Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 440 06.0439: "Hunter, or Prey"

"Missile torpedo spotted on the port side!"

Following a shout from the crew, the soldiers sitting near the portholes in the cabin all looked towards the blue fire flying towards them.

"May the Emperor bless us with peace..."

Just as the triumphant officers and soldiers were facing the oncoming heavy Seeker missiles with solemn and uneasy expressions.

"Damn you, Lei Mu! You bastards! You're fucking bastards! Hey! Get out of the way!"

The bespectacled commando sergeant spoke in a low Gothic dialect with an ancient Terran accent and cursed fiercely at the alien creatures that attacked from the void.

After cursing, he ran to the gun position, personally took up the close-in defense gun on the side of the transport ship, aimed at the incoming Seeker missiles and began to fire.

"I caught up with it!"

Fasha sped past in the Skyhawk 1, skillfully advancing the machine gun shells a certain distance and blowing up one of the missiles flying towards the transport plane.

When the second shot was about to hit the transport ship, it was directly blown up by the close-in defense gun operated by the commando sergeant who volunteered.

"Wuhu~" After successfully hitting the target, the sergeant jumped up and shouted excitedly.

Captain Zhao wiped the sweat off his forehead with his officer's white gloves and shouted to the soldiers packed into the transport plane, "It's all right, get back to normal!
Let’s sing a military song to cheer up our naval colleagues: Ready, set, sing!

Join the army together to clean up the enemy dust! Swear to sweep away the Titanium Slaves at all costs! "

In order to ease the soldiers' tense mood, the officers took the lead in leading the soldiers in singing a morale-boosting military song.

"Be patient and give up your homesickness! Be generous and show your patriotism!
Going to the battlefield with a proud smile on your face, with your flag flying in the dark!
The air blows Taibai into the Pleiades, and the strength pulls the long arrow to shoot the Sirius! "

The inspiring and loud singing echoed in the transport ship.

In the void, the hunt continues.

After the Epic's engineer checked and confirmed that it was complete, the mechanical valve opened. With a hissing sound, a large amount of air escaped into the void along with the round metal object.

A set of cables was released from the rear of the Epic, at the end of which was a device shaped like a small copper satellite.

That is the 'Fortune Teller' detector that can continuously send out detection waves.

The device could be fired from a torpedo well by an Imperial warship, or it could be towed in this form.

"Be quiet. Be silent."

Horatio put on the monitoring headphones himself, his eyes like an eagle, fixed on the tactical panel display.

drip…drip…

"Not around here."

"Turn left," Horatio ordered without turning around.

The Epic sped out of the gas cloud and turned, with the probe it was towing also swinging in a smooth arc.

"Captain, should we turn on the ship's bird detection radar?" Harvey asked.

"No!"

Horatio flatly refused: "Before we find the exact position of the enemy, any action that exposes ourselves may cost us our lives. Be careful, gentlemen."

As time passed, the Epic was still unable to determine the location of the enemy mothership. Facing the vast void, the calmness that concealed a crisis was eerie.

But this also makes the Iron Hand skill that Horatio activated at the end on the planet Far useful.

『Activation: Void Commander (Basic)』

The scene within the surrounding 3000 cubic kilometers area was projected directly into his mind with an accuracy that even the most advanced detectors could not achieve.

Although there was still a 'fog of war', the areas detected by each ship were being transmitted to the Epic in the form of electrical signals, and then transmitted to his mind through the neural plugs, allowing him to clearly see the situation in the surrounding known airspace.

"Could the enemy ship have escaped?" David Beatty proposed a possibility:
"Our transports performed torpedo evasion maneuvers, and there were escort ships hunting down the frigates. If I were a Tau commander, I would have retreated when I saw both of the sub-ships sink."

"Stop making noise! ​​Be quiet!" Harvey discovered something. Facing the source of the noise next to him, he elbowed David Betty and whispered, then tightened his monitoring headphones and continued to concentrate.

"Wait, there's movement." He suddenly raised his head, his face unable to hide the excitement and nervousness.

Suddenly, his tightly closed eyes fluttered open: "It's an enemy missile!"

He jumped and shouted, and Horatio, who had gained detection vision, almost immediately discovered the incoming heavy seeker missiles in his void sandbox.

"The launch point is to our left. She must have discovered the signal wave from our towed detector! Immediately track the missile trajectory and lock onto the enemy target!
All ships have it, and from now on, use relative coordinates!"

Horatio immediately issued a series of ship operation orders in an orderly manner.

The relative coordinate system is a polar coordinate system that extends from 0 to 360 degrees clockwise, split into 180-degree sectors on the port and starboard sides, which allows the captain to quickly determine the enemy's position during single-ship combat.

"The missile passed through the plane below our ship, the launch direction was 86 degrees to the port side, the target was the signal source of the towed detector!" "Let's pretend to be more realistic, retract the cable, and turn off the radiation wave source after 10 seconds."

"Retract the cable and turn off the radiation source in 10 seconds!"

laugh!laugh!
The cable was retracted by the motor, causing the probe's trajectory to appear similar to that of an Imperial battleship accelerating to avoid it.

On the Tau warship in an unknown location, the blue-skinned alien stared at the projection and smiled smugly.

"Take your stubbornness and go away, you haters, for the sake of the Greater Good."

Two more heavy Seeker missiles were fired from the bow of the ship, heading straight for the center of the gas cloud.

"Enemy missile! Port 73! Phase ZL! Accurate target!"

"Right now, full left!"

The Epic turned sharply like a hound smelling blood, and rushed towards the enemy mothership hidden in another cloud of gas.

With the help of the gas cloud cover, even if it is now traveling at superspeed, the shadow field that can only operate at half power can still hide the whereabouts of the Epic before it breaks out of the gas cloud, because its front-projected radar reflection wave is small enough.

"Torpedo No. 4 is ready, wire-guided!"

"Wire connection completed!"

"Open number three! number four! Torpedo silo!"

"Torpedo wells number three and four are open!"

"Hey, our boss must have caught the enemy!" Old man Qiao sat on the hanging beam and knocked on the torpedo he had just repaired with the wrench in his hand: "Look at this big flying stick, it's so thick and long, it must be very powerful when inserted!"

Although he belonged to the damage control team, in order to show his loyalty to Horatio, he volunteered to take his two sons to maintain torpedoes when there was no damage control mission, and he also wanted to learn more skills of food management.

On the command bridge, all officers held their breath and stared at the gas cloud directly in front of them.

"Torpedo silo number four, fire!"

Whoosh!
The Helios torpedo with a wire jumped out of the launch silo and sank into the gas cloud. It was connected to a wire that was only 500 kilometers long. Without exceeding this distance, the mechanical priests of the torpedo department could control the torpedo to turn.

Soon, the faint glow of ion engine fire appeared in the gas cloud - that was the iconic color of the engine of the Tau warships.

"The third torpedo was launched at the specified lead time!"

The Tau warship was slow to get going, and with the Seeker missile launch port located in the bow, it would now surely perform a turning maneuver.

The first wire-guided torpedo launched was biased to the left, so the enemy ship could only turn right, otherwise it would collide head-on with the No. 4 torpedo.

Seizing this opportunity, Horatio asked the torpedo officer Fideo to calculate the lead time for the right turn.

"Turn on our ship's auspicious detection instrument! Quick!"

Diddoo!

The Epic sent out an active detection wave.

The obvious heat signature of the Tau warship's engines, combined with the Epic's high-powered detectors' signal wave positioning, made it impossible for her to hide in the gas cloud.

"It is indeed the 'Envoy' class! You guessed it right, Captain!" After observing the specific image features and comparing them with the manual, Louise reported to Horatio in an admiring tone.

"She's done for today!"

After locking the specific position of the enemy ship, Fideo used a torpedo calculator to quickly calculate the lead time.

"Torpedo lead calculation completed!"

"Launch torpedo number three!"

Whoosh!
Another super-giant steel rod, one hundred meters long and twenty meters in diameter, flew towards the enemy ship that had already turned.

Horatio held up his stopwatch and counted silently in his head.

The Envoy-class light cruiser had already turned around at this point and was unable to launch heavy Seeker missiles at the Epic.

But the ship's ion cannons and railguns still fired at the approximate location of the Epic, attempting to make a final resistance.

A chaotic volley of railgun shells and plasma balls exploded around the Epic, and the scattered matter, which had lost most of its power, formed a shock wave that impacted the slender and slightly lighter hull. The Epic was shaking violently as if it had been hit by fists and feet.

When the first wave of explosions spread throughout the ship, many crew members were caught off guard and fell.

"What's wrong? What's wrong?! Were we hit?" Old man Qiao asked in surprise as he looked at the swaying movement around him.

"Wow! Dad, what's going on?! It hurts!" Old man Joe's youngest son wailed continuously. A small wrench that fell from the maintenance platform bounced and landed on his head, leaving a big bump on his messy hair. He covered his head and crawled under the torpedo to avoid the small thing falling from a high place.

"Everyone stay calm! Our ship is in a normal battle with the enemy ship. All departments are performing their duties step by step. The damage control team is checking for cracks on the outer hull!" Leidos, the chief officer of the engineering department, picked up the microphone and issued maintenance instructions to the damage control team via wired communication.

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(End of this chapter)