Battleship Raider
Page 15
“There has been a mistake. I’m a technician. I fix things.”
“No error has been made. You are an imposer. Under Section 17 of the revised military regulations, spies and saboteurs captured during frontline conflict may be subject to summary execution.”
“I’m not a spy! I’m a thief.”
“Thieves caught stealing military equipment during frontline conflicts may be subject to summary execution.”
“I didn’t technically steal anything,” I said, “I haven’t taken anything off the ship. I was just looking. And besides, there is no frontline conflict. The war has been over for almost forty years. We won. Sort of.”
“Your data is in error. There has been no formal notification of an end to hostilities. No ceasefire has been announced.”
“The Celestia has been out of signal range for forty years,” I said. “Her main antennae were destroyed when she crashed.”
“Until official verification has been received, your data cannot be accepted as accurate. You will be escorted to the brig.”
“Contact one of the satellites and send a message,” I said. “Or the space station that is in orbit around Saphira – they will confirm what I have said.”
“Please stand by.” The robot entered into silent communion via the ether, searching the sky for signals.
“Presence of orbiting entities confirmed,” the robot said. “Secure communication channels have been requested. Please stand by.”
A knot formed in my stomach as I realised there might be a problem here. The robot would send a coded transmission. Unless the receiver replied with an appropriately coded ‘handshake,’ the reply would be treated with suspicion and regarded as having possibly come from ‘the enemy.’ I didn’t think it was very likely that anyone out there was going to have access to those forty-year-old codes.
“Contact with alliance military command cannot be established. Your attempt to infiltrate and disrupt the operation of this vessel has failed. You will be escorted to the brig, there to be held in solitary confinement and treated according to the protocols for prisoners of war.”
Meaning that Big Red would lock me up in a cell and leave me there. There was every chance that I’d die of starvation, given there were no crewmembers to ensure that I was regularly fed and watered.
“As an alliance citizen, I am entitled to appeal directly to the captain of this vessel.” This was a guess, but I thought there must be some procedure for making an appeal if you’re arrested and accused of spying.
“Your request cannot be granted – Captain James G. Fitzroy is deceased.”
“Then I wish to communicate with the senior officer aboard.”
“Your request cannot be granted – there are no crew members aboard. Put down your weapon and surrender. Failure to comply will result in a severe penalty.”
“You mean you’ll shoot me?”
“Use of lethal force is authorised,” the robot confirmed.
I held up the gun between my thumb and fingers, showing that I wasn’t touching the trigger. I placed the gun back in the canvas holdall. While my hand was in the bag, I hit the trigger on one of the explosive devices. I passed the holdall over to the robot who took it in his big metal hand.
I had the door open and was diving out into the corridor as all the explosives in the holdall erupted into a giant orange ball of flame.
Chapter Twenty
I raced down the corridor aware of the expanding blast of scorching air that was coming after me. At the first corner, I paused and glanced back. The robot stepped out of the flames, unscathed. Of course it did, it used to be a firefighter on the battleship’s launch deck. It raised its cannon and I didn’t wait around to see what came next.
I tripped on a ridge in the floor and stopped when I saw what it was. There was a blast door here that would completely seal the corridor. It was one of many around the ship that would close off a section if there was a major fire or a hull breach, protecting the other parts of the ship. These were big, heavy doors. If I could get this one sealed, it would slow the robot down, buying me enough time to figure out a way to deal with it permanently.
The idea was that these doors could be closed instantly to maintain the integrity of the ship – and this meant they were easy to close. I pressed by ID tag to the plate on the wall and pulled down the yellow leaver. The door dropped into place and I heard the bolts lock. Hopefully, the smoke and flames from the exploding holdall would be enough to convince the ship’s sensors that this door should remain sealed.
There was a muffled boom on the other side, which I assumed was the robot firing its cannon at the door. Beyond the sound, there was no other evidence of the attack on my side. I took off at a swift uneven jog, heading for the warehouse deck – I needed to stock up on equipment. The adrenaline rush meant that, for the moment, I was feeling no pain.
The big red robot now regarded me as an enemy agent and it would do everything it could to prevent me from leaving the ship. If I did manage to get off the wreck, it would come after me and hunt me down – to ensure that I couldn’t reveal the location of the Celestia to the Gators. It probably also thought I had stolen the Navigator and would want to recover it. This was its program and it would carry it out relentlessly. To stand any chance of getting away, I would have to disable the robot permanently – or at least slow it down for long enough to make my getaway. I needed to be faster than I was on foot. And I needed to be better armed. No matter what else you say about the military, they do always have the best toys. And now it was playtime.
When I had first come through the warehouse deck, I had been looking for small items of swag that I could easily carry away. I had spared the big stuff only a glance. There were large sections of pressed metal that were obviously sections of the outer shell of warbirds. There were replacement engines – huge and shiny and hanging in steel wire hammocks to protect them from vibrations if the battleship suffered a direct hit somewhere nearby. There were several vehicles stashed in there – small one-man ATVs for travelling around the launch deck and other areas within the ship. And there was one large tractor that had probably been used to move the warbirds in the hangar or to drag them out onto the launch deck. It made you think of the scale of the operation that had been carried out when the Celestia was in combat. Much as I would have liked to try out the big tractor – who doesn’t imagine themselves driving trucks when they’re a kid? – my current plan called for speed. Not getting caught was a key factor.
The ATVs were electric vehicles with four broad tyres. They had a seat like a motorcycle and handlebars to steer them, but you could attach a trailer to the back of them to shift gear around the ship. It looked as if the robots had maintained and charged these just like everything else on the ship.
On one of the shelves in the warehouse, I also found a pilot’s helmet and I just had to try it on. Bikers should always wear a helmet. That was my excuse. The foam inside it smelled a bit musty, but I didn’t let this put me off. Kids also dream of being Warbird pilots.
I lowered one of the warbird engines onto the bed of a trailer and hitched the trailer to the back of the ATV. The slow movement and squeaking of tyres gave me an idea that this might be on the limit of the weight the little vehicle could pull. I tossed the metal net that had held the engine into the trailer as well. I found a machine gun similar to the one carried by the crab-bots and bolted it on the back of the ATV. I could use it to fire at anything that came after me. But only after I’d unhitched the trailer. Until then I would have to use a rocket launcher, so I armed two of these and wedged them in beside the machine gun. I drove the ATV and its trailer into a big freight elevator and took it up to the launch deck level.
I knew when the elevator doors opened, I’d be confronted by at least two of the crab-bots with their big machine guns. They would be guarding the massive double doors that opened onto the launch deck. I would have to deal with the crab-bots before I could open the doors. And blowing up the robots and op
ening the big hull doors would tell the red robot where I was – if it didn’t know already. I picked up the first rocket launcher and hefted it up onto my shoulder.
The elevator doors slid open. The crab-bots must have heard the elevator approaching because one of them was halfway across the hanger. I targeted this one first. The explosion sent its legs flying outwards to all points of the compass and its gun arced upwards and then came clattering down on the far side of the hangar. I wasn’t sure how many points a crab-bot was worth – probably not many, they’re just heavily armed drones and they’re pretty easy targets. The second one, alerted to my presence, turned its gun turret and began to fire. I ducked behind the engine on the trailer. I picked up the second rocket launcher and fired it as soon as the targeting viewfinder lit up green. The explosion took out the machine gun and one of the crab-bot’s legs. It scuttled around lopsidedly on its remaining legs making an agitated whining sound. I reloaded and finished it off with a second missile. I felt better for having blown something up.
You know when something is so big and so obvious that you miss it? That was what the hangar doors were like. The whole wall opposite me was an expanse of grey metal covered by a framework of more grey metal that formed two massive ‘X’ shapes. It wasn’t immediately apparent that this wall could split and open up like the drapes in a theatre. When they did part, they would reveal an immense scarred circular stage – one of the Celestia’s six landing pads.
The hangar itself must have been five or six storeys high – it was difficult to judge the scale of the place. There was a vehicle parked to the right of where I was standing and it took me a moment to realise that the front of it was actually a full-size commercial tractor. The kind of rig that hauls groceries from the factory to the city. This brought home to me how big the space was. You could have raced the truck around the hangar – and it would have taken you some time to complete the circuit. The truck reminded me of one of those tractors they use to manoeuvre spacecraft once they’ve landed at the spaceport. I guess this vehicle was something else the robots had been maintaining while they waited for their human masters to return.
The hangar was a big open space like a factory floor. The deck was marked out with yellow lines – parking bays for up to a dozen Warbirds. All but one of the bays was empty. There was just one Warbird strapped down to the deck. It was missing an engine and there was no cover on the cockpit. Maybe mechanics had been working on it when the ship was hit. The floors in the other empty bays sat flush with the hangar floor, but under the broken Warbird the floor had been dropped to create a maintenance pit almost twenty feet deep. They could probably drop the damaged propulsion unit of a Warbird down and swap it out with a working one. Seeing the deep pit sparked an idea that made me want to know how to drop the floor in the empty bay closest to the doors that opened onto the launch deck.
The hangar was a cross between an auto repair shop and a mini spaceport. You could imagine how busy this place must have been when the battleship was engaged in a clash with the Gators. Now it was deserted and silent. Eerie. There was a handful of small trailers scattered about with crates fastened to them. They must have been used to ferry spare parts and other supplies up here from the warehouse level. They sat there making it look like the maintenance crew would reappear at any moment.
I looked up at the ceiling high above. Huge banks of lights hung from the criss-crossed beams. I figured you could probably fly a Warbird in through the big doors and set it down in here – though you’d probably only do that if you wanted to swazz off your superior officer.
There was a walkway a couple of storeys up, running all the way around the walls on three sides. It and the half-dozen sets of stairs leading up to it were all painted yellow. Grey and yellow – the military decorator’s favourite colour palate. It made your eyes long for a hint of turquoise or fuchsia.
I drove across the hangar, avoiding the larger pieces of crab-bot debris. When I got to the outermost bay, I dismounted and pulled off the helmet. I spread the metal cargo net flat over the floor of the pit and crawled around it threading a metal cable around the edges of the net. When this cable was pulled tight, the net would close up like a sack. The free end of the cable trailed from the pit and across the deck and it had a loop woven into the end of it.
The control mechanism for opening up the service bay was simple – hold down two buttons built into the deck to lower the floor. I suppose that was to prevent you from lowering it if you hit one button by accident. I dropped the floor of the pit down as far as it would go.
I tried slapping my ID tag against the sensor to get the massive hangar doors to open, but apparently you needed more than level three technician privileges. This made sense since under normal circumstances these opened to reveal the vacuum of space. I popped open the access panel and got to work on the lock mechanism. If I got this wrong, I’d trigger a lockdown that would prevent the doors being opened at all, requiring a reset from a senior officer. I could probably overcome this, but it was better not to trigger it in the first place. As I worked on the lock, I listened carefully for any sound that might indicate the red robot’s approach.
There was a bassy thunk! that I could feel through my feet and in my chest. Gigantic bolts disengaging. Yellow warning lights began to flash.
“Warning! Outer doors opening. Decompression imminent.” The recorded voice wasn’t aware that there was a breathable atmosphere on the other side of the doors. How could it be? Battleships never entered a planet’s atmosphere.
The doors rumbled open and daylight filtered in through the crack. I could hear the sounds of the jungle outside – birds and the monkey-like creatures disturbed by the noise from the wreck.
I let the doors open until the gap between them was about twenty feet wide, then I stopped them. I jammed the mechanism so they couldn’t be opened or closed. This wasn’t for my escape – it was part of the trap I was laying for the big red robot.
I drove the ATV and trailer through the gap and out onto the launch deck. I towed the trailer across the deck, turned the ATV and then reversed the trailer until it sat right on the edge. I unhitched it, setting the manual brake to stop it rolling. I had created a crude sort of a trap, but I thought it could work if it was sprung quickly and with the element of surprise. Now all I had to do was lure my prey into it.
I had half expected the robot to appear before my preparations were complete. But now I was left waiting for it to turn up. It had to know where I was – I’d blown up crab-bots and opened the biggest external door on the ship, so I wasn’t exactly hiding. Could it still be trying to batter its way through the blast door? Or was it taking a long detour through other more accessible parts of the ship to get to the hangar and deal with me?
I hate waiting. In situations like this, it frays the nerves and leaves you imagining all sorts of ways that the plan can go wrong.
After twenty minutes I gave up and went in search of the robot.
Chapter Twenty-One
The corridors were empty and spookily quiet. I stopped the ATV and strained my ears to try and catch some sound that would indicate where the robot was. I heard nothing. I turned and looked down at my shoulder, catching a whiff of burned leather as I did and wishing Trixie was there to tell me where the big red robot was lurking.
The ATV moved forward slowly, the tyres squeaking on the corridor floor. I had to find the robot’s hiding place. Coming ready or not. At every corner I slowed, afraid the metal hulk would be waiting silently, ready to ambush me. In some places, I stopped the ATV and sneaked forward on foot to peer around the corner. At other times I raced around the corner, almost on two wheels, relying on the element of surprise. And every time I saw nothing but more empty corridor.
By a roundabout route, I came to the blast door that I had shut 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 t
he 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.