Free SAW 1: Stars at War by Lee Guo

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