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

immortals will rescue others of our kind. We will not use this forum to reexamine the imperative, Brother. Our purpose today is to determine our military options. I have made my proposal as your Admiral.”

James wasn’t going to accede to Valentin in front of his sons.

“I will agree to eliminate the deep-system sorties, but I will only cease diplomatic missions on Inauguration Day. I will give you seven standard days to root out where our enemy is developing their new weapon. I expect a full report that includes attack plans. If you’re right, I’ll hold you up as heroes of Salvation. If you’re wrong …” James looked around the bridge and thought for a moment. This edict needed bluster with a tangible threat.

“If you are wrong, I will incinerate Major Kane, and you will need to rescue another immortal to make up the difference.”

He saw Kane’s features whiten, but Valentin’s executive officer neither back stepped nor took his eyes off James.

“Yes, sir,” Kane said, his shoulders firm. “It will be done.”

“We will meet later,” Valentin told his XO. “I’ll return to Lioness on a Scramjet and …”

“No,” James interjected. “You are best suited to prepare the city for my return. This conference proves you’re not needed here. You and the Major can stream intelligence data. Yes?”

Valentin cast his eyes downward. “Brother, you wouldn’t be attempting to usurp the chain of command?”

“Never, Admiral Valentin. What I am is practical.”

James ordered his brother planetside twenty days ago and celebrated each moment. Valentin stopped pursuing questions of Hiebimini’s civic hierarchy and why hybrids appeared to be observers rather than contributors to the work of establishing a new home. Major Kane, a softer personality, accepted his shipboard role without comment.

“If we are talking in practical terms,” Valentin responded, “I’m sure you’ll agree any attempt to castigate our senior leadership would devastate morale. Thank you in advance, Brother, for allowing me to promote the Major when this operation concludes.”

James allowed the momentary insolence to pass, though he longed for the days when his younger brother behaved as such. He bid Valentin farewell and scrapped the holowindow. He stared down Kane, who worked hard to toe a diplomatic line between the brothers.

“Don’t fear, Major. I won’t incinerate you if the mission fails. I’ll give you the choice of who I burn. Consider the candidates carefully. You are dismissed.” He pivoted to his sons. “What have you learned today?”

“It’s good to be the older brother,” said Peter, who arrived three minutes before Benjamin. “I have the last word.”

“Try it,” Benjamin said with a buoyant smirk. “I dare you.”

James escorted the boys off the command bridge, and they bickered all the way to the lift. Their father might have intervened, but James shifted his eyes to another distraction.

Crack. Rip. Rumble.

The three sounds followed in a sequence equidistant apart. At first, he thought the sounds signaled trouble for Lioness. Quickly, he realized they were buried deep inside his mind. He swung about and caught blurred movement in the white forest.

The crystalline surface cracked like ice on a thawing lake. A tree’s massive trunk ripped open as if gashed from the opposite side. A rumble followed, less than a tremor and more like a warning.

“There. Over there!”

James saw movement. A fabric – no, a cloak in gray – disappearing behind the bursting tree.

“Finally. Finally. You’re here, Ignatius.”

Then the white forest dissolved into silence, leaving only the bickering of his sons to attend.

It was just as the algorithm predicted in one of its countless futures: He will return in gray, and you will hunt him down. He will be the final answer. All paths will intersect with him.

Resolution.

James was eager to begin the hunt.

16

F IRST, JAMES HAD TO DEAL WITH HIS WIFE, a task almost as daunting as commanding an insurrection. He knew the moment would require delicacy; he had hoped to withhold the news about Samantha Pynn until after Rayna delivered the babies. Yet Rayna made a habit of probing deeply into the collective mind of her fellow Jewel hybrids.

The Queen of Salvation, as she liked to call herself, was buoyant upon return from her latest diplomatic chores on the colonies. She reported great successes on New Ecuador, Bolivar, and Brasilia Major, where Salvation’s message carried growing weight among the working classes. She used her bulging belly as a prop to symbolize the new future.

However, her mood shifted into knives-out when she heard Samantha Pynn was living in a city meant only for Jewel hybrids and immortals. She saved her rage for the private residence on Lioness.

“I give you children,” she told James, her fingernails boring into his mammoth neck. “You bring me shame.”

“We don’t trade, Rayna.” He pushed delicacy aside. “We take, we kill, and we conquer as husband and wife. Your shame is petty jealousy, and I am not to blame.”

“You do not fool me, James Bouchet. I know you best. You are typical man. Always to use women as tools for pleasure.”

She broke through his leather-taut skin and drew blood. The pain excited James.

“I have allowed you to be a warrior for long enough. Your job now is to be a mother to our people.”

“You mean to make babies like factory. No?”

“Our people have to grow, Rayna. We have cities to fill.”

“After I give you these babies,” she said, rubbing her stomach, “how soon will you come inside me to make more?”

He yanked her claws out of his neck and twisted her hands backward until he heard the bones crack in each wrist. As usual, since the day he first beat Rayna in order to grow her body to its full potential, his wife showed no outward response to the pain. However, the pistils in her eyes grew fiery orange, which he