SAW 1: Stars at War

by Lee Guo

  Now, if I could only stop my hands from shaking...

  "Will those five hundred reach us in time?" someone asked.

  "You bet! But on the safe side, guys let's slow down!" Bobbi advised. "Turn around and accelerate backwards…400 Gs for 30 seconds ought to do it!" Bobbi couldn't believe she was saying the things she was saying. It felt natural, but she knew training and experience in the sims was pumping words out of her dry mouth. She certainly didn't feel it in her heart.

  Her body and mind were separated.

  She could feel the shaking in her hands—from two things. Fear, but also excitement. She was doing her job, and no matter how tough the eventual end results might become, she knew it to be her best and only she could do it like this, because she was in the zone.

  While she finished the turn and decelerated her fighter at 400 Gs, things around her felt slow, like she could pay attention to everything at once. Her instruments became crystal clear to her. Every beep and every light entered her mind as she unconsciously checked them.

  What a way to die.

  "Alright everyone," Bobbi announce on the net, "Revert back to our original direction and get ready to be intercepted. Delta Wing, you guys caught up?"

  "Yes, ma'am," said a new male voice. "Colonel Jennings from Delta Wing here. Hope our additional five hundred won't take away too much from your kills."

  "You won't!" Bobbi laughed. "We'd be happy to share our kills with you! How would you like to form up?"

  "Right behind you is good."

  "Alright then! Prep the anti-fighter missiles and get ready to shoot a good amount the moment the bogeys enter range. They'll be doing the same to us, so get ready to sand blast our way through."

  Fighters had missiles themselves, but they were the smaller variant, meant to kill other fighters. Anti-fighter missiles, not anti-ship missiles that came from missile ships, weren't able to wreak severe damage to a large multi-kilometer ship.

  Sand blasts referred to sand canisters which exploded in front of the fighter, shooting a wave of sand at enemy missiles in an attempt to kill them through severe relative velocity.

  On her map display, she saw them. 3400 red dots two hundred thousand kilometers away. Suddenly, those 3400 dots became twice as many, and then tripled.

  Her screen flashed. ENEMY MISSILES INBOUND, as her computer tracked the newly created gravity waves.

  "Alright guys, fire your missiles!" said Bobbi to her wing. She zoned in on her target, a squadron of enemy fighters directly in front of her, and punched the missile launch button.

  On her monitors, her team's 1500 green dots became 5000. Her wing's newly created missile waves zoomed past her from behind. In the darkness of space, they left no physical trail, nor seeable exhaust. Their grav waves did alert Bobbi of their positions and their speed, which would be around 1000 gravities.

  Half a minute later, the two missile waves from both sides intercrossed. Not a single explosion occurred during that interval, as both missile waves separated after mingling, heading for their opposing targets.

  The MISSILES IMBOUND alert continued to flare on her monitors.

  "Everyone, target the incoming missiles ahead with your sand blasts and fire!" Bobbi ordered.

  "Roger! Firing!" came the replies on the net.

  Bobbi watched the incoming missiles aiming at her and made a ballpark estimate. Then, she punched the button which let loose her sand canisters. The canisters themselves used a substantially smaller grav engine to zero in on those missiles. The AI on the canisters then detonated when the time was right.

  She knew the enemy fighters would be doing the same thing, or maybe they had a better anti-missile defense system than sand canisters.

  On her monitors, she watched as the enemy missiles zoom in closer to her intended sand blast area. She tightened up in fear. Come on, canisters. Detonate! Detonate! Kill those missiles.

  The missiles came closer. 10,000 kilometers.

  6,000 kilometers.

  2,000 kilometers.

  One thousand kilometers! Then, one by one, the enemy missile's grav waves disappeared!

  Score! They continued to blink off. What’d been 6000 missile signatures became 5000 then 4000 then 2000.

  They fell like flies. But they didn't fall fast enough. Some of those missiles passed through the sand detonation zone and darted toward her 1,000 man fighter wing. "Everyone, fire another wave of sand blasts!" But it was too late. Some of her fighters did manage to fire, but the missiles zoomed into her wing at lightning speed. They smashed into her 1000 fighters, and Bobbi felt the horror of watching dozens of her able fighters disappear from the gravity wave map.

  Bobbi could imagine it. Thousands of high velocity missiles armed with nukes diving into her fighters from the front. Some of those missiles would hit dead on and their kiloton nukes would blink, splashing plasma into her fighters. Other missiles would proximity detonate, having missed their targets, giving off lethal blasts of radiation and plasma.

  Her fighters died. Space always remained silent, but the net screamed with voices from her squadron leaders panting and giving out orders to evade and destroy the missiles.

  "Able-2, you hear me? You there?" said one.

  "Sand blast it, squadron 22. Fire everything!"

  "Jink it, squad!"

  "Jellico-6, you got two missiles heading straight for you!"

  "I see it! I see—"

  So many green dots disappearing from the screen! Bobbi watched as enemy missile signatures meshed with her fighters. She looked ahead, and saw even more missiles.

  Sand blast, away! She punched the canister launcher repeatedly.

  Suddenly, she wondered if she would survive the missile wave. But then, the missiles ahead of her started disappearing, and she felt safer.

  Until she realized she was entering laser range. "Guys!" she glanced at her wing. Only 800 fighters remained. Bobbi cringed. 200 dead pilots already. "Aim at a red dot in front of you and be ready to fire lasers when range hits!"

  She stared at the enemy fighters on her monitor, and realized that her wing's own missile wave killed about 300. That meant there were only 3100 enemy fighters left—only 3100.

  Meanwhile, her losses kept racking up. By the time the missiles disappeared entirely, she’d lost another 50, meaning she only had 750 fighters left.

  250 fighters just died within the period of 2 minutes.

  While the enemy fighters came closer and closer.

  140,000 kilometers away. 120,000. 100,000. 80,000. Laser range.

  "Everybody, fire laser mounts!" yelled Bobbi at the top of her lungs. She let her AI target one of the enemy dots ahead and jammed the button on her throttle.

  Suddenly, space in between the two fighter groups darted with thousands of crisscrossing laser beams. "Fire! Fire! Fire!" came the scream and cries on the net.

  "I'm hit!" someone yelled.

  Laser beams slashed through both fighter groups, enemy and friendly, and the sound of explosions beaconed through the net.

  Bobbi kept selecting targets and jamming the laser button.

  As the distance between the two combatant groups decreased, the laser fire became more accurate. One of the enemy beams struck into her fighter's puny shields, splashing green-blue radiation all across her view screens.

  Bobbi glanced down at her shield gauge. Shields at 60%, it read.

  On her map, the distance between the two wings decreased. The enemy's dwindling numbers matched her own wing's dwindling numbers…percentage wise. Suddenly, Bobbi realized it wasn't so bad. She was killing more than her side was losing. She shook her head. She realized she couldn't think this way about her dead, and at the same time she realized every commander in history thought this way.

  The red dots came closer. 50,000 kilometers. 40,000.

  "Alright, guys! Squadron leaders, fire as many missiles as you want! Unload it all if you have to! Continue firing lasers!"

  Missile separation from her wing increased the green d
ots, but so did the enemy's. Now, it was a gigantic mess of a battle. Lasers crossed the shortening distances. Missiles veered in and out from every direction.

  "Missiles away!" said the net.

  "Missiles incoming!"

  Sand canisters exploded while numerous sand dusts flared into plasma as they accidentally hit laser beams. Meanwhile, her fighter numbers dropped. 680.

  650.

  600 fighters.

  40% of her wing dead already.

  And the distances between the two combatants decreased further. 30,000 kilometers. 20,000. 10,000.

  Bobbi fired her lasers at an enemy dot and realized she hit dead-on as the dot disappeared from the map.

  0 kilometers.

  Enemy fighters zoomed past her from forward to back. Inside her cockpit, her heavy breathing skyrocketed even more. An adrenaline rush shot through her neck. Now, she was truly in the zone. Time seemed to slow down. Everything around her became crystal clear. The sound of the yelling and screaming on her net filled her with fear and excitement simultaneously. "Everybody, turn and shoot! Turn and shoot!"

  Unexpectedly, those dreaded enemy fighters were behind her, and as she finished her 180 degree turn, she shot them with her laser beams, and they did the same to her.

  Distance: 10,000 kilometers. 20,000 kilometers.

  I survived, thought Bobbi, just as another laser beam slashed into her forward shields. Her shield gauge dropped, again.

  30%.

  "Everyone, accelerate forward! Stop your backward momentum and burn towards them! Let's dogfight!" said Bobbi, just as any wing commander would say.

  Hell would continue unabated.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Battle Fortress Epsilon Decimus

  Flag Bridge

  The fighter wings engaged. This much proved true. Prion saw the human tallies on her monitors…the twisting intermeshing dots. 3648 dead human fighter pilots and counting...3681... 3739... More dead every second.

  She glanced at Commodore Brigum and already knew he was thinking. "I told you so".

  Then, she glanced back ahead of her at the main holomap display.

  The overall situation: the fighters from both sides have engaged, but the battleships were far from reaching laser range of each other.

  The lead snake battleship still remained two million kilometers away. Capital-ship laser range being 100,000 kilometers, Prion easily calculated that it would take an hour before it was reached, providing both battleship forces continued accelerating towards each other.

  The ‘fighter war’ may very well be determined long before that.

  Everything depended on how her 20,000 remaining fighters fared. If they lost, her missiles would be toast. If they won, she'd have ‘missile’ supremacy over the enemy…meaning her missiles could go anywhere they wanted, which included being positioned right behind the enemy starship fleet when it engaged her battleships.

  If her fighters lost, the enemy would gain missile supremacy, a very bad state of affairs.

  Seconds ticked by…Prion waited. "How many enemy fighters have we killed, commodore?"

  "About..." Brigum paused, "4700 fighters and counting...4750."

  Prion felt a measure of relief. It wasn't too bad. At least her fighters weren't being destroyed by the overwhelming enemy numbers. By kill rate, they were killing more than they lost. Furthermore, this didn't count the dogfighting, as most of the engagement losses came from initial head-to-head high-speed encounters before both combatants had their velocities reduced to dogfighting speeds.

  One thing she’d become certain of…if the kill rate to loss rate remained unchanged, she would marginally lose the fighter war, because the kill-to-loss ratio wasn't high enough, considering the snakes started with 32,000 and hers began with 24,000.

  Everything depended on how well her fighters did in a closed-in dogfight.

  Gamma Wing

  Mark Four Space Fighter Call Sign ‘Zeta-1’

  Wing Commander's Cockpit

  Battle! Battle! Battle! Everything exploded around her!

  Right and left, bottom to top, enemy fighters zoomed past! Invisible laser beams crossed space in every direction, most coming from misses that happened further away. It looked like a gigantic bee's swarm, with two colonies of very violent bees attacking one another.

  This was the nit-and-grit. This is why she’d signed up. No one with a sane mind would do such a thing. Fear became obsolete. Tactics, instincts, and lightning fast decisions dominated her adrenaline filled brain. "Go! Go! Zeta-2, you got one on your tail!" yelled Bobbi over the squadron net.

  "I see 'em, I'm jinking!"

  "Zeta-1, look behind you!" said Zeta-4.

  That's me! Bobbi glared at her display and saw an enemy fighter chasing her.

  The bogey behind her fired.

  A laser beam crossed space next to her left, and another one crossed her right, but it was unfair—the snakes carried three laser mounts instead of two—and the center laser beam smashed into her shields, lighting up her surroundings with blue-green splash scatter.

  She gazed at her shield gauge.

  Shields 0%.

  Fuck.

  Bobbi immediately turned her rotatable laser turrets at the bogey behind her. The advantage of laser armaments was she could fire anywhere in a 360 degree arc. It just took time for the laser mounts to adjust. She ‘dived’ her twenty-five meter long fighter upwards in hopes of presenting a faster moving target. Then, just like she predicted, when the bogey shot at her new position, she dove downwards, making the enemy beams miss. Now, with her turrets positioned, she fired.

  Her laser beams slashed into the bogey's forward shields, splattering blue ions in every direction.

  Inside her cockpit, she tapped the firing button.

  Two more laser beams dove into the bogey's forward hull, penetrating the shields. A bright light flashed from the bogey's round hull, and it separated into pieces.

  A dead bogey.

  Bobbi just realized the snake fighters did have weaker shield technology. That, or her laser mounts were stronger, or the bogey's shields were already been fired upon, or both.

  "Zeta-1, you there?"

  "I'm here," Bobbi answered.

  "We got new fighters incoming, wing leader!"

  Bullshit! More enemy fighters? She already had bogeys around her, beside her, swarming her. She couldn't take even more! "Where? I don't see 'em."

  "Zoom your map out!"

  Bobbi did just that. In her cockpit, she readjusted her 2d map display to 20,000 kilometers wide, then 40,000 kilometers. She cursed. A new enemy wing...numbering an additional 1200 snake fighters, headed for her dogfighting grounds.

  The enemy commander really wanted to jam her grounds...What was so important about her location?

  "What do we do, wing leader?" asked Zeta-4.

  "We can't do anything! If we run, we lose even more because our fighters loose agility!"

  "But—we're gonna die."

  "We're not going to die!" We're not going to die, right? Admiral Prion wouldn't let us be overwhelmed like that, would she? She'll definitely reinforce us with something.

  Bobbi zoomed the map out to 90,000 kilometers wide, and saw no human reinforcements. 170,000 kilometers—nothing.

  Desperation.

  Bobbi looked at her wing's tallies. Gamma wing: 1109 kills, 630 losses. Numbers to make any wing commander proud. Then she looked at the allied wing who’d joined with them earlier. Delta wing's tallies: 591 kills, 288 losses. Not bad.

  Total combatants within 10,000 kilometers? 1720 enemy fighters. 710 human fighters. Within 40,000 kilometers? 2920 enemy fighters. 710 human fighters.

  Even with her wing's kill rate, they were being mowed down through sheer numerical disadvantage. With the survivor counts as it is, there might be a chance for her wing to survive if and only if human dogfighting skills could prevail, but not if the enemy added an additional 1200 fresh fighters to the dogfight. There would be no chance.

/>   They would all die. Bobbi didn't even have a bit of hope. The only good thing she would be taking enemy fighters away from other positions on the map, so other human wings would have it easier...

  She glanced at the map, again. 1200 extra enemy fighters. Damn. They already there.

  Bobbi sat in that silent cockpit. Her heart pumped.

  You know what? No matter how bad the odds, she was a wing commander, and she would die as one. "Here they come! Get ready, Gamma Wing!" she urged with an enthusiasm she didn't feel. "Aim your sand canisters at their missiles and fire!"

  She waited for the missiles to come, but none came.

  The enemy newcomers were well within missile separation range!

  What's going on? If they had missiles, they would have shot them long ago.

  "Alright guys, I guess the newbies don't have missiles. Get ready for laser contact."Bobbi twisted and dodged and fired like the demon she was. As 1200 extra bogeys came in, they added to the enemy's laser fire. Already, she saw her Wing numbers drop, as many of her fighters were caught off guard, unable to handle new fire while dogfighting with preexisting enemies.

  Then, just as the 1200 extra throttled through her dogfighting swarm, they left through the other side. Bobbi wasn't surprised by this. They’d come in at extremely fast velocities. What did surprise her was that after they zoomed through her ranks, they failed to decelerate. Instead, they continued accelerating away in the opposite direction.

  Bobbi blinked. Where were they going?

  Abruptly, she realized it. Those 1200 extra bogeys aimed to destroy the missiles her wing was meant to protect, far off in the distance.

  Feeling relieved she wasn't going to die, but at the same time she felt saddened she couldn't protect her objective, which was to keep those missiles alive, Bobbi continued dogfighting her best, because there was nothing she could do. She couldn't suddenly disengage and go after those 1200 bogeys. That would leave her squadron vulnerable and kill everyone, herself included. Besides, she didn't have the velocity to take down those 1200 before they got outside of laser range...

  Mobile Battle Fortress Epsilon Decimus

  Flag Bridge

  "They're aiming for my missiles," Prion observed. "Commodore Brigum, can you do something about it? Do you have any fighter wings in reserve?"