The Lost Starship (34 page)

Maddox glanced back at Dana.

Meta helped the doctor forward. Dana examined the lights on the panel. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“Maybe what?” asked Keith.

No one answered him. Everyone was too busy staring through the triangular window, watching the growing starship.

“It looks as if we headed for that bay,” Valerie said
, pointing at the bigger vessel.

Silently, Maddox agreed
with her. First the medical flesh creature and now the narrow control slots on the panel—he was glad humanity hadn’t encountered alien life before this. The New Men were different enough. What would communication be like with a sentient squid alien?

“Are the
re more of the wall creatures on the starship?” Keith asked.

“
I don’t think you understand,” Dana told him. “The creature had a single function as a medical machine.”

“It was
n’t truly alive then?” Maddox said.

“
Oh, it was,” Dana said, “which is interesting.”

“No,” Valerie said. “It’s disgusting.”

“You only say that because it’s different,” Dana told her.

“Exactly,” Valerie agreed, “too different. The thing was eating you alive.”

“It didn’t want to,” Dana said. “It hungered, yet it tried to communicate with me. It taught me whatever I asked it.”

“How could you ask if it
was an alien?” Maddox said.

“That
certainly compounded the problem,” Dana said. “Direct thoughts helped.” She grew quiet. “The loneliness of the creature staggered me. I felt sorry for it. Over the centuries, the creature has fed off the others like it to sustain itself.”

“Disgusting,” Valerie
repeated.

Dana turned on her. “You’re a Star Watch officer. You’re trained to explore the universe and understand
things that are different.”

“Sorry,” Valerie said
, who didn’t sound apologetic at all. “Blood-sucking alien vampires don’t count.”

“You must
look past your primitive emotional responses,” Dana said. “It was alive. It thought, and it had survived the ages until now.”

“You have a point, Doctor,” Maddox said. “I’m hoping your brief time linked with it has given you enough information for us to take over the sentinel.”

“I’m afraid I have bad news for you,” Dana said. “I’m just remembering now what the medical creature told me. The starship has defenders. That’s why the creature has stayed in the shuttle, searching for fighters of its kind to overpower the defenders and take over the vessel. Then it can return to its homeworld.”

“Where is that?” Maddox asked.

“It doesn’t know,” Dana said. “It was a simple medical creature. I think over the centuries—due to need—it started thinking. That’s what slowed its reactions against you. In the old days, it would have subdued you after the first shot. While you were busy firing, I communicated with it, pleading for your lives. It listened long enough for you to kill it, and for that I will always feel badly.”

Like the others,
Dana had watched the approaching starship even as she spoke. Now she turned around to face Maddox. “You may have killed the only true alien mankind will ever find. That should give you pause for reflection.”

Maddox grunted. He didn’t care
one bit about medical creatures from six thousand years ago. He wanted this starship, and he needed it now.

“Let’s get ready,” Maddox said.

“We’re going to attack the alien defenders head-on?” Sergeant Riker asked him.

“I don’t see what else we can do,” Maddox said. “We didn’t come all this way to wait in the shuttle. After we dock, we’re going to storm the sentinel.”

Through the window, they watched the
ir ship enter a hangar bay. Other narrow shuttles waited down below on a lit deck. Then their craft descended. Soon, it made loud metallic sounds as vast cylinders of compressed air hissed outside the shuttle’s hull. The entire craft shuddered until magnetic locks attached to the vessel and the vibrations stopped.

“We’re in,” Maddox said.

As if on cue, their vacc-boots clanked down onto the deck. Each of them had been floating above the floor.

“We have gravity,” Keith said. “Is that good or bad
, do you think?”

“Only one way to find out,” Maddox said.
Although he wore a spacesuit, he readied an assault rifle he’d brought from the
Geronimo
. The others checked theirs. After everyone nodded, he led the group to the outer hatch. Dana had shown them where it was.

The pit of Maddox’s stomach twisted
as nervous tension oozed through his arms and made his fingers burn. He glanced back one last time to see if everyone was ready.

“This is it,” Maddox said. “We’re Star Watch officers and personnel.”

“Not all of us,” Meta said.

“As of now, you are,” Maddox told her. “And I don’t mean an honorary member. The
Lord High Admiral gave me the authority to draft whomever I wanted. Do you agree?”

Meta
nodded, saying. “I do.”

“Then repeat after me,” Maddox
said. He administered the oath, and she swore to uphold it.

“Doctor Rich?” Maddox asked.

“Forget about your rituals,” Dana said. “Let’s get on with this.”

“
No,” Maddox said. “This isn’t only for you. It lets the rest of us know you’re with us.”

“I’m stan
ding here, aren’t I?”

“
You must also be with us in spirit,” Maddox said. “We must be a team or we’re never going to succeed. We have to be able to rely on each other.”

“This is military gibberish,” Dana said.

“We want you to belong with us, Doctor. Will you take the Star Watch oath? Will you fight with every fiber of your being to help us defeat the New Men?”

“Your ringing platitudes mean nothing to me,” Dana said stubbornly.
“I am an island unto myself.”

“Wrong,” Maddox told her. “The others gave you their blood to keep you alive. You’re aiding us with your
exceptional intellect.”

Dana glanced at the others. “Is this true? Do you want me to join your war party in spirit and in truth?”

“I do,” Meta said.

“And I,” Valerie said.

“Sure, love,” Keith said. “Let it be all for one and one for all.”

“The old musketeer slogan,” Dana said. “That is quaint. What about you, Sergeant Riker, you shot me with your stunner? Do you want me in the Star Watch?”

“An old dog like me in an alien starship on the edge of nowhere would like all the allies he can get,” Riker said. “I want you to join up, Doctor. We need you with us all the way.”

Maddox was surprised at Dana’s reaction. As the gruff sergeant spoke, the doctor turned away. She didn’t speak, but her helmet went up and down in a nod.

“Administer the oath,” Meta told Maddox.

Clearing his throat, Maddox did just that. In a quiet whisper, Doctor Dana Rich took the Star Watch
vow, finally joining the team.

Only then did Captain Maddox approach the hatch. He unlocked it and swung it open into the alien
hangar bay.

A few interior lights gleamed overhead.
From here at least, the other shuttles appeared to be intact. He climbed down, stepping onto the alien sentinel. After a long journey, it was difficult to believe he had gotten this far. A grin split his features. A laugh bubbled.

Twisting around, he saw the hangar bay door
they’d entered sliding shut, sealing them from the stars.

“Nothing,” Lieutenant Noonan said in a hoarse voice. “I don’t see any movement. Where are these defenders?”

“Fan out,” Maddox said. “Look everywhere. Lieutenant, do you have your motion detector out?”

“Like I said, sir, I don’t see a thing. I meant
on my detector.”

Like mice in a deserted castle, the Star Watch team began to cross the hangar bay deck. They passed other shuttles. Nothing moved. No dust stirred. Scrawled across the floor
in various places were alien numbers or words.

“I see a hatch, sir,” Riker said. “Do you suppose the defenders are waiting
on the other side?”

Maddox hefted his repeater. What would ancient, alien space marines be like after six thousand years? “This is it, people.
If we’re going to control the starship, we have to defeat them.”

His stomach twisted with anticipation. The closer they neared the hatch, the tighter his gut
s became. Turning, he pointed at each member in turn, showing each person where he wanted him or her to stand. Only then, did he take the final step toward the hatch. Finding his mouth bone dry, Maddox shifted his stance. He gripped his repeater one-armed and swung the hatch open with the other.

Valerie shouted, and she fired several rounds.
His helmet muffled the noise of the sounds even as the bullets burned past Maddox into the giant corridor.

“Stop shooting!” Maddox shouted. “They’re dead.
Look! They’re all long dead.”

He
stared into a brightly lit wide curving corridor. The sight shocked him. Monstrous skeletons of nine-foot… The captain squinted. They were big pincer-creatures with steel-shod claws. Each skeleton gripped what appeared to be a hacked-apart fighting robot. Instead of humanlike arms, the robots had segmented metallic tentacles with grippers on the ends. Littered among the dead combatants were serrated blades, oddly shaped rifles, tubes, possibly grenades and…

“What is that?” Valerie asked. She’d moved up beside him by the hatch. Her gloved finger pointed at a crust
y substance covering most of the corridor decking.

The
lieutenant’s words coming out of Maddox’s headphones caused him to start. He took a sharp breath and stepped into the corridor. The bottom of his vacc-boots crunched upon the crusted substance, causing it to burst into powder.

The others followed him
, observing similar reactions.

“Slime,” Sergeant Riker declared. “This brittle stuff must have been slime once. Did the skeleton things crawl like slugs?”

“Sick,” Valerie said, “sick and disgusting.”

Maddox studied the corridor, looking for clues about the battle that had taken place here.
The bulkheads bore scotch marks and had holes in places. He accidentally kicked a tube, which rattled and bounced down the corridor, coming to rest against a skeleton’s skull. The struck bone disintegrated into dust, sending up a puff that slowly drifted onto the deck.

“Was
this the defenders’ last stand?” Keith asked.

“I’m not interested in that,” Meta declared. “Where are the
other defenders? The medical creature in the shuttle told us some still live or function.”

Maddox halted, and with greater intensity, he stared down the corridor. The littered deck went on as far as he could see.
He told himself to think.

“If the starship’s defenders had survived the last battle,” he said, “wouldn’t they have cleaned up this mess?”

“That’s an interesting question,” Dana said. “Yes, I believe you’re correct. By this—” a sweep of a hand indicated the dead— “it shows us nothing alive or functioning remains on the starship.”

“That isn’t what the medical creature told
you,” Valerie pointed out.

“Let me ponder the implications of that,” Dana said.

As if they were on a battlefield, the team moved down the corridor in a staggered formation. Their weapons aimed here and there. Vacc-boots continued to crunch the ancient slime and occasionally caused a skeleton to burst apart into dust. The lights burned from the ceiling, providing illumination.

“I
’m beginning to think that Doctor Rich is right,” Valerie said. “The ship is deserted.”

“
Why the dichotomy?” Dana asked. “The medical creature painted a different picture of what we would find. I wonder if the last time it tried to board, the fight was still in progress. Yes. It might have tried once, maybe twice, and then it
knew
the hopelessness of entering the sentinel. After communicating with it, I sensed it wasn’t a curious creature, but lonely and frightened, as I’ve said before.” The doctor shook her helmet. “For six thousand years, the medical creature sought a way out of its predicament, refusing to try the only thing that would work: making another attempt to enter the sentinel.”

“
Do you know this to be true,” Maddox asked, “or is this conjecture on your part?”

“Maybe a little of both,” Dana
admitted.

They continued down the curving hallway. The skeletons of dead aliens and broken combat robots thickened in places and thinned in others. It appeared as if the battle had taken place along the entire breadth of this giant corridor, at least.

“I wonder how big the ship is,” Riker said later.

“I’ve been a fool,” Valerie said.
“I’ve been so worried about these fabled defenders that I haven’t thought of anything else.” She adjusted her boxlike motion-detecting device. It made clicking sounds.

Maddox’s spine tightened. What did the noise indicate?

Lieutenant Noonan laughed, looking up. “I have good news. The ship’s atmosphere is breathable, although its carbon dioxide content is higher than I like. The bad news is that it’s far too cold to take into our lungs. We have to figure out a way to heat the air before we can take off our vacc-suits.”

“We’d better find a way to do that quickly,” Meta said
. “Our oxygen tanks won’t last forever.”

They had brought extra tanks, but Maddox knew
she was right.

“Even if we
can breathe their air,” Keith complained, “we’re going to starve to death unless the aliens ate the same foods we do.”

Not only had they taken extra tanks, but each person had s
tuffed their suit with frozen food packets. Maddox figured they could eat rationed servings for another two weeks. After that, they would begin starving. Losing the scout could well prove deadly to their future survival.

For the next
several hours, they explored the giant starship, walking from one end to the other. They found that it was three times the size of an SWS
Gettysburg
-class battleship, the largest Star Watch combat vessel.

Everywhere,
broken fighting ’bots lay entwined with alien pincer skeletons. Clearly, it had been an epic boarding battle fought without quarter to the death.

“If you hadn’t linked with the medical creature,” Valerie told Dana, “we wouldn’t know who invaded and who
had defended.”

As they began to retrace their steps, Maddox
shouldered his repeater. The others had already put away theirs. It didn’t seem anything remotely alive had survived the many centuries. The starship was in effect empty, a Flying Dutchman of the space ways.

During the sweep back, t
hey explored side hatches, possible weapon storage rooms and finally found the engine area. It was vast, with more of the dead on the floor and crusted slime on the plates.

Big
broad metal-colored cylinders hummed with energy. Blue electrical currents flowed between the narrow structures on top of the cylinders. What might have been control panels to the side showed a bewildering set of Christmas lights that blinked in undecipherable sequences.

“
Here is the evidence,” Meta said with awe in her voice. “The engines are running. Do you know how incredible that is?”

“
Are they a type of fusion reactor?” asked Maddox.

“
No,” Dana said. “That wouldn’t be my guess.”

“What would be?” asked Maddox.

“Antimatter,” the doctor declared.

“Do you
agree, Meta?” asked Maddox.

“That’s
far above my pay grade, Captain,” the Rouen Colony woman said.

“
Supposing we can figure out how to control the vessel,” Keith said. “How do we
fix
the starship if she takes hits? The Commonwealth doesn’t have antimatter technology.”

“First things first,” Dana said
.

“We’ve just gotten our first break,” Valerie chimed in. She
was studying her device. “The air is breathable
and
warm enough here for us to take off our helmets. I think the engines heat this spot.”

Inside his helmet,
Maddox exhaled sharply. He was the leader. He would test the lieutenant’s theory in order to make sure it was safe for the others. Reaching up to remove his helmet, he found Meta holding his arm, keeping him from it.