Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4) Read online

  Adm. Wickremsinghe spoke on the com. “Ensign Ricks, could you please call for a flag meeting of all the captains from both the squadrons in fifteen minutes, and of course Adm. Seth as well.”

  “Yes sir, will do that immediately.” Ricks replied.

  “And ensign, please tell the captains to ensure that their chief engineers are also present for the meeting.” The admiral added.

  The meeting started a few minutes later than Adm. Wickremsinghe had planned. Coordinating between 14 ships split into two squadrons, which were still separated by over a light minute of distance took more than the 15 minutes’ notice that the admiral had given Ensign Ricks. Humans had been fighting is space for decades, so when the meeting did start, the standard protocols for such flag meetings were known to everyone. Adm. Wickremsinghe was the ranking admiral, and the admiral of the fleet. He would open the discussion, and since a round trip of light between the two squadrons would take over two minutes, the conversation would be structured, and one-way at a time.

  Adm. Wickremsinghe acknowledged and greeted Rear. Adm. Seth first and then the captains of the B Squadron ships, and then his own squadrons’ captains. He did not wait for any greetings back from anyone and continued his monologue. He would speak until someone else was invited to speak, and then the next and so on. That was the only way to have such a meeting at a light minute distance.

  “Gentlemen, the agenda of this unscheduled meeting is to discuss the engine troubles we are having with the ships of Squadron B, and how it affects our schedule. More importantly and more worryingly, we are here to discuss any change in battle plans necessary due to these engine outages. Finally I want to table the possibility of further engine failures, not just in Squadron B, but also in the ships of Squadron A, because fundamentally both have engines made out of the same technology, albeit Squadron A has newer ones with lesser mileage on them. I want ideas on how we can draw out contingency plans in case such an eventuality were to happen in the middle of a battle. So with that agenda set, I invite Lieutenant Commander Tsarovsky the chief engineer of the Hercules to give us an assessment of the engine failures on the ships of Squadron B.”

  Adm. Wickremsinghe made a thought click on his neural interface and muted his mike, as they waited for the signal to reach Squadron B and then for the Chief Engineer to respond. He turned to Capt. Surjeet Singh his flag captain standing next to him and asked. “You have the tactical briefing ready?”

  “Yes, sir.” Capt. Singh replied.

  “Good. You go after the engineering briefing.” The admiral replied.

  Lt. Cdr. Tsarovsky opened with customary greetings. Although he spoke a fairly standardized version of English that most of humanity had settled upon as the lingua franca of the species, a heavy East European accent betrayed his ancestry. “As you may perhaps be aware, I was part of the engineering team that constructed these first production grade reactors for the Hercules class and the Horatio class ships. One being our new battle cruiser class, and the other our troop carrier class ships from the two eponymously named first ships. Both these ships are part of Squadron B of the fleet, and it has been my responsibility now for a decade to not just maintain and fix these engines, but also to report back to HQ on any design or structural issues with these engines.

  “As you are all aware, after we finally cracked the Ka-Let fusion reactor design, we engineers were put on a very tight and I might argue unrealistic deadline to build a new class of battle ship and a troop carrier using the new Ka-Let reactor design. I understand that the tight deadline was because the ships were being built for this mission, and this mission itself had a tight deadline, but still I would be lying if I said we didn’t cut corners. There were design decisions we took, which we knew may cause maintenance problems in the long run, but we took them anyway because it cut the production time for the engines.

  “The good news is that some of those design flaws were rectified in the engines of squadron A, which we had 5 more years of time to build, and 4 years of operational experience from running the engines of squadron B. Hence, not all the problems that plague the engines of squadron B are likely to occur on the engines of squadron A. It is also noteworthy that the problems on the engines of squadron B have emerged only in the last 6 months, after almost a decade of operating continuously. Squadron A has been operating for only half that time, so the probability of these ships developing similar troubles in the short run is lower.

  “The bad news is that some of the problems related to wear and tear of the engines are fundamentally design issues that are shared by all the engines in the fleet, so to that extent squadron A is also susceptible to those faults. The worse news is that some of the wear and tear related problems cannot be fixed out here in the field, if they can be fixed at all. The Ka-Let design engines are so new, that we haven’t had the need to rehaul any of the engines till now. We don’t know if these engines can be rehauled. Frankly we were in such a hurry to build the engines that the engineering design team did not give repairs and maintenance much thought at that time.

  “So in summary, here is my opinion. First, I do not expect the engines of squadron A to develop similar kind of problems yet, at least not for this upcoming battle. However having said that, one cannot rule it out completely, since these things occur on statistical probability, and that as you all know gentlemen is never zero. Second, some of the engines of squadron B can be expected to be repaired in the month or so, that we have before the upcoming battle, but others cannot be. For example I expect that the recent engine of the Goliath that went down a few hours ago to be repaired in a weeks’ time, but the first one that she lost a few months ago will remain down till she can reach a shipyard.

  I have mailed you all my detailed prognosis of the state of the engines of squadron B along with all our repair logs maintained over the last 10 years. It may help the engineers of squadron A, as they can learn from our experience. To summarize that prognosis as my third and final point, I expect almost all the ships in squadron B to enter the battle with only 7 out of the 8 engines functioning, with the additional risk of some of the ships of the squadron losing an additional engine. I recommend admiral that you keep this in mind as you plan your battle plan. Thanks and that’s all from my side.” Lt. Cdr. Tsarovsky signed off.

  Adm. Wickremshinghe nodded to Capt. Singh, who started immediately with the knowledge that Lt. Cdr. Tsarovsky had actually finished his briefing two minutes ago and that the ships of squadron B were waiting for that long for the next person to speak.

  “As we all know that USC Bheem was the first ship of squadron B to develop engine troubles almost 6 months ago. This reduced its thrust capacity by 12.5%. The rest of the ships of the squadron also had to reduce their thrust to keep formation. During the course of the next few months, almost all the other ships of the squadron developed their own engine troubles. Fortunately for us none had more than one engine down at any given point, so they were at the same level as USC Bheem as far as thrust goes, so the overall squadron did not slow down any further.

  “Actually ‘slow down’ is a bit of a misnomer in this context, because the net effect of the squadron B having lower thrust was that it actually arrived faster and at a higher speed into this system because their deceleration capability was reduced by that amount. Fortunately for us, the breakdown of the engines occurred late enough that even at this lower thrust, squadron B would be able to come to a complete halt almost an AU before it reaches the gas giant Hades, and the core Shaitan worlds orbiting it.

  “An AU might sound like a lot, but it is actually a whisker if you consider the speed and the distance at which squadron B was travelling. If the Bheem had developed engine problems even a week or two earlier, then squadron B would not have been able to come to a halt before reaching Hades. They would either have had to make a high speed pass close to Hades, which given the fate of the fleet at Beta Shaitan would definitely not have been advisable, or they would have had to point away from Hades and make a detou
r back, which would have delayed the attack by many months and given the enemy that much more time to prepare..

  “The fortunate consequence of this whole engine trouble episode, is that the enemy is going to have less time to prepare for what we hope is a surprise attack on the very heart of their civilization. Squadron A has had to reduce its thrust in the last 6 months as well to arrive at the same point and the same time as squadron B. So all of us are going to congregate at this point just under the plane of this system’s orbit about 1 AU from Hades.” Capt. Singh used his eye tracking software to make a pointer on the holographic 3D map of the Hades system that was being projected on all the ships.

  “While the good part may be that our hastened attack timetable will give the enemy less time to prepare, the bad part about it is that we are also being forced to form up into a complete fleet very close to the enemy’s system and at a point which the enemy can easily predict. This will also force us to commence our attack immediately on forming up together without giving us too much time to do a recce of the system or make detailed threat analysis. Hence we will have to do all our battle plan now while we are still far from the system and cannot see the enemy positions that well.

  “The Ghost has been giving us good intelligence on enemy positions, but its high speed fly-by is no substitute for real time intelligence which unfortunately we don’t have. On the other hand the enemy has a minute-by-minute knowledge of our exact position. As if our massive engine thrusts pointed towards them wasn’t enough, they have been shining their lasers at us on a regular basis to know our exact speed and deceleration. The Shaitans seem to have adopted our lighthouse technology eagerly, because sometimes we get lit up by them every 10 minutes.

  “One positive fallout of the Shaitans lighting us up though, is that when their Warmaster analyses our thrust capability, there is a possibility that he may underestimate the capability of squadron A by 12.5%, since we here in squadron A have reduced our thrust to match that of squadron B, but squadron A can boost it up any time we want in battle.” Capt. Singh paused to adjust the 3D map of the system and zoom into the heart of the system. The gather point was no longer visible. Hades loomed large in the display, with many tiny dot like spheres orbiting it. The lines of the orbit had been artificially drawn by the computer to give an idea of the orbit of the satellite moons of Hades and the plane of the system.

  Somewhere in the middle of the cloud of the 103 moons orbiting Hades, two of the moons were colored with two different shades of green – the Origin World which was the planet of birth of the Shaitans, and World #2, the spiritual center and the holy land of the Shaitans. Interspersed within the orbits of those swarm of moons were nine red dots and over a hundred blue dots. Capt. Singh adjusted the display and then continued speaking.

  “Gentlemen, this is the tactical view of the system we have been able to draw up from the flyby of the Ghost. Please keep in mind that this tactical picture is already a week old, because the Ghost flew by the heart of the system that many days ago. The Ghost is updating the picture even as it is receding from the system, but its ability to see details gets diminished by the day. In a week, our fleet will be in a better position to see details within the system than the Ghost, then we will be updating this picture better.

  From what we have been able to see and analyze so far, we have identified well over a hundred artificial objects in space large enough to be detected by the Ghost. Some of them could be civilian structures like satellites or cargo vessels that pose no threat, but we will not know for sure till the last moment. Some, we have positively identified as what the Shaitans call as War Vessels and Migration Vessels, which do pose a threat. These have been marked in red, while all other unidentified structures have been marked in blue.

  So if you go by the initial assessment, the Shaitans have left their core world surprisingly unguarded. This is in consonance with the intelligence we got from the Heretics on World #6. I must thank Commander Montgomery and her diplomatic corps, for the yeoman service in gathering tactical intelligence about the Hades system from the Heretics. It is windfall intelligence, which we had not expected or counted on. However knowing the potential of a double cross, it would be only prudent to not take anything said by the Heretics at face value. Hence, we will have to consider every blue dot on that map as a potential threat to the fleet. We have to also keep in mind that this is the heart of the Shaitan Empire that we are attacking.

  They are likely to throw everything they have at us, just as we would have done if they were attacking Earth. To that extent, it is highly possible that even non-combat ships may be pressed into service for the defense of their system. Shaitans are no strangers to suicide attacks in any case, with their spiritual and birth home under attack, we can expect fanatical and suicidal strategies at every turn. Keeping these facts in mind, we would not just have to keep a safe distance from everything that floats in space in this system, but actively shoot down anything that tries to come remotely close to us.

  I would like to remind everyone, that those hundred odd blue dots that we see are probably not the only things floating in space around Hades. The Ghost’s sensors are not sensitive enough to detect from such a distance objects like space mines or anything small like a floating missile. Despite the fact that our schedule has advanced by almost a month due to the engine troubles, the Shaitans have had the opportunity to watch us arrive for months if not over a year. There has been ample time for them to have mined their system in anticipation of an attack.

  I know that the Shaitans have not used mining as a tactic till now in our battles with them, but then the Shaitans have learnt and copied our techniques previously. Throughout these Shaitan wars, they have learnt from us, just as we have learnt from them. Right now they are shining laser detection beams at us to detect and range us; this is a technique they learnt from us. They have used our high speed attacks against us in Beta Shaitan. So it would not be a stretch of imagination to expect them to have copied our carbon coated missiles which double up as mines. We need to be wary of this. Right now we are in exactly the same situation attacking their home planets as the Shaitans were a few decades ago, when they attacked Earth. They would have noticed how we used those mines effectively to defend our home.”

  Capt. Singh paused again to adjust the display once more. This time he zoomed out again to bring the point of convergence of squadron A and B into view. He then instructed the computer to draw the projected line of travel of the two squadrons, which merged at the point of convergence to become one line.

  “This is the modified plan of attack that we had all agreed to last week. It is as simple an attack plan as it can get. The six battle cruisers from squadron A plus the two battle cruisers from squadron B would form a three dimensional cone formation that will slowly proceed towards World #2. The three troop carriers will fall behind a bit and follow in the wake of the cone formation, at a distance of a million kilometers, far enough not to be affected if the battle cruisers got into a skirmish, but close enough for the battle cruisers to protect them if they were attacked from behind or flanked from the sides.

  “The worrying factor in this plan as stated earlier is the point of convergence of our two squadrons. We have noticed Shaitan ship movements close enough to this point from where they could have launched mines, which could slowly be drifting towards the point of convergence. It would be highly prudent for us to suspect mining of this area. Accordingly one of the agendas of this flag meeting is to brainstorm options to mitigate this risk.

  “Once we have come to a complete halt, we can then choose a course at random, which would not be predictable by the Shaitans, and hence less likely to be mined. Even then, our plan is to crawl towards World #2 at a pace, which would take us almost a month to cover the distance of one AU to World #2. Our calculations show that at such a slow velocity, we should be able to detect a cold dark mine floating on our path with enough warning time to be able to alter our course if needed as well as be able to launc
h adequate number of antimissiles from a far enough distance to be reasonably safe.” Capt. Singh nodded to Adm. Wickremsinghe, indicating that he had finished his briefing.

  The admiral took over from where Capt. Singh had finished. “In addition to the agenda of brainstorming options about our rendezvous point, I would like to hear opinions about two more aspects of this battle. One is about where you think the Shaitans are likely to make a stand with their defense fleet. We know that they have a few warships and migration ships stationed in the system. We have not clearly identified all of them, but preliminary analysis shows it is not a huge fleet, but whatever be the size of the fleet, I am sure each of those ships in the defense fleet will fight to death to defend their home world and holy land. They are unlikely to let us reach World #2 unmolested.

  “The other issue we need to discuss is contingency response if one of our ships in the fleet, especially the battle cruisers are to develop an engine snag in the middle of a battle or a chase. It is best we have templates of our response ready, which we can modify according to the situation. That way we would have a faster and more coordinated response to such a contingency. I would invite Adm. Seth to give his opinion on all the three matters, followed by anyone from squadron B who may have anything to add, and last from anyone in squadron A.” Adm. Wickremsinghe invited the other admiral in the fleet, who was just a few months his junior on the service records of USC to go first.

  After the expected two minute delay, Adm. Seth spoke. “First on the point of convergence of the two squadrons, which is our rendezvous point. This has been worrying me as well, and I have worked on this problem for the last few days. The physics of the problem is such that if squadron B were to decide to change the point where it would come to a halt, it would have to do it by compromising on the distance at which we can come to a halt from Hades. We would have to divert some of our thrust to moving to a different point away from the line of our approach. This would mean that much lesser thrust to slow down our velocity, which would mean we would come to a halt closer to Hades.