Vaughn Heppner - The Lost Starship

Blood oozed from her many wounds, floating away from her in tiny globules.

“Quick,” Maddox said in a loud voice. “Help me save her.”

Perhaps sensing his intent, Meta holstered her smoking gun. Together with Maddox, they applied bandages to the many wounds. Once the bleeding stopped, Maddox ordered Meta to free the others. They watched with openmouthed horror and drooling sleepiness.

The Rouen Colony woman applied her strength yet again, freeing each of the crew from their restraints.

“The doctor’s too pale,” Valerie said. “We have to use our medikits.”

Maddox nodded for her to proceed. Valerie used a higher function on her kit. She gave the doctor a direct blood transfusion. It turned out Sergeant Riker had the same blood type. So, he also gave Dana a transfusion.

The room stank of alien stenches, gunpowder and blood. More vapors and a dark oozing substance extruded from the fleshy mass on the wall that seemed to operate the torture chamber.

Maddox looked around. He couldn’t spy any hatches out of here.

“What do we do now?” Keith asked as he panted.

“Good question,” Maddox said.

Dana’s eyelids flickered until she finally focused on him. “I know what to do,” she whispered.

“We’re listening,” Maddox said.

“The… the creature communicated with me,” Dana said. “It’s so terribly lonely.”

“You can tell us all about that later,” Maddox said. “For now, I want to know if we’re on the shuttle or in the starship.”

Dana frowned at the question.

Maddox explained to her what he’d seen before passing out.

“Oh, yes, the shuttle,” Dana said. “I see what you mean. We’re on it or in it. The creature is too afraid to move into the sentinel. It’s been waiting for reinforcements.”

“What do you mean?” Keith asked with his eyes wide and wild. “You’re telling us this… creature has waited for reinforcements for six thousand years?”

Dana nodded weakly.

Maddox felt cold inside as ruthlessness and despair battled within him. “Is the alien ship filled with these life forms?” he asked, indicting the quivering flesh.

Dana stared at him. “Do you mean the ship or shuttle?”

“The starship,” Maddox said, “our goal.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Dana said. “This one invaded the sentinel or was part of a combat group. It was or is a medical creature.”

“How do you know any of this?” Maddox asked.

Gingerly, Dana touched the bandages on her scalp. “It communicated directly with my brain. You should have left those in place.”

“It was draining your blood!” Maddox shouted.

Dana shuddered.

“Is that thing—” Maddox jerked his thumb at the mass of alien-flesh beginning to ooze off the wall—“flying the shuttle?”

“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.”