SAW 1: Stars at War Read Free

back there.
Only twenty rear laser mounts.”
    “Is that enough to take it out? Fire!” Donovan ordered,
“Helm, turn us 90 degrees so our side laser mounts can fire on it.”
    “But that’ll expose our side to the snake squadron!” Chris
at weapons replied.
    “We’ll die if we don’t take it out! Do it!”
    Asterix’s twenty rear laser mounts spammed twenty beams at
two second-intervals into the snake K-ship.
    The K-ship looked like gigantic cockroach, except with a
very vast abdomen that held its antimatter stores. Its forward hull carried all
the propulsion units and defenses.
     Did it have a crew? Donovan would never know and didn’t
care to find out.
    The rear laser mounts crashed into the K-ship’s forward
hull, but to Donovan’s surprise, he saw green-blue shield scatter! It had
shields! I guess the snakes equip some of their ships with shields after
all. Shield blasts splattered as the Asterix ’s laser beams continued
to prick the K-ship.
    “It’s closing to two hundred kilometers,” the helm reported.
    The Asterix finished its 90-degree turn, and its
forty-side laser mounts added to the fire that splashed the K-ship’s shields.
    “Sir!” helm called again. “The Pendam turned, too!
They saw it!”
    Donovan looked over at his ally.
    The light-cruiser Pendam had a much faster turn rate,
because it was much smaller. Within a minute, it’d fully turned a 180, while Asterix kept turning to face the K-ship. The Pendam fired a full frontside of
two hundred cruiser-sized lasers. They dove into the K-ships shields, and
instead of making a blue-green splash, they directly hit the K-ship’s armor, or
whatever protected it.
    The K-ship rocked as both Asterix and Pendam jammed their laser beams into its rather unprotected hull. Explosions easily spasmed
across its forward hull and more secondary explosions followed. Within seconds,
the K-ship was no more, but in its place stood a gigantic white-hot explosion
followed by a similar shockwave that expanded and expanded.
    “Shockwave incoming!” said damage control.
    —until it enveloped both Asterix and Pendam .
The bridge of the Asterix rocked back and forth and its shields bled its
iron-cobalt matrix off.
    “Shields at 10% and falling!” damage control advised.
    My god, that was a big explosion, thought Donovan.
    The bridge buckled and gravity shifted sideways as the
inertial stabilizers tried to compensate. His armpad shook and people on the
bridge who tried walking couldn’t. Everyone held onto something.
    Finally, the shockwave of highly energized plasma created by
the dust and small rocks of the asteroid field passed.
    “Shields gone!” damage control noted.
    Donovan gazed up at the neighboring starship Pendam and realized it also lost its shields, but because it had a smaller surface
area, the shockwave did relatively proportional damage to it. Luckily, the
K-ship exploded one hundred and fifty kilometers away. Closer—and both ships
would’ve been neutralized.
    Both Pendam and Asterix now turned their backs
at the enemy squadron in an effort to destroy the enemy K-ship. This was no
good.
    “Sir! The enemy behind is firing!” damage control shouted.
    Three snake starships…a light-cruiser and two heavy
cruisers—fired their full frontside grazer mounts at three hundred kilometers
away.
    Virtually point-blank, Donovan saw the Pendam ’s rear
explode from numerous grazer hits.
    The Pendam was a light-cruiser, and its rear armor,
the weakest of all its armors. The enemy fire smashed its rear hull. Beams of
gamma-ray photons from all three snakes machine-gunned into Pendam ’s back,
wrecking internal equipment and explosions flamed every quarter of its hull.
    Donovan winced and already knew what would happen before it
happened.
    The Pendam ’s power plants, with its fusion reactors
and its antimatter stores, lost containment and exploded in another dazzling
array of bursts.
    The Pendam was gone.
    I’m next… “Helm! Full speed ahead!”