Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  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.

  Hey, babe. If you have any last save-the-day ideas, I’d appreciate them. Cause I’m fresh out.

  Donald Stephenson screamed into the microphone connected directly to the secondary stasis field control station. “Dr. Ivanovich. I told you to move the anomaly through the portal. Do it now!”

  She didn’t respond.

  Glancing down at the containment bubble around the anomaly, he saw the problem. One of the technicians was fighting the Kasari in front of the gateway portal, blocking the anomaly’s path.

  He leaned closer to the mike. “Ivanovich. Move the anomaly now. We have less than a minute to get rid of it and redirect the gateway, or everyone on Earth dies.”

  No response.

  Shit. The woman had frozen up.

  To make matters worse, the sensor array had detected unusual gravitational variances moving around within the cavern, variances consistent with Rho Ship worm fiber technology. Raul.

  For reasons beyond Stephenson’s ken, the young idiot was trying to subvert the gateway for his own ends. So far he hadn’t managed to grab gateway control again, but using the Rho Ship’s neural net, he might manage it at any time. And if the anomaly was still sitting here in the ATLAS cavern when he did, everything Donald Stephenson had spent forty years working on would wink out in one sudden cosmic gulp.

  Rising to his feet, Stephenson stepped toward the grated steel steps leading down to the third tier. If the Russian bitch couldn’t do it, he’d take over her station himself.

  The alarm sounded as he reached the bottom step, and if he hadn’t braced himself against the structural support railing, he’d have been one of the first people sucked through the unprotected wormhole. Above his head, a large section of his primary control station tore free under the force of the explosive decompression, tumbled into the portal, and disappeared.

  Death didn’t scare him. Failure did. And as he clung to the railing, watching his staff and equipment being sucked out through the gateway, for the first time in his life, he found himself staring failure dead in the face.

  Multiple worm fiber views into the ATLAS cavern so horrified Raul that he began to shake. Not only had the Stephenson team lost the portal stasis field, they had failed to move the anomaly through the portal. With the damage being done to systems throughout the cavern, he couldn’t project how long the gateway would remain functional. Worse, Heather was badly injured, barely clinging to a steel railing eighty meters above the cavern floor. If he wanted to get Heather, it had to be now.

  As his neural net locked in the last of the gateway override codes, he restored his connection to the ATLAS portal, breaking away from the Kasari gateway. As the gateway connection synchronized, inside the ATLAS cavern it was as if a door had been slammed against a storm. Clinging to opposite edges of the portal, Mark and the Kasari he’d been fighting dropped to the floor. The Kasari recovered immediately, closing the gap and bringing his sword down in a sweeping blow Smythe barely managed to deflect. Then the Kasari closed with Mark, his momentum pushing Mark back against the portal’s black wall.

  Raul ignored them. Manipulating the stasis field, he reached out into the cavern, plucking Heather from her high perch, bringing her floating gently down to floor level as he pulled her toward the portal.

  He was so focused on his task, he failed to notice a second young woman leap through the portal until she was already in the ship. With a shock of recognition, he released Heather, sending her tumbling onto the cavern floor, and shifted the stasis field to meet this new threat.

  Then Jennifer Smythe was inside his head.

  Raul had been hard to miss as Jennifer had gotten up, her ears hissing and popping from yet another rapid change in atmospheric pressure. He’d been so obvious he’d even made her take her eyes off of Mark and the alien locked in close combat. That horribly misshapen figure, floating inside the open portal to the Rho Ship. He had been intent on Heather, who was floating through the air down toward the portal, trapped within a stasis bubble.

  Jennifer’s decision was instantaneous. She’d give him something to be intent about. Vaulting the two tiers of workstations that separated her from the cavern floor, Jennifer took three running strides and leaped through the portal, sliding to a stop in a clear area between a jumble of alien equipment. Ten feet in front of her, Raul locked his eyes with hers. Feeling a deadly intention replacing his initial surprise, Jennifer thrust herself into his mind.

  For three seconds it seemed the shock of her mental assault would give her the upper hand. But now, as his alien neural net worked to eliminate her foothold, the balance of power was shifting. A thin smile spread across Raul’s disfigured face, the appendage that had replaced his right eye shifting in anticipation.

  Feeling her mental control slipping, Jennifer lifted the Bandolier Ship headband from its place around her neck, letting the buds settle over her temples. Whereas before she’d felt the power of Raul’s neural net beginning to dominate her will, now Jennifer felt his mind recoil in surprise as he sought to understand what had just happened. Rather than try to take control of the Rho Ship’s neural network, she focused on Raul, exposing the layers of desires, fears, and insecurities that made him who he was. And with every penetration, she released gent
le waves of pleasure, a sense of her acceptance, even admiration.

  And Raul reacted like a man dying of thirst who had just stumbled upon a stream of Rocky Mountain spring water. He drank her in.

  So lonely. If she’d had more time, Jennifer would have pitied him. Instead, she ramped up her exploitation of his needs and weaknesses, encouraging him to show off his knowledge of the Rho Ship and its systems.

  She concentrated on the Rho Ship’s wormhole generation systems. As the knowledge of their design and function filled her mind, she saw what he’d done, reprogrammed the starship’s wormhole drive to connect to the ATLAS gateway, bypassing its primary function of creating a wormhole and shoving the Rho Ship through it.

  His will subject to Jennifer, Raul manipulated his neural net with a mastery that came with intimate familiarity, modifying the wormhole drive’s programming with subtle elegance. The feeling of awe Jennifer fed him brought a smile to his lips, a smile that died as the realization struck him.

  “My God! You’ve killed us both!”

  As she turned her back on him, a barely audible whisper slipped from Jennifer’s lips.

  “I know.”

  Inside the Bandolier Cave, the coffee mug slipped from Dr. Hanz Jorgen’s fingers to shatter on the stone floor, spewing its hot, black wetness up his pants leg. As a brilliant white glow replaced the Bandolier Ship’s normal, soft magenta, he didn’t even notice.

  Hanz didn’t know how he knew, but he did. Something powerful had just grabbed control of the Bandolier Ship’s computers, drawing every cycle of their processing power. He could practically hear the alien circuits groan under the incredible demand being placed upon the system.

  Staring at the glowing starship, he wondered what problem could tax it so intensely. Then, as a shudder traversed his body, Hanz decided he didn’t really want to know.

  Heather tumbled across the concrete floor, coming to rest with her back against the first tier of workstations to the right of the portal, pain sending streaks of light lancing across her vision as the sheet metal spear twisted inside her shoulder. Fighting off a wave of dizziness, she struggled to her knees to see Jennifer standing inside the gateway device, a dozen feet separating her from where Raul’s legless body floated in the air.

  Jesus. What had Stephenson done to him?

  Jennifer pushed her headset into place and a new vision filled Heather’s mind. For several seconds Jennifer and Raul faced each other, frozen in place, a blitz of emotions playing across Raul’s face.

  Then Jennifer turned to face her, eyes as milky white as Heather’s.

  Take care of each other. I love you both.

  Then the portal shifted back to empty space. As the decompression wind returned, Heather grabbed the workstation support, choking off the scream that rose in her throat. If she didn’t do something in the next thirty-three seconds, the hungry anomaly behind her was going to eat them all.

  Locking away the grief that threatened to incapacitate her, Heather channeled every ounce of adrenaline her body could produce, pulled herself up over the first row of workstations, reached out to grab the floor support for the next tier, and hauled herself up onto it. Once again, the spike in her shoulder twisted, leaving her gasping for breath as a red mist colored her vision.

  Gritting her teeth, she lunged up onto the third tier and climbed up, anchoring herself onto the floor-bolted chair in front of the secondary stasis control panel. With her mental countdown ticking down, she grabbed the twin field positioning joysticks and thumbed the right throttle.

  Eighteen seconds.

  Mark, adjusting to the jump in atmospheric pressure, was only halfway to his feet when the alien reached him, the blow staggering him. Still he managed to catch the alien’s sword arm at the wrist as he was driven back against the portal wall.

  Bracing his entire bulk behind the weapon’s hilt, the alien forced the tip an inch closer to Mark’s chest. The muscles in both his arms strained to the point that they threatened to pop through the skin; Mark hammered his right knee into the thing’s groin. The tip of the black blade touched his chest, sending a warm wetness trickling down over his abdominals.

  Mark twisted hard to the left, feeling the blade glance off his rib cage as the tip bit into the steel wall. Maintaining his momentum, Mark released his right hand, slamming the knife edge of his palm into the creature’s throat, followed by a side kick that buckled its left leg.

  Jennifer’s voice entered his mind as he kicked the alien’s damaged leg again.

  Take care of each other. I love you both.

  Before he could look up, another explosive decompression shoved him toward the wormhole. His left hand released its grip on the alien’s sword arm and grabbed the portal’s edge as the creature tumbled backward. He felt the alien grab his left leg as its sword spun away into the blackness beyond.

  Mark twisted, managing to get a two-handed grip on the portal lip before the additional force of the alien body hanging on his leg sent them both on the same trip the sword had just taken. Raising his right knee, Mark sent his Red Wing boot crashing down into the creature’s face, avoided the arm that swung out to capture it, and did it again. When that failed to have the desired effect, he began working on the hands clutching his left leg, breaking bones with every kick.

  The creature healed fast. But not fast enough. The fifth kick broke its hold and, with a growl of anger, it fell into the portal and disappeared.

  An instant later the brightly glowing anomaly bubble followed it through the portal.

  Holding on to the lower support railing on the stairs leading up to his primary gateway control station, and with less than thirty seconds remaining until the anomaly’s event horizon breached its containment field, Dr. Stephenson had found himself mesmerized by the fight between the Kasari and the blond Swedish electrical technician. As hard as it was to believe, the big Swede had managed to survive the latest Kasari attack and was busy kicking its face in with his brown work boots. Then the Kasari’s grip on the man’s leg faltered and it slipped away, sucked across the pressure differential into the wormhole.

  More importantly, one of the security guards, the team’s lone female, had clawed her way up to a seated position at the secondary stasis field generator controls. And, although he could scarcely believe what he was seeing, she grabbed the secondary stasis field control joysticks, somehow managing to thrust the anomaly through the wormhole after the Kasari.

  Despite the relief that coursed through his veins at the extinguishment of the current threat, he wasn’t happy. The anomaly was gone, the Earth would survive, and he still had time to restore the gateway connection to the Kasari Collective, but something was still very wrong.

  As he fought the wind on his way back up the steps to his control station, the image of the black-clad security dyke manning the secondary stasis controls replayed in his mind. No hesitation in her actions. She’d handled the controls as if she’d designed them, exactly as Dr. Ivanovich had handled them, far better than Dr. Trotsky, the scientist trained for that job.

  Sliding into his chair and bracing his feet against the control station’s steel framing, Stephenson pulled up the gateway diagnostics and confirmed the wormhole’s remote location, deep in empty space. Even if the anomaly absorbed enough nearby matter to become a major black hole, it would take a very long time, and even then, there were no significant star systems near enough to worry about.

  Shifting back to the gateway controls, as Stephenson prepared to enter the Kasari synchronization codes, he spared one last glance at the female security guard. She met his gaze, her eyes freezing him in place. As years of age melted from her face, the shock of recognition hit him. The McFarland girl!

  Seeing her shove the stasis field control joysticks up and to her right, Stephenson dived off the rear side of the platform as it came apart all around him, heavy steel shrapnel ripping into his chest and neck as he tumbled the thirty feet to the concrete cavern floor, the impact breaking his right leg, sen
ding the jagged edge of his splintered femur jutting out through his upper thigh.

  He rolled right, grabbed a steel strut, and pulled himself under a piece of the damaged structure. Heather McFarland. The little bitch had tried to kill him.

  It was no wonder he’d failed to recognize her. He’d watched ten years melt from her features in a second. Suddenly several pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. All this time he’d overlooked what was right in front of his face. Those three kids had been involved on the periphery of every key event for the last two years. The clues had been there all along.

  Freaks of nature. No. Not nature. The Altreian starship!

  They must have stumbled onto it long before the government found it inside that Bandolier cave. Only they’d done something to it, activated equipment that altered them, swallowed the Altreian anti-Kasari propaganda, become surrogate soldiers executing the Altreians’ twisted agenda. And if Heather McFarland was here, the Smythe twins had probably penetrated the project as well. And they’d done a damned fine job of sabotaging his big day.

  The depressurization wind had stopped. That meant they’d cut power to the gateway, most likely by physically damaging the cables with the secondary stasis field.

  Bending at the waist, Donald Stephenson grabbed his right knee and shoved, forcing the splintered bone back inside the already healing wound. With a deep breath he checked the nanite repairs to his lungs and throat. Good.

  As for McFarland and the Smythes, they were about to find out neither he nor his project was quite so easy to kill.

  Mark managed to hook his left elbow around the portal’s superstructure, levering himself around the side and out of the brunt of the howling wind. The shriek of tearing steel brought his head around in time to see the primary control platform come apart like a sheep in a raptor’s jaws. He didn’t see Dr. Stephenson, but if he was inside that, he was dead.