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

Michael stopped his glass shy of his lips. The answer should have been easy, but the words arrived in a jumbled mess.

“Reckon it’s complicated. Solomons deserve better, and I’m one of them. Anything I can do to make a difference …”

Moss wagged a finger. “No, no. You see, the problem is you are not actually one of them. Not in the truest sense. All Solomons on Earth are born to the tri-crest. Except you. My understanding is you could have returned through the Interdimensional Fold. Still can. Yet you remain – perhaps for love, yes – but you fight harder and sacrifice more than ninety-nine percent of gene-born Solomons. Again I ask: Why?”

This time, the words flowed without hesitation or calculation.

“Because I’m a man, and I should never be held second to anyone. This is my home, Finnegan. I live here. I die here. I’m worth more than the Chancellory says. All us Solomons are. I couldn’t change anything on first Earth if I tried. But here, this is a fight we can win. Chancellors need us, and we need them.”

Moss never took his eyes off Michael. “And this first Earth, as you call it? Were you second class there as well?”

“The law said I wasn’t, but the truth said something else.”

“I see. Answer me this. If you could lay down your life, knowing it would bring about universal equity, end the civil war, and protect Samantha, would you do it?”

Though late at night, his blood drenched in liquor and poltash, the weight of three killings upon him, Michael saw clearly.

“You wouldn’t have to ask twice, dude.”

Moss stared out toward the city. “You are the man I thought you were. I saw it in your eyes when you walked into the observatory. When I was nineteen, like you, I was mindlessly slaughtering indigos. I felt deep down this was the wrong fight, always had been. But I wasn’t willing to die for a new reality. To reset our future, end all this madness, we must find a few like-minded Chancellors. Right off hand, no one comes to mind.”

“Ain’t that the damn truth.” He set his second empty glass on a side table. “But I’ll bet you something, Finnegan. We stay out here all night, drinking and smoking and talking, I’ll bring you around to my way of thinking. Come sunrise, you’ll be a new man.”

“I’ll be asleep in my chair, as will you. But point taken.”

Michael steeled himself for what came next.

“So, what is it, Finnegan? What’s the biggest obstacle we got to jump over to make this right?”

“Unfortunately, it is the most change-resistant wall any society must face. It’s the reason Solomons serve Chancellors; the reason peacekeepers kill indigos; the reason the Chancellory ignores truth in the face of its own demise.” He sighed. “Tradition.”

“Makes sense. You lot been running the whole show for three thousand years. I reckon that throne ain’t big enough for partners.”

“No, it’s not. And now these terrorists are complicating the picture. I guarantee the Chancellors who want me dead are willing to sacrifice our identity to become a race of hybrids and immortals – so long as we don’t give up the throne. They want me gone because I am subsidizing private ventures to hunt down these monsters. The Guard can’t protect us, and we cannot allow these abominations to replace us. Michael, I know your connection to James Bouchet, and how you disavowed him long ago. But I have to wonder. If my private teams were to find him and kill him, how would you feel?”

Michael looked to the stars, remembering the vow he made long ago on a Pacific beach. His mind was clear.

“I’d ask to see his head. Then I’d thank you for saving me a trip.”

He conjured an image of that special moment, but Michael knew ridding the Collectorate of his former No. 1 would not be so easy.

He realized just how difficult moments later when David Ellstrom, Moss’s Chief of Staff, interrupted them.

“Sir,” he told Moss. “We received an encoded message to private stacks.” Ellstrom’s eyes twitched in Michael’s direction. “It’s Vasily Station. We have a problem.”

9

The Spearhead

3.6 Astronomical Units from Vasily Station

Three minutes before attack

V ALENTIN BOUCHET HATED THIS PART, even after surviving forty times – and despite his brother’s assurance of a full-proof design. A guarantee of success, he told James, did not lessen the agony of one’s insides being displaced. But the effect only lasts for three milliseconds, James argued. There is no long-term damage.

“You’re immortal,” the older brother reminded Valentin. “You’ll always be in pain, and it will never make a difference.”

Valentin winced every time he heard his brother’s dismissive tone. The pain caused by entering the Slope’s aperture field lingered for hours, sometimes days. A dull ache, as if suffering a chronic but undiagnosed muscular disorder. Yet Valentin resisted the urge to complain. He was a soldier. More to the point: Admiral of his brother’s seven-ship fleet and hero to the five hundred immortals liberated from the colonies.

Not that complaining would do any good. The bond which carried the brothers through the wild opening days of their insurrection faded after James implemented a regimented chain of command. Valentin understood the need for a hierarchy as they gained assets and allies, but he missed those free-flowing early days when they wrote their game plan on the fly.

Valentin studied an array of holoscreen analytics from his command station on the forward deck of Spearhead, a retrofitted cargo ship stolen six months after escape from Earth. The data tracked the interstitial zone between Spearhead and its destination, charted the stability of the magnetic cloak called Black Forest, and monitored the radiation signatures of Spearhead’s wormhole drivers.

He understood the science behind these analytics, though it took weeks to wrap his head