Merchants in Freedom (Doomsday War Book 3) by Richard Tongue

Author:Richard Tongue [Tongue, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

“It’s more than three miles high,” Morgan said, looking at his screen. “I still can’t make out any definite surface features, but I suppose there has to be something down there. No way in, certainly. As far as the sensors say, it’s just a big solid lump of alloy.”

“Touchdown in two minutes,” Winter replied, glancing across his readouts. “Do you see anything that might represent some sort of hazard down there, any reason why we can’t make a landing?”

“No reason at all, but I don’t see what good it could possibly do,” the veteran soldier replied. “We can’t go out and take a walk on the surface of that thing, and even if we couldn’t, there’s nothing out there.” He reached up for a series of controls, and added, “There’s a drill on the end of the manipulator arm. Maybe I can carve out some sort of sample, get something for the computers back on Xenophon to analyze.”

“Be careful,” Winter said. “We don’t want to make anyone mad.”

“There’s nobody here to get mad, Jack,” Morgan said, shaking his head. “There’s nobody down here at all. Just some sort of ancient monument. If we had time for a proper survey, maybe we could do something more, but as it stands, I think about all we can do is take some nice films and hope that someone smarter than either of us is able to conjure something out of them when we get back to Earth. There’s no…” He paused, frowned, then added, “Wait a minute. I might have to eat my words.”

Before Winter could respond, a blinding flash of light shattered the Stygian gloom, and he peered down to see a door opening in the surface of the structure, directly beneath them, as though inviting them to descend. He glanced across at Morgan, smiled, and worked the controls to guide the submersible safely inside, calculating carefully for the drift.

They slid into the space inside the mysterious structure, the walls rising on either side as the hatch above slid shut, until finally they came to rest at the bottom of the chamber, a faint gurgling sound from outside as the water drained away, as though they were lying inside the largest vehicular airlock ever seen. Morgan looked across at his readouts, shaking his head.

“Atmosphere’s strange out there. The pressure and temperature are about right, but the mix is way off. Lots more carbon dioxide than we can stand, and argon instead of nitrogen. You couldn’t breathe it for very long without dying, though I guess that isn’t the point.”

“We couldn’t go out for a walk as it stands anyway,” Winter said. Looking up, he added, “Right now I’m rather more concerned about getting out of here again. I hadn’t expected it to close up quite so abruptly.”

“Heat signatures all around us,” Morgan reported. “The area just ahead of us is smooth, though, and no sign of any activity there.” He frowned, then added, “Hey, there’s something up there. Look.”

Winter squinted at

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