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

his eyepatch. “But the life of a rogue is very lonely. The Salvation fleet provided a unique opportunity.”

Ophelia couldn’t resist a jaw drop when her haze cleared.

“You’re a double agent,” she said. “You work for the Guard.”

He tapped her hand and leaned in. “Voice down, please. And no, I’m not working both sides. If I were, I could have given up the coordinates for Black Forest long ago.”

“No,” she said. “You’re still Special Services. This is off-book.”

“Believe what you will. I could have turned you in when I realized what you were up to. Still can. But it will make little difference to him. I used to span the Collectorate in his service. At some level, I loved the man. He’s a remarkable specimen. Yes?” Harrison smiled, but Ophelia saw the irony. “I’ve even been to Earth. Made a special delivery for him. But what I saw today terrified me. Afterward, I asked him for my next off-fleet mission. He said our resources would be stretched thin for some time. In effect, he grounded me.”

Harrison talked to the table, but his mumble came through clearly.

“This fleet will soon leave Black Forest. When it reaches its destination, they will slaughter everyone not hybrid or immortal.”

He confirmed her worst fears. “What’s their destination?”

“A place where we will not be allowed to step foot. I’ll say no more. But I will be in touch. When it’s time, don’t make the mistake of saying no.”

He spun away from the table and left them in stunned silence.

Magnus spoke for them both: “Did that just happen?”

“He has us. He knows we don’t have a choice.”

“Of course, we can choose. We can …”

“We can die when he turns us over to James, or when they kill us trying to escape. I think he wants what we want. Like I said before, Magnus, we don’t have a choice.”

Ophelia sorted through her thoughts, vowing not to paralyze herself in fear. She decided this outcome was probably the one she deserved – at the very least. She ran from her crimes for too long.

Rikhi deserves better. I have to give him another chance.

Ophelia reached the only possible decision.

50

North American Consortium

 

M ICHAEL COOPER, ON THE OTHER HAND, faced too many decisions. His fourth time manning a navigation cylinder demanded more than he could deliver. Why did I let Rikard talk me into this? I’m gonna get all these people killed. He swiveled through the curtain of holographic panels, trying to input the algorithm for blind flight while pushing the nacelles to max thrust and looking for a new course into a safe zone. C’mon, Cooper. Stick the landing. You can do this.

He swiped pearls of sweat from his eyes as he bore down on the steps to entering a code entirely from memory. Ten segments, fifty keys embedded within them. One mistake, and the Scram’s internal security buffers would reject the program. He finished the second segment before turning his attention to new trouble.

The Scramjet that decimated the mountain safe house was closing. Though the rate slowed as each ship reached max thrust, the calculus was clear: The more powerful vessel was gaining at a rate of a kilometer every two minutes. Michael’s little Scram, a century-older model designed for less arduous work, would be within range of an energy slew in fifteen minutes.

“How does it look?” Carlos Rivera shouted from his still-seat, one of nine occupied by Michael’s nervous passengers.

“Like somedamnbody else oughta be in my chair,” Michael said, unaware how his words might sound to the others. “Beyond that, couldn’t be better, No. 1.”

Michael deemed Carlos “No. 1 asshole” after the incident that exposed the Solomons to their pursuers. He wanted to blame Carlos’s brazen decision to shoot a man in the back for what befell them next, but Michael owned too much blame to shift it entirely.

“What can we do to help?” Carlos asked.

“Look, dude, unless you know how to catalyze the Carbedyne to make this bucket go faster, best help is to shut up and let me get us into blind flight.”

He silenced the cabin and didn’t care if Rivera was now “No. 1 pissed-off asshole.” Yet these people were his comrades, his brothers and sisters in arms. The odds favored them dying together before sunrise. Michael wanted their help – needed it – but none were certified short-range pilots. Words like stay calm made no sense right now, since Michael was anything but. He knew blind flight was less than a shot in the dark.

Nonetheless, he grabbed segment three of Rikard’s program and swished his fingers through the ship’s master flight code, searching for the NAC’s stack-grid monitors. He needed to replace them with a precise sequential code that would help block the Scram’s unique transponder beacon.

“Fucking algorithms,” he mumbled as he worked. “That’s when math went bad for me. Soon as they introduced fucking algorithms.”

Michael hated anything that reminded him of Albion High School. He couldn’t believe how far he’d come in two years. If not for the Tier II Education that rewired his brain, he never could have tackled these mathematical sequences. Even so, it wasn’t going to be enough, and he knew it.

The third segment was the most complex, full of translinear dilutions – a concept that still befuddled him. Like differential calculus, he told himself, but assbackward. You got this, dude.

He didn’t. Eight keys in, the security buffer activated a soft red filter over the flight program and locked out any further breech into its transponder stack.

“Shit,” he whispered. “On to plan B. Whatever the hell that is.”

He swiveled around to the aerial topography controls, where the picture grew bleaker. Reaching the rendezvous coordinates always required two assumptions: No pursuit, plus one circuit through the NAC’s eastern quadrant under blind fight. With