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

from Aeterna – Valentin would use his popularity to capture their hearts and minds while using propaganda to undermine James’s credibility. He would kill James and claim he was saving the people from a madman.

No longer a Chancellor, Valentin? Traitorous fuck. You will always be a Chancellor.

James organized his thoughts and pushed through the collective mind until he found Rayna.

“Expect me soon.”

Later, after returning to JaRa, he bypassed a visit with his newborn daughters and isolated himself with his wife. He told her everything. The case against Valentin was unshakeable, he insisted.

“This is no time,” Rayna said, “to come undone, husband. We have greater enemy to defeat. Support him. Encourage our people. They will lose heart if they lose their Admiral. We can destroy Valentin another way.”

“How?”

“I have idea.” She kissed him. “I always have best ideas. No?”

47

S AM WOKE FOR THE SECOND straight morning and expected Michael to be lying next to her. He’d stare for a moment then whisper every reason why he couldn’t possibly leave bed until at least noon. Then he’d pull the silk spread over them and explore. Most days in Boston began that way.

She didn’t know why this memory returned on her sixth and seventh days in JaRa and felt so immediate, but it didn’t trouble Sam. Rather, it settled her nerves. She was still a hostage surrounded by the enemy, but her domed habitat seemed less like a prison. As long as she attended her assigned duties, the immortals did not wear scowls in her presence. The whispers about her rumored association with Brother James diminished. In addition, she avoided Rayna for two days. Did Valentin scare her off? Not likely, she thought. No one scares Rayna. She assumed Rayna was mothering her newborns; Sam pitied the life awaiting those girls.

At eighteen, she was older than almost all the immortals. This fact carried a certain cachet. Sam’s experiences on two Earths doubled their intrigue. The children along the food production line loved to indulge in horror stories of their “mortal” homes among the colonies and create imaginative tales of what life on Aeterna would be like through the coming centuries. It broke the monotony of peeling, slicing, scaling, grating, dicing, and coring. They encouraged Sam’s participation. Sam recognized their bubbling enthusiasm and hyperbole: This was a middle school cafeteria, minus the relationship drama.

However, they were also single-minded zealots, eager to wage war against anyone who threatened Salvation. Sam never asked who among them had killed for the cause, but many participated in off-world missions, and all were trained. They laughed at awkward jokes, never brought up romantic or sexual innuendo, and shared gossip about the hybrids who they knew the least.

Sam blended among them with an ease which caught her off-guard. In Albion, Alabama, she was the shy, annoying bookworm who classmates neither understood nor appreciated. Most of the time, she ate alone in the cafeteria, a fate she blamed on Daddy – the architect of her manufactured persona. Among the Chancellory, she was an interloper to be tolerated, an inconvenient beast thrust upon them by disastrous circumstance and a generous inheritance. These immortal children shared a common bond: They despised the lives forced upon them before they were liberated.

Whenever Sam dared to feel empathy, she reminded herself of a simple distinction: Each of these children rose from the dead and would enter battle unconcerned about death, even mocking it.

Rosa Marteen, the thirteen-year-old who took to Sam like a sister during the negotiations near Mars, embellished her tale of that mission while unsheathing yellow potatoes with a phasic driver.

“There were three,” she told others on the line as a new pile of potatoes were dumped between them. Sam stood across from her. “Now, Miguel and I were supposed to stay quiet the whole time because only Samantha was allowed to talk.”

Horst Yaeger interrupted. “I’ll wager you were biting your tongue so hard, you were drawing blood, Rosa.”

“What are you implying, Horst?”

“Nothing. I’m surprised they didn’t send along somebody whose lips don’t move so much.”

“Horst. Really? You have an opinion for every occasion.”

Sam enjoyed the back-and-forth. The children never took offense; a far cry from her own schooling, where Drama was always capitalized.

“Yes,” the boy continued, “and my opinion is they should have selected me because I volunteered to train for the diplomatic corps. When we negotiate a treaty with Forster’s Alliance, I’ll be there. You wait. I’ll show those cudfruckers what I made of myself.”

“Good luck,” Rosa replied. “We haven’t even opened diplomatic relations with Forster’s. I heard it might be years. Anyway, I’m sitting there listening to Samantha talk to these Chancellors.” Rosa chased the phasic driver over the potatoes without looking, her technique now ingrained as automatic. “I knew these were horrible human beings when they came onboard. They looked at us like we were … oh …”

She held up a peel. “This!”

“Typical Chancellors,” another girl said, launching into a story about her nasty experience onboard an Ark Carrier above Brahma. Two boys raised eyebrows and nodded in unison. Rosa tried to refocus attention back to herself.

“Gyselle, we heard this story befo …”

“They’re the worst,” Gyselle LaMarsh continued. “All of you are so fortunate. Be glad you were fostered by indigos. Carrier Chancellors are such nasty people, they even look down their noses at Earth Chancellors. But they don’t do anything. They don’t have jobs. They live off the fat of the colonies. They’re always drinking and …”

“Yes, yes,” Rosa interrupted, raising her voice. “Raising nasty children. We know, Gyselle. You tell us at least once a week. Besides, those Chancellors are all dead. Our refractors took out the entire Brahman Noose last year. Can I finish now?”

“OK, but make it exciting this time, Rosa.”

“I will. Our talks were almost finished, and Samantha was amazing. She defended us