SAW 1: Stars at War (5 page)

CHAPTER SIX

Flag Bridge, Mobile Battle Fortress VSF
Epsilon
Decimus

P
rancort's grip
spasmed.

Damn those K-ships!
He should’ve known! He should
have brought some K-ships to the battle himself, but they were so useless in
open space—how could he have known the enemy would bring K-ships in case of an
asteroid battle?

All his fault. It was all his fault that he didn't think of
it himself. He accepted an engagement in the close-in battlefield, yet he
didn't bring K-ships. "It's my fault," Prancort said aloud.

"Now is not the time to regret. Concentrate on the
battle!" Prion urged. "Concentrate on what you
can
do!"

Everything went to terrible. The K-ships. The snake frontal
armor. Everything. He wanted to quit, he truly did. A voice in his head told
him it was already over, and how he should evacuate while he still had forces
left, but another voice told him he could still win. The second voice won.
Prancort would not give up. He wasn’t a man who gave up.

He did have one arsenal left. It came slowly, but it was
almost there. His own starship, the battle fortress
Epsilon Decimus
.

Above the Cylinder

Command Nexus, Heavy Cruiser CE
Gro-Banok

"Destroy that human ship!" Master Commander's
voice rang in Gro-Banok's anterior lobe.

The suicide attack down below worked perfectly. The
antimatter explosion killed four human ships. Gro-Banok didn't even know about
the plan, but he’d trusted Master Commander, and Master Commander had not
failed him.

Now, all he needed to do was use his heavy-cruiser to
destroy the remnant of the flotilla, the one that got away, because it was
slower than the rest.

Gro-Banok peered at the remains of the two human starships above
him. They’d fallen into the trap as well. They failed to factor in the Cell
juggernaut flanking their top, and they died miserable pointless deaths because
of lack of judgment by their commander.

Then, of course, he considered the single starship below, a
human juggernaut that barely had controls of its gravitics. It bled flames from
its hull….practically dead, but it still could run away.

"Destroy it!" Master Commander Cro-Drignon ordered
in a slithering voice. "Give the prey no quarter!"  "Yes, my commander."
Gro-Banok yelled at the pilot of his heavy-cruiser.

Abruptly, Gro-Banok decided he would do the honors himself.
Using all twenty-two legs, he inputted commands into the central computer to
about-face and turn 180 degrees to shoot down the lone human juggernaut.

Do not run, prey. Accept your death!

Inside the Cylinder

Bridge, Juggernaut VSF
Asterix

Donovan was running…running into that hole. His entire
starship felt so heavy. It felt like he couldn't move an inch. But slowly,
slowly, he was accelerating.

Hold together, baby
.

He knew the snake heavy kept eyeing him, turning to meet
him.

We're getting there.
Asterix
slowly entered
the hole in between the two asteroids. While the seconds ticked away, he felt
more and surer his back would be shot. Then,
Asterix
slid past the two
asteroids on both sides. "Helm, turn us to the left! Use the left asteroid
as cover to protect us from snakes in our back."

"Y—yes, s—sir."

Donovan glanced over at the helm officer. The man was
literally shaking. "You okay, Chris?"

No response.

"Chris?" Donovan saw a limp body in a heavily
padded suit, lying in front of the helm console. Donovan removed the safety
restraints from his captain's chair and dove towards the helm station. He
glanced briefly at the unconscious man, but more importantly, he entered
commands into the ship computer himself to veer
Asterix
to the left.

All around him, bridge officers watched as Donovan jammed
the helm controls like the seasoned veteran he was.

Twist. Twist. Turn. Tap. Tap.

An explosion shook the ship. That sounded like it came from
aft.
The snakes are shooting at us.

The
Asterix
finished turning, and now the shots
sounded from the ship's left.

It's better to be shot from the side than from the rear
.

Slowly, the
Asterix
slid into the no-hit zone out of
line of sight from the snakes behind it.

When the
Asterix
got behind the asteroid, he realized
he would be safe for a while—until the snake followed him into the hole.

"Captain, look!" the weapons officer, Carly
exclaimed.

Donovan stared at the holomap and realized he now stood in
position to see everything inside the cylinder or ‘chasm’. The Asterix was the
only ship out of the eight-ship flotilla that made it to the destination—it was
all up to him, now!

He watched as the forty starships battled it out in front of
him. Entire walls of humans and snakes forward facing each other and lasering
the frontal armor of their opponent. Only Donovan's
Asterix
had
side-shot opportunities at the twenty or so enemy vessels beneath. His ship
would be the game changer!

"Weapons—Carly!" Donovan called out, still
standing in front of the helm controls, "Shoot the smallest ship who is
side-facing us! Hell…shoot em all!"

"Yes, sir!"

On the big holomap, Donovan saw Asterix's lasers connect
with each of the snakes inside the cylinder. Not doing very much damage to
either one, it sure distracted them from their frontal battle.

"Sir," Carly called back, "Three, no—four
snakes below are turning to face us!"

"Shoot the ones that haven't turned, of course!"

"The turned ones are firing, sir!"

Donovan held onto the helmsman's chair as the combined power
of four snake starships grazer-beamed into Asterix's forward hull. The bridge
shook from the almighty blasts and amidst DC's yelling, Donovan wondered what
it was all for.

We don't have enough attack-power to make a difference on
the flanks of the cylinder! If only more of our flotilla made it!

Earthquakes rumbled through his super-armored bridge. If it
felt like this in here, Donovan felt certain plasma and secondary explosions
flamed through his ship. The
Asterix
had already been through six
battles—six battles—worn and beaten as any ship could get.

Hold together, baby!.

For what?
Donovan didn't know and couldn't think of a
clue!
Just don't lose antimatter or reactor containment!

Donovan walked back to his captain's chair. Moving away from
the helm's console, he became certain he wouldn't be moving the ship any time
soon. He needed to forward face his assailants. He staggered and fell, but his
pads kept him from injuring himself.

Amidst the yelling and screaming from the bridge officers,
and the, "Are we gonna die?" from Carly, Donovan finally reached his
captain's chair. He wrote a quick message through the arm pad to the admiral.

He received a reply back, immediately."Stay put,"
it said.

At the base of the Cylinder

Flag Bridge, Mobile Battle Fortress VSF
Epsilon
Decimus

Block D-9-D existed as a massive cylinder with the walls
coated by asteroids. Prancort's slow moving battle fortress, the
Epsilon
Decimus
, finally arrived in D-9-D by sliding into the hollow open base of
the cylinder, on the ‘human’ side.

When it got there, it gained line of sight on all the snake
starships within, especially the ones on the ‘snake’ side.

"Fire!" Prancort ordered.

All two thousand
fortress-sized
x-ray laser mounts
fired into the snake's cylinder fleet. The sheer volume of firepower tore into
the two dozen snake warships like dolls being shot with live ammo. For the
snakes that had turned to shoot
Asterix
, lack of forward armor
protection meant
Epsilon Decimus
' lasers burned them into a helpless
mess of smoldering debris.

Inside the Cylinder

Bridge, Juggernaut VSF
Asterix

Donovan saw the battle fortress.

By science, the thing was massive! He’d known how big it was
by seeing it on the holomap, but only by having it fight in the same Block, did
he realize its true size.

Being eighty kilometers long meant a whollop of surface area
for its laser mounts. Equipped with thirty fusion reactors, it was easily the
most powerful and most expensive arsenal on the battlefield. Its shield output
overwhelmed
Asterix
by over six times. Any snake grazer beam that
connected with it looked like feathers striking an elephant.

Returning back to reality, Donovan gazed at his bridge.
People came back to their senses. The world became palpable—again. They thought
they were dead, but were instead—saved by a monstrosity.

"Weapons—do we still have weapons?" Donovan asked.

"Uhh—yes, sir. I got about thirty forward laser mounts
still reading green," said Carly.

"Can we use them without blowing up the ship?"

"I—I don't know, sir!"

Donovan paused a second to consider the risks.
"Fire!"

The
Asterix
's remaining lasers dove into the unturned
snakes below. The snakes below were in dead man's land. If they turned to face
Donovan, the fortress would kill them. If they didn't turn, the fortress and
the other human starships combined would kill them, except slower. Meanwhile,
Donovan's lasers pummeled the snake defenders gradually with each hit.

"Uh, captain…?" Carly called out.

"I see it…"

The snake heavy-cruiser which chased Asterix, already
followed him into the hole. It now turned sideways, forward-facing Asterix's
right armor, in order to shoot Donovan as soon as its momentum cleared the
asteroid.

"Helm! Turn the—”Helm lay on the floor of the ship,
unconscious. Donovan got out of his captain's chair and dove towards the helm's
console, but it was too late.

The snake heavy-cruiser's point blank grazer fire smashed
into Asterix's side armor and the ship's smoldering corridors—whose flames were
just being put out—now became filled with plasma, metal-tearing hull fragments,
and body parts.

"Reactor two, three, and four are down. We're gonna
lose containment! I don't know how much we can take!" DC shouted out.

But then it stopped. Donovan looked to the right and saw a
hulking mess that once was a snake heavy cruiser. The mess retched up secondary
explosions.

Donovan's captain's chair beeped. Donovan dragged his war
weary body away from the helmsman console and pressed his chair's arm pad. He
received a message from the admiral. The display read, "Never fail to
shoot someone in the back."

Donovan laughed, and his bridge crewmembers, uncertain at
first, joined in. Standing up and grinning, Donovan stated, "Devil's
Luck."

—then, the snake exploded.

Inside the Cylinder

Battlespace

At first,
Gro-Banok
's entire outer hull seemed to
bubble, then it cracked. An antimatter containment failure split apart
Gro-Banok
into many fragments. The tremendous explosion, besides killing eight thousand
insectoids, severed the spinal nerve cord that held the insectoid ship
together. Fragments of the forward section split from the aft, expanding away
from the middle at collision velocities.

The expanding fifty million-ton fireball seemed awe
inspiring, until collision alert alarms rang out in the bridge of the
Asterix
.
A gigantic two million-ton hull fragment headed straight for
Asterix
's
epicenter. It slammed into
Asterix
like a throwing knife. The cut
crashed into
Asterix
's starboard hull, breaking through dozens of decks.
Explosions broke floors and corridor walls, burning anyone even near the
rushing fireballs.

The knife did not stop there. It inserted itself into
Asterix
's
nerve center, the bridge. The bridge of a Viron battleship was extremely
well-armored. So much so, it completely stopped the knife. But at deadly costs.
The people in it, however, were as fragile as homo-sapiens could be. Any sudden
change in gravities could crunch body parts, and despite the padding on the
crew's uniforms, nothing could prevent the right wall of the bridge from
splitting in half, and blowing dangerous metal fragments in every direction.

Just as the antimatter explosion severed the snake
starship's spine, a metal splinter zoomed across the bridge and severed Captain
Drake Donovan's spine. The upper part of the captain flew diagonally. The lower
part of the captain smashed into the ground and skidded on the floor to his
left.

"Medic!" yelled the survivors, amidst the chaos
and the burning retching flames.

CHAPTER SEVEN

At the base of the Cylinder

Flag Bridge, Mobile Battle Fortress VSF
Epsilon
Decimus

I
nside the
gigantic cylinder, snake battleships became wretched hulks for every minute
that went by. While his eight-ship flanker flotilla at the top failed to reach
its destination, except the juggernaut
Asterix
, which lay crippled—a
smaller detachment of flankers traveled through the cylinder's bottom and
managed to reach flanking position…unimpeded. This, combined with the awesome
power of the battle fortress
Epsilon Decimus
, created a pincer movement,
or a semi-perfect ‘bear's claw’.

The snakes inside the cylinder faced annihilation.

Another snake heavy-cruiser on the snake's wall exploded in
a tantalizing fury of fire and hull fragments. Prancort watched as his powerful
fortress-sized lasers pummeled a snake's forward armor as if it partially
didn't exist.

I can't believe I almost retreated…
Prancort watched
the exploding battlefield.
What will the snake admiral do now?
Somewhere, far away in the distance, a snake commander must be thinking of a
new plan. Maybe he’d been too surprised by the sudden turn-around to consider
it.

Prancort knew one thing, however. If that snake admiral
didn't withdraw all his forces from the cylinder, and soon, he would lose
everything in Block D-9-D. Well, not everything. There was still snake forces
sporadically spread out outside the cylinder.

There it is! A retreat!

Inside the cylinder, the snake battle wall suddenly began
turning. Every snake ship began twisting towards a crack or exit.

"Captain, fire on all the turned starships!"
Prancort ordered.

"With pleasure," said voice from below.

More snakes exploded or became crippled, at an increasing
rate. If the fortress's guns could do this much damage against snake frontal
armor, shooting side armor was like shooting an egg. Every half a minute, a
snake exploded.

When the last snake left the cylinder, Prancort counted the
charred snake hulls inside. It was a graveyard. Twenty-three snakes were dead,
at a loss of twelve human ships. Five snakes escaped. The gain-to-loss ratio
wasn't that great. Certainly, the destruction of the eight-ship flotilla hiked
up the losses. He wondered if flanking with those ships was even worth it. By
flanking, he exposed those eight ships to much greater risks. They did fail,
but how could he have known there was a hidden K-ship planted right in front of
their reentry point? Could he have accomplished much less losses by keeping
them where they were?

Absolutely—his battle fortress, which equated to a whole
fleet of snake ships, would have made a difference even without flanking.

Prancort puzzled over it, and then decided in the future, he
could win through overwhelming force without flanking, because of his battle
fortress.

His attention returned to the map.

The battle was not over.

He looked outside the cylinder. Skirmishes occurred in the
surrounding Blocks all around D-9-D. The human fleet's total death count was
75%, meaning a full three quarters of his pre-battle fleet now lie as sprawling
debris or incapacitated. The snakes lost 70%, of which a significant number
came from losses in the cylinder.

Prancort had forty ships still operational, a dozen of which
were inside the cylinder, including his battle fortress. Should he take them
out and engage the enemy fleet? He thought about it. If he didn't, what would
he do? He would have to withdraw all his forces into the cylinder, and they'd
rack up considerable losses from retreating.

By science, I have the most powerful machine humanity has
created to date. I'm going to use it.
“Captain, move our battle fortress to
the snake's side of the cylinder."

"And do we stop there?"

"No, keep moving until it exits their base."

"Yes, sir!" The captain smiled.

Prancort inputted commands into the fleet computer, and the
dozen other ships inside began moving as well.

Inside the Cylinder

Bridge, Juggernaut VSF
Asterix

Helmsman Lieutenant First Class Chris Mayson woke up.

What happened?
He must have blacked out. How strange.
He’d never fallen unconscious before. When he looked at his helm console, he
saw nothing. All his instruments were turned off. All the displays were blank.
What
happened? Had the ship been turned offline?

No. No way. They were in the middle of battle.

Then, he felt the heat. It was hot inside his padded suit,
and his entire body sweated. He wanted to take off his helmet, but first, he
checked the oxygen inside the bridge.
Yes, it was safe.

He took it off. A rush of smoke filled his nostrils. He
gazed around and saw flames. To his right, Chris gasped as he stared at the
wall. It looked like someone had exploded a bomb on the other side and a
gigantic gaping hole filled with sizzling wires and torn metal all darted
inward.

What the hell happened here?

"My God—is everyone, ok?" he called out.

"No, Chris," a woman's voice responded.

"Carly, that you?" Chris glanced at the woman.

Carly Kemph, tactical officer, sat exasperated near the
weapons console. Her instruments and displays blanked out, too. "What
happened to you?" she said.

"I blacked out," said Chris.

"Are you ok?" Carly blinked.

Chris looked at himself. "Not a scratch. Where's the
captain?"

Carly pointed at the disfigured body on the floor,
surrounded by medics.

"My god—the captain? Did I cause that? This is the
first time I ever blacked out. It never happened to me before. I'm
really—"

"He's lucky you blacked out. If he’d been sitting, that
metal fragment would have sliced his head off. But he was standing. You saved
the captain, Chris."

"How do you know? You watched him get hit?"

"Everyone was watching. He was talking about Devil's
Luck."

Chris stared at Donovan's, or what was left of his, upper
torso. He’d literally been sawed in half. "Can they heal him?"

"Heal him? No," said Carly. "Save him? Maybe.
Can't say the same for Commander Rajek…"

"Where…" Chris then saw Paul Rajek's scattered
remnants and shuddered. A mesh of blood and flesh smacked onto the wall on the
far side. "Holy mother, is that him?"

Carly nodded.

Stunned and confused, he gazed at Carly.

The woman just stared into the fire, not moving, not manning
her station.

Well, what was there to man? Then, he looked over at the
captain. The guy, if he lived, would never walked on two legs, again. Then, he
glanced at what was left of the first officer on the wall.

The two remained silent, except for the moaning in his
suit's radio. Was that DC? Or was it Comm?

"So, who's captain, now?"

"You are, Chris."

"Oh—Ah…"

Above the Cylinder

Bridge, Light Cruiser VSF
Harrington

Elise was dead, or so she thought.

How the hell could I still be alive?
With a snake
juggernaut in front of her, and two snake heavies below her?

Yet amazingly, she could still breathe fresh oxygen from her
suit.

"Damage—damage control," she called.

"DC is gone," said voice on radio. "I'm
manning her operations from my station."

"Ripley, how about it? Tell me what's left."

"We lost all three fusion reactors. The engineers shut
them down before they melted the coolants. Seventeen out of fifty sections are
reporting green-green. The rest are yellow-orange or red-red-black. Most of our
top section is full black."

It made sense. The juggernaut had been firing at her top
before she turned it to face him. "And our bottom section?"

"Orange to brown."

Amazing.
She wished she could get the holomap back
online. That would be a heaven's gift. How did she survive two snakes shooting
her bottom? "Do you, uh, have map information?"

"Yeah," Commander Ripley replied, "it's all
online. We just don't have the main plot."

Elise closed her hands and thanked whatever space deity
who’d given her good fortune. An explosion shook the bridge. She could hear a
clunk
,
then a
slam
. A
clang
pushed her against her seat straps.

Space deity my ass.
Elise sat in the darkness. She
studied at her arm pad. It was black. She tried rebooting it, but no luck.
Then, she slammed it with her padded gloves.
Still, no luck.
Unbuckling
her safety straps, she stood up and tried to keep her balance amongst the
shaking and the clang sound of metal tearing away.

When she got to Ripley's station, she gazed over his
display.

"Map plot?" said First Officer Ripley.

"Hell, yes," grumbled Elise. "Can't tell
people to shoot—if I can't see."

"Not a lot of that left."

His display changed from DC view to a two-dimensional
representation of a three-dimensional sphere ten thousand kilometers in diameter.

My stars, everything is still here.
"Zoom it in,
please," Elise requested.

The map went from ten thousand kilometers down to one
thousand, then down to five hundred kilometers.

"Change the view. Can we see it from the side?"

"Sure."

Two debris fields hovered beside her, the aftermath of a
reactor explosion from both a human destroyer and a heavy-cruiser. Below, two
hulking fragments of exploded snakes also littered side by side. Above her, a
partially damaged snake juggernaut continued to fire on her forward armor.

Clang. Clang.

Elise couldn't understand it. How did she actually escape
her ill fate? Somehow, out of the two snakes under her, one destroyed and
another one disappeared. The snake above her looked badly damaged.  "Zoom
out," Elise ordered.

The map turned one thousand kilometers.

"Zoom out, again. Wait—never mind." There. Another
human heavy had intervened on her behalf. It lay dead after being destroyed by
the snake juggernaut, but not before killing off a snake heavy below her.

But what happened to the one that disappeared?

She didn't know, and then realized she may never know if the
juggernaut finished her.

Rumble. Rumble.

"Are gravitics online?"

"No, ma'am," said helm.

"Damn…Weapons?"

"Firing, ma'am. Twenty forward laser mounts. “
Shake—Strike that. Eighteen firing."

"I'm not ready to die," Elise voiced aloud.
"We got reinforcements, right Ripley? Zoom out." Her eyes glistened.
Four human ships headed out of the cylinder towards her. The battle inside must
have gone well—or they were retreating.

Doesn't matter, she shook her head. What mattered was that
there was help arriving.

The bridge spasmed and for a second it seemed gravity
plating deactivated.

Would help get here in time?

Elise realized it didn't matter how far they were, as long
as they had line of sight on that snake juggernaut.

Get line of sight people!

Bridge, Light Cruiser VSF
Dejax

Icheb von Shuer realized he had better luck than his friend
Donovan. That exploding ship fragment looked like it had jammed right into
Asterix's bridge, and Icheb wondered if his friend was okay. Every attempt he
tried to message
Asterix
failed. The big juggernaut's comm system
obviously went offline. It dropped off the network, too, since its transponder
no longer signaled. This only happened when things were very bad. He could see
it through the probe network, of course, but it looked it would explode any
minute.

There was nothing Icheb could do for Drake Donovan and his
crew. But there was something he could do for Elise de Manchu and hers.

But in order to help her, he needed line of sight on that
huge fifty kilometer ship which seemed poised and just about to blow her to
pieces. True, it was damaged, but still a snake juggernaut. "Helm, could
we plot an alternate course?"

"The admiral told us to go this way."

"I know but we won't get there to help in time."

"Up to you, sir."

"Good, go sideways towards coordinates 441,732,240.
That should give us line of sight on the juggernaut a minute earlier."

"Aye, sir."

Two minutes later...

"Sir, the juggernaut is moving!"

"Which direction? Forward or backwards?"

"Backwards!"

"Do we have line-of-fire on him?"

"No, sir! His moving practically negates our line of
fire!"

Icheb bit at his lip. This wasn't a good situation at all.
It looked like the humans would lose another ship—Elise’s
Harrington
.
"Do the other ships have line of fire on him?"

"No, his moving negates theirs, too."

"Smart devious bastard."

Above the Cylinder

Bridge, Light Cruiser VSF
Harrington

Elise's bridge shook more and more like an avalanche had
fallen. Her starship was only a light cruiser, and she’d taken a good four
minutes of front-front action from a snake juggernaut.
It must be a new
record.
"Gentlemen, this is good bye."

The shaking and explosions seemed to come even closer. With
her reactors shut down, she didn't have to worry about a fusion overload, but
damn it—she was just a light cruiser. The juggernaut's grazers should be able
to peel away the layers of armor and hull from her strongest side—her front.

The explosions became louder and louder. She knew that
pretty much everyone on her forward hull would be burned crisp. Soon, the
juggernaut's grazers ought to be able to dig into her heavily armored bridge...