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

what his ex-best friend looked like in a crimson bodysuit. Terminators.

“Why, Rikard?”

“Their orders are to take control of security in every major city and hunt down elements considered hostile to the Chancellory.”

“Hunt down? Does that mean …?”

He nodded. “Their standing order will be to kill every active member of the Solomon equity movement, arrest all Chancellors harboring or collaborating with the movement, and enforce the existing Solomon Treaty. They’re going to bring peace the way they’ve always done it on the colonies: By wiping out the threat to peace. No trial. Only what peacekeepers do best: Slaughter.”

Michael felt sick. “Rikard, I don’t understand. We protected the Chancellors from each other. We killed for them. Can’t they stop the Guard from doing this?”

“It was the Chancellors who forced the Admiralty’s hand. The hardliners won. These assassins they sent out after us? They’ve already killed at least forty of our brothers and sisters. There have been firefights. Chancellors killed in the crossfire. The assassins provided cover, so the Admiralty can use the chaos as an excuse to bring in the Guard.”

He turned to Maya, whose eyes glassed over. She offered no comforting words. He wanted a bottle of jubriska. Desperately.

“Rikard, we don’t have a chance against the peacekeepers.”

“No. We don’t.”

31

Pynn compound

 

S AM WATCHED THE GUARD’S PUBLIC announcement alongside Merton Bayfield, her estate manager. Supreme Admiral Bastian Grandover was a rigid monolith inside the GPM, standing beneath the statue of Johannes Ericsson. He recited the Guard’s new standing orders with the zeal of a lobotomy patient. He wasn’t the same man who treated her with disdain. She heard disgust and reservation in his tone; surely, he realized this was a horrifying mistake. But did Celia Marsche and her allies give him a choice?

“Will they do it, Merton? Will all those soldiers come back to Earth to kill Solomons?”

“My brother served five years on Pinochet during their civil war. I’m afraid this is the sort of thing peacekeepers live for.”

“Ninety percent of peacekeepers were born on Earth. Yes? That means they were raised among Solomons. They’ll be killing the people who maintain their homes.”

“True. But they will be following orders, Samantha. Peacekeepers who do not obey their superiors become outcasts the rest of their lives. Their families lose face and leverage. You’ve not lived among us long enough to appreciate what that means.”

Sam waved off the holowindow. “My family is gone, so I don’t have to appreciate it. Michael is my world, and they want to kill him. For what? Because he’s made a life here? Because he thought maybe he didn’t have to be a second-class citizen again? Grandover says he’s a threat to the Chancellory. How? The only thing he wants is a voice and his name on a deed.”

Merton was a small Chancellor, three inches shorter than Samantha. Yet he carried his chin high, a man who commanded the room. Sam thought it an impressive feat. Merton sat behind the desk in his office massaging his beard while hearing her out. He nodded.

“Michael’s goals make perfect sense. The Solomon Treaty symbolizes an antiquated philosophy. But when men are faced with the specter of extinction, they cling to the oldest traditions, lest they lose all hope. Kill those who ask to be their equals, and they restore the illusion of hope. They can live with the blood.”

“I don’t agree.” Sam paced the office. “Chancellors who’ve spent their whole lives on Earth go out of their way to avoid blood. They send their children to the colonies to kill indigos a hundred light-years away. They hire Solomons and mercs to do their dirty work here instead of meeting their enemies face-to-face.”

Merton flexed a brow. “Point taken. Assuming you’re correct, how might one use that weakness as leverage?”

“Organize. Find a few powerful Chancellors willing to go public. Those Chancellors pull in their allies. And so on. We make a stand before the peacekeepers arrive.”

“And what of Grandover’s order to arrest any Chancellor supporting the Solomon movement?”

Sam saw an opening. “He only said they’d arrest anyone harboring or collaborating with Solomons. He didn’t say anything about trying to stop an invasion.”

“I see. And you have a force capable of resisting the UG?”

“Maybe. Where I grew up, people routinely banded together to voice opposition to every kind of injustice. They marched in the streets, sometimes by the millions. Once in a while, they even overthrew governments.”

“Volatile world, you describe. Were they ever at peace?”

“Everywhere at once? No.”

“But we were on this Earth. For centuries, no less. Harmonic perfection. Chancellors will see peacekeepers as the tool to restoring that perfection.”

Sam took his point. “They will see. But not yet. How long before those battalions secure the cities?”

Merton swiveled in a high-back, cushioned chair.

“Interesting question. I don’t believe the Supreme Admiral offered a timetable. I’m not familiar with military protocol in regard to troops.”

“You don’t need to be. If they left their Carriers this minute, how long would the journey to Earth take?”

“Depends. If you’re talking about the closest colonies – Brasilia Major, Cairns, Marianas – four standard days. But the outlying systems – Boer, Kyriokos, New Riyadh – fourteen to fifteen days. The problem is, Grandover did not specify where these battalions are stationed. Nor do we know when he issued the orders. The troops might be well on their way.”

“Still, it gives us time. Yes?”

“Time for what, Samantha? Do you have dangerous ideas?”

She desperately needed Pat to counsel her on the madness swirling through her synapses. Was this even practical?

“I’m going to save him, Merton.”

“What do I need to know, Samantha?”

“If I tell you what I’m thinking, you’ll be implicated. Won’t you?”

Merton drew a pipe from within his suit.

“Only if I directly act on your behalf.”

“And since you’re not an