SAW 1: Stars at War (16 page)

Jacobs understood it….a tradeoff. Rather than be encircled
and annihilated, they chose to leave the battlefield and at the same
time…temporarily expose their rears to human fire.

However, to everyone who saw the retreat on the main
holotank, it looked fantastic. Officers yelled in enthusiasm. Techs managing
the rows of monitors jumped with excitement.

"All ships," yelled Jacobs into the fleet net,
"Fire into their exposed rear! Chase them for as long as possible!"

During the chase, one more snake starship exploded. Though,
once the enemy fleet reached a certain distance, the snakes stopped
accelerating away and turned 180 degrees to forward face the human chasers.
Once again, the two fleets forward faced each other, separated by 80,000
kilometers.

Looking at the holotank, Jacobs winced. This wasn’t a good
position for the human fleet to be in. The human starships weren't good at a
front-front slugging match, not against snake ships.

"All ships…accelerate backwards," Jacobs directed
to his fleet.

"We're disengaging, captain?" said First Officer
Davis, who now stood beside him.

"Oh, yes, there's no way we can damage more than what
we'll suffer in a front-front laser slugging match. It'll take forever to close
the distance again, to the point where we can shoot side and rear shots and by
then, the damage will be done by the front-front slugging match."

"I see. You're the boss, captain." Davis smiled.
"Excellent move, that encirclement."

"Thank you." Jacobs couldn't smile himself. So
many ships and crew had been lost. If only he’d found the solution earlier...

While Jacobs glared at the holotank, he visualized the snake
commander…wherever he was, if he, it, survived at all…choosing not to pursue.
The snake fleet did exactly that. They did not accelerate forward to cancel
Jacob's fleet accelerating backwards. They just stood there while Jacob's fleet
accelerated away. Then, when both fleets exited extreme laser range from one
another, the snake ships turned about face and accelerated in the opposite
direction, off the battlefield.

I guess they had enough, too…
the white-haired Jacobs
shook his head.

In this way, the Battle of Hephaestus ended.

Captain Jacobs sat back in his seat—truly a battle of
annihilation. He wanted to commend the snakes on their bravery, just as he
needed to commend his own survivors.

However, with five snake starships still alive and five
human starships still alive, it wasn't entirely over, either. Jacobs needed to
take advantage of the temporary pause to do something useful. "All fleet
units, send out the Search and Rescue tugs. We have to tend the wounded and the
survivors."

It occurred to Jacobs—now was the time to find out who lived
and who died.
Admiral Prion and Admiral Kirkeis, are you two still alive?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Gamma Wing

Mark Four Space Fighter  ‘Zeta-1’

Wing Commander's Cockpit

Bobbi survived. By stars, she survived. Her grav wave
disappearing trick worked. She knew it worked ten minutes in, when she hadn't
been blasted to pieces by the snake juggernaut, after she felt certain she
entered its PD laser envelope.

For the rest of the battle, she calmly waited. Using passive
sensors, she monitored the battle without emitting a single bit of information,
except what light and electromagnetic radiation reflected off her twenty-meter
hull.

In utter fascination, she witnessed the entire annihilation
of both fleets down to five ships each.

The discipline involved amazed her. Her enemies and her
allies were truly super soldiers. Once committed, they did not rout.

Which she couldn't say for the human fighter wings, though
understandable how the human fighter wings ran away. They were getting marginal
gains while sustaining heavy losses by snake PD lasers. Still, she couldn't
stop thinking about how so many pilots panicked when the shit hit the fan...

Inside that dark cockpit, she booted her main power plant to
life. Her fighter's fusion plants ignited. On her instruments, she pressed a
button, opening a channel to the fleet's SAR net. "Wing Commander Bobbi
Duke to search and rescue operations. My gravity emitters have been damaged. I
need pickup."

A moment passed. Then a voice came through her helmet,
"Hold on Zeta-1. Rescue tugs on their way. Glad you made it."

Bobbi felt a wash of relief.
I made it.
She survived
the most vicious battle of her life, against all odds. "Thank you SAR
command. I'll be waiting."

Mobile Battle Fortress
Epsilon Decimus

Flag Bridge

Vice Admiral Kirkeis was supposed to die. By all odds, his
body should’ve been sprayed across the room—a mesh of fragmented body parts,
splattered goo and burned blood.

Yet, while thinking of what he should be, he fully knew he
wasn’t all of that.

The flag bridge of the Battle Fortress burned. The air
wasn't breathable. The walls filled with wide gaping holes, a product of the
starship's rampant energy fireballs and exploding metal fragments. On his
helmet's net, he could hear the moaning of soon-to-be deceased crewmen.

Medical personnel, dressed in white padded uniforms,
scattered across the room, working on survivors. One such female walked close
by. She peered down on him.

"I'm alive," he said.

"V-vice admiral?" The medic's eyes widened.
"Help! The Vice Admiral is alive!

Soon enough, four medics rushed to gather around him. They
lifted his body onto a stretcher. As they carried him away from all the flaming
carnage, Kirkeis choked. "Wait, is the battle over?"

"Sir," the lead medic answered, "You're not
physically fit to command. But yes, it's over. Scuttlebutt says the snakes have
retreated behind a far moon."

"Then, we've won?"

The lead medic whispered, "I don't know."

"And Admiral Prion?"

The medic shook his head.

"What happened to her?" whispered Kirkeis.
"Tell me she's alive."

The medic gazed down sadly. "She lost too much blood.
We did not get to her fast enough. We failed. I failed. You're the highest
ranking officer now, sir."

Prion is dead?
"Why didn't you get here in time?
You could have saved her!"

"I am sorry! The station was in a mess. Many urgent
requests came in at the same time!"

"More urgent than the highest ranking officer in the
fleet?" yelled Kirkeis.

"I am sorry, sir! It just wasn't possible to get to her
fast enough. Now, if you will excuse me, we must get you to the med bay and
save your life!" The lead medic glanced briefly at his distraught
subordinates, who monitored his vitals and continued pushing him on the cart.
"I'm sorry." The lead medic hurried away, disappearing from Kirkeis'
narrow vision.

Kirkeis stared up at the chrome metal ceiling as his cart
hovered through the ship's corridors. He balled his fists.

"Sir," said one of the medics controlling the cart
behind him, "It's best you don't strain yourself. Please be calm."

How could he be calm? So many people were dead. People
important to him. Admiral Prion...Gilbert...Brigum... He’d seen his comrades at
the table blown to bits. Only he survived...

It wasn't fair!
How only he survived the luck of the
draw. Why must he live and the entire command staff die?

At least, we didn't lose the battle, thought Kirkeis. At
least, we fouled the snake admiral's plans. That, in itself, was a victory
altogether.

Kirkeis let his fist relax.
Everyone did ok. The human
fleet did ok. Whoever took command of the fleet did ok.
It was unnecessary
to hope for too much. It’s more important to work with what one had.

Soon. When I'm better, I'll have another chance at it.
Soon.

With that, Kirkeis let his mind slip to exhaustion and
sleep.

Battle Statistics

Battle of  Hephaestus

Date: 4091 AD (Galactic Year 1720), October 16th

Result: Indecisive

Belligerents: First Viron Empire (Modern Day Humans) / Cell
Khanate (Insectoid Centipedia)

Leaders (FVE) : Admiral Prion de Caille, Vice Admiral
Kirkeis, Rear Admiral Gilbert, Commodore Brigum

Leaders (Cell) : Second Master Commander Cro-Grombak

Motivations (FVE) : Territorial Defense

Motivations (Cell) : distraction, annihilation of the human
fleet

Strength (FVE) :

55 capital ships (1.5 billion tons) / 590,000 Humans

22 missile ships - 22,000 capital ship missiles/ 5,000
Humans

10 light fighter carriers + 5 heavy fighter carriers -
24,000 fighters, / 30,000 Humans

Strength (Cell) :

72 capital ships (21 billion tons) / 2 Million Insectoids

30 missile ships - 21,000 missiles/ 6,000 Insectoids

30 fighter carriers - 32,000 fighters / 45,000 Insectoids

Losses (FVE)
: 50 capital ships ( 1.4 billion tons) /
all missiles destroyed / 17,000 pilots and fighters dead / 502,000 Humans dead
/ 80,403 Injured / 0 Captured / Admiral Prion de Caille, Rear Admiral Gilbert,
Commodore Brigum—deceased

Losses (Cell)
: 67 Warships (19 billion tons) / all
missiles destroyed / 32,000 pilots and fighters dead / 0.8 Million Insectoids
Dead / 320,599 Injured / 0 Captured

Part of : Early Insectoid Expansion Campaign (Show)

Act 3

CHAPTER TWENTY

Star System KA924, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Second Cell Invasion Fleet

Hiveship Roro Cro-Drignon

Fleet Command Nexus

M
aster
Commander Roro Cro-Drignon's two forward mandibles clicked in excitement. His
body slithered through the giant spherical command room. Using twenty-two legs,
he moved closer to his command interface, at the very center of fleet's Nexus
Chamber.

Hundreds of lower-ranking officers in the outer spherical
layers bowed to him in respect as he proceeded.

Once he arrived at the center, his limbs and mandibles dug into
the platform's soft-gelled interface layer, allowing his entire body to send
commands to his fleet. In addition, nanite-augmented wires linked his brain
with the warship's central computer, essentially making the warship take on his
name,
Roro Cro-Drignon.

He could see and hear everything inside and outside of him,
including the system's red star twenty million kilometers away. System KA924's
star was a small red dwarf with a quarter as much mass as his race's birth
world. The humans called it Kolonides, for whatever odd reason their weak
culture deemed fitting.

To Roro, it was nothing more than an obstacle, one meant to
be conquered or annihilated. Roro saw, through his interface, thousands of
little human ships scurrying in system. Dozens more were warping out of the
system, probably because of his fleet's enormous gravity waves.
No matter.
The small fishes did not matter
.

What Roro wanted more than anything else was the destruction
of system's orbital infrastructure, the series of orbital elevators, refinery
stations, construction yards, and hovering residential complexes that the
humans so called their homes high in orbit around the system's second planet.

Destroying the enemy's base of operations—and the ability to
construct new ships—excited Roro. All made possible because of the distraction
fleet, otherwise called the first invasion fleet, which attacked the human
nation through the center border—the closest route in between the two nations.
The humans had been expecting an attack through the center border and it’s
exactly what Roro gave them. Then, once the human fleet all sorted to meet that
attack, Roro would use his own fleet, the so called
second invasion fleet
,
to rampage through the human's inner systems by entering through the periphery
borders, starting with KA924, or Kolonides.

He would destroy the human's means of constructing new
ships, because…Roro was a patient war commander. After the stalemate battle of
Orasis V, he knew the war could no longer be determined by a single battle, but
by many battles, most likely spread out over a long period of time. Also, if
the timeframe became large, and it did, a nation's ability to create and crew
new ships—both his and the enemy's—would largely determine the war's outcome.

Thus, Roro aimed for his enemy's production jugular. His
first fleet, commanded by Cro-Grombak, would distract the enemy's defensive
units, hopefully killing as many human ships or weakening the human fleet,
while his second fleet, which Roro commanded, would destroy the human nation's
innards, denying the humans their ability to produce new ships. After that,
time itself would become the humans' own worst enemy, as the insectoid Cell
Empire produced more and more ships, and the humans could not.

Roro did not feel bad about destroying a rival empire's
ability to defend itself. He cared only for his own empire. The Cell Empire
remained in the midst of a population boom, for many decades now. Only, with
not enough land. Ever since the eight warlords stopped fighting each other for territory
and population space, and, as a byproduct, killing each other's population and
resources, land became ever sparser. Within ten years, the Cell nation would
have to induce some type of reproductive control—a veritable insult to his
race's very way of living.

For a culture where reproduction is the center of life, new
land must be taken to meet the growing demands.

It just so happened the humans owned so much land.

Roro had no quarrel with obtaining another race's resources
by force.
Prey would succumb to predator. The weak will succumb to the
strong. This is the nature of the universe and all things.

The Empire must grow.

Roro scanned everything in the system, and saw with
cybernetic clarity, nothing in KA924 could withstand even one of his warships…so
he gave the order. "All unitsss, attack! Kill anything that is
human!"

The Empire must grow.

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Human Defensive Outpost, orbiting Kolonides II

Command and Operations Room (CAOR)

"Holy stars!"

"You see 'em?" Ops asked.

"I see them!" Captain Rolan Von Goering tried to
lift his shaking hand from the main holomap controls. It was not an easy task.
His entire body shook with fervor. "St—ars," he stammered. He'd never
been this afraid since he’d been stranded on a spaceship as a kid.

"Uh, captain? You gonna alert the station?"

"Oh, yeah—right," stammered Rolan. "Action
stations, everyone. Comm, signal action stations. Broadcast our scanner data to
every starship or freighter in system. Tell them to get out!"

"Yes, sir! What about us, sir?" Ensign Jessica
Shelby asked.

"I—don't know. W—We're forbidden to leave the system.
We're supposed to defend our posts." Why did he feel so cold?

Sirens sounded across the entire outpost. Inside the CAOR
room, he heard Ensign Shelby's voice blasting, "Action Stations".
Yellow ceiling lights flashed above.

He gazed at the holomap, again. Gigantic red dots kept
moving inward. From this distance, all the computer could project was velocity
and size data.
But my stars, were they massive.
Eight snake capital
ships, plus thirteen of what must be snake missile freighters. Oh stars, why
him?
Why couldn't they bother another system elsewhere in the periphery?
Then, it would be some other captain's mess.

"But sir," Ensign Shelby interjected,
"There's no way we can beat that fleet. We have to scuttle the station and
save our lives. High command will understand."

"And ditch the outpost?" said Captain Rolan.
"B—b-but high command never said to do that in the face of any
enemy."

"But sir, we can't win," Ensign Shelby pleaded,
"And the outpost, even if manned, can't even kill one of their ships.
We're toast. You're asking us to sacrifice our lives for nothing—"

"You know…I think you're right," Captain Rolan
interrupted, "Forget high command." He took a moment to ponder what
he was about to do, then decided that he must do it. He couldn't ask four
hundred crewmen to sacrifice their lives. The defense outpost had no chance
against snake capital ships…it’d been designed to defend against pirate raids
and criminal marauders. Who knew the snakes would appear here, right here, on a
border that didn't even come close to touching snake space? He stared at his
crew. "Signal all hands to the shuttle bay. We're ditching the
station."

"Yes, sir," Ensign Shelby answered with clear
relief in her voice.

Rolan halted. But there was one military arsenal the humans
did have—and thus, Rolan had too—which could damage the aliens. The system's
missile picket. There were about one thousand missiles lying in orbit, around
the second planet, meant to take out small snake scavenging parties, but they
weren't designed to take out an entire fleet.

Still, their presence could be of some use, provided Captain
Rolan, the system's senior military commander, knew how to use them. He
didn't…And worse yet, he was a coward and he knew it.

Captain Roland's illustrious military career and all the
ensuing promotions which led him to his high rank, came as of an old but still
functioning patronage system. The son of a wealthy industrialist and thus, his
father carried tremendous influence in getting him to where he was now.

Roland wasn't ready to command starships…command missile
squadrons. But he needed to try. "Uhh...Jessica, reroute all controls of
military units to our shuttle pod, please."

Ensign Shelby beamed back, while looking in surprised.
"Yes, sir, I'll reroute them before I leave."

"Now, Ensign."

"Yes, sir." Jessica grinned.

"And one more thing, Ops—program a dozen warp packets
with an update on the situation, including the size and composition of the
enemy force, and fly the messenger boats to the central worlds."

"Yes, sir!"

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Shuttle Pod One, Passenger Compartment

The inside of the escape shuttle was cramped like hell.

"All shuttles have left the station, sir."

"Good," said Rolan. "Tell everyone to run as
fast as they can, and when they get outside the gravity well, tell them to warp
out of here."

"Where to, sir?"

"One of the central worlds. Praxis."

"Yes, sir. Adjusting course," said the pilot.

Bump.
The artificial gravity field within the shuttle
adjusted slightly. In the shuttle's passenger compartment, Captain Rolan
touched some of the makeshift controls. He stared at the small adjustable
holoemitter and created a very tiny holomap. He could use it to control his
units in the coming—Rolan felt like laughing—battle.

Computer screen overlays to his right and left, allowed to
him manual access to many of the command systems he'd normally have in the
CAOR. It just wasn't...comfortable.

Now, as for what to command, there wasn't much. Through the
miniature holodisplay, he could see what was left the system's civilian ships
high-tailing it out of the system in a gigantic cone-shaped dispersion away
from the incoming snakes.

The real problem would be what to do for the hundreds of
thousands of civilians on the planet of Kolonides II. Kolonides II. A temperate
world a bit colder than ancestral Earth…with all the climate, plant and animal
life to make it a habitable place for civilians to live. Unfortunately, there
would be no way to could transport all the civilians out of there. They would
have to go to bomb shelters created in case someone—like a pirate or a space
marauder—wanted to kinetic bomb the planet. Inside these shelters, the
civilians could live for weeks and even months before help arrived.

However, the shelters weren't designed for a snake war
fleet. He reserved some guesses as to what the snakes would do. Since the
planet wasn't in the immediate expansion zone of the snake empire, it would be
very likely the snakes would destroy it with no guilt or pity to its
inhabitants. In that case, the civilians would be screwed because snake kinetic
kill warheads would be much stronger than any would-be pirate's. On the other
hand, if the snakes did want to take control of the entire planet for
habitation reasons, they would send ground troops to kill the population's
militia.

If so? Where were their troop transports?

There were none.
By stars.
"Hey Jessica, we
ordered the planetary population to head towards the bomb shelters,
right?"

"Uh, yeah captain, we transmitted an emergency bomb
alert a while ago."

"Good, good." Rolan scratched his head and sighed.
So!
The missile war. He couldn't believe it. He was going to war against
the snakes.
Me!
How could he deal the most damage with his 500-ton
missiles? He knew he couldn't take out their whole fleet—impossible. But he
could try to take out at least something...while he escaped through a shuttle.

If he could just kill one or two ships, it would make all
the difference. High command would award him for killing a ship or two…maybe
even a promotion to a senior captain or something...instead of command of a
periphery world, he could command a real world, with millions of citizens!

So, how would he send his missiles to attack the snake
warships?
What would be the best trajectory?
When would be the best time
to reveal that he had any missiles? Rolan sat beside his computer screens and
thought about it. Then, he realized that any time to launch was a good time.
There was no perfect time to speed the missiles, since he had no other assets
to intersect the snake fleet's inward dive.

As for missile trajectory, he imagined the best route would
be a scattered route, with hundreds of missiles going many directions, all
intersecting with the snake fleet at one critical moment. This way, some of his
missiles would strike the sides of the snake fleet, no matter which way the
individual ships turned their bows to.

Roland tapped into the computer controls. The missile
control screen overlaid across the displays surrounding him.

This is it—I'm really going to do it.

Hmm.. trajectory, trajectory. The best....would have to
be... this!

He entered the trajectory of missiles into the computers.
Instantly, a dozen lines appeared on the holomap, like a really long claw, all
converging at a single point where the computer predicted the enemy fleet would
be—as long as the enemy fleet didn't split up. "Hey Jessica, does this
look good?"

"Uh—I don't know, captain. I'm not trained in missile
combat. I specialized in communication systems—ah…" She glared at the
trajectories. "I guess so?"

Rolan cringed. "Your guess is as good as mine. I never
paid attention to the Tactical Instructor on missile tactics."
Or any
of the tactical instructors, for that matter. What I did pay attention to, heh,
were all the female health 'instructors'.

"Maybe you should ask someone else?" Ensign Shelby
suggested.

"That's not a bad idea."
What would his people
think if the captain starting asking around?
"Hey Paul, can you take a
look at this?"