Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(102)

“And after that?”

“I would guess there’s going to be a big party.”

The camera shifted back to Ted’s nervous smile. “Let’s all hope and pray that happens.”

“Approaching final countdown to anomaly capture.” The last ten seconds of the countdown echoed through the cavern. “Initiating anomaly capture.”

With a sound like thunder, the huge steel anomaly containment device came apart and crashed to the concrete floor. For several seconds, the only sound that could be heard was the reverberating echoes of its fall.

Then the alarm sounded.

“Warning...primary stasis field generator power at eighty-two percent and falling. Stasis field degradation detected.”

At the ATACC, a bearded Scandinavian technician ran toward one of the large electronic racks, his long blond hair flowing out behind him as he leaped up onto the second level of equipment, ripped out a panel, rolled onto the floor, and slid his torso inside.

On his perch, high above the others, Dr. Stephenson shifted from one keyboard to the next, pounding his fist on the desktop in frustration. Suddenly his voice took over the PA system.

“Initiate procedure to swap primary and secondary stasis field generator controls. Dr. Trotsky, override the con from your position. Now!”

As the pulsing alarm blared, Ted stared in horror as the air surrounding the point where the anomaly containment device had previously been suspended acquired a pale-blue glow within what he could only imagine was the failing spherical stasis field.

A flurry of activity along the near side of the ATACC pulled his eyes away from the glowing sphere. Several people had moved to surround a gray-haired scientist at one of the ATACC workstations who had slumped forward over the controls.

Remembering who he was, Ted pulled himself together and pointed. “Get me a camera on that.”

The video feed shifted, zooming in on the group of scientists gathered behind the workstation. A young woman in a white lab coat pushed her way through, physically lifting the scientist from the chair, handing his unconscious body to two men, then sliding into his chair. The woman’s hands moved across multiple keyboards, her actions a blur, backdropped by a bank of flat-panel displays. The movements of her lithe body, the way her short, spiked, platinum-blonde hair framed her face, gave Ted a déjà vu moment, reminding him of a hot pop star rising up into the sky above her European concert audience.

“Warning...primary stasis field generator power at forty percent and falling. Stasis field failure imminent.”

As he continued to watch the exotic young physicist work, Ted heard a low moan of dread rise up from the other scientists, a moan that entered the microphones and drifted out to a network audience of billions.





President Jackson stared at the CNN broadcast, surrounded by his national security team. General Smith’s tense voice sounded through the encrypted satellite speakerphone.

“Mr. President. We are out of time.”

Looking around the room, meeting the eyes of each member of his staff, each head nodding in affirmation, the president swallowed, then spoke with reluctant authority.

“General Smith, I authorize you to immediately implement Anomaly Fail-Safe Plan Bravo.”

“Mr. President, I read back. General Smith, I authorize you to immediately implement Anomaly Fail-Safe Plan Bravo.”

“Confirmed.”

“Roger, Mr. President. Smith out.”

Raising his eyes once again to the television screen, President Jackson spoke again, his voice barely rising above a whisper.

“God help us all.”





General Raymond Smith swiveled his chair and nodded to the only other person in the command and control bunker beneath Ramstein Air Base, just outside Kaiserslautern, Germany: Major Bob Glendale.

“You heard the president’s authorization?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Open your envelope.”

As Bob reached for the envelope on the workstation in front of him, General Smith turned to face front, picked up a knife, and slit open his own brown manila envelope, spilling the contents onto his own workstation.

He glanced at the checklist, but he knew it by heart. This wasn’t Anomaly Fail-Safe Plan Alpha. This was Bravo. That meant there would be no warning to the poor bastards inside the ATLAS cavern. The president had just given the nuke-it-now order.

Picking up the cylindrical red key with the #1 tag dangling from it, the general glanced over at Major Glendale, who had his own key in hand.

“Insert keys.”

The major inserted his key in the console as General Smith mirrored his action.

“Activate on my mark. Mark.”

As the keys turned in unison, a bright green LED lit up on the panel in front of General Smith. Flipping up the red trigger guard, General Smith took a single deep breath, pushing from his mind the thought of the innocents soon to die. Then he thumbed the toggle switch to DETONATE.





Watching the imagery from a dozen separate worm fibers, Raul rubbed his hands in anticipation. Despite the heady stew of arrayed forces that had long been destined for this moment—an alien armada, Dr. Stephenson, three Altreian ship mutants, and the combined intellectual might of the Earth’s best and brightest—only Raul had put it all together.

Here, floating in his own fortress of solitude, he could feel the power bubbling up through his neural net, the awesome force of God’s will. Right now, at this singular moment, there was only one archangel, and Raul was it. Not God’s son as he’d earlier believed, but his mighty right hand. His entire life had been in preparation for this.