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

The mercs came from a descendancy of hardliners and belonged to the same affiliation hired to kill Michael and Sam in Rear Admiral Augustus Perrone’s purge. When Michael stood over the body, he felt none of the remorse that tortured him after killing Christian Bidwell. This felt right. Necessary.

“This is what it takes now,” he told Rikard after they fled the scene. “I been half a heartbeat from death so often, reckon it’s my turn to spin the wheel on some of these mo-fos. Get my speed?”

“Even if it means saving the lives of Chancellors who wish you’d never crossed the fold?”

He laughed. “Ain’t nothing more satisfying than having a Chancellor in your debt. That’s the whole purpose of deep-ops, right? Build allies? Hold leverage when the war ends?”

All of which was enough motivation for Michael. Later, when Rikard invited him into a permanent role, Michael didn’t hesitate. Knowing full well the decision meant more bodies on the deck, he threw back a shot of jubriska and said, “I’m in.”

He never told Sam how far he’d gone as a soldier in the Chancellors’ civil war. Maybe when it’s over, he convinced himself.

Now, as he arrived at eye level with the Entilles audience, Michael heard the announcer introduce him as “the man who brings a special proto-African charm to the Collectorate.”

He whispered under his breath, “The fuck?”

Shaking off his frustration, Michael spoke over the smattering of applause and went for the opening every mediocre standup comic delivered on first-Earth TV.

“Hello, Boston Prefecture! How we all doin’ tonight?”

He gave them a second to produce the predictable non-response. “Yeah, yeah. I feel you. It’s Boston, right? Number one in everybody’s hearts for fifteen hundred years, give or take. Am I right, people?” Steady applause. “Fifteen hundred years. Can you imagine?” He pointed to a silver-haired Chancellor near the front. “This fella can. He laid the first stone.”

That was the gut punch he needed. As the audience erupted into howls, Michael dived into his routine. By the end of ten minutes, he successfully compared the Chancellory to the Third Reich and the Admiralty of the Guard to James Bond movie villains. They didn’t understand the analogies, so Michael never knew if they laughed at the punchlines or the way he flailed while delivering them.

“But seriously, there was this guy back in my neck of the universe called Goebbels. Worked for that Hitler asshole I mentioned before. Let me tell you, this Goebbels was a piece of work. You’d love him. He said if you tell a lie often enough and loud enough, it becomes the truth. Now ain’t that the truth, people?”

He slayed, fulfilling the opera singer’s encouraging words.

All the while, Michael’s eyes segmented the audience, looking for his assigned target. He circumnavigated the stage-level tier first, then moved upward with methodical precision. Advance intel said Finnegan Moss always sat near the stage. Michael had studied the face for hours and grew nervous when he didn’t make contact right away. Moss was supposed to be here: Dinner with three women in the Onyx Presidium – none of them his wife – and then private talks with a rep from the Juniper Presidium afterward. That’s when the attack would happen. The intel was rock-solid.

Michael wondered whether someone got to him before Moss reached Entilles, although the possibility seemed slim. Like most powerful Chancellors, Moss carried a phalanx of security – a combination of pay-rolled Solomons and freelance mercenaries. No security apparatus – or weaponry of any form – was allowed inside the theater, creating an oasis from the violence. However, security teams blanketed the external promenade and the corridors linking private landings. The deep-ops team needed a genetic lock on Moss to set up a cordon around him once he left the theater.

They needed Michael.

Nineteen minutes into his twenty-five-minute set, Michael found Moss out of place in the third tier. He wasn’t laughing as hard at the jokes as his female companions.

Now came the hard part. Time for Michael to get close. He had six minutes to plant a bleeder on Finnegan Moss, or that man likely wouldn’t survive the night.

Michael couldn’t guarantee his own survival, either.

3

Unification Guard headquarters

Vasily Intersystem Transit Station

 

S AM AND MICHAEL TALKED ABOUT HAVING children, but the conversations went nowhere. They cheated death enough to understand the folly of long-range plans in an unstable universe. They also weren’t ready to defy the law banning Chancellor-Solomon offspring. They broached the topic only when others pointed out Sam’s genetic loophole: She might bear children free of the Chancellory’s tragic fate because brontinium extract never poisoned her blood.

Michael, who was an only child, admitted he wanted kids someday. Months ago, as they walked the Pacific beach at the Pynn outpost, he reminisced about first Earth.

“When I was little, Pops took us on these trips to Starkville.” He laughed. “My aunts and uncles were pumping out kids like rabbits. It was crazy, but I had some wicked times with my cousins. So, yeah, I wouldn’t mind having a gaggle of mini-Coopers.”

He took Sam in his arms and came in for a long kiss. “Right now, I reckon we need to settle for loving each other. This shit is about to get real again, and there’s gonna be a serious damn body count. I promise, Sam. We come out the other side, I’m gonna marry you. We’ll have a mess of little dumbasses, then we’ll grow old together and start yelling at kids to stay off the grass.”

It was one of Sam’s most beautiful memories. His humor untouched, his tenderness unvarnished, his courage undaunted. All of this as he fought battles forced upon him, bulked up to become a warrior in training, and spent every spare minute playing catch-up on his second-Earth education.

The notion of kids rushed over Sam when she learned the age