SAW 1: Stars at War (13 page)

"I know! But do it, anyway. If we are to win, we need
everything we got. Order the attack! Tell the fighter wings to shoot important
targets on the snake battleships…grazer arrays, gravity emitters, shield
emitters—no they don't have shields, shoot anything worthwhile!"

"Yes, ma'am! I'll—"

"Tell them to fire on the snake grazer mounts!"
Prion demanded.

"Yes, ma'am."

Prion stared at the holotank. The two stratified fleets
would soon began crisscrossing their frontal layers. Meanwhile, laser dove in
and out between the two fleets. One of her battleships, a heavy-cruiser,
exploded. It resided in her frontal layer.

Damn! And we haven't even started crisscrossing, yet!

"All ships…begin concentrating on priority targets,
now!"
Were the distances, right? Yes, they were.
She inputted into
the computer the snake battleships she wanted to concentrate fire on. The
command messaged across the fleet net.

Immediately, twelve of her battleships fired into one snake
target. The massive amount of laser energy overwhelmed the snake light-cruiser.
It exploded.

Yes!
Prion balled her fist.
One down. Forty-five
more to go...

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Gamma Wing

Mark Four Space Fighter  ‘Zeta-1’

Wing Commander's Cockpit

R
ear Admiral
Gilbert reported into Bobbi's helmet. "All wings, engage the enemy
battleships. Target grazer emission arrays. Good hunting and good luck."

Bobbi blinked. Then, she slammed her fist into her console.
Cacophony!
What a mess! Was the admiral kidding? Fighters against battleships? It was
suicide! It was a waste of the fighter corps! They already turned 60% of the
fighter wings into debris and body parts. Now, they wanted to suicide the rest?

The admiral on top must be really desperate.
Or out of
her mind...

It would’ve been much better to conserve the fighter wings
outside the enemy fleet's point defense range, to conserve their numbers for
the next battle, now that all enemy fighters and missiles were dead. It made no
sense to fight battleships with fighters. But then Bobbi realized, there might
not be a next battle, not if she and all the rest of the fighter wings didn't
factor themselves in.

However, these little twenty meter fighters against
multi-kilometer battleships? While all the fighter squadrons were out of
missiles by now...

Damn it!

What could she and the remnants of her wing accomplish
fighting those monsters?

"Gamma Wing Commander, did you hear that?" Rear
Admiral Gilbert's voice came on in her helmet.

"Y—yes, admiral," replied Bobbi.

"What's the hold up, colonel? All the other wings have
altered their vectors except yours. I need you to attack the battleships, distract
them as much as possible, damage their grazer mounts. Anything. Every little
thing can alter the battle."

"Yes, admiral…Will do."

"Good luck, Gamma Wing." The admiral's connection
broke.

Bobbi sat there for a second. Then, she realized time, in as
much as the decision itself, was of essence. She pressed the button linking her
to her Wing's net….all 150 of her remaining pilots. "Alright, everybody.
We got new orders. We've got to attack the battleships."

A bunch of cursing echoed back. "Are you kidding?"one
of them asked.

"No, I kid you not. The Rear Admiral personally assured
me of its importance. We’ve got to do it. All the other wings are doing it. We
can't let them take the fire alone. Alter heading towards 219 mark…024. We'll
take on that snake heavy-cruiser."

Silence filled the net. Then came the,
‘Yes, ma'ams.’

"Let's go!" shouted Bobbi with a confidence she
didn’t feel.

Mobile Battle Fortress Epsilon Decimus

Flag Bridge

Intersection. Crisscross.

The frontal two layers of both her fleet and the enemy's
overlapped each other. Neither of them turned.

Prion nodded to her admirals sitting behind her.
"They're not stupid, are they?"

A simple equation dictated whether a layer ought to turn 180
degrees to fire on an unturned enemy layer behind it…with their rears exposed.
If you turn, will you be able to deal more damage to the enemy layers behind
you, than you would receive by exposing your rear to the enemy layers in front
of you? Will you deal more damage than you will get?

In the early stage of intersection, where only the two
frontal layers of both fleets crisscrossed, the answer was most definitely no.
However, as both fleets further mashed together and as the crisscrossing
occurred deeper into both fleets, such as the middle and back layers, there
were less opponent layers in front to shoot your rear if you turned and exposed
it, and thus, the risks became lesser if you about-faced.

If there were no enemy layers in front of you, the answer is
simple—
turn
.

Now, the middle layers of both fleets crossed each other.

Keep firing on my priority targets.
Prion manually
designated more snake targets to concentrate her fleet's fire upon. Her fleet
fired its lasers. Somewhere in the deep darkness, fifty thousand kilometers
away, another snake heavy-cruiser exploded. Prion saw its grav drive disappear
on the holotank.

Score...

Two green dots in her middle layer disappeared. A human
destroyer and a heavy-cruiser exploded.
No!
Prion cringed.

The snakes obviously concentrated their firepower too, now
that there were no asteroids to block their fire. Worse, the snakes held more
firepower, as they opposed with 43 ships to her 24.

Or did they?

After all, she did have the mobile Battle Fortress she stood
on.
Yes, that is something! The mobile fortress Epsilon Decimus was worth a
dozen battleships.

"Captain Grisham," Prion called to the Battle
Fortress's captain.

"Yes, admiral?" she answered from below.

"Concentrate fire on snake cruiser A4. He's just coming
within range."

Below, the captain below barked out orders, "Barry,
fire on A4, now!"

Immediately, on the holomap, the Epsilon Decimus' lasers
fired on a snake heavy-cruiser. All two thousand fortress sized grazer mounts
seared into the snake's hull. The raw firepower split the snake cruiser apart.

Captain Grisham looked up at Prion. "What's the next
target, admiral?"

Prion smiled. Things didn't look so bad after all. She did
have a chance.

Gamma Wing

Mark Four Space Fighter  ‘Zeta-1’

Wing Commander's Cockpit

"Golly! It looks like a mountain!" someone said on
the Wing's Net.

Bobbi gulped.

That snake battle cruiser must be twenty kilometers long.
End to end, it looked as big as a mountain range…A gigantic round mass. In the
white light of the system's double suns, it shined its natural orange color,
the color of mended nano carbon. And it was firing at her!

Invisible rays of gamma radiation streaked across her wings.
Deadly power concentrated in a tight beam.

Her Wing's orders were to incapacitate the snake
heavy-cruiser's anti-ship laser equipment. Her fighters were precision snipers.
They could do this. If they could hit an enemy fighter from 50,000 kilometers
away, they could hit a gigantic grazer mount.

"Everyone, pick a grazer target on that thing and
fire!" Bobbi ordered.

"Yes, ma'am! Firing!"

Outward, her team of 150 fighters spat out laser fire which
darted into the battle cruiser's gigantic laser mounts. For what good it did,
tiny explosions rippled through those huge fifty meter wide projecting guns.

She saw her target, one of the laser guns on the ship's dorsal
side get ripped to pieces as her laser fire slammed into it.

Hit, and score!

Of course, the snake fired back. Much smaller point defense
laser rings on the battle cruiser's round torso spat back tiny grazer beams,
much like her own fighter's, but ideally suited for shooting down fighters and
missiles.

One by one, she saw members of her remaining 150-sized
fighter swarm disappear on her grav wave displays. They died, just like that,
as snake point defense fire from the battle cruiser ripped into members of her
wing's almost negligent shields, if they still had any after so many battles.

138... 137...

Damn. Well, Admiral Brigum, I hope you're happy. You just
sacrificed your fighter numbers to put some little dent in the enemy
battleships' ability to fire. I hope it's worth it. You could have used us to
kill missiles in the next battle.

By the time this is over, I probably won't even be alive.

Please, by stars, please let me live. Please don't let
the next one be me.
Bobbi prayed as she simultaneously targeted another
grazer mount on that battleship and punched the fire key.

Mobile Battle Fortress
Epsilon Decimus

Flag Bridge

Battle space became a mess of scattered battleships, both
human and snakes. All stratified layers of both fleets were now meshed together.
Prion's back layer already blended with the enemy's forward layer. Many of her
forward layered units had already been ordered to turn, exposing their afts to
possible enemy fire.

Starships everywhere were shooting at the afts and sides of
opposing starships, while being shot as well. Prion guided her fleet's ships
with hands on her controls.

But in order to control the Battle Fortress, Prion shouted
to Captain Grisham below, "Fire on juggernaut A5 right in front of
us!"

"Happily, ma'am," said the captain.

Two thousand fortress-sized laser mounts sent the energy
output of a main sequence star into the forward armor of the snake juggernaut.
The beams shredded the armor, and what didn't shred—melted. The remaining
energy dove into the snake's muscles and exploded the ship from inside out.

The snake juggernaut popped like a firecracker.

Prion grinned. Below, applause and joyful cries echoed
upward. The Battle Fortress was simply too powerful. Too much energy. Too much
power.

Prion turned around to see the admirals behind her. They,
too, beamed confidently.

I can win.
.
I can win. The mobile Battle Fortress
saved the day, again. Despite all the enemy's tricks, the sheer power of human
engineering saved the day.

"Captain. Target enemy Juggernaut A7—" She stopped
midsentence. Gazing at the holomap, something odd happened with the enemy
fleet. All their battleships suddenly stopped concentrating on individual
targets of the human fleet and now turned inward, to aim at her, the human
fleet's middle layer.

This wasn't a good strategy at all! Now, all her
starships could shoot the enemy's backs with ease, without being shot as well.
Why would the snakes make themselves so vulnerable? Unless...

"Good stars! They're going to shoot at us! They're
targeting this Battle Fortress with their entire fleet!" An intense
feeling of danger rushed through her spine.

It made damn good sense. Without asteroids blocking the way,
the enemy could aim at any object they wanted, so why not destroy the biggest
object they could fire on? One where they knew a commander like Prion would
situate herself? It was the complete opposite of ‘kill the small, easy targets
first’, yet just as practical.

Though, for all the good sense it made for the enemy, Prion
herself didn't know of a counter, except—Prion bolted upright. She could very
well die within the next minute! Now, would be the ultimate test: just how much
damage could the Battle Fortress withstand? Then, just how swiftly could her
other starships take out the enemy fleet now, when it no longer fired on hers?

"Admiral!" Kirkeis called out, "Order the
fleet to shoot their exposed rears!"

"Absolutely right!" Prion entered the commands
into her datapads. All human starships would now fire on the exposed snake
targets.

Satisfied, she watched the holomap…as all 39 snake starships
finished their turn and aimed their grazers on the Epsilon Decimus—on her.

They fired.

Binary Star System, Hephaestus

Battle space

40,000 plus antimatter-powered snake grazer beams zoomed
through space every second, sending the energy equivalent of a supernova
crashing into the shields of
Epsilon Decimus
. Blue-green-violet shield
splatter splashed this way and that, like water while the fortress absorbed the
energy.

The mobile fortress possessed six times the energy
generation capacity of a human juggernaut, and six times the shield
regeneration capacity. Yet, even then, it could not create more shield matter
than the rate it was losing. Its shields quickly dwindled, dropping from 100%
to 60%, and as more enemy ships added their fire, to 10%. The Battle Fortress
was made to withstand and defeat five or six snake juggernauts, but it wasn't
fighting that, it was fighting the entire snake fleet.

At 10% shield saturation, grazer beams passed through and
smacked into the 80 kilometer fortress's armor. Explosions dotted the nano
carbon hull.

Then, the shields collapsed, allowing the full onslaught of
grazer beams from the entire snake fleet to crash into the Battle Fortress's
armor. Metal and nano carbon, the toughest material in existence, bent this way
and that. Grazer beams shattered armor-plast and burned meter wide holes. The
entire battle station lit up like a firecracker.

One thing was for certain, however. The designers of the
Epsilon
Decimus
made sure it could take on damage. With so much armor—but against
37 enemy warships—still a losing battle. Its designers couldn't design for this
contingency.

It took less than a minute for the station to lose its
shields against 37 snakes. As the snakes continued slashing at its outer skin,
within another minute the armor shattered and peeled away.

However, all this time, the
Epsilon Decimus
fired
back. Its 2000 laser mounts blew away two snakes heavy-cruisers and a
juggernaut.

Yet, as its armor continued to peel, snake grazers eventually
dug into the station's innards. Inside, power conduits exploded. Rushing
fireballs trampled corridors and killed thousands of human personnel. Numerous
holes sucked atmosphere out into deep space. Entire hull sections became
wreckage.

Mobile Battle Fortress
Epsilon Decimus

Flag Bridge

Inside the
Epsilon Decimus
’ flag bridge, chaos
reigned. Men and women shouted.

Prion herself shouted, "Fire on snake A9!"

"Aye, aye, firing!" said Captain Grisham.

The Battle Fortress's remaining laser mounts fired on a
snake juggernaut, blasting its way through solid godlike armor, a testimony to
the fortress's remaining firepower even under duress.

Thirty seconds later, the snake juggernaut exploded…31
snakes to go.