SAW 1: Stars at War

by Lee Guo

  "Let's see...” Brigum paused, "No, I don't have anything left. All my wings are engaged."

  "Ahh...that's a problem." She stared at the big holomap in front of her. Her three admirals sat behind her around a sophisticated table wired with interfaces, keypads, monitors, and three-D projectors.

  The good thing is there wasn't too many groups of isolated snake fighter wings scavenging around. Their numbers weren't high enough to kill all her missiles, but she would lose some. The other good thing…since the enemy divided up its fighter fleet, humans fighters no longer faced the task of fighting all the snake fighters at once…A stable strategy. If the snake commander believed he couldn't win the fighter war, then it was better to divide up his fighters to take out some of Prion's missiles while he still could. But did the snake commander really think that way? Did he really believe he would lose the fighter war? "Commodore Brigum, what are the fighter kill-to-loss tallies?"

  "Our fighters performed well," said Brigum, "Now that we are engaged in primarily dogfights throughout the battlefield. 9200 enemy kills, 5400 losses."

  Almost 2 to 1! The status quo proved human dogfighting skills were superior!

  Inexplicably even to her, Prion felt overjoyed! It was one thing to lose the same amount of battleships in a proto-stellar asteroid field, but it was another to know you had the upper hand, when it came to fighter squadron tactics and technology.

  If things went according to plan, she would soon gain missile supremacy, although with a loss to some of her missile fleets because of enemy fighters splitting up to snipe her missiles.

  Prion glanced back at the big holomap. Yes, soon she would be ready for the main battleship battle that was to come—wait—something looked wrong! She winced, staring at the enemy battleship units. She shoved her torso forward, trying to get a better look, because she couldn't believe what was happening!

  The holomap showed—the enemy battleship fleet decreasing their velocity. They were decelerating!

  Why would they do that?

  Surely, they couldn't be running away, were they? Because, there is no way they could decelerate, and then re-accelerate in the other direction fast enough to avoid a fleet battle.

  Then, she realized it.

  They weren't avoiding a battle.

  They were decelerating, so they could increase the length of the battleship laser war. Instead of constantly crisscrossing with her with opposing velocities, they wanted a full-blown elongated laser battle. They wanted a close-in dogfight with battleships!

  Normally, battleship battles would have two fleets crisscross, then decelerate in the opposite direction and then crisscross again, with periods of peace followed by intermittent war, but if one of the fleets decelerated early, there would be continuous battle until one of the fleets got completely destroyed.

  Prion suddenly realized if she continued on her present course, she would go into a no-holds-barred all out battleship war, where she wouldn't even be able to pull out if she started losing, because laser range was 100,000 kilometers and any retreat would only be impossible, if both fleets had null relative velocity.

  Normally, retreat is always possible if they kept interweaving, because one fleet could always decide they had enough and accelerate off the battlefield instead of coming back.

  "Does everyone see that?" said Prion to her admirals. "They want a continuous battle. Do we fight, knowing that we can't retreat?"

  Commodore Brigum rubbed his nose. "I don't like how enthusiastic the enemy is about getting into an elongated battleship slugging match. It sounds like they know they can win. Why else would they do it?"

  "But how can they win?" Rear Admiral Gilbert interjected. "I saw the replay of their battleships in combat in that asteroid field. A little flanking and it's easy to destroy a snake."

  "But now, we no longer have a movement advantage since our smaller ships are no longer inside an asteroid field," Brigum noted. "Also, the weapon ranges are now 100,000 kilometers since there are no asteroids blocking the way. That will impact how well you can flank, too."

  "But you haven't inputted the missile factor," Gilbert urged. "We will soon have missile superiority as well as fighter superiority. Our fighters can take out their missiles."

  Prion scratched her head. "Mmm...it does seem like a golden opportunity. We will have missile and fighter superiority. That's something we've always hoped for and now we have it."

  “The enemy knows this,” Brigum continued. "But once we go in, we cannot disengage, nor can the enemy. The enemy knows this as well. He knows he won't have fighter and missile superiority. So, why is the enemy so sure of winning and willing to bet everything on it?"

  Prion puzzled. The cautious commodore did have a point. Around the table, she saw her colleagues pondering over it.

  Vice Admiral Kirkeis spoke, "Perhaps, they are very confident in their armor. I've seen the holotapes of the Orasis V battle, their armor is very tough. In addition, they have 20 more battleships than we do. I know Fleet Admiral Prancort defeated a larger number in that asteroid field because of flanking, but the same may not be duplicable here."

  Prion nodded. "That's very true. Still, I want to fight. From the looks of the fighter war, we will soon have missile and fighter superiority. If we can't fight with these advantages, when can we fight? It's true, the enemy thinks he can win, but so can we. I'm confident that our missile superiority will win the day. I'm willing to bet on it. I know I'd be risking a ton. I can't escape if I enter, but then neither can their battleships escape, if I start winning."

  Commodore Brigum spoke, "I think you're making a mistake, ma'am. There are so many unknowns. We don't know much about their technology. We know they have stronger capital-ship laser armaments and we have stronger shields, but that's all we know. Are you willing to risk everything in your command to find out?"

  "If I don't risk everything, I can't win. Sometimes, you have to gamble."

  Silence.

  Brigum broke the quiet, "It's your call, ma'am."

  "I know."

  "Just be careful."

  After a pause, Vice Admiral Kirkeis noted, "Obviously, the stratified layer formation needs to be changed now that our fleets are no longer rapidly crisscrossing."

  Gamma Wing

  Mark Four Space Fighter ‘Zeta-1’

  Wing Commander's Cockpit

  We’re winning! Bobbi felt an ounce of glee inside her metal cockpit.

  Her displays read: 2490 kills, 1104 losses for Delta and Gamma wing combined! Another display reported the survivors: only 910 enemy fighters and 400 human fighters remained.

  The future looked bright. If her fighters could beat the snakes in a dogfight when outnumbered 3 to 1, she knew they'd could outperform in a 2 to 1.

  The losses upset her, of course. 1104 losses. 1104 dead pilots. That was over 70% of her wing. 7 out of 10 people she trained in the last two years were now sprawling debris.

  However, she knew this might happen. Her pilots were professional soldiers. No one routed early. Their training wouldn't allow them to do that.

  Truly a fight to the death.

  Bobbi had to give credit to the snakes. They grinded her fighter count down to 400. Even when they lost more than they took, they kept fighting.

  Determination. Persistence. She liked that. Too bad, they were the enemy.

  Now, as she expertly twisted and dove and fired her lasers, she wondered how other wings fared in other parts of the battlefield.

  Considering how well she did while being outnumbered, what were the results for those human wings who weren't outnumbered as heavily?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Battle Fortress Epsilon Decimus

  Flag Bridge

  3 hours later...

  The human fighters won. Now, the human fighter wings scavenged the battlefield, searching for lone snake fighters, remnants of the enemy's original 30,000 fighter force.

  Since the snakes zeroed in on her missiles, they’d actually taken more loss
es in their fighter numbers, because they failed to prioritize their own safety. The enemy fighters that zoomed after her missiles didn't dogfight, then they were chased down and shot to pieces.

  However, Prion lost 30% of her missiles because of it.

  Other groups of human fighters now tried to take down the snake's missiles, but the snakes kept their missiles well-guarded in the center of their battleship fleet. It grew difficult, even as a majority of Prion's fighters surrounded the snake's battleships, while staying outside the range of their point defense guns and lasers.

  With the enemy's fighters out of the equation, Prion concentrated on the battleship battle…the main course…just about to begin. Her remaining 9,000 pilots counted as 2% of her total population. Her other 490,000 spacemen manned her battleships.

  Now…humanity won the fighter battle, Prion now held missile supremacy over the snakes. In a period of two hours, she carefully positioned her missiles at the rear of the snake battleships, and there would be nothing the snake commander could do about it. If he tried to position his missiles behind Prion’s war fleet, her fighters would take them out.

  This way, when the snakes used their battleships to fight her main battle fleet, their backs would be turned to her missiles...then her 500 megaton fusion warheads would strike—all remaining 15,000 of them.

  Prion studied everything. The setup. Everything.

  She was doing it. She was committed.

  The snakes, by decelerating, had, in essence, sent her a message, "You want to fight? You can leave if you want. Just decelerate and head the other way."

  However, she’d said yes. She rolled the dice. It’d come too far to change all that.

  Prion put everything on the line. The future of her species. The well-being of her fleet. Her own sanity. If she won, everything would be all right, and she'd be able to battle another day. If she lost, the snakes would terrorize and destroy her nation's innards, starting with the orbital construction infrastructure, and then the mining operations, and then the human populations itself.

  She gazed at her fleet's formation.

  She followed Kirkeis' suggestions, who’d been paramount in organizing her fleet. Kirkeis was perhaps even better than her. He graduated first in his class, after all, and did superbly in simulations.

  In the previous scenario, where both fleets were veering at each other at high speeds, fleet depth, or depth layers, were needed in order to gain rear attack opportunities when a forward layer passed the enemy. However, now as both fleets were inching towards each other, having fleet depth would mean the backward elements of her fleet would not enter attack range fast enough and the forward elements would be overpowered or fight alone. Thus, her fleet no longer attained the stratified layering concept.

  Instead, her fleet looked like a single sheet, a wall facing the enemy. This time, however, it would be more crucial for her to be able to flank the enemy, thus her single sheet stretched wider than all the previous sheets.

  The enemy augmented their fleet in the same way, sacrificing depth for width and height. The enemy possessed twenty more starships, so his became even wider.

  Mobile Battle Fortress Epsilon Decimus

  Flag Bridge

  30 minutes later...

  This is it!

  The two opposing battleship walls entered laser range of one another. Prion could see the enemy wall facing her. "All lasers, fire!" she ordered.

  "Yes, ma'am! Firing lasers!"

  The Epsilon Decimus fired all its 2000 laser mounts onto the frontal row of the enemy fleet. Joined with all that firepower, all 55 human ships fired as well.

  The snake battle wall…all 75 ships…fired back.

  The battle became joined.

  Starships from both sides slashed at one another with their frontal laser beams. Snake laser beams splashed against the human ships' shields. Human laser beams crashed into snake armor.

  In the bridge, behind Prion, her three admirals looked on at the main holomap.

  The main course has begun! Prion's heart pumped faster and faster. Her breathing quickened. Galactic history would be determined in the next thirty minutes!

  She could win, she knew, but she’d better think fast, and she needed to follow the plan.

  The snakes had more starships and with stronger frontal armor, Prion could not maintain a constant frontal war battle. She needed to close the distance and start rear shots, then flank shots. Though first, she needed to use up her missiles to take out some of those rear-exposed snakes. "Admiral Gilbert!" said Prion. "Order all missiles squadrons on attack runs! Target rears and sides!"

  "Yes, ma'am!"

  Battle space

  On the holomap, 15,000 human missiles, which lay behind the enemy fleet, having previously been laying still, suddenly activated their gravitic engines. They zoomed towards the rears of enemy ships at maximum G. The enemy ships saw this, of course and those snake battleships couldn't turn their fronts towards the oncoming missiles, or else they would expose their rears to Prion's battleship lasers.

  Instead, the snake vessels sent out thousands of dispersed gravity emitting machines, a form of electronic countermeasure, in an attempt to confuse the human missile's quantum targeting computers. They worked. Immediately, 2000 human missiles ran off course, aiming at gravity-emitting duds, their tracking systems completely misinformed about where they should be heading.

  However, 13000+ human missiles didn't run off course, and headed straight for the snake's battleship rears.

  They ran into the snake's secondary line of defense…point defense lasers.

  Each snake battleship used thousands of these small anti-missile lasers. With a range of only 50,000 kilometers, and a power output of only 1/1000 of a normal capital ship grazer, these PD lasers were useless against capital ships—against missiles, they were very effective. They fired at one millisecond intervals, practically splattering space with a wall of grazers.

  Human missiles that went into the PD grazer wall prematurely detonated. Hundreds died. Those that continued on course would be hit with more accurate PD grazer fire.

  Upon reaching 30,000 kilometers, the remaining 12,000 human missiles reached the snake's third line of defense…the anti-missile missiles.

  40,000 counter missiles, the total anti-missile armament of the snake fleet, launched from the rear of their fleet, heading towards the human missiles. The human missiles were well prepared for this. The 12,000 human missiles all launched their own ECMs, which replicated their own gravity signatures. Snake counter missiles weren't so smart, and there were so many of these gravity emitting ECM duds. Approximately half, 20,000 counter missiles, aimed for these ECMs and were essentially useless.

  The remaining 20,000 counter missiles aimed at the human missiles and tried to proximity detonate. Snake missiles held a payload of 500 kilotons of TNT. A direct hit would destroy a human capital ship missile, and kill its 500 megatons of explosive power meant for a snake battleship, but shooting a missile with another fast moving missile was hard. So many of these 20,000 counter missiles detonated uselessly, without stopping any of the human's capital ship missiles. Though, some did hit. Out of 12,000 human missiles, 4000 were destroyed, along with their 500 megaton payloads.

  The remaining 8000 human missiles sped inward, towards the snake battleships, and then hit the fourth layer of snake missile defense. Flak. Incendiary fuses… used in warfare for a long time, but the snakes perfected it over a period of 20,000 years. Flak was essentially cannon launched proximity-detonated tactical nukes. The snakes’ cannons launched these 20 kiloton warheads and they detonated at a range of 50 kilometers from a battleship, creating a literal wall of rapidly expanding plasma. Ineffective against capital ships, or even destroyers, they were very effective against human missiles with no shields or armor.

  Out of 8000 human capital ship missiles, half of them failed to hit their target by dying in the plasma wall. The other half, the remaining 4,000, smacked right into rears of twenty snake
battleships. Each missile contained 500 megatons of TNT. Each detonated with nuclear fury, blasting into the innards of each snake ship through their carbon armor-plast. Fireballs spewed through corridors, destroying snake crew and machines.

  Eight snake battleships lost containment and their fusion reactors detonated disastrously.

  Mobile Battle Fortress Epsilon Decimus

  Flag Bridge

  Crewmen onboard the Epsilon Decimus' flag bridge cheered. By the time the nuclear bombardment ended, Prion estimated over 14 snake battleships were neutralized. Three destroyers, five light-cruisers, five heavy-cruisers and one juggernaut. Six other snake starships were heavily damaged.

  As good a damage count as any.

  Now, would normally be a good time to thrust her fleet into the snake's formations, thus mixing up human starships with snake starships, so she could attack the snake's rears and sides, instead of just facing a wall of frontal armor, which Prion knew, would result in her loss.

  However, the holomap still indicated the snakes still had over 21,000 capital ship missiles hidden inside their battleship wall, probably reserved to destroy her fleet when and if she exposed her rears to those missiles, such as when she decided to push her battleship wall into the enemy's.

  Their very presence, those 21,000 missiles, prevented her from pushing her battleship wall into the snake's wall.

  Not if prion had any say about it.

  Oh, she would push and expose her battleships rears eventually, but before she did, she would use her fighters to kill those missiles. Those missiles had been well guarded by snake battleships. However, now with 20 snake battleships out of the way, her fighters had less to worry about when it came to snake PD laser screens.

  It all went according to plan. Soon, those snake anti-ship missiles would be dead, or forced into attacking her battleship's fronts well before she exposed her rears and sides.