Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(8)

She still missed her parents, and worried about them constantly. Only fear that contact would place them in danger had prevented communication, that and the fact that Jack had strictly forbidden it. But Heather’s visions had taken on a darker tone of late, bringing her to the brink of a decision that could knock Mark, Jen, and herself from this perch they had worked so hard to attain. Had it been any other topic, she would have consulted Jack and Janet. But not this. It was too important, too personal. Mark and Jennifer were the only ones she would divulge her fears to. But not yet. Not while hope remained.

“Helloooo. Anyone home in there?” Mark nudged her.

“What? Oh, sorry. Lost in thought.”

“Let’s fire it up.”

Jennifer opened the laptop, took a deep breath, and pressed the power button. The Windows logo replaced the black-and-white BIOS screen. From her position behind and to the right of Jennifer, Heather found the 7,204 rpm drive noise disconcerting; still, six hundredths of a percent’s variance from the drive spec was well within tolerance: nothing to worry about. Though Heather succeeded in banishing the small worry from her thoughts, her mind replaced it with another. Would the USB oscillating circuit deliver the required performance? It would if the printed circuit thin film resistors performed within tolerance. Christ. Chinese components.

“So far so good,” Jen said. “Now let’s see if our super Wi-Fi dongle works.”

Mark cracked his knuckles. “After all that effort, it better.”

“It will.” Heather hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. A probability of 73.65847 percent was far from a certainty.

Jen began rattling off the steps from her mental checklist.

“Entering coordinate. Identifying available networks. Selecting network. Sniffing packets...verified. Inserting TCP packets...verifying responses.” Heather found herself grinning even as Jennifer thrust her hands into the air. “Yes!”

Smacking Mark’s hand in a quick series of high fives, Heather finally released the breath she’d been holding.

Mark leaned down for a closer look at the display. “You know what this means? Our bag of tricks just got a hell of a lot lighter.”

“Plug ’n play.”

Mark placed his hand on Jen’s left shoulder. “It’s dinnertime. Let’s shut it down. We’ve got a long night ahead.”

The vision tugged at the mind curtain Heather closed to block it. Mark had no idea how right he was.





“Are you ready for this?” Jack’s voice held an edge nobody without the neural augmentations Heather, Mark, and Jen enjoyed could have detected.

“Why shouldn’t we be?” Mark replied. “We’ve been linking with the Bandolier Ship headsets every week.”

“True, but up until now you’ve only browsed the ship’s unprotected data banks. Today, I’m going to ask more of you.”

“Such as?”

Jack turned away to stare out the window that filled most of the living room’s western wall. For perhaps a minute he remained perfectly still, his lithe form silhouetted against the sunlit hills that rolled away from the ranch house to the horizon. When he turned once more to face them, his face formed an unreadable mask.

“Fair enough. It’s time Janet and I made you aware of our concerns.” He pointed toward the comfortable chairs and couches arranged around the low coffee table.

Heather sat down, as did Mark and Jen. For some time now she’d been expecting this talk. She’d seen it coming in her visions, different versions, but always the same topic. Suspicious thoughts hovered around Jack and Janet like ghostly halos whenever they mentioned the Bandolier Ship or the four alien headsets.

As if on cue, Janet entered from the kitchen and paused to set little Robby in the baby rocker, winding the handle several times and setting it in motion before sliding onto the love seat. Jack settled in beside her.

Heather glanced at the baby. Robby already bore a striking resemblance to his father, especially in the eyes. But there was something else about the child that both fascinated and unnerved her. For one thing, the little boy never cried. Whenever Heather looked into those eyes, the feeling he was studying her rose within, as though she were a zoo animal on the far side of safety glass. Heather knew it was ridiculous to think this way about a three-month-old, but as she looked into those eyes, she couldn’t shake the feeling.

Jack’s voice brought her out of her reverie. “Throughout your training here, we’ve made it clear that everything we have you do is voluntary. And although you’ve done everything Janet and I have asked of you, you can’t have helped noticing a certain amount of distrust on our part. It’s time for you to know just how strong that distrust is.”

Having Jack say aloud what she’d long suspected slapped Heather in the face as if he’d struck her with his open hand. From the silence that hung in the air, she knew Mark and Jennifer felt the shock just as strongly. For several long moments Jack let it hang there, allowing his words to achieve their full emotional impact.

“Don’t get me wrong. You’re the finest group of young people I’ve ever known. What Janet and I don’t trust is the agenda of the starship that altered you.”

“Wait just a second!” Jen burst out. “The Rho Ship’s the bad one.”

“Damn right,” Mark agreed. “And it’s not like the starship chose us. It was just pure dumb luck that we stumbled onto it and tried on the headsets.”