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

in the robot’s face. From this side I could see the marks where the cannon blasts had hit the door, leaving black sun silhouettes and small dents. There were also smaller indentations – from blows of the robot’s fists. But the door had not been breached. Big Red must have turned around and taken a detour around this obstacle. Presumably he had taken a different path to the one I had just followed.

Trixie would have been able to plot all of the possible routes on a blueprint of the ship. And probably could have told me which one the robot was most likely to take. All I could do was turn and ride back along the corridor and try to guess which way to go.

It was robot season. I was the hunter and it was my prey. But it felt like I was swimming around looking for a shark so I could bop it on the nose and make it chase me. It was a crazy plan. A dangerously crazy plan. At any moment the beast could attack without warning and Quin Randall would never see another birthday. I wanted to give it up and just head out into the jungle on the ATV. But I knew I wouldn’t get far if I did. The robot would come after me – and it wouldn’t stop until I was dead.

This made me realise that my ‘Be very quiet, I’m hunting robot’ approach was all wrong. I needed to put myself in its place and think like a robot. What was the robot doing at this moment? What was it planning? Its number one priority was to locate me and prevent me from escaping. To kill me. If I wanted to find the robot, all I had to do was let it know where I was. The robot would come to me.

How could I attract its attention? Easy. Make a sound loud enough for it to hear.

“Hey, robot! I’m here!” My voice echoed along the empty corridor and faded to nothing. I needed something louder.

If Trixie had been here, I would have asked her to play music through whatever speakers were available nearby. Something with a pounding beat. In the absence of selections from my ‘Way Too Loud’ playlist, I was going to have to improvise a live performance. Without instruments.

I came up empty in the first few rooms, but finally found a couple of plastic trash barrels that I thought I could use. One was a little smaller than the other, which was ideal. I took them out into the corridor and turned them upside down. I also snapped the handles off a couple of brooms to be my drumsticks. I had seen street buskers hammering away on buckets before and I’ve always fancied having a go. I was never part of a band when I was a teenager – I was a loner and didn’t play well with others. And when it came to musical instruments, I didn’t play well at all.

I set up my drumkit in the middle of a long corridor, thinking this would help the sound travel further in each direction. My first few strikes with the sticks were a bit tentative and unrhythmical. I started over. I could get a decent bass drum sound by hitting the middle of the big barrel and the rim of it could stand in for a snare. The smaller drum – rim or rim and centre together – was my hi-hat. I started off with a simple four-four beat, playing bass and snare on alternate beats – that was enough to get me into the swing of it. Bringing in the snare on eighth notes didn’t complicate things too much so I switched up to sixteenths – and after that I just made it up as I went along, imitating beats I’d heard in rock ‘n’ roll songs or played by the buskers.

As I played, I kept glancing up and down the corridor. Another advantage of this mid-point was that I would see the robot coming whichever way he came. At least, that was my theory.

A fist smashed through the wall panel behind me coming out close to my ear. That threw me off my beat – and almost caused me to squit my pants. I dropped the sticks and leapt up onto the ATV, pulling on my pilot’s helmet.

The robot punched another hole in the wall and then tore out the whole panel. I spun the wheels of the ATV as I took off down the corridor. The robot kicked my trash barrel drums aside. Maybe it preferred a more laid back beat. Or something classical.

I heard the boom! of the cannon and a section of roof rained down around me. Then came the steady thump-thump of the robot’s marching feet. It wasn’t a beat you could dance to.

An automatic door slid open ahead of me. I was far enough ahead of the robot that I felt safe in stopping to lock the door behind me. It wasn’t one of the big blast doors so it wouldn’t slow the robot down for long. I set off again – and when I glanced back, I saw the robot crash through the door, barely slowing its pace.

I took the next corner at speed, the ATV tilting and lifting its outside wheels. Under other circumstances this would have been fun. Right now it was the most dangerous game of tag I had ever played. If I was caught I was dead.

A quick glance over my shoulder. No sign of the robot coming around the corner. I slowed. I wanted to stay out of reach, but I didn’t want the robot to lose me. I needed it to follow me to the hangar.

Crash! The robot burst through a wall only ten feet away. It had taken a short cut and gained on me significantly. That was cheating. As I accelerated away, I heard the robot start to run behind me.

I took a left