The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

The head of the security team, a rock-hard monster of a woman with a scarred, balding head, spoke in a harsh, guttural tone, her voice seeming to echo from deep within.

“Defend as long as we can. We are exposed, and half my team is dead. I warned you about only equipping us for defensive operations. You wanted to play by the rules; the others did not. Now we fight with thump guns against flash pegs and tracers.”

“Not now, Chief. I explained about drawing too much attention through illicit purchases. We discussed …”

The chief ignored her. “The tunnel would have provided refuge, but that option has dissipated.” She looked west. “There. The ridgeline. The five of you can find temporary defense behind that stone facing, assuming the aftershocks do not induce more slides.”

She reviewed her holocube. “I recalled my last four fighters. The enemy is forming a wide net, up to two hundred meters in either direction. They have our flanks. Without extraction, they’ll take us out in ten, maybe twelve minutes.” She looked away from the battlefield projection. “We have a level position here, and the enemy is scaling a forty percent incline. The five of us will establish defensive positions in these trenches. They will provide us with an opportunity to keep the enemy off-balance.”

She examined the five civilians, including the three teens in t-shirts and jeans. “Appears only the children have weapons. The two of you,” she told Ophelia and Brey, “may need them as your last line of defense. Saved by nine-year-olds. I suggest you run now.”

“Nine?” Michael chimed in. “Seriously. I could show you something to make your head spin …”

“Not now, Coop,” Jamie said. “She’s right. We need to move.”

As they dashed toward the stone outcropping, Michael – wincing with each step on his turned ankle, asked Jamie, “That was a she? No, seriously. A she?”

Bestriding them, Ophelia turned to the three new arrivals.

“Appears they have conscripted you. Mr. Cooper, I hope your aim is as good as your false bravado.” And then to Jamie: “Time for the Jewel to offer another demonstration, perhaps.”

“What?” Brey interrupted. “These children do not understand how to go up against these mercs. And their guns look like pre-history models. They’ll have no effect against … ”

“Relax, Brey. We both know at least one of them can hold his own. The question is, for how long? And you, Miss Pynn?”

“I’m not a child, and I was trained by the best. I was meant to be a peacekeeper.” As they ducked behind the stones and took position, Sammie added, “I can kill.” She eyed Brey. “Can you?”

“Good,” Ophelia said, offering a wry smile. “You seem to be making a nice comeback. James, your thoughts?”

Jamie sat on one knee, and he sensed the agony of mercenaries falling to thump blasts and something deadlier: exploding projectiles no bigger than bullets. Whatever defenses the recovery crew established, they could not hold out for long. He knew little of military strategy, but he remembered his study of World War I. Armies held their ground in the trenches, but as soon as they exposed themselves, the carnage began. The three mercenaries up close were statuesque, bulging super soldiers. But they were human, and therefore fragile.

His blood roiled. Jamie heard their steps as they chased up the hillside, their hearts beating with great anticipation, while the defeated languished on this new battlefield, their brains electrified, paralyzed, mangled. The Jewel reached out to them with curious tendrils, analyzing each to determine who was most likely to make a fatal error. As the answers laid out before his mind’s eye, Jamie understood what was happening.

I didn’t kill him, Jamie thought of the man in the cavern. I consumed him. The Jewel consumed him. That’s what she meant.

As if on cue, Lydia’s final taunts roared back at him. He remembered being tossed in the maelstrom, seconds after Angela Bidwell killed him, but within grasp of new life. “You have crossed the line beyond anything that is sacred,” Lydia told him. “You will change us both. If you return to that body, you will damn yourself to a pain beyond imagining. You do not understand what you will become. The dark will drown them.”

Jamie saw the total picture, chiefly the part he tried so hard to deny every time he questioned his decision to save Sammie and Michael. I am the dark, he realized. I’m that place they go when they die. The more I kill them, the more I hear them.

“Their pain,” he whispered.

“James?” Ophelia snapped. “I asked for your thoughts?”

Patience. Strategy. You can do this.

    “You don’t have enough fighters to stop them.” He held up the thump gun and the hand that reduced a man to ash.

Sammie jumped in. “J, what are you doing?”

He ignored her and pulled Ophelia close. “What you said before? That you could make sure they start lives for themselves in the Collectorate. Did you mean it, Ophelia?”

“Of course, James.”

Michael stammered. “Dude. No way.”

“Yes, way. Coop, you’re not ready for this, and I didn’t bring you here to see you die in the first thirty minutes. Sammie, you’re putting on a front. You need to heal. You can barely aim straight.”

“Jamie, no,” she said. “Those men are professionals. They’ll give us time until rescue comes.”

“Look, both of you. I did this yesterday in the woods. I let the Jewel guide me, and I made it. But now I am the Jewel. I promise, I’m not gonna die today. I got too much to do, and you gotta do what I say. This will work.” He changed to Ophelia. “And if I’m full of shit, you make sure you keep your promise.”

“I’ll see you again,” he told his best friends. “I swear to