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

ground, its barrel opened up and curled back like a banana skin. It had been a good shot. A great shot.

From nowhere, Old Jack launched himself at me. His face was badly burned on the left side and his eye was milky white like a cooked fish.

“I’m going to tear your head off and use your skull for a cereal bowl!” he snarled. Old Jack wrapped his fingers around my throat, thumbs digging in to crush my oesophagus.

I looked towards the robot but it lay inert. No help there. I aimed frantic punches at Jack’s side and midriff, but his heavy pirate coat just absorbed the blows. I tried stamping on his foot over the arch and kicking him in the shins, but I was growing too weak to do him any serious damage. I was only seconds away from unconsciousness and possible decapitation. No more Mr. Niceguy – I had to fight dirty.

I brought my hand up and pressed the thumb into Old Jack’s damaged eye.

A roar of pain. His grip on my throat loosened a little. I raked my fingernails down his burned cheek, feeling bits of him get under my fingernails. He let go of me and staggered back, clutching his bleeding face.

I tried to drag air into my lungs. My throat was swollen, feeling like something big was stuck halfway down. I sounded like a drowning man who had come to the surface for the last time.

Old Jack was already recovering, cursing me in a half-dozen languages – including Gator. He set his shoulders and leaned forward, coming back in for the attack.

Unable to move anywhere fast, I dropped to one knee and dug my fingers into the top of my boot. A variation of Quincy’s First Law is: Always have a gun B. The pistol in my boot was small and held only two shots. It was really only any good at close range, but this was fine because Old Jack was almost on top of me. I stood and fired the two shots into his leg.

Old Jack almost went down. But he used his forward momentum to keep coming. He ignored the blood streaming down his thigh.

Off to the right, I saw the robot beginning to stir.

“I need a hand here!” I croaked.

The robot closed its right hand into a fist. He pressed his elbow joint to the side of his body and managed to unlock the elbow joint – his left arm was a machine gun with no fingers to unfasten it. Then he swung the arm, letting his forearm fly and arc through the air towards me.

I caught the arm and swung it like a club. The huge metal fist smacked into Old Jack’s jaw.

“Right hook!” I yelled. I think my brain was still deprived of oxygen. I swung the arm again. “Uppercut!”

Old Jack fell to his knees, groggy. He tried to get up. Thock! I hit him on top of the head. His one good eye rolled up until only white showed and he keeled over sideways. He didn’t move again. He was still breathing – and this soon became a snore, so I figured he’d live.

I walked out into the clearing.

Blondie was sitting at the top of the Celestia’s ramp, still trying to unjam his gun. He wasn’t aware I was watching him. His hand slipped and his finger was trapped in the mechanism.

“Scrack!” He pulled his finger free and then threw the big gun aside in frustration. He looked up and saw me standing there. I couldn’t read his expression – but my guess was that he was thinking real-life gunfights aren’t nearly as easy as the simulations in video games. Without saying a word, he got up and went back inside the battleship. He came back a moment later with a medical kit and a pair of pliers. He saw me staring at the pliers.

“To pull out porcupine spines,” he said.

I shuddered at the thought of it. “There’s another one over there,” I said, “Old Jack.”

Blondie looked over to where the old pirate lay. “I should let him die.”

“But you won’t,” I said.

“No. I’ll radio for someone to come and pick us up,” Blondie said. “You two should probably go.”

The robot was standing waiting for me. I was still holding his right arm. I went over and fitted it back in place.

“You destroyed everything,” I said.

“You didn’t want them to get away with it, did you?” the robot asked.

“No. I wanted us to get away with it!”

“I was not aware of that fact.”

Chapter Thirty

“How did you come to be on this world?” the robot asked.

We were walking along some sort of animal track, heading for the spot where I’d hidden my Trekker.

“I’m hiding.”

The robot said nothing to this.

“You don’t ask a lot of questions, do you? I like that in a man.”

“I am not a man.”

“Well, you’re certainly not a woman.”

“Would you like me to be?” The robot’s voice had changed to something female and husky and it swayed its hips as it sashayed ahead of me on the path.

“Don’t do that – ever!”

The robot made a sound that I realised was meant to be laughter.

“I didn’t know robots could laugh.”

“I’m not a robot, am I?”

“Then what are you?”

“Now, I am just...” His voice trailed off in an oddly human way.

What was he? Or rather who? I was already beginning to think of him as a person – and not just in the way that makes us give our vehicles and computers names. But Big Red really did need a name. And he had been right: on recent evidence, I really couldn’t claim to be Robin Hood – and calling him Little John just sounded like a weak joke.

“We have to give you a name,” I said. “What would you like to be called?”

“What name do you think would suit me?”

He was an eight-foot-tall, fifteen-hundred pound, fire-engine red robot with a quiver containing a cannon and a giant cleaver. ‘Timmy’ and ‘Mittens’ were probably non-starters.

“How about Butch?”