Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(111)

The concussive blast penetrated the thin steel plates, coating her body in alien slime as it lifted her from her perch and flung her against the outer railing, sending a tidal wave of pain through her right shoulder. Fighting to stay conscious, Heather saw that a foot-long sheet metal shard had speared her just below the right collarbone, a third of its length extending out her back. Her other symptoms pointed to severe concussion.

Struggling to a sitting position, she braced herself against the railing that had prevented her from falling 250 feet to the cavern floor below.

Shit. When does this get fun?

Then a new alarm Klaxon sounded, accompanied by a digitized voice over the PA system.

“WARNING. PRIMARY STASIS FIELD COOLING SYSTEM MALFUNCTION. PRIMARY STASIS FIELD POWER FAILURE IMMINENT.”

As a new vision filled her mind, Heather wrapped her good arm and leg around the support strut.

Then, with a hurricane squall, the primary stasis field died, opening the portal to the vacuum of empty space.





Mark was one with the dance. Once he’d thought he was meant for basketball, but he’d been born for this.

Adrenaline coursed through his system unchecked, fueling his attack. Dodging the alien’s counterstroke, his black sword swept an arc that removed the alien’s top left arm at the elbow, sending the clutching hand to the concrete floor between them.

The alien ignored the loss of a hand, lunging forward onto Mark’s blade, its momentum aiding Mark in driving the full length through its thick torso. Only as one of its hands closed around his right wrist, preventing him from pulling the sword free, did Mark realize his mistake.

Twisting to the left, Mark grabbed the alien’s sword arm with his left hand as the remaining alien hand grabbed his throat and squeezed. With electric sparks arcing across his dimming vision, Jennifer touched his mind.

Can’t hold it much longer. Get the hell out of the way.

Bracing his arms like a gymnast performing the iron cross, Mark brought both knees up to his chest, leaned back, and hammered his heels into the alien’s face, breaking what would have passed for a nose and rocking its head back. As the alien hammered at his ribs with its amputated stump, Mark scissored his legs around the thing’s head, locked his heels, and squeezed.

Feeling the alien grip on his throat loosen slightly, Mark twisted his head to the side and bit into the alien fist, feeling bones snap between his teeth as the acrid alien blood filled his mouth, stinging his lips and gums. The alien’s grip on his throat loosened another notch and Mark felt the blood flow return to his brain. Sucking in a rattling breath, he increased the pressure his legs were applying to the alien’s head and neck.

He didn’t have a lot of faith he could crush that skull or break its neck, but he could damn sure try. In the meantime he began flexing his pinned right wrist, making short sawing motions with the sword blade within the alien’s torso.

Adopting Mark’s tactic, the alien twisted its head and sank its teeth into the flesh of his thigh. Shrugging its shoulders up, it shoved hard with its three good arms, breaking Mark’s grip and sending him tumbling across the cavern floor.

Ignoring the pain shooting through his leg, Mark rolled to his feet, prepared to meet the charge that didn’t come. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out why. Watching the alien’s fist and injured stomach knit themselves back together, he knew this was a battle of attrition he couldn’t hope to win.

Mark spat the alien blood onto the floor, trying not to swallow any. Well, if killing the thing the old-fashioned way wasn’t going to work, he’d just have to see how it got along without a head. As he readied himself for his next attack, high up, near the top of the massive power cage, a loud explosion sounded, its echoing report followed by the blare of a new alarm.

“WARNING. PRIMARY STASIS FIELD COOLING SYSTEM MALFUNCTION. PRIMARY STASIS FIELD POWER FAILURE IMMINENT.”

Feeling his ears pop from the pressure change, Mark dropped the alien sword and lunged for the portal’s titanium edge, his fingers closing on its lip as a blast of hurricane-force wind lifted his feet from the ground, trying to suck him into the wormhole behind him.

A quick glance over his shoulder made the situation clear. The alien had managed to grab the portal’s far edge, but several of the scientists had been swept from their workstations as they and some of the monitors and keyboards tumbled into deep space. A glance up at Jennifer showed that she had managed to wrap her arms and legs around a steel rail, while, at his command perch, Dr. Stephenson clung to the elevated support structure.

Meanwhile, the November Anomaly sat unmoving, held in place by the stasis field containment bubble, glowing considerably brighter than the last time he’d looked at it. Now was the time to thrust it through the portal. Unfortunately, neither Jennifer nor Stephenson was able to let go to enter the required commands into a control station.

The howl of the wind nearly drowned out the screams of those swept from the scaffolding along the walls, but not the screech of tearing sheet metal and the crash of equipment flung against structural steel and concrete on its path into the wormhole. As Mark clung to his handhold he knew the wind wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon, not with the LHC’s twenty-seven-kilometer primary beam tunnel providing plenty of air, not with everything ventilated from the outside.

As a steel-case desk ricocheted off the portal five feet above him, Mark’s thoughts turned to Heather.