“I don’t think so,” Dana said. “I have the feeling the sentinel is flying it. The creature merely intercepts those the starship tries to rescue.”
Maddox fought for calm. “How do we get out of this room?”
Dana frowned as she looked around. Finally, she pointed at the barely quivering flesh. “We have to peel that thing off,” she said. “The hatch is behind it.”
“We’d better put our vacc-suits back on,” Sergeant Riker said. The suits lay scattered on the deck. “We don’t know what’s in the rest of the shuttle, if it has more air we can breathe.”
Maddox glanced at his aide. The sergeant looked shaken, and the man gripped his arm where the medikit had drawn blood.
“Good idea,” Maddox told him. “Let’s suit up, people. We’re alive, and it appears we might have the freedom of the shuttle. Now is the time to make the most of it.”
Peeling away the shuddering warm flesh might have been too difficult without their suits on. The hatch was smaller than those on the scout, but it was large enough for them to squeeze through.
What looked like crusted slime coated the deck plates. It crackled as their boots crunched over it.
“We can call them the slime aliens,” Keith said over his short-speaker.
“Are there more of them aboard the shuttle?” Meta asked Dana.
The doctor shook her helmet. She wheezed over the headphones. Meta and Valerie helped her along the short corridor.
“No,” Dana whispered. “Use the other hatch.”
Maddox released his grip on the one and forced the other. It opened into a narrow control room with a triangular window in front. He and the others piled into the chamber. What might have been tentacle slot buttons on a panel glowed with various colors.
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 there 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 wasn’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.”
-33-
Through the window, they watched their 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 standing 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.”