Fleet Vanguard by Anthony James

Author:Anthony James [James, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-09T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Having defeated the maintenance robot and sabotaged the Trivar warship, Joe Nation sprinted on towards the front section of Xur’kd. He had absolutely no doubt the enemy would step up their efforts to find him and he didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity of the Istoliar cores when they came. Not for the first time, he reflected happily that it wasn’t only the Estral who relied solely on external defences for their spaceships. It made his life so much easier once he got inside. Had the Trivar fitted the insides of Xur’kd with an extensive array of sensors and miniguns in the same way most Space Corps warships were, Nation was confident he’d have been killed long ago.

The forward exit from the Istoliar room brought him eventually to an open area, from which he was able to go in one of several directions. Nation had no desire to stay on the lower levels, and the Trivar had helpfully left a stairwell here for his use. Keller got in touch again over the neural link. He spoke to her briefly and then got back to business.

“Fetch? What the hell is she on?” he chuckled.

Before ascending, he peered along the other three passages, wondering if he could reach any other Istoliar cores. The left and right corridors weren’t long and he went along the former until he emerged into a room.

“Well I’ll be,” he muttered.

Nation found himself in another long, narrow space. The ceiling was lost above and the side walls curved with the shape of the spaceship’s outer hull. Tiles of alloy clad the floor and Nation’s sensor recognized the material as having a similar composition to the heat shielding used in warships designed to soak particle beam strikes.

The reason for the presence of this material was easy to see. Dozens of missile magazines stood vertically against the inner wall of the spaceship. Each magazine was little more than a Gallenium-driven gravity conveyor that slid the missiles from left to right and then lowered them into the launch tubes hidden behind the far-right end of the loading mechanism. From there, the missiles were dragged into position by machinery hidden inside the armour plating, ready for launch.

Nation stared upwards and saw the tips of the warheads protruding above the tops of the magazines. To the untrained eye, it didn’t look safe having the explosives exposed, but if the Trivar design was anything like the Space Corps equivalent, these weapons wouldn’t detonate until they were activated by the targeting system.

BK> So they do have missiles.

Nation remembered he’d given Keller access to his feed and it appeared she was keeping an eye on him.

JN> Looks like. Big ones as well.

BK> Can you make out anything which tells us about their capabilities? Payload, range, speed?

JN> The propulsion sections are hidden. If I had to guess, I would say big payload, long range, high speed.

BK> Go closer.

JN> Yes ma’am.

BK> And stop being impudent.

JN> Yes ma’am.

The nearest magazine was a short sprint away and Nation dashed towards it, keeping a close eye out for more robots.

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