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

zeroed in on his first target, and pressed the trigger button. Maya followed suit.

“This won’t work,” Hans said when he caught up with them. “They’re wearing Guard armor. All we can do is slow them down.”

Michael didn’t relent. Between blasts – and a sharp, rising pain in his back – Michael snarled.

“We brought down their Scramjet. We can take them out, too.”

“We missed our chance, Michael. Lee hit one of their nacelles with a rocket, and he was about to blow the wad when it crashed. But they came out firing. They got a bead on him.”

Hans pointed over the embankment to the center of the avenue, where a body laid face-down. Beside it, a rocket launcher. The assassins were nearly there.

Hans pointed to the hovering uplift. “They’ve been providing cover fire. If we don’t move now, we’re dead.”

Every instinct told Michael to stand his ground. No more goddamn running. But the pragmatic angel on his shoulder whispered the obvious: They couldn’t win. Not here.

Michael nodded, and Hans tapped his amp.

“Oliver, we’re coming. Get ready for another fast evac.”

They took off as a threesome, ducking and firing as they passed around the wreckage of the uplift, a young pilot crushed within. Hope prevailed. The second uplift dropped into the square, and both Carlos and Xi leaped onboard.

Yet just as Michael pushed off his feet for a final, desperate sprint, a fireball threw him to the ground. He lost sight of Hans and Maya. Contorted sheets of shrapnel lay about him. He no longer recognized the crashed uplift, which was a pyre.

The rocket launcher.

Laser fire intensified. As he pushed off the hard ground, Michael reached for his rifle. Maya was doing the same.

Amid ringing in his ears, he heard Hans shouting.

“Go, go, go. We’ll make it. Retreat and regroup.”

Now to his feet, confirming Maya was also OK, Michael saw Hans beckon. “Move, before we’re dead, please!”

Which he did. Hans led them down a long flight of stairs dropping beneath the avenue. They entered a multiplex of alleys where closed shops and low-level blue lighting created a haunting feel.

“This way.” Hans took lead through a maze of service connectors without slowing down. Clearly, he knew the layout.

Four turns later, they stopped at a lift, where Hans pressed his open palm against a GenScan. The door slid away. Inside, they caught their breaths, although Michael’s cough worsened.

“Welcome to the Harrisboro Regional Sanctum,” Hans said. “Where Chancellors deliver justice fair and swift. Or so they say.”

“You work for the government?” Maya asked.

“Sanitation. I manage this sector. Few people have more access. Although after tonight, I doubt my palm will work again.”

“What’s the plan, Hans?” Michael said.

“Stall until help returns. I ordered my pilot to retreat. If he’d waited for us, even a few seconds more ….”

The lift opened. “Fourth level,” he said. “Oversight Sanctums. Only meet twice a month. Worse than bureaucrats. No one will look for us here. At least, I hope not.”

“Maybe,” Michael said. “These assholes are relentless.”

“Until they do, we need to see to your wounds.”

“What?”

Maya grabbed his hand. “You’re hurt, Michael. You’re bleeding.”

So that’s what he felt. Suddenly, the pain in his lower back throbbed. His jacket was lined with armor, the same variety that saved his life at Entilles Club. Yet something penetrated it. She took him inside a bodyroom, where Maya insisted Michael remove his jacket. Right sleeve off, no problem. Left sleeve, blinding pain. He grunted as he grinded his teeth. Maya pulled up his shirt and fingered the wound, looking for anything buried inside.

“You were punctured through the armor,” she said with the calm of a battlefield nurse. “You’re fortunate. I don’t feel any foreign objects, and the wound appears superficial. But I should wrap you, to slow the bleeding if nothing else. Until you see a proper doctor, this will more than sting. The body doesn’t like being sliced open.”

He laughed, hurting himself more. “You think?”

Maya worked with precision, fashioning a tight wrap from supplies she found in the sanitation supply cubby. Afterward, Hans led them to a nearby conference room with more comfortable seating. The overhead lights turned on automatically, but Hans reassured them of their safety. This was a windowless room.

After a few awkward, quiet minutes – the first respite any of them had in hours – Michael broke the silence.

“Hans, I’m sorry about your pilot.”

“Me too,” he said. “Dana was sweet, and a great flier, but in over her head. Bringing her into the movement, I was doing a favor for a friend. Then she goes and falls in love with me. Cud.”

Michael squirmed at a new wave of pain. “Ah, fuck.”

Hans opened his jacket. “Here. Might take a little edge off.” He handed Michael a pipe.

Michael looked at it lovingly. “Poltash? Sweet. You wouldn’t happen to have a flask of jubriska, too?”

“Sorry. I’d rather drink my own vomit.”

Michael ignited the pipe and inhaled. “Thanks for that, Hans. I’ll try not to remember that the next time I throw one back.”

Maya indulged in a sly laugh. “Hans, you’ll have to pardon Michael. He hasn’t had a drink in more than a week. Separate a man from his liquor, and he becomes testy. Yes?”

“My noggin is perfectly clear. At least, I thought it was. Hans, what the hell happened tonight? All that shit at the park. The concert. I mean, a concert with everything else that’s going on?”

“Until tonight, Michael, nothing was happening. At least not officially. The local DayWatch kept the assassinations under wraps. They thought they had the city locked down. The concert is a big deal around here. A tradition. The Chancellors weren’t going to allow a few Solomon bodies to slow the proceedings.”

Michael took a second puff. “And now they’ve got a war zone.