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

concerns about the things that came out after dark. I could hear small things scurrying through the undergrowth – but I wasn’t worried about them. I was worried about the big things that ate the small scurrying things.

Something large like a white sheet flapped towards me, as big as a man. A gauzy ghost-moth, attracted by the drone’s light. It was an eerie yet beautiful creature. Later in the evening I stood and watched a host of them dipping and gliding through the trees, dancing to music I couldn’t hear.

I had the drone’s audio sensors tuned to pick up sounds I couldn’t hear. If the Celestia’s guardian robot came stalking through the trees, I wanted to know earlier rather than later. And there were other denizens of the jungle that I wasn’t keen on encountering. As well as dragons, I had heard tales of giant vampire bats. Not as big as the ghost-moths, but still large enough to bring down a man. These might be a local myth – but if Mozzie picked up their ultrasonic cries, I wanted to be ready with my sharpened stakes. Or my pistol.

I plodded through the night, one step after another, resting often. When I stopped, I would lean against a tree, knowing that if I sat down I wasn’t going to get up again. More than once I managed to fall asleep on my feet. Progress up the slope was slow. When I reached the halfway point, both moons were almost directly overhead. It would be daybreak when I reached the wreck. If I reached the wreck. When I reached the wreck.

In an effort to find a silver lining, I told myself that an advantage of my chosen route was that it would bring me back to the Celestia from a different direction. And I would probably be able to find a new way in. Probably.

I retied the shirt around my leg, trying to ignore the fact that it was soaked with my blood. How much had I lost? How much can you lose before your situation becomes critical? Perhaps it was better that I didn’t know the answer to these questions.

Mozzie buzzed an urgent alert. I had dozed off again, standing against a scrawny old tree that stood close to the top of the slope. His alarm wasn’t to wake me. He had picked up the calls of the bats. Lots of them. I hid behind the tree as a dark swarm of them swept overhead, wings beating like the opening and closing of hundreds of umbrellas. Their dark shapes blotted out the moons for a time and I just stood and stared up at the spectacle. Then they were gone. They hadn’t spared me a thought. Perhaps I didn’t have enough blood left to be worth bothering with.

When I reached the top of the slope, I did allow myself to sit down. This was okay, I thought, as long as I didn’t lie down. I was feeling light-headed and I was pretty sure it wasn’t anything to do with the altitude. Blood loss and dehydration mess with your head. And the rest of you.

Falling off the cliff had taken me less than a minute. Walking back up had taken me most of the night. As the crow flies, I had moved only about a mile closer to the wreck – it was still more than four miles away. At a brisk walk, I could have covered that distance in an hour-and-a-half or two hours, even without a machete. At my current pace, I was likely to see the moons rise again before I got there.

I staggered onwards for what seemed like days but wasn’t. The moons seemed to be zipping across the sky at double their normal rate. Or perhaps I was just moving more slowly, caught in some sort of time bubble.

I don’t remember lying down. Or closing my eyes. But when I opened them the sun was shining brightly overhead. It was another hot and humid day – but I was shivering. Probably not a good sign. The shirt tied around my leg was stiff with dried blood. I decided to leave it as it was. My leg felt stiff and swollen. The rest of me just ached. My ribs hurt when I drew breath. I had to get to my feet and start moving again. I wouldn’t survive another night in the open. But all I really wanted to do was close my eyes and go back to sleep.

A sound off to my left drew my attention. It was one of the ugly green birds with the googly eyes. It sat watching me, turning its head on one side to almost ninety-degrees. Its wrinkled face and curious blinking were so comical that I had to smile. But my smile must have looked more like a mad grin or a grimace because it made the bird stretch its wings and scarper. The piece of dead wood it had been perched on rocked then settled. Not deadwood. Rusty metal. A piece of the Celestia’s wreckage.

Seeing this was enough to spur me into action. Very slow, painful action, but action all the same. Summoning all of my strength I manage to get my good leg under me and rise slowly. I tucked the gourd of my crutch under my arm and stood, swaying only slightly. My lips were dry and my throat was parched. Mozzie was hovering at my side and I set him to scanning for the Celestia’s non-natural energy signature. When he showed me how close it was, I almost cried. If I could have spared the moisture, I probably would have done. We set off at a brisk limp, knowing we had less than a mile to cover.

I was hiding behind a tree, shielded by the undergrowth, looking out at the midsection of the Celestia. I was seeing her from a new angle, but she looked much the same as I’d left her – partially buried and