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

the clan just sends more after us. We should give them what they came for. Throw them into the Void. They’re dying for it anyway.”

“Not a bad idea,” Percy said. “Of course, you’re the last man here to think of it.”

Matthew nodded. “Nilsson took it before Cabrise and Forsythe weeks ago. Shot down.” He sighed. “Kill ‘em but don’t piss ‘em off. Madness. The Guard doesn’t cast a shadow anymore.”

“None that I can see,” Rachel said. “We had enough battalions to hold every colony under martial law, but not enough to take out the great Brother James and his band of freaks. This Guard you see today, Cooper? Nothing like it used to be.”

Michael heard the solemn, resentful tone in their voices, but he went for humor, using both hands to frame his face and adding:

“Pretty much.”

They didn’t laugh, but Michael assumed they understood.

“You won’t be the last,” Matthew said. “Not if Poussard has her way.” He shifted his eyes to all. “We know it’s coming. The longer realignment lasts, the harder it’s going to be to reclaim the colonies. But there’s one way the Admiralty could do it. Indigo enlistment.”

Rachel and Percy nodded. “Cooper here,” she said, “will be the most famous PA in the Collectorate. Learner’s right. If we can train you to be a soldier of the Guard, what’s to stop every black cud on Zwahili Kingdom from joining our merry band?”

Michael tensed. “Broadman, you call me a fucking proto-African?”

“Am I wrong?”

“You know I hate that shit. And yeah, you’re wrong. Me? I … I’m an African-American. That’s what they called me on first Earth. When they were being nice or politically correct or …” He wanted to slug her, but it was just Rachel winding him up. She played the game every time she wanted something more. Michael didn’t care.

“Good try, Colonel. Give me a few hours off the jube and rum, and I’ll show some more of that PA magic you love.”

She grabbed his crotch. “Hours? No, no. That won’t do. We’re cutting you off, Cooper. Got that, gents?”

He and Rachel hadn’t been together in more than a week. It was always on her schedule, when Rachel decided she needed to unleash the energy bottled up in this claustrophobic base. Outside of the brief dawn battles and body cleanup, the life of spec-ops inside Ericsson station consisted of drinking, smoking, and waiting. At first, Michael thought she chose him because she wanted fresh meat that was wild and untamed. Once, during the height of intercourse, he offered an old saw he remembered from first Earth: “Once you go black, you never go back.” Her response? Rachel bared her teeth like she did on Michael’s first day of training then proceeded to pound him with a vicious right hook.

Michael got the message, but when he pulled himself up off the floor, Rachel was waiting for him, hand extended. They resumed.

He thought Rachel was likely a beautiful woman, not a creature built as powerfully, as masculine, and as savage as any man. He saw it sometimes in jade eyes that reflected a sweeter, gentler woman hidden behind the façade of warrior. Her hair was buzzcut around the sides and back, with a swoop of snowflake blond over the top.

“I don’t love her,” he told Maya not long after the sex began. “Never could. But I want her. Every-damn-time I see her, I wanna be with her. It ain’t about Sam. It’s what I need.”

“And why is that?” Maya asked.

She always asked, but Michael never answered.

He knew why, of course. Once in a while – usually when he was drunk – the answer climbed its way out of those hidden recesses in his subconscious. It clamored for an audience.

Today, it hounded him again. Two bottles of jubriska, a medical reg, and rum kickers almost lowered the defenses. Instead, he washed it away by focusing on Forsythe’s confounding news. He wondered what the vid of Sam sitting between two immortals must have looked like; why it was so devastating that even Michael was barred from seeing it. And then there was the extra tidbit of news Forsythe delivered before dismissing him.

“Michael,” the captain said, “remember how I told you Salvation initiated the diplomatic talks? It was Samantha; she contacted Poussard herself. Broke through the Admiralty’s security protocols and entered Poussard’s stream amp directly. She said Samantha was calm, friendly, reasonable, as if it were a routine business matter. Michael, she does not rule out mind control, but it is the Supreme Admiral’s position that Samantha knows exactly what she is doing.”

He opened the first bottle of jubriska five minutes later. Now, as banter in the canteen moved away from a Michael-centric focus, he stared into an empty glass until, without warning, soft words crossed his lips. Michael whispered what he hoped the liquor would suppress.

“She’s a traitor.”

8

H E DIDN’T WANT TO BELIEVE IT. Every ounce of logic begged him to be patient, to wait for the truth. Yet months earlier, James made a promise to Sam: “I will realign the Collectorate, and you will be at my side to map the future. You will do this willingly and without Michael.”

Willingly. The word ate at his gut more than the combined fuel of rum and jubriska. She was Salvation’s ambassador. She smiled as she negotiated. “Samantha knows exactly what she is doing.” If Poussard lost faith, who would stand in Sam’s corner?

Unanswerable questions swirled through his drunken mind as Michael left the canteen, empty bottle in hand, and searched for a way to escape. How long would Forsythe be able to contain this? Once the news spread, all the old suspicions of collaboration with James Bouchet would rise to the surface. Would his team trust him? Would Forsythe recall him to Praxis? Deny him a place in the invasion of Hiebimini?