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

They created me. They designed me. They know how to kill me. Both will try. One will succeed.

This was not the clarity he envisioned, but James found a small relief in knowing his brother wasn’t a traitor.

“Prepare another strike team,” James ordered. “Ready a Scramjet for aerial bombardment of slews. Once we eliminate the security perimeter, we go in. No survivors, except anyone named Bouchet. I’ll reduce my parents to ash.”

“James, no,” Valentin said. “You’re putting yourself at high risk. And I find it curious how we received all this intel on the same day. We should study it further before making a move. If these leaks are designed to draw us out …”

“Stay here, Valentin. Protect the planet. Our teams on Euphrates and Tamarind will end the threat for good. Don’t you see? This will be their calamity and our certainty.”

32

Ericsson Research Station

Tamarind

M ICHAEL HAD ONE CARD TO PLAY, and it terrified him. The endgame seemed clear: He’d be with Sam soon, or he’d be dead. All that lay between the two of them: Upwards of seventy Chancellors, some of whom were spec-ops killing machines, a leap across four hundred sixty-five light-years, and an army of lunatics waiting at the other end. His plan only worked one way, and Michael said the words out loud to steel himself for the trial ahead.

“I don’t want to kill these assholes, but I’ll put them down if they try to stop me. Clear?”

He said this after Maya finished telling him the direction their scheme might go. She reached her conclusions after exchanging details with Aldo Cabrise on their admin stacks. Maya concurred with Aldo: Michael’s strategy made many assumptions about timing, allies, and the Anchor. It might work, they agreed, but this would be a one-way trip. No Plan B.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re right about their intent,” Maya said from the Void viewing platform. “If you murder even one of them, Michael, the uniform means nothing. You’ll be an enemy of the Chancellory.”

“When was I not? They hated me on Earth then played nice when I gave them Sam’s money. It’s like Aldo said: They used me as an extra gun, but they’ll never take me to Hiebimini. Odds are, I ain’t walking out of this place alive. Or so those motherfuckers think.”

That outcome grew likely during the two days since Michael and Aldo first reached an understanding and agreed to talk further. Independently, they asked nuanced questions, pulled together anecdotes, and heard enough evasive answers to sense a rising new tension, shy of anything concrete to validate their fears.

Aldo heard it in Capt. Forsythe’s disagreeable tone and from the silence of his old contacts inside the Great Plains Metroplex.

“Hornets are stirring,” Aldo confided to Maya in his office. “They’re building a nest. Not much longer until they swarm.”

The spec-ops team didn’t treat Michael any differently. They took their positions along the ridgeline before sunrise and awaited the Mongols, though the enemy failed to show for three straight days. However, none of them retreated to the Commons for the usual morning round of drinks. Michael wondered why.

Col. Rachel Broadman did not approach Michael for their usual foray in her bunk, and Michael watched Maj. Aiden Nilsson take the elevator to Level 1 alongside Frances Bouchet more than once.

The evidence was circumstantial, the signs unconvincing. If they were wrong and acted too soon, bloodshed might follow for no good reason. Two hours before Michael and Maya met on the viewing platform, the evidence thickened.

At first, it came to Michael as a strange intuition. The constancy about the station was its daily repetition; almost everyone maintained duties on a tightly wound schedule. Shift changes and meal rotations in the Commons created a steady but uncrowded flow of personnel through the claustrophobic corridors. He passed the same people at the same times each day. Until now.

Michael retraced his steps since the Anchor test, analyzed his daily routine, and noticed a glitch: The base wasn’t as crowded. Since Aldo insisted Michael not be seen at the command office or communicate over traceable streams, Michael settled for dropping his suspicions onto the commandant’s admin stack.

“There hasn’t been a shuttle. Are staff leaving through the Anchor? Am I imagining this?”

While he waited for Aldo’s response, Michael checked in on Alayna Rainier, the only other Presidium rep based planetside. He contacted her by stream.

She received him on her cube. “Apologies, Michael. I’m in the midst of a conference at the moment. Might we talk later?”

“How about over drinks in the Commons?”

“Perhaps, Michael. I’m talking with our allies back home. I’ll brief you later. Goodbye.”

Whose allies? He and Alayna never formed a strong bond, and she always struck him as more aloof than the Presidium reps he got to know onboard Praxis, so he wasn’t able to read her tone. Did his paranoia insist she was hiding something? Or was she just another conspiratorial asshole among a whole damn race of them?

Thirty minutes after he dropped his questions on Aldo’s stack, Michael received a response:

“People don’t come or go without my knowledge. The Anchor has not been approved for routine transit. I will review everyone’s internal stream markers. If they’ve left, I’ll know.”

Michael heard nothing more until meeting with Maya on the platform. She delivered the news straight from Aldo.

“You’re right,” she said. “Nine support staff, an engineer, and two from the core science team are no longer on the base. Aldo is preparing to contact Capt. Forsythe, but he’s cautious. He doesn’t want Forsythe to know he suspects a deception. If he’s too contentious …”

Michael finished the sentence. “Forsythe will contact Maj. Nilsson. He’ll lock down the base, and we’ll be fucked.”

“We still don’t have definitive proof, Michael.”

“Next best thing, if you