SAW 1: Stars at War (18 page)

Each of the eight snake ships did the customary anti-missile
routines. First, they launched electronic countermeasures. Small robots
mimicked snake warship signatures, confusing the human missiles' targeting
systems. A hundred missiles lost tracking, but a few regained their correct
tracking.

Then, the warships launched antimissile missiles. These were
a more lethal variant of the fighter missiles. They sped towards the 300 human
missiles, proximity detonating and critically damaging 150 human missiles
beyond functionality.

The remaining 150 human missiles entered the snake warship's
point defense laser range, and then the flak range. The point defense lasers
took out another 80, and the wall of expanding plasma halved the survivors.

The surviving 38 human missiles dove into one snake
heavy-cruiser at a speed of 130,000 MPS. Their fusion payloads exploded over 20
gigatons of TNT energy and their kinetic energy added another 40 gigatons into
the frontal nano carbon armor of the snake battle cruiser.

Snake heavy cruisers were covered in over 4 kilometers of
frontal armor at many places. Still, entire plating sections vaporized into
plasma. Heat pushed into the starship's internal compartments, shattering
systems and burning snake personnel.

When it was all over, the snake starship continued on
course, with many of its minor forward systems damaged. Its gravitic drive was
still stable, and so were the majority of its laser mounts. None of its fusion
reactors or antimatter reaction chambers were damaged.

Searing kilometer sized holes in the ship's forward armor
gave it a multi cratered appearance.

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Shuttle Pod One, Passenger Compartment

"That's it?" Ensign Laforte asked while looking
incredulous.

"That's it," Paul answered simply.

"Shit," said Laforte. "We barely touched that
thing."

"What did you expect? The snake fleet has counter
missiles, ECMs, flak screens, and PD lasers. Anything that survived the
fighters would have to deal with that."

"But it was over 60 gigatons of explosives..."
Laforte defended.

"Against snake frontal armor," Paul countered.

"At least," Rolan interjected, eyeing both
lieutenants, "We damaged a heavy-cruiser."

A heavy silence.

"Won't they repair it? They have nanites, right?"
Jessica asked.

"Yeah," Rolan answered solemnly.

Another silence filled the compartment.

"What a waste." Ensign Laforte palmed her face in
her hands.

Together, the crew watched as the snakes battleships
continued on course towards the planet. Now, the fighters spread out, chasing
the evacuation ships, including Shuttle pod One.

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Kolonides II, medium class planet

1500 snake kinetic kill rounds averaging five tons,
accelerated to half of light speed, slammed into the Earthlike planet of
Kolonides II.

For the relativistic rounds that hit water, huge mile high
tidal waves slashed the coasts of the planet. For those that hit land,
extinction-level explosions created expanding rings of mile-high walls of fire
that ravaged anything in its path. The planet shook with Armageddon-level
shockwaves.

Nothing on the surface survived. All plants and animals
vaporized in the walls of fire. Even for the bomb shelters five hundred meters
underground, survival depended on how close they were to the impact. Sometimes,
all the inhabitants of that shelter died, regardless of how deep they were.

From orbit, one could see on the surface hundreds of fire
rings slamming into each other. Survival rates for the planetary inhabitants
varied and depended on many things, like the depth of the underground shelter,
the material above protecting the shelter, the proximity of the impact
detonation, the size of the initial impact, and plain luck.

Sixty percent of the 450,000 humans on the planet died
within an hour. The underground bomb shelters weren't designed for this type of
strike. Protection against hostile piracy forces was one thing. Protection
against kinetic kill strikes from a conventional battle fleet was another.

The surviving 200,000 humans were in luck. Their chances of
survival became much higher as the snake battle fleet turned its attention on
attacking the orbital facilities. The snakes would deal no more blows to the
planet's surface.

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Shuttle pod One, Passenger Compartment

"Aww shit!" Lieutenant Chaffer exclaimed,
"They really bombed the surface. It happened. They nailed it."

Rolan watched in horror as the molten surface lit with fires
seeable even from the camera link on the orbital defense outpost. What is the
feeling you have when you know something bad would happen and hours later—it
does happen? "Does anyone have relatives on the planet?" said Rolan,
staring at the red glowing planet.

"I do," said Paul. "A cousin."

"I hope he's among the survivors," Rolan offered.

"He will. He's a tough one." Paul grimaced.

"At least, the worst is over
.
"
... for
the planet, that is.

Rolan's shuttle was nowhere near the planet. In the five
hours since, they accelerated at one hundred Gs to a fourth of the distance out
of the red dwarf's gravity well, where the gravity metric was flat enough to
sustain a warp bubble.

Though…they would never make it.

Their shuttle could accelerate at hundred Gs, which was good
because it would be faster than the multi kilometer snake warships, which could
only accelerate at fifty Gs, but one hundred Gs was nothing compared to a snake
space fighter, which could accelerate to over five hundred Gs.

The snake fighters were coming, and when they overtook
Rolan's shuttle, far before he reached warp distance, Rolan and his bridge crew
would be killed.

There was nothing he could do. The shuttle pod had no
weapons.

Rolan sat in silence, knowing these were the last hours of
his life. For some reason, the snake commander wanted his blood
in
particular
. Staring at the miniature holomap, he kept watching as various
human objects were destroyed.

First, the planet's surface.

Next is the orbital facilities and the defense outpost.
My home for so many months...

Then—mere hours after that—it would be him.

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Orbiting Kolonides II

The snake fleet decelerated. They needed to in order to
become stationary with all the human orbital facilities—construction yards,
floating manufactories, orbital elevators, and space-based residential
complexes.

Hours passed.

Eventually, the snake fleet crept into stationary orbit.

Upon reaching laser range, the snake warships pummeled the
orbital buildings with grazers continuously, until the buildings' shields gave.
The planet's orbital facilities were huge objects, many kilometers wide.
Equipped with powerful shields, they could withstand kinetic bombardment blows,
but not sustained laser fire.

Then, once the shields gave, the facilities were gutted and
shredded. With no armor, they easily became sprawling kilometer wide debris.
Decades of construction became waste.

Luckily, the buildings had been evacuated.

While the evacuees onboard the escape transports headed out
of the system, it was up to the snake fighters to decide who lived and who
died, as there wasn't enough fighters to kill all the transports.

The animal controlling the fighters was still Master
Commander Roro Cro-Drignon.

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Shuttle pod One, Passenger Compartment

On the miniature holomap, a snake fighter squadron
accelerated towards Shuttle pod one. The distance decreased every second.

"We're dead," Rolan voiced aloud.

He could imagine it. Death would come quick. When those
fighters fired their lasers at his shuttle, pumping torrents of energy into the
hull, everything inside the passenger compartment would explode. Machine and
crew would vaporize into plasma. Everyone he knew and gotten close to in the
past months—would die.

At least, Rolan would hardly have time to notice it, unless
he kept watching the snake fighters approach on his scanners, but he just
couldn't help staring into the holomap...

Slowly, but surely, they inched closer.

Two million kilometers.

One million and a half.

One million.

Half a million.

"Everybody, it's been pleasure working with you,"
Captain Rolan Von Goering stated clearly. "I know I haven't been the most
competent commanding officer, but—there's nothing I can say. I am a failure. My
decisions may have cost us our lives."

Inside the cramped compartment, his bridge crew stared back.

To Rolan's left, Paul nodded. "It's alright, buddy. You
chanced it, and it didn't work."

"That's war," Ensign Laforte added.

When Rolan's gaze turned to Ensign Shelby, the woman didn't
say anything. She looked cold, like she was about to faint.

Jessica...

Rolan returned his gaze at the holomap. The fighters were
almost 100,000 kilometers away. They were almost on top of the shuttle. Wasn't
70,000 kilometers the limits of snake laser range?

Rolan glanced with one last look at the ghostly pale ensign.
"Jessica, good bye. I know I wasn't a good commanding officer, and I often
pulled rank to get you to do things for me..."

The pale ensign nodded, then said, "Good bye,
captain."

He gave one glance at the snake fighter squadron chasing him
and realized that they’d already entered maximum firing range for snake lasers.
They were only 50,000 kilometers away.

"Good bye, everyone."

The snake fighters fired.

Everything in the room lit up like hell. The shuttle pod
exploded. Metal fragments smashed and sliced through bodies, killing the bridge
crew in the passenger compartment. As more laser energy pumped into the
shuttle, every solid object expanded into plasma.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Star System Dalon, Core of the Viron Empire

Planet Dalon's World

Highguard Hospital Complex, Aquaria

Building E, VIP Floor, Intensive Care Unit

Room 001

H
e kept
falling, falling. Blackness everywhere—no light, no ground, things did not
exist for him to hold onto…Just nothingness. A total void, and so he fell.

Wait—a light. It became larger. Like a single star in a
black sky.

Prancort wanted to touch it, to grab hold of it.

Prancort...yes, that’s my name, as it has always been,
and always will be.

He found himself in a kindergarten. He could hear
children's voices.

"Prancort! Prancort!" they yelled. "Can't
catch me, Prancort!"

He could see toys. He could stand up. He could smell the
odors of school, of young children, of toys, of lunch and of the city.

Suddenly, everything around him changed, again. He was
walking home from school. The megacity surrounded him. Gigantic air cars,
hovering busses, tall massive metropolitan skyscrapers. If he looked down, he
could see endless chasms filled with hovering vehicles like fishes, all the way
into the unending mists below. He stood on a bridge, high in the sky, one of
many bridge serving as walkways between buildings.

I have to get home. I've got to meet mom.

Home. Apartment 2894 B, Level 294, complex M, one of
thousands of living quarters in a gigantic residential building.

The surrounding changed, again.

His mom, lean and tall, smiling.

"Ma! Ma! I'm back. I've come back!" waved
Prancort. Ah, home again, he explored his home like it was always there, like a
child. He remembered every room, every doorway, every piece of furniture.

It all came back.

He kept walking, running, jumping through the passages of
his apartment. He gazed at mom, who always smiled at him.

Then something seemed wrong.

She looked old. Wrinkle lines formed on her face.

She's aged, thought Prancort. Suddenly, the memory
clicked in him. This was the day he left home. The day of his graduation and
his inception into the military academy on Gregor Prime. "Good bye,
mother! It'll be a while before I see you!"

His mother cried, but her tears couldn't hold him back.
He felt determined to go through cadet school and become an officer in his
nation's military.

When he looked at his hands again, they were no longer
children's hands, anymore, but that of an adult.

The scene changed, again. The academy at Gregor Prime.
His dorm. Years of studying, and thinking, and training, and practicing to be
the best, to excel among tens of thousands of officer-cadets.

This became his place, the place which gave birth to the
legend of Prancort…the unbeatable.

He now remembered the simulation rooms. He plugged the
connector lines that nano connected with his brain to lead him to a virtual
reality, a nonexistent place where he competed with other cadets in war games.
He remembered the confidence he felt. His agility, his nimble mindedness. His
consistency and energy.

The scene changed, again.

Graduation. The Yellow of his uniform. The various medals
he wore beside his military chevrons. His cadet cap. The great unbending pose
as he received his award as the Academy's highest scoring cadet that year.

He’d done it, but the rest of his life still lie ahead of
him.

He remembered his first assignment. Tactical advisor to a
captain on board an assault frigate. People greeted him warmly, and the resulting
promotions combined with the war's unending openings allowed Prancort to fill
in positions at an unheard of pace.

He became a lieutenant, then a commander, then a captain,
then a commodore, all within five years' time.

He remembered his first command of a starship. The VSF
Endeavor. The bridge seemed so small, because the Endeavor was an assault
carrier.

Then, he remembered his first flag command. The flag
bridge of the VSF Adamantium, a Viron juggernaut. He remembered the look of
hope in the young faces and gazes which eagerly followed his every word…his
every move.

His promotion to rear admiral happened in two years. Then
counter admiral, then vice admiral, then a full admiral.

When he looked at his hands, they became middle-aged
hands. The lines of wear and tear showed on his palms, combined with the
brutality of keeping constant strength and an agile mind.

I am...Prancort. I am me.

He then—woke up.

"It worked!" said a man in a white coat.

Prancort stared up at the hospital ceiling. He lay on a bed.
He glanced to his left and right. Dozens of white coated doctors stared at him
with excitement. On their faces was look of success.

A successful operation.

A plan working perfectly well.

Prancort had seen that look thousands of times.

"Fleet Admiral Prancort," the lead doctor stated,
in a stiff confident voice while walking closer, "Welcome back."

"What happened?"

"You were infested with a neural nano virus. It
targeted your brain. We have tried thirteen separate procedures to remove it
without damaging your brain, with no success. The fourteenth was the luckiest,
and the most risky, but it worked. We had to do it because high command forced
us to."

"Why?" said Prancort.

"You’ll soon find out."

Star System Dalon, Core of the Viron Empire

Fleet Base Aquaria, Synchorbit around Dalon's World

Command and Control Complex, Debriefing Room 1A

It would be the first time Prancort wore a fleet uniform in
months. Of course, to him, time had no meaning while he’d been poisoned and
unconscious.

"I see." He folded his hands together. "So
Admiral Prion has left to fight the first snake fleet invading our center
borders and, additionally, the snakes have invaded through our side border,
near the galactic periphery using a second fleet?"

"Yes, sir."

"When will we hear about the results from Admiral
Prion's battle?"

Rear Admiral Wilks, a stubby man with white hair, replied,
"Sir, we still do not yet know if she has fought. Her messenger ships have
yet to reach us. However, in her last transmission, she believed the snakes
were invading a star system called Hephaestus and she said she was
intervening."

"I see," Prancort pondered.
"Hephaestus...that's right near our center border."

Silence filled the table. All eight of the highest-ranking
flag officers in the republic waited on Prancort's next words.

"Alright, time to head to business and deal with the
current threat," Prancort stated, "Admiral Wilks, tell me of the
composition of this second snake fleet that's invading from the
periphery."

The aged Admiral Wilks spoke, again, "From the records
collected by a defense outpost orbiting Kolonides II, we believe the snakes
have eight battleships and nine missile carriers and four fighter-interceptor
carriers."

Prancort gasped. His eyeballs bulged.

The table fell silent as each flag officer allowed Prancort
enough time for the bad news to sink in.

"How did the snakes get such a high production
advantage? How are they able to create so many new vessels?"

"We don't know," said Rear Admiral Wilks. "It
can be assumed that they always had it. They do have more star systems in their
territory than us, after all. They probably have more production
capacity."

"...Which means that even if we defeat both invasions,
they'll just send another wave at us," Prancort paused to think. "Ok,
first things first, we must defeat this new second invasion from the periphery
at all costs. We must not allow them to damage our production chain and make
their production advantage even greater."

"How will we do that, sir?" asked a young
commodore at the table.

Prancort winced. "I do not yet know."
So many
unknowns. So many!
Prancort glanced at the logistics commander to his left,
a commodore named Bresly. "Well, we can't do anything to aid Admiral
Prion. Whatever happened has happened. But we can fend off this new second
invasion. What assets do we know, commodore? How many available warships,
missiles and fighters can we scramble to meet this new threat?"

To his left, Commodore Bresly rose to answer Prancort's
question, "Sir, according to latest reports, we are still repairing two
warships in stardock. The
Asterix
and the
Dayhall
are not fully
ready, but they can be scrambled into battle with only a portion of propulsion,
shield, and lasers operational. Besides the
Asterix
and the
Dayhall
,
we have only one other battleship fully operational, because it has just left
stardocks, the
Pelican
."

"And our other assets? Go on," Prancort urged.

"In terms of fighter assets, we have five new squadrons
of pilots fresh from training school, amounting to 300 new pilots. We have
enough Mark Nine fighters produced to equip each of the 300 pilots. In terms of
missiles, our orbital nano-factories have produced 1600 new missiles since
Prion's fleet sortied out to meet the first invasion, but we have no missile
ships to carry them. All our missile carriers sortied out with Admiral Prion to
fight off the snakes' first invasion fleet."

Drats!
Prancort blinked. "So, we can utilize no
missiles, because we have no transports." Prancort removed his cap and
scratched his head.
Touché, snake commander. Send one fleet through our
obvious center to divert our attention and distract our forces, and send
another fleet from the side to kill our production chain.
A by-the-book
strategy at work. He had to give credit to the snake commander, again.
"What about civilian freighters? Can we outfit civilian freighters to
carry our missiles?"

"Commandeering civilian freighters?" Commodore
Bresly responded, "That's never been done before."

"I'm sure we can persuade the civilian owners into
loaning us their freighters for national security. If we lose, their freighters
won't be of much use. We can also sign a contract saying if the freighters are
lost, we'll reimburse them."

"Sir, this is unprecedented," Bresly debated.

"But can it be done?" Prancort continued on.

A pause. "I suppose it can," agreed Commodore
Bresly.

"Make it so," said Prancort. "We need them to
FTL carry our missiles into battle."

"It will largely depend on how we alter the freighters
into carrying our missiles and missile launchers. It could take some
time," Bresly advised.

"Please get it done as quickly as possible."
Prancort folded his hands together. "Those freighters could mean the
difference between defeat and victory. Missiles alter the strategic and
tactical situation immensely."

A silence.

The commodore tapped notes onto a computer screen.

Prancort addressed his staff, "So, we have three
battleships, 300 fighters, and 1600 missiles against the new snake invasion
force of eight battleships, about 3000 fighters, and…" Prancort gulped.
"A hell of a lot more missiles. That's quite a disadvantage. At least as
long as the battle near Hephaestus doesn't fall heavily against us, we won't
have to worry about the first snake fleet there. What is the
Pelican
?"

"Sir?" Bresly replied.

"What battleship class is it?"

"A light-cruiser, sir," said Commodore Bresly.

Great.
Prancort sighed. "It will have to do. If
we cannot defeat the second invasion fleet, we can at least distract them, so
they make the least damage to our production chain. If anyone has good ideas,
please share with the table, immediately." Prancort looked around him. No
one said a word. He felt like he stared at  defeat in the face.

Shaking his head, he knew he shouldn't be thinking like
this. They were looking at him for support and reassurance. "Well, no one?
Ok, let's take a break, people. Meanwhile, I'll transfer my flag to the
Asterix
.
Captain Shenks, please inform the CO of the
Asterix
that I'll be
transferring my flag to his ship. We'll have another video conference at 1230
hours. Then, we'll sortie out at 1500, worst case. Dismissed, everyone."

Star System Dalon, Core of the Viron Empire

Orbital Stardock Prometheus II, Synchorbit, Dalon's
World

Juggernaut Class Battleship
Asterix

Flag Bridge, 1200 Hours

"Admiral on deck!"

The newly refitted bridge of the
Asterix
looked like
semicircle. The captain's chair held the center, surrounded in front by the
weapons and helm stations. Damage control sat to the right. Weapons to the
left. Ops behind. The organic captain's chair, which was typically the center
of all attention, looked newly minted, with black pads of nano fiber and
floating holographic displays on each armrest. Men and women operated each
station, all of whom, at this very moment, saluted Prancort.

Prancort returned the salute. "At ease. Return to your
stations."

"Welcome to the bridge," a man who sat on the
captain's chair approached.

Prancort eyes widened.

The man's robotic legs created a nearly silent whirring
sound. "I don't believe we've met," said the captain of the
Asterix
.

"We've met many times," smiled Prancort. "Not
physically, of course."

"Then, let me formally introduce myself. I'm Captain
Donovan, Drake Donovan." Donovan reached out his metal hand, which
Prancort shook. It felt cold, like steel. And the grip was tough, like a
machine. "I suppose I should explain why over half of me is made of
metal," said Donovan. "Most of it—actually, all of it—is because of
you."