Battleship Raider

by Paul Tomlinson

  There was no time to think of anything except getting to the next tree. I had no idea how much time had passed since the red robot had opened fire on the dragon.

  My foot slipped on a wet branch and I had to wrap my arms around the trunk of the tree to save myself. As I waited for the jackhammer in my chest to slow down again, I listened to see if I was being tracked by the robot. But all I could hear was the drumming of raindrops on leaves. I hoped the robot was satisfied that it had scared me away from its territory and had returned to the Celestia. There was little chance of this if it thought I had run off with the Navigator under my arm.

  I was amazed that something that big could move so quietly. If I hadn’t been staring down through the leaves, I would not have been aware that it was there. I clung to the tree, holding my breath as the big metal monster approached. It stood directly under the tree I was in, head moving from side to side as it scanned the jungle all around. It was close enough that I could see the water beading on its bodywork and trickling down. I could have dropped down right on top of it, but I couldn’t think of a good reason to do that. I had no explosives to thrust inside its casing, so a direct attack would be like an ant picking a fight with an elephant. I’d just get squished.

  The robot moved quietly away, still scanning ahead as it went. I relaxed my grip on the tree trunk and shifted my weight. There was a loud Crack! as the branch under me broke. Before I was even aware of what was happening, I was falling towards the ground. I remembered to bend my knees as I hit and rolled with the fall. I could hear the robot swiping aside the bushes as it headed back, alerted by the sound of the snapping branch. I got to my feet and ran.

  I’m not sure what’s worse, being pursued by a bad-tempered one-eyed dragon, or being chased by an emotionless robot tank. I didn’t have time to weigh the pros and cons of each. At that moment, Death was a red bulldozer crashing through the jungle after me. If I stumbled over a hidden tree root or slipped on wet leaves, I would probably be splattered across the foliage. I kept my head down and my legs pumping. My world consisted of the few yards of undergrowth I could see in front of me.

  The ground slipped away under me. A layer of wet leaves slid over the dirt, carrying me with it. I pinwheeled my arms, trying to remain upright, but smashed down onto my back. And kept sliding – forwards and downwards. The rifle flew from my hand when I hit the ground and I had no chance of retrieving it. There had been no warning that the ground sloped so steeply. I was skidding down a path of some kind that was now channelling rainwater like a mini river. I dug in my heels, trying to slow my descent, but it had little effect. Unable to do anything else, I crossed my arms across my chest and tucked my chin down. I was going to have to ride with it and hope I didn’t crash into anything substantial on the way down.

  Trees and bushes and rocks flashed by on either side of me. Pebbles and sticks bruised my back and my butt, and mud and debris were piling up in the back of my jacket and under my shirt. My backpack was torn away and thrown aside and I slid onwards, losing sight of it.

  And then there was no more ground. I had been pitched over the edge of a precipice and was falling through the air. I looked down, hoping to see a wide expanse of deep water that would cushion my fall, but all I could see was the tops of trees. There was nothing I could do. A curious calm came over me and I relaxed.

  I crashed through the canopy of leaves and for a moment it did feel like I had fallen into a lake. But then the small snapping branches gave way to larger ones and they buffeted me around like the flippers in a pinball game. I was bounced from one stout branch to another as I fell, first my chest and stomach then my back being pummelled. I tried to grab at branches with my good hand, hoping to at least slow myself down before I slammed with deadly force into a thick branch or the jungle floor. I caught a branch but my fingers slipped over the wet bark. My right leg scraped painfully against a broken branch and I felt something tear. And then I collided with a branch that tipped me, turning me so that I was falling head-first. I raised my left arm to protect my face and tried to grab something – anything – with my right arm.

  My stomach struck a branch hard, driving the air out of my lungs. I slid off the branch and fell the last ten or fifteen feet, crashing through a dense patch of ferns and landing with a thud on the soft wet earth. I lay on my back trying to drag air into my chest. I could feel consciousness slipping away and had to fight to stop the red cloud overwhelming me.

  Every part of me felt battered and bruised. I had cracked some ribs I was sure, but aside from that, my bones seemed to be intact. Beyond the general level of pain, there was something seriously wrong with my right thigh. I didn’t want to look at it but knew I had to. I struggled to a sitting position. There was a long tear in my jeans where they had been ripped by a broken branch and they were soaked with blood. The gash in my thigh was maybe five inches long and was oozing blood. I’m generally okay with the sight of blood – except when there’s a lot of it and it’s my own. I waited for the sick feeling in my stomach to subside.

  My backpack was gone – and the medi-kit with it. I had no bandages and no antibiotics. I needed to bind the wound and stop it bleeding so I was going to have to improvise. I shrugged off my jacket. My shirt was wet and filthy, but it was all I had. I pulled it off and turned it inside-out, pressing the cleanest surface to the wound, wrapping the shirt around my leg and tying it tightly in place.

  I had no idea how far I had fallen – either horizontally or vertically. My joyride had carried me away from the robot, which was a good thing. But I didn’t know where I was in relation to the Celestia or my Trekker. I needed medical supplies and the ship or my vehicle were the only places I was going to find them.

  Using my arms and sliding on my bruised butt, I dragged myself further into the undergrowth. Using my knife I cut a strong sapling and tripped the twigs and leaves from it. I used the stick to help me get to my feet, keeping my weight on my left leg. I hobbled around in a circle, looking for – There! A tree with the round leathery yellow gourds. I cut one down and jammed it on top of my stick. Tucking the gourd into my armpit, I could lean on the stick like a crutch. I just hoped the gourd wasn’t the local equivalent of poison ivy.

  Without my shirt I was feeling chilly. This was possibly my body going into shock. But I still thought it was a good sign. When I started feeling hot – burning up inside – it would mean that my wound was infected. I pulled on the leather jacket. It had survived the battering remarkably well. Zipping it up, I could feel the bulges of the drones in the inside pockets. Gnat was out for the count, but Mozzie was still functional. I powered him up and sent him skywards to get an idea of my location.

  I thought about trying to use the drone as a communicator. I could call for help. Hell, maybe I’d call the bounty hunters and tell them where to find me. Being back in Margotsville jail would be a massive improvement on my current situation. But, of course, there was no signal down here in the jungle. If I waited until there was a satellite overhead, I might be able to make contact. But I had no way of tracking satellites. Given enough time – and a college degree in electronics and astrophysics – I might have been able to come up with a solution. But my life-blood was leaking away and I needed to act quickly.

  The thing about jungle is that it all looks the same. The images Mozzie came back with told me nothing useful. Operating the drone manually, without Trixie’s input, meant I could achieve very little. I pinged the location of my Trekker – it was fifteen miles away, due east of my position. Running from the robot and the subsequent fall had taken me further from it. There was no tracking device in the Celestia that I could use to pinpoint its location, but I could scan for non-natural energy sources. The ship was a little over five miles away – as the crow flies. The Trekker was a safer option, but I doubted I could reach it in my present state. The battleship was closer. But both of them were above me. I was going to have to get back up to the top of the cliff that I had fallen from. And I couldn’t fly up like a
crow.

  I drank some water that had collected in the centre of a large leaf. I would have been glad of a protein bar at that moment – the thought of that rubbery old slipper texture and indeterminate flavour made my mouth water. I would probably find some back at the ship, I told myself. All I had to do was get there. Before I bled to death.

  I sent Mozzie back up again, scanning the layout of the land to find a less vertical slope that I could trek up. The one he found would add a couple of miles or so to my journey, but it was a much better prospect than trying to climb a vertical cliff face with only one good hand and one good leg. A journey of eight miles begins with one unsteady step. A little voice in my head was telling me to find a sheltered spot and go to sleep – start my journey in the morning. If I listened to that little voice, I wouldn’t wake up in the morning.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The rainclouds drifted away westwards and the sky faded from dark blue through a rich purple to black. Saphira has two moons, Smaug and Fafnir. The first of them came out; I didn’t know which it was, but the bright yellow disc lit up the jungle and made it look unreal – like a theatre set. The second moon would rise about an hour after the first. The two would give enough overhead light to travel by and I had the drone shining its little spotlight on the ground so I could avoid any immediate obstacles.

  On top of the fear of bleeding to death, I had some concerns about the things that came out after dark. I could hear small things scurrying through the undergrowth – but I wasn’t worried about them. I was worried about the big things that ate the small scurrying things.

  Something large like a white sheet flapped towards me, as big as a man. A gauzy ghost-moth, attracted by the drone’s light. It was an eerie yet beautiful creature. Later in the evening I stood and watched a host of them dipping and gliding through the trees, dancing to music I couldn’t hear.

  I had the drone’s audio sensors tuned to pick up sounds I couldn’t hear. If the Celestia’s guardian robot came stalking through the trees, I wanted to know earlier rather than later. And there were other denizens of the jungle that I wasn’t keen on encountering. As well as dragons, I had heard tales of giant vampire bats. Not as big as the ghost-moths, but still large enough to bring down a man. These might be a local myth – but if Mozzie picked up their ultrasonic cries, I wanted to be ready with my sharpened stakes. Or my pistol.

  I plodded through the night, one step after another, resting often. When I stopped, I would lean against a tree, knowing that if I sat down I wasn’t going to get up again. More than once I managed to fall asleep on my feet. Progress up the slope was slow. When I reached the halfway point, both moons were almost directly overhead. It would be daybreak when I reached the wreck. If I reached the wreck. When I reached the wreck.

  In an effort to find a silver lining, I told myself that an advantage of my chosen route was that it would bring me back to the Celestia from a different direction. And I would probably be able to find a new way in. Probably.

  I retied the shirt around my leg, trying to ignore the fact that it was soaked with my blood. How much had I lost? How much can you lose before your situation becomes critical? Perhaps it was better that I didn’t know the answer to these questions.

  Mozzie buzzed an urgent alert. I had dozed off again, standing against a scrawny old tree that stood close to the top of the slope. His alarm wasn’t to wake me. He had picked up the calls of the bats. Lots of them. I hid behind the tree as a dark swarm of them swept overhead, wings beating like the opening and closing of hundreds of umbrellas. Their dark shapes blotted out the moons for a time and I just stood and stared up at the spectacle. Then they were gone. They hadn’t spared me a thought. Perhaps I didn’t have enough blood left to be worth bothering with.

  When I reached the top of the slope, I did allow myself to sit down. This was okay, I thought, as long as I didn’t lie down. I was feeling light-headed and I was pretty sure it wasn’t anything to do with the altitude. Blood loss and dehydration mess with your head. And the rest of you.

  Falling off the cliff had taken me less than a minute. Walking back up had taken me most of the night. As the crow flies, I had moved only about a mile closer to the wreck – it was still more than four miles away. At a brisk walk, I could have covered that distance in an hour-and-a-half or two hours, even without a machete. At my current pace, I was likely to see the moons rise again before I got there.

  I staggered onwards for what seemed like days but wasn’t. The moons seemed to be zipping across the sky at double their normal rate. Or perhaps I was just moving more slowly, caught in some sort of time bubble.

  I don’t remember lying down. Or closing my eyes. But when I opened them the sun was shining brightly overhead. It was another hot and humid day – but I was shivering. Probably not a good sign. The shirt tied around my leg was stiff with dried blood. I decided to leave it as it was. My leg felt stiff and swollen. The rest of me just ached. My ribs hurt when I drew breath. I had to get to my feet and start moving again. I wouldn’t survive another night in the open. But all I really wanted to do was close my eyes and go back to sleep.

  A sound off to my left drew my attention. It was one of the ugly green birds with the googly eyes. It sat watching me, turning its head on one side to almost ninety-degrees. Its wrinkled face and curious blinking were so comical that I had to smile. But my smile must have looked more like a mad grin or a grimace because it made the bird stretch its wings and scarper. The piece of dead wood it had been perched on rocked then settled. Not deadwood. Rusty metal. A piece of the Celestia’s wreckage.

  Seeing this was enough to spur me into action. Very slow, painful action, but action all the same. Summoning all of my strength I manage to get my good leg under me and rise slowly. I tucked the gourd of my crutch under my arm and stood, swaying only slightly. My lips were dry and my throat was parched. Mozzie was hovering at my side and I set him to scanning for the Celestia’s non-natural energy signature. When he showed me how close it was, I almost cried. If I could have spared the moisture, I probably would have done. We set off at a brisk limp, knowing we had less than a mile to cover.

  I was hiding behind a tree, shielded by the undergrowth, looking out at the midsection of the Celestia. I was seeing her from a new angle, but she looked much the same as I’d left her – partially buried and with trees growing all around and leaning in over her. From this position, I could see what was left of one of her circular landing decks. It was badly buckled, but I could still imagine the warbirds coming in to land.

  I sent Mozzie up to survey the landing deck. I felt sure there would be some way into the ship from the deck. The images he brought back showed how the intense heat from entering the atmosphere followed by the impact of the crash had badly warped the ship’s structure. Right-angles were now skewed and straight lines had been softened and bent. But I could also see a couple of small hatches that looked like they hadn’t been too badly affected. My next task was to get up onto the deck. How hard could that be?

  Trees on either side of the ship had grown taller than her tallest point and their leaves had formed a shield over her so that she couldn’t be seen from the air. If I could climb one of those trees, I could lower myself onto the deck. Ordinarily this would have been child’s play.

  I selected a tree that seemed to offer the easiest climb. Lots of branches close together. I would have to abandon my crutch and I let it go with some reluctance – it had served me well. I was going to have to use both hands to climb. This was going to hurt. A lot. A handful of painkillers and pint of moonshine would have been very welcome at that moment. I reached up with my good hand and grasped the first branch.

  The pain served as a distraction, stopping me worrying about other things. Like the fact that I might climb the tree and leap onto the Celestia’s deck only to find the big red robot waiting for me with its cannon primed and ready to fire. I dismissed that thought. I could only deal with one life or death crisis at a time.

  The
climb was slow and painful but finally I was just above the level of the deck. There was no sign of Sergeant Spudgun. My body was drenched with sweat and my head was spinning. The exertion had re-opened the gash in my leg and fresh blood was soaking through the makeshift bandage. But I was within spitting distance of salvation – if I had been able to muster enough saliva to spit.

  I waited for the world to stop spinning. Blinking to clear my vision, I crawled slowly along the branch towards the deck. When I reached the halfway point the branch began to sag. This was a worry until I had gone a little further and the deck was under me. I rolled, hanging under the branch. I aimed my good leg towards the deck, keeping the damaged one up and out of the way. I dangled there for a moment like a sort of post-apocalyptic gymnast – and then I let go. My foot hit the deck and I rolled to absorb the impact.

  I lay on the warm deck, listening to see if my arrival had drawn the attention of Ronnie Rocketlauncher. If he did come to investigate, he’d probably think I was already dead. I didn’t hear the steady clump of giant footsteps coming across the deck. No robotic Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum. This meant I had to get up. I cursed the red robot.

  The hatch was very similar to the one I had originally entered through. Was it yesterday or the day before? It felt like a week ago. There was no porthole in this one, so I had no way of knowing what was on the other side. A big robot with a big gun? Automatic weapons? Or another improvised explosive device? I would have to be extra cautious.

  I was all set to pop the access panel and crank the handle to open the airlock door – but Mozzie chose that moment to try and attract my attention. Behind him, the plating of the ship’s hull was buckled and it looked like a seam had burst. The drone disappeared through the crack. Was the gap wide enough for me to slip through? It would be a tight squeeze, but I was sure I could make it.