Mozzie was shining his little searchlight around the space inside. There were no signs of defensive weapons or crudely made booby traps. I pulled off my jacket and slipped through the gap.
I was in.
Chapter Eighteen
The pain and swelling in my thigh were getting worse. The flesh around the cut felt like it was burning. This was in contrast to the rest of my skin which was cold and clammy. My pulse seemed to be hammering away at double-speed and I was breathing rapidly too. The loss of blood would mean my blood pressure was way down and my organs would be panicking about the lack of oxygen. I had a very real sense that time was running out. The shivering was back, much worse than before, and so was the dizziness. If I didn’t get to a medical bay soon, I wasn’t going to be in a fit state to administer any kind of treatment.
I told Mozzie that I needed to get to the medbay that I’d found on the crew deck previously – it was the only one I knew the location of. The little drone set off, bobbing through the darkness like a metal firefly. I crawled after him. We were in the space between the inner and out hulls of the ship. I had to squeeze past pipework and thread my way through tangles of cables – all the while trusting that the little drone knew where he was going.
I don’t recall much of that journey. I had to fight down feelings of nausea and I had to follow the little bobbing light. I couldn’t think about anything else. I remember climbing a ladder that seemed to go on forever. And I remember kicking out a panel and crawling out through the wires of some kind of cabinet – it may have been a medical scanner or it could have been a soda dispenser, I really don’t know. But I do recall the relief at finding myself standing in the medical bay.
Crawling out of the wainscoting meant that we had almost certainly triggered one of the ship’s sensors. The ship and her big red robot would know we were there. I closed and locked the door to the corridor, jamming the lock so it couldn’t be opened from outside. The robot’s cannon could probably blow the door and most of the wall away, but the locked door would buy me at least a little time.
The fact that I have no medical training was a bonus. If I had known what I was doing, I wouldn’t have attempted it. I sorted through the medicine lockers, finding vials of antibiotics. I didn’t know whether they would have retained their effectiveness, so I planned to give myself a megadose just to be sure. I filled the syringes ready. I also found some iron that I could inject into my flesh to replace some of what I had lost.
On a couple of occasions, I had seen medics working on injuries in the battlefield, so I knew what I had to do and which piece of equipment I needed to use. There were several on-charge in the medical bay, all showing ninety per cent charge.
I removed the blood-soaked shirt and then took off my jeans. My right thigh looked a lot bigger than the left one. And it looked like something from a horror movie. I used bottled water and a handful of fresh bandages to clean the gash as best I could.
The device in my hand was a military-issue meat welder. They fetch good money on the black market. In the hands of a skilled medic, they can knit tissue back together without leaving a scar. In the hands of someone like me – well, I’d probably end up looking like Frankenstein’s monster.
The problem with this sort of apparatus is that it isn’t intended for self-administration. Normally the patient is sedated and given a local anaesthetic before being operated on. I assume they did this because the procedure hurts. There was anaesthetic in the medicine locker, but I didn’t know how much to inject. I might have to run at any moment, so didn’t want to risk having no feeling in my leg. And I had to be absolutely sure the anaesthetic didn’t spread in my body – if my arms went numb I wouldn’t be able to perform the operation.
I rubbed some anaesthetic gel into the skin around the wound, knowing it wasn’t going to be enough. I took the belt from my jeans and folded it in half – I could bite down on it if I needed to. I’d also found a proper aluminium crutch in one of the storage lockers and set this down close to hand. With the preparations done, I couldn’t put off the evil deed any longer.
I sat on one of the treatment beds and held the welder as steady as I could. Deep breath and bite down on the belt. Thumb the switch to activate the device. Oh, hell, that hurts!
It was like having your flesh shredded by burning knives and then pinned back together with white-hot hooks. I had to use both hands to drag the tip of the welder along the full length of the wound. My vision blurred and I passed out.
I opened my eyes, trying to focus them. The drone was making its annoying buzzing sound and bobbing up and down over the syringes. I must have given it instructions to wake me and remind me about the antibiotics. I jabbed the syringes into my skin and the pain was nothing to what I had just endured. I injected the iron too. Just call me Doctor Randall. I grabbed a couple of the bottles of water and drank them down. Then I rubbed some more anaesthetic gel into my thigh. The pain had subsided a little, but it still felt like someone was pouring boiling water over my leg.
In comparison to this, the pain in my left hand was almost nothing. The two knuckle joints were a little swollen and felt warm, but while they were painful I could still move them fully, so I didn’t think there had been any kind of fracture. I used medical tape to bind up my hand, leaving only my index finger and thumb to move freely. Ideally, I would have had the hand in a bucket of ice for a while, but circumstances weren’t even close to ideal.
I had given the drone instructions not to let me go to sleep. The urge to countermand that order was very strong, but I knew that would be detrimental to my long-term survival. It could only be a matter of time before Howie Howitzer was hammering at the medbay door.
I needed fresh clothes. If I was going to die, I didn’t want to die wearing just my underpants. I had hoped there might be sealed packs of sterile surgical scrubs in one of the lockers, but I didn’t find any when I was doing my search for equipment. I was going to have to go down the corridor and see what I could find in the crew’s quarters. And while I was there, I could pick out a couple of the biggest guns I could find in the sergeant’s gun locker.
I swung my legs off the side of the table and lowered my feet to the floor. The level of pain in my right leg didn’t increase substantially when I tested my weight on it. I’d take the crutch just in case. I could always hit the robot with it. Wearing only briefs and a gun belt, I set off on my mission.
Chapter Nineteen
“Attention unidentified intruder!”
The synthesized voice blasted out over the ship’s intercom system. Startled, I almost soiled my underwear. I looked up at the ceiling, guilt obvious on my face. I thought I was being reprimanded for stealing clothes. I’d found a black t-shirt and a nearly-new pair of khakis in someone’s private locker. I was threading my belt, complete with its new pattern of teeth marks, into the loops when the voice echoed around me.
“Remain in your current position and await arrest. A security detail is on its way. Failure to comply will result in a severe penalty.”
I was fairly certain that I’d suffer the same severe penalty if I did comply. Big Red was on his way and I don’t think he intended to take prisoners. I picked up the canvas holdall I’d borrowed from the sergeant’s quarters – and it felt reassuringly heavy. I’d grabbed a couple of big rifles plus ammunition for them and extra bullets for my pistol. I was disappointed that there weren’t any high-calibre weapons in the locker – presumably they kept the fun stuff somewhere else – but I had found a handful of small grenades that I thought I might have a use for.
Using the crutch, I headed back towards the medbay as quickly as I could. It seemed as good a place as any to make my stand. And it had a secret exit that I could crawl back into if needed. Locking myself in the medbay wasn’t ideal, but I couldn’t think of a better option. My leg was on the mend, but I wasn’t going to be running sprints or marathons anytime soon.
There was a moment when I wondered if I would even make it back to the medbay
. I heard a click-click-click as something metallic walked towards me. Before I could hide, the thing turned the corner ahead and came towards me. It was maybe four feet tall and scurried along on four robotic legs. It looked sort of like a crab but what it really reminded me of was a severed hand walking on its fingers. This was creepy enough, but even more unsettling was the big machinegun on its back. It marched forward and showed no signs of slowing. I pressed myself back against the wall. It walked straight past me and continued on its way, obeying whatever instructions it had been given. My guess was that these armoured crab-bots were being dispatched to guard all of the exits off the ship.
I slammed the medbay door shut behind me, locked it, and jammed the lock again. How many blasts from the big robot’s bazooka would it withstand? I didn’t know. Not many.
Again I found myself wishing I still had Trixie to call on for help. It’s amazing how lost you feel when your tech is gone. I still had the second drone, but the plan that was forming in my head called for Mozzie to be sacrificed. He was going to act as a decoy, drawing the big robot away so I could make my way to another part of the ship without being bashed or blown up.
“Mozzie,” I said, “I need you to do something for me. I want you to go back to the airlock we used to get into the ship, can you do that for me?”
The little drone made a positive whistling sound.
“I want you to trigger some of the ship’s sensors as you go so it knows where you’re heading. Don’t trigger them all – we don’t want to make it too obvious.”
More whistling.
“When you get there, I want you to make it seem like you’re trying to open the hatch to get out of the airlock.”
The drone floated out of the medbay, exiting through the hole that I’d used to get in. It would travel some distance hidden between the skins of the hull and then come out into a corridor where it would be picked up by the movement sensors. Hopefully, that would draw the attention of the big robot. In the meantime, I would be heading in the opposite direction in search of the battleship’s main computer room.
When I crawled into the hole, I had to abandon my crutch. There was a dull ache in my thigh that would probably increase as the painkillers wore off, but other than that my leg was fully functional.
Normally when I’m heavily out-gunned, I try and talk my way out. But how do you reason with a military robot that’s had its ‘kill’ button pressed? You don’t. You have to try and talk with whoever is controlling the robot. As far as I could see, it had to be the ship’s computer that was controlling both the security robots I’d encountered before and the big red monster. I needed to come up with some way to get the computer to call off its dog.
In the medbay I had tried to use the ship’s internal communications network to talk to the computer, but there had been no response. Either there was a problem with the network or a problem with the main computer. I would have to go to the ship’s tech centre and try to access the computer directly. With luck, the little drone would distract the big robot long enough for me to use the computer to shut it down.
I saw two more of the crab-like machine-gunners as I made my way through the ship, but I didn’t let them see me. I was doing all I could to avoid getting picked up by the ship’s sensors, using the space between the hulls and the service ducts wherever possible. I wanted the computer to think that the drone was me.
When I pressed my ID tag to the scanner, the door into the computer room slid open. The area inside was only partially lit by dim red emergency lighting. Maybe the computer had a migraine. I stepped inside and the door closed behind me.
“Computer,” I said, “turn on the lights.”
Nothing happened – but you have to try these things.
“Computer?”
Still nothing. Standing in the semi-darkness, I became aware of how eerily quiet the room was. There should have been a gentle hum from the ship’s servers and a gentle sigh from the cooling system. But the room was completely silent.
“Where is the ‘on’ button?” I muttered.
The cabinets holding the racks of servers and storage modules stood at the back of the room where it was darkest, looking like a couple of good-sized refrigerators. Where you expected there to be winking lights showing the machines working, there was only darkness. The rest of the room was taken up by a half-dozen workstations for human operators. To my eyes, it all looked like something from a museum. I tapped a key on the nearest keyboard, hoping it might wake something, but the screen in front of it stayed dark.
A slight shuffling sound made me look up. A large shadow detached itself from the blackness at the back of the room. The big red robot. It said nothing, just stood there with its arms at its sides looking menacing. It really excelled at that. I pulled one of the stubby military machine guns out of the holdall. I knew it was useless against the robot’s armour, but it was comforting to have it in my hand.
“Robot,” I said, “activate ship’s computer auditory and speech systems.”
“Unable to comply.” Its voice was a deep rumble.
“Run diagnostics on ship’s computer.”
“Unable to comply.”
It was going to be that sort of day. Robots can be like that.
“Robot, report current status of ship’s computer.”
“Ship’s computer is currently inoperative.”
“How long has it been offline?”
“Logs indicate that the computer ceased to function fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty-seven days ago.”
I didn’t attempt to do the calculation, but I guessed that this was the best part of forty years. If the ship’s computer was dead, who or what was controlling the robot? And who had been controlling the other security robots that had worked for the last four decades to tidy up the Celestia and keep her secure?
“Robot, who provided you with your current instructions?”
“I did.”
“You are operating autonomously?”
“That is correct.”
“And the other robots?”
“They are currently unresponsive.”
I might have had something to do with that. “But you were controlling them?”
“That is correct.”
Interesting. And just a little bit creepy. Big Red was a forty-year-old military-grade robot – its processing unit didn’t even approach artificial intelligence. And yet, it had been running this ship since it crashed. It must have switched over to some sort of autonomous mode when the ship’s computer was destroyed. It would be operating within very clearly defined limits – protect the ship from intruders. As with all things military, there wouldn’t be much creative thinking going on.
In terms of brains, the ship’s Navigator – an artificial sentience – would have been top of the heap. Some considerable distance below that would have been the ship’s computer – effectively second in command to the Navigator, acting as a connection and translator between the Navigator’s bio-analogue functioning and the digital systems of the battleship. With both of these gone, I was left to deal with something not much more sophisticated than an automatic vacuum cleaner – that was armed with a bazooka. Having said that, the robot had managed to see through my attempt to use the drone as a decoy to draw it away and it had figured out that I would make my way here to the computer room. It was smarter than it looked.
“Robot, confirm that attempts were made to bring the ship’s computer back online.”
“Confirmed,” the robot said. “Multiple attempts were initiated and basic repairs completed. All attempts failed.”
“Did you try hitting it?” My granddad always referred to this as ‘percussive engineering.’
“Yes. And I tried turning it off and then on again.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“I am not programmed for humour.”
The ship’s computer was dead. I needed a Plan B. I had nothing. The robot waited. It had been waiting for forty years, a few more
minutes standing around wasn’t going to phase it.
Up close you could see that the robot’s original bodywork had been patched and mended over many years. Its chest cavity appeared to have been enlarged by someone with only a rudimentary knowledge of welding and one leg had been fixed using a scarred piece of metal that had once been painted with black and yellow chevrons. And its yellow head with its cartoony eyes was definitely from a completely different robot.
“Robot, who carries out your repairs?”
“I am programmed for self-maintenance.”
“What is your present level of charge?”
“My batteries are at seventy-five per cent capacity.”
No chance of it running out of juice anytime soon, then. I was going to have to do something to disable it. It had no ‘off’ button, so I would have to be creative. I looked down at the gun in my hand.
“Unauthorised access to military weapons is a class two disciplinary offence,” the robot said.
“I’m armed so that I can protect the ship’s computer,” I said. “I was ordered to come here and try to carry out repairs.” I held out my ID tag, hoping the robot would check it against the record Trixie had created for me in the ship’s database. Assuming it was connected to whatever back-up server she had managed to access.
“Randall, Quincy Aloysius – technician, third grade,” the robot said.
“That’s me,” I said.
“There are tasks on your job sheet that have not been logged as complete,” the robot said.
“It’s been a busy couple of days,” I said. I felt relieved that my bluff seemed to be working.
“Your data is in error,” the robot said. “There are no surviving crew members on the Celestia. All aboard perished when the ship was in collision with the planet Saphira. I buried all of the bodies.” It raised its cannon and pointed it at me. “You are an unidentified intruder on an alliance military vessel.”
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