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 guts 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 crusty 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 stuffed 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.