Battleship Raider by Paul Tomlinson (book recommendations website .txt) 📗

moved inwards towards the centre, there was less evidence of structural damage. Everything seemed normal, nothing crushed or twisted into crazy angles. You could imagine an end of shift klaxon sounding and crew members streaming back down to their quarters to wash up before heading to the mess hall. These imaginings were the closest that I came to seeing ghosts.

The last cubicle in the corridor held only a single bed, belonging to a sergeant or some other lower-ranked officer, presumably. The wall opposite the bed was filled by a mesh-fronted locker that held weapons. Handguns and rifles. I popped the padlock. The weapons all seemed to be loaded. In the bottom of the locker was a row of flashlights. I picked up a couple that showed as being fully charged. The weapons could wait – for now. I asked Trixie to tag the location so we could come back to it later. Depending on what other loot there was to carry away, I would pick up a few guns on the way out.

Around the corner was a small medical bay. There were half-a-dozen of these scattered throughout the ship, as well as the main trauma centre that housed the operating theatres. There was a refrigerated locker filled with blood products and medicines, all long past their use-by dates. And there was a cupboard full of vacuum-packed dressings and other equipment. This was another location to tag for later. I doubted I would be back – there were much richer pickings on the deck below – but you never know. This might turn out to be the first of several visits I made to the Celestia.

I figured I’d seen all this deck had to offer. Time to head downwards. By definition, Security was going to be housed in a location that was more secure. And the increased protection meant it was also the ideal place to house the most valuable items of equipment. There would be robots down there and other equally saleable items of hardware. And also the greatest prize of all, the Navigator, shielded in its own (allegedly) impregnable vault. That sounded like my kind of challenge.

How do you travel between decks on a battleship? You take the elevator the same as anywhere else. With only emergency power available, I was thinking that the elevators would be offline. Aren’t we always told not to use them in an emergency? The elevator cars usually descend to ground level and sit there until the emergency is over. If you want to escape, you have to use the stairs. I wasn’t sure if battleships had stairs. I’d been on space stations and passenger liners where a staircase swept majestically down into the ballroom, but this was set dressing designed for impact rather than practicality. Warships don’t have ballrooms. But surely they must have some sort of utilitarian stairway for use in case of fire or flood? What did they do when the elevators broke down? Even on a military vessel you must occasionally see an out-of-order sticker. There had to be some kind of manual back-up.

Looking around me, I couldn’t see any emergency exit signs. Presumably the crew were expected to be familiar with the escape routes. They probably got woken in the middle of the night by sadistic sergeants running fire drills and could get to the assembly points with their eyes closed. Or perhaps arrows lit up to direct you to safety when the alarms went off. I considered setting off the fire alarm to test this, but I didn’t want to make that much noise – especially when I didn’t know how to turn it off. My attention was drawn back to the elevators. Even if they weren’t operating, the shaft still went straight down to the next level.

My journey to the wreck of the Celestia had been organised at short notice and I had travelled south with only the bare minimum of equipment. My plan, such as it was, was to improvise when I got here. With hindsight, there were a few things I wished I’d brought with me. A bigger flashlight was one. And another was a ‘burglar’s friend’ – a jemmy or crowbar – which would have been ideal for prying open the elevator doors. I was thinking that I’d have to try using the largest screwdriver from my tool roll when I spotted something more promising. At the end of the corridor close to a fire alarm button there was a box on the wall. Behind its glass front, I could see a red-handled fire axe. I used the screwdriver to lever the box open. The axe was heavy in my hands. It wasn’t an ideal substitute for a jemmy but it was sturdier than my screwdriver.

I pushed the sharp end of the axe head into the gap between the elevator doors, wedging it in as far as it would go. Then I used a hammer to knock it further in. When most of the head was buried in the gap, I gripped the end of the handle and turned, forcing the doors apart. There was a lot of resistance from the mechanism that was supposed to keep the doors safely closed when there was no elevator car behind them, but gradually the gap widened. I didn’t want the doors snapping shut suddenly when I had my fingers between them, so I slid a fire-extinguisher into the gap to stop them closing. I know, I know, you’re not supposed to use extinguishers to prop doors open, but I’m not big on obeying regulations.

Setting aside the axe, I used my hands to drag first one door and then the other, and then I got first my shoulders and then my whole body in the gap and used my legs to force the doors fully open. The elevator shaft was dark and the smell of dead vegetation wafting up from the lower floor was stronger. I paused to draw breath. I’d lost track of how long