Battleship Raider

by Paul Tomlinson

  Celestia, like all the big battleships, had been constructed in a spaceside dockyard. She had never entered a planet’s atmosphere and wasn’t designed to. Thrusters used to manoeuvre her in space would have been all but useless as she fell. And even if the crew could have controlled her descent, she had no landing gear.

  I don’t know how long she held together, how much time those trapped inside had to contemplate their fate. Jack Sterling said the battleship broke into at least three pieces while it was falling. From the ground it must have looked like a meteor shower – just pale ribbons of light arcing downwards in the night sky.

  Depending on their angle of descent, those pieces could have plunged nose-first or belly-first into the jungle, ploughing through the canopy and flattening the trees. The cherry-red heat of the hull would have ignited leaves and wood sending up clouds of smoke and steam. The sound must have been deafening: a deep rumble that shook the ground like an earthquake, the rending of metal and splintering of trees. The Celestia would have torn up the ground like a massive snowplough, sending a tidal wave of soil and other debris forwards and outwards and upwards, the dark scar she left behind her smouldering and smoking.

  Weakened by the passage through the atmosphere, the chunks of battleship would have buckled under the initial impact, fractures appearing in the hull. As they scraped across the ground, pieces would have been torn free and hurled left and right.

  After the wreckage of the battleship came to rest, there must have been silence. A world in shock. But then the jungle would have started breathing again, doing what all living things do. Healing the wound. Surviving. And, eventually, hiding all trace of the Celestia’s impact.

  According to Old Jack, the three largest pieces of the battleship had travelled in convoy until the unevenness of the ground sent each of them along different courses.

  “You wants the middle section,” Jack Sterling had said, “that’s where all the good stuff will be.”

  The co-ordinates he had given me were for this middle section. The hunk of wreckage in front of me was supposed to be the treasure chest. Looking at it, it was impossible to judge which part of the ship it was – it was a slightly curved block of grey metal, pitted and scarred by its descent through the atmosphere. Judging from the curve, the section was half-buried – or the lower part of it had been torn away.

  All those who were able to, had abandoned ship and the rest had perished. This wreck was their tomb. It seemed almost sacrilege to swazz up the side of her, but there are some things that a man just has to do. I’m not one for prayers, but I would drink to the memory of those who died – once I was safely inside. As I rezipped, I noticed for the first time how quiet it was near the wreckage. There were no insects or birds in the air and nothing scurried through the undergrowth. Perhaps the collective memory of the jungle creatures still recalled the damage caused when the battleship came down – ‘This thing turned your great aunt Edith to charcoal’ – so they all kept a respectful distance.

  Or, more likely, all the little critters had shut up because there was a big critter on the prowl.

  I listened, straining my ears. Was that something big I could hear moving through the undergrowth? With images of sabre-toothed lizards in my head, I unsnapped the flap on my holster and practised a couple of quickdraws. Then I set down my pack and opened it. I had a couple of palm-sized drones – I called them Gnat and Mozzie – and I sent them up to survey the area. They fed data back to Trixie.

  “What’s out there?” I whispered.

  “Insufficient data to identify life form. Approximate mass in excess of one thousand pounds.”

  Definitely something big. “How close is it?”

  “Fifty yards and maintaining a path parallel to your current position.”

  “Passing by?”

  “Negative. Pacing backwards and forwards.”

  “I smell like food and he’s wondering whether I’m dangerous. Will a single bullet kill it?”

  “Define bullet?”

  “Twelve-millimetre explosive cartridge.”

  “A single direct hit to the thorax offers a fifty-six per cent chance of a kill.”

  I didn’t like those odds, especially when I couldn’t even see what I was shooting at. “Perhaps if I fire off a few shots it will scare him away?”

  “I am unable to advise.”

  “Or it might just anger him and make him charge...” I started pacing myself. “To hell with it.” I drew my pistol and looked out into the jungle. “Trixie, give me the best sight you can.”

  The computer projected a target in front of me, giving me something to aim the barrel of the gun at. The target lit up green when I was aiming in the right direction and I squeezed off three shots. The projectiles tore through the jungle and I heard then explode. There was a bellow from the unseen creature, though whether of anger or pain I couldn’t tell. And then there was a thrashing in the undergrowth.

  “Please tell me it’s running away,” I said. The pause before Trixie answered was much longer than I was comfortable with.

  “The target is withdrawing.”

  I let out a sigh. “Monitor that area,” I said.

  Here be dragons. I’d originally thought it was a joke, but Old Jack was deadly serious.

  “They’re dangerous, Quin. Sneak up on you. I lost one of my men. Gobbled up he was. ‘Course, that’s one advantage of having a team. If one of them gets took, you get to live for another day.”

  The trouble with stories like that, even if you don’t believe them, is that they sneak into your subconscious and make you uneasy. And if you haven’t got a team, odds are that you’re the one who will get gobbled up. I wanted to use the drones to find a way into the Celestia. They would be able to fly under the jungle canopy and hopefully discover some sort of opening that I could use. But I wasn’t going to have them do that until I was sure the dragon – or whatever it was – was gone for good. The drones had motion and heat detectors that were much more effective than my own in-built survival systems. Gnat and Mozzie drifted off to see what had become of the big bad beastie.

  While I waited I twisted open a can of instant coffee and watched it steam as it heated up. I drank it straight from the can because the smell as I poured it into a mug might attract Fangzilla. And flies might squit in it. I’m not a big fan of the instant stuff, but it’s a hundred times better than the stuff they served in the prison. I think they reused the water from the cabbage boiler. As I finished up the coffee, a fly buzzed past the end of my nose and I was reassured to hear the jungle coming back to life around me.

  “Any sign of the beast?” I asked.

  “I am registering nothing of that approximate mass.”

  “I’ll take that as a no. Bring the drones in.”

  Old Jack Sterling said the crash had torn a hole in what was now the east side of the wreck. I would start my search there. With Gnat and Mozzie hovering just in front of me, I had Trixie project the video into the air in front of me. She could have given me the full immersive experience by firing the images onto my retina, but I wanted my peripheral vision working full-time looking out for anything that might snatch me up for a snack. I gave the drones their instructions and sent them on their way.

  While Gnat and Mozzie were doing their thing, I turned my attention to a snack of my own. The packaging of the protein bar claimed it was beef stroganoff, but they all taste like an old man’s slippers. As I forced down the last of it, I heard a ping as one of the drones discovered something. I squinted at the virtual screen. There wasn’t a welcome mat as such, but the opening in the metal looked fairly inviting. I carefully packed the empty coffee can and wrapper away and then had to smile, thinking of the thousands of tons of scrap metal that were littering the jungle. I shouldered my pack and set off for the drone’s location. I was about to go into the rabbit-hole and forty years back in time.

  Chapter Five

  “Tell me about the dragons,” I said as we moved along the length of the wrec
kage.

  “Sapphire Dragons,” Trixie said, her voice soft in my ear. “Properly called Crichtorax.”

  “Named after the explorer who first tripped over one,” I muttered, “or maybe he was the first person to get eaten. Tell me that they don’t really eat people.”

  “Their diet includes invertebrates, birds and mammals – mainly local deer – and some carrion.”

  “Not a herbivore, then. Are they poisonous?”

  “Two glands in the lower jaw secrete a form of venom which prevents blood clotting, lowers blood pressure, and causes muscle paralysis which is said to be accompanied by severe pain. The victim’s body then goes into shock and may suffer hypothermia before loss of consciousness and death.”

  “Can you tell me anything good about them?” I asked.

  “Please wait.” There was a brief pause. “They are edible and the flesh is said to taste like chicken.”

  “How big are they?”

  “Adult Crichtorax range in length from twenty to thirty-six feet with approximately fifty per cent of this being tail.”

  “Show me one,” I said. I’d only ever seen the image on a fifty-cent coin. They put dragons on the local currency to try and get tourists to buy some.

  Trixie projected the image into the air. The dragon was bipedal, walking on its hind legs like a tyrannosaurus rex. If half its length was tail, then the adults stood between ten and eighteen feet tall. The picture showed a large skull with a narrow snout, long neck and a short thick body. The skin was made of armoured scales and was predominantly olive-green with the female having rusty brown stripes down her back and the male sporting iridescent peacock blue stripes. I scanned through the details under the image, figuring that it is good to know as much as possible about something that is going to try and eat you. The yellow forked tongue provided both taste and sense of smell like a snake’s and its teeth were in rows like a shark. They were serrated to saw through flesh and were replaced regularly. These teeth were sought after by tourists as souvenirs.

  “A cross between a snake, a shark, and an ostrich – lovely.”

  The dragons have long arms which they carry close to their bodies. Each has three long clawed fingers with the middle finger being the longest. Their toes are tipped with scythe-like claws used for climbing trees and disembowelling their prey. Their eyes are a milky green with elongated cat-like pupils and they contain predominantly cones, meaning the big beasties have poor night-vision. They can see colours but have difficulty spotting things that aren’t moving. The only bit of good news I could see was that they hunt alone rather than in packs or flocks or whatever the collective noun was. A bastard of dragons maybe. With any luck, the bullets had scared my local dragon away for good.

  Despite the name, the Sapphire Dragons weren’t native to Saphira. Scientists reckon they are an artificially engineered predator and as such, they are banned on all inhabited worlds. One story has it that they were introduced by the Gators as pets or their equivalent of hunting dogs. Another theory is that they were released on Saphira so that wealthy tourists from the orbiting luxury hotel could come down and hunt them for sport, but the owners of the space station strenuously deny this so obviously it can’t be true. I’d never felt the urge to go dragon hunting – even when I had my own suite up on the space station.

  Old Jack had been right, there was a huge gash in the outer hull of this section of the wreckage. The outer hatch was gone and this left the inner hatch exposed. If I could open that, I would be through the inner hull and inside the ship. It was unlikely that there was any power in the ship to trigger the locking mechanism so I was going to have to open the hatch manually. There is usually a wheel or a crank under a flap beside the door for this. Ten minutes work on a good day.

  As I got close I could see that it wasn’t going to be a good day. Or even an average one. The impact had distorted the outer hull causing it to collapse like a concertina. And a bent girder now blocked access to the flap beside the hatch, preventing it from opening. I was going to have to cut away a piece of the girder. I briefly considered sending the drones off to look for an alternative way in, but knew this was likely to be my best chance of getting inside before the moons rose.

  I was going to have to work in a very narrow space, squeezed between two sections of the mangled hull. That meant having to shrug off my jacket and gun belt – and also that I would be uncomfortably close to the sparks from the metal cutter. Breaking and entering often involves more work than you think. I donned my eye mask and slid into the gap. Wedging myself in place as best I could, I fired up the laser cutter and got to work. Molten flecks of metal flew out like a child’s sparkler, burning pinholes in my shirt. I was so intent on the task that a first I didn’t register the alarm that the computer was sounding in my ear. I turned off the cutter.

  “What is it?”

  “A lifeform approaching.”

  “The dragon?”

  “The mass of the lifeform is consistent with the Crichtorax.”

  “That’s not good.” The safest place to be was on the other side of the hatch. I looked at the girder – I had another couple of inches to cut through before I could open the access the flap.

  “How far away is it?”

  “At its present speed, it will be within striking distance in three minutes.”

  I wasn’t sure if the computer meant me striking it or it striking me. My gun belt was hanging on the end of a rope with the rest of my stuff. I could haul it up and sit and wait. Hope it got bored and went away. And if it didn’t, hope for a couple of clear shots at its torso. Or I could try and get the job done and get inside.

  “Warn me again when it is a minute away,” I said. I fired up the cutter again, turning up the heat – this didn’t need to be pretty. Metal began running down in thick orange gobbets.

  “Sixty seconds,” Trixie said, as I got the flap open.

  “I’ve got it.” Wary of accidentally touching the hot metal, I reached for the crank. It wouldn’t move. After forty years it was no surprise to find that it had seized up. I had a little can of spray lubricant ready for just such a thing.

  “Thirty seconds,” Trixie warned.

  Still the crank wouldn’t budge. My hand slipped and my bare arm touched the still hot cut metal.

  “Dammit!”

  There was an answering roar from the jungle. And then a large phlegm-coloured eye appeared, the dragon’s head was too wide to enter the crevice where I was huddled. I froze, hoping the poor light and its weak vision would prevent it from seeing me properly. The head drew back a little and then the yellow tongue appeared, testing the air and flickering towards me. One fork of the tongue brushed my arm lightly and I resisted the urge to bat it away. Licked by a dragon, how many men could say that had happened to them? I hoped I would live to tell the story. The tongue withdrew and the eye reappeared. Did it know I was here? If it reached in with its claws I was toast. I was still clutching the laser cutter and my thumb brushed the starter button. Should I risk an attack of my own? What the hell, I was canned meat as it was. I thumbed the button and thrust the flame towards the dinner-plate-sized eye.

  There was a horrible sizzling sound and an even more horrible smell. The dragon’s roar almost deafened me. It pulled back and I heard it crashing away through the jungle. I’d had two narrow escapes – I didn’t think there would be a third. I needed to get inside before Fangzilla returned.

  I reached for the crank, hoping the lubricant had worked its way into the mechanism, but it was still stuck tight. The angle I was working at meant I couldn’t get as much leverage on the crank as I needed, but I didn’t think I had enough time to cut away more metal to improve this. And there certainly wasn’t time to cut through the hatch itself. I had no more than an hour’s worth of daylight left and I was sure the dragon would soon be back to give me more than a friendly lick.

  I turned on the cutter and adjusted it to its lowest level. I was going to wave it quickly back and forth over the crank
mechanism to heat it up. Then I’d spray more lubricant on it to cool it down again – and maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to free it up. I did this twice and the second time I felt some movement in the mechanism. Unless I imagined it.

  Trixie spoke softly in my ear, but I didn’t need her to tell me that the dragon was on its way. The jungle was silent again – except for the noise of the dragon’s approach. It was coming and this time it was angry. And probably blind in one eye. Maybe I could take out its other eye. I hauled on the rope to bring my pistol and the rest of my stuff up. My heart missed a couple of beats when the line snagged, but a sharp tug freed it. And for some reason that made me think of something else. I needed a hammer.

  Percussive engineering was what my grandfather used to call it. Anyone who is ever faced with a stubborn piece of machinery always uses it. Either as a first move or a last sign of frustration, you hit it with a hammer. I applied the head of the hammer to the end of the crank. It made a satisfying clanging sound that vibrated along the hull. I hit it again.

  “Thirty seconds,” Trixie said.

  Behind me I felt the hatch move. I hit the crank again and the hatch moved some more. It was open an inch or more now. I leaned back against it, trying to force it inwards and whacking the crank at the same time. Then I felt another thud! And it wasn’t me hitting anything. The dragon had collided with the outer hull. I could see its shark teeth snapping at the opening and then one of its clawed hands shot in towards me. A talon raked down my boot, scarring the leather as I tried to scramble backwards. I used the hammer to fend off the claws but in the narrow space I didn’t have room to swing it like a weapon.