Triumph & Defeat (Shaitan Wars Book 4) Read online

  “The problem is further complicated by the fact that squadron A is approaching Hades from a completely different direction compared to us, and hence at a completely different angle. For both the squadrons to meet up and come to complete halt at the same time, we can only choose a deviation from our current path that is symmetric between the two of us; which largely defeats the purpose of changing our path, because such a path would also be predictable the moment we start changing our course. It would give the Shaitans less time to prepare than what they have got on our current path, but not a whole lot of improvement in terms of risk for us.

  “The only way we can have a non-symmetric and completely unpredictable path for both our squadrons is if squadron B does not use the maximum possible thrust as it is currently using, but varies the thrust and the direction of turn. In addition squadron A does not aim to come to a halt at exactly the same position as squadron B, but somewhere near enough. We can then take a few days to creep towards each other.

  “The downside of this approach is that we would come to a halt even closer to Hades than a symmetric but predictable change in course, because in this approach we would not be using the maximum thrust. Another downside is that squadron A would have to exert greater thrust than squadron B to come to the same random point in the plans that I have drawn up and simulated. Squadron A can afford to do that because they are currently going at only 87.5% of their maximum thrust, but we may not be able to keep up the deception that squadron A cannot thrust any harder for the consumption of the Shaitans. They would see squadron A thrusting at 95% of their maximum thrust according to the plan I have drawn.

  “It may not be a bad idea though. If the Shaitans had assumed that squadron A could not go any faster earlier, and suddenly see them going faster, they would get increasingly uncertain about what our maximum thrust capacity is. That in itself might make them more cautious in their battle plans. I am uploading the details of the deviation plan that I have drawn up and simulated. Please have a review and let me know your opinions.

  “On the issue of where the Shaitans are likely to make a stand, frankly I have no logical basis to make a speculation, but Commander Montgomery has something to add on that matter. I know that she is not a military strategist, but she has gathered the insights of the Shaitan Warmaster and some of the elder warrior seers. Who better to get inside a Shaitan Warmaster’s head, than another Shaitan Warmaster? I have nothing more to add, so I will ask Sandra to take over.” Adm. Seth nodded to Sandy.

  “Sir, I and my diplomatic corps have been having intense discussion and speculation sessions with the Warmaster and his senior warriors. There is no spectacular new information or insight to share, but here are a few opinions and guesses of the Warmaster.

  “The first thing that the Warmaster is fairly certain about, is that this system must have been completely emptied out to contribute to the Hadean fleet, which the Shaitans call the Grand Coalition fleet. This system consisting of the gas giant Hades, the origin world, World #2 and all the 131 moons put together is the richest system of the Shaitans in terms of both resources as well as economy, within the Shaitan Empire. Being the first and the oldest system of the Shaitans, it also has the most developed infrastructure like space mining and orbital building ship yards. There are three orbital space yards over World #2, two over the origin world and one over the mining moon designated in our charts as Hades-BJ. Not only do they have six orbital yards, but also plentiful of raw materials being mined from the 131 moons orbiting Hades, which provide everything that the Shaitans require.

  “Thus, in times of peace, this system would have at least thirty warships and an equal number of long range transport ships, which the Shaitans call migration vessels. Warships have higher wear and tear, and hence are replaced more frequently. If we were to visit this system in the middle of such a replacement cycle, we might even encounter as many as fifty operational warships during peacetime. When we pointed out to the Warmaster that our spy drone has been able to identify only about a dozen vessels of military nature, the Warmaster explained the reason.

  “When the decision to raise the Hadean fleet was taken by the Grand Council here on World #2, this system had to lead by example and contributed all the war vessels it had. The core of the Hadean fleet consists of about fifty warships contributed by this system. The rest has been contributed by all the other Shaitan worlds put together. What the Warmaster had suspected earlier, but is fairly certain now, after he heard about only a dozen warships, is that this system sent every warship it had in this system as part of the Hadean fleet. They never expected us humans to reach their core worlds so soon and be able to mount a direct attack here.

  “As the Shaitan Warmaster explained, Shaitan space ship technology limits them to hop from world to world to be able to reach the core worlds here, so the Shaitans had made the assumption that the humans were also limited similarly. Hence the Shaitans had been confident that there would be ample warning if the humans ever started marching towards their core worlds. That, and the fact that this system has the highest ship building capacity in the Shaitan Empire, made them confident that they would be able to replace all of their ships within just a few decades, before which time, a human attack was not conceivable. Thus the Shaitans didn’t think it imprudent, in sending off all their warships.

  “So the Warmaster believes that there should be twelve warships that would have been produced by the six orbital yards since the time the Hadean fleet had been dispatched and probably another batch of six was nearing completion in those yards, given the amount of time that had elapsed. Given the fact that the Shaitan defense fleet has not rushed out to meet us in the periphery of their system, and take advantage of the fact that our two squadrons are separated, according to the Warmaster means that the six ships in the shipyard are not yet close to completion. Shaitan warships go through almost a year of space trial and rectification at the least, sometimes as much as two years before the warriors take possession of the ship from the builder castes as a battle ready ship. In this emergency, if those six ships in the space yard had been in such a trial phase, they would have been added to the defense fleet immediately.

  “If those six ships had been added to the defense fleet, then according to the Shaitan doctrine, the strategy of the Shaitans would have been different. For now, the Warmaster expects the defense fleet’s strategy to be classic defense centered on their key space infrastructure. The defense fleet wouldn’t want to leave the surface of the two settled moons i.e. the origin world and World #2 unprotected, but if they have to make a choice, they would rather protect the space elevators, the orbital ship yards, and the mining operations on the other moons, especially the space elevator and the mining complex on Hades-BX. It is the source of most of the heavy metals needed for ship building.

  “The Warmaster further confirms something that we also anticipate. The defense fleet would probably press a lot of the civilian space crafts into service, possibly as suicide boats if necessary. There have been precedents to such tactics in Shaitan warfare history during times of desperation, and these are as desperate times for them as one can think of.

  “The Warmaster told us that mining an area of space has not been part of the Shaitan space warfare doctrine, although they have always been aware that such a thing could be done, and have tried it early on in their history. The effectiveness of mining has never been worthwhile for the Shaitans primarily because in such a large theater as space, it is next to impossible to anticipate where the enemy would cross, and hence mines have rarely been effective in hurting or stopping the enemy.

  “However, there has been a lot of renewed discussion in the last few decades in the Shaitan warrior circle about mines, after the Shaitans observed how effectively we used it against them. There has been intense discussion in the warrior circles about the use of dual purpose missiles, which could double up as a mine, similar to the ones that they have seen us use. So the Warmaster feels that it would not be completely surpri
sing if the defense fleet mined certain volumes of space near their strategic assets with mines. The Shaitans are going to pull all stops for this defense fleet, and every available missile will be at their disposal to use. So spare missiles could be left floating as mines.

  “Another bit of information from the Warmaster about the thinking of the Shaitans, is that the defense fleet is probably fairly confident that our objective is to destroy the space infrastructure and then bomb the surface from space. They most probably consider the probability of us landing on the surface for a ground assault as very low. The Shaitans would also be fairly confident that if we decided to embark on such a misadventure, we would pay a heavy price.

  “This despite the fact that we did exactly that on World #12 aka Alpha Shaitan. The Warmaster has read the opinion and reports of various elder warrior seers about our ground campaign on Alpha Shaitan. According to them, the campaign exposed our species weaknesses when it came to underground battle inside tunnels. This is one place where the Shaitans think they would always have the upper hand. According to the Shaitans, the only reason we were eventually able to take Alpha Shaitan was because that world was isolated and no other Shaitan world could come to its aid.

  “Even fighting all alone, Alpha Shaitan could have held on for a long time, if not forever, but for the use of the biological agent, which we unleashed in the last few months of the underground campaign there, which broke the will of the Shaitans on Jehannum. That is the only thing that scares the Shaitans, and a lot of research has gone into mitigating the effects of such biological agents by the Shaitan curious caste. In addition all the peripheral worlds have been instructed to produce gas masks at industrial scale and keep it ready for civilian use, as well as revamp the entire ventilation system along with addition of air isolation systems along the entire planet. This would ensure that if the peripheral worlds were attacked with biological agents, then they would not go down like Alpha Shaitan did.

  “The Warmaster feels that such preparation may not have been taken seriously on the core worlds, because the Shaitans never expected the core worlds to be attacked, but they would have had a lot of time to make preparations. We can detect an incoming Shaitan fleet almost five years in advance. Our ships have a much higher deceleration rate, but even then the Shaitans in the core world would be able to detect us almost eighteen months before our arrival time. So the Shaitans are probably fairly confident about handling a human attack on the surface.” Sandra finished her report on whatever she and her team had learnt from the Heretic Shaitan Warmaster.

  The flag meeting discussed other matters of strategy and contingencies, not the least about what to do if another of the ships developed an engine snag. When the long flag meeting ended, the fleet had a working strategy for approaching the battle for Hades.

  ---XXX---

  Scent of Vigor did not know how to approach his seer and teacher. Should he approach him physically and give the message the old fashioned way? The seer wasn’t very far off, and he could reach him in no time. What if the seer is in discussions with another seer, and didn’t want to be disturbed? That shouldn’t be a problem, for what Scent of Vigor had to convey would pale anything that the seer could possibly be discussing. In fact Scent of Vigor would be in trouble if he didn’t convey the news immediately. In reality, what made Scent of Vigor reluctant to convey the message physically was the thought of how the seer may react on hearing the news? Scent of Vigor didn’t want to be around when the seer got the news.

  After all Vigor’s teacher was no ordinary seer. Vigor’s teacher was seer Taste of Aggression, the eldest of the Warriors and a legend within the Warrior caste. Vigor would be conveying the head of the Warriors, a being with the responsibility to defend the entire system and the holy lands, with possibly one of the worst news that his beings had ever heard. Vigor decided against conveying to the seer physically, and chose to connect with him over his tasting station. He opened the channel in the turn-by-turn communication mode, rather than in the default and more natural two way simultaneous mode, where each being could feel the richness of emotions of the other being simultaneously. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to either taste the emotions of the seer or let his emotions be known to the seer. As Taste of Vigor and other Shaitans had learnt lately, this form of communication was more akin to the way the Ka-Baal communicated with each other.

  “This better be important. You are breaking all etiquettes of behavior, when I am in the middle of consultations!” The taste of Seer Taste of Aggressions’ response on opening up the channel left no doubt about what he thought of the interruption. Taste of Vigor has composed an opening statement in his mind, but decided to skip it on tasting the seer’s mood. Instead he simply transmitted the synopsis of the data he had composed in the last few moments and then attached the full data with it.

  There was a moment’s lull in transmission of data from the seer’s end, which was the equivalent of silence in human communication. Then the tasting station sensed massive involuntary twitching in the body of the seer, which was faithfully transmitted back to Scent of Vigor. For a moment, Scent of Vigor thought that the seer was going into a death frenzy, that is typical of his beings before they are about to die, as their mind gets disjointed and confused. The seer managed to regain some modicum of composure shortly and asked Vigor. “What… How… No… I mean are you sure of this data?”

  “The tasting banks have been extra cautious before putting out this data, seer. Given the gravity of what it implies, the tasting bank contacted their counterparts on the origin world, as well as the tasting banks in the void controlled by the curious caste. We have taken over an eighth of a cycle to cross check our data from two different independent sources as well as gotten it analyzed by the warriors of the tasting banks on the origin world. All of it points to exactly the same analysis. I wish we were wrong seer, but the reality is exactly what you are reading in that report.” Scent of Vigor replied, trying hard that his taste would not betray what he felt at that moment. He was glad that he had not reported to the seer physically, for he was a riot of odor at that moment, none of which were complimentary.

  “Call an emergency session of the seers council on my behalf… call a session of the warrior subcommittee, call all my elder warriors to my niche.” Seer Taste of Aggression gave instructions in a rapid-fire manner. Then he realized that he was confusing his protégé, and repeated his instructions more cogently. “Ask all the senior warriors present in the nest at this moment to come immediately to my niche. Seer Taste of Domination is already with me, you just call the rest. Please ensure that you transmit this report exactly as it is to the senior warriors, so that they have some time to study it on their way.

  “Call a joint session of the warrior subcommittee of the origin and this world in an eighth of cycle from now. Prepare a detailed report for this committee for the purpose of this session as quickly as you can. Show the report to me once before you send it. I may want to add annotations. Lastly call a joint session of the council of seers of both the worlds in a quarter of a cycle on my authority. I will prepare the report for that session myself.” Taste of Aggression was about to close the channel, but one part of his minds was still going through the report sent by his protégé.

  He re-opened the channel and asked Scent of Vigor, “Is this drive signature verified? It feels a bit different from the usual Ka-Baal drive signature.”

  “It is subtly different from the usual Ka-Baal drive signature seer. In fact it is exactly the same as the Ka-Let drive signature seer! I got that fact verified from our historical archives. That is not all seer. Have you noticed the estimated mass of those void vessels? They are far bigger that the Ka-Baal warships our beings have fought till now. In fact, there seem to be two classes of void vessels. According to the initial estimates, a few of the void vessels coming from the direction of sector 6, roughly in the direction of World #6 are really massive. If the estimates are correct, they would dwarf our migration vess
els, the most massive of our void vessels.

  “There is one more co-incidence that we dug out from the historical archives seer. Those two massive class of void vessels may not match anything that we have observed of the Ka-Baal vessels, but they match very closely with the mass of the Ka-Let vessels that our ancestors fought!” This time Scent of Vigor could not hide his amazement from the taste signal transmitted.

  “There are no coincidences in war my protégé, especially not two of them together. There are some profound implications of this Scent of Vigor. I just hope we have not been concentrating on the wrong enemy all this while!” Seer Taste of Aggression replied.

  --- XXX ---

  As Taste of Aggression had anticipated, the first question he was asked was exactly the same that he had asked his protégé. “How sure are you of this data?” Aggression was prepared for the question and rattled off the independent verifications of the data.

  “No, not the data about the number of void vessels approaching. I am very sure that the warriors would have the count and the position of those approaching enemy vessels calculated accurately. I am asking about the similarity with the Ka-Let?” It was seer Taste of Water, with his unique historical perspective who asked the question.

  “About the drive signature, we are almost 64 by 64 confident about the accuracy of the data. About the mass and hence the size of those approaching vessels, it is very hard to get an accurate estimate of such facts at such a distance. It involves some assumptions which could always go wrong. Within those limitations, the computer has put a confidence level of 55 out of 64. As far as I am concerned that is fairly close to being certain, especially given the exact match of the drive signature.” Seer Taste of Aggression replied.