The Battle of Titan Read online

  He had looked up to Bob and had marveled at his experience. How he could correlate any situation with a previous problem he may have faced, and quickly come to a solution. Now that experience was gone, and he would have to fill Bob's big shoes. Well, he will have to step up and work extra hard. That was all he could do, and hope he would be equal to the challenges thrown at him.

  Challenges there would be, of that he was sure, for they were embarking on the most complex space mission in human history till date. And if that was not enough of a mind job, he was now directing the most important mission, not just space mission of humanity. One on which the future of humanity would certainly depend. It might even determine whether human species survives or not! Well just another day in the office, Jason thought... No pressure!

  It had been thought that the first six months of the mission would be uneventful, as the Sentinel mission would follow the ESA-ISRO probe and may at the most tweak and update its mission parameters. It had been anything but uneventful. There have been two major shocks in the first two months itself. First Bob and now the Chinese.

  Operation Sentinel had been humanity's response to the approach of what was now confirmed beyond doubt as a spacecraft approaching the solar system. Ok, it was a US response primarily, with lots of help from allies. It was however not the only human response. There was Sedna – 1 and now the Chinese.

  The objective of the Sentinel mission was originally to study the spacecraft approaching, try to establish communication with it and if possible find out the intention of the aliens inside it. The objective was also to do all that as far out in space and as far from earth as possible.

  The reason was obvious. If earth was in any kind of danger, it is better to find out as early and as far out as possible, so that there is time to prepare for it. There was always the hope however forlorn in Jason’s estimation, that they might be able to stop it from reaching earth, if the aliens were found hostile.

  Jason more than most people in the world knew the capabilities of Sentinel. Compared to the ship that was arriving, it was as primitive as rocks and spears are compared to nuclear missiles. The incoming alien ship was an interstellar ship with technologies, which humans can only dream in science fiction.

  It was massive, with the current estimate at about 10 thousand tons. When Sentinel reaches the space ship on its rendezvous after expending its fuel, it will be just about 9 tons. Talk about David and Goliath! There was no way Sentinel could stop this thing. If that alien spacecraft wanted to come to earth, it would.

  That didn’t mean the US would not try. When the Europeans were taken into confidence and they were convinced to change the Sedna – 1 mission, it became obvious that Sedna would be able to launch much earlier than NASA could hope to launch Sentinel. Thus it would intercept the alien spacecraft much before and further away in space. There wasn’t much scope to change the physical characteristics of Sedna – 1.

  The spacecraft had essentially been physically assembled already, so not much could be added but a few extra and minor sensors. Not any weaponry really. The craft had excellent sensors and scanners to begin with anyway, so only the software was reprogrammed for the new mission. Sedna – 1 was repurposed as an intelligence probe.

  With Sedna – 1 taking the burden of gathering intelligence off the Sentinel mission, it could concentrate much more on communication and defense.

  Sedna – 1 also had communication equipment, and would try to initiate First Contact, but its communication repertoire was limited. It had been designed to communicate back only to earth in the most power efficient manner possible. So it had radio communications in a limited range of frequencies, and two red laser communication ports configured to give it redundancy.

  Sentinel could communicate in almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum from Ultra low frequency radio all the way up to x-ray. It was the weaponry that had generated the biggest controversy, and it is here that the US had taken the biggest risk. The debate whether to include nuclear weapons had generated more controversy than Jason could understand.

  It is one thing for the Greens, the leftists and the liberals wanting to ban nuclear weapons to be used against humans. He could understand that and even agree with it, if we could make sure everyone else does the same. To have abhorrence for nukes when they are planned as a contingency against alien attack is suicidal madness.

  Unfortunately for the US and perhaps the whole of humanity, many sub-committees of the congress are dominated by these kinds of people. They couched their dogmas in the logic that using nukes would set up a bad precedent with the aliens, who would then have no compunctions of using nuclear weapons on Earth itself.

  As if the aliens shared the same moral code as humans. It was unlikely in Jason’s estimation. If the aliens are coming here to attack earth, they will do so with whatever means they have, whether we welcome them with nukes or with flowers. To Jason’s mind it was suicide to go into the gunfight of your life, and leave you biggest gun behind at home.

  Such self-inflicted disabilities, thanks to human politics, had already been disturbing Jason during the few weeks he had taken over, when they got the news about the Hàoqí launched by the Chinese. They had all known about the new orbital construction facility being created by the Russians with a lot of Chinese funding.

  They were also aware of the simultaneous construction of a spacecraft happening on the facility. What everyone had assumed was that they were still a few years away from finishing the orbital facility and the spacecraft.

  It seems everyone was wrong. The official announcement of the launch of the Hàoqí had taken place an hour ago, but they had tracked the launch as it happened about 6 hours ago. ‘Hàoqí’ in Mandarin means ‘The curious’ or ‘Curiosity’ depending on how it is used. So Jason has been told. If the name is any indication of the objective of the mission, then it would be an investigative mission similar to Sedna – 1.

  Any additional help and any more human space crafts in the sky is more than welcome as far as Jason is concerned, but damn why can’t we co-ordinate with each other. We could have achieved so much more. Sedna – 1 helped Sentinel focus so much sharper and gave the mission that much more chances of success.

  He was not even thinking of collaboration, just coordination. If nothing simply coordinating their defense strategy might get them to achieve more than they could individually, stacked against huge odd as both the crafts are.

  The Hàoqí seem to be in the same class as the Sentinel, about similar tonnage. There was no word on the equipment or weapons it carried yet. The only official word on the mission of the Hàoqí was ‘exploration of the anomalous celestial object suspected being of artificial origin’, if the translation from Mandarin is to be believed.

  He was sure that if humans got their ass kicked by aliens ever, then they would only have themselves to blame. If a species cannot come together in the face of a crisis, then that species deserves to become extinct. Jason was determined to do something about it, he just didn’t know what. There was a germ of an idea forming in his mind, but it was dangerous; to him personally.

  He was however getting more and more convinced that it was exactly this kind of thinking from the politicians that had put them in this current sorry state in the first place. He would be no better than the politicians, if he put his career first before the best interest of mankind.

  So he decided to take the plunge. He would however need to make some allies to achieve this, and he knew the first person to start with. He got up from his chair in the mission control hall and walked back to his office down a corridor. When he was in the privacy of his office, he sent a message to Dr. Oleg Larson indicating that he needed to talk to him on an important subject, but he should call back only if he was alone.

  Jason was an engineer by education, but after working with NASA for a few years he had gone back to college to get some education on astrophysics. Dr. Larson was still teaching those days, and he was not a Nobel laureate yet. They had g
otten close and trusted each other, despite Dr. Larson’s general apathy towards people working in the government.

  In the recent months Dr. Larson had been a driving force in first disseminating the information of the discovery to the government machinery, and then as an advisor to the president for planning of the Sentinel mission.

  Although the actual discovery had been made by Dr. Larson’s ex-student’s student, he had contributed a lot by the use of his immense reputation to get the urgency of the matter through to the thick head of the government machinery. It had also renewed the old friendship between Jason and Dr. Larson.

  Jason waited impatiently twiddling his thumb, but Dr. Larson called only after half an hour. “Hey there Jase. How is it holding up there in Houston? Hope everything is fine? I am sorry about Bob, I heard about it.” Oleg greeted on the screen. He seemed to be in small room using his hand held for the conversation. He must have stepped out of some meeting or conference to make this call.

  “Hello Dr. Larson. I am doing fine, holding up ok, tough to get into Bob’s big shoes, but trying my best. I hope you and Carla are doing fine as well.” Jason greeted back.

  “Oh Carla is doing just fine, but I may have some grief written on me. These damn meetings and discussions in DC are interminable. These government types just love to talk. They seem to be in love with their own voices. It keeps me away from Carla for weeks at an end. She isn’t very happy about it, and I am sure I will eventually have to pay a price for it.” He smiled at the thought of his wife’s retribution.

  Both the married men smiled at the shared but unsaid joke about a wife’s anger, which need not be said to any married man. Then Jason got back to business. “Oleg, I am opening up a topic which may be dangerous, and yet I feel necessary. I could do with your advice and help. If you decide that this is not the right course of action, I will drop it, but please first hear out the rationale.”

  “Damn, you sound serious. Don’t tell me we have more trouble coming our way!” Oleg said.

  “No. Not more trouble, but I am trying to find a path to ease our troubles, and give humanity a better chance. Let me explain what I have in mind.” Jason explained his objective and his plan. Oleg listened to him quietly.

  Then after a long pause Oleg said. “You know for a government guy, you have quite some balls and a heart to do the right thing, irrespective of the personal cost. There might still be hope for good old US of A. I will see what I can do. I will get back to you in a few days. I guess I don’t need to tell you to keep this quiet.” Oleg said with a smile and a conspiratorial wink.

  Jason smiled back. “I was hoping you would say that sir. Mum’s the word.” With that they cut off the link and the conspiracy began.

  Jason went back to his work in the mission control, while Oleg started a chain of events which would lead to a new level of human co-operation and a united human response for the first time in human history.

  Chapter 9

  The Scout

  A few months earlier

  It had been few tens of thousands of cycles since the fateful time, that Harmony had discovered the wicked machinations of Ka. A lot had happened in Harmony’s life and the life of his beings during that intervening time.

  Harmony was now a seer. He was still getting used to the title of Taste of Harmony. While he was not the eldest of seers in the curious caste, he was without doubt considered the most respected and capable. In fact he was one of the youngest of seers in his beings’ living memory. He was too young to be in the council, although many expected him to break the record on age there as well someday.

  Many expected him to take the niche of his mentor Taste of Light at the council, when entropy would claim his body or mind to such an extent that he would have to be put to the liquefaction chamber.

  Harmony was extensively consulted by the council in any case, and was a regular at council meetings either representing views of his caste, or as a proxy for Taste of Light, who rarely came to his niche in the council, preferring to attend from his nest’s tasting station. Harmony was more or less permanently based out of nest-of-nests now, rarely visiting his birth nest.

  A tremendous flurry of activity had started in the world after Harmony’s momentous discovery that had lasted a thousand cycles, as the entire world mobilized. The scout vessel had been readied on priority on the orbiting building station, fuelled and programmed with as much mission parameters as possible given the limited knowledge they had about the Kalshuk system.

  It had taken them well over a hundred cycles working at a frenetic pace to modify the existing remote tasting void vessel, used for research into a remote scout vessel used for intelligence.

  With a new building station being built in orbit for void vessels, only the second since their beings migrated to this world, and the old one being re-furbished and upgraded, there had been too much work and too few builders.

  Then had come the task of staring the construction of a migration vessel. The last one his beings had started was 80 thousand cycles ago, and had been completed fifty thousand cycles ago. There was tremendous shortage of builders with knowledge of building these vessels.

  That would change in a generation as new builders were spawned on a priority basis, but for now the pace was painfully slow. The old building station in orbit had been used to start building the first new migration vessel, while the second orbiting building station was still being constructed.

  Now the world had settled into a steady hum of determined activity for the last hundred cycles or so, as the new migration vessel construction was complete and going through its tests on the orbital station. Next it would be put through its paces in the void within the system, before it was certified ready to go.

  The second orbital building station had been completed, but it was not building a migration vessel yet. The station’s facilities needed to be validated and broken in first. So smaller void vessels required for servicing the outposts within the system were being constructed on it.

  It would also relieve the pressure on the older void vessels being used right now to service the system, as no new void vessel had been constructed in few thousand cycles since the start of construction of the new migration vessel.

  Now Harmony could sense the growing excitement within his beings again. The scout vessel was now approaching the Kalshuk system, and had started its deceleration phase. They had senses closer to the mythical Kalshuk system, than his beings had ever sent. The seers told of Kalshuk from the memories of the Ancients.

  The ancients thought of it as the abode of the mischievous elements of Ka, not the most dangerous of the many abodes of Ka, but one to be kept away from nonetheless. Here they were defying that ancient lore, to face it head on, now that Ka has thrown his beings a new challenge of survival.

  The deceleration phase of the scout was inconvenient in one aspect. The nozzle of the propulsion system points directly towards the direction where you are traveling, which is the direction of maximum interest. You cannot have tasting sensors directly at the center of the direction of travel, because the propulsion nozzle is at that place, and no sensitive tasting sensor can be placed next to it.

  They had of course anticipated this problem and placed sensors on the sides, projecting out and then pointing towards the direction of the travel, but even these sensors were interfered with by the hot ion plasma being expelled from the nozzle on most frequencies of light.

  Despite the best efforts of the builders, it just was not possible to build a nozzle which would expel all the ion plasma in a straight line down the nozzle. It tended to spread out in a cone, thus interfering with the sensors.

  Despite this inconvenience, they were getting back a good amount of data and knew much more about the Kalshuk system than before. The scout vessel was so far now, that it took the data traveling at speed of light almost 28 cycles to reach them.

  They now knew that Kalshuk system had many globes orbiting it, including one massive gas giant for certain and po
ssibly as many as 3 more! It has been known for a long time to his beings that gas giants do orbit bright stars as well.

  There has been many a metaphysical debate amongst his beings as how Ka would use these gas giants, and the possibility of finding it out for himself filled him with tremendous excitement. From the orbital perturbations, it was expected to have many rocky planets orbiting as well, though they had not yet been observed.

  They also knew now that the anomalous signals were not coming from Kalshuk itself. The direction of the signals had resolved itself enough to rule out Kalshuk itself. This meant that it must be coming from one of the globes orbiting Kalshuk, most probably one of the gas giants, for those can support life of his beings and those of the spawns of Ka, if that is what is in store.

  It was maddening him to have to wait cycle after cycle waiting for data to slowly resolve itself as the scout approached its destination. There was nothing Harmony could do about it, so he waited.

  As the overseer appointed by the council for the nest-for-Kalshuk, he had many other duties and tasks, with which he kept himself busy for the last few hundred cycles after the initial excitement of starting the deceleration phase.

  It was not only in the void and orbit, that his beings had made themselves busy since the mobilization. An entire nest had come up right next to the nest-of-nests dedicated for the Kalshuk project. All occupants of the nest were related to the project in one way or the other, mostly curious & builder castes, but some warrior caste as well.

  The nest-for-Kalshuk would slowly go through a character transformation as the project progresses with more warriors getting involved in the planning process, as the migration vessel readies for launch. Right now it was dominated by the curious and builder castes, as the scout mission, as well as the vessel construction was reaching its terminal stage.