Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(100)

Ten meters from the gateway mouth stood the large metal shell that housed the vacuum chamber and electromagnetic containment fields designed to slow the November Anomaly’s death spiral. If all went well, they wouldn’t need it much longer. If things didn’t go well it wouldn’t matter.

According to top scientists on the program, the anomaly’s descent into instability continued to accelerate as Dr. Stephenson’s equations had predicted. If the Gateway Device failed today, there wouldn’t be a second chance.

The noise along the high ramp picked up as foreign news organizations began their broadcasts. Jan Fernandez, his assigned makeup artist, stepped forward to pat his face down with a powder puff, erasing the beads of sweat that had popped out on his brow despite the cool temperature here in the cavern.

“Thirty seconds to air.”

Ted nodded at his producer, took several deep breaths, and, just as he’d done in crisis after crisis around the world, put on his game face.

From his left to his right, the three eye-level monitors mounted on the walkway’s metal wall showed CNN’s Atlanta feed, his own image, and a tight shot of Dr. Stephenson sitting on a high perch above the other ATACC scientists, surrounded by keyboards and monitors.

Bob Marley, the Atlanta anchor, spoke in his ear.

“We go now to the best crisis reporter anywhere, CNN’s own Ted Cantrell.”

It was showtime.





Cohort Commander Ketaan-Ra moved down the line, inspecting his assault team with the confidence that came from many such missions across the galaxy. Its mission wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t complicated either. Wait for the gateway to synchronize with the signal from the far end, activate the portal, then charge through to secure the other side, establishing a beachhead for the army that would follow.

Then all the heavy firepower and advanced weaponry available to the follow-on force would bring yet another world into the Kasari Collective. But that army would not be allowed through the gateway until his team had finished its work.

His special assault team would take some losses, there was little doubt of that. It happened in almost every assault, the result of being denied any ranged weapons that might damage or disrupt the far-gate. The far-end gateways were always fragile technological implementations, the best these primitive worlds could construct, even given a world ship tutorial. Denied even low-power disrupter weapons, his team would rely on the initial surprise and shock their assault would generate and on their martial arts training, bladed weapons, and nano-enhanced bodies to secure the objective.

There would be some security presence on the far end, but it would be minimal. It always was. Nobody opened a Kasari gateway with the expectation of welcoming in an assault force. The planet expected what the world ship had conditioned it to expect, the reason they’d gone to all the effort to construct the gateway. So the special assault team would rock them back on their heels and another portal would be secured. Then the signal would be given and the army would pour through, extending the perimeter, bringing the transporters, sky riders, heavy equipment, and the rest of the Kasari logistics train.

Finishing his inspection of his chosen dozen, Ketaan-Ra motioned his sergeant forward, assuming the position of attention as his top veteran inspected Ketaan-Ra with the same meticulous routine that he’d used on the team. Standard operating procedure. Nobody went into combat without undergoing a thorough inspection, especially not commanders.

As the sergeant moved around him, touching each item of equipment, his comm unit sounded the alert. The far gateway had powered up, preparing to go active. Once that happened, it would only be a matter of allowing the two gates to synchronize signals before the portal stabilized.

A warm glow worked its way up from his two feet into Ketaan-Ra’s legs and torso, spreading into his four arms, his neck, and then his head.

It was almost go time.





Even for Ted, reporting on the culmination of the November Anomaly project was a little overwhelming. As he started in on his coverage, he knew he sounded a little unsure of himself. As he continued, though, his veteran instincts kicked in, the nerves went away, and it all became automatic.

Having hit his stride, Ted gestured toward the cavern that fell away before his platform. “What we are about to see is the single most important event since the dawn of life on this planet, the culmination of the most ambitious science and engineering project ever conceived by man. During the next hour, Dr. Stephenson and the scientists working on the November Anomaly project will attempt to use technologies reverse-engineered from the Rho Project alien starship. Some of these technologies have never before been tested, much less utilized on this scale.

“Over the last eight months, in the huge cavern behind me and aboveground a short distance from here, the world’s best scientists and engineers have constructed four devices crucial to pulling off today’s attempt at saving the human race. The first is the only aboveground component, a power plant built using alien matter disrupter technology that will provide the awesome power required by the systems here in the ATLAS cavern.”

Ted was well aware that his TV audience was seeing not just him and the ATLAS cavern, but a sequence of 3-D computer animations designed to illustrate what he was talking about.

“Two more critical pieces of equipment are not visible in the cavern below, buried as they are within the walls of the equipment on the cavern floor below. These are actually two identical copies of the same thing, a device called a stasis field generator. They are designed to generate and manipulate powerful force fields that will be used to isolate the November Anomaly and move it into the gateway that will transport it into space.”