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

come back and haunt Old Jack Sterling for getting me into this mess.

The robot stood with its blade raised, ready for the kill. Was it prolonging the agony? Or was it having second thoughts? Or perhaps subjective time had slowed to a crawl to allow me to make the most of my last seconds of life? I was probably supposed to spend this time contemplating the life I had lived and repenting my sins. But all I was really thinking at that moment was that the dead dragon was crushing my scronies. And then, bizarrely, I heard Old Jack’s voice – as if recalling the old devil’s name had somehow summoned him.

“Well, aren’t you a sorry-looking sight!” Old Jack’s voice said.

I didn’t want his voice to be the last sound I ever heard – even if I was imagining it.

He moved into view and stared down at me.

“What is that smell?” he asked.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Nobody wanted to come near me. I was covered in squit, blood, and swazz. Some of the blood was mine. I smelt like a walking septic tank. Old Jack’s men had rolled the dragon off me and then quickly backed away. Far away. I got to my feet slowly, trying to ignore the aches and pains and the overwhelming feeling of fatigue.

Jack Sterling looked like an old pirate, so his crew had decided they should dress like pirates and had all gone off to the costume shop to pick their outfits. It was the only explanation that made sense. As far as I could see, there were five of them plus Jack.

The biggest of them was mostly belly. His head was shaved smooth and shiny but the dark hair on his forearms was longer than that on my head. He wore tatty sneakers and walked like his feet hurt. The smallest of the crew was a scrawny runt who looked like his grandmother had been a brown rat. His eyes were drawn into a permanent squint and I think he was breaking the top teeth in for a giant rabbit.

And then there were the twins. Brothers, I reckoned, until I noticed one of them had breasts. They dressed alike and spoke alike and probably had the sort of relationship geneticists frown upon. There was a lot of giggling and looking into each other’s eyes. Even if it was platonic, it was still creepy. I guessed she had chosen their costume because he was unsteady in the high heel boots.

Tattoos seemed to be obligatory and most of them looked self-inflicted. You know that thing where you see something misspelled and you wonder if it’s you that’s wrong? That happened to me a couple of times just then. And you should never get something inked in a language you can’t read. ‘Please may I go to the lavatory’ isn’t poetry or prayer no matter how you translate it.

If I was putting together a crew, I wouldn’t pick any of this lot. Maybe pirates are in short supply on Saphira.

“I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you,” I said to Old Jack, nodding towards the deactivated robot.

“You might want to hold off on the hugging,” Jack said. “This isn’t a rescue mission. We’re here for the loot.” He was staring down at the dead dragon. “Pity about the skull. You can get good money for a whole one.”

I looked up at the robot. It was standing with the bloody cleaver raised. Still as a statue. “How did you...?”

Old Jack held up a battered remote control unit. It was discoloured and held together with duct tape. “Had it from one of my old shipmates,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if it still worked.”

He tossed the remote to one of his crewmen, the fifth member of the team. He was a technician who had gone down the cyber-pirate route. His head was shaved at the sides and the mohawk was bleached platinum blond. He wore very tight black leather jeans and an oxblood leather vest showed off his bony chest to good effect. On a slow night in dim light, I might have bought him a drink. He used the remote to reset the robot into a neutral standing position. Then he made the robot kneel. It was still as tall as he was.

“What about the other security robots?” Jack asked.

“They won’t be a problem,” I said.

“You took out a dozen of them? I’m impressed.”

“I’d have taken out this one too – but he just won’t die.”

“If you can’t beat ‘em, recruit ‘em,” Jack said. He nodded towards his crewman who was using a laser cutter to make a small circular opening in the robot’s chest.

“Do you think a restrainer will work on that thing?” I asked.

Restraining devices were fitted to all modern robots by law. They limited a robot’s capacity for self-motivated action – kept them docile. But this wasn’t a modern robot.

“If that robot doesn’t do what it’s told,” Jack said, “the device will fuse all its internal circuits. It won’t cause any trouble.”

The platinum blond crewman unfastened the robot’s cleaver and tossed it aside. In its place he fitted an ordinary robotic forearm and hand. It more or less matched the robot’s right arm, though it looked like it had been patched up with bits of old metal.

“All done,” the crewman reported to his captain.

“Then fire him back up,” Jack said.

The crewman looked about as doubtful as I felt.

“It’s either that or you get to carry all the loot out yourself,” Old Jack told him.

You don’t sign on to be a pirate in order to do heavy lifting. The crewman thumbed the ‘on’ button on the remote.

Still on its knees, the robot emitted a faint whine and then began to vibrate.

“It’s trying to fight the restraint,” I said, backing away.

“It won’t win,” Old Jack said. But he also took a step back when the vibrations became a more pronounced shimmying. It looked as though the robot was trying to shake the restraining device out of