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

He heard it during training sims after the calamity on Tamarind last year, when two were incinerated during aerial bombardment at the Mandewatt Convocation. Immortality, they were all reminded, was not a guarantee.

“I’m sorry to hear this,” James said. “They will be honored at the proper time. I hope we have better luck with Lennox and Santos.”

He ordered the soldiers into hiding and insisted he needed no personal guard. After they left his sight, James sagged.

When he opened the bicomm, James saw the rage in his brother’s eyes. He didn’t need to hear details to predict the news from Tamarind was worse.

“What is your status, brother?” Valentin asked.

“Father is dead. Mother was not here. Whatever they were building is destroyed. Valentin, I … I believe this was a trap.”

Valentin seethed. “Casualties?”

“Two confirmed. Potentially four. We lost Gamma. Send a rescue ship to these coordinates. I don’t know how long we have.”

Valentin looked away. “Admiral Kane, status?”

“Fourteen minutes, sir.”

“I sent it five minutes ago. Remember, James? The backup ship you insisted we wouldn’t need?”

James barely remembered the pre-mission strategy session other than being annoyed by Valentin’s growing list of concerns, including the persistent paranoia about the sudden convenience of it all.

“Thank you, brother. We’ll be waiting. Report from Tamarind?”

Valentin spoke through gritted teeth.

“They’re gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“All of them, James. Fifty of my people. And Ulrich Rahm. It was a trap, James. I told you from the beginning that all this intel arriving at the same time was too simple. I begged you to wait. And for what? So you could kill our father?”

The last time Valentin stared at James this way, they faced each other deep in the bowels of the Great Plains Metroplex, blood in their eyes and their hearts. Valentin intended to kill the scrawny interloper who called himself a Bouchet.

James remembered Emil’s warning: “They betrayed us both.”

“What happened, Valentin?”

“We were winning. We breached the mountain and we killed almost everyone inside. But the Chancellors staged everything, even sacrificed their own people, to trap us. Two stealth ships attacked. They blew Spearhead out of the sky. Scramjet Beta was on the ground. So was Ulrich Rahm. We were going to retreat after we took out the base and secured the Chancellory’s weapon – and of course, after we identified Michael Cooper’s corpse, because that was so damned important to you. Then Ulrich would release his Berserker and consume the base. Can you imagine what happened instead, dear brother?”

Yes, he could. He experienced it himself.

“I imagine Ulrich tried to defend our people like he did last year,” James said. “He directed his Berserker at the stealth ships.”

“Yes, James. He did. But he wasn’t fast enough this time. My bicomm transmission allowed me to watch from Beta. I’ve never seen a hybrid incinerated by his own monster. The slews must have hit him exactly when he released the nuclear storm. I saw a flash. Then … nothing.”

Ulrich Rahm. He was the first of the eight rescued hybrids to break the Chancellors’ conditioning program. He took to Slope design and navigation immediately. More than anyone, Ulrich proved Slope’s viability. He gave Salvation the advantage it needed.

“A flash?” James said. “Your people were inside the mountain. Yes? How do we know they didn’t survive?”

Valentin dropped into the captain’s dais and rubbed his beard. He threw open a holowindow.

“This is a bicomm view from the agent who gave us the intel. He’s in Mandewatt. Thousands of kilometers from the Void.”

Since his rebirth as a hybrid, James saw many wonders and horrors from across the universe. The Jewels afforded him glances of miracles he would never see up close in his lifetime. What he witnessed on this transmission made no sense.

A wall of fire spread across the far horizon, rising like lava plumes dancing into the clouds.

“It extends five hundred kilometers in every direction, and it’s growing,” Valentin said. “All of this in minutes. We have unleashed an apocalypse on our allies.” Valentin’s restraint disappeared. He spit as he shouted:

“I warned you, James. I asked you to reconsider. But you’re a god, and gods don’t reconsider. Yes?

“Hear me good, brother. And make no mistake about my intent. When you come home, things are going to change. You, James, are a good killer but a terrible general. You always have been. I don’t know if we can defend Aeterna from what’s coming, but we’re going to try. And when we try, we will do it my way. Is that understood?”

Now this was the brother who James thought was out to kill him. This was the savage brute who largely stayed hidden behind a disciplined, rational demeanor.

“Yes,” James said with little energy. “I understand, Valentin. You and I will have a different conversation when I return.”

Valentin pounded a fist. “It won’t be a conversation. Not this time.”

We’ll see, brother.

James turned off the bicomm and fell to both knees.

43

Hiebimini / Aeterna

 

F IRE AND DEATH became sunlight and beauty. Folding space was just like they said: Stepping through a doorway. No churning stomach, no fluttering heartbeat, no transition. It was, Michael thought, like a harshly edited dream where reality exists in fragments. If he did not understand the science, he would have assigned it another word: Magic.

Michael was still running, his arms wrapped around Aldo and Maya, when he appeared above the planet. The geek inside him wanted to behold the wonder of the moment, but the soldier inside ordered him to survive. He commanded his DR29 to modify his gravmod boots against the altered g-force. The planet’s gravity rated 1.1 gees relative to Tamarind, 1.3 relative to Earth.

They arrived eighty-seven meters above the surface, enough to see far across the land. Michael tried to take it in even as