Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(106)

Worse, the not-so-dead Raul had somehow diverted the gateway, synching it to the Rho Ship’s wormhole star-drive engines. Shifting his attention to the anomaly decay calculations, Stephenson grimaced. If he didn’t get control of the gateway in the next minute and a half, everyone involved was about to have a very bad day.

A glance down at the secondary stasis field control station gave him a rush of relief. Dr. Nika Ivanovich, the postdoc who’d taken over for Trotsky, remained at her station, maintaining containment of the anomaly and ready to launch it through the gateway if he could get it pointed away from Earth and not at the Kasari staging base. Stephenson had no intention of shoving an emerging black hole up the ass of the collective.

Throwing the gateway controller into maintenance override while the wormhole was active was a crazy risk, purging the synchronization codes as it performed a controller reboot. The theoretical effect on the wormhole was indeterminate. It would certainly break Raul’s connection to the gateway, but would also deny the Kasari an immediate reconnection. That meant that the three Kasari who had already come through would have to try to gain control in the cavern until reinforcements could arrive.

While there was a very heavy NATO, French, and Swiss security presence on-site, almost all of that force was outside the building, its mission to protect the project from any attack from outside the secure perimeter. That meant the small special ops team on duty within the cavern was on its own until the rapid response force could get here.

As he initiated the gateway’s maintenance override, Stephenson glanced down at the portal. The image of Raul floating inside the Rho Ship winked out, replaced by dancing star-fields. Damn it. The uncontrolled wormhole was waggling through space-time like a dog’s tail. If it leaped deep into a galactic core before the controls rebooted, the primary stasis field draping the portal couldn’t protect them. Still, the odds of survival were in their favor. Big sky, little stars.

Ignoring the continuing rattle of gunfire, Dr. Stephenson focused his attention on preparing for the moment the reboot completed, when it would allow him to lock the wormhole to its original coordinates.

Thumbing the microphone, he spoke into the PA system.

“Dr. Ivanovich. Prepare for anomaly transport within twenty seconds. Initiate on my mark.”

One minute fifty-seven seconds until the end of the world. And, at the moment, all he could do was sit there and twiddle his thumbs.





Mark stared into the wormhole device in disbelief. A vast chamber yawned before him, most of its floor space filled with the vanguard of the alien army they were here to stop. Before he had finished digesting this new circumstance, three aliens plunged through the stasis field. The first, a bipedal, four-armed being, standing a full seven feet tall, leaped onto the first tier of the ATACC, grabbed the nearest scientist from his workstation, and impaled him on a two-foot jagged blade.

As the man opened his mouth to scream, the powerful arm stabbed him again, transforming the sound into a bubbling wail that followed the man into death.

Two other creatures skittered across the cavern floor toward the surrounding scaffolding draping the walls on either side of the ATACC. From Mark’s viewpoint they loped along like eight-legged gorillas, thick bodies the size of sofas, open jowls screeching a keening yowl. If they had eyes, he couldn’t see them.

Mark started moving, his hand suddenly filled with the heavy hammerhead lineman’s pliers from his tool belt, his legs driving him toward the four-armed alien that had just tossed the dead man into the panicked scientists scrambling away from the assault. Mark reached the thing’s back as gunfire erupted behind him.

Off to his left, the wormhole shifted again.

Adrenaline flooding his system, Mark swung the pliers with every ounce of strength he could generate, the force of the blow caving in a section of the thing’s skull, sending it crashing into the next row of elevated workstations. It slipped, arms flailing, but somehow regained its balance, whirling to meet its attacker with a wide sweep of its knife hand.

Mark threw himself sideways, barely avoiding the weapon’s jagged tip. The creature turned to fully face him, rising into a crouch as it assessed its opponent, its head wound repairing itself as Mark watched. The smell of the thing filled his nostrils, an ammonia–diesel fuel perfume that made his eyes water. Its orange-and-black-flecked eyes blinked twice, lids closing bottom-up.

Then it plunged toward him, a second blade filling another of its hands. Mark accepted the charge, dropping to his back as he struck out with both legs, propelling every bit of his power into the quick thrust. Based upon the shock of the impact, he judged the alien’s weight to be better than six hundred pounds. It didn’t matter. The being might be big and able to heal in a way that made Priest Williams look like a sickling, but compared to Mark it was moving in molasses. The blow landed directly on the groin area, redirecting the alien’s charge into a flailing heels-over-head flight over Mark and back out onto the open cavern floor.

Whipping his legs around, Mark landed back on his feet before the alien stopped rolling, his breath puffing out of his mouth and nose in twin attempts to clear the stench that threatened his oxygen supply. As blood wept down his face from a fresh scalp wound, Mark hurled the pliers at the rising creature’s lower left hand, the tool opening as it spun through the air, its momentum tearing the long blade from its grip and sending it spinning along the floor toward the portal opening.