SAW 1: Stars at War

by Lee Guo

  Six to seven human ships—disabled! Just like that!

  Now, the twelve-ship snake battle wall turned several of its ships towards Donovan’s Asterix.

  “Helm, reverse course! Reverse!” Donovan commanded, “Get us out of line of sight!”

  “Aye, sir!”

  The Viron light-cruiser beside Asterix, the Pendam, also retreated.

  “Are we abandoning them?” Rajek asked.

  “Look at that human squadron. That’s not a battle wall anymore, it’s a scattering of disabled ships! It’s just us and Pendam versus all the snakes!”

  “Surely, some of our ships that withstood the shockwave could still fire,” Rajek offered.

  Donovan sat silently. “You’re right. We do still have flanking position on that snake squadron. But we’re severely outnumbered. It’s now seven versus fifteen—”

  “Sir, look!” the helmsman yelled. “The holomap!”

  Donovan twisted his head to look forward into the central holomap and he saw it. It’d been crawling in order to sneak up on Asterix and its ally, the Pendam. Another snake k-ship, some three hundred kilometers aft of Asterix.

  “Weapons, do you have firing solution on that?” Donovan asked.

  “Yes, sir—but we don’t have much laser mounts back there. Only twenty rear laser mounts.”

  “Is that enough to take it out? Fire!” Donovan ordered, “Helm, turn us 90 degrees so our side laser mounts can fire on it.”

  “But that’ll expose our side to the snake squadron!” Chris at weapons replied.

  “We’ll die if we don’t take it out! Do it!”

  Asterix’s twenty rear laser mounts spammed twenty beams at two second-intervals into the snake K-ship.

  The K-ship looked like gigantic cockroach, except with a very vast abdomen that held its antimatter stores. Its forward hull carried all the propulsion units and defenses.

  Did it have a crew? Donovan would never know and didn’t care to find out.

  The rear laser mounts crashed into the K-ship’s forward hull, but to Donovan’s surprise, he saw green-blue shield scatter! It had shields! I guess the snakes equip some of their ships with shields after all. Shield blasts splattered as the Asterix’s laser beams continued to prick the K-ship.

  “It’s closing to two hundred kilometers,” the helm reported.

  The Asterix finished its 90-degree turn, and its forty-side laser mounts added to the fire that splashed the K-ship’s shields.

  “Sir!” helm called again. “The Pendam turned, too! They saw it!”

  Donovan looked over at his ally.

  The light-cruiser Pendam had a much faster turn rate, because it was much smaller. Within a minute, it’d fully turned a 180, while Asterix kept turning to face the K-ship. The Pendam fired a full frontside of two hundred cruiser-sized lasers. They dove into the K-ships shields, and instead of making a blue-green splash, they directly hit the K-ship’s armor, or whatever protected it.

  The K-ship rocked as both Asterix and Pendam jammed their laser beams into its rather unprotected hull. Explosions easily spasmed across its forward hull and more secondary explosions followed. Within seconds, the K-ship was no more, but in its place stood a gigantic white-hot explosion followed by a similar shockwave that expanded and expanded.

  “Shockwave incoming!” said damage control.

  —until it enveloped both Asterix and Pendam. The bridge of the Asterix rocked back and forth and its shields bled its iron-cobalt matrix off.

  “Shields at 10% and falling!” damage control advised.

  My god, that was a big explosion, thought Donovan.

  The bridge buckled and gravity shifted sideways as the inertial stabilizers tried to compensate. His armpad shook and people on the bridge who tried walking couldn’t. Everyone held onto something.

  Finally, the shockwave of highly energized plasma created by the dust and small rocks of the asteroid field passed.

  “Shields gone!” damage control noted.

  Donovan gazed up at the neighboring starship Pendam and realized it also lost its shields, but because it had a smaller surface area, the shockwave did relatively proportional damage to it. Luckily, the K-ship exploded one hundred and fifty kilometers away. Closer—and both ships would’ve been neutralized.

  Both Pendam and Asterix now turned their backs at the enemy squadron in an effort to destroy the enemy K-ship. This was no good.

  “Sir! The enemy behind is firing!” damage control shouted.

  Three snake starships…a light-cruiser and two heavy cruisers—fired their full frontside grazer mounts at three hundred kilometers away.

  Virtually point-blank, Donovan saw the Pendam’s rear explode from numerous grazer hits.

  The Pendam was a light-cruiser, and its rear armor, the weakest of all its armors. The enemy fire smashed its rear hull. Beams of gamma-ray photons from all three snakes machine-gunned into Pendam’s back, wrecking internal equipment and explosions flamed every quarter of its hull.

  Donovan winced and already knew what would happen before it happened.

  The Pendam’s power plants, with its fusion reactors and its antimatter stores, lost containment and exploded in another dazzling array of bursts.

  The Pendam was gone.

  I’m next…“Helm! Full speed ahead!” Donovan shouted, “Get us out of here! Put that asteroid wall in between us!”

  “Will do, sir!”

  The Asterix’s gravitic drive went to full, while it still could. The big gravity emitter fore and back glowed to purple and the ship accelerated full speed at 0.4 kilometers per second squared.

  “The enemy behind is firing on us!” damage control called.

  Donovan closed his eyes for all the good it would do. The enemy is firing. The enemy is firing at my rear!

  The bridge shook to gigantic blasts that tore through the Asterix’s aft armor like paper. Damage control sensors blazed with alerts from many of the aft quarters. Damage control yelled out, “I got red-red-black from aft decks C12 to E19! Sections are blinking!”

  Donovan clenched tight to his armrests with his gloved hands. Hold together, Asterix. We’ve been through so much. Don’t fail me now!

  The damage sensors kept blinking and the starship kept buckling, but she kept accelerating forward.

  Another shake—then silence filled the bridge…

  “The asteroid wall is in between us,” helm advised.

  Donovan let out a big sigh. “Damage report! Tell me everything that got destroyed.”

  The DC officer read a big, big list of damaged aft sections. It kept going and going, but—at least the Asterix was still alive.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Flag Bridge, Mobile Battle Fortress

  VSF Epsilon Decimus

  Holy Science! Prancort wanted to yell. But who in the flag bridge could bear their admiral yelling at air?

  He just lost fifteen starships to that K-ship attack! True, the first K-ship had destroyed seven, but once it killed off half his battle wall, the rest were now meat for the grinding. The snakes in that battle would slaughter the rest, and he couldn’t pull them out fast enough—well, at most one or two would survive. Then the second K-ship, although caught before it did irrevocable damage, wrecked the shields out of the Asterix and the Pendam. The Pendam…was Prancort’s lucky vessel. It saved the battle in Block E-9-C with its early arrival, and now it was dead.

  So many dead—he lost 70,000 soldiers in less than ten minutes.

  Damn those K-ships!

  The enemy didn’t have missiles, but they did have torpedo ships. These damn ships could generate enough of a gravity field, so small rocks wouldn’t damage them before they reached their target. Once they reached certain proximity, they detonated in a gigantic antimatter explosion. The sheer shockwave of plasma wrecked nearby ships.

  He didn’t think the snakes had any, but it’s probably why they were enthusiastic in fighting a close-quarter asteroid field battle. K-ships were usually ineffective in
normal battles in which distances were up to hundreds of thousands of kilometers, where it could be targeted from far away. That, combined with its weak shields and short blast radius, made it an expensive but ineffective weapon. But in this close-range battle, the k-ship really left its mark. They could get close enough to use their blast radius and the space dust just made the shockwave worse.

  Now, when Prancort thought about it, everything the snake admiral did made sense. It made sense to wait until the battle became joined before sending in the kamikaze ships. If his units hadn’t been preoccupied, he could have easily shot down those k-ships before they even got close. Now, he understood why the enemy commander waited so patiently, prior to the general attack. That snake waited his K-ships to arrive from somewhere far away, where it’d been stored just in case of this type of encounter. He also finally understood why the enemy admiral tried to get all the human ships in Block E-8-D to wall up with their rear exposed to the K-ship attack….a diversionary tactic.

  Which meant—there were probably more K-ships—creeping in other blocks! He needed to warn his fleet! He punched a button, opening a fleet-wide channel to all ships. "All ships, be careful of K-ships! Watch out and shoot them before they detonate in proximity!"

  Star System Orasis V

  Fleet Command Nexus, Hiveship CE Roro Cro-Drignon

  The master Centipede slithered. Fleet Admiral Roro Cro-Drignon's snakelike body inputted commands into his computer interface at lightning speed. All twenty-two limbs interfaced with the command computer. They told his minions, his fleet, what to do.

  Roro Cro-Drignon was a genius among his race. He hailed from a blue hypergiant in the constellation G2654. As an expert at fleet battles involving multitudes of ships, he’d been chosen for the task. He could out perform any of his peers and create complex movements unparalleled in a star fight.

  His forward double prying mandibles clicked in excitement. They weren't even limbs. They were jaw muscles that emulated limbs.

  When the prey is cornered and cannot run, is when he will strike!

  Do not let the prey dictate the conditions of the game.

  When the prey is surprised and off balance, take advantage of his immobility.

  "All units, attack!" spat the Fleet Admiral. "Drive the prey away from the star field and win the battle for the empire!"

  Roro Cro-Drignon's twenty-two limbs spammed commands into his interface. Across the entire battlefield, all his starships ventured forth in a vehement offensive unlike any other. His K-ships, long hidden, drove out of camouflaged positions and darted towards the enemy.

  To victory! We will take their land and savage their empire! We will take what is ours!

  Flag Bridge, Mobile Battle Fortress

  VSF Epsilon Decimus

  Prancort watched the snakes launch attack after attack, unlike anything he’d had ever seen before! Even the simulations at the Fleet Academy on Gregor, where he graduated first, he never saw any admiral, not even an AI, do such a thing. Such coordination! Such a kaleidoscope of movement!

  Prancort tried his best to fight back, to reposition his units. He was beginning to admire this enemy admiral he faced.

  Except—now wasn’t the time for admiration!

  Nearby, Prion was yelling, "All ships in block D-7-J, retreat!" "Starships Adelaide and Kruschev, flank around that position in a semicircle!" Prancort called out orders as well.

  Those—those K-ships! Those extreme game-changing, havoc-wrecking K-ships. They darted into the battle from positions unknown and caused catastrophic damage. Where did they come from? How did the enemy know the fight would be here? How had the enemy hidden them so perfectly?

  Prancort tried his best to scramble out orders to his fleet. To fight an uneven battle…made more uneven by these hidden surprises. His hands jammed his keyboards with new instructions and he kept yelling out orders.

  This is a trap! A carefully planned, well-conceived trap!

  In the back of his head, he realized something profound about how the human brain wasn't meant to multitask to this level. The human brain could easily send out instructions to a fleet in open space, as there weren't that many variables and the whole fleet could be thought of as one unit; but in an asteroid field, the human brain wasn't meant to control so many small arenas all at once. Unexpectedly, Prancort realized the reason he’d always won in the simulations against other cadets, back at the academy, particularly if the simulation involving an asteroid field—he fought other humans and not a multi-legged multitasker like a snake field marshal.

  In order for him to win, he’d better play much, much better than the enemy, who could rely on sitting and shooting from the front. But he didn't have the ability to control so many ships in so many local arenas, and outplay the enemy admiral in each by a large margin every time.

  He realized this and, of course—all too late...

  No! He shook his head. He couldn't think like this. To think so, would be to invite defeat! He must believe he could win. He must believe victory is possible!

  Yet, as he continued fighting, he began to believe the opposite…Prancort, he knew he truly could not compete on the same level as that snake admiral—at least not in an asteroid field.

  Arriving Near the Cylinder

  Bridge, Juggernaut VSF Asterix

  "Fusion two and three are down!"

  "Did you stabilize them?" Captain Donovan asked.

  "Still trying, sir!"

  Captain Donovan tried to scratch his beard inside his paddled space suit…impossible and it itched like hell.

  He must—he needed to put his attention elsewhere! He concentrated on the holomap ahead of him. It fizzled again, and again. Power fluctuations inside the Asterix had been very troublesome ever since his ship took those blows to the rear. Though what seemed even more unsettling was what the holomap showed. So many red, enemy dots, veering right and left across such a broad expanse of space.

  The situation looked very, very bad. "Good. We don't want them to blow up."

  "No, sir. Trying my best, sir," said DC.

  "Helm, how much longer until we reach the targeted area?" Donovan asked.

  "ETA two minutes, sir."

  Two minutes later, they were there. The battlefield resembled a giant disfigured cylinder. It wasn't a perfectly shaped cylinder, but it did have two open bases. Asteroid walls screened left and right, down and up. At the center, the remnants of a massive antimatter explosion still disturbed the surrounding space dust. Small rocks and dust glittered in glowing vibrant red and orange.

  For five minutes, he waited in silence as two more human starships also arrived at the chasm. The Dejax and the Zero.

  No signals from command yet. Why haven't we been given the command to move?

  Just then Donovan saw the incoming waves of snakes heading towards his position, and realized that there was a reason the Admiral hadn't moved him. His ship would be the one to hold the ground.

  Donovan eyed the waves of incoming snakes. "Helm, move us twenty kilometers to our right. Weapons, fire on snake D11... 8 on my mark."

  "Yes, sir!" Both stations yelled back.

  "Mark!" Donovan called out.

  Asterix's two hundred forward laser mounts fired beams into the newly arrived snake heavy-cruiser. Combined with his friend Icheb's attack from the Dejax, the beams slashed into the snake heavy's forward armor, removing entire slabs off. Parts of it glistened white-hot, dotting with holes.

  But the snake held. Its frontal armor absorbed the fire.

  In front of Donovan, the holomap showed three new enemy snakes approaching the chasm where Asterix, Dejax, and the light-cruiser Zero stood. Asterix and Dejax already fired on one snake. The other three snakes would arrive within a minute.

  Donovan counted two snake heavy-cruisers, a snake light-cruiser, and a snake juggernaut in total.

  They were fresh, whereas Donovan's Asterix had already been through four battles.

  Moments later, the other snakes arrived. O
ne of them fired.

  The Asterix shook as snake grazer fire slammed into its wrecked and torn forward armor. He knew holes dotted all across his ship, giving opportunities for any carefully aimed grazer beam to wreck into his inner hull even from the front.

  Below, one of the snake heavy-cruisers surpassed an asteroid previously blocking the line of sight and now it opened fire on the Dejax. In front, a snake light-cruiser also entered the battlefield and fired in the human lighty Zero.

  Then, a snake juggernaut appeared...it entered line of sight and machine gunned Dejax in a perfect strategic sense—take out the weakest targets before firing on the big ones. Meaning Asterix would be next. Did they know Asterix was already limping and weak? Did they know Asterix's shields were down and had so many holes in its armor? Apparently—not, because they treated Donovan like he was fresh.

  Donovan could do nothing but watch as the enemy combatants slammed his friend's heavy-cruiser.

  He received a message from his friend's Dajex. "I guess this is it, old pal. I guess my luck ran out," Icheb said.

  Donovan was about to type something in when he stopped.

  The situation didn't make any sense. Why would Prancort order him and two other equally damaged human ships to hold this chasm against superior enemy firepower? Human forces in this chasm were outmatched. Unless...

  Laser beams from behind Asterix zoomed past and slashed into the snake heavy-cruiser in front. The snake heavy was forward facing those beams, but against this much combined firepower, even its frontal armor couldn't withstand the blows.

  Donovan looked behind Asterix and saw a newly arrived human Juggernaut just as explosions ahead ripped apart snake D118's frontal hull. The snake heavy lost orientation, teetered over, but failed to explode into pieces. Its forward grazer armaments failed to fire. It essentially became neutralized as a combatant.