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

I received, we had infiltrators at the Ukrainian site. Observers were down – on both sides of the fold. On a hopeful note, the Jewel appears to be alive.”

Sammie heard the doubt. “But …?”

“We’re not sure which faction controls her. I’ve been searching security filters for coded streams, but nothing in four hours. I have suspicions about who is funding the enemy, but no proof.”

“So that Jewel is a girl?” Ophelia nodded. “What about the other sites? Aren’t these rebirths happening almost simultaneously?”

“Yes, but even with our best resources, confirmation from the colonies may take several standard days.”

Sammie sorted through the details with clinical reasoning, a technique her mother taught her. She deduced the problem’s scope.

“You have the money to retrieve the Jewels – assuming the Green don’t disrupt your plans – but you lack the funds to transport them all to one location. Or you can cover inter-colony passage, but establishing a permanent settlement is out of reach. Yes, Ophelia?”

She wrapped a hand around Sammie’s shoulder. “You are not the little girl who emerged from the fold. Correct on both counts. Extracting a Jewel off-world will be a delicate operation, in some cases requiring weeks. Purchasing private vessels for Fulcrum travel is exorbitant. The intercolonial fees, customs taxes, blockade inspections, private security … the costs never stop mounting. And then, as you say, the permanent settlement.”

“Where are they all headed?”

Ophelia removed her hand. “One step at a time, Samantha.”

“Understood.” An answer to her question would have been a stunning victory. Still, she uncovered much more two hours into the Collectorate than she expected. No matter the direction their path wound, she decided to keep Ophelia Tomelin close.

Her mind lurched forward through the minutiae and refocused on Jamie’s goal: Find the Jewels and kill them all. End the monsters before they end humanity.

A massive dream. Odds, improbable. A bloody proposition they sealed with a kiss. She was prepared, whatever may come. She could not say the same about Michael.

Sammie looked ahead, where Michael strode alongside Patricia at the spear of the group. She wondered why he covered for her if he so detested her action. How could she make him understand about the consequences of being soft in this world?

She was terrified for Michael and doubted he would survive long enough to experience a single, happy day in the Collectorate.

11

V ALENTIN BOUCHET SAW NEITHER A CHANCELLOR nor a brother staring back at him from inside the ReCon tube. The facial similarities aside, this bony creature struck Valentin as a genetic defective. Perhaps an exobirth malfunction. Sunken eyes, pale lips, spider-like fingers. A chest and torso with no musculature shaping the boy’s relaxed red shirt. He’d seen humans like this before, but usually among permanent settlers onboard Ark Carriers.

Or indigos. Valentin killed many of them – colonial ethnics with idealistic notions of absolute sovereignty. The peacekeepers laid waste to fields of such sorry men and women for centuries. And now this …

Inconvenience.

“Kill him while you have the chance.”

Those words slunk across his tongue but shy of his lips. Valentin did not understand the admiral’s wish to keep James alive despite the boy’s clear and present threat.

For seven years, the naysayers tortured Valentin: Too short to be a peacekeeper, no instinct for the kill, a mind for science not military glory. Seven years Valentin blinded himself to snickers and condescending tones. He earned respect with every kwin-sho victory, every endurance suffocation, every battalion promotion, every indigo body. Not yet fifteen, but already a junior officer with a long list of commendations – save the one blip in conscience he vowed never to repeat. And now this …

Brother? Would the others see this boy as a mirror of Valentin had their parents sent both sons to another universe? Would they see Valentin as a fraud born of a family willing to put itself before the interests of the Chancellory?

Valentin talked himself into unlocking the tube, then he made a plan. Leave the bastard magnetized to the stasis pad. Flex one hand around the neck. Snap it like so many calcified bones. Over.

He’d be demoted, but the witnesses would spread the tale: The brother who refused to allow a stain on his descendency’s good name. The man who eradicated an abomination.

Valentin cast his right hand over the laser-lock and rushed his fingers through the hologram’s security filters until finding the safety release. The gleaming tube dissipated, but so did the green glow of the stasis pad. Valentin cursed when he recognized his mistake.

Before James stepped off the pad, Valentin saw the truth in the older Bouchet’s concentrated eyes: He, too, had murderous plans. Valentin detected the steeled conviction of a boy who planned ahead. A boy who could kill his brother with a touch, take out the other unarmed peacekeepers, and hold the admiral hostage in exchange for free passage. He waited to pounce.

    “I saw what you did,” Valentin said. “Give me the first cause to defend myself, and your friends are dead.”

James stepped off the pad, looked forward and aft, wriggled his arms, flexed his fingers. He firmed his shoulders and raised his chin.

“Don’t worry,” James said. “I’m not gonna kill you now.”

A split second earlier, James consulted with Ignatius Horne. He had to know whether this version of the Jewel might prove itself a fair counselor. They waded in the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, Ignatius’s pants rolled up shin-high.

“Do you recall the countless speakers who visited your school, talking on the subject of bullies?”

“I do,” James said. “I hated them all.”

“Because their message was ineffectual. What strategies did they suggest? Walk away from the threat? Report the vermin to an adult? Never respond in violence?”

“Yeah. And I tried every strategy – and then some.”

“And still, their shadows hung over you,