Europa Journal

by Jack Castle

  On point, Commando Stein repositioned himself at the end of the tunnel, so he could use the temple’s entrance as cover.

  Mac found herself looking in the direction of Stein’s boots. Pure white sand spilled amongst several roughly hewn temple blocks on the floor nearby, marking the spot where the original survey team had first broken through the outer wall. This is it, Mac thought. This is the threshold where past meets present, where our conception of history changes forever.

  She instinctively ducked when a loud shot rang out and a bullet ricocheted off the frame surrounding the temple’s entrance.

  “Jesus,” Leo stammered. He dodged to the rear, ducking back to where Tae was taking cover behind the party members actually wearing body armor.

  “I missed on purpose!” Professor Bort yelled from inside the temple. “Anyone comes any closer and the next one goes right through the big blonde’s exposed head.”

  Brett leaned over and whispered into Stein’s ear, “She’s right, you know. You did leave your head pretty exposed.”

  Stein ignored Brett’s chide and announced in a harsh whisper, “General, I have a shot.”

  “Hold your fire, soldier,” Zimmerman ordered.

  Recovering her composure, Mac moved alongside the general. “General, she’s my friend. Let me go in and talk to her.”

  “I’d advise against that, General, she can negotiate from back here where it’s safe,” Brett said.

  “Why are we debating this?” Stein interjected without looking away from his sniper scope. “I can take her out before she brings the whole place down on us.”

  Mac took an angry step toward the German commando, but Brett snatched her elbow and held her back behind cover. “Dr. Bort is a renowned extraterrestrial archeologist,” she told the commando.

  “Yeah, well right now she’s a crazy lady with a gun,” Brett said in Stein’s defense. Mac tore her arm from his grasp.

  “Noted,” the general said. He turned to face Mac. “Okay, I’ve got the medics and additional security standing by. Why don’t you try calling out to her first?”

  Mac nodded, looked around at everyone for support, and took a step forward. “Joan, it’s Mac. I’m coming inside,” she yelled. Behind her, she could hear Brett’s grumble of irritation as her actions overrode the plan to stay behind cover.

  “Mac, is that you?” sobbed the professor. “Damn it, Mac, didn’t you get my last message? I told you not to land on Europa.”

  “What message? I never got any message about staying away. Can I come in?”

  There was a long pause. “Okay,” Joan said weakly. She added more sternly, “But only Mac.”

  Mac took a few tentative steps into the open and stopped at the pyramid’s threshold. She looked back at the group behind her. Brett was shaking his head, bidding her not to enter, while Leo and Tae were wide-eyed, wondering what she was going to do. Joan was her friend, mentor, and confidant. Mac knew that she didn’t have any choice. She crossed the threshold between the buildings that spanned millennia and entered the outer room of the pyramid.

  The moment she did, the lives of everyone in the pyramid were bound together and fated to alter the history of humanity forever.

  Chapter 4

  The Inner Chamber

  Stepping into the narrow room of the outer chamber, Mac was overwhelmed by its cache of offerings, which included painstakingly sculpted stone statues that evidenced the skill and imagination of ancient and unknown artists. She was also stunned by the chamber’s similarity to Earth’s ancient pyramids, particularly when she considered that she stood not in Egypt but 70 kilometers beneath the icy ocean of Jupiter’s moon Europa.

  Mac had seen Dr. Joan Bort during her last trip to Europa. Joan was in her late sixties, tall and lithe for her age. She resolutely wore glasses, even though modern surgery could have easily corrected her vision.

  The frail woman Mac saw inside the chamber now was a mere shell of the once proud mother figure and mentor in Mac’s life. Joan wore her usual white, deep-pocketed lab coat, but the state of her hair and make-up suggested that she hadn’t slept for days. She held a pistol in one shaky hand.

  “Hi, Joan,” Mac said.

  “Oh hi, Mac,” Joan replied a little crazily. “Why didn’t you stay the hell away? Didn’t you get my communiqués?”

  Not wanting to get the professor in more trouble than she was already in, Mac made sure the general couldn’t hear her. “I only got the one about the dead pilot you found in the pit and something about his journal.”

  This excited the professor, and her eyes perked up a bit. “And did you read what I had transcribed?”

  “Yes, but it was only a partial transmission, and it didn’t say anything about staying away.”

  Joan frowned and looked a bit like her former stubborn self. “Damn security must’ve intercepted my transmissions.”

  “Joan, what happened down here? What happened to you?”

  “There isn’t time. You have to leave,” she said urgently.

  “Why? What’s down here? Why is it so important that we don’t enter the inner chamber?” Mac risked a glance over Joan’s shoulder.

  Joan shook her head. Then, making up her mind, she said, “We had the corpse dated, and our results showed that the pilot arrived over 700 hundred years ago. I had the tests run three times. It just didn’t make sense. So we focused our attention on the inscriptions on the walls.”

  Mac tried to see the pit and inscriptions Joan referred to, but they were farther inside the temple, in its inner chamber.

  “They were similar to the ones found in the Mars pyramid and in the secret chamber beneath the Great Sphinx.”

  “Were you able to decipher any of them?” Mac asked. She tried not to focus on the shaking barrel of Joan’s gun.

  “Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, “once we realized that the glyphs weren’t solely Egyptian or Sumerian, but a combination of the two, it didn’t take long to come up with a Rosetta matrix.”

  “And what did you find?”

  Joan’s eyes suddenly glistened with the awe of a small child. “Something wondrous.

  The inscriptions discuss a device that forms a wormhole, or a portal, to another world, another galaxy, but the gateway’s power source, a crystal that fits into a niche in the wall, is missing. The inscriptions also speak of an alternate power source, but my team and I have searched everywhere and found nothing. The only reference to an alternate power source is found with a hieroglyphic representation of the Europa moon over a cuneiform symbol meaning death. Before we could investigate any further, the base commander shut us down. But not before I grabbed this.” She pulled out a dirty, torn journal from her coat pocket.

  Mac recognized it from the photos Joan had sent. It was the World War II pilot’s journal.

  “I nearly read it too late. If the base commander hadn’t shut us down, I probably wouldn’t have gotten to it for months. I suppose, in a way, I should be thanking that fat pig.”

  Mac smiled. It was good to see a glimmer of her feisty friend. “What’s in the journal? What did you find?”

  For a moment, Joan had been her old self, excited about her most recent findings and eager to share them, but when Mac asked about the contents of the journal, the wild-eyed look of terror returned to Joan’s face.

  “I can’t tell you, and you must never know,” she said with finality. She slowly pocketed the journal in her lab coat. “The gods would be angry with me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mac asked. She remembered that Joan had never cared much for religion. “Joan, listen to me. There are people outside with guns. They’re professionals. Why don’t you give me the pistol before anyone gets hurt?”

  A look of fierce determination swept over Joan’s face. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.” She leveled the gun at Mac. “I’m so sorry, but this
is the only way to save mankind.”

  “What is? Save them from who?” Mac was acutely aware of the end of Joan’s pistol and was suddenly terrified that she would never see her daughter again. Joan didn’t look like herself anymore, not at all. She was no longer the woman who shared Mac’s love for exploration and who had been like a second mother to Mac. This was a woman possessed, whether it was by fear or some Europa moon phantom, Mac didn’t know. Whatever the case, Mac knew that Joan was prepared to fire to protect the pyramid’s secrets.

  “Everyone,” Joan said. “I’m sorry. It’s the only way.”

  All of Mac’s tactical training from the academy went out the window, and she simply stood there, frozen with fear and confusion, and she hated herself for it. Her daughter would grow up, graduate from the academy, marry Leo, and have kids — and do it all without her. She closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable.

  A single shot rang out.

  Mac opened her eyes to find herself still standing and Joan’s lab coat staining with an ever-increasing circle of blood. Stein had taken that preemptive shot after all.

  “Heaven help us. It has begun,” Joan said. The bullet had not blasted her backward, as bullets always did in Leo’s old movies, but rather seemed to have just passed through her. She staggered for a moment and collapsed to the floor. Her fingers released their grip on the gun.

  “Damn it, Stein! What are you doing?” Mac shouted back to the pyramid’s entrance. She rushed to her friend’s side.

  “Bring in the medics!” General Zimmerman shouted into his radio as he, Brett, and Stein advanced on the scene.

  “I need some help in here!” Mac yelled over one shoulder and turned back to her friend. The bullet had passed directly through Joan’s lung, and Mac knew from her emergency trauma training that Joan’s lungs were filling with fluid.

  Stein, never taking his aim off the wounded professor, quickly moved in, confiscated her pistol, and checked her for more weapons. “She’s clear,” he announced.

  “Get away from her!” Mac shouted as she shoved him out of the way, or at least attempted to.

  Stein and the general moved farther into the temple to clear it of any additional adversaries and victims.

  Mac lifted the professor’s head and cradled it in her lap. Joan’s hands trembled uncontrollably.

  Brett stepped up to Mac. “Are you hit?” he asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” she stammered.

  Brett ripped opened his trauma kit, yanked out a thick bandage, and applied it to Joan’s open wound. “Don’t worry. The medics are on their way.”

  “You hear that, Joan?” Mac said, choking up with tears. “The medics will be here any second, so you just hang on.”

  Joan tried to speak but only managed to produce a gurgling sound.

  “What is it? What do you want?” Mac asked.

  Joan put her hand in her pocket and removed the journal. She held it out to Mac in hands that shook more violently with each passing second.

  “This? You want this?”

  She tried to speak again, but only a mouthful of blood spluttered out of her lips.

  “Don’t worry,” Mac said as she gently pushed the book and Joan’s trembling hands back down. “I won’t let anyone take it away from you.”

  “Hold this,” Brett ordered. He placed Mac’s hands over Joan’s bandage while he used a syringe to pump Joan full of adrenaline.

  The professor insistently pushed the journal toward Mac.

  “You want me to take it?” Mac asked.

  Joan nodded. She tried to speak again but couldn’t. Mac used one hand to gently remove the journal from Joan’s grasp, her other hand still occupied with holding the bandage over Joan’s wound.

  Just then, the paramedics arrived on the scene, and Mac felt two strong hands pull her backward and out of the way. As the paramedics worked on Joan, Mac dropped the journal and put a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry.

  #

  Nearby, Leo and Tae, who did not have emergency medical training, stood against the wall doing their best to stay out of the way. When the paramedics wheeled a gurney onto the scene, Leo had to step into the inner chamber to make room — at least, that would be his story, and he would stick to it.

  Leo took one last look at the professor in the outer chamber and knew she was in the most capable hands available. Then Leo’s feet, almost unbidden, began to carry him deeper into the pyramid. He knew that he should turn around but seemed unable to do so. He was surprised to see that Tae walked alongside him.

  “What? Can’t I see inside the discovery of the millennium?” Tae said. Clearly, he was still hurt that Leo and Mac hadn’t told him about the extraordinary discovery.

  They moved into the inner chamber together. It resembled the Egyptian style outer room, except there was a deep pit in the center of the inner chamber that was encircled by the original survey team’s floodlights. As they approached the pit, they saw the remains of rescue pilot Captain Harry Reed, still in his flight clothes.

  “Whoa, look at this guy,” Tae said.

  “Yeah.” Leo joined him at the pit’s edge. “According to Professor Bort’s report, the poor guy’s plane and crew vanished in the Bermuda Triangle in the winter of 1945.”

  “How did he end up here?” Tae asked. His voice echoed off the tomb’s walls. Fortunately, everyone in the outer chamber was too busy with the professor to notice their unauthorized entry into the inner chamber.

  “Don’t know,” Leo said, but he was more interested in the inscriptions on the wall behind the pit.

  He walked to the wall, which was lit by a light stanchion and covered in strange symbols. The symbols reminded him slightly of Egyptian hieroglyphics but looked more primitive. One drawing in particular held Leo’s attention. It depicted the underwater temple and, next to it, several additional symbols, one of which resembled the Europa moon. Leo touched the moon symbol, and it lit up in bright yellow colors. He yanked his hand back. “Whoa, did you see that?”

  Tae joined him, and Leo repeated the light show, only this time he was able to move the symbol around the wall, like a cursor on a computer.

  Tae’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Uh, I don’t think you should be messing around with that.”

  Ignoring him, Leo said, “I wonder why the scientists didn’t discover this?”

  “They probably photographed and airbrushed the site but never touched it with their bare hands,” Tae said. “Only an idiot would touch an alien wall without some sort of protection.”

  Ignoring his friend’s insult, Leo asked, “Why? What’s the worst that could happen?” He continued to drag the moon symbol playfully around the wall.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” Tae repeated. “Gee, I don’t know. It’s alien technology, and that’s why we don’t mess around with it.”

  “Huh, it kind of looks like there’s a piece missing out of the temple symbol,” Leo said. “I wonder what would happen if …” He moved the symbol for the Europa moon into the drawing of the pyramid.

  Leo couldn’t read the ancient language, and he didn’t know about the orbital gateway or its power sources. Nonetheless, he had just activated the portal’s alternate power source: the moon itself.

  The ground quaked under their feet.

  “Uh, Tae?” Leo said nervously as he backed away from the wall.

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, put the symbol back where you found it,” Tae said.

  “Good idea.” Leo stepped back to the wall, but when he tapped the symbol, it neither lit up nor moved. The quakes increased in tempo and intensity. “Crap! Nothing’s happening.”

  #

  Back in the outer chamber, Mac stood out of the way while the paramedics loaded the professor onto a gurney. She looked at Joan and realized
that the professor was staring intently at something on the floor.

  A final breath escaped her mentor’s lips.

  “She’s gone,” one of the paramedics said.

  Still in shock, Mac followed the professor’s final gaze. She saw the journal lying open on the floor; it was now stained with the professor’s blood. She quickly bent down, scooped it up, and stuffed it into her jacket pocket. In that moment, if she had looked closer, she would have seen a name written on one of the pages in Captain Harry Reed’s handwriting: her own.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” the other paramedic said. They had strapped Joan onto the stretcher, and they offered Mac one last look at her friend’s face.

  Mac slid her hand gently over Joan’s face and closed her eyes. “Good-bye, Joan,” she said. The paramedics covered the professor’s face with a sheet and wheeled her body to the elevator.

  Mac’s mind reeled. What was so damn important that Joan was willing to kill or die for it?

  Suddenly, the ground beneath Mac’s feet rumbled. And as usual, when something big went wrong, her future son-in-law soon burst on the scene saying, “It’s not my fault!”

  “Leo, what did you do?”

  “Well, there were these symbols on the wall…” Another more powerful quake cut him off.

  “A moon quake?” she asked.

  “That’s impossible,” Tae shouted above the rumbling. “The tectonic plates of this planetoid have been inactive for nearly a century.”

  Mac nearly tumbled to the floor. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” she replied sarcastically.

  General Zimmerman popped his head back into the chamber. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” he ordered.

  The rumbling was steady now, so no one argued. They quickly retreated back through the tunnel and headed for the elevator. To their dismay, the elevator doors were already closing when they arrived.

  “The elevator’s leaving without us!” Leo yelled. He sprinted up the stairs to the elevator but couldn’t catch the doors in time.

  Another quake rocked the base, and it was followed by sounds of breaking glass and water rushing inside the tunnel.