functional combat vessel, given who the previous owner had been. This was a bit of a conundrum. There was a real possibility that combat may be required and a nonfunctional torpedo room gave him a weary feeling. If this room was in this sort of use then the aft bay was most likely in a similar condition. And checking that room out he needed to go through the engineering compartment and on his first day on board he really didn't think that a wise thing. Engineers tended to be a bit possessive of their domain.
Ryan walked out the room and keyed the door shut behind him. Now how does one go about refitting a ship with no parts and no way to get a hand on any torpedos? There should be a ship in the area but it would have to be a large capitol ship so the Check Mate could land in one of the large hangers. And there was no reason that he could come up with that would require a rendezvous with one. So without letting Rook know who he was, which was not going to happen at this stage he was stuck.
There was one other weapons platform that needed to be checked out and that was the upper and lower turret quad cannon. Referring back to his map of the ship he walked the silent corridors.
When he reached the access shaft it was clear in both directions, up and down. Ryan climbed to the top a wiggled his body into the small space. The turret occupant stood on a small platform and with the use of foot peddles rotated in either direction. The elevation controls were even simpler to operate. The weapon raised and lowered with light pressure on the handles and the firing triggers were integrated into the grips. Just squeeze the grips and the weapon fired out of the corresponding side.
Ryan pressed down on the left foot pedal and the turret swung around until he let off. He raised and lowered the weapons through their firing arc and satisfied that at least the mechanism still functioned. He didn't want to power up the guns since that would set off bridge warnings.
He stayed up in the turret just a bit longer and enjoyed the view as they traveled through hyperspace and figured that if the top turret worked then the lower unit would as well.
YOU ARE READING
Tales of the Check Mate
Научная фантастикаTales of the Check Mate is a story of a man, woman and a search for a purple grapefruit. The innocent seaming orb is rumored to be an unknown weapon of incredible power and it is up to Ryan Bolan, Internal Affairs and Investigations Agent to recover...
