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.
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.
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.
The alien ignored it, moving toward Mark once again, this time in a controlled fighter’s crouch instead of a charge, its remaining sword at the ready, its other three hands swaying in a wrestler’s pose. Mark turned and ran. Behind him the alien followed, and although it wasn’t nearly as quick, it was fast. Halfway to the scaffolding, Mark turned hard right, then again, allowing his larger opponent’s momentum to carry it past him.
The maneuver gained him five meters. Focusing on achieving all the speed he could generate, Mark let his legs propel him toward the alien’s dropped blade. The slap of heavy boots on concrete behind him told him the race was going to be close.