Guardians of the Galactic Sentinel 1: The Deimos Artifact (24 page)

The Viking leader looked thoughtful for a long moment before coming to a decision. "I must admit that, against my better judgement, you've piqued my interest in this artifact business." He nodded his head as he came to a decision, "Maybe we could all use a little diversion. I'll tell you what, we'll go with you to that moon, but none of my people are going to handle or have anything to do with that artifact. Anything you do with that damned thing is purely up to you."

"Understood," said MacPherson, "When can we go?"

"How about everybody gets a good night's sleep and we head over there tomorrow?" said Holger. "You take your ship with Gertrude on board and I'll go in one of my raider ships."

"Thanks, Holger, that's more than generous of you," said MacPherson. "Maybe we can get to the bottom of this mystery somehow."

"That would certainly be nice," said the big Viking. He got up from his chair, "Tomorrow morning then?"

The meeting broke up and all of the
Capri's
crewmembers were escorted back to their assigned quarters. With his belly full of excellent food and two glasses of wine, Zack had no trouble getting a good night's sleep.

Chapter
28.
Expedition Deimos.

Midgard Colony, Sol System, July 14, 2676.

The next morning everyone was up early and all were treated to a hearty breakfast though it wasn't a formal affair like the previous night's dinner had been. The clothing Zack had been wearing when he left the
Capri
, freshly laundered, had been waiting for him when he returned to his room after dinner. Zack concluded, once again, that the Vikings certainly lived well unless, of course, they were just putting on another temporary show for the benefit of their guests.

The
Capri's
crewmembers, accompanied by Gertrude, were reunited with their ship. Zack wasn't quite sure if Holger's daughter was acting as a guide, a chaperone, an informant or all three. Perhaps it didn't matter; she seemed to be very competent and, for better or for worse, the members of the expedition had decided to ally themselves with the Vikings.

A Viking raider ship, the
Warbird One
, came out of one of the vast holds of
Midgard
station to accompany them.
Warbird One
was a lean and purposeful ship, heavily armored and bristling with weapons. Zack figured it had once been a military warship of some kind, maybe a destroyer escort or something like that. It appeared as though the Vikings had added more weapons to an already formidable ship. Not only was it at least twice the size of the
Capri
, but everything about the ship looked to be at least twice as stout.

Holger called them from the bridge of the raider ship, which Zack concluded from the designation "
Warbird One,
" was the Viking leader's own personal craft.

"Time to boost out, everyone," radioed Holger, "Follow us! We go to sublight in one hour."

The pilot and navigator of
Warbird One
obviously knew exactly where they were going because the ship immediately came about and began to boost towards the inner planets of the Sol System.

***

The journey to Mars took the two ships about half of the day. They spent four hours in sublight and another three or so in normal space using reaction engines to match velocities with Mars and its tiny moon. From the bridge of the
Capri
, Zack watched as the famed "Red Planet" got larger and larger through the viewports until it dominated the entire view.

"Hold here,"
said Holger, over the radio,
"That moon should be coming around again pretty soon. It only takes about thirty hours to make an orbit."

Neither the
Capri
nor
Warbird One
had been designed to land or take off from larger planets, those that possessed any sort of dense atmosphere or heavy gravity. The
Capri
, outfitted as she was for exploration, was equipped with a light-duty retractable tricycle landing gear and could be safely set down on low-gravity, airless worlds like Deimos, but something like a descent to Earth or even Mars was not within her design parameters. The
Warbird
, as a Viking raider, was equipped with its own fairly heavily armed shuttlecraft, though its shuttle was not designed to operate under high gravity or heavy atmospheric conditions either.

The two ships waited for a half hour or so until the tiny, asymmetrical moonlet came sweeping around from behind the planet towards them. The planet, now less than twenty-five thousand kilometers away, was an immense, red-tinted presence. The two ships began maneuvering to intercept the moon. As they drew closer to Deimos, Zack was reminded that the surface of the moon had appeared to be relatively smooth in the photos he'd seen. There were impact craters here and there, but most of the surface appeared to be more or less featureless. He wondered briefly what natural, or unnatural, process might have been responsible.

The
Warbird's
shuttle emerged from the bay in the stern of the raider.

"Where's our landing spot?"
asked Holger, over the radio.

MacPherson responded on
Capri's
radio, "I don't know that we'll be landing right away. Our target is that large crater, just to the right of center from where we are now. The crater is about three kilometers in diameter and the crater floor looks to be quite smooth. If we decide to land, we should be able to do so there without any problems. I thought we might wait in the
Capri
a kilometer or so above while you take a look around inside the crater with your shuttle."

"What are we looking for?"
asked Holger.

"I'm not really sure," replied MacPherson, "I thought we'd have you scout out the rim of the crater first and see if anything looks promising."

"Sounds like a plan,"
replied Holger,
"You have a better idea of what we're looking for. We'll send you all of the video feeds."

Within about twenty minutes the
Capri
and the
Warbird's
shuttle were hovering a kilometer or so above the surface of Deimos. Ariane held position there while Holger directed Erik, who was piloting the shuttle, to descend further, to within fifty meters of the surface.

Erik expertly lowered the shuttle into the confines of the crater and began to 'fly' the craft slowly along the crater rim. Meanwhile, everyone on the
Capri
kept an eye on the various viewscreens on her bridge for anything that looked out of the ordinary. Gertrude had taken over the first officer's station from Zack, who didn't really mind giving up the seat. It turned out that Gertrude was a certified and experienced pilot in her own right and the added redundancy at the pilot position, while they were in very close proximity to the tiny moon, just made good sense. Not only that, Viking ships were often required to scout asteroids and other small planetoids and she had a lot of experience in exactly the type of activity they were currently involved in.

Around an hour later, with the shuttle about two-thirds of their way around the crater rim from where it had started, Gertrude suddenly came to attention, "There," she said, "in that shadow. Could you come back around Erik? I think I might've spotted something."

Erik pivoted the shuttle around and went back to the spot that Gertrude had called their attention to. He pointed the nose of the ship at a shadow, which was being cast by an overhang in the rock of the crater's rim, and drew in closer.

"Can you turn on your landing lights?" asked Gertrude.

Erik switched on the shuttle's landing lights. The shadow that had captured Gertrude's attention immediately evaporated but, just above the level of the crater floor, a blacked out area remained. It looked like the entrance to a cave or an alcove of some kind.

Ariane radioed the Viking shuttle, "Holger?"

"Holger here."

"Do you know of anyone doing any excavations or explorations of any kind on this moon?"

"No, I don't,"
came the reply,
"There just doesn't seem to be enough here to justify the investment."

"In that case, we may have found something. Hold station there while we come on over and have a look for ourselves."

Capri
cut across the crater to where the shuttle was and descended into the crater to hover alongside some fifty meters to starboard. Ariane switched on the powerful landing lights of the yacht to provide even more illumination.

"Take a look at the area lit up by our landing lights," said Ariane, "Doesn't that look like the entrance to a cave or something?"

"It sure as hell does,"
replied Holger,
"I suppose we'd better take a look."

"That's what we're here for," replied Ariane.

Landing the
Capri
on the floor of the crater was actually pretty tricky. With a gravitational pull of a miniscule 306 micro gravities and an escape velocity of only twenty kilometers per hour, a person on the surface could literally launch themselves out into space with little more than an ill-timed sneeze! Landing party members venturing outside of either ship and onto the surface were going to have to be extremely careful. Ariane showed off her piloting skills by setting the
Capri
gently down about fifty meters from the possible opening in the crater rim. The
Warbird's
shuttle settled down nearby, demonstrating that Erik was also very skilled. The two ships had landed right near the inner rim on the side of the crater nearest the "fat" end of the moon.

Ariane kept the area bathed in the harsh glare of the
Capri's
landing lights.

From the perspective of the floor of the crater, the "opening" had taken on a decidedly different appearance. Dead ahead of both ships was what appeared to be an arched opening with a flat bottom that was cut horizontally into the rim of the crater. Large enough to accommodate two people abreast, the opening was normally hidden in the shadow of the overhang and could only be seen from inside the crater, from well below the top of the rim. It was easy to understand why this feature had never been seen by earlier observers. No orbiting observation satellite or long-distance telescope would ever have been able to pick it up. One literally had to all but land in the crater at just the right spot to see the opening.

Zack made an observation, "I don't see any footprints or any evidence that a shuttle or anything else has ever been here. If this place has ever been explored, it must have happened a very long time ago."

"Who's going inside,"
radioed Holger.

"No one, for right now," replied MacPherson, "We have a small, tethered drone we're going to send in first."

"Excellent idea,"
replied Holger.

After taking the time necessary to get prepared, Zack, MacPherson and Arnold exited the
Capri
through the main airlock. Zack had elected to suit up in the light-duty battle armor that had been brought onboard the
Capri
back at the Central Planets. The Professor and his assistant were wearing conventional spacesuits that had been reinforced for archeological work. Arnold, who was also the operator of the exploration drone, was carrying the small device encased in a protective travel container.

As Zack had speculated a few minutes earlier, it was obvious that the crater had not been visited anytime recently. There was no evidence whatsoever of any kind of visitation recorded in the dust of the tiny moon's surface. And there certainly would have been. The
Capri
and the Viking shuttle had both sunk about ten centimeters into the layer of dust that coated the crater floor. Some of the dust that had been stirred up by the landings appeared to be settling very slowly back to the surface. When this expedition left, there would be obvious and very visible evidence that someone had been here. Evidence that would endure for a very long time.

Each of the three members of the landing party left noticeable footprints whenever they stepped onto the surface as well. Until they could rig some kind of a cable guideline, all three of the landing party members kept themselves connected to the
Capri
by tethers clipped from their spacesuits to cleats on the hull of the ship. As the person who had by far the most experience operating under zero and low gravity conditions, Zack had been volunteered to run a guide cable from the ship over to the opening.

The
Capri
had landed some fifty meters inside the crater rim. Prior to leaving the ship, Zack had procured a cable launching tool from the
Capri's
modest but comprehensive store of exploration supplies. The device, which looked like a truncated rifle, was about three-quarters of meter long and, like a rifle, was designed to be fired from the shoulder. Often used out in space to facilitate the safe movement of personnel between ships, Zack had deduced that the device would work perfectly in the all but nonexistent gravity of Deimos.

Anticipating a recoil that could actually be dangerous in the ultralow gravity, he drew his tether up tight and braced himself against the
Capri's
front landing strut. Using the sighting system that the device was equipped with, he then drew a bead on the crater wall about a meter above the crater floor and a meter to the right of the dark opening. He pulled the trigger, felt himself being gently driven back into the strut by the recoil, and watched as the cable, its trajectory totally unaffected by the negligent gravity, snaked straight and level to its target. The general adhesive end-pad that Zack had selected for the cable end bonded instantly with the rock of the crater rim.

Upon seeing the end pad impact with the crater wall, Zack released the trigger of the launching device to halt the deployment of any additional cable. He drew the line taut, as well as he was able, by pulling it around the same landing strut he had braced himself against. He then looped the cable a few more times around the strut, crossing the cable over itself several times to ensure that it remained taut. He finished up the process by holding the cable shooter up against
Capri's
hull and activating the device's magnetic clamping field. He had no doubt that the jury-rigged handrail would hold for the time being, but if frequent trips to the cave were going to be a common occurrence in the future, Zack realized that they would have to rig something more permanent on the end of the cable he'd just attached to the ship. If the ship were gone, the cable would need to be connected to something else.