Guardians of the Galactic Sentinel 1: The Deimos Artifact (30 page)

Zack and Sergei made their way to the bridge of the
Capri
as quickly as they could. Ariane was monitoring communications so that everyone on the bridge of the
Capri
could overhear what was going on. The commander of
Warbird One
was frantically attempting to communicate with the Soviet ship,
"
Murmansk
? Stand down immediately and return to your previous position! Be advised that we will defend ourselves! All hands to battle stations! Engineering? Raise shields and charge weapons!"

Murmansk.

Onboard the
Murmansk
, the alien creature, deigning not to reply to any of the frantic hails, was calmly operating the controls at the command console on the bridge while his companions at the other two stations did the same. As soon as the lead alien was able to detect the signature of weapons being charged on the Viking ships, he called down to his companion in engineering. After a short consultation with the monitors on the engineering console, the alien engineer went to the device that he and the Ambassador had connected to the
Murmansk's
power plant just a short time earlier and spent a somewhat lengthy time lingering over it. He fiddled with several of the controls and finally tapped the master switch that activated the programming he had just created. After a brief moment to ensure that the device was operating as intended, he resumed his station at the engineering console of the
Murmansk.

Warbird One
.

The commander of the
Warbird One
, eyes intent on his instrument cluster, watching the progress of the Soviet ship intently, was wondering if he should open fire as soon as possible or wait for the enemy to make the first move. His concentration was interrupted by his Weapons officer.

"Captain?"

"What is it, Weapons?"

"All...all of our weapons systems have just gone down!"

"Well, get them back up! Immediately!"

"I've already tried twice, Sir. Something is definitely wrong."

The commander called down to engineering, "Engineering? What the hell is wrong with my weapons?"

"Engineering here. Unknown, Commander, the weapons were fully charged up and then...they weren't! I've never seen anything like it. It was like somebody flipped a switch or something and the capacitors just...I don't know...lost their charge. Now I can't get them to respond at all!"

"Keep working on it," said the Commander. "Helm? Prepare to take evasive action."

In rapid succession, the Commander of
Warbird One
was contacted by the other two ships in the small Viking fleet. The other two commanders reported similar malfunctions in their weapons systems.

The Soviet ship, weapons still fully charged, continued to advance on the formidable Viking force which, for some mysterious reason, had just lost all of its powerful offensive weapons and, along with them, any advantage in battle that the small fleet may have had.

Chapter 36.
Lopsided Altercation.

Voltaire Crater, Deimos, July 15, 2676.

The personnel on the bridge of the
Capri
had overheard the entire exchange.

"What the hell is going on with my ships, Popov?" shouted Holger, looming threateningly over the much smaller Soviet commander.

"I swear, I do not know, Holger! I left my men with orders to remain on station. Naturally, they would be expected to respond if they were provoked, but I gave no order to attack your ships. Such an action would be foolhardy; your shielding is way more than a match for our weapons. That, and your weapons are much more numerous than ours."

"Our weapons?" said Holger, still in a near rage state, "Our weapons are no longer working! I'll ask you again, Sergei, what have you done to my ships?"

Sergei opened his mouth to respond when a thought occurred to him, "It must have something to do with that damned Ambassador!"

"What Ambassador?"

"An Ambassador who was brought onboard my ship about a month ago. I was told that he was a representative of a powerful government that wished to ally themselves with ours. He has been obsessed with the artifact from the very first."

"Who is he?"

"I...really do not know."

"How could you not know?"

"He was brought onboard by my Political Officer and was in a medical transport module. After that, he remained in a darkened room. I was ordered to make myself and my ship available to him."

"You're telling me you never saw him?"

"I...did not," replied Sergei, realizing how lame he sounded, "I only spoke to someone who carefully kept himself in shadow."

"Why the hell did you tolerate that?"

"I had my orders," replied Sergei, "Because of the medical module, I assumed he was disfigured in some way or recovering from some kind of injury and was sensitive about it. That or he was someone well-known and he really wanted to go unrecognized."

"How did this person influence your crew? What has he done to our weapons?"

"Believe me, Holger, I simply do not know!"

"Well that's just great!"

Before anyone on the bridge had a chance to take any further action, they were shocked to the core by an even more fantastic occurrence...

Murmansk
.

Five minutes earlier, Rudolf Lysenko, back down in the engineering section of the Soviet ship and still almost incoherent with fear, crawled out of the waste disposal unit as carefully and as silently as he could. Concealing himself behind the unit, he risked another peek at the alien creature. Whatever the alien's capabilities, it did not appear to have eyes in the back of its head. The creature seemed to be as blind directly behind itself as Lysenko himself was. Fortunately, there was also plenty of noise down in the engineering section; the device that the two aliens had installed was emitting a loud thrumming noise that only added to the mix. If Lysenko was very careful, the abundant noise would mask any of the soft sounds he might make while seeking a better place to hide.

The creature was still preoccupied at what had to be a console that it was unfamiliar with, probably trying to balance the demands of the newly-connected device with the needs of the rest of the ship, thought Lysenko. Not only did it appear that the creature was unable to see directly behind itself, the alien also seemed to be completely absorbed by the work it was performing at the engineering console. A couple of meters away, almost carelessly left on top of one of the engineering consoles, the Soviet engineer could see the alien's hand weapon. Good, at least the beast wasn't armed at the moment.

Lysenko briefly considered taking a run at grabbing the weapon and turning it on its owner but immediately rejected the idea when he realized that he had no idea how to operate it. But...he had to do something. The young technician wondered if the alien was vulnerable to mechanical damage. Perhaps he could sneak up behind it while it was preoccupied at the console and whack it on what appeared to be its head with one of the larger wrenches from the tool room's extensive inventory?

Lysenko figured he had nothing to lose and, in the meantime, the creature appeared to be totally oblivious to his presence. The engineer took two slow and careful steps before ducking into the shelter of the ship's largish tool room. He then tiptoed over to a rack on the wall and, after a short inspection, carefully removed a wrench that appeared to have the length and the heft he wanted. The alloy wrench was almost a meter long and must have massed over two full kilos. He grasped it in both hands and tested its heft with a couple of experimental swings. He concluded that if this tool couldn't get the job done, nothing could.

Upon rethinking his sketchy plan, Lysenko figured he was as good as dead no matter what he did. He decided then and there that he was either going to kill the creature or go down swinging. Leaning his back against the wall of the tool room, he peeked around the corner of the doorjamb. The alien appeared to be as preoccupied as before.

Lysenko mentally measured the distance between himself and the alien at the console and figured it to be three quick steps if he took long, quick strides. He withdrew his head back into the tool room. Grasping the wrench tightly against his chest, he took a series of deep breaths while he steeled himself for what must come next. Before he could have second thoughts, he wheeled around the corner and stormed out of the tool room making straight for the alien at the engineering console, bringing the wrench up over his head in both hands as he dashed forward.

Unable to suppress a raw, primal scream that gave vent to the abject terror and disgust that raged inside him, he brought the heavy wrench down with all of his strength on the small crown-shaped protrusion that had to be the hideous creature's head. The weight of the wrench and the force of the downward swing, combined with the technician's considerable forward momentum, enabled him to deliver a truly heroic blow.

There was a sickening squish as the wrench smashed nearly unimpeded through the creature's "head" before coming to a stop on something harder beneath. The creature, obviously heavily stunned by Lysenko's formidable blow, attempted to rise out the engineering chair and turn towards his attacker, its four hands coming up in what appeared to be an attack mode. Deep in the throes of a blind panic and seething with a rage that bordered on insanity, Lysenko brought the wrench back up and struck the creature again in nearly the same spot, the adrenalin streaking through his veins granting him superhuman strength.

The second blow seemed to slow it down even more. Lysenko brought the wrench up yet again. Upon delivering a third blow, the engineer heard and felt something crack within the alien's body. The creature fell out of the engineer's chair and clattered to the floor where it ended up on its back, the smashed remains of its head oozing a clear, viscous fluid and the four hands rhythmically clenching and unclenching several times before all motion ceased. Lysenko stood over the now apparently dead creature in a stunned and shocked state, his breath coming in huge ragged gasps.

He had done it! Somehow he had managed to kill the alien!

He fought down another bout of sheer panic as he wondered what the hell he was going to do now!

Capri
.

...As the crew on the bridge of the Capri were frantically trying to sort out what to do next, Ariane intercepted a communication from the Soviet ship.
"Mayday! Mayday! This is engineering technician Rudolph Lysenko onboard the
Murmansk
."
The poor young sailor, obviously badly shaken, was barely able to keep his voice under control.
"I...I think ship has been taken over by alien creatures! This is video I take from monitors in engineering."

The video display showed a short, sinister-looking creature with four arms armed with what appeared to be a hand weapon of some kind. As the personnel on the bridge of the
Capri
watched in horrified fascination, the creature used its formidable-looking weapon to shoot the chief engineer in the back. It then shoved the dead man out of the command chair, turned to face the video camera and performed an obvious visual sweep of the engineering section. Apparently finding no further crewmembers to kill, the creature took a seat at the engineering control panel and began making adjustments to it.

"That thing looks just like the god... the scarab or whatever it is from the drawings on the wall of the artifact chamber," said Zack.

"It sure as hell does," replied Ariane, "What would something like that be doing on a Soviet ship?"

Her answer seemed to come from the Soviet ship. The young Soviet engineer, in his state of full-blown panic, continued to repeat his message to anyone who might be listening,
"Mayday! Mayday! This is engineering technician Rudolph Lysenko! Aliens have taken over our ship..."

"What kind of trick is this, Popov?" said Holger.

Sergei was every bit as shocked as the others on the
Capri
by these latest developments, "Those things were on my ship all this time? I...I have been betrayed by my own government!"

As Sergei struggled to grasp what was happening, Zack was the first to recognize the gravity of the situation from the perspective of those who were currently parked on the moon.

"Holger?"

The Viking leader swung his towering frame threateningly at Zack, "What is it, boy?" he snapped, his voice barely under control.

"With your three ships neutralized, there is nothing keeping the
Murmansk
from coming directly here to this moon. Something tells me that we shouldn't let this Ambassador or whatever that creature is get their hands on the artifact."

"What are you suggesting?" asked Holger.

"That we take the time that we have remaining to place the artifact on top of the base in the cavern. It's seems pretty obvious to me that these beings either don't want us to place the artifact or that they want to place it themselves. Let's beat them to the punch!"

"Get your armor on! I'll go with you," said Holger.

"Ariane? Gertrude? Keep an eye on Captain Popov," said Zack. "We still don't know if he's telling the truth or not. Meantime, get everyone into their spacesuits. We could be coming under attack!"

The two men hustled off from the bridge before heading down and forward to the suit-up area near the airlock.

"Alien creatures on my ship?" muttered Sergei, "I knew from the very start that all was not right with that Ambassador. God, how I hated that intolerable
svin'ya
!"

Too late, it occurred to him that perhaps his Political Officer presented them all with an even more immediate danger, "How could I be such a fool?" said Sergei to himself. Both of his female guards looked at him, expecting him to elaborate, "It is not me you need to be worried about," he added, "Major Krupski is almost certainly involved in this outrage."

"And we left him alone down in the boardroom with four helpless scientists," said Ariane.

"And the artifact," added Gertrude.