The Impossible Future: Complete set Frank Kennedy (freenovel24 .TXT) 📖

not going to find James. When he’s ready, Augustus Perrone will play his hand. He will lead us there.

“Whatever his strategy, he does not intend to kill James. At least not soon. I have known the man for years. He is using James for leverage. To what end, I have no idea. As long as James has value, he lives. Augustus did not disarm my chief, so he wants us to survive. Patience, Michael. Our chance will come. This is your home now, but you do not understand the rules. Trust us. We will …”

Her eyes flickered past Michael, as if filled with revelation. Instead, a translucent disruption enveloped Ophelia. She shuddered and fell.

“Down,” Patricia shouted as she aimed her thump gun toward the thick brush. She did not find her target fast enough.

She grunted and fell.

Sammie and Michael shared terrified glares as they laid in the pine needles. She looked beyond her friend to where Patricia fell, and the thump gun that rested less than six feet away. She felt the pistol tucked behind her back. If I’m fast enough …

Sammie heard bushes ruffle and shifted her focus. A man in a white bodysuit came in for the kill.

 

9

J AMES SAW EVERY VISIBLE COLOR in the spectrum. Then he awoke. Standing flat-footed, he tugged at his legs, but they did not react. He wanted to look down, but he feared what lay below. He feared the shadow lurking just beyond his vision.

Paralyzed. Under attack. No retreat.

His memory unclogged before his limbs did. He heard a commanding voice, an introduction to … brother. Younger brother.

His eyes worked, but he saw muddy shadows, as if adjusting his vision in darkness, searching for a sliver of ambient light. He heard the tattered echoes of unfamiliar voices. As he sharpened his vision, the shadows gathered an unexpected sheen. James jerked his torso back and forth, flittered his fingers from arms that seemed braced against his sides, and realized what this was.

The glass barricade wrapped around him to within a foot. His breaths shortened as panic rose. It all flooded back.

    “Sammie? Michael?”

His arms broke free, and he slammed his hands against the barrier. The tint faded like prescription sunglasses worn indoors.

Tubes. To his left, to his right. A green, circular fog glowed above his head and beneath his feet. Again, the whirr. His mind cleared and logic returned.

The floor in the center of the ship’s compartment shifted, as metallic plates rose, formed layers, then contorted and spiraled. Inside the living remodels, tiny lasers danced from the plates and spun webs of fabric that encased the geometrically-revamping structures. Four uprisings flexed as if made of liquid steel before finishing as executive swivel armchairs with ergonomic supports and thick, high backs.

Across the compartment, four peacekeepers of staggering build stood naked in tubes of their own. Breaths of steam doused them as laser lights danced over immaculately-framed bodies.

James remembered what Michael called them outside their ship: Terminators. He was right. The former Jamie Sheridan loved the movies. He saw Arnold Schwarzenegger walking naked in the night to ominous music – a relentless, cold-blooded killing machine. Ripped the heart out of a man just to steal his clothes. These four killers – who wiped out a field of mercenaries with brutal, efficient force – dressed without resistance as fabrics wove themselves around the men. Seconds later, the tubes opened.

Gone were the one-piece crimson suits, replaced by form-fitting khaki trousers that glossed like leather, and white, collarless shirts free of buttons, stressing the musculature. An ornate insignia planted itself above each man’s heart – a detailed cluster of planets, ships, and an unfamiliar flag, with color-coded bars underneath.

Each peacekeeper reached back inside the tube and retrieved a pair of shoes dropped from an overhead beam. Dark brown, like boots freshly polished.

The men took their seats and pulled on their shoes. One disappeared toward the forward compartment, beyond James’s view. Two others swiveled to face each other, and a holographic cloud drifted down between them. They smiled while twisting their fingers through a holocube.

The fourth stared at James.

He remembered this face, albeit for mere seconds before the world fell dark. The dimple, the deep brown, searching eyes, the hair like faded moonlight. Yet the admiral called him James’s younger brother. The warrior who approached with a glassy stare of indignance looked all of twenty-five. Battle-worn, childhood a distant memory.

James felt impotent, a ninety-pound weakling. His brother stood only a few inches taller but spread far wider. James whispered the last word he heard before collapsing outside the ship.

“Valentin.”

His brother stopped. Did he hear? Was he repulsed?

“At a moment such as this, I recommend all parties consider a pensive approach.”

The voice rocked James. At first blush, it came from inside the tube. Was someone communicating through a speaker? His new brother stared with pursed lips. And then again …

“We must account for preconceptions that may bias first contact and create a tremulous – and might I say dangerous – relationship.”

James dared not think it – especially when he realized the smug, professorial voice was bouncing around inside his head. She’s gone, he thought. I destroyed her.

The timing terrified him.

“Look!” The voice insisted. “Over here. This way. Ah, yes. A tad closer. To the right, just beyond synaptical interlude nine-forty-four, and behind the temporal lobe until you see the …”

James still keyed on his brother, who approached with tepid steps, but he also detected something else. Felt another place. And then …

“Greetings, James.”

He stood on a beach – the sun setting over the sea, orange streaks through the sky, a rough breeze carrying the heady musk of salt. Beside him, a gray-suited man in a white fedora drank red wine from a tall, fluted glass.

“I have been observing you