SAW 1: Stars at War (6 page)

BANG!

CRANG!

Elise looked forward as the bridge's frontal wall—did
nothing.

The firing softened. When she gazed at her first officer's
display again, she saw the snake had turned face. It was in the middle of a
180-degree turn.
Where is it going?
Why didn't it finished us?

Then—she realized. Even if it killed her, the four
reinforcements she had coming would encircle and finish the snake. This would
be true, especially since one of her reinforcements, a light-cruiser named
Dajex
had taken a different route. Everyone knew that even a small battleship, placed
in the right place, could turn the tide against something as big as a
juggernaut.

Now, as the snake finished its turn, its main gravitics
began pulling it out of the immediate battlefield. It started leaving, because
it couldn't fight off her reinforcements.

Elise silently cheered. She wanted to say,
"congratulations" to every member of her crew, but she realized there
were about a thousand members in her forward hull that couldn't cheer. They’d
burned in the inferno which almost broke her bridge.

Elise prayed...to whatever god there was. She knew humanity
mostly abandoned religion since space colonization, but times like these—she
truly believed that whoever might be out there, she was glad he looked out for
her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Outside the Cylinder

Flag Bridge, Mobile Battle Fortress VSF
Epsilon
Decimus

T
he Battle of
Orasis V was not a human victory, Prancort sighed.

The humans lost eighty percent, while the snakes lost
seventy-five percent, making it one of the wildest pyrrhic victories to date.
It was only a victory in terms of territory and eventual map domination, but
who the hell wanted to dominate the proto-stellar asteroid field of a newborn
star?

The snakes strategically withdrew, only because Prancort
aimed his battle fortress at their jugular, and after witnessing how powerful
it was, both to Prancort and the snake commander, they decided the future gains
no longer measured up to the potential losses. Their retreat may look like the
mother of all routs, scattering in every direction, but Prancort knew that no
snake captain would do such a thing as long as its fleet commander still lived.
It’d been so sudden. Only an order from the highest level in their command
chain could have done it.

"Cheer up," Prion urged. "You did your best.
You made mistakes. But you also broke three quarters of their main
armada."

"How can I cheer up, when I've lost 900,000 people?
People who will never see home, again?"

"You know the answer to that. You knew you had to risk
them in order to defend our homes."

Prancort closed his eyes. "Things didn't happen
according to plan. The losses weren't supposed to be like this."

"While you are drooping, are you forgetting
something?"

Prancort opened his eyes and stared at her.
"What?"

"Chase them! Our lasers have a range of one hundred
thousand kilometers!"

"Oh, right! The battle isn’t over!" Prancort
entered commands into his interface, then brought the fleetwide audio online.
"All ships…Chase the enemy. Kill as many as you can, but be careful of
traps and counterattacks."

But wait!
There was one more thing…The wounded and
incapacitated ships. If he chased the enemy off the battlefield, these ships
would likely take damage because they would crash against moving asteroids. 
Even a complex collection of objects such as the Cylinder, would dissolve in
shape within a day. He needed to take care of his immobilized vessels. Then, of
course, there would be the issue of prisoners…snake survivors.

Prancort suddenly decided against chasing the enemy. If he
wanted to save his wounded, he needed a proportion of his fleet back to act as
rescue vessels. That meant he only could send a part of his fleet chasing the
enemy. This would allow his enemy to gain overwhelming numbers on those ships
chasing them. It really wasn't like the enemy was routing, in which case you
could chase them with any inferior quality and quantity of units. This was a
clearheaded retreat. Added along the fact, the snake admiral was known for
tricks and deceptions, and suddenly Prancort thought better of it.

The biggest issue was; Prancort could beat them right now in
this battlefield, because he had the power of his Battle Fortress. However, if
he chose to chase them, his slow moving and massive Battle Fortress couldn't
come along. He would be disadvantaged in firepower if the snake decided to
fight back elsewhere.

He entered commands into the interface.

"Why are you calling off the chase, sir?" Prion
asked.

Prancort told her.

"But you're forgetting one thing," Prion
countered, "The enemy is dispersed."

"They'll reconnect as a fleet when they reach a safe
distance."

"But they aren't one, now. You can make it hard for
them to do that."

"But if I send a majority of my fleet and leave a
minority for rescuing my survivors, they can still attack my numerically
disadvantaged units, even if they are dispersed."

"True," Prion paused. "I guess it's settled
then. Soon, it'll be too late to chase them, anyway."

Prancort nodded. This much was true. "Especially,
against that admiral. Who knows what traps he has waiting for us. Speaking of
him, we need to quickly rescue the wounded because once he enters warp, he
could attack a nearby system. We need to be there, to defend it."

A moment of silence went by.

"All the more reason to attack him, now," Prion
reiterated.

"Then I'll—we'll be destroyed. My battle station isn’t
fast enough to chase them. Without it, I can't beat him."

"I see. And, just out of curiosity…Do you respect him,
sir?"

Why wouldn't he? "He is an incredible opponent,
whatever his name is." Prancort gazed ahead at the giant holomap. The enemy
units receded in the massive volume of space. Those retreating red dots became
smaller and smaller as separation between the two scattered fleets increased.

It's not over. Not by a long shot. You have sparred with
me well, unknown creature. But one day, I will beat you.

But not today.

Prancort returned his attention back to his data screens to
guide the rescue effort.

Battle Statistics

Battle of Orasis V (Star of Orasis)

Date: 4091 AD (Galactic Year 1720), September 8th-9th

Result: Human Victory

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

Leaders (FVE) : Admiral Prancort de Gaulle / Vice Admiral
Prion de Caille

Leaders (Cell) : Master Commander Roro Cro-Drignon

Motivations (FVE) : Territorial Defense

Motivations (Cell) : Territorial Expansion (Overpopulation)

Strength (FVE) : 160 Warships (5.2 billion tons) / 1.5
Million Humans

Strength (Cell) : 203 Warships (56 billion tons) / 4.9
Million Insectoids

Losses (FVE) : 127 Warships ( 4.2 billion tons) / 889,529
Humans dead / 219,403 Injured / 0 Captured

Losses (Cell) : 152 Warships (41 billion tons) / 2.3 Million
Insectoids Dead / 829,511 Injured / 1,382,995 Captured

Part of: Early Insectoid Expansion Campaign (Show)

"By not chasing the enemy, Prancort did something
he would regret for the short remainder of his life."

"Galactic history could have been changed with a
single decision."

Act 2

Chapter 9

In transit from Orasis V towards Worber's World

Remnant of First Fleet

Admiral's Quarters, Mobile Battle Fortress VSF
Epsilon
Decimus

The war was not over.

Prancort sat within the comforts of his black cushioned
couch. Alone, thinking hard.

The enemy ran, but he was unsure where they ran to. He had
only repelled one enemy invasion. He had a hunch that the snake admiral
retreated his forces back to its own territory, to recuperate losses, but
Prancort wasn’t certain. In any case, as long as the snakes could still make
warships, there would be future invasions. In order to prevent them from making
warships, Prancort needed to be the one to invade…

However…he couldn’t invade the snakes…yet.

With only thirty starships left, he needed time to
recuperate losses and rebuild his own fleet.

In the meantime, Prancort did everything possible to gain an
edge in future battles.

For instance, one of these things would be to examine all
the new technologies the snakes left on the battlefield of Orasis V. All the
snake wreckages were a treasure cove of technological wonders Prancort’s
Imperial Engineers would feast on.

As for the interrogation of snake prisoners of war, it would
be a dead end. Useful information on how they live, but not how they think as
warriors. The snake prisoners were extremely reluctant to give information on
certain military aspects like strategy and war tactics. Luckily, he had other
sources to tell him useful information on military strategies and tactics.

Prancort smiled. After the battle, the fleet captured over
1.3 million of these centipedes. However, the main find would be after
scavenging and studying the schematics of the snakes' broken starships. He
felt  glad he won the battle and taken control of all the debris the snake war
fleet left behind. Otherwise, humanity's specialists would never have the
opportunity to study so many new technologies. Already, the possibility of
reverse engineering the snake's starship systems made potential reaping
benefits seem likely.

He especially felt content about reverse engineering the
snake's grazer mounts. The snakes version of the gamma ray laser was years
ahead of human's own x-ray lasers. If the war continued for many years, it
would be very likely humanity would have its own version of the gamma ray
laser. There were other technologies, too, such as the snake's gravity and
inertial nullifying device, which allowed their ships to carry on much more
mass, it would have reaping potential as human scientists adapted it to their
own starships.

There were many more innovations which would be tiny
improvements on what humans already possessed. However, Prancort sighed, his
engineers had yet to find a ‘library’ or ‘engineering encyclopedia’ of all
snake techs. The Holy Grail…which was a massive manual on all snake
weapons…failed to be found. There were, however, several duds, or dead data
cores, such as each snake starship's main computer, which were now useless to
human scientists because the snakes built in a failsafe system that destroyed
all the computer cores upon the ship being boarded by human marines.

If only one of the fail safes failed to activate, then
Prancort's scientists would have access to all the snake's technological
database...

If only!
Then, he would have a surefire way of
beating the snake admiral.

Now, when he thought about the snake admiral, Prancort sat
upright on his couch. He still felt unsure if the snake admiral retreated his
fleet or was on his way to attacking another human world. He thought about it,
long and hard, and despite the negatives, it excited him. Military strategy
always excited him.

What will you do next, unknown creature? Will you go home
and lick your wounds? Or…will you assault another human world immediately?

Star System Orasis V

Engineering Ship
Jackson’s Folly
Bridge

The mother of all harvests
, Raymond Patel mused,
gazing at the wreckages, laid out all across the proto-stellar cloud. The
snakes left over 150 wrecks on the battlefield. The largest of these wrecks
were fifty kilometers long. Simply getting the snake survivors to surrender
these starships did wreak havoc for the Imperial Marines.

Now, when the snake survivors had all been rounded up and
put onto prison barges, it was up to the Imperial Engineers to dissect the
enemy wreckages.

General Raymond Patel controlled the entire dissection
operation.

He stood on the bridge of the engineering ship
Jackson’s
Folly
in his green imperial engineering uniform interlaced with red
stripes. He gazed at the hovering blue computer screens. Each screen showed the
progress on each of the 150 wrecks, many of which were broken into even smaller
pieces.

“We’re half-done disassembling that snake grazer array,
General,” said a subordinate.

“Very good,” he replied, “Continue breaking it into pieces
and pushing the pieces inside the collector ships.”

“Yes, sir.”

Raymond Patel sighed and sat back in his chair. It’d been
chaos these past few days to get all the wrecks in a vector that wouldn’t
collide with all the stray asteroids. The proto-stellar cloud that encircled
Orasis V wasn’t stationary by any means. All its contents constantly moved. As
a result, pieces of snake starships were often on collision courses with
asteroids and small rocks.

A mess…A real mess.

It would be up to the Imperial Engineers computer
predictions to make sure all the stray snake vectors didn’t collide with each
other or the giant kilometer wide asteroids. To do this, Patel hooked up
maneuvering jets with the snake pieces to keep them safely stationary—Far from
a simple matter.

Raymond Patel knew he couldn’t hope to get all the pieces
outside of the proto-stellar cloud. One of his subordinates insisted they move
all the pieces out of the proto-stellar cloud where they would be safe from
collisions. But, the battle occurred too deeply inside the cloud. They didn’t
have enough maneuvering jets to move all the pieces out.

No, all Patel could hope for was that his team of 200,000
imperial engineers would dissect the important equipment embedded within the
snake pieces in time. For instance, that snake grazer mount.

At this moment, Patel gazed at the work of all of his
200,000 Imperial Engineers. He eyed one monitor in particular. It showed five
thousand engineers working on a snake gamma ray laser mount. They were cutting
it out of what’d once been a snake heavy-cruiser. This grazer mount is
particularly important because when the snake cruiser exploded, the entire array
miraculously stayed intact.

Patel knew high command—that is, Fleet Admiral
Prancort—would consider such a piece indispensable.

Suddenly, alarms sounded inside the bridge.

Ring. Ring.
Danger! Danger! The monitor read.

Patel leaned forward in his seat, staring at the monitor
where five thousand engineers worked on the snake grazer mount
. DANGER.
DANGER, COLLISION COURSE DETECTED
, the monitor read.

Patel quickly glanced above and gasped. The overhead holomap
showed a 10 kilometer asteroid heading towards the grazer array on a collision
course.

“Scotty! Use the maneuver jets!” Patel yelled out.

“I am, sir! But the jets are not moving the grazer array out
of the way fast enough!”

“Shit!” Patel swore. “How did this asteroid avoid detection
earlier?”

“I don’t know, sir!”Lieutenant Scott Henderson replied, “Our
computers analyzed all the vectors of all the asteroids and broken snake pieces
within fifty thousand kilometers of the battle and we moved the pieces as
safely as possible. It must have been a fluke inside the programming or some of
the asteroid collisions we failed to predict. Some factor—?”

“Tell the imperial engineers…” Patel lurched forward.”…to
vacate the grazer array!”

“Yes, sir!” Lieutenant Henderson then bellowed into his
microphone, “All engineers working on snake grazer array 802, please disembark
and vacate the premises to a safe distance. A large asteroid is on a collision
course! Please vacate to a safe distance! I repeat all engineers of grazer
array 80…“

Patel could only watch at his monitors as the asteroid got
closer to a collision. Shit! And he needed that grazer array intact! Its impact
on humanity’s understand of snake technology was tremendous! 

He watched and watched and watched. Some of people
dissecting the grazer array slowly climbed out. But there were many that didn’t
get out. They were trapped.

Patel gazed at Lieutenant Henderson. “Tell those people to
hurry!”

“I am, sir! All engineers working on grazer array 802,
please vacate the premises ASAP! An asteroid is on a collision—”

The 10 kilometer wide asteroid slammed into the grazer
array. A titanic whoosh of an explosion blew fire and debris in all directions.
The snake grazer piece crumbled as the giant asteroid smashed into it.

My stars
—
there’s humans in there—
Patel sucked
in his breath.

By the time it was over, the asteroid cut through towards
the other side. Its momentum like a behemoth carrying it through the snake
grazer. The grazer, on the other hand, became sprawling debris. It shattered
into a thousand pieces.
Whoever didn’t make it out
—Patel counted—
perhaps,
as many as 2000 humans died in that collision.

This is the price we pay to defend our nation…
“Helen.” Patel glanced at a colonel from the med unit. “Get medic teams toward
that broken grazer mount immediately. A lot of people are going to need help.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Scotty, recheck the asteroid vector projections.” Patel
sighed. “Let’s hope an error like that doesn’t happen, again.”