Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(104)

A cheer went up from the ATACC as Dr. Stephenson shifted at his console.

“Immediate wormhole generation commencing.”

No time for a countdown. Just enough to create the wormhole and validate the far end’s space-time coordinates; then Jennifer would modulate the secondary stasis field to allow it to pass the anomaly through the primary and out into deep space. Then Jen would use the secondary field to destroy the gateway before Stephenson could open it up to the invaders.

Heather refined her calculations. Five minutes and seventeen seconds until the growing event horizon spilled out of the containment field and swept everyone to his or her ultimate destiny. If everything went according to plan, they should have two minutes to spare.

If everything went according to plan.





“Why don’t we have detonation?”

General Smith’s voice over the secure telephone unit carried a tension that Captain Everett could feel like static electricity.

“Sir, we’ve lost comms to the nukes.”

“Captain, I don’t care if you have to manually initiate, I need that detonation. Whatever it takes.”

“Wilco.”

“Captain. Your country is counting on you.”

Captain Everett set the handset back in its cradle, then began running toward the doorway that led to the ATLAS cavern. He was going to die today anyway. But maybe, just maybe, he could pull the plug on the thing that was about to eat his wife, his baby girl, and the whole damn planet.





“Far-gate active!”

The notification entered Commander Ketaan-Ra’s mind through the nano-bot communication swarm distributed throughout his brain.

“Synchronization?”

“Not yet initiated from the far end.”

“Why not?”

“It appears the wormhole is directed at a point in galactic zone 3AF2344XZ.”

Ketaan-Ra hissed. He’d waited too long to have something go wrong now.

“Override from this end. Lock it down now.”

“Dangerous.”

“Do it.”

“As you command.”

As power was diverted to the activating gateway, Ketaan-Ra’s detachment came to the ready. When the synchronization reached its final stage, Ketaan-Ra braced himself as the millions of nano-bots throughout his body compensated for the new world’s atmosphere, gravity, and pressure differential. The process was straightforward. Start the change as the gateway went final, charge through the opening as the change progressed, arrive in the new world ready to breathe its air and function in its environment. It always hurt and this time was no different.

Unable to remember the atmosphere he’d been born breathing, Ketaan-Ra exhaled his final lungful of the ammonia-methane mixture he’d come to regard as normal, and leaped through the portal into a nitrogen-oxygen world.





Mark tossed the steel panel onto the floor behind him, flipped onto his back, and pulled his head and shoulders into the electrical access duct. To his neurally enhanced eyesight, the limited ambient lighting seeping into the electrical panel from the cavern was more than adequate.

Since he’d rigged the power circuits for the primary and secondary stasis control panels, he knew what he was looking for without need of the normal test and evaluation procedures. Snapping open the cover on the primary control circuit panel, he found the faulty circuit immediately, a bad amplifier module on the main circuit board. Funny, all that power controlled by a tiny transistor. It took only a trickle of current to the transistor to turn on the main power channel. Conversely, the denial of that trickle cut the main power in an instant. Mark had counted on that when he’d installed the module with the faulty resistor, one chosen to build up heat and burn out within a minute of primary stasis control power-up.

The pungent odor of burned insulation tickled his nostrils as he grabbed the correct screwdriver from his tool belt and spun the first of eight screws free, catching each in his palm as it fell. Snapping the module free of its mounts, Mark snapped the ribbon cable free and tossed the useless circuit card out onto the floor by his feet.

Grabbing his toolkit, he popped open the top, selected the replacement module, and began reinstallation. The kit contained replacements for several of the high-priority circuits, but it didn’t hurt that Mark had known exactly which one would blow and when.

As badly as they’d needed the primary stasis control to fail, they needed it back online shortly thereafter. Just enough downtime for Jen to tranquilize Dr. Trotsky and take over operation of the secondary stasis controls. Dr. Stephenson already recognized that she had far more talent than the older man. If not for Russian political pressure, Trotsky’s uncle being the president of the Russian Federation, Stephenson would have already replaced Trotsky with the postdoc she impersonated.

Snapping the new module in place, Mark tightened the last of the screws, and thrust himself out of the compartment and back into the cavern.

As he watched, twenty meters away the portal activated. The effect was instantaneous. One moment the black steel interior was empty, the next a star field replaced it, the view into space so spectacularly clear that Mark expected to be sucked out into the endless expanse. The fact that he wasn’t confirmed not only that the primary stasis field was back online, but also that Dr. Stephenson had used it to seal the gateway. Nothing would be passing through that field without the correct modulation code, and even then, after passing through the film, the object would be subject to the instantaneous changes in pressure, gravity, temperature, and atmosphere that the far side had to offer.