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, sending 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.
Then the gateway died, the wormhole winking out, whipping Mark’s body through another rapid pressure change that dropped him to his knees. Behind him, the crackle of electrical arcs and the smell of burning insulation told him all he needed to know. Restoring gateway power wasn’t going to be a simple task.
Climbing back to his feet, Mark looked up at the secondary stasis field control station. Heather sat slumped forward over the controls, a jagged piece of steel sticking three inches out of her back.
Ignoring the blood leaking from his own side, Mark raced toward her and cleared the first row of workstations, his next jump landing him beside her chair.
Mark tilted her gently back, hearing his own breath hiss through his teeth. The sheet metal shard had penetrated just beneath her collarbone, high enough to miss her lung, but it was two inches wide. So much blood. Her uniform was soaked in it, and it had puddled in her chair, more dripping down through the steel grate below.
Mark tore off his shirt, ripped it in half, and knelt beside her.
Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners, a weak smile lifting the corners of her mouth.
“We did it.”
“Yes we did. But we’re not done yet.” Mark squeezed her hand. “This is going to hurt.”
Holding her shoulder back with his left hand, Mark squeezed the steel sliver with his right. He looked into Heather’s beautiful face, saw no fear, and nodded.
Mark pulled. One swift, smooth pull. And although Heather made no sound, to his ears the passage of the metal shard out of her body sounded like a Civil War amputation saw. As the shard popped free, her blood splashed his on face, its metallic odor filling his nostrils.
Ripping off her shirt, Mark tore off the sleeves and used them to bind the balled-up halves of his own shirt into a tight pressure bandage. As he prepared to lift her from her chair, he saw the calf wound.
“Jesus Christ!”
Mark grabbed her ripped pant leg and tore it free. The wound was a jagged tear in the calf muscle, not arterial, but another bloody mess. Using the pant leg to bind the remains of her shirt to her calf, Mark tied it off, stood, and lifted Heather into his arms as rising despair threatened to overwhelm him. He’d already lost his sister today. He couldn’t take losing Heather too.
“Hang on to my neck. I’ll get you out of here.”
When Heather didn’t respond, he glanced down at her face. Her eyes were half closed, gone back to milky white. That was fine. Let her visions carry her away from the pain and sorrow of the present. In the meantime he’d get her the hell out of the death and destruction within the ATLAS cavern.