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

Finally, he heard her. “We’ll be waiting, Michael. This will not be for nothing.”

She disconnected. He didn’t expect to wait long for Doltrice’s team to arrive, but Michael realized how desperately close this would be. To the city’s north, a huge vessel with system engines and capable of holding dozens of Scramjets and troop carriers descended from the clouds. Its landing lights bore down upon the city like additional suns. A gauntlet of tinier vessels emerged from the belly of this creature, their running lights like constellations.

He was reminded of skeptical Solomons who long insisted any insurgency against the might of the Chancellory was doomed from day one. To see this great demon arching over the city, Michael figured the skeptics were right after all. But the fight?

Worth every minute. Even if we never had a chance.

A blue laser missed him by inches, smashing into the balustrade. Then another.

Michael pivoted. The shots came from the portside of the Sanctum Scram parked in the landing zone.

He saw the shooter. Limping, burned, helmet partially dissolved. And inside the only eye Michael could see, pure rage.

He reached for his blast rifle and realized he lost it in the fall. He felt for his Ingmar. No such luck, either. Ah, the other pouch. The laser pistol. He grabbed it with his left hand when reaching across his body was too agonizing.

Michael wasn’t in position to develop a steady aim, but he did his best. The first two shots dinged off the Scram. The assassin, one of those who pursued him from the outpost, ducked and returned fire.

A blast tore through Michael, singing a hole through the jacket’s armor and cutting above his right collar bone. The pain was … no worse than how his ribs already felt.

He continued firing, a steady parade of short bursts.

“Why,” he muttered through clenched, bloody teeth, “do people on this goddamn planet keep trying to kill me?”

Michael settled on luck. A blast splintered off the Scram’s flight deck and caught the assassin in the top of his skull. He crumpled.

Immediately thereafter, another Scram dropped between him and his dead enemy. He let go of his pistol as mercenaries surged around him and gathered him up. They handled him roughly, scrambling to beat the incoming ships, and his pain sent him into a fog.

He was conscious still as they carried him onboard and lifted off. They stood him up and magnetized him to a still-seat. They didn’t seem interested in attending to his wounds right away. Were any of them even qualified? And yet, he understood.

The mercenaries spoke with the urgency of soldiers girding themselves for battle. One said they weren’t going to make it, that the enemy Scramjets were entering into flanking maneuvers.

Michael coughed blood and triggered something unexpected.

His amp came alive, but not with a live stream. This was a prerecorded message, sitting on his admin stack, for timed release. He recognized the admin signature. Sam.

He didn’t have the strength to throw open a cube.

It didn’t matter. Her voice was enough.

“Michael. Sweetie. If you’re seeing this, it probably means you’re safe and maybe with the team I hired. I hope so.” She laughed. “They cost us a bundle.” She couldn’t hold her witty tone, however. “But I’d pay anything to save you. Being a Chancellor used to mean everything to me. Now, I don’t care about any of it. This crazy life we built only works with the two of us going down that road together.

“I know you believe somebody is looking over us, and maybe you’re right. They keep trying to end us, but we keep bouncing back.” She paused. “Maybe God is on our side. But if he’s not, and we don’t see each other again, I want you to understand what I’ve done. Michael, I made a decision to help us the only way someone like me can. You’ll know soon enough if I succeeded. But if I don’t return, just know that I’ve left my entire estate to you. What’s left of it, anyway. Take the credits and leave Earth. Find a new life on the colonies or go back through the fold and home to Alabama.

“I love you, sweetie. I hope we’ll see each other soon.”

His emotions tore through him with the same devastating pangs as the injuries to his chest. He didn’t understand what she meant, or what damn fool risk she’d gone off and taken. He assumed Doltrice might know, but the chaos onboard took the attention away from him. These mercenaries were arming for a heavy battle, their navigator trying all kinds of tricks from inside the cylinder. Michael recognized enough of what he saw from his vantage point to know they were diving down and traveling through the narrow pockets between the city’s high-rises, just as the uplift pilot Dana tried earlier. But she couldn’t evade a Scramjet with slews and died in the inevitable crash.

He recognized Capt. Doltrice. A tall, steady man, hands behind his back and standing beside his navigator to coordinate maneuvers. For an instant, Michael wondered how Sam pulled this off. Where did she find them? And so quickly?

The Scramjet banked and rolled, the strike team holding position with ceiling hooks or attached to still-seats. This felt all too familiar to Michael. Also familiar was the concussion hitting the starboard bulwark. Michael blamed himself. Why didn’t he order the uplift port closed sooner? Why couldn’t he have held on to the damn hook? The lost time was going to cost these men and women their lives.

He saw it on their faces. A sense of the foregone. They’d probably been here before as soldiers but found an escape. The Guard simply did not lose battles. Maybe they were arrogant enough to think they knew the Guard’s tricks. Not that any of it mattered now.

The Scramjet leveled