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

not fast enough. He fell to his knees and threw up the rations he ate last night. The ship returned to normal space.

“I’ve been told to follow your orders,” the navigator said. “Direct from Admiral Valentin. So, your orders?”

Aldo wiped the spittle off his lips. He stumbled forward and asked the navigator to throw open a holowindow from the forward dais.

“And what is your name, child?”

“Call me ‘child’ again, and I will kill you, orders or not. I am Sgt. Tyne Dax, if you must know.”

Aldo didn’t want to go there, so he focused on the holowindow.

“Our position?”

“We are situated …”

She announced the GPNM coordinates and said she was scanning by quadrants. As one quadrant cleared, she opened a new aperture and jumped to the next. This went on for five jumps, which sickened Aldo further. He was pale and weak twenty minutes later when Sgt. Dax’s cool exterior broke.

“Oh, no.”

“Yes?”

She hesitated. “I have contact. Forty-two thousand kilometers. Bearing … no, in a holding pattern. Engaging analyticals.”

The target was huge, but the design matrix wasn’t military. Aldo knew the odds of finding a scout ship so soon were remote at best. Then again, after all he’d witnessed, maybe this was exactly what he should have expected.

Aldo was shocked by what he saw yet also comforted. The configuration he knew well. The command he knew well.

“Praxis.” He laughed. “Of course, they did.”

A delicious irony, for sure, but it tinged Aldo’s blood with rising heat. The Praxis crew left Ericsson Station behind, forty-three people’s lives in limbo – including his own.

“Sgt. Dax, report our contact to your Admiral and warn the city. Then we’re going to do something very interesting.”

68

M ICHAEL WAS MORE IN LOVE THAN EVER. Sam was a hundred feet away, which felt like an inch. He tasted her lips, smelled her perfume, lost his heart in her eyes. He’d never seen her hair this short, but it blazed under the morning sun and added a royal quality to the woman who kept him going in a universe where he didn’t belong.

A hundred feet. No more. After four hundred sixty-five light-years, what was this but a hair’s breadth? It was simple. She was in his grasp. Yet Michael dared not reach. She walked amid monsters.

He activated his amp. “What are they doing to her?” He asked Valentin. “Is this the ‘complication’ you told me about?”

Valentin hopped off the rifter and took wary steps into the bowl.

“Michael,” he said in hushed words, “It’s a ceremony. Trust me. I’ll stop them before they go too far. You must stand down.”

“Answer me. What is this?”

“It’s about the babies. I don’t know Samantha’s role.”

“I see knives. Why do they have knives?”

“Michael, please. You’re a soldier. Be smart. Be disciplined.”

That word again. The man cloaked in gray, Trayem Hadeed, told him, “The disciplined man binds grief and rage inside reason.” Michael thought the idea was sensible in most cases. But love wasn’t grief or rage. It was a special kind of creature that threw discipline aside like rubbish.

“Does she know I’m here?” Michael asked.

“No,” Valentin whispered. “I never had a chance to tell her. They took Samantha before I returned. I’m sorry.”

Sam walked onto the stage and followed Rayna’s instructions to take her place outside the three participants. Michael studied the moment; Sam never looked Rayna in the eyes. She did not smile once en route to the stage. Rayna called forth her sons, a pair of gangly creatures whose height stunned Michael. They weren’t possible. These boys were taller than most high school seniors. Each carried a baby.

“She called them her sons,” Michael whispered. “It’s only been three years. What kind of freak show is this?”

“A conversation for another day, Michael. You need to stop talking. They will hear you. And stop moving toward the stage.”

Michael’s chest tightened. Since the moment he saw Sam, he shaved at least twenty feet between them.

He studied the crowd. A few hybrids shot quizzical glances his way.

Rayna began the ceremony.

“Today, we assign my daughters to lead lives of glory and conquest. They belong to first generation of inheritors to a great legacy of The Promised Few. They are chosen of the Jewels of Eternity. They will be Tsarinas to sit above their Tsars. Is most beautiful path. No?”

She nodded to her sons, who walked up the stage and handed the infants to the hybrid women bearing knives. The boys returned to the crowd and settled next to their father.

“As part of new tradition, each baby of The Promised Few will offer a sacrifice to make right all the sins they will commit until their deaths. Their blood will purify their essence and sanctify their morality and honor. Dharma,” she told the closest woman, “please lay Irina in the basin.” The hybrid complied. “Nya, please lay Martina in the basin.” The other woman did as ordered.

“This water is warm. It signifies youthful fire and vigor. It is in such beautiful cauldron that great warriors and leaders are fashioned. Now will their blood be drawn to signify their morality and honor.”

The first hybrid placed her blade over the baby’s chest and created an incision. The second hybrid followed immediately. The water turned red. They laid the blood-stained knives on the table.

“You see how my babies do not cry? Already they know of their greatness. For this courage, I deem them Assigned.”

Michael’s fear rose a notch as the hybrids in attendance applauded wildly. The babies continued to bleed untended.

“Valentin, this is some fucked up shit right here. Why aren’t they crying? Why is Sam up there?”

“They’re hybrids, Michael. They’re not human. As for Sam? I don’t understand what’s …”

Valentin turned away. He cut their live stream. Michael saw him in the crowd. He