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

I had been inside the wrecked battleship. This weird red-lit metal labyrinth seemed to have a time zone all of its own.

I lay down on my stomach and edged forward to shine the flashlight down into the shaft. The beam of light showed me the grid-like metal structure with the cables running down the middle – and not much else. The light wasn’t strong enough to penetrate as far as the next level. I was about to reach into my pocket for a coin to drop down when I felt a breeze on the back of my neck. It was coming down the shaft.

Adrenaline surged through my body and I pulled myself backwards out of the shaft without even thinking about it. Something big and heavy whooshed down the shaft and I felt it brush past the top of my head.

I lay on my back for a moment and waited for the sick feeling in my stomach to fade. I didn’t want to think about how close I had just come to being decapitated by the plunging elevator car. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. I looked around, trying to see the camera that had to be watching me, but in the red half-light it was hard to see anything clearly. From this point on I would have to assume that I was being observed, that my movements were being tracked.

Knowing that the elevators were operational, I could have jacked into the control system to call a car to take me down to the next level. But I didn’t fancy putting myself into a closed metal box that the ship could take control of and send me plunging to my death or leave me trapped between floors until I starved. I had also entirely gone off the idea of climbing down the elevator shaft.

“Trixie, call up blueprints for the ship and show me emergency exit routes for my current position.” I was whispering, afraid of being overheard, which was crazy. If the ship wanted to listen, her sensors could probably pick up the gurgle of my stomach digesting protein bars.

The plans showed that there were several staircases connecting the two levels, but none close by. In the event of a fire or other emergency, the crew had to use ladders built into the conduits that ran between floors. These narrow tubes carried the pipes and cables that provided services around the ship – water, electricity, data, sewage, and the like. Engineers called these conduits roach runs because no matter how sophisticated the technology became, those bugs always managed to find their way in. You’d have thought they would have evolved into stainless steel roaches or something by now, but no, their ugly prehistoric form still does the job fine.

I popped the hatch open on the nearest access point and shone my torch inside. It was a much smaller space than the elevator shaft. A ladder was screwed to the wall on one side and the other was filled with pipes and cables of various sizes and colours that disappeared down into the darkness. I didn’t see any cockroaches but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I also couldn’t see any sign of cameras, sensors, or weapons – but again that didn’t prove anything. For my own continued well-being, I should assume that defences of some kind had been placed in the conduits. I tried to imagine what a devious military mind might come up with. Lasers criss-crossing the tube ready to chop me up like zucchini? Or could the ship seal off parts of the network and flood them with carbon dioxide?

I took the hatch off its hinges so that the ship couldn’t seal it shut behind me. I was about to toss it aside but dropped it down the tube instead. I watched it fall until it disappeared beyond the light from the flashlight and then I listened as it clanged down in the darkness. There were no flashes of laser weapons and no sounds of explosions. Of course, the ship might be watching and could have turned off the defences temporarily. Perhaps it was trying to lure me into a trap? I had to hope that she wasn’t that devious.

I fastened the red axe to my backpack and threaded my arms through the straps. I had some of the smaller tools in the pocket of my jeans and the pistol in the holster on my belt – I hoped these would be enough to deal with any challenges I met on the way down. I had a spare flashlight attached to my belt and I could quickly unsling the axe if I needed it. I went back down the corridor and made a quick scouting exhibition to try and find a helmet of some kind, but all I came up with was a moth-eaten baseball cap that I didn’t want to put anywhere near my hair. I was just going to have to hope that the ship had nothing it could drop down on me while I was in the roach run.

I stepped into the tube and grabbed hold of the ladder, tugging at it to make sure it was firmly screwed to the wall. The rungs of the ladder felt warmer than I’d expected. They were probably a composite made of recycled plastic waste but the clammy feel of them made me think of bone for some reason – like I was climbing around inside the ship’s skeleton. Trying not to shudder, I started downwards.

Chapter Eight

Initially, I had been confused by the distance between the crew quarters level and the security level below. The deck between them couldn’t be seventy feet thick, could it? It wasn’t clearly marked on the blueprints, but it turned out that there was a sort of subfloor between the two levels. A basement or attic, depending which of the levels you were standing on. It was basically a warehouse where they stored all of the stuff you needed to run a