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

The heat arrived with a shutter, and the uplift died. He didn’t need to look outside to know a slew hit the nacelles. But the uplift was still intact. A direct hit would have incinerated them.

“I’m sorry, Hans,” the pilot said. “I tried but … I love you.”

And then, silence. A dead ship spinning out of control. In a city.

Michael braced and prayed. To kiss Sam one more time…

52

Moss compound, Boston

Two hours earlier

S AM’S NIGHT ALMOST SPUN OUT OF CONTROL, but now she saw the first inklings of hope. If her finger had pressed the trigger button a nudge harder, if she’d given in to her rage, the battle would be all but lost. But staring down David Ellstrom, the chief of staff to Finnegan Moss, she hesitated. Despite Finnegan’s betrayal – setting up Michael at the Entilles Club, joining Celia Marsche as her ally and lover – Sam couldn’t punish David for his silence. Her instant of mercy stayed her finger long enough for the truth to arrive.

David blurted out the word as if stumbling upon a great revelation.

“Grandover,” he shouted. He tapped his forehead and his eyes scattered, a sign of processing immense data from an admin stack upload. “We have him. Supreme Admiral Grandover. He did it, Samantha. Finnegan uncovered the information.”

“What? Uncovered about …?”

“I apologize for not telling you sooner, but I thought it a long shot at best. Samantha, Mr. Moss endeared himself to Celia Marsche not to betray the Solomons. On the contrary, he wanted to prevent this madness. His efforts began more than a year ago. He knew the hardliners were making inroads in the civil war. He suspected their influence was growing in the Admiralty. And there were wild theories that some might be cooperating with James Bouchet’s group.”

She lowered her weapon. “Wait, what? David, you might have led with that because I almost killed you.”

“Yes, I’ve been here. I was working my way toward it, but without hard evidence, I didn’t expect you to believe me.”

“And now, what? Right at that moment, the evidence just pops into your head?”

David sighed, as if realizing how close death came.

“I haven’t heard from him or his Solomon contact for days. He thought he was close to a breakthrough, but nothing more. We make our luck, I suppose.” He visibly trembled, this man who seemed nonplussed in their previous encounters. “Give me a moment, please.”

Sam needed one, too. She took a seat beside him.

“All this time, Finnegan’s been a double agent? I can’t believe it. You said he was a complicated man … but sleeping with Celia Marsche? That woman is a monster.”

“An apt description, at minimum. Samantha, you’ve lived here long enough to understand Chancellors. We don’t come at our enemies overtly. We ruin them from the inside. Only when we have them on their knees, do we reveal ourselves. Why do you think so many families coopted Solomons to kill their rivals?”

She laid back on the sofa. “Traps within traps. Every day since we crossed the fold. How did people like us hold onto an empire for three thousand years?”

“Don’t try looking for the answer. You’ll just give yourself a headache. Now, about Grandover.”

She’d almost forgotten about him amid these revelations.

“What did Finnegan find out?”

“The reason he’s been Celia’s puppet. Finnegan suspected Grandover’s orders to redeploy the Guard were made against his will. Based on the data he’s provided, she has been in direct contact with Grandover’s office seventy times in the past twenty days. This is … oh, my.” He opened a holocube.

Sam didn’t recognize the data points at first, but David clarified.

“These are the actual deployment orders by battalion, their disposition, and arrival schedule.”

“They’ll be here in a day or so, won’t they?”

David’s features turned pale. “That’s the official line. But look here. Three ships – the UGT Agrippa, Trumond, and Desolation – are already here. They’re in orbit now, awaiting final combat orders. Ten more ships will be here within twenty hours, and the remainder over the next four days. These ships must have been under way before public notification.”

“But the orders come directly from Grandover, right?”

“They do.”

“Then we have to stop him. How is Celia controlling him?”

David pushed through the data to reveal extensive documents and vids about the Supreme Admiral. They were packaged together, as if ready for a public exhibition. David saw the dark truth before Sam and unleashed an uncharacteristic gasp.

“Unbelievable. The Artemis Refinery Explosion. He was behind it.”

“The what? I’ve never heard of it.”

“Artemis used to process most of the brontinium ore we mined from Hiebimini and converted to brontinium extract. After the ore supply dried up, the Chancellory panicked. Most of the reserves were housed in Artemis on a regulated production schedule to ration the extract over decades. Seventeen years ago, most of the facility was destroyed. It was located on a planetoid in the Oorton system, away from prying eyes. Few got close enough to investigate, but we lost sixty percent of our entire reserves.

“Samantha, most of the public never knew about the disaster, but for those who did … more than anything, the explosion precipitated the civil war. Families fighting for control of what was left. According to these documents, Artemis wasn’t an accident.

“Bastian Grandover commanded the facility and ordered the explosion as a diversion. Oh, my. We didn’t lose those reserves after all. They were diverted into the hands of a select few Presidiums. Two percent of the Chancellory has control over most of the extract. Enough to keep their descendancies from peril for generations.”

She saw the grander picture. “While the rest of us die off.”

“Precisely. He was promoted repeatedly over the next two years and joined the