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

ship of this size – toilet paper and spare mattresses and all those other things that you never really think about when you imagine a warship. If I had been planning a longer expedition, I would have wanted to have a good look around this warehouse. But given my experiences so far, I had decided that I wanted to be off this wreck as soon as I had enough valuables to take back with me. Preferably in the form of something I could easily carry. Like the core of the Navigator unit. Anything less than that was going to be a major disappointment.

Sweat trickled down my nose and dripped off the end. There was no air conditioning in the roach run. I doubted that the cockroaches cared much, but it must have been unpleasant for the engineers who had to work in these tight spaces. It was dark too and the bobbing of the flashlight was disorientating.

Something grabbed me from behind and tried to pull me up. Or that’s what it felt like. My backpack had caught on the little wheel of some sort of valve and was stopping me going downwards. I had to go back up and reach around to unhitch it. I decided to shrug off the shoulder straps so I could lower the backpack down the shaft on the rope – this would avoid further entanglements and would also give me greater freedom of movement. And while I was at it, I took off my jacket and gun belt and tucked them under the flap of the pack. I lowered the backpack down until I ran out of rope and then I let it fall the rest of the way – it didn’t fall for long, so I figured I had only another thirty or so feet to go.

As I got closer to the security deck, a glow filtered upwards, getting brighter as I descended. Looking down I could see that the hatch was partially open.

“Level 3: security, weaponry and robot guards, bombs and navigation, space helmets and drones. Going down.”

Reaching the hatch I pushed it open and peered out into the corridor. There was no sign of my jacket or backpack. I looked all around in case they’d bounced or rolled and I looked up in case they had snagged on something on the way down. But they were gone. Someone or something had taken them. I was definitely not alone on the Celestia. This thought gave me the creeps. But on a positive note, this was a much better class of spaceship corridor. The walls were a clean off-white that the brochure probably called ‘desert sand’ and sensors turned on the lights just ahead of me as I moved – and they were proper ‘evening sun’ lights, none of your nasty ‘bloodshot red’. It was like being in the office building of an expensive law firm. Any minute now there’d be a corner with a potted palm in it.

With no backpack and no computer, I was feeling vulnerable. Who or what had snatched my things? Out in the corridor, I was more exposed than I wanted to be, so I decided to duck into one of the rooms. I could take a moment to consider my next steps.

“Pick a door, any door.”

Again there was a complete absence of helpful signage. Maybe it was a War thing. I remember reading somewhere that planets in the war zone used to remove all of their street names and road signs in an attempt to confuse any enemy invaders. I bet the Gators were furious when they couldn’t find the name of the place that they were just about to blow up.

I chose a door at random. It had a standard electronic lock that had probably been state of the art back in the day. I took the lockpick out of my pocket and slid the sensor into the mechanism. It vibrated slightly to let me know that it had tricked the lock into thinking that an ‘access denied’ signal said ‘open sesame.’ I snatched my hand away as the lockpick suddenly grew very hot and then exploded in a shower of sparks. I glanced over my shoulder up towards the lens of a security camera.

“Spoilsport.”

The door had opened about an inch and then stopped. I grabbed the edge of it and pulled, sliding it open a little further. Eventually there was room for me to squeeze through.

“Mind the gap.”

The door slammed shut the moment I was through it. Behind me the lights flickered on. Something, just an odd feeling, warned me that something was wrong. I turned slowly.

The narrow room was filled with security robots. Two rows of them – six to my right and three to my left. I froze, holding my breath. Were they active? I’ve had some nasty experiences with security robots in the past. The carbon-fibre carapaces of these were painted the usual pale blue and white to mark them as security rather than military hardware and the bare metal of their joints was bright and shiny. I was starting to feel light-headed and had to let go of the breath I was holding.

“Pardon the intrusion, gentlemen, I was looking for the bathroom.”

There was no response from the robots. Perhaps they didn’t believe me. Looking down, I could see that they were all standing on charging pads and the gently flashing indicators all seemed to be in the red zone – they weren’t yet charged. Three of the pads were empty. Did that mean there were more robots out on patrol? Or maybe they were in the repair shop?

I stood directly in front of one of the robots. I dodged left and then right to see if it would follow the movement with its head, but it stood like a mannequin. I raised my hand and slowly reached towards the robot’s forehead. I touched the shiny blue plastic. Still nothing. I pushed. The robot tilted slowly on its heels and, reaching the tipping