Augmented by Anthony James

Author:Anthony James [James, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-03T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

BK> Priority 1 target: Estral ship Vastiol.

Keller gave the command for the Gundar’s Istoliar drive to fire. It took a moment to warm up and then it threw the spaceship into high lightspeed. Keller monitored the flight and cut the engine a tiny fraction of a second later. The Gundar re-entered local space, this time ninety-five thousand kilometres from the Vastiol’s positron trail.

BK> Exit into local space complete. Locking on to Vastiol. Max range of overcharge repeater = 99800 klicks.

The Gundar’s main armament had varying capabilities, depending on the range. At anything less than one hundred thousand kilometres, it was absolutely devastating.

The particle beam turret fired three times in rapid succession, each expulsion sending an invisible beam of energy into what appeared to be an empty area of space. The repeater was stopped by an energy shield and the Vastiol remained undamaged, still with its stealth modules active.

BK> Damnit, they have a phase-shifting shield.

The Vastiol’s battle computer caught up with the sudden attack and sent the ship into lightspeed.

BK> Target ship has entered lightspeed. Running fission model to determine its destination.

Almost every spaceship left an identifiable cloud of energy behind as a result of the transit into lightspeed. Any would-be pursuers with the technological knowhow could generate a predictive model from the cloud and from this model, extract the details of where the fleeing ship would emerge. Keller’s augmentation had more than enough processing brute force for the task.

BK> Model 80% complete. Inbound phase-shifting missiles from Class 2 Estral vessel. The Gundar’s shields have absorbed three overcharge particle beams from the enemy warships. They’ve picked up on my location quickly. Shield capacity: 95%. Model complete, entering lightspeed.

Keller activated the Istoliar drive in pursuit of the Vastiol and before the phase-shifters could crash into the Gundar’s energy shield. The Estral warship hadn’t gone far – only a billion or so kilometres off into an area of Isob-2’s solar system that wasn’t close to anything in particular. The Gundar’s drive shut off and it entered local space.

BK> The Vastiol is keeping within the antenna arc. Searching…

JN> Get the bastards. I can think of better places to die than this miserable piece of rock.

The fission prediction model wasn’t always one hundred percent accurate, but on this occasion, it brought the Gundar to within twenty thousand kilometres of the Vastiol.

BK> Target locked, firing.

The overcharge repeater fired again and again. After the fourth shot, the power drain on the Vastiol’s shield was sufficient to shut down its stealth modules and the enemy spaceship abruptly came into view. It was seemingly undamaged, but Keller was sure it didn’t have much in reserve.

The Vastiol’s four escort ships appeared from lightspeed and started firing at once.

BK> Targeting Class 2 vessel with stasis emitters. Success.

The Gundar’s stasis emitters made no sound, but they did produce a noticeable spike on the Istoliar drive’s power gauge. The most potent of the Estral escort vessels was shut down completely. Every single one of its onboard systems went offline and its Obsidiar-Teronium drive stopped generating power.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.