Read Battle Station for Free Online

a hole in my own suit. I decided to try it anyway, but couldn’t get the angle right. The projectors were on my wrists, and with the bulk of the suit, I couldn’t get them turned so they would fire against my own chest and waist region.
    I recalled something at the last instant, as the arm drew me up into a region of even more complete darkness: the ship’s maw. I recalled that Sandra had once slashed away one of these fingers with her combat knife. I drew mine now, and it took me two strikes, but I managed to hack away one of the three fingers. About a foot of its length twisted and writhed like a half-severed worm on a sidewalk as it floated away from me.
    It was all too little, too late. I experienced the familiar sensation of being swallowed by a huge, hungry creature. Then the starlight shut off, and I knew I’d been consumed.
    The arm released me and snaked away through an opening. Familiar nanite walls surrounded me. The arm retreated from my chamber into another, and I darted after it, using my suits propulsion systems.
    In this chamber, two doors opened simultaneously. I eyed one, then the other. In the back of one a tiny gleam of white light shone. I froze, remembering.
    “The tests,” I said aloud to no one. But I was certain my hunch was correct. I laughed suddenly, knowing where I was and what was happening.
    “You big bastard of a ship,” I whooped. “You scared the living crap out of me.”
    It was a test. It was all a test. The ship was a Nano ship, and apparently it was tired of its commander, or whoever had been in charge had died. Now, it was recruiting me for the job. Fortunately, I was very conversant with these tricks and ploys. I’d seen them all before. Hell, I could have written a book about them.
    I waltzed through one trick after another. Each time I did so, I expected the ship to address me in some fashion, as Alamo had so long ago. But it didn’t. I opened my external microphones and turned up the gain. All I heard from the ship was some odd sounds—clicks and echoing squeaks. They sounded like something a dolphin would make at the bottom of the sea.
    Maybe it wanted me to remove my helmet to talk, but I didn’t want to. I kept it firmly on my head in case the ship did eject me for some reason. Even if I failed a test, at least I wouldn’t die.
    It was about the fifth test, by my count, when I met the alien. It was an entirely new life form. Big, but not impossibly so. If I had to estimate, I would say it was about ten feet long and weigh in at around a thousand pounds.
    It looked like a crustacean of some kind. A big, bluish-green one. It dripped fluids, and didn’t look to healthy—but who was I to judge? Maybe this barnacle-encrusted sad-sack creature was an Olympic contender wherever it came from.
    It approached me gamely enough. There was only one big claw and eight smaller legs instead of six, but I still considered it a lobster. It never had a chance, of course. I pushed away its snapping claw and sat on it. There was gravity in the ship, and I pinned it to the deck, where it scrabbled helplessly.
    I almost killed it out of hand, but stopped myself. That’s what the ship wanted. That’s what had to happen, but I couldn’t do it. In fact, the entire situation made me angry.
    I flipped up the visor on my helmet, having tested the air with my suits sensors and found it breathable. The atmosphere was humid, dank and made me sweat in my suit almost immediately.
    “Ship, talk to me. I’ve beaten this poor fellow. Let him live, I command you.”
    More clicks, squeaks and a few new sounds: gurgles. I frowned. Could this be the language of the crustacean? It did sound watery, ghostly. Like the noises undersea creatures made.
    I kept talking to the ship, but it didn’t say anything back I could understand. After about ten minutes however, I smelled something—something mouth-watering. With a shock, I realized what it was: burnt lobster.
    The ship had been heating the floor,