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

He tapped his amp and internalized the stream patterns, silently counting off code inside the device itself. His mind’s eye showed him the evolving stack, which was searching for the closest data window. He grew tense with each passing second and felt the jubriska clouding his vision. Twice, he backtracked, as if clearing the combination on a padlock.

Snatch.

He saw the reservations and private guest profiles drop into his stack, a stunning breech of Chancellor security.

“We’re good?” The chef asked. When Michael nodded, she said, “Me first. Wait fifteen seconds, turn right on your way out. Do not go back through the kitchen. Understood?”

“Yeah. We’re cool.”

He followed instructions and ducked out to a private corridor.

Michael reached for his flask and double-blinked, triggering his amp’s internal comm nodes.

“Tell me you’re seeing this shit,” he whispered.

Inside his mind, Rikard whispered back, like a ghost infiltrating Michael’s admin stack. “We have it. Amazing work, Michael. We’re running down the profiles now. Hang on.”

“What about the bleeder?”

“We’re in him, albeit with limited audio. I don’t think the transference was entire, but good enough for our needs. He doesn’t seem interested in drifting opera. He and his guests are leaving the theater. Guess nothing could top your routine.”

“Yeah, right. I reckon I oughta call it a career. Ain’t fun telling jokes to these assholes anymore.”

Silence. A delay. A long swig. The comfort of jubriska.

Then finally, Rikard’s voice. “We have a problem. Moss is on his way to his reserved landing, but the three women on his guest profiles do not match the ones with him.”

“What? Why would he fake that?”

“Two possibilities. He doesn’t want to leave a trail tying him to these women, so he bank-swept his admin’s data reporter with false identities, intending to pay the entire sum himself. Or …”

His pause made Michael nervous. “Or what?”

“Or one … maybe all three … of these women violated his admin stack. Only a few Chancellors, mostly military, can do that and slide away clean.”

“Can’t be that hard.” Michael rolled his eyes. “James did it to Sam months after he left the solar system.”

“What’s that, you say?”

Michael realized his error at once. He and Sam long ago agreed to keep James’s haunting message under wraps, believing it would sow distrust of them among Chancellors and Solomons alike. They agreed only to share with Patricia Wylehan, who was Sam’s human firewall.

“Never mind,” Michael told Rikard. “I ain’t thinking right. Just tell me what we’re gonna do.”

“One of those women is going to kill Moss. I’ll reposition our other asset. Leander, Matthias, and I are ready to move and …”

Maybe it was the jubriska, or perhaps he was becoming experienced enough to recognize a brilliant con. Either way, Michael’s stomach roiled as he saw a third possibility.

“Fuck. It can’t be them. It’s too lazy, Rikard. Everybody saw them, and he’s not meeting with another Presidium. They can’t do this without committing suicide. Fuck. I should have seen it.”

“Seen what, Michael?”

“The only other one who could’ve changed the data. The goddamn sous chef. Our informant, Rikard. She’s playing both sides.”

“No. Alise has been with the movement for three years. She’s been waiting for a chance to contribute. She’d never …”

“She would if a damn Chancellor came along and offered a pot of gold. You said she’s been in that kitchen for eight years, and she’s number two fiddle. Get my speed, Rikard?”

The comm went silent, but Michael reacted. Every instinct said they walked into a trap.

He grabbed his pulse gun and armed it.

As if on cue, the corridor was no longer private. Shadows appeared from both ends.

He thought of the woman he loved more than life and fired.

5

Vasily Intersystem Transfer Station

E VERY DAY FOR ALMOST TWO YEARS, Sam tortured herself with the unwinnable game of “what-if.” She could have stopped Jamie Sheridan before he became a monster. The history-turning moment bounced through her memory on autoplay. He stood in her lake house bedroom, pointing the pistol he’d stolen off her. He spoke of desperate plans to run away, taking her hostage into the deep woods. He planted the gun in her chest and said, “You crawl out that window, or swear to God, I’ll kill you.” He was inconsolable, raging, reckless. All she had to do was swipe the gun – a lightning-quick move she was trained to handle. Instead, she weakened, gave in to love and mercy. And they ran.

Had she followed instinct, they might have died together in the lake house attack soon thereafter. Or perhaps Jamie would have survived in captivity but been reborn compliant. Either way, a quarter million people would still live. The more she thought of it, the more she hurt. Had she stopped Jamie, Michael would have died from his wounds, alone and forgotten. Sam couldn’t imagine a life without Michael’s love.

“You’re doing it again,” Patricia said, snapping Sam out of her self-inflicted misery. “It’s not your fault. Any of it.”

They sat across from each other at a portside dining table, a spectacular view of the docking quays one level below, extending outward like equidistant spokes into open space. Sam’s dinner sat uneaten, but her second glass of wine neared extinction.

“Thank you for the weekly reminder, Pat, but it doesn’t change the history.” She grabbed a fork and took pokes at the fluffy brown entrée. “What is this supposed to be, again?”

“A house specialty. Braised gen-lamb smothered in a smashed vegetable roux. Tourists lay over just to try this dish.”

She tried a small helping, but nothing tasted good at the moment. Her rage remained unchanged an hour after her interview with the surviving children of the Kilmurry and hearing James’s message. She dropped the fork and stared at the stars.

“I know what you’re going