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

more personal. Pay close attention, Mr. Bouchet. This transpired fifteen minutes ago.”

Valentin played the transmission. He read the stream stamp of an unfamiliar woman, Ophelia Tomelin. The video focused on three children, underdressed but aggressive, their strange weapons aimed high to either side of Tomelin. The questions began. “You are the daughter of Walter and Grace Pynn of the Americus Presidium?” The girl answered, confused. Yet Valentin recognized that family name from somewhere. Then the video focused on a taller boy, white-skinned, close-cropped blond hair. “You are James Bouchet, son of Emil and Frances Bouchet?” And the response: “That’s what I been told.”

Valentin caught the admiral’s eyes. “This can’t be.”

“It gets better,” Admiral Perrone said.

Valentin followed the next tense minutes. Something about a Jewel of Eternity, next stage of evolution. “You can’t control me. You can’t trust anybody.” And then, without warning, chaos. Thump guns, the boy claiming to be Valentin’s brother falling to one knee and …

“What?” The vid captured the last second of a man’s life, as his body exploded into flame and fell to ash as quickly. “How did …?”

“My name is James Bouchet. Take me to my parents. Now.”

The transmission ended.

“Do not speak, Mr. Bouchet,” the admiral said. “You will waste valuable time. Your brother – and yes, he is your brother, so do not belabor the issue – was created as part of a program to evolve Chancellors past our current travails and into a brave new world. Or so they said. His genetic rebirth occurred in a parallel universe – yes, they exist, and we can access them. More or less. His return came hours later than expected, and with considerable complications, not the least being his ability to annihilate men with no visible weapons. Perhaps most disturbing, he is not compliant to Chancellory commands. The transmission ended at that moment, likely because of another seismic disruption. These tears between universes have never been stable. We have received no confirmation of the aftermath from the ground, but we should arrive on site in less than twenty minutes. We will engage with enemy forces and affect a rescue of those three individuals, including your brother.”

Valentin took a measured breath. “Yes, sir. I understand. I am prepared for engagement.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.”

“But why rescue them, sir? This … my brother … he is a mortal threat. Should we not destroy him?”

Admiral Perrone stood up, sipped the last of his café, and nodded. “Prudent strategy would suggest that outcome. However, I need him alive, at least temporarily. You see, Mr. Bouchet, you stand to lose a brother you never knew. I have far more at stake. You heard them claim the observers – our team sent through the IDF with James Bouchet – were all dead. Yes? For his sake, they’d best be mistaken – or wonderful liars. I sent a wife and son to that universe fifteen years ago.”

He straightened his uniform, turned to his officers and Valentin.

“Peacekeepers, establish engagement protocol. Prepare to exterminate all enemies of the Chancellory and wish everlasting agony upon anyone who left my family behind.”

 

5

Near the Interdimensional Fold

 

T HE FOUR OF THEM STEPPED into the sunlight. The hillside, which sloped downward several hundred meters to a tall, thick tree line of heavy pines, was sliced open by trenches. Mercenaries employed by Ophelia fired into the tree line, dodging tracers – some of which bounded off the security shield in fiery collisions while other tracers smashed magnetic seams and threw up soil, impacting like grenades.

Two of Ophelia’s recovery crew tried to enact a rescue at a deep rut, struggling to pull a third out by hand. The ground exploded at their feet, throwing them forward. Shouts dominated to the west, where a blood-soaked guard hauled a tall, thin man in a pantsuit matching Ophelia’s out of a trench. The man stumbled toward the remains of what was once a modular bivouac. Equipment lay scattered down the hill. Ophelia panicked first.

“Our ship,” she shouted. “Where is it?”

The thin man pointed south. Forty meters separated them from the bivouac. The ship’s location lost importance at the next rumble.

Jamie knew this was not a quake, the ground remaining steady beneath his feet. Sammie turned around first, her eyes exploding as she looked upward.

The side of the mountain descended – a rolling wall of soil carrying stones and trees. They had seconds.

“Run,” she cried, and they dashed for the bivouac. Along the way, they leaped narrow trenches. Michael turned his ankle when the soil beneath let go just before they reached what remained of the camp.

When they looked back, the mountain covered the entrance to the fold. Screams of desperation followed the descending hellscape.

“We lost the beacons,” a gangly man just north of seven feet tall told Ophelia, wincing as he protected a mangled left hand. “Most of the shield is gone.”

“Where is the ship, Brey?” Ophelia demanded.

“It was there,” he pointed to a hole twenty feet wide in the hillside. “The ground opened up during the quake. Rikard flew her out of here before she took any structural damage, but I saw trails. The enemy clipped a nacelle.” He tapped his forehead. “I’ve been trying to find him instream. No response. I am not sure if he crashed or … I never totally trusted Rikard.”

“The others?”

He shook his head. “This mountain is coming apart. It’s worse than when we sent the Shock Units through.”

“Try again,” she told him. “We have what we came for.”

As Brey Grinderson searched through his amp’s holocube, he stared icily at Jamie, Sammie, and Michael.

“They best be worth it, Ophelia,” he said. “You never said we’d have to die for their likes.”

“We are not dying today,” Ophelia said, then addressed the blood-soaked mercenary who rescued Brey from a trench.

“Chief,”