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

“Maya,” he said as gently as he could. “Stand down. Please.”

She compromised by lowering the pistol but not the knife, which was positioned for a strong upward thrust.

“Let them go inside,” Percy said. “After they’re gone, we can tell the Admiralty anything. I’ll erase the recording. Look, it’s what Nilsson wanted, and he was in command when he made the call.”

“Cudfrucker,” Kal said. “Maybe we ought to let you go. You can die with your friends when the Guard wipes out your sorry lot.”

Michael didn’t bother to respond. He understood Kal’s anger more than the grief-stricken soldier would ever realize. Yet he also knew there was nothing he could say to mend relations. The decision, barring flash pegs, fell to Rachel. He pivoted and waited her judgment.

She didn’t take long.

“No. If the rest of us have to drive each other mad until after the invasion, you get no special pass, Cooper. You’ll be confined to quarters, stripped of weapons, uniform, and rank. Let’s be real, Cooper. She’s as good as dead. You too, before long.”

Michael now understood what it felt like when time stood still. He saw no option that didn’t end with multiple deaths. He had no intention of leaving with Rachel, but he didn’t want to risk Maya’s life. Percy seemed to freeze after Rachel arrived at a compromise of sorts. If Michael shot anyone first, it would have to be Kal. He stood almost at point-blank, his helmet retracted, weaving a sadistic smile of satisfaction. I’m not going back. I’m not …

He never did.

The mountain shook. All five stumbled as the floor buckled and the latticework of lighting flickered. Repeated explosions echoed above like rolling thunder.

No one needed to guess. Rachel shouted the obvious.

“It’s them!” She opened her holocube, and Michael, Percy, and Kal followed suit. “Cudfruckers … Go. Now. Up the lift. We have to hold them back.”

He order was nonspecific, as if she expected everyone in a uniform to rush into battle. Time restarted, and for an instant, everything that happened seconds ago appeared forgotten.

Percy followed Rachel’s lead, and Kal swerved past Michael without a word. The laboratory door was six feet away. Michael knew what he wanted more than anything in his lifetime. He also knew the right thing to do.

“Go,” he told Maya. “Stay with Aldo. I’ll be back soon. I’ll be …”

She nodded, as if she didn’t need to hear more.

What am I doing?

I promise I’ll find you, Sam.

As he turned, gathered his weapons, and prepared to fight a force more deadly than any Mongols, Michael saw a spark of terror in Maya’s eyes. She didn’t have a chance to say anything.

Michael felt it. Instinct. He raised his blast rifle and opened fire a beat slower than Kal Carver, who had turned about-face at the bend and leveled his weapon at Michael, blood in his eyes.

Flash pegs glistened in a rhythmic stream as they crashed into his chest armor. For an instant, he thought his pegs crumpled Kal, but the illusion didn’t last long enough to be confirmed.

Michael felt a burning incision above his left eye, followed by an electric charge sear his brain like lightning. He was lifted bodily and flung backward.

The lightning stopped, as did the explosions above.

Someone shouted his name, but the voice diminished as if trailing a poor soul into the deepest reaches of the abyss.

Midnight.

Black.

Home.

No thought.

No sensation.

End.

39

F.N. Hossaini Industrial Complex

Euphrates

J AMES HEARD THE PANIC as he closed in on his father’s location. Two more shots were fired as his inevitable victims argued: “We can’t let them have it. Detonate now.” James raised his weapons and prepared to unload on everyone who was not Emil Bouchet. He never had a chance.

“No.” “Please.” “You can’t do this.”

The shouts blended among each other in the seconds before an explosion tore the room apart and sent debris flying in James’s direction. Shrapnel smashed against his armor, much of it flaming.

He held his ground then advanced into the devastated structure, greeted by bodies, some of them crying out in agony.

“All this way,” James muttered, “and you killed him first?”

He couldn’t make sense of what remained, though some of the ravaged technology bore the hallmarks of lab equipment. The last time he saw a lab this devastated, he was the cause. SkyTower, Level 10, seconds after he incinerated hundreds of immortal fetuses at Valentin’s request. Long before either brother imagined they might one day consider replicating those experiments to grow Aeterna’s immortal population.

Wait. What’s this?

He discovered someone moving about in the wreckage. The body configuration seemed right, but the man he saw through the flames walked with a decided limp, and smoke rose from his charred skull.

James stepped over bodies and twisted metal to draw closer. He didn’t know for sure until he heard the man speak.

“Aren’t you a sight?”

Emil Bouchet seemed a diminished version of the overdressed, bombastic narcissist James met in SkyTower. Yet his father’s eyes were blue and piercing, the last embers of a once-mighty figure.

“Black is your color,” Emil said. “And no, your mother is not on Euphrates. I won’t be there to see your people burn, but she will.”

James retracted his helmet. His pistils turned fire orange.

“What kind of weapon did you create, Father?”

“The same kind I always build. A weapon to save Chancellors.”

“I could take you with me and force the information out.”

Emil frowned as he laughed, grabbing at his chest.

“You wouldn’t if you could.”

“Why not?”

“Because killing me now will bring you joy. And because you’re not leaving Euphrates. Son, you don’t see the bigger picture. They betrayed us both.” His eyes turned away from James to the southern horizon. “I wonder? Is it fitting or ironic that we