Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  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.

  The Swiss Air Force captain turned to see an American warrant officer approaching his chopper.

  Annoyance tingeing his heavily accented English, he leaned sideways in the cockpit, his voice rising above the copter noise.

  “I’m sorry, this is an emergency medevac flight. No passengers.”

  The American held out a sheaf of papers. The pages, buffeted by the rotor wash, revealed the noise suppressor screwed into the barrel of the Glock nine-millimeter pistol.

  “Out of the chopper!”

  As the captain hesitated, a small spat, like a sandal slapping the pavement, was the only sound that accompanied the slug through his thigh.

  “Shit!”

  Jack pointed the gun at the flight medic sitting next to the pilot.

  “Last chance.”

  The man scrambled out of the cockpit, dragging the pilot out onto the tarmac with him as Jack stepped in and throttled the engine.

  Just as at other area hospitals, the emergency staff at Meyrin’s Hospital La Tour was overwhelmed. The panic that had spread at the televised reports from the ATLAS cavern had gotten worse after the loss of the live broadcast feed. So it didn’t surprise him that there was no immediate reaction to his theft of the medevac helicopter.

  As the EC635 lifted off from the hospital’s improvised helipad, a security guard ran from the emergency entrance, fumbling with his holster strap. The spray of blood out the back of his head interrupted his attempt to draw his weapon.

  Jack maneuvered the stick, waggling the chopper’s enclosed tail rotor at the high window half a block away, and banked toward the LHC’s ATLAS facility. Thumbing the TRANSMIT button on his QT-modified cell phone, he spoke loud enough to be heard above the cockpit noise.

  “Nice shooting, babe. Pack it up.”

  Janet’s voice came right back at him.

  “OK, my lover. Go get our team.”

  Heather opened her eyes as Mark climbed the stairs onto the third level of scaffolding that draped the ATLAS cavern’s outer walls. Although the depressurization had pulled several of the scientists and technical crew from these walkways, many more, including a number of the scientists who had manned the ATACC workstations on the cavern floor, had managed to make their way to the exits during the fight that had raged through the cavern and the subsequent gateway malfunctions.

  “We can’t leave yet.”

  Her voice brought Mark to a stop. “What?”

  “Stephenson’s not dead.”

  Mark swung his gaze out onto the cavern floor, where Dr. Stephenson had just climbed out from beneath a rubble pile like some kind of giant cockroach.

  “Doesn’t matter. No way he can fix that,” Mark said, nodding toward the Cage and its spark-spitting mess of cables.

  “We have to make sure.”

  Understanding dawned on Mark’s face.

  “The nukes.”

  “We’ve got to set the timer.”

  Mark turned to look up at the high ramp that ran along the cavern ceiling and into the topmost part of the Cage. Back in that jumble of wires and cables was the spot where he’d bypassed the trigger line to the nukes.

  “Might be hot.”

  “Let’s hope not. The shorts in the power cables are low down in the Cage and each level is electrically isolated from the others.”

  Mark nodded. “OK, I’ll do it.”

  “I should go with you.”

  “Not in your condition.” Before she could object, he continued. “Your body stays here. Your mind can come along for the ride.”

  Both of them reached for their alien headsets, slipping them into place at the same time.

  Nothing happened.

  Heather couldn’t understand it. No gentle tingling. Nothing. Her headset was just dead. She didn’t need to look at Mark to know that his was dead too.

  “Shit!”

  Heather looked up at him. “We’ll just have to do it the hard way then.”

  Mark set her down with her back against the steel wall. “Wait until I get up there and then you can try to make the mind link. If you can’t manage it, don’t push yourself. I don’t need your help to set the timer.”

  As he turned away and vaulted up the stairs that would take him to the ladder that led to the high ramp, Heather fought off a fresh wave of dizziness. She had no doubts about Mark’s capabilities. But what if stray voltage managed to travel through one of the nest of cables through which Mark would have to crawl to reach their splice? If she wasn’t there with him, seeing what he saw, how could she sense what to touch and what to avoid?

  Sitting up just a little straighter, Heather watched the muscles ripple across Mark’s bare back as he moved up onto the ladder that would take him all the way to the top. She’d just have to make sure she stayed conscious long enough to make that happen.

  Mark knew the Cage inside and out. He’d installed a significant portion of the electronics, cables, and super-cooling equipment. The construction crew had been exceptional, but the workmanship was only average. The focus had been on making everything work and staying on schedule. That meant taking shortcuts here and there. It was one of the reasons Mark lacked complete faith in the electrical isolation between cage sections.

  Although they’d thought it unlikely the military would actually remotely detonate the bombs, given the potential consequences, two weeks ago Heather had decided to have
him disable the remote circuit, but leave the manual timer in place. The tricky part of creating the new circuit had been blocking remote detonation signals from reaching the bombs, while providing positive circuit test feedback to prevent anyone from detecting his splice.

  As he reached the top rung of the ladder and stepped out onto the skywalk, he reached up and touched the concrete cavern ceiling, an old habit whenever he came up here. Not many people on the project had touched both ceiling and floor, and even though he was about to turn the whole thing into radioactive slag, he couldn’t suppress the surge of pride in what he’d helped accomplish here.

  Reaching the Cage, he pulled out his hot-circuit detector, checked around the entrance, and stepped inside. As his rubber-soled boots touched the steel grating, he felt Heather slide into his mind. She didn’t try to communicate, but he felt her invade his senses, doing something he’d never experienced before. Heather wasn’t sharing her visions, but manipulating the color of everything he saw. The effect was breathtaking. Greens and blues were good. The farther things got into the red end of the spectrum the greater the danger they presented.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t seeing a lot of greens and blues.

  Mark didn’t know how long Heather could keep this up. He couldn’t even imagine how deep she must have gone to make this happen, but it had to mean she’d totally abandoned trying to control the blood flow to her wounds. Mark just hoped his pressure bandages were good enough.

  Moving as quickly as he dared along the narrow passage, Mark allowed his neuromuscular system to work its magic, sliding his body past dangerous wires, cables, and metal supports without accidentally touching any of them. He remembered how cool he’d once felt traversing the packed Los Alamos High hallway without brushing up against any of his classmates. That had been effortless; this was damned hard.

  Reaching a point where a crawl space spilled off to his right, Mark opened one of the pre-positioned tool kits, extracted the tools he needed, slid them into his belt, and entered.

  Damn. It looked like a red-and-yellow laser light show. For fifteen meters he worked harder than he’d ever worked in his life, contorting his body over, under, and around hot protrusions.

  When Mark reached the panel that hid the nuclear timer device, he was relieved to find it a cool turquoise color. Unscrewing the panel from its supports, careful to avoid tipping the anti-tamper mercury switch, he set it aside. Then he inserted a tiny screwdriver, setting the timer for twenty minutes. Setting the tools on the floor, Mark didn’t bother to replace the cover panel.

  Unable to turn around within the crawlway, he prepared himself for the reverse passage. Then Heather’s mind link went out.

  Heather? You out there?

  No response.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  Taking a deep, steadying breath, Mark forced his heart rate down to forty-six beats per minute. Time to find out just how perfect his memory really was.

  Jack flew over the top of the building that provided access to the ATLAS cavern, searching for the best place to put the chopper down. But he had no intention of landing until he got a call from Mark’s, Heather’s, or Jennifer’s QT phone. It struck him that the quantum twin acronym was no longer adequate. Each of these devices had at its core one of five quantum-entangled particles, making each one operate as if it were part of a five-way conference call.

  Of course they had to be turned on to work. He’d had no signal from Mark, Heather, or Jennifer yet and they were already five minutes behind schedule. As he hovered over the parking lot, he spotted people streaming out of the building, some climbing into vehicles, some lying on the ground as others sought to apply first aid. Some members of the crowd waved up at him, signaling for him to land.

  Then Jack spotted Mark running toward an open space between buildings, Heather’s limp body in his arms. He brought the chopper in for a hot LZ pickup, the skids never touching the ground as Mark lifted Heather inside and then swung up. Gaining speed and altitude, Jack banked away toward Lake Geneva.

  Mark slammed the door shut, stretched Heather out, grabbed the medic bag, and began prepping a plasma IV.

  “Jennifer?”

  Mark’s voice caught in his throat. “She didn’t make it.”

  Jack reached back to place a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  Mark nodded. “We’re going to need some distance.”

  “How long?”

  “Twelve minutes, eighteen seconds.”

  “OK. Got one more pickup on our way out.”

  Swabbing Heather’s forearm with an alcohol swab, Mark slid the needle into her vein. “Good, maybe Janet can help me get the bleeding stopped.”

  Jack glanced back at Heather’s bloody body, her pale face, and the purplish tint of her lips, then turned to face front, extracting every bit of speed the chopper could manage. He wanted to say he’d seen worse, that he’d been worse, something to assuage Mark’s rising panic.

  But no words would help Mark, so he kept his thoughts to himself.

  Shut up and fly, Jack. Just shut up and fly.

  After Donald Stephenson had pulled himself out of the pile of rubble that was all that remained of his primary control station, a quick glance around the chamber had brought home the extent of the destruction inflicted by the McFarland girl. In addition to destroying the primary control station, she’d used the secondary stasis field to sever the main lines that supplied power to the gateway and to the stasis field generators.

  But she’d overlooked one thing. The stasis field generators had a bank of emergency capacitors modeled on the advanced Rho Ship capacitor design. They couldn’t store enough power to activate the gateway, but they had plenty of capacity to provide twenty minutes of secondary stasis field operation. And twenty minutes was all he needed.

  Dr. Stephenson moved across the cavern floor, passing directly in front of the gateway device, its interior dimly lit by the red glow of emergency lighting and the reflected glitter of electrical lines arcing within the damaged power cage, where severed cables hissed and spat like angry cobras. Mounting the three tiers of steps that led to the secondary stasis field control station, he glanced at the blood pooled in and around the chair bolted to the steel grating. He dipped his fingers into it, raising them to his nose. Dr. Stephenson wasn’t sure that it was enough to prove fatal to the McFarland girl, but it brightened his day.

  Ignoring the blood, Dr. Stephenson seated himself in front of the terminal. The workstation was still powered on, drawing on its uninterruptable power supply’s fifteen-minute backup battery. The battery indicator showed just over half of that charge remaining. Pulling up the emergency override panel, he switched power sources from primary to the emergency capacitor backup. As he tapped this new source, the battery warning indicator disappeared.

  Dr. Stephenson’s fingers danced across the keyboard, entering the commands that would bring the secondary stasis field generator back online. While he wasn’t as quick as Raul’s neural net, he was far from slow. An invisible bubble expanded across the cavern until it encompassed the area around his workstation, the stasis field generators, the gateway device, and, finally, the damaged portion of the power cage.

  With that protective barrier in place there would be no further outside interference. Manipulating individual stasis field tendrils, he began repairing damaged power cables, making use of the network of cameras and instrumentation available to him. And without his having to worry about killing the power in the hot lines, his repairs proceeded far faster than any team of electrical engineers could have made them.

  His first priority was to restore power from the matter ingester. That would allow him to dump a full charge back into the backup capacitors, as well as providing the power he needed to reopen the Kasari gateway.

  Suddenly the outside of the stasis bubble went white. Despite the nearly perfect shielding, Dr. Stephenson felt his retinas burn out, momentarily blinding him before the nanites in his bloodstream could repai
r the damage. Only one thing could account for that flash, a nuclear detonation. And while the stasis field had protected him from the initial radiation and blast effects, all hope of restoring power had just evaporated, along with the unprotected parts of the ATLAS cavern and all the surrounding facilities.

  Without being able to see it, Dr. Stephenson knew that only the stasis field kept him safe from the intense radiation and the super-hurricane force shock wave that hurled debris outward from the blast. In a few minutes those same winds would rush back to fill the void they had left behind. And although the emergency capacitor power would probably last long enough to protect him from that, no amount of nanites could save him from the hell that awaited when the stasis field began to die.

  As his vision slowly returned, Dr. Stephenson rose to his feet to stare at the surreal scene. Like a child’s snow globe, a dome of protection surrounded the undamaged section of the cavern while a roiling inferno altered the surrounding landscape. The ATLAS cavern was gone, the walls vaporized for hundreds of meters in all directions, the rock beyond that reshaped into a bowl of glowing molten glass.

  With the scope of his failure burning his brain like a hot tong shoved up his nose, Dr. Stephenson turned in a full circle. In a handful of minutes, the secondary stasis field would slowly begin to fail, bathing him in a radioactive dose equivalent to that of a bad sunburn, painful but nothing his nanites couldn’t repair. Then, in a decaying exponential, the radiation would keep rising, and, as when an egg was boiled in a microwave, there would come a point when fluids burst through the skin as his juices boiled away.

  How long would it take him to die?

  Not liking the result of his mental calculations, Dr. Donald Stephenson turned back to the secondary stasis field control station. For two and a half seconds, his finger hovered over the KILL POWER button. Then, as his finger descended, the protective stasis field winked out.