The Altreian Enigma (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 2) Read online

  “No, but you found planets that had once hosted intelligent life that are now lifeless,” said Jack. “It’s possible that the ship is still denying you and Mark access to parts of its database.”

  “That’s . . . possible,” said Heather.

  “Jack,” said Janet, no longer able to restrain herself, “Khal Teth’s trying to manipulate you through your dreams, showing you what he wants you to see in order to get you to fulfill your bargain.”

  Jack shook his head. “I would sense if he was lying to me.”

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “I am.”

  Janet leaned back in her chair, feeling her temples throb.

  “Wouldn’t Eos have told Robby if the Altreians had sent another starship to Earth?” Mark asked.

  The mention of the Altreian AI that had fled from the Second Ship’s computer into Robby’s mind didn’t improve Janet’s mood.

  “Eos shares Robby’s mind,” Heather said, “but it no longer has access to the Altreian starship’s database.”

  “Unless Robby puts on his Altreian headset and performs a specific query,” said Mark.

  Heather brightened at the suggestion. “That could work.”

  A sudden glimmer of hope caused Janet to lean forward. “And if Eos doesn’t find anything to confirm your dream, that would mean—”

  “Nothing,” Jack said, “except that the information about the Altreian research vessel isn’t stored in the Second Ship’s database.”

  Janet placed her hand atop his and squeezed hard.

  “Before we start down this path, I want you to explain to our son exactly what Khal Teth wants from you,” Janet said, swallowing hard, “and why he’ll never see his dad again if you go through with it.”

  Jack’s brown eyes met hers, and for a moment she thought she saw the familiar red glint within his pupils. And as he gently returned her squeeze, the subtle gesture brought moisture to her eyes that she blinked away.

  Dear God, don’t you dare take him away from me.

  CHAPTER 2

  Wearing a dark-gray Italian suit, Alexandr Prokorov walked through the broad tunnel, ignoring the incessant dripping of condensation from the concrete ceiling, just as he ignored the smell of mildew and the chill in the dank corridor. Beside him strode Dr. Lana Fitzpatrick, the U.S. undersecretary for science and energy. This being her first trip to the construction site of the wormhole gate that the United Federation of Nation States had dubbed the Friendship Gate, her deep discomfort at the subterranean environment showed in her tight body language. She jerked involuntarily at the sound of each drip, twitching at the echo of their footsteps as they walked along the passage.

  Ahead, the tunnel suddenly widened into a yawning space that would have dwarfed the Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS cavern. Prokorov heard Lana gasp at the sight. He had to admit that it still sent a shiver of excitement up his spine each time he entered the chamber. Inside, thousands of workers, scientists, and engineers scurried about as their supervisors pressed them to get the project back on schedule.

  Eight years ago, the building of the Stephenson Gateway had broken all records for such complex construction. But Dr. Stephenson had suffered from a series of constraints that this project didn’t have. First of all, the size of the ATLAS cavern, enormous as it was, hadn’t allowed for the matter disrupter to be placed adjacent to the wormhole gate that it powered. That had meant that extensive superconductive cabling had to be routed inside from an external power source, slowing down the construction.

  But this wasn’t the only advantage that the current construction project had over the original Stephenson Gateway project. Technological advances in materials and computing allowed for extensive miniaturization and optimization techniques that reduced the overall size of the project.

  Prokorov continued his advance toward the inverted-horseshoe-shaped gate within which the wormhole would be created. The program’s top scientist, Dr. John Guo, stood within its arch. At five feet four inches tall, the dark-haired Chinese man exuded an energy that made him seem larger than those gathered around him, and his pointed gestures indicated that he was far from satisfied with their efforts.

  As Prokorov and Dr. Fitzpatrick approached, Dr. Guo dismissed those with whom he had been remonstrating and turned to meet the new arrivals.

  “Aaah, Minister Prokorov,” he said, his English free of any identifiable accent. “I was informed of your arrival. How was your journey from The Hague?”

  “Uneventful,” Prokorov said before turning toward his companion. “This is Dr. Lana Fitzpatrick, the U.S. undersecretary of science and energy.”

  Dr. Guo raised an eyebrow as he shifted his gaze toward the blond American scientist. Something in his fleeting expression gave Prokorov the sense that these two had more than a passing familiarity. He would check into his hunch at a later date.

  “It’s good to see you again, John,” Dr. Fitzpatrick said, extending her hand.

  Dr. Guo took it and returned the smile, although his face held none of the warmth hers offered. “Always a pleasure.”

  “I wasn’t aware the two of you knew each other,” Prokorov said.

  Dr. Fitzpatrick’s blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “We worked together for a time at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But that was a long time ago.”

  As, clearly, neither scientist wanted to offer up more than fleeting glimpses into their past relationship, Prokorov shifted topics to the one he was interested in.

  “So, walk me through the progress your team has made in recovering from this latest incident.”

  Dr. Guo’s already-dour expression turned grimmer. “I already sent you my update.”

  “I read it. That’s why I’ve come in person . . .to ensure that you have a true sense of urgency.”

  The scientist opened his mouth and started to say something, but then, looking directly into Prokorov’s eyes, seemed to think better of it.

  “Fine. You can see for yourself.”

  Dr. Guo turned and walked toward the towering piece of machinery that Prokorov recognized as the matter disrupter. It looked somewhat like a gigantic generator that had been stood on its end and wrapped with a lattice of steel scaffolding, seventy yards high. And along the multiple levels of scaffolding, scores of workers moved.

  Dr. Guo didn’t wait for Prokorov and Dr. Fitzpatrick to catch up with him, proceeding directly to a metal doorway that led into the matter disrupter’s interior. He opened the door and stepped through. Prokorov and Dr. Fitzpatrick followed him across the threshold.

  The walkway that extended along the outer wall was just wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Oddly shaped tubes and instruments clung to the sides of curved columns that rose up into the dimly lit upper reaches. More passages branched off into the middle of the clustered equipment. Workers were forced to crawl in order to traverse some of the tunnels.

  The design had a distinctly alien feel. In these depths, far below the rolling countryside, the construction progressed on an extremely aggressive schedule without all the overly restrictive safety protocols normally required of such a project. But this latest accident had brought that progress to a screeching halt.

  For another three minutes, Dr. Guo led them through a maze of increasingly cramped walkways before entering an elevator cage and turning to face his guests, his arms spread in mock welcome. Prokorov stepped in beside the chief scientist, but Dr. Fitzpatrick stopped outside the metal cage, her head tilted back to stare at the cabling that guided the elevator into the heights.

  When she looked down, Prokorov saw that the color had drained from her face.

  “Is something wrong?” Dr. Guo asked.

  Dr. Fitzpatrick cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. I have a thing about heights.”

  “Get in or stay behind,” Prokorov said.

  She swallowed hard, straightened, and stepped inside. The cage door closed behind Dr. Fitzpatrick with a clank that sounded like a jail door closing. Proko
rov noted the white knuckles on her hand that grasped one of the vertical bars making up the cage’s walls.

  Dr. Guo pressed a button, and the cage surged upward with an acceleration that made Prokorov’s stomach lurch. Beside him, Dr. Fitzpatrick’s gasp showed that she regretted her decision to accompany them.

  The journey didn’t take long. When the cage rattled to a stop, Prokorov guessed that they had risen roughly ten floors, a guess that a downward glance through the steel grating confirmed. Ignoring the wobbling American scientist, he followed Dr. Guo along one of the interconnecting walkways, their shoes clanking on the steel grating and echoing through the conduits that draped the machinery.

  An eerie world of cryonic equipment kept the electrical conduits at a temperature cold enough to maintain superconductivity, thus allowing for the transport of tremendous power from the matter disrupter to the wormhole gateway and its stasis field generator. And since the matter disrupter could transform energy into any type of particle, in this case directly into electron-positron pairs, its efficiency was almost 100 percent.

  Dr. Guo came to an abrupt halt at a point where the passage gave way to a room-sized open space. The monitors, computers, and controls that had recently lined the room’s interior had been reduced to burnt-out scrap. What remained was being piled onto a hand trolley by a dozen technicians who worked to clear debris and repair the damage. From the scowls Prokorov saw on their faces, his surprise inspection wasn’t particularly welcome.

  Prokorov felt his jaw tighten. “What is this?”

  “This,” said Dr. Guo, “is what you were too impatient to let me brief you on from the relative safety of the main chamber. Two days ago, the matter disrupter suffered a minor instability ten yards on the other side of that shielding. Since then my people have been working around the clock to fix the problem.”

  “You mean there was a radioactive leak?” Dr. Fitzpatrick gasped, unconsciously pushing back a strand of her blond hair.

  “No, but the matter disrupter proved to be far more efficient than we were prepared for. This damage was caused by a massive electrical power surge.” Dr. Guo turned his gaze back on Prokorov. “It’s exactly why I warned you against the dangerous pace at which you’ve been pushing us.”

  Prokorov ignored the jab. “Describe to me in the simplest terms possible the precise nature of the problem and how you intend to fix it.”

  “The matter disrupter relies on a wave-packet model of matter. All matter is composed of a harmonic chord of frequencies that combine together to form a stable packet. You can think of it as a three-dimensional standing wave that compresses the underlying fabric of our universe into a tight little vibrating bundle. Some of these wave packets are not completely harmonic and try to dispel the destabilizing frequencies, giving them off as radiation as the packet attempts to achieve a harmonious chord.

  “The matter disrupter takes advantage of this phenomenon by adding a destabilizing set of frequencies to the particles at which it is targeted. The ultimate disruption would be to supply a set of frequencies that completely cancels out the particle’s wave packet—an anti-packet. But we don’t have to supply a complete anti-packet. The proper subset of destabilizing frequencies will make the particle tear itself apart.”

  Dr. Guo paused to meet Prokorov’s gaze.

  “You’re familiar with the gateway design Dr. Stephenson built in Meyrin, Switzerland. What we are building here is a very different beast, one that incorporates a number of measures intended to prevent any type of external hacking attacks. Chief among these is the requirement that all control programs be physically implemented via circuitry instead of software. And each of those preprogrammed operational modes must be manually switched on and off.

  “Normally I would have created a much smaller experimental prototype so that we could work out the design problems that were bound to happen. Since I wasn’t allowed to do that, we are now encountering those problems at full scale.”

  Prokorov gritted his teeth. If he had anyone else with this man’s knowledge of the project, he would have replaced Dr. Guo long ago.

  “Don’t give me excuses. Just stick to the facts.”

  “The facts are what you see before you. The disrupting wave packet was too perfect and triggered a matter-antimatter reaction that produced the excess energy that killed seven of my top people and did the damage you see before you. Even working around the clock, it will take us six weeks to complete the repairs.”

  “I want this repair work completed within three weeks.”

  “What you want is irrelevant. The repairs will be completed as soon as possible and not before.”

  “Suppose I send some of our top scientists and engineers to help?”

  Dr. Guo shrugged. “My people are already familiar with this project. Newcomers would need to be trained on our equipment, and that would just slow us down.”

  Prokorov turned to look at Dr. Fitzpatrick. “Your thoughts?”

  She paused to consider. “I can put together a top-notch group from Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and give them a week or so to study the design, construction, and operation of this reactor. Then, when they get here, they won’t be coming in cold.”

  Seeing that Dr. Guo was about to object, Prokorov held up a hand. “Good. Dr. Guo, see that Dr. Fitzpatrick gets all of the pertinent materials. Any questions?”

  Prokorov watched as the chief scientist’s gaze swung from Dr. Fitzpatrick back to him, the man’s expression changing from anger to a neutral stare. Clearly he hadn’t expected to be undercut by her, and he didn’t like it.

  “No.”

  Prokorov paused, his determination tightening his facial muscles. “Dr. Guo, do not disappoint me again. Second contact will not be kept waiting.”

  For the first time, he saw fear in the scientist’s eyes. As Prokorov turned to walk away, he savored the image.

  CHAPTER 3

  Robby knew one thing for sure: this had just ruined what should have been a snowy and fun-filled August day in New Zealand. His dad had just sprung something on him that threatened to destroy what little remained of his childhood. After the events that had brought him to this secret complex where the Smythes were preparing for the end of the world, all he really had left of it was his relationship with his mom and dad. Now, if he couldn’t prove his dad wrong about the Incan Sun Staff and the alien vessel, Robby could lose him forever.

  As horrible as that was, the thought of what such a loss would do to his mom was even worse. She didn’t speak a word when Jack sat him down at the kitchen table and spilled his story, but Robby had seen the dread in her eyes.

  The revelation that Jack believed there was an alien presence in his head hadn’t shocked Robby. The boy shared his own mind with an alien artificial intelligence named Eos, an entity who had been his imaginary friend since he was a baby. Over the years, Eos had developed a relationship with Robby that transcended just an AI presence in his head. She initially referred to herself as the Other, but as he had grown older, Robby hadn’t liked that. So he had renamed her Eos, after the Greek goddess of the dawn. Together, they represented the dawning of a new age. Because of that relationship, it was no stretch of the imagination to believe this part of his dad’s story. But Robby wouldn’t allow himself to believe the rest.

  Thus, Robby now sat in one of the four command-center chairs in a room modeled after the bridge of the Altreian starship that the Smythes had discovered.

  On either side of him sat Mark and Heather while Jack and Janet stood watch. Robby still felt odd over beginning to think of his mom and dad as Jack and Janet. But since their escape from Peru, they had finally accepted him as a full-fledged member of the team that was fighting to save Earth from a renewed Kasari invasion. As such, he felt it only right that he refer to them as he would any other team member, even if it drove Janet crazy.

  Robby retrieved the U-shaped alien headband from a compartment in his couch’s right armrest, paused to stare down at
the iridescent three-quarter loop with the small beads at each end, inhaled deeply, then slid the headband into place. As the twin beads settled over his temples, he heard Eos whisper in his mind.

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “I’m ready,” Robby responded.

  “No matter what I might discover?”

  Robby felt himself swallow, but pulled forth the required answer. “No matter what.”

  The familiar mental connection with the Second Ship’s computer washed over him along with that strange thrill at the incredible knowledge made available to his augmented mind. He remembered initially wondering why these four headsets had been left on the Altreian starship when its crew members were sucked into space after the Rho Ship’s weapon punched a hole through the hull. In fact, the Altreian crew members had been able to use their psychic abilities to link their minds to the starship’s computer, and only needed to wear the headsets in order to extend the range of their mental connection whenever they left the vessel.

  Eos flowed into the Altreian computer system, resuming her original function as the AI that controlled the starship’s computer, pulling Robby’s mind along with her.

  Although Mark and Heather could also connect to the neural net, only Eos had complete access to the database she had been created to manipulate.

  Robby felt Mark’s and Heather’s minds within the Second Ship’s computer, but then he shifted his attention back to Eos and let the AI sweep him away into the seemingly infinite trove of data.

  Ignoring all that was irrelevant to his current search, Robby found himself drawn into a vision that acquired such reality that it took his breath away. He felt as if he were transported onto a magical holodeck, where all he had to do was think about something and it would appear before him, amazingly detailed in every way—the texture, the smell, the sound his feet made on the surface across which they moved. If he had centered his thoughts on the Quechua village where he’d spent the first few years of his life, the Second Ship would pluck it from his perfect memory and make the stilted huts real.