SAW 1: Stars at War

by Lee Guo

  "The admiral told us to go this way."

  "I know but we won't get there to help in time."

  "Up to you, sir."

  "Good, go sideways towards coordinates 441,732,240. That should give us line of sight on the juggernaut a minute earlier."

  "Aye, sir."

  Two minutes later...

  "Sir, the juggernaut is moving!"

  "Which direction? Forward or backwards?"

  "Backwards!"

  "Do we have line-of-fire on him?"

  "No, sir! His moving practically negates our line of fire!"

  Icheb bit at his lip. This wasn't a good situation at all. It looked like the humans would lose another ship—Elise’s Harrington. "Do the other ships have line of fire on him?"

  "No, his moving negates theirs, too."

  "Smart devious bastard."

  Above the Cylinder

  Bridge, Light Cruiser VSF Harrington

  Elise's bridge shook more and more like an avalanche had fallen. Her starship was only a light cruiser, and she’d taken a good four minutes of front-front action from a snake juggernaut. It must be a new record. "Gentlemen, this is good bye."

  The shaking and explosions seemed to come even closer. With her reactors shut down, she didn't have to worry about a fusion overload, but damn it—she was just a light cruiser. The juggernaut's grazers should be able to peel away the layers of armor and hull from her strongest side—her front.

  The explosions became louder and louder. She knew that pretty much everyone on her forward hull would be burned crisp. Soon, the juggernaut's grazers ought to be able to dig into her heavily armored bridge...

  BANG!

  CRANG!

  Elise looked forward as the bridge's frontal wall—did nothing.

  The firing softened. When she gazed at her first officer's display again, she saw the snake had turned face. It was in the middle of a 180-degree turn. Where is it going? Why didn't it finished us?

  Then—she realized. Even if it killed her, the four reinforcements she had coming would encircle and finish the snake. This would be true, especially since one of her reinforcements, a light-cruiser named Dajex had taken a different route. Everyone knew that even a small battleship, placed in the right place, could turn the tide against something as big as a juggernaut.

  Now, as the snake finished its turn, its main gravitics began pulling it out of the immediate battlefield. It started leaving, because it couldn't fight off her reinforcements.

  Elise silently cheered. She wanted to say, "congratulations" to every member of her crew, but she realized there were about a thousand members in her forward hull that couldn't cheer. They’d burned in the inferno which almost broke her bridge.

  Elise prayed...to whatever god there was. She knew humanity mostly abandoned religion since space colonization, but times like these—she truly believed that whoever might be out there, she was glad he looked out for her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Outside the Cylinder

  Flag Bridge, Mobile Battle Fortress VSF Epsilon Decimus

  The Battle of Orasis V was not a human victory, Prancort sighed.

  The humans lost eighty percent, while the snakes lost seventy-five percent, making it one of the wildest pyrrhic victories to date. It was only a victory in terms of territory and eventual map domination, but who the hell wanted to dominate the proto-stellar asteroid field of a newborn star?

  The snakes strategically withdrew, only because Prancort aimed his battle fortress at their jugular, and after witnessing how powerful it was, both to Prancort and the snake commander, they decided the future gains no longer measured up to the potential losses. Their retreat may look like the mother of all routs, scattering in every direction, but Prancort knew that no snake captain would do such a thing as long as its fleet commander still lived. It’d been so sudden. Only an order from the highest level in their command chain could have done it.

  "Cheer up," Prion urged. "You did your best. You made mistakes. But you also broke three quarters of their main armada."

  "How can I cheer up, when I've lost 900,000 people? People who will never see home, again?"

  "You know the answer to that. You knew you had to risk them in order to defend our homes."

  Prancort closed his eyes. "Things didn't happen according to plan. The losses weren't supposed to be like this."

  "While you are drooping, are you forgetting something?"

  Prancort opened his eyes and stared at her. "What?"

  "Chase them! Our lasers have a range of one hundred thousand kilometers!"

  "Oh, right! The battle isn’t over!" Prancort entered commands into his interface, then brought the fleetwide audio online. "All ships…Chase the enemy. Kill as many as you can, but be careful of traps and counterattacks."

  But wait! There was one more thing…The wounded and incapacitated ships. If he chased the enemy off the battlefield, these ships would likely take damage because they would crash against moving asteroids. Even a complex collection of objects such as the Cylinder, would dissolve in shape within a day. He needed to take care of his immobilized vessels. Then, of course, there would be the issue of prisoners…snake survivors.

  Prancort suddenly decided against chasing the enemy. If he wanted to save his wounded, he needed a proportion of his fleet back to act as rescue vessels. That meant he only could send a part of his fleet chasing the enemy. This would allow his enemy to gain overwhelming numbers on those ships chasing them. It really wasn't like the enemy was routing, in which case you could chase them with any inferior quality and quantity of units. This was a clearheaded retreat. Added along the fact, the snake admiral was known for tricks and deceptions, and suddenly Prancort thought better of it.

  The biggest issue was; Prancort could beat them right now in this battlefield, because he had the power of his Battle Fortress. However, if he chose to chase them, his slow moving and massive Battle Fortress couldn't come along. He would be disadvantaged in firepower if the snake decided to fight back elsewhere.

  He entered commands into the interface.

  "Why are you calling off the chase, sir?" Prion asked.

  Prancort told her.

  "But you're forgetting one thing," Prion countered, "The enemy is dispersed."

  "They'll reconnect as a fleet when they reach a safe distance."

  "But they aren't one, now. You can make it hard for them to do that."

  "But if I send a majority of my fleet and leave a minority for rescuing my survivors, they can still attack my numerically disadvantaged units, even if they are dispersed."

  "True," Prion paused. "I guess it's settled then. Soon, it'll be too late to chase them, anyway."

  Prancort nodded. This much was true. "Especially, against that admiral. Who knows what traps he has waiting for us. Speaking of him, we need to quickly rescue the wounded because once he enters warp, he could attack a nearby system. We need to be there, to defend it."

  A moment of silence went by.

  "All the more reason to attack him, now," Prion reiterated.

  "Then I'll—we'll be destroyed. My battle station isn’t fast enough to chase them. Without it, I can't beat him."

  "I see. And, just out of curiosity…Do you respect him, sir?"

  Why wouldn't he? "He is an incredible opponent, whatever his name is." Prancort gazed ahead at the giant holomap. The enemy units receded in the massive volume of space. Those retreating red dots became smaller and smaller as separation between the two scattered fleets increased.

  It's not over. Not by a long shot. You have sparred with me well, unknown creature. But one day, I will beat you.

  But not today.

  Prancort returned his attention back to his data screens to guide the rescue effort.

  Battle Statistics

  Battle of Orasis V (Star of Orasis)

  Date: 4091 AD (Galactic Year 1720), September 8th-9th

  Result: Human Victory

  Belligerents: First Viron Empire (Mod
ern Day Humans) / Cell Khanate (Insectoid Centipedia)

  Leaders (FVE) : Admiral Prancort de Gaulle / Vice Admiral Prion de Caille

  Leaders (Cell) : Master Commander Roro Cro-Drignon

  Motivations (FVE) : Territorial Defense

  Motivations (Cell) : Territorial Expansion (Overpopulation)

  Strength (FVE) : 160 Warships (5.2 billion tons) / 1.5 Million Humans

  Strength (Cell) : 203 Warships (56 billion tons) / 4.9 Million Insectoids

  Losses (FVE) : 127 Warships ( 4.2 billion tons) / 889,529 Humans dead / 219,403 Injured / 0 Captured

  Losses (Cell) : 152 Warships (41 billion tons) / 2.3 Million Insectoids Dead / 829,511 Injured / 1,382,995 Captured

  Part of: Early Insectoid Expansion Campaign (Show)

  "By not chasing the enemy, Prancort did something he would regret for the short remainder of his life."

  "Galactic history could have been changed with a single decision."

  Act 2

  Chapter 9

  In transit from Orasis V towards Worber's World

  Remnant of First Fleet

  Admiral's Quarters, Mobile Battle Fortress VSF Epsilon Decimus

  The war was not over.

  Prancort sat within the comforts of his black cushioned couch. Alone, thinking hard.

  The enemy ran, but he was unsure where they ran to. He had only repelled one enemy invasion. He had a hunch that the snake admiral retreated his forces back to its own territory, to recuperate losses, but Prancort wasn’t certain. In any case, as long as the snakes could still make warships, there would be future invasions. In order to prevent them from making warships, Prancort needed to be the one to invade…

  However…he couldn’t invade the snakes…yet.

  With only thirty starships left, he needed time to recuperate losses and rebuild his own fleet.

  In the meantime, Prancort did everything possible to gain an edge in future battles.

  For instance, one of these things would be to examine all the new technologies the snakes left on the battlefield of Orasis V. All the snake wreckages were a treasure cove of technological wonders Prancort’s Imperial Engineers would feast on.

  As for the interrogation of snake prisoners of war, it would be a dead end. Useful information on how they live, but not how they think as warriors. The snake prisoners were extremely reluctant to give information on certain military aspects like strategy and war tactics. Luckily, he had other sources to tell him useful information on military strategies and tactics.

  Prancort smiled. After the battle, the fleet captured over 1.3 million of these centipedes. However, the main find would be after scavenging and studying the schematics of the snakes' broken starships. He felt glad he won the battle and taken control of all the debris the snake war fleet left behind. Otherwise, humanity's specialists would never have the opportunity to study so many new technologies. Already, the possibility of reverse engineering the snake's starship systems made potential reaping benefits seem likely.

  He especially felt content about reverse engineering the snake's grazer mounts. The snakes version of the gamma ray laser was years ahead of human's own x-ray lasers. If the war continued for many years, it would be very likely humanity would have its own version of the gamma ray laser. There were other technologies, too, such as the snake's gravity and inertial nullifying device, which allowed their ships to carry on much more mass, it would have reaping potential as human scientists adapted it to their own starships.

  There were many more innovations which would be tiny improvements on what humans already possessed. However, Prancort sighed, his engineers had yet to find a ‘library’ or ‘engineering encyclopedia’ of all snake techs. The Holy Grail…which was a massive manual on all snake weapons…failed to be found. There were, however, several duds, or dead data cores, such as each snake starship's main computer, which were now useless to human scientists because the snakes built in a failsafe system that destroyed all the computer cores upon the ship being boarded by human marines.

  If only one of the fail safes failed to activate, then Prancort's scientists would have access to all the snake's technological database...

  If only! Then, he would have a surefire way of beating the snake admiral.

  Now, when he thought about the snake admiral, Prancort sat upright on his couch. He still felt unsure if the snake admiral retreated his fleet or was on his way to attacking another human world. He thought about it, long and hard, and despite the negatives, it excited him. Military strategy always excited him.

  What will you do next, unknown creature? Will you go home and lick your wounds? Or…will you assault another human world immediately?

  Star System Orasis V

  Engineering Ship Jackson’s Folly Bridge

  The mother of all harvests, Raymond Patel mused, gazing at the wreckages, laid out all across the proto-stellar cloud. The snakes left over 150 wrecks on the battlefield. The largest of these wrecks were fifty kilometers long. Simply getting the snake survivors to surrender these starships did wreak havoc for the Imperial Marines.

  Now, when the snake survivors had all been rounded up and put onto prison barges, it was up to the Imperial Engineers to dissect the enemy wreckages.

  General Raymond Patel controlled the entire dissection operation.

  He stood on the bridge of the engineering ship Jackson’s Folly in his green imperial engineering uniform interlaced with red stripes. He gazed at the hovering blue computer screens. Each screen showed the progress on each of the 150 wrecks, many of which were broken into even smaller pieces.

  “We’re half-done disassembling that snake grazer array, General,” said a subordinate.

  “Very good,” he replied, “Continue breaking it into pieces and pushing the pieces inside the collector ships.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Raymond Patel sighed and sat back in his chair. It’d been chaos these past few days to get all the wrecks in a vector that wouldn’t collide with all the stray asteroids. The proto-stellar cloud that encircled Orasis V wasn’t stationary by any means. All its contents constantly moved. As a result, pieces of snake starships were often on collision courses with asteroids and small rocks.

  A mess…A real mess.

  It would be up to the Imperial Engineers computer predictions to make sure all the stray snake vectors didn’t collide with each other or the giant kilometer wide asteroids. To do this, Patel hooked up maneuvering jets with the snake pieces to keep them safely stationary—Far from a simple matter.

  Raymond Patel knew he couldn’t hope to get all the pieces outside of the proto-stellar cloud. One of his subordinates insisted they move all the pieces out of the proto-stellar cloud where they would be safe from collisions. But, the battle occurred too deeply inside the cloud. They didn’t have enough maneuvering jets to move all the pieces out.

  No, all Patel could hope for was that his team of 200,000 imperial engineers would dissect the important equipment embedded within the snake pieces in time. For instance, that snake grazer mount.

  At this moment, Patel gazed at the work of all of his 200,000 Imperial Engineers. He eyed one monitor in particular. It showed five thousand engineers working on a snake gamma ray laser mount. They were cutting it out of what’d once been a snake heavy-cruiser. This grazer mount is particularly important because when the snake cruiser exploded, the entire array miraculously stayed intact.

  Patel knew high command—that is, Fleet Admiral Prancort—would consider such a piece indispensable.

  Suddenly, alarms sounded inside the bridge.

  Ring. Ring. Danger! Danger! The monitor read.

  Patel leaned forward in his seat, staring at the monitor where five thousand engineers worked on the snake grazer mount. DANGER. DANGER, COLLISION COURSE DETECTED, the monitor read.

  Patel quickly glanced above and gasped. The overhead holomap showed a 10 kilometer asteroid heading towards the grazer array on a collision course.

  “Scotty! Use the
maneuver jets!” Patel yelled out.

  “I am, sir! But the jets are not moving the grazer array out of the way fast enough!”

  “Shit!” Patel swore. “How did this asteroid avoid detection earlier?”

  “I don’t know, sir!”Lieutenant Scott Henderson replied, “Our computers analyzed all the vectors of all the asteroids and broken snake pieces within fifty thousand kilometers of the battle and we moved the pieces as safely as possible. It must have been a fluke inside the programming or some of the asteroid collisions we failed to predict. Some factor—?”

  “Tell the imperial engineers…” Patel lurched forward.”…to vacate the grazer array!”

  “Yes, sir!” Lieutenant Henderson then bellowed into his microphone, “All engineers working on snake grazer array 802, please disembark and vacate the premises to a safe distance. A large asteroid is on a collision course! Please vacate to a safe distance! I repeat all engineers of grazer array 80…“

  Patel could only watch at his monitors as the asteroid got closer to a collision. Shit! And he needed that grazer array intact! Its impact on humanity’s understand of snake technology was tremendous!

  He watched and watched and watched. Some of people dissecting the grazer array slowly climbed out. But there were many that didn’t get out. They were trapped.

  Patel gazed at Lieutenant Henderson. “Tell those people to hurry!”

  “I am, sir! All engineers working on grazer array 802, please vacate the premises ASAP! An asteroid is on a collision—”

  The 10 kilometer wide asteroid slammed into the grazer array. A titanic whoosh of an explosion blew fire and debris in all directions. The snake grazer piece crumbled as the giant asteroid smashed into it.

  My stars—there’s humans in there—Patel sucked in his breath.

  By the time it was over, the asteroid cut through towards the other side. Its momentum like a behemoth carrying it through the snake grazer. The grazer, on the other hand, became sprawling debris. It shattered into a thousand pieces. Whoever didn’t make it out—Patel counted—perhaps, as many as 2000 humans died in that collision.