SAW 1: Stars at War (11 page)

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...

T
he 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 losses 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.

"Commodore Brigum! Send in those 3000 fighters we've
reserved behind the enemy's battleship wall to snipe those anti-ship missiles
the snakes are guarding!"

"Yes, ma'am," Brigum answered hesitantly.

Prion knew Brigum didn't want to send his fighters into the
snake's battleship point defense lasers, but the fighters needed to snipe the
missiles. Weight for weight, she guessed that her 3000 fighters could take out
more missiles than their own losses. Tactically, her fighters had no other use
in this battle anymore other than taking out snake missiles. Their ability to
damage warships seemed extremely limited, to the point where using them would
sacrifice her pilot's lives aimlessly. But as long the enemy's missiles survived,
those megaton warheads would forever be a threat to her own battleships.

On the holomap, she saw her 3000 fighters approach the
snake's battleship wall from their rear. 80,000 kilometers. 60,000 kilometers.
40,000 kilometers. Her fighters entered the snake fleet's PD laser range.

The snakes' point-defense lasers fired.

Dozen by dozen, her fighters died. The mark-four space
fighter's shields were very weak, even against a snake's PD laser, which was
1/1000 the power of their main grazers armaments. As her 3000 fighters came
even closer, the wall of PD lasers slashed into her fighters, killing hundreds.

"Commodore Brigum, tell the fighters to fire on the
snake anti-capital ship missiles!"

"Yes, ma'am. They are in range, now. Firing."

On the holomap, her 2800 fighters zeroed in on the enemy
anti-ship missiles. Laser fire from her fighters took down hundreds of snake
missiles.

Yes!
Piron almost smiled. Each missile taken out
would be one less to ram into her ships, and cause internal damage or shield
degradation.

The snake missiles stood there, idly behind their
battleships, and more missiles fell.

20400...20100...19800.

Then, like the sudden movement of a great animal, all the
snake missiles sped away...towards Prion's battleships.

Prion already anticipated this. She knew the snakes wouldn't
let their own missiles be taken out…better for them, to use them, even if it
meant causing little damage to Prion. Their only option would be to smack those
19800 remaining missiles into Prion's frontal armor. They certainly couldn't
move them behind her battleship wall and smack her battleship's rear armor like
she’d done to the snakes.

The reason being, as soon as the snake missiles moved
outside the protection of their battleships, her fighters would have easy targeting
on those missiles. The fact the snake lost the fighter war meant the snakes
couldn't move their missiles around. No missile supremacy, especially if they
wanted to smack into Prion's rear, the missiles would have to move past her
battleships, slow down, then reaccelerate into her battleship's rears. By then,
her fighters would have turned them into meat. So…their only option was to
strike her battleship wall's fronts, doing much less damage.