flying

Manually pivoting the battlesuit and using its retro-thruster protocols as he approached, he rerouted engine power to the weapon systems and eye-sketched a potential frame of entry. Coldstar sent a series of stereoscopic pulses at the area he had highlighted.
'High commander, the hull integrity at this location would be impenetrable even to a fusion gun blast,' said the battlesuit. 'There is only one viable vector of entry at this level.'
'The gun port?'
'The gun itself.'
Farsight frowned for a moment before twitching his olfactory chasm in resignation, already zooming on the colossal macro-cannon that jutted nearby. It was one of dozens of such weapons that allowed the devastating broadsides of the Imperial ships.
The prototype panned a matrix of thin laser beams across the structure. A gold symbol of entrance appeared above the framework breakdown on Farsight's thrust/vector hex. The giant cannon's barrel was large enough to accommodate even a state-of-the-art battlesuit.
'Estimated time until this gun fires again?' said Farsight.
'Six point two microdecs by current estimates, high commander.'
'Then let us wait.'
The battlesuit's feet mag-locked to the outside of the battleship's hull, hidden in the shadowed lee of the vast superstructure that surrounded the macro cannon. Farsight pulled into a crouch.
'Two microdecs,' said Coldstar.
Anticipating a deafening thunder of gunfire, Farsight engaged the audio cut-out and braced for the worst.
The world seemed to turn black and silent for a moment as the tremendous pressure wave of the macro-cannon firing blasted through the prototype. Were it not for the gel systems that kept its control cocoon sacrosanct, Farsight's innards would likely have been pulped by the extreme pressure wave, but he had chosen his position wisely, and O'Vesa's genius did the rest.
'– – BREECH CLOSING NOW, COMMANDER – –' came the alert on Farsight's command suite. He reopened audio, disengaged his mag-locks and launched off. The battlesuit sprang away, pivoting elegantly to come around the lip of the gigantic cannon.
As Farsight peered into that black cylinder, he felt icy claws of doubt push into his mind. What if the breech system voided some kind of casing after each shot, mangling his battlesuit in the process? What if the projectile had been a boarding torpedo, and he was about to emerge into a weapons deck full of heavily armed gue'ron'sha reserves? Worse still, what if the breech had a portal at the barrel's end, and it simply closed around him like an airlock? Would it keep him trapped within the giant cylinder until another warhead was loaded, ready to blast him to specks of stellar debris?
'I advise against this course, high commander,' said Coldstar. 'We should return.'
'Noted,' said Farsight, 'and overruled.' Punching the controls, he sent the prototype speeding over the gun's lip and into its barrel.
Ahead, red lights flashed as a great riveted portal slid slowly into place. Farsight ramped up the prototype's speed, keeping his extremities and gun systems tucked in close. The dim light at the barrel's end diminished, like accelerated footage of a solar eclipse. For a horrible moment, he feared he had miscalculated. Cold sweat dried on his temples, his lips, the nape of his neck. He made the battlesuit's profile as thin as possible, angling it sidelong to pass through the rapidly diminishing gap.
He did not know this suit. He did not know its shape. One error, one fin scraping against the cannon's side or its heavy inner rim, and he was as good as dead.
Then, suddenly, he was through. A microdec later the heavy circular door clanged shut behind him. There was a sense of equalising pressure, a clanking of bolts and vault-locks, and the inner door of the breech clanged open. A thin crescent of light spilled through, growing wider as the primitive Imperial mechanism readied itself for another warhead.
Farsight waited until the aperture was large enough, then burst through into the hangar beyond with a sharp exhalation of triumph. Held aloft by the prototype's sophisticated jet pack turbines, he analysed the industrial scene beyond.
The munitions deck hangar, its vaulted roof hung with great chains that clinked in the gloom, was a vision from some primitive underworld hell. Red-lit and cavernous, it was filled with a thousand labour-serfs, each bent under the whip of a cruel slavemaster. Together the slaves hauled chain-lashed munitions shells the size of transmotive cylinders into position.

Farsight: Crisis of Faith