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

“Attention, all residents and guests. Please be advised that during this time, you must not impede the actions of Unification Guard personnel. They are attempting to secure the station and bring our crisis to a swift conclusion. Remain where you are until we have restored standard gravity.”

Lancaster tapped his amp and threw open a holocube, which displayed his identification for all to see. He motioned for Sam and Pat to follow. As they surged between handholds, none of the civilians made a move toward the central lift. However, seconds before making a downward kick to propel toward the grapples next to the lift, a new movement surprised them all.

The civilian lift closest to their target door slid open, despite Lancaster’s assurance about the transport system shutdown. A cheer arose, and guests moved toward the open door.

They were met with flash pegs.

They threw four men and women backward like projectiles as their bodies filled with holes, smacking other guests and flinging them against the panoramic glass. Globules of blood floated aloft in broken streams.

Amid shouts of terror, two figures stepped from the lift, firmly planted on the ground. They walked with methodical purpose, their gravmod boots resisting the zero-g environment.

Pat pulled Sam close.

The attackers hid inside a suit which coated their bodies in a sheen, like a custom-fitting bubble. The translucent shell disguised their faces. Sam knew they were too short and thin to be military, and nothing in her studies of UG tech showed a design like this. Guard or not, both were equipped with blast rifles.

The attackers surveyed the scene, examining the terrified – and retreating – guests. Lancaster reached for his sidearm, but when he jerked it from its pouch, a flash peg blew off his right hand. The major released a primal scream and lost grip on the handhold.

The bubble-suited assassins turned to each other and nodded. One broke away, heading down the corridor. The other raised his rifle and aimed.

Sam couldn’t see his eyes, but she felt them lay upon her.

The gunman hesitated, as if adjusting his weapon. Waiting for the kill order, perhaps?

No. Sam froze. No. Jamie wouldn’t do this. Not to me. Why?

She prepared for the death she evaded during the long night across the fold and on to Philadelphia Redux, standing in the shadow of SkyTower. She thought of Michael and prayed he would not give up without her.

Then the assassin flinched. He angled his weapon a few degrees away and fired, unleashing a steady stream of flash pegs.

A woman gagged as if choking to death.

Patricia Wylehan let go. Her body contorted and her eyes stared into oblivion as she hurled backward, driven by the projectiles that tore open her chest.

As reality consumed Sam, she screamed for her Chief and lost her grip on the handhold. Her eyes clouded as the sobs came. She couldn’t absorb seeing Pat’s lifeless floating body, which bounded against the panorama and left behind a painted mass of red globules, and still understand everything else going on around her.

Other than Michael, no one championed her like Pat. No one believed more in her ability to take on the Chancellory elite, or that she was the best of the Pynn descendancy to come along in generations. Sam still lived because of a mercenary who found a reason to take a stand.

For a moment, Sam surrendered. She gave in to the fraud she often thought herself to be, the Chancellor who could never live up to her father’s iron-fist image of a warrior-politician. She was nothing special, floating as helplessly as these other people – Chancellors or colonists – who did not possess her alleged status. Pat would tell her to fight back, to firm her gut and respond in kind. Michael would say she was going soft for a Chancellor who once ran around in the Alabama woods as a girl, chasing and assassinating human prey.

The anger rose in her gut, but all she could do was watch. She rolled over after bumping into another desperate civilian and saw the assassin moving off down the promenade. His accomplice, a good fifty meters away, aimed a weapon toward the panorama. She realized, too late, he was not carrying a blast rifle.

The weapon’s pulse created spatial disruptions, blurring the physical space between the terrorist and the glass. The assassin appeared oblivious to the chaos, as horrified guests raced quickly from grapple to grapple to escape the inevitable. Flash pegs tore apart those who threw themselves toward the assassin to stop his madness.

On the far side of the promenade, Lancaster held his bloodied right stump against his chest while shouting new commands to the Station Watch. Even amid the cacophony, Sam understood every word.

“Decompression imminent. Engage segmented seals. … I don’t care how long it’s been. Engage the cudfrucking seals, or you will have another thousand deaths on your hands.”

Although this was Sam’s first off-world experience, she assumed the most terrifying sound in space must be the cracking of glass. The panorama beyond the lobby was splintering. A blast rifle continued to clear any threat to the attackers.

A new rumble and a gust of steam entered the insanity. Seconds afterward, huge metal doors emerged from the belly of the structure and slid outward. They segmented the promenade, with doors closing off the lobby area on both ends. Guests bounded off them, except for one who found herself caught between the door and the panorama locking ports. The door snapped her body in half, and she fell end-over-end in a chasing field of globules.

Sam caught Lancaster’s eyes. She saw his terror. He wasn’t prepared, never even considered the possibility for infiltration. He told her the Guard didn’t know how to fight these terrorists. He was as useless in this fight as she was.

A minute later, the station shook. Sam knew what happened but