SAW 1: Stars at War (17 page)

Paul, the Tac Op, walked through the compartment and knelt
to see. His grisly bearded face transfixed on the holoimage of the missile
routes. "The routes are ok, captain. But I would make the loops a little
bit wider, so the missiles hitting their aft have a longer time to build up
speed. As for the missiles attacking their front, I would launch those missiles
away from the warships as early as possible, so that they have space to
generate a great amount of speed in time for the rendezvous from all the
missiles. Remember, the faster the missile, the less time they are exposed to
enemy point defense and counter missile fire. In general, the faster the
missile, the harder it is to take them out, and the more kinetic damage they'll
make, when they do hit."

Rolan rubbed his chin. "You're a God-send Paul. I'll do
exactly as you suggest."

"You also have to be careful, because those warships
could fan out when they see the missiles appearing on their grav wave
detectors. No—strike that, they won't do that since it decrease their ability
to defend against the missiles."

"What I don't understand," said Ensign Shelby,
"Is why their missile boats aren't launching snake missiles at us?"

"Probably conserving their ammunition for a real
encounter," Paul answered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Star System KA924, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Second Cell Invasion Fleet

Hiveship Roro Cro-Drignon

Fleet Command Nexus

O
ne thousand
small gravity waves appeared around the second Planet. Roro saw them through
his neural link with the hiveship's computer.

Missiles!
.
Yes... they had to be missiles
.
They were too small to be starships, and they accelerated too fast…either
missiles or fighters, but Roro couldn't understand why his enemy, the system's
human commander, would launch fighters at him. Fighters couldn't take out his
capital ships, and if the human commander wanted to take out his missiles with
fighters, the humans ought to wait until he launched his missiles first—which he
wouldn't launch, not until he met human starships, since his missiles were
irreplaceable.

So…those fast moving gravity waves emerging from the second
planet must be human missiles.

Good thing, he didn't spread out his warships early to hunt
those escaping civilian ships! Roro's mandibles clicked happily.

Perfect!
Roro already devised a plan just in case
human missiles appeared.

In addition to taking out those orbital construction
facilities' weak shields when his starships entered laser range, and of course,
kinetic bombarding the planet's surface, thereby riddling the system of human
inhabitants, he prepared a special surprise just in case the humans sent
missiles.

But first…"All ships, fire kinetic kill slugs at the
planet! Destroy all life! Leave not one human alive!"

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Shuttle Pod One, Passenger Compartment

Rolan could still see everything sincehis shuttle pod
remained tied into the Defense Outpost's military sensors. His miniature
holomap showed the gravity waves of a thousand kinetic kill dots being
accelerated through the snake starships' grav rail emitters. These kinetic kill
slugs headed for the planet.

My stars, the planet's civilians are dead! Those are
military grade snake kinetic kill rounds!

Nearby, Jessica prayed. It became obvious she had seen it,
too. "May the stars have mercy," she whispered.

Rolan's attention returned to the holomap. At least...his
missiles could take out some of the snake warships. It didn't look like the
snakes had any counter to that...

The holoemitter beeped. New dots appeared on the
holodisplay. Grav signatures confirmed: Snake fighters! 1000...no, 2000...3000
snake fighters!

"Uhh—oh," Rolan stammered.

"They got fighters, too?" said Jessica. Inside the
shuttle's passenger compartment, all five bridge officers cried in despair.

"That can't be true!" Ensign Laforte lamented.

"We're screwed!" Lieutenant Chaffer cried out.

Rolan shut his eyes in despair. It was true. Not only did
the planetary population die, but he would die, too. If the snakes had
fighters, those fighters could accelerate faster than his shuttle pod. Besides
shooting down his missiles, it was entirely possible the snake fighters could
overtake their shuttle pod, and all the escaping shuttle pods, plus a decent
amount of civilian ships, before everyone reached the system's gravity well's
edge and escaped into warp.

Cries of despair filled the compartment. "We're
dead," Jessica voiced his thoughts.

"We're not screwed," Lieutenant Paul Tinkerslay
piped in.

Everyone turned their attention towards Paul.

"What do you mean?" Rolan asked.

Ops officer Paul sat up straight. "We can delay those
fighters from hunting down our civilian ships by using our missiles as bait. By
running erratic patterns in our missiles, and keeping them as far from the
civilian ships as long as possible, we can use them to threaten an attack on
the capital ships and pin down the snake fighters. That will give the rest of
us the longest time to escape."

"But we're deviating our missiles from the most optimal
path!" Lieutenant Chaffer interjected.

"The optimal path is the path that will lead the
fighters away from us. It's useless to think we can still damage the
battleships," said Paul. "The snakes have 3000 fighters while we only
have 1000 missiles. Our missiles are dead. We can only use them to pin their
fighters away from us so we can escape."

It made sense, thought Rolan.
We can still live! We may
not be able to save the planetary population, but we can save ourselves...
He
nodded. Obviously, Paul's strategy would be the best way to go. It was useless
to think he could damage the capital ships now since they have so many
anti-missile fighters. "Very well. Paul, why don't you take command of the
missile trajectories?" Rolan stood up, giving Paul a seat in front of the
holomap.

"Will do, captain. I'll try to save us as much time as
possible."

"Wait," Ensign Laforte interrupted, "What if
we accelerate all our missiles on a straight line towards the snake
battleships, instead of curving around to hit their backs? Won't our missiles
gain enough speed, so they would be harder to shoot down by their
fighters?"

"It won't work," said Paul. "Our missiles
won't pick up enough speed, and against 3000 fighters, we can expect a survival
rate of thirty to forty percent of our missiles before they smash into their
battleships."

"Is that too bad?" Laforte asked.

"It won't destroy any of their battleships."

"But it will damage them. And what if we aim for the
fleet carriers?" said Laforte.

"The battleships will position themselves in front of
the carriers and missile ships. But yes, you are correct. Three hundred
missiles aiming for a snake warship's front might damage one warship, but you
forget to factor in snake ECM countermeasures, and snake anti-missile missiles,
as well as point defense lasers. That one battleship we'll want to strike will
be heavily defended by the other seven ships."

"What's the likelihood we'll severely damage one snake
starship from the front?" Rolan asked, weighing the options.

"Not high, sir. And if we do that, we'll almost
guarantee that
not all
our civilian ships, including us, will survive
long enough to escape into warp. The enemy fighters will be positioned to take
the shortest route to chase us down before we reach the system's gravity
edge."

"I see." Rolan rubbed his chin. He thought about
it long and hard. He could either chance a case where he might damage one snake
capital ship, however unlikely, or he could choose to guarantee his safety, and
of course, those of his crew. Rolan was a selfish bastard. He glanced at
Jessica. "Then we'll go with your original plan. Have a seat, lieutenant.
Let's use our missiles to buy us as much time as possible."

"Thank you, sir." Paul sat down at the missile
directory screen.

Star System KA924, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Hiveship
Roro Cro-Drignon
, Fleet Command Nexus

As expected, the human commander split his missiles in every
direction, practically inviting Roro to use his fighters to chase them down,
while the human commander escaped.

Roro could either chase the missiles or possibly save some
of his battleships from a missile convergence later. Or, he could ignore the
missiles and send his fighters to chase down those escaping ships. But Roro had
a third option. He could split his fighters up. Some could chase the missiles.
Some could chase the escaping ships. He had more than enough fighters for both,
but this was assuming the humans already launched all their missiles. 

Roro had held his fighters back precisely because of the
missile threat. He would hold more back until he was certain the humans
revealed all their missiles, but—now—he felt certain the humans had no more
missiles. He felt it. An animalistic, primitive, predatory gut instinct from
millions of years of evolution as a predator.

All in all, the escaping human civilian ships weren't much
of a target, but the system's military commander, and all the grav dots that
separated from the system's primary military installation were.

Roro's twenty-two feet entered commands into his interface
gel, ordering his fighter squadrons to split up. A portion continued heading to
intercept the human missiles. A portion now chased the human ships.

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Shuttle Pod One, Passenger Compartment

"The snake fighters are splitting up." Paul sat
back, patting his curly, brown hair. "Ah, this is an oversight. I didn't
think they'd do that."

"Well genius, what do we do, now?" Rolan snapped.

Paul gazed back at his commander, as if struggling whether
to find a solution or confront the sarcastic remark. The man thought about it
for a minute.

Everyone gave him a very heavy and polite silence.

"I don't know—I think—we're screwed. We could
uh...Let's just hope they don't chase us. Wait. No—they’re heading straight for
us."

A long solemn moment passed.

Ensign Laforte then, came up with a brilliant, sad remark,
"So, since we can no longer save ourselves in either scenario, why don't
we aim all our missiles straight into the fronts of their battleships? Let the
missiles build up speed and hope for the best?"

"But that will mean we won't divert away the portion of
the fighters chasing said missiles," said a very sad Paul. "We'll be
allowing more snake fighters to chase the civilian ships down."

More silence.

Captain Rolan stared at his crew. Time to be a man, but my
stars, he couldn't stop his fingers from shaking. "I—I think it's best to
take out—No, I mean damage as many snake warships as we can. Forget using the
missiles as a distraction to save ourselves and the civilians. That's not what
the missiles are for. Besides, many civilians will die anyway on the planet, a
hundred more civilian ships won't matter."

"It's true," Ensign Laforte agreed, "The
kinetic rounds will kill hundreds of thousands on the planet's surface. By
using our missiles as a diversion, we'll save at most ten thousand more sailors
on those civilian ships, including us."

"I can't believe what you guys are saying! You're
talking about human lives!" Jessica exclaimed. "Humans lives can't be
seen like that. Just because a hundred thousand lives will end, doesn't mean
you can sacrifice a thousand more!"

"But if we don't damage those snake warships as much as
possible, the snakes will kill even more later on. The snakes must be stopped.
This surprise invasion must be stopped!" Ensign Laforte slammed her fist
into the wall.

"There's no guarantee we'll damage any," said
Paul.

"We have to try," Laforte urged.

A choking silence filled the compartment. A silence filled
with sickening fear and rough decision making. Each choice resulted in their
own deaths…regardless.

Rolan wanted to cry, until he realized everyone stared at
him for the final decision. Rolan had always been a coward. This was a fact.
But even cowards could make great moral decisions when faced with a no-win
scenario."Alright people, let's do this! Let's send the missiles straight
at their throats, right through those fighter screens. Let's chance it."

Star System KA924, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Hiveship Roro Cro-Drignon, Fleet Command Nexus

The missiles are changing directions?
Instead of
heading away in order to loop around and hit me, they are speeding straight at
me. Rather than divert my fighters away, the prey is sacrificing himself to
wreck destruction on the enemy, on us.

A noble prey.
Roro became awed by the insight of the
creature commanding the human forces. To act so nobly while meeting certain
death...

All the more reason such a prey must be eliminated. If this
particular creature survived, he or she would add to his race's collective
prowess and certainly, Roro didn't want the humans to have more talent. He
already had to deal with the one supreme human who forced a stalemate at the
battle of Orasis V.

Roro's feet tapped into the gel interface. His commands
beamed down the command chain, connecting to every fighter.

In his mind, all his fighters coalesced into a gigantic wall
in front of his battleships, to take out as many incoming missiles as possible.

Star System Kolonides, Periphery of the Viron Empire

Battle space

One thousand human missiles accelerated at maximum gravitic
drive of 600 Gs towards the snake starships. Each 500-ton missile carried a
fusion payload of over 500 megatons of explosive power in its concentrated
tritium mesh in addition to its kinetic energy at impact.

After four hours, the human missile squadron accelerated to
a speed of nearly 100,000 meters per second when they entered the laser range
of the snake fighter wall. The snake fighters fired, taking down missile after
missile with their fighter-sized lasers while decelerating at maximum thrust.

It took fifty seconds for the incoming human missiles to
overlap past the snake fighters, at which point the fighters launched their
smaller counter-missile missiles. These small 50-ton missiles were ideal at taking
down small targets like fighters and missiles. The mini missiles intercepted
the human missiles, mostly detonating in proximity but rarely a dead on hit.
Two hundred human missiles died this way.

While the human missiles passed, the snake fighter continued
firing lasers, taking down hundreds more.

By the time, the human missiles exited, the snake fighter
screen's laser envelope, only four hundred human anti-ship missiles were left.

These four hundred missiles dove towards the snake ships.