Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(105)

All Stephenson needed to do was validate that the space-time coordinates of the far end were far enough from Earth that the anomaly would pose no further threat, a near-certainty given the vast expanse available; then Jennifer would use the secondary stasis field to thrust the forming black hole through the portal. Immediately after that she would use the stasis field generator to destroy the gateway. After that they’d have fifteen minutes to get to Jack’s rendezvous point.

Then the wormhole shifted.





Dr. Donald Stephenson clenched his jaw, lines of concentration burrowing fresh fissures in his forehead. He could be angry later. Right now he had to fix this giant mess they found themselves in.

The almost disastrous handoff of anomaly containment to Dr. Trotsky’s station had shocked him. If not for the decisive actions of Trotsky’s impressive postdoc, taking over the secondary controls when Trotsky fainted, they’d already be dead. She hadn’t wasted a second checking on Trotsky’s condition, practically throwing the unconscious man out of his chair as she slid in to replace him.

As he finished sealing the portal with the primary stasis field, Dr. Stephenson activated the gateway. A tremor shook the cavern floor, rattling the scaffolding, and producing a momentary fluctuation in the power grid. Stephenson adjusted the controls to compensate, allowing the wormhole to come into being at its own pace. A glance at the impedance and temperature measurements for the thick super-cooled power cables brought the barest hint of a smile to his lips. Superconductivity was holding, despite the awesome current flowing into his gateway.

From his perch he could see the entire ATACC, had a direct view down into the portal itself. The scientists looked frozen in time, eyes locked on the anomaly trapped within the secondary containment field, the glowing blue orb reminiscent of a giant fortune teller’s crystal ball.

In front of Stephenson, beside the computer keyboard, the gateway controls looked like a concert equalizer, an assortment of sliders and knobs that could be adjusted manually or set automatically via the computer. Dr. Stephenson leaned forward and pushed the largest slider all the way to the top. Within the gateway a star-field appeared, wavered, stabilized.

As he prepared to validate the coordinates, they changed, an altogether different scene appearing within the portal. What the hell? This wasn’t supposed to happen yet. As Donald Stephenson stared at the army assembled in the vaulted chamber on the other end of the gateway, three alien creatures leaped across the threshold.

Then the portal shifted again.





“What the hell?”

The imagery unfolding in Raul’s sensor array made no sense, momentarily freezing him into inaction. Despite the initial glitches, the gateway had gone active, the far end of the wormhole targeted into empty space. The anomaly should have already been shoved through the portal. Instead, the gateway had somehow synchronized with the Kasari gateway. And, much to his horror, the lead members of the assault cohort leaped through the portal.

The first one through, the apparent commander, never hesitated, grabbing the nearest scientist with two of his powerful arms, the third pistoning a jagged blade into the man’s torso as the fourth arm pointed toward a nearby security guard. Two spider creatures lunged out of the portal, one of them launching itself toward the black-clad female soldier, the other racing up the scaffolding toward a second black-uniformed military man.

As he saw the first of the spiders close on Heather, Raul snapped out of his brain freeze. Although the timing was all wrong, he couldn’t let the Kasari continue to pour into the ATLAS cavern. Activating his own wormhole engine, Raul applied the synchronization codes, locking onto the ATLAS gate to seal off the Kasari portal.

Raul adjusted his worm fiber feeds from the ATLAS cavern. Where seconds earlier the portal had opened into the Kasari staging area, Raul’s legless body now hung in the air within his Rho Ship’s command center. Above the ATACC, a startled exclamation escaped Dr. Stephenson’s lips. Raul ignored him, shifting his attention to the nightmare leaping toward Heather.

As it reached her, she blurred into motion, rolling sideways, regaining her feet with a nine-millimeter Glock in her left hand and her heavy rifle cradled in her right, the Glock firing so fast it sounded like an automatic, each slug penetrating her alien opponent’s misshapen body as it spun to face her, knocking it backward, but not down.

Raul’s neural net supplied him the reason she wasn’t firing the larger weapon. It was an M25, the programmable explosive shells designed to engage at distance, each one exploding with the force of a small grenade, allowing its wielder to destroy enemies hiding behind cover but almost useless at close range since the round didn’t arm itself until it had traveled thirty meters downrange. It was still a big bullet at point-blank range, but not one you wanted to waste unless absolutely necessary.

Enough of this shit. Time to grab Heather and bring her home before she got herself killed. As he shifted part of his own stasis field to reach through the gateway and pluck her from the madness of the ATLAS chamber, his lock on the ATLAS gateway destabilized, then resynchronized, this time on the Kasari gateway. Immediately, nine Kasari warriors spilled into the Rho Ship.





Dr. Stephenson hesitated, but only for a second. Three Kasari commandos had entered the cavern, but not the entire assault unit. There should have been at least a dozen to rapidly secure the Gateway Device. And now gunfire had broken out, as one of the two multi-legged Graath killers had failed to instantly terminate the female commando.