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

voice. Yeah, like, in my head. OK? It was right after I heard they arrested the guy. I don’t remember much. That part’s true. But I remember the voice. It was sweet. I dunno. Like your Grandma Verna. She just said, ‘You’re a monster.’ Kept saying it over and over. Then it’s like she pointed me to the jail. I don’t remember taking the bat. I just heard a voice say over and over, ‘I’ll kill them all.’”

Jamie’s voice cracked and faded to a whimper as he repeated those last three words, and he looked away from Michael, who wished he’d never taken things this far. Jamie slipped on his t-shirt and stood in the water’s edge, barefoot and swaying, his eyes as lost as they must have been when he entered the sheriff’s office, Michael reckoned.

As he began to cry, Jamie said, “Please don’t tell them, Coop.”

“Not a chance. Dude, I got your back. You’re my No. 1.”

Michael meant every word. Time passed and Jamie learned to laugh again. School resumed and bored them both silly. Pranks and petty juvenile crime filled the listless summer days. The Sheridan boys took no handouts and settled into a dreadful apartment. Michael visited his sketchy cousins in Starkville, routinely tested his parents’ patience, and was told by guidance counselors how he was throwing his future away with poor grades. Yet he took solace that he’d escape Albion with his No. 1 and they’d survive on the road somehow. It all made sense. It would all work out in the end.

That’s what Michael told himself whenever he remembered Jamie’s confession by the river. Twenty-seven months later, he changed his mind.

PART ONE MICHAEL

Humans have been known to make irrational decisions in moments of greatest trial. Others, however, prove themselves to be visionaries of enormous courage. Their choices lay the foundation for exciting new paths in humanity’s long journey. The choices made on the world then known as Hiebimini in Standard Year 5358 will be debated for generations. What we can deduce with certainty is simple: History ended there.

-          Edward Faust

-          Annotation 1044-B

-          The Fall of the Collectorate, Volume 4

1

Ericsson Research Station

Planet: Tamarind

Four months after Collectorate Realignment

Standard Day 16, SY 5358

 

M ICHAEL COOPER LINED UP HIS KILL SHOT. The Mongol cluster approached at dawn in a formation that screamed easy pickings. They ascended the ridge in single formation, not trying to disguise themselves or use the wide-spreading Lebanese cedars as cover. His DR29 zoomed in, expanding the view from inside his peacekeeper helmet.

At three hundred meters, from his crouched position on a layered crevasse, Michael concluded these zealots were begging to commit suicide. Each brandished a laser pistol and a retractable Lin’taava sword. Their ceremonial robes, splashed in the Tuvaan clan shades of brown and sunset orange, fell over them as little more than potato sacks. Suitable for worship perhaps, not combat. From his vantage, Michael needed only to press the trigger button on his Mark 10 blast rifle, and he would cut down all eight with a burst of flash pegs. It would be a single-shot record for him, yet it seemed unfair. Damn indigos. What is wrong with these people?

He rolled his eyes to swipe through the holostreams of his fellow Guardsmen. Six other positions, flanking the ridgeline and radiating outward from the mountain base’s only entrance, depicted the enemy’s approach. Three columns of eight Mongols in single file maintained a hundred meters separation. Like their previous strategies which ended in slaughter, this made no military sense.

You think we’re violating sacred ground, Michael mused. We’re trying to steal the damn secrets of the universe. Yeah, so maybe we are. But this ain’t gonna get it done, guys.

“Turn back, dumbasses,” he whispered. “I’m tired of counting bodies before breakfast.”

The Tuvaan incursions occurred at dawn. Weeks earlier, the special operations team learned why. This fringe group adopted the beliefs of pre-colonial ancestors, who equated sunrise with rebirth of the soul. They insisted the Creators would look favorably upon warriors who gave their lives at this most divine moment. And since the Void was the Creators’ greatest gift to humanity, the devout must defend it with all their being and cast out the interlopers.

Michael was present with his new band of brothers and sisters when they interrogated the only Mongol survivor of the second incursion. The prisoner was a vicious hound at first, unwilling to speak Engleshe but happy to spit in the face of any Guardsman. Ten hours of torture, a reopening of his wounds, and a realization of his impending death calmed the prisoner at last. He spoke in a tongue unique to his high-forest clan but did so with a glow of absolute peace. Blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth, the prisoner answered all their questions and died with a contented smile, his message processing through a translation program.

These Tuvaan fanatics weren’t going to give up the fight. Ever. Their numbers were limited, their weapons insufficient, and their allies among other Mongol and Chinese clans non-existent. But they were committed in heart and mind. And this, the spec-ops team agreed, posed on unacceptable threat to the mission.

*

The debate over military response became heated, inside Ericsson Station and in orbit onboard the Praxis. Spec-ops team leader, Major Aiden Nilsson, favored preemptive surgical strikes with energy slews. Take out the entire clan – intel suggested three thousand casualties – and free up resources for girding the base against a possible assault by Chinese and Mongols loyal to Brother James and Salvation. Major Nilsson obtained the full support of his team before making the formal proposal to Praxis Capt. Delano Forsythe.

“We weren’t brought here to be butchers,” Nilsson told his team. “That’s the job of rank-and-file Guard. Sooner or later, these animals will stumble into a fit of luck.