Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  “About that time, Artan distracted her by climbing back to his feet. He didn’t stay there long though. Anyway, when she was done, she turned around to face the rest of us. I swear to God, she wasn’t even breathing hard. All she said was ‘Anyone else?’ but she didn’t get any volunteers. Then she turned her back on us and walked away.

  “So that’s why those three are in the hospital. Diego’s in the best shape. He’ll probably be released tomorrow. Artan and Hedo are going to be there for a while.”

  “I guess she didn’t take kindly to the Turks breaking her deal.”

  “I tell you what, boss, I wouldn’t screw with her.”

  Charley nodded. “So it was a training accident.”

  “Just like I said.”

  “Looks like we’ve got a new teammate. Spread the word.”

  Bob rose to his feet, opened the door, and paused.

  “I don’t have to.”

  The door to the command hooch banged closed behind him.

  The knock on his door roused Freddy from the light doze that had almost allowed the glass of Crown Royal to slip from his fingers.

  Shit. What time was it? The LED lights on the cable box read 11:45. Who the hell would come knocking at midnight?

  Freddy thought about grabbing his snub-nosed thirty-eight. But what if it was the Ripper? The thirty-eight would just get him killed.

  Setting the glass on the end table, Freddy slid out of the easy chair and stumbled to the door. Wiping a hand over his face, he took a deep breath to clear his head and opened the door.

  It took a full five seconds for Freddy’s mind to process the girl standing before him. She was a petite Asian in jeans and a purple camisole that left her navel exposed. At least he didn’t see any piercings.

  “Wrong house. The party must be down the street.”

  “Freddy Hagerman?”

  “What of it?”

  “I understand you met with Denise Jennings of the NSA at the Thomas Jefferson Building.”

  Now she had his attention. Freddy motioned her toward the couch, but she remained where she was.

  “I won’t be here long enough to come in or sit down. I came here to give you this.”

  She handed him a leather valise he had mistaken for her purse, and stepped back, her eyes as black as her hair.

  “I think you’ll find that I finished the work Denise started. I understand you know what to do with it.”

  “Mind if I ask a couple of questions?” Actually, he had more than a couple of questions.

  “No need. If the answer isn’t in what I just gave you, I don’t know it.”

  “Your name?”

  “Good-bye, Mr. Hagerman.”

  She turned and walked down the dark driveway and climbed inside a small car. No interior light came on when she opened the door. Neither did she turn on her headlights when she drove away. So much for getting the license plate number.

  Freddy stared after her as she turned the corner at the end of his block. Then he closed the door, walked into the kitchen, and spread the valise’s contents across the kitchen table. Three coffeepots later, with the first gray of dawn lightening his windows, he knew that she had spoken the truth.

  He also knew that if the Ripper hadn’t told him not to publish the story until after November Anomaly Gateway Day, he would already be on his way to New York.

  Donald Stephenson paced the ATLAS cavern like a lion in a cage. It was strangely quiet. He’d given the entire staff eight hours off, instructing the G-Day crew to report promptly at four a.m. to begin the six-hour countdown.

  They’d been shocked. The cavern always had a night crew. But tonight, Donald wanted to savor the culmination of his life’s work alone.

  As he walked among the massive equipment, his footsteps echoing, and looked up at the steel scaffolding draping the cavern walls, a sudden chill raised gooseflesh on his arms. It reminded him of another November night, so many years ago, when he’d stood in another man-made cavern, alone with the Rho Ship.

  The truth was, that moment had been the purest of his life. The sense of discovery, the revelations. The renewed sense of purpose when, even though many thought him successful, in his mind he had just been spinning his wheels.

  Mankind imagined itself a highly evolved species...or, even more bizarrely, as the one, all-powerful God’s greatest creation. But on that first night when Donald had made his way, alone, into the Rho Ship, he had discovered proof of what he had always thought to be true. Man was no more than an adolescent species on a backwater planet in an aging galaxy.

  If the Rho Ship hadn’t been so horribly damaged in its combat with the Altreian starship, it wouldn’t have taken Donald so long to prepare the way for mankind’s next evolutionary leap. But through all these years of baby steps and setbacks, Donald had persisted, until those steps had finally deposited him on destiny’s doorstep.

  Odd how his fate seemed entwined with Thanksgiving, like some cosmic circadian rhythm. For the first time in a very long time, a genuine smile creased his ageless face.

  Tomorrow, on Thanksgiving Day in America, he would change the world.

  The Anomaly Transport and Control Center (ATACC) looked nothing like anything Ted Cantrell had imagined. When he and his CNN news crew had arrived to begin setup for the most important broadcast in history, he’d expected to find something like the NASA Flight Control Room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, a room filled with banks of high-tech workstations arranged in a neat grid in front of a wall filled with large display screens. This felt more like the Batcave.

  The ATLAS cavern was huge, the walls draped with steel lattice construction, grated metal walkways leading to metal stairs, each of these girded with steel rails that were all that prevented someone from stumbling into a deadly fall. High up along one of the topmost levels, international camera crews and media had been allotted space to set up cameras and on-site reporting stations. Every available space along the long, narrow walkway was packed with equipment and cables, with open space reserved only for the network anchors.

  Eschewing an anchor desk, Ted had decided to stand back against the blue railing, allowing the camera to frame him against the huge cavern that opened up behind him. Despite the tight operating space, the view was breathtaking. Its great form rising thirty meters from the central cavern floor, the Rho Gateway Device resembled an inverted horseshoe magnet, its metal walls five meters thick, its outer surface sprouting appendages that looked like the buds on a potato left too long in its sack. Huge cables snaked out from a massive steel structure that rose three hundred feet from the cavern floor, terminating on those buds or disappearing beneath the ATACC. They were the lines designed to carry more power than any power plant on Earth had ever generated.

  As Ted stared at them, he felt a sudden tightening of his throat. Despite the thick layers of insulation that surrounded each of those cables, he wondered if that power might not burst free, sending uncontrolled electrical arcs crawling across all this steel latticework.

  But if he felt dangerously exposed up here, what must it have felt like to be one of the hundreds of scientists and technicians who occupied and surrounded the ATACC? Rather than being constructed at a safe distance from the gateway, the control center was snuggled up against it, wrapping the monstrous piece of equipment as if they were two lovers spooning up in bed. Safety and beauty had been sacrificed at the altar of speed, reducing the length of thousands of cables and putting scientists in position to directly observe and react as required.

  Ten meters from the gateway mouth stood the large metal shell that housed the vacuum chamber and electromagnetic containment fields designed to slow the November Anomaly’s death spiral. If all went well, they wouldn’t need it much longer. If things didn’t go well it wouldn’t matter.

  According to top scientists on the program, the anomaly’s descent into instability continued to accelerate as Dr. Stephenson’s equations had predicted. If the Gateway Device failed today, there wouldn’
t be a second chance.

  The noise along the high ramp picked up as foreign news organizations began their broadcasts. Jan Fernandez, his assigned makeup artist, stepped forward to pat his face down with a powder puff, erasing the beads of sweat that had popped out on his brow despite the cool temperature here in the cavern.

  “Thirty seconds to air.”

  Ted nodded at his producer, took several deep breaths, and, just as he’d done in crisis after crisis around the world, put on his game face.

  From his left to his right, the three eye-level monitors mounted on the walkway’s metal wall showed CNN’s Atlanta feed, his own image, and a tight shot of Dr. Stephenson sitting on a high perch above the other ATACC scientists, surrounded by keyboards and monitors.

  Bob Marley, the Atlanta anchor, spoke in his ear.

  “We go now to the best crisis reporter anywhere, CNN’s own Ted Cantrell.”

  It was showtime.

  Cohort Commander Ketaan-Ra moved down the line, inspecting his assault team with the confidence that came from many such missions across the galaxy. Its mission wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t complicated either. Wait for the gateway to synchronize with the signal from the far end, activate the portal, then charge through to secure the other side, establishing a beachhead for the army that would follow.

  Then all the heavy firepower and advanced weaponry available to the follow-on force would bring yet another world into the Kasari Collective. But that army would not be allowed through the gateway until his team had finished its work.

  His special assault team would take some losses, there was little doubt of that. It happened in almost every assault, the result of being denied any ranged weapons that might damage or disrupt the far-gate. The far-end gateways were always fragile technological implementations, the best these primitive worlds could construct, even given a world ship tutorial. Denied even low-power disrupter weapons, his team would rely on the initial surprise and shock their assault would generate and on their martial arts training, bladed weapons, and nano-enhanced bodies to secure the objective.

  There would be some security presence on the far end, but it would be minimal. It always was. Nobody opened a Kasari gateway with the expectation of welcoming in an assault force. The planet expected what the world ship had conditioned it to expect, the reason they’d gone to all the effort to construct the gateway. So the special assault team would rock them back on their heels and another portal would be secured. Then the signal would be given and the army would pour through, extending the perimeter, bringing the transporters, sky riders, heavy equipment, and the rest of the Kasari logistics train.

  Finishing his inspection of his chosen dozen, Ketaan-Ra motioned his sergeant forward, assuming the position of attention as his top veteran inspected Ketaan-Ra with the same meticulous routine that he’d used on the team. Standard operating procedure. Nobody went into combat without undergoing a thorough inspection, especially not commanders.

  As the sergeant moved around him, touching each item of equipment, his comm unit sounded the alert. The far gateway had powered up, preparing to go active. Once that happened, it would only be a matter of allowing the two gates to synchronize signals before the portal stabilized.

  A warm glow worked its way up from his two feet into Ketaan-Ra’s legs and torso, spreading into his four arms, his neck, and then his head.

  It was almost go time.

  Even for Ted, reporting on the culmination of the November Anomaly project was a little overwhelming. As he started in on his coverage, he knew he sounded a little unsure of himself. As he continued, though, his veteran instincts kicked in, the nerves went away, and it all became automatic.

  Having hit his stride, Ted gestured toward the cavern that fell away before his platform. “What we are about to see is the single most important event since the dawn of life on this planet, the culmination of the most ambitious science and engineering project ever conceived by man. During the next hour, Dr. Stephenson and the scientists working on the November Anomaly project will attempt to use technologies reverse-engineered from the Rho Project alien starship. Some of these technologies have never before been tested, much less utilized on this scale.

  “Over the last eight months, in the huge cavern behind me and aboveground a short distance from here, the world’s best scientists and engineers have constructed four devices crucial to pulling off today’s attempt at saving the human race. The first is the only aboveground component, a power plant built using alien matter disrupter technology that will provide the awesome power required by the systems here in the ATLAS cavern.”

  Ted was well aware that his TV audience was seeing not just him and the ATLAS cavern, but a sequence of 3-D computer animations designed to illustrate what he was talking about.

  “Two more critical pieces of equipment are not visible in the cavern below, buried as they are within the walls of the equipment on the cavern floor below. These are actually two identical copies of the same thing, a device called a stasis field generator. They are designed to generate and manipulate powerful force fields that will be used to isolate the November Anomaly and move it into the gateway that will transport it into space.”

  The shot shifted to the camera showing the ATACC, gradually zooming out until the massive Gateway Device filled the screen.

  “Right now you are looking at the heart of the project, the Rho Gateway Device.”

  Pausing momentarily for dramatic effect, Ted continued. “This is the engineering marvel that will create a wormhole, through which the scientists will push the November Anomaly using the stasis field generators. Once the anomaly has been pushed into the wormhole, the Rho Gateway Device will be powered down, closing the wormhole, and eliminating the threat to our planet, forever.”

  The lighting in the cavern acquired an amber hue as the PA system sounded.

  “Initial stasis field power countdown commencing...five, four, three, two, one. Engaging power.”

  There was a brief pause, followed by another announcement.

  “Stasis field generator power steady at ten percent on both systems. Commencing one-minute countdown to full power ramp.”

  Ted turned sideways, to enhance the camera’s view of his profile silhouetted against the gateway.

  “Now it starts getting dicey. This countdown will take us to the point where scientists bring the two stasis field generators to full power. While it’s nowhere close to the amount of power the Gateway Device will use, it’s still more than the total amount of power used by the Large Hadron Collider over the entire course of its operation.”

  He found he was sweating profusely. It all came down to this...

  Again the loudspeaker sounded out the final ten seconds of the countdown.

  “Initiating power ramp...fifty percent...seventy percent...ninety-five percent...stasis field generator power stabilized at one hundred percent. All systems nominal.”

  The sound of clapping echoed up from the cavern floor.

  Ted smiled, relieved. “You can feel the tension in that applause.”

  The PA system squawked. “Commencing one-minute countdown to Rho Gateway power ramp.”

  Ted turned back to face the camera. “I have to admit to a little dry mouth. Unlike the stasis field generator power-up, the gateway is going to be ramped to full power without a pause. The scientists will power it up, but they won’t activate it until after the November Anomaly is isolated by the primary stasis field generator.”

  As the final countdown sounded, the camera shifted to a tight shot of the Gateway Device.

  “Gateway device power ramp initiated.”

  Ted felt his hair stand on end, but he couldn’t be sure if it was static electricity in the air or the tension in his body. In front of him, the producer and the camera people had a kind of tension, too, their bodies just going through the motions. They appeared to Ted like poorly designed computer simulations of the team he knew so well.

  “Power at fifty percent...seventy-five
...ninety...ninety-five...ninety-eight...”

  There was a brief pause in the announcements.

  “Gateway device power stabilized at ninety-nine point three percent of maximum.”

  Once again the sound of applause rang out from the scientists and technicians assembled below.

  Ted exhaled. “I know you must be wondering why they’re clapping, since we didn’t get to one hundred percent power. I sure am. For an explanation, we go to Dr. Gerta Freiholt, a physicist from the matter disrupter team. Thank you for taking the time to help us understand what is happening.”

  The camera shifted to a white-coated woman with her gray hair pulled back in a severe bun. “My pleasure. As you can tell from the reaction from our ATACC crew, ninety-nine percent power is excellent. The system was designed with a certain amount of tolerance. While we would have loved to hit the one hundred percent target, anything over ninety-five percent is good.”

  “That’s good to know. We have a couple of minutes until the next phase. Can you give us a quick overview of what scientists will be trying to do with the stasis field generators?”

  “Well, first they are going to use the primary stasis field generator to capture and isolate the November Anomaly. Right now the anomaly is contained by powerful magnetic fields within a vacuum chamber.”

  The camera switched to a view of the steel ball suspended a few meters in front of the Gateway Device opening.

  “When the stasis field is directed at the anomaly containment apparatus, it will instantaneously cut through all that steel, which will fall away onto the cavern floor. However, the stasis field will move at the speed of light, so before the pieces of the vacuum chamber have begun to move, the field will wrap itself around the anomaly, maintaining the vacuum and preventing any external matter from perturbing the anomaly.”

  “What about the metal casing? Isn’t it going to fall right into the anomaly and won’t all that metal knock it around?”

  “No. It won’t be able to touch it. Think of the stasis field as a force field that is so powerful that it can repel anything away from the anomaly. Even an explosion couldn’t penetrate it.”