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

His unexpected distraction made the pain of the aperture shock wave more acute. He cursed his stupidity.

Seconds later, the ship exited the Slope at its original staging coordinates and entered the protective cloak of Black Forest. Valentin checked the cargo hold’s data. Their operatives were unharmed, the cabin pressurized. He unbuckled and fought a sharper headache as he led Harrison Malwood to meet the agents. He stopped en route and whispered to his intelligence chief.

“If they made any mistakes, we vent them. Understand?”

As they entered the hold, a woman and a man who spent months in the fleet with Harrison and James before their mission, were unshelling. Their bodysuits, designed by fleet engineers on schematics James learned from the Jewel, dissolved like skin flaying from an animal. The shells dropped as Valentin offered each agent a side-nod. They responded in kind, no physical or emotional hints of the terror they wreaked on Vasily.

“Congratulations,” Valentin said. “I’m sure Brother James will be grateful for a job well done. Is Samantha Pynn alive?”

The agents turned to each other and smiled.

“And well,” they said in unison, as if rehearsed. The larger agent – a female scientist who carried a blast rifle – added on. “But Patricia Wylehan is no longer an issue.”

“Wylehan? Samantha’s aide? You assassinated her?”

The woman frowned. “Of course. Brother James was specific.”

Valentin turned to Harrison, whose surviving eye expressed surprise. “You knew about this?”

“No. Brother James must have issued this directive himself.”

“I see.”

But Valentin didn’t see. Another mission, more secrets.

And still, the headaches. This time, Valentin vowed not to hold back. He was going to talk – and James was going to listen.

10

On approach to the Salvation Fleet

100,000 kilometers from Nexus One-Three

V ALENTIN WITNESSED A SPECTACLE when Spearhead emerged from its wormhole at mission’s end. The Enfidi Horse Nebula, a galactic painting in starry waves of pinks and purples, filled the viewport. The nebula kept his people company while they hid from the Collectorate in this dead system off an uncharted Nexus point.

“Could anything be more beautiful?” He asked Harrison Malwood, who shrugged his shoulders.

“Not bad,” the cynical intel chief said, “but it’s no more than illuminated gas and dust. To my mind, true beauty is what humans create out of nothing.”

“Such as?”

“These wormholes are a start. Don’t know why you complain about them, Admiral. The aperture doesn’t bother me in the least.”

Valentin winced. “When have you ever heard me complain?”

“I hear everything, Admiral. That’s my job.”

Now it made sense. “Ah. My brother has you watching me?”

“Don’t take it personal, Admiral. I watch everybody. All we need is one act of betrayal to bring our little family to ruin.”

He didn’t want to get into it now, so Valentin moved on.

“Glad we have a man like you working to preserve our … family.” He sliced his fingers through a holopanel. “Now entering Black Forest,” he announced through the ship. “We’re home.”

They pierced the protective cloak which made their fleet impossible to hunt. Six ships, all holding stationary positions equidistant from one another, dropped out of invisibility. Their system engines were inert, as if docked at port. A quiet colony, tucked away fifty light-years from the nearest inhabited system.

As Ulrich Rahm navigated the ship into the lead position, Valentin contemplated how much this fleet – which James called Salvation – accomplished in less than two years. Seven ships against the Collectorate: each with a story, each with a price.

Spearhead came to them easily when they raided Qasi Ransome’s least defended mineral supply depot. They killed eight on site and later vented the crew who disabled the harmonic transponders. Only Passaic Dawn, whose pilot Valentin shot in the chest, suffered a smaller toll. The renamed Sunrise housed rogue Chancellors who sold their futures to acquire the secrets of immortality. Most other ships came with a far higher toll in lives.

The UGT Sterngarten – a Guard battalion transport with a trove of weapons – came into the Salvation fleet’s possession at the expense of three hundred peacekeepers plus another seven hundred collateral indigos. The Lutrium bursts, designed by James and his Jewel intellect but deployed by Valentin and six immortal children, cascaded beyond the Sterngarten’s docking port on Pitcairn and into the surrounding service village. They left an extinct community behind. James renamed the transport Haven.

Blood spilled when they acquired Greenland, a deep-range research vessel converted to agricultural production; Gemini, a tourist liner hijacked from drydock above Xavier’s Garden; and Benevolence, a private transport en route to Inuit Kingdom. The forces of Salvation also executed passengers and crew to acquire eight Scrams and uplifts for travel within the fleet.

Yet nothing compared to the price paid for Lioness, the fleet’s command-and-control ship. This system cruiser – the largest Chancellor mode of commercial travel – housed most of Salvation’s nine hundred members, including its command staff and their most revered of all. Vital research and weapons development occurred on Lioness. Military planning, victory celebrations, and “special education” took place here. It was their greatest prize. Forty thousand humans fell for Salvation to take its trophy.

It had been Rayna’s call. She was returning to action less than a week after giving birth to twins, ending months of combat quarantine imposed by her husband. She hand-picked Lioness from a list of potential targets. “My babies need good home,” she insisted in a thick Ukrainian accent. “Princes deserve to live in castle.”

The mission collapsed minutes after blasting in via wormhole at Port Baghdad on Euphrates. Intel was wrong: Lioness was drafted into temporary service for the Guard and was about to load hundreds of well-armed peacekeepers who spent weeks suppressing food riots. Upon realizing the error, Rayna ordered her two Scrams to unleash a barrage of energy slews on the crimson red enemy. As fires raged