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

He yanked the blast rifle from Rikhi then turned and aimed.

He was too late.

Harrison shot Lennox twice, the blast wounds opening in the colonel’s back near his spine. Lennox collapsed as Harrison brandished his weapon.

Valentin fired.

Harrison quaked as flash pegs tore him apart, his weapon discharging as he fell. Ricochets splattered off the Scramjet’s hull.

“Cud.” Again, he cursed his brother’s arrogance. This should have been tidy, not a spectacle. Now, he needed to order cleanup on the deck and bodies vented into space. He …

Shouts and desperate cries grew behind him. Fingers pointed.

Valentin pivoted. At first, it made no sense.

But he knew. From the vacant, staring eyes. The large, bloody hole. What have I done?

Sister Ursula Amondala lay dead on the deck of Lioness.

65

On approach to Great Plains Metroplex

S AM PRAYED FOR THE LOVE OF HER LIFE. If Michael’s God was real, perhaps He would hear her words. Perhaps He might forgive her for not contacting Michael in almost ninety minutes. How to explain her decision? How to tell him she was sure of nothing, that all her plans might fall apart before sunrise and kill them both? That help might not reach him in time or be enough to hold off the enemy?

“One more soldier will not have made a difference,” Lucinda Blanche said, sitting at Sam’s side and holding her hand like the grandmother Sam never had. “We have to be unified, Samantha. Have you not been saying this all along?”

“The only thing I said when he transmitted his coordinates was that I loved him, and I was sending help.”

“I’m sure he understood. The longer you streamed, the greater chance to compromise him. Michael is in a war zone.”

“He’s fighting for his life, and I’m making a political stand. I should be with him.”

Lucinda, though more than sixty years older, giggled like a schoolgirl. She dismissed Sam’s comments with a wave.

“Oh, please. What of it, if you kill a mercenary on the streets of Harrisboro? You’ll be no closer to ending this war. You and I possess something Michael does not: leverage. If we do not use our status and intelligence to push out Grandover, what good are we? I know little of war, but it is not won solely by those on the battlefield.”

“I know. And even if we stop this invasion, there’s no guarantee we stop the war.”

Lucinda opened a holocube. Another ally, Evan Augustine of the Vancouver Presidium, stared back, along with Malcolm Rainier of the Coronado Presidium. She had them on circastream since bringing Sam onboard her personal Scram, along with Ezekiel Mollett of Americus. All were en route with their Presidium officers.

“What is our status, my friends?” She asked.

Sam thought all of them appeared pale, as if they knew this was a do-or-die proposition. Failure almost certainly meant none would leave the GPM alive. Best case, they’d be “disappeared” into the notorious subterranean cells beneath the complex.

“I’m still working San Mateo,” Malcolm said. “Their loyalties are divided, to say the least.”

“I have reasonably good news,” Evan added. “My grandson has just finished convincing Len Danielsson of the Delta Presidium into standing behind us. They’re sending five representatives now.”

Sam was impressed. Evan, the most aged of her allies, earlier seemed reticent about risking his descendancy’s fortune. Now, it was as if he found new life.

Lucinda looked ahead to Ezekiel, who was trying to make contact with officers inside the GPM.

“Any movement, Zeke?”

“I’ve only been able to reach officers off-duty, outside the amping temperate zone. Best I can determine, there are a number of mid-level officers who want to make a move, but mutiny is out of the question. It’s like we discussed before. Our best bet is Rear Admiral Angela Poussard. She’s next in line to Grandover, and there’s no clear indication she was onboard when Celia Marsche pulled off the coup. A couple of majors say she’s been largely invisible the past few days, working mostly as an administrator.”

Sam remembered her, after a fashion. She was there when Supreme Admiral Tolliver announced his resignation. She took a position at one end of the conference room while Grandover handled the other. At that point, Celia entered, full of bluster. She all but pushed then-Step Admiral Poussard out of her way. Sam did not see Poussard during her detention after the coup. Perhaps …

“Do they know we’re coming?” Lucinda asked.

“Not from me,” Ezekiel replied. “I’ve just been trying to take the temperature. But they might make assumptions, especially if our other allies have been inquiring.”

“Would they be more likely to take a stand alongside us?”

“Civilians?” Malcolm interjected. “I doubt it. They’re already disgusted enough that a certain Scandinavian civilian may be pulling strings. They need to be motivated by military law. One, that these are illegal orders, and two, that the Guard is violating its duty to protect the Chancellory. Bastian Grandover is well-liked down the chain of command. The others won’t so easily turn.”

“Which is why we need Poussard,” Ezekiel said. “She is the only one who can legally usurp Grandover of his command.”

Sam grew impatient. “But we don’t know that she’d change anything if she had the reins. Do we?”

Shaking heads. Sam felt the indecision and pushed forward.

“If we could deliver our evidence to Poussard – or all the officers, for that matter – surely they’d lose confidence in the man. They’d see his true nature.”

While everyone visually agreed, hesitation remained.

Lucinda put this idea into perspective. “If we had access to stream directly inside the Admiralty firewall, we’d have the man cold. But we don’t, and the GPM’s temperate zone for amping extends ten kilometers outside its gates. Zeke, do you trust the officers you interviewed well enough to share the evidence with