Guardians of the Galactic Sentinel 1: The Deimos Artifact (32 page)

"It's kind of why we came here, isn't it?" replied Zack.

"Lead on," said MacPherson.

Chapter 39.
Shooting Gallery.

Capri, Voltaire Crater, Deimos, July 15, 2676.

Those remaining onboard the
Capri
were only getting spotty reports on the progress of the mission from Holger Tvedt, who was at least as excited about the affair as his two companions. Above them, the Soviet ship had come to within weapons range of the three Viking raiders, none of whom were going to be able to fight back. Ariane watched helplessly on her monitors as the Soviet ship opened fire on the nearest of the Viking ships at a range of well under a hundred kilometers. The stout
Warbird
absorbed two volleys from the
Murmansk's
extremely powerful and totally unopposed Matsukov cannon before her shields began to fail. The Viking commander had little choice but to break off and run. The courier ship then turned on the next of the Viking ships and began hammering away at it.

"It won't take long before there isn't any opposition left," said Ariane, "We can't stay onboard this ship."

"There are almost certainly more Viking ships on the way," said Gertrude.

"They can't possibly get here in less than three hours," said Ariane.

"I know."

"In the meantime, we'd better evacuate," said Ariane.

"We have weapons," replied the Viking princess, "Assuming those creatures, whatever they are, want the artifact, they'll have to come into the cavern to get it. There's only one way for them to get in there and that'll be through the opening. If we concentrate our fire on the entrance, maybe we can defeat them somehow. I know it sounds desperate but what choice do we have?"

"None that I can come up with," said Ariane, "How much more time do you think we have, anyway?"

Gertrude checked the display in front of her, "I'd say no more than a half hour. We'd just have time to gather up a few things and get to the cavern before that ship is likely to be on us. I say we get on with it and the sooner the better."

"You
are
Holger's daughter, aren't you?"

"Damned right I am and whatever those creatures are, they aren't getting past me without a fight!"

"Let's get everyone rounded up," replied Ariane, "We have enough pulse rifles and pistols to arm everyone who knows how to use one several times over. We can grab the weapons on the way out!"

"Right behind you," said Gertrude.

Murmansk,
Near Deimos, July 14, 2676.

The Ambassador, though he would have actually referred to himself more as an "agent" or "operative," of a race referred to by most as the "Custodians," knew that he and his companions were running out of time. His weapon neutralizing module was still working effectively to keep the enemy ships from being able to fire back at him, but the energy draw required by the device was more than the primitive power plant of the captured ship was going to be able to deliver for much longer. The aliens needed to destroy, disable, or drive off the enemy ships in a matter of just a few more minutes or they ran the risk of overloading their systems and damaging something vital to the operation of their captured ship, after which they would almost certainly come under attack. Either outcome would place their real objective in jeopardy.

With relief and a small measure of gratification, he watched as the remaining Viking ships abandoned their untenable stations and began to run for safety. He judged that his opponents wouldn't know anything about his power limitations and would continue to run more than long enough to allow him time to complete his plan. The Viking weapons would soon be coming back on line as they pulled out of range of the field his device was generating. By then, it would be too late.

In the meantime, the Ambassador could readily sense that the humans had placed the key apex piece on the target area of the Sentinel unit. That couldn't be helped and would have had to happen in any case. Now all he needed to do was to get down to the moon and dispatch the pesky and annoying humans that remained on the moon and in close proximity to the artifact. Getting them out of the way would disrupt the chain of events set in motion by the placement of the Key and ensure that the human race would not be able to complete the activation sequence of the Sentinel device. With the sequence interrupted and incomplete, humans would be denied any access to the
Grand Amalgamation of Galactic Civilizations and thus be delivered directly into the hands of he and his fellow Custodians!

He checked the readouts on the engineering console and concluded that he could continue to run the damping device for a bit longer. He now turned his attention to the two shuttles and the armed pleasure craft parked on the tiny moon. A few pulses from his weapons would render all three of them totally useless and would certainly kill anyone foolish enough to have remained on board any of them.

The
Murmansk
would have them within range of her weapons in a matter of a few minutes.

He then ordered a seemingly routine operation that had a profound effect on the next phase of his plans. He instructed his navigator to override the programming in the navigation software and take the ship over to the moon. The navigator, his fingers a blur on the keyboard, quickly substituted his own programming and set course for nearby Deimos. The Ambassador activated the attitude thrusters to point the nose of the captured ship at the moon and ordered the reaction engine thrust raised to maximum.

The confounded ship responded well enough to begin with but then proceeded to behave in a very erratic fashion! The nose pitched hard upwards so violently that the ship would have gone on to perform an overhead loop if he hadn't immediately ordered that the reaction engines be cut. With the throttles cut back, he laboriously used the thrusters to correct the ship's attitude manually. He double-checked the settings and tried the reaction engines again, this time cutting the thrust back to three-quarters. The result was less violent than the first attempt, but the consequences were the same; the nose of the ship began to pitch sharply upward as soon as he ran up the thrust of the reaction engines.

Again he ordered the throttles cut and manually corrected the ship's attitude. Angry and frustrated, the creature briefly considered using his weapon on the control console but abandoned that course of action immediately. He took a moment to cool down and calmly consider what might be causing the ship's erratic behavior.

The agent suddenly remembered the battle damage that the ship had suffered in its altercation with the armed pleasure craft just a few days ago. Something must have happened to the dorsal thruster that had lowered its power output. That criminally incompetent captain had neglected to tell him! Using this deduction as a working theory, he applied thrust to the port and starboard reaction engines only and used the attitude thrusters to maintain the proper pitch of the ship.

The method worked! The ship was now heading straight for the moon. Without full thrust, it would take him somewhat longer to get there than it should have, but get there he would.

The aliens had been able to approach the Viking ships earlier without having these maneuvering problems because the
Murmansk's
navigator had programmed the ship's controls to automatically compensate for the weaker dorsal reaction engine. By overriding the programming in the navigation computer, the aliens had cancelled those instructions and, by their own actions, had inadvertently been responsible for causing all of the maneuvering problems with the ship.

More importantly, the aliens' difficulties with the reaction engines had bought the people trapped on the surface of the moon some precious and badly needed time.

Voltaire Crater, Deimos, July 14, 2676
.

The last of the personnel remaining from the three grounded ships were strung out on the cable that led to the cavern in the rim wall of the impact crater. There was little doubt that all of them were going to make it into the cave before any kind of attack could come, but it looked like things were going to be close. Almost everyone, with few exceptions, was carrying either a pulse rifle or a pulse pistol. Several of the men were also hauling spare air tanks, while the others carried as much food and water that was packaged for use in a spacesuit as they had been able to gather up in the short time allotted.

The refugees in the cave would be able to hold out well enough for at least of couple of days, maybe more. If reinforcements from the Viking colony couldn't overcome the opposition and were somehow unable to intervene, they would all very likely perish from lack of oxygen eventually, but remaining in the ships on the surface with the aliens rampaging unopposed above, was almost certain death. They had little choice but to take their chances in the cavern for the time being. Whether or not they could fight off a ground assault by the aliens remained to be seen.

Murmansk, approaching Deimos, July 14, 2676.

Deep in the bowels of the Soviet ship, engineering technician Rudolf Lysenko had finally managed to calm down enough that he could begin think clearly. After wasting several precious minutes trying to decipher the controls on the mysterious alien box, he had given up in defeat. None of the symbols on the control panel made any sense and he could see from the power readouts on the ship's engineering console that the device was drawing an enormous amount of power. In his ignorance of how it worked and what it did, any attempt to disconnect it was likely to be very dangerous to his person, possibly even fatal. He concluded that his best course was going to be to just leave it alone.

Instead, he did what he could to monitor the battle outside and, with the Viking ships unable to fight back for some reason, had come to the stark realization that no one would be coming to help him. With everyone onboard his ship dead except him and an unknown number of alien creatures in complete control of the craft, Lysenko was coming to the cold realization that his next course of action would have to be something drastic. He didn't like what he was about to do but could think of no other way to resolve this bizarre and horrifying situation.

Lysenko had also come to the realization that for all of their apparent efficiency and their obvious ruthlessness, the aliens were not infallible. He had managed to kill one of them by the blunt and brutal application of a simple tool and, just a few minutes ago, the ship had undergone a couple of rather violent and inexplicable maneuvers that could not have been planned.

His mind made up, Lysenko moved to take action. Having already closed and dogged the hatch that led from the engineering sector into the main corridor of the ship earlier, he shoved a metal bar through the spokes of the hatch wheel and braced the bar against the floor. For added assurance, he finished up by taking a couple of minutes to weld the bar to the spokes and to the floor. When he had finished, the hatch into the engineering section was not going to open without the application of a plasma torch or some pretty powerful explosives.

The next thing he did was to take total control of the engineering functions of the ship. That involved entering a series of override commands into the master console, followed by his personal code. The auxiliary engineering console up on the bridge was now effectively useless.

Lysenko then coldly went about the task of setting the ship's fusion reactor on overload. It wasn't something that he had been specifically trained to do, but countless simulations wherein he had been required to troubleshoot and correct critical reactor problems had left him with a pretty good idea of how to go about it.

He was actually aided somewhat in his grim task by the fact that the agent's damping device had already placed a heavy strain on the laboring power plant. Just a few adjustments were needed to push things way over the edge. Lysenko, feeling almost light-headed as he went against years of training, over-rode a host of safety parameters and then set the controls to run the power plant at one hundred and fifty-percent output. Within a minute, he could hear the unit begin to strain under the impossible demands he had placed on it.

Which was, of course, the whole point of the exercise.

Voltaire Crater, Deimos, July 14, 2676.

The last of the human contingent worked their way into the first chamber of the cavern in the crater wall. Gertrude led the way and Ariane had been last in line. Between them were three Viking crewmembers from Holger's shuttle, two men and a woman from the Soviet shuttle and Kathryn, Arnold, Olga, Sergei and Cliff from the
Capri
. Cliff had required some extra persuasion and would have remained on board his precious ship if Ariane hadn't insisted that he accompany the rest of them.

While Gertrude and her fellow Vikings, along with Sergei and the three Soviet sailors, went about setting up some defenses, Ariane immediately went in search of Zack and her father. As she made her way towards the rear of the chamber using the handholds in the wall, she passed Olga, Arnold and Kathryn, all raptly gathered around the now completed pyramid. The eerie green glow from the central edifice bathed the entire chamber in otherworldly light.

The three of them looked like they were in the middle of some kind of deeply religious experience. Surprisingly, Arnold didn't seem any the worse for wear following the joining of the two portions of the pyramid. She made a mental note to ask him what, if anything, he had experienced during the placing of the artifact. Meantime there was work to do.