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

more to know what happened. The hardliners won over the military. She saw it all: Deployments in the streets. Raids against anyone opposing the hardliners. Progressive Chancellors dead. Solomon defenders dead. Forced peace. Forced unity.

“No,” Sam whispered, but no one heard her.

Others reacted in dismay.

“This is the true reason Tolliver is resigning,” Grandover said. “He refused to deploy the Guard.”

Adrian pounded the table. “But you went along with this madness to become Grand Admiral?”

Celia gave Grandover no chance to respond.

“He had no choice, Adrian.” She turned to Poussard. “And now neither do you.” Poussard bared her teeth but made no aggressive move. “I will simplify the picture for all of you.

“Over the next several weeks, we will restore order in every corner of our world. And by order, I mean both the natural and carefully legislated order. We will reestablish the biological hierarchy on which my ancestor found the Chancellory. Johannes Ericsson’s Elevation Philosophy proved Chancellor supremacy among all humanity. The armies who fought in his name annihilated the dangerous and destructive institutions of deity worship and ensured the lesser amalgams of the human race would be forever dependent upon the Chancellory.

“We have lost sight of our heritage. We have become confused and distracted since the fall of Hiebimini. We have questioned our right to the pinnacle of Elevation. We have begun to view Solomons as potential shared citizens of Earth.”

She turned her deadly glare toward Sam. “We have been mesmerized by cancerous notions of equality among subsets of humans. We have been strangled by the wiles of new faces and new voices. We have accepted the dilution of our genetic purity as some of us consort with Solomons for carnal pleasure. Even so much as to defile oneself with a proto-African.” She pointed at Sam. “And you allow her into the heart of the Unification Guard? Into the chambers of power that steer the Chancellory? She brought Bouchet to this world. She remains his agent and his beacon, even as she shares a bed with an indigo not worthy even of the Solomon designation.

“If the Chancellory moves forward to recapture its legacy, this one must not.”

Sam did not hear the shouting. She did not hear her allies’ passionate defenses or the rising tide of support for Celia. She felt Lucinda’s hand on her shoulder, but the world was spinning. She had not felt this light or helpless in two years, not since a laser pulse tore through her in Philadelphia Redux. Not since she looked at Michael in dismay, saw a hole open in his chest, then fall away into darkness.

A few seconds before she fainted, Sam thought of Michael.

Run. Please run.

23

Pynn compound

 

M ICHAEL DID NOT WANT TO RUN, but he had no choice. He agreed with Rikard’s assessment that if he remained in the compound, mounting a defense behind the security wall, he endangered Sam, the twins, and the staff.

“Yes,” Rikard said, “they’ll kill everyone who comes between you and them.”

“I’m not that damn important.”

“If you’re dead, no. They’ll burn your body and pretend you never existed. For the ones who do remember, you’ll symbolize the futility of standing against the Chancellory.”

“And what are they gonna reckon if we go into hiding?”

“Who said we’re going to hide?”

Michael and Rikard moved with furious speed. Michael called in three Solomon staffers who supported equity and explained what he had to do. Since none had taken an active role in the movement’s covert operations, they might not be targeted, but neither he nor Rikard could be sure. Their choice was simple: Stay behind but remain vigilant or flee in Rikard’s uplift. Two vowed to look after the children and Sam when she returned. But a cook named Helene Yaffetz insisted she was tired of hiding in the shadows. A slender, demur woman with chocolate hair and hazel eyes, Helene said she had no fear of what might come next.

“If we lose now, we won’t have another chance. They’ll fight us even as every last Chancellor dies off.”

The three made haste for the compound’s small-arms closet, created after the Solomon treaty was altered to allow Solomons to possess weapons. The law stipulated ownership must come at the discretion of Chancellor clients, but growing paranoia among Chancellory factions in the wake of SkyTower sent purchases to unprecedented levels.

Laser pistols. Thump guns. Pulse guns. Pulse rifles. UG-issue Mark 8 blast rifles. Michael knew how to use them all. He killed with two, including the Ingmar Pulse Gun, Model 16. He learned how to modify the gene-stamp to slip around peacekeeper protocols on the Mark 8.

They worked in silence swiping most of the armory, dropping weapons, flash peg cartridges, and pulse initiator pills into cases. The unreality of the moment, that Michael was running for his life again – this time as fugitive, soldier, or both – felt unexpectedly exhilarating. Though the terror was palpable and Sam still incommunicado, Michael couldn’t help but think all roads led to this day.

He’d found love in a relationship forbidden by law. He’d been mortally wounded more than once. He’d spent two years building up his body and learning to kill. All this, while his former best friend was murdering people by the thousands. He should have known it would end this way. The steady diet of jubriska and poltash weed kept him from seeing the truth.

“I really thought I could marry her one day and we’d live happily ever after,” he told Rikard as they reached the massive central foyer.

“It’s not over yet, Michael. There are more of us than the hardliners realize. An army. And we do have a plan. You’ll be back.”

“In how many pieces?”

Merton Bayfield, Sam’s trusted estate manager, greeted them at the foyer.

“I wish there was another way,” Michael told the Chancellor, one of the few he ever