze and settled on the surface, and the lighter gasses which did not freeze were slowly lost to space.

  Now there was a metamorphosis on the surface. This had been a rocky planet with some water and a lot of organics on the surface. If anyone could touch the rocks on the surface now, it would measure about 10°C. This meant that the ice that touched the surface melted slowly, a
ny organics like liquid methane sizzled and evaporated into gas.

  The surface however was open to space, so it was almost as cold as space. Thus the liquid water would freeze as it came into contact with the upper layers of ice, and the sizzling methane chimneys that had started spouting at various holes, would condense and rain back into the atmosphere as methane rain.

  Over a few million years as the temperature of the planet and the surface stabilized, the atmosphere grew thick and rich in nitrogen released from the frozen surface and the rocks, and methane with smatterings of propane and other organic gases. A human scientist could not have helped but notice the similarity of the atmosphere with that of Saturn’s moon Titan.

  The crust of the moon, just below the surface was also going through a transformation. The constant deformation of the planet had cracked and reformed the crust in all possible manner, until it had become a honeycomb like structure with almost infinite mazes and tunnels just below the surface running deep almost 4 Km and all across the surface of the moon.

  The honeycombed tunnels were the equilibrium that nature had devised to take the constant stress and strain that the surface faced. Tunnels would crush, stretch, flex and deform to take the stress without having to break the crust constantly. Within these tunnels flowed many streams of liquid water. Some that seeped from the surface, while some gushed out of superheated geysers deep below at the lower levels of the crust.

  Then the most beautiful of all events in the universe happened. Life began in the tunnels of the moon inside the pools of stagnant water that inevitably formed from the boiling geysers. As anywhere else in the universe, life starts if given even half a chance. This was not however the Shaitan tree of life. That is another story altogether.

  These were single celled microbes which are the most common form of life in the universe. They got their energy from the hot springs, ate the chemicals in the rocks and released oxygen as waste product. When these microorganisms had released enough oxygen into the tunnels, it started leaking out into the surface slowly changing the composition of the atmosphere with the presence of oxygen.