Retribution (Shaitan Wars) Read online

  Cuifen either didn’t comprehend what Alex was saying or chose to ignore it completely. Instead she turned her gaze back to Alex. “You still look cute… just like the first day I set my eyes upon you. Do you remember that day in Zurich so many years ago, when we were all brought together? They told us to get to know each other before we trained together for Titan. You didn’t speak a single word to me that day. I kept hoping we could be alone, but there were always someone with you. That day I knew that you were the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. No one else.”

  Alex was crying freely now. “You deserved someone better Jojo. Someone who could give you more than I ever gave. Someone who was… yours…” It was Alex’s turn to trail off. He didn’t have the words to say that would not hurt Cuifen.

  Cuifen tightened her grip on Alex’s hand with surprising strength for a woman dying of extreme radiation poisoning. “You are mine! You will be always mine. We had little time together… I wish we had more. I would take a few moments spent with you Alex, to a lifetime spent with anyone else. I didn’t want to own you, to possess you… just wanted you to love me, and that you did. That is all I wanted. I am happy that you will still have Leanna. You will not be alone when I am…” Cuifen looked away, for the first time in their conversation there were tears in her eyes.

  Alex held her hands, but Cuifen slipped out of consciousness within a few moments again. Col. Cuifen Ma never regained consciousness again. Within 15 minutes she went into coma, and she was dead within the hour. Alex sat at the corner and wept inconsolably. No one dared approach the CO of the Marine Corps for many hours as he simply sat and stared at nothing in particular.

  Finally a brave Lt. Lehigh dared to stand in front of the General and clear his throat. Alex looked up and the lieutenant said. “Sir, a shuttle team from the Nautilus reports that they have found the Ka-let signature of the marker that the Shaitans had been looking for.”

  Alex looked up irritated and frustrated and with clenched teeth replied. “Of course they found the signature! We bloody put it out there to fool the Shaitans. You should know that lieutenant!”

  Lt. Lehigh looked down. Without looking directly at Alex he said. “I know that sir. This is not the one we put up sir. This is in a completely different place. This is the real one, sir! This was actually put up by the Ka-let 80 thousand years ago, sir!”

  Chapter 2

  Kali

  Darmstadt, Germany

  29th May 2084 (The Day after)

  It was beautiful summer’s day in Darmstadt. Cruelly beautiful. Saloni felt she had no right to enjoy such a beautiful day when there were tens, probably hundreds of millions of humans around the world who were suffering utter misery getting on with their destroyed lives, even while mourning the loss of their loved ones who had not been lucky enough to come out alive, from what was being called the ‘Great Kinetic Holocaust’.

  She was heading towards the administrative building to meet up with her husband. She had cried all night, and her eyes were puffy. Now however the sorrow and the shock had slowly given way to something else. A deep and slowly burning rage, settling down on a bedrock of determination.

  She was going to exact revenge and retribution. She was going to change from the giver and nurturer of life. She was going to become Kali. She would become death itself. Saloni had been a nonreligious and nonspiritual person all her life. She had gone about her life, never ever feeling the need to go to a temple or read any scriptures.

  Last night she had taken out the Hindu scripture that her mother had insisted on leaving her as a legacy. She had never read it before, but now she was reading it. The Bhagvat Gita was unique amongst religious scriptures of the world, in that it was written in the middle of a battlefield at the beginning of an epic war. It was not a book on military tactics. Amongst many other things, it was a book teaching one when you could kill, and why you should kill. It told you about when it became your duty to kill.

  Saloni had led a happy life with Stephan mostly in Darmstadt. They had raised children, who now themselves had children of their own. She had given birth to life and nurtured them, she had led a productive life advancing human space navigation and was one of the leading designer of navigation systems on space ships in the world. She was influential in the space community, but her husband had even more influence. Right now she was going to see him, to convince him about her plan. She wanted retribution for humanity.

  Stephan was the director general of ESA, and the topmost person in European civil space program. At 74 he still had a year before the normal retirement age, but he was considered so good in handling the various pulls and pushes of the individual nations of the EU, that he would probably continue for some more years at his position. Most people in the Western world worked till 80 in those days.

  More importantly from the point of view of the plan Saloni had hatched, Stephan controlled the asset that was needed for humanity’s opportunity for a quick retribution. A chance to hit the Shaitans back and send them a message. ESA had sole control over the LTKS project. This was one project that ESA had funded on its own, without their long term partners ISRO and JAXA.

  The ‘Long Term Kuiper belt Surveyor’ project, or LTKS for short was a project that had been conceived to make use of a spare equipment. When the first Variable Geometry nuclear fusion reactors were being developed by the major powers individually, each one had experimented with some unique technique of fabrication.

  The rest of the nations had fabricated the reactors on Earth, performing the nano-engineering in the gravity of Earth and building the reactors layer by layer in a painful and slow process. That was the reason that Variable Geometry Fusion Reactor were so few in numbers and only four Nautilus class ships had been available at the time of the Shaitan invasion.

  The Europeans had however taken a different track. They had experimented with the manufacturing process itself, rather than any aspect of the fusion reactor. The Europeans had constructed their first experimental reactor in space. More precisely they had constructed it in the ESA space station that orbited the Earth.

  The premise was simple. Instead of laying out the reactor layer by layer like a 3D printer, they would grow the reactor in the weightlessness of space. This would enable them to grow the reactor in three dimensions simultaneously, instead of being confined to two dimensions like the conventional process. This should enable faster construction of a reactor.

  The experiment had been a partial success. They were able to grow the reactor as they had anticipated, and it had been achieved far faster than the Earth bound manufacturing process. However there had been two problems with the reactor that the Europeans had constructed in space.

  The first was that the reactor had turned out to be a lot bigger in size physically compared to similar output reactors constructed in the gravity of the Earth. It was realized post facto that the gravity of the Earth was compressing the nano scale cells of the reactor by a small amount, which did not happen in zero-G environment of space, where it grew perfectly symmetrical.

  The slight flattening did not have any effect on the performance of the reactors, but the billions upon billions of such cells that added up to make the reactor, added up in volume to make the space grown reactor much larger in volume for the same output.

  The second problem with the reactor was the difficulty in achieving variability of output. The reactor could essentially run in only full power mode and a very low power mode. It could not smoothly tune up or down the amount of power generated by the reactor. This was the more severe defect, which rendered the reactor unsuitable for use in a practical spaceship, which would need to be able to control the amount of power it generates dynamically.

  This defect had nothing to do with gravity or lack thereof. It was due to the shortcomings of the manufacturing process followed by the Europeans. That shortcoming had since been rectified with the help of the Americans, but the Europeans were now stuck with a bulky but otherwise perfectly functioning fus
ion reactor in orbit. It could not be taken down to Earth without damaging it.

  It had initially been proposed that the reactor be used as an abundant source of power for the space station itself. However it became apparent fairly early that the space station could not use the full power that reactor was capable of generating even if the station got rid of all other power sources, and the reactor could not run in a lower setting.

  This would create problems of heat dissipation and required elaborate engineering. It was considered more expensive and a headache to use the reactor than to simply abandon it. Then someone in ESA came up with an idea to use the reactor with the additional investment of a few hundred million Euros. In that age of space renaissance, it was considered cheap.

  The space station was not an orbital ship construction facility, but it had enough docks and anchor points to start the construction of a space probe. Space probes are far cheaper to make than space crafts. It does not need to support humans, or any armor or anything else. ESA constructed a space probe that was essentially a huge hydrogen tank.

  The reactor was fitted with an Ion plasma generator that was being developed for the Nautilus class ships. A small housing enclosed the reactor and a bevy of electronic controls, sensor and communication equipment. The electronics and sensors were dirt cheap. The expense was more to haul them to space.

  In the end ESA had managed to assemble a beluga whale shaped tank, and a housing for the ion plasma thruster, reactor and the electronics strapped to the tank. Keeping with the experimental theme of the project, some of the huge amount of deuterium and tritium required for filling up the tanks was transported using the experimental space gun project. There were no deadlines, so the delays due to technical glitches didn’t matter.

  This rough and ready space probe had been launched into the Kuiper belt to study the various unknown objects floating out there. It was however launched in a special direction. The LTKS was pointed straight towards the planet Shaitan. It would take a few decades for the probe to reach that far out at the edge of the Kuiper belt.

  There was no guarantee that the engines, which were experimental would last that long. In a few decades sensors and electronics also fails, so there was no guarantee that a fully functional probe would reach planet Shaitan, but this was the best human technology could do right now to reach a distance as far as the planet Shaitan and study it. It was better than nothing.

  That was the reason that the study of the planet Shaitan was not the primary mission of the surveyor, but a secondary one. There were still a lot of unknown and mysterious things out there that the humans did not know about that needed to be studied. The ‘long term’ in the name of the mission indicated that the probe would reach its final destination, the planet Shaitan in 24 years.

  That time frame may have been acceptable to the mission planners three years ago when the mission was launched, but it was no longer acceptable to Saloni. She had a plan to get there faster, and that extra speed would have its own use.

  As she entered the corridor leading to her husband’s office, she had a lot of ‘Guten Tag’ to respond to. When she entered Stephan’s office, he wasn’t there and she stomped her foot impatiently. She missed the time of her youth when directors of any agency had secretaries. You could access secretaries at any time and get to know where the director was, and cut into any conversation if required. These days no one other than the president probably had a secretary managing their affairs.

  She sent a message and waited impatiently. “Hello my love, you never come to my office! What a surprise! Give me 10 minutes, I am in a meeting.” Stephan called back and replied.

  When Stephan entered his office, before he could say anything, Saloni clung to him and started crying again. Stephan had consoled her the whole night as she cried in his arms, as they watched various feeds on their screen from the internet. They had even switched to TV channels after a long time. Every human being on Earth was disturbed, but Saloni seems to have taken it especially hard.

  Then Saloni told Stephan about her plan. His eyes widened. He sat Saloni on the sofa and sat next to her and looked up the ceiling. “Do you realize that what you are asking for goes way above my pay-grade love? Heck it goes above the pay-grade of the Chancellor. This is in the realm not just of any military, but that of UN and specifically USC.”

  “I don’t care how high the pay-grade goes Stephan, I know you know everyone who needs to take the decision, and I know they will listen to you. Don’t do it for me Stephan. Do it for our grandchildren, and every other little soul on this planet who needs to live on. Give them a chance to live Stephan. Give humanity a chance to live on.” Tears were flowing through the cheeks of Saloni again.

  “Love, I don’t doubt that your calculations are correct, and the resulting impact is scientifically accurate. You are the best in business. But what you are proposing is retribution, it has nothing to do with giving our grandchildren a long term chance to survive.” Stephan said softly, so as to soften the blow of what he was saying.

  “Yes, what I am talking about is revenge and retribution, but that is the first step in discouraging the enemy to attack again, or at least think twice before they do it again. It is the duty of the survivors to extract retribution. Not in anger. Not even as a revenge for the departed souls that they enemy has killed. It is the duty of the survivor to prevent having to light any more funeral pyres of his loved ones.” Saloni said and rattled off passages from the scripture she had been reading.

  “All right love, I will do it. Let’s talk to your old boss, our match-maker and tormentor in chief. He is not just influential, but a personal friend of the right man who can take this decision for the USC. We will still need to take ESA oversight committee approval, but given the way the world feels right now, that should not be a problem.” Stephan said as he drew Saloni closer and gave a kiss on her forehead.

  Saloni and Stephan had not expected a response so quickly. It was very early in the morning in the East Coast of the US, but Senator Jason Golombek was on their screen within minutes of sending the message. “Guten Tag Stephan, hello Saloni. How is my favorite couple doing this morning?” Jason replied. He had really aged in the last few years, and seemed to be on a wheel chair.

  “Good morning Jason. I am sorry to call you at such an early hour. But you know the terrible thing that has happened. They are calling it the ‘Holocaust’ on the internet now. The ‘Great Kinetic Holocaust’. It is something to do with that. It is her idea really, but I fully endorse it. We thought that you might be the best person to talk about it.” Stephan apologized for the early morning call.

  “Don’t mention the hour Stephan, I haven’t slept a wink tonight, and at my age one doesn’t get too much sleep in the nights anyway. So Saloni dear, what is this plan you have got. Knowing you, it has to be a plan. You were always one of my brightest, although a bit cocky at times.” Jason gave a toothless smile. He had not bothered to put on his false teeth for a conversation with old friends.

  Saloni explained with passion and quotations from scriptures, interlaced with her mathematical calculations and the projected impact of the whole plan. Jason’s body may have become frail, but his mind was as sharp as the days he was the mission controller par excellence for NASA over half a century ago. He understood without having to be explained twice. Once Saloni had finished her impassioned discourse, he smiled and kept quiet for a few moments, giving a far-out look thinking something.

  “I would like you two to know that I consider you two to be my most successful project in life, my best deed that I will cherish till I die. You two are good together. Two happy young souls who made a wonderful life and spread happiness and the next generation together. Well… not so young anymore, but you two will always remain that young happy couple to me.

  And it seems that you two have yet more to give to this world. I like your idea Saloni. I am not going to quote further scriptures to you, since you seem to have done a lot of that already.” Jason gave
another laugh exposing his naked gums. “But I would like you two to know that a funny thing happened to me last night. All through the night, as I scanned the internet and saw the horrible aftermath unfold, I have been clutching this.” Jason raised a thick tome of the King James Bible.

  “I have never bothered to read this book before, but I guess old age and unimaginable tragedy has its way of turning you to seek solace in things you thought you never believed in. I have been reading this all night. Genesis 9:6 - Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

  I will speak to Admiral Daniel Cloutier as soon as he can give me time. As you can imagine, he would be very busy at the moment, but he owes me a couple of favors especially on the Nautilus ship program. I am one of his staunchest allies in DC, so he is sure to get back as soon as he possibly can. In the meanwhile, can I request you Saloni dear to put this entire proposal in a summary with as much technical calculations as possible, that I can forward to the Admiral.” Jason asked Saloni. She agree to have it ready and dispatched to him within the hour.

  It took Saloni, Stephan and a host of ESA flight engineers and physicist more than six hours to actually get the whole proposal in a shape to be presentable to Admiralty of the USC. That delay was perfectly fine, because a harried Admiral Daniel Cloutier got a chance to respond back to Jason’s message only after 12 hours. Since Daniel was in orbit and had lost track of time, he smiled weakly at Jason and said. “Good morning, afternoon or evening Senator, whatever time it might be out there. Frankly I don’t care any longer. What can I do for you senator?”

  Jason smiled and said. “I can see you are emotionally drained and that is understandable. First you can call me Jason. I am no longer a senator. I am a retired ex-senator. Second it is not what you can do for me, but what we can do for you. If you are done with dealing with the tragedy and the grieving, how would you like a shot at Retribution?”