The Lost Artifact Read online

  “For the simplest of reasons,” the android said. “This was the nearest Laumer Point. It wanted to escape from your starship.”

  “That’s not the only reason.”

  Yen Cho stared at Maddox for several seconds. “It appears that you are aware of Gideon II.”

  “Yes,” Maddox said. “I know that Strand was part of the Mercer Corporation excavation team two hundred and thirty-six years ago.”

  “I was not aware that Star Watch had such detailed records.”

  “Now you are.”

  “Captain,” Yen Cho said in a reproving voice. “I know what you are attempting to do. You want to know what Strand searched for down there. I happen to know that Strand erased all information regarding the dig. Star Watch might know he came here, but it has no idea what he sought to find or if he found it.”

  “And you do?”

  “Oh, yes,” Yen Cho said.

  “I’m waiting to hear it.”

  “And you can continue to wait. Gideon II has no bearing on our present situation. The robot, if it exists, would not have landed on the planet. I doubt it would have the capacity to do so.”

  Maddox studied the android. After several seconds, he lurched to his feet and gave Yen Cho a nod. Still facing the android, Maddox reached behind him and tapped on the hatch.

  It unlocked and opened.

  “Go ahead,” Maddox told Riker.

  The sergeant retreated from the chamber.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Yen Cho said. “The robot is drifting in space somewhere. I would like to know its destination as much as you would. Do not waste time searching the planet.”

  “I won’t,” Maddox said. Then he stepped backward through the hatch and waited until the marine closed it with a snick.

  In the hall, Riker was holstering his big gun.

  Maddox tapped his chin thoughtfully. Then he whirled around and stalked away at a brisk pace.

  -43-

  Less than an hour later, Maddox sat beside Keith as the ace piloted an armored shuttle through Gideon II’s upper atmosphere. The medical treatment had healed his earlier burns. Below, the dusty planet seemed the same as ever. In the distance, wispy clouds appeared far below them.

  “There are traces of water vapor,” Maddox said, studying his sensor screen.

  Above them in orbit, Victory launched more probes. The probes sped in all directions as they scanned relentlessly, searching for a small piece of debris. Yet, space was vast compared to the particle of substance they were trying to find. If the Builder robot—if it was a robot—used a cloaking device, it might be even harder to find than anticipated.

  Maddox knew it could be worse than that. If Yen Cho was correct about the debris being a robot, the construct could have had a waiting vessel somewhere in the Gideon System.

  So far, Valerie hadn’t spotted any power source in nearby space. Neither Keith, nor Galyan back on Victory, had spotted any power source on the planet.

  Maddox was certain that Yen Cho had lied about the planet. If no one could find any energy traces anywhere, there were two possibilities: a cloaking device, or the robot landing somewhere hidden on the planet. If the robot hadn’t kept a private spaceship waiting in orbit, might it have something down here? That was what Maddox intended on discovering. Of course, if the robot had something waiting down here, that something could be dangerous, the more so as they attempted to uncover its existence.

  Keith piloted while Riker and four marines waited in back. All five of them wore exoskeleton combat suits. Maddox would don such a suit when the time came. Keith would remain aboard while staying aloft, the shuttle armed with 30-mm cannons and several antimatter missiles.

  The flight down proved uneventful. They passed the wispy clouds and soon descended upon a vast worldwide desert of shifting red sand. There were a few rounded mountain ranges here and there, their erosion indicating great age.

  “Winds about fifty-three klicks per hour,” Keith said. “Nothing to write home about, depending on the average size of the grains of sand.”

  Maddox understood. Too fine, and the grains would inevitably find their way into the combat-armor joints. That could prove tactically important.

  “Slight change in plans,” the captain said. “We’re going to land before you go airborne again. I want to test the size of the grains, see what we’re up against.”

  “Roger that,” Keith said.

  Soon, the shuttle swept several hundred kilometers above a shifting desert that made Earth’s Sahara seem puny in comparison.

  “Mountains in the distance,” Keith said.

  Maddox nodded. That was their destination. They were heading to the planetary coordinates of Strand’s original excavation. That was all the information that remained of the historical survey: where they had done the digging.

  The mountains appeared as a smudge on the horizon. They grew quickly to rounded humps on a desert world of sand.

  “Whoa,” Keith said. “I don’t get it. We didn’t see that on the ship’s scopes. It’s like that suddenly appeared.”

  Maddox looked out a window in amazement. The shuttle flew over a vast dug-up area abutting the lowest mountain slopes. The circumference and depth weren’t the only incredible part. Inside the huge dig were monumental pyramids.

  Keith was right. This hadn’t been in the briefing.

  “I’m picking up something,” the pilot said. “I’d call it a charged particle field. It’s over the pit.”

  “What’s powering the field?” Maddox asked.

  Keith shook his head. “I’m not getting any readings on that.”

  “How would that have blocked Victory’s telescopes from seeing the dig?”

  “It shouldn’t have,” Keith said. “This doesn’t make sense, Captain. What’s going on?”

  A surge of excitement filled Maddox. He’d guessed right. The android had been lying about the planet.

  Keith whistled as he studied a sensor. “Listen to this. Those pyramids are five times the size of the Giza Pyramid in Egypt. They’re massive.”

  Maddox started counting pyramids. He stopped at thirty-seven, having counted about a quarter of them.

  “Wonder what’s in them,” Keith said.

  “I wonder who built them,” Maddox countered.

  “Should we have brought the android along?”

  “On no account,” Maddox said. “Land…several hundred kilometers from the edge. Land on a mountain slope, too,” he added. “We’ll keep off the sand if we can help it.”

  “Roger that,” Keith said softly.

  A few minutes later, the shuttle touched down softly onto a level area of rocky slope.

  Maddox nodded in appreciation of the ace’s piloting skill. He unbuckled and went back, climbing into two tons of space-marine combat armor. Once ready, he joined Riker and the others.

  Each of them had a heavy autocannon attached to a suit arm, smart-missile packs and complex detection gear. Each suit was black-matted and made the wearer seem like an overgrown mechanical gorilla.

  A cargo hatch opened, and a metal ramp extended to the rocky ground. Maddox led the way, clomping down the ramp. He clanked to the nearest area of sand and ran an analyzer over it.

  The grains were super-fine. They would prove troublesome to the suits in no time.

  Maddox summoned the marine sub-lieutenant, Gordon Vesper. The marine studied the finding.

  “I’m not a suit tech, sir,” sub-lieutenant Vesper said. “But these grains will start giving us trouble within the hour. We can last longer if there’s no wind and less in a sandstorm.”

  That was worse than Maddox had expected, and it gave him greater appreciation for the Mercer Corporation feat over two hundred and thirty-six years ago.

  “Take her up,” he radioed Keith.

  The ramp pulled back, the hatch shut, and the engines powered up. The shuttle lifted gently and continued to climb on its gravity dampeners.

  Count on Keith to think of the best wa
y to launch. The ace hadn’t given them a swirling dust cloud and had thus extended their possible length of stay.

  “Keep in close touch,” Maddox told Keith, “and keep in constant contact with Victory. If you lose contact with Victory, you’re to pick us up right away.”

  “Roger that,” Keith said through Maddox’s headphones.

  Maddox watched the shuttle rise higher.

  “Winds are picking up, sir,” the sub-lieutenant said over the shortwave.

  “Let’s go,” Maddox told him and the others. “Let’s see what the Mercer Corporation found down there.”

  ***

  Maddox led Riker and the space marines between the gigantic pyramids. They were constructed out of colossal red granite blocks, many tons each. Some of the pyramids were bigger than others. All were smooth, without apparent sandblasted damage from the winds. None had any visible entrance.

  “Anything?” Maddox asked the others over the shortwave.

  “There’s nothing here, sir,” Riker said. “The pyramids appear to be solid stone through and through.”

  “That’s what I’m reading, too,” Maddox said. Yet, he had his doubts about that. Something seemed off, and he couldn’t quite place it.

  “Why would aliens build solid stone pyramids?” Riker asked.

  “We don’t know that’s the case,” Maddox replied, “just that these so far appear to be solid.”

  “You think our scanners are off?” the sergeant asked.

  Maddox didn’t reply, but that was something to think about.

  The two-ton combat suits continued to clomp between the pyramids, searching for answers or possible clues.

  “You know what I find strange, sir?” sub-lieutenant Vesper asked ten minutes later. “There’s no sand down here.”

  In his combat suit, Maddox halted. The servomotors whined as he bent onto one knee. He studied the ground, the rock. There wasn’t a grain of sand on it. He should have seen it right away. The charged particle shield over the dig should have led him in that direction.

  Sometimes it’s harder to see what isn’t there than what is there, he reminded himself.

  “Check your suits,” Maddox radioed. “Tell me if any of them have any sand in the joints.”

  Riker and the marines checked and reported in. They each had a few grains, no more, likely picked up before they’d entered the giant dig.

  “I’m beginning to think the Mercer Corporation never dug this hole,” Maddox told Riker. “They wouldn’t have possessed the tech to make a charged particle shield that didn’t seem to have a power source and that lasted so long. It’s clear the shield has kept out the sand all these years. Otherwise, during the last two hundred and thirty-six years, the wind would have dumped enough sand to bury this place. And the tops of the pyramids would have eroded like the mountaintops.”

  “Say, that’s right,” Riker said.

  “Recheck your scanners,” Maddox told the others. “There has to be some form of energy doing this. These things can’t be solid stone.”

  The two-ton suits went back to back with each other, so one of them scanned outward in all directions. Each marine’s autocannon was primed for firing. At the same time, each marine used the sensors attached to the suits.

  “Nothing new, sir,” Riker soon said.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Maddox said.

  What was he missing? Was this why Yen Cho had told him to forget about the planet? Or was it more subtle than that? Had Yen Cho told him to forget about the planet in the same way Maddox had told Riker to tell the marines earlier not to tell anyone about the shot-up android? In other words, had Yen Cho known him so well that the android knew that saying what it had would goad Maddox to come down here?

  “Sir,” a marine said. “I’m getting a strange reading.”

  “Send it to me,” Maddox said.

  On his HUD visor, Maddox studied the reading, a slight energy trace.

  “I’d say that looks like leakage of some kind,” Riker said over the shortwave.

  “Leakage from what?” Even as Maddox asked that, he believed he understood. That must be leakage from a stealth suit. Somebody must be trying to sneak up on them.

  -44-

  At that moment, Maddox had one of his hunches. “Keith,” he said over the comm.

  There was no answer.

  Maddox swore, looked up and used his HUD radar. There! He spotted the shuttle. It was high up there, higher than he thought Keith should have gone. Maybe the wind had picked up and was kicking sand up into the air.

  Yes, Maddox detected a haze of fine sand particles between the giant hole and the shuttle. The charged particle shield must keep the sand out, repelling the fine grains. Could sand that spread across the charged-particle shield have blocked Victory’s scopes earlier?

  Maybe the particles blocked his comm connection, too. Maddox had a fix and couldn’t talk to the ace. He activated a laser-link and beamed the comm laser up at the shuttle.

  “Keith,” he said again.

  “Sir?” the ace asked. “This is a laser-link, and I can hardly hear you. What’s going on?”

  “Listen. Give us…six minutes. Come low after that and place an antimatter missile in the exact center of the dig.”

  “But sir—”

  “Do it, Lieutenant. Our lives may depend on it. Maddox out.”

  The captain shut off the laser link. He regarded his combat team. He may have just sentenced them to death. But he was certain that Rull androids in stealth suits attempted to capture them. On no account was he going to let that happen. He also suspected the enemy had enough numbers to overpower the small group.

  “See that pyramid?” Maddox said, pointing at the nearest one.

  The others nodded.

  “Use your autocannons and start blasting granite. After that, grab your picks and begin hammering and prying rock free. We’re building ourselves a bomb shelter. We have less than six minutes until an antimatter missile strikes.”

  “Sir!” Riker said. “That’s suicide.”

  “No. It’s our only chance to remain free agents. Now go to work.”

  Maddox didn’t wait for questions or to see if the others understood him. Instead, he trained his autocannon on the nearest pyramid and began hammering it with shells in timed sequences. Granite blasted apart. Some of the stone shards struck his suit but did no damage.

  A moment later, the others started doing likewise. They blasted into the ancient pyramid.

  “Stop firing, stop firing,” Maddox ordered. “Grab your picks and work like madmen.”

  He attacked the autocannon-created hole and used the full power of the combat suit. For the next four minutes, Maddox and the others’ caused rock to explode apart under their powerful blows.

  At five minutes and twenty-nine seconds, Maddox burst into a chamber. He’d suspected something like this or maybe it had been more like a wild hope. There must have been something in the red granite that had blocked their suit sensors. Given everything else, that confirmed for him that this was Builder-related.

  He clicked on a helmet lamp and beckoned the others to him. For the next thirty-three seconds, the two-ton suits clanked at speed down a corridor until they reached a pit. Without hesitation, Maddox leaped. The others followed him.

  For several sickening seconds, Maddox’s suit fell. It struck with force and caused the servomotors to whine with complaint as the shock absorbers saved his frail flesh-and-blood body from the impact. The captain curled himself and his suit into a fetal ball, ordering the others to follow his example.

  As the last marine curled tight, Keith’s antimatter missile hit the bottom floor of the giant dig and detonated, sending a powerful antimatter blast in all directions.

  The suits were deep enough that the strange red granite absorbed and blocked the worst of the heat, blast and radiation. Besides, each of them had already swallowed an anti-radiation tablet, and their combat armor was better than any bio- or nuclear-hazard suit.
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br />   Riker unfolded from his fetal position and slid beside the captain. He clanked his helmet against Maddox’s helmet.

  In a voice sounding tinny to the captain, Riker asked, “What was that all about, sir? Why did you try to kill all of us?”

  Maddox clicked off his shortwave. “It was nothing of the kind, Sergeant. I suspected stealth androids were about to attack us.”

  “Sir?”

  In a few terse sentences, Maddox explained his idea of Yen Cho having tricked them down here. With the leakage energy reading, he had put two and two together.

  “You don’t like anyone telling you what you shouldn’t do, do you, sir?”

  “Enough of your cheek, Sergeant. We have to get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “I don’t understand. You took care of the problem.”

  “If I’m right about Rull androids, they must have a ship or a hidden base near here. We took out a stealth attack, but maybe they have heavier hardware. I think they planned to kidnap us for nefarious ends. I’m sick of being someone’s prisoner. Once per mission is quite enough for me.”

  “That antimatter strike must have leveled plenty of pyramids. That’s archeological mayhem, sir.”

  “I’m not Ludendorff,” Maddox said. “I’m concerned with the living more than the past’s relics. But enough about that. We’ve waited long enough. It’s time to dig our way to the surface and contact Keith. I want to get off the planet before the androids send reinforcements or try to attack Victory.”

  -45-

  With Victory’s sensors, Galyan scanned the planet’s surface. The Adok holoimage had just received word of the captain’s unbelievable order.

  He used the starship’s best scope to study the incredible excavation site. This was odd. The site wasn’t visible. All he saw was sand.

  Galyan tried a different sensor. How interesting. There was a type of force field, a charged particle shield. He would assume the charged particles radiated sand from—ah, yes. Sand cascaded down a seeming dome and spewed from repellers at the bottom edges. If he hadn’t known about the dig, the instruments would have assumed this was a natural phenomenon. Sand continued to blow onto the field and slide down. Ordinary scopes simply saw sand and could not detect the hole underneath the charged-particle dome.