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

must your mind be working several moves ahead – and independent of your DR29 – but it must command every limb to be an adjunct weapon. Think of it like a dance. The choreography dictates which limb will lead at a given moment. But in battle, a superior Guardsman allows them all to lead at once.”

“Wait, what?” Michael said. “You’d be like some damn puppet on a string, flailing every which way.”

Nilsson nodded to Rachel, who flew upon Michael with lightning efficiency. She wrapped herself around him, twisting his left arm into a grotesque backward contortion. He wanted to yell, but Michael learned after his first week of beatings to absorb the agony.

“A simple move,” Rachel said, “and I’ll snap off your arm at the shoulder, newb. Requires surprisingly little strength.”

Nilsson expanded the point. “Chancellors born to brontinium extract have the ability to instantly reconfigure our bones and connective tissue for close combat. We demonstrate this ability through kwin-sho. Like the indigos, you lack this augmentation. But you do not lack the ability to command your limbs to act in concert with each other or independently. And you have been given enough Guard synthetics to enhance this skillset. Ready to learn?”

“Yeah,” Michael groaned. “Can I have my fucking arm back now?”

In the days to come, Michael did things with his body he never imagined possible and began holding his own against soldiers who were bred for this life. He never beat them one-on-one – they were simply too big, too fast – but fifty percent of his fights closed to a draw. The pain that once tore through him like shards of broken glass now resonated as throbbing aches that diminished after the synthetics soothed and repaired him.

He reported to medpod daily and increased his dosage. He felt it inside, saw it outside. He was growing, thickening, broadening. By the time he landed at Ericsson Station as a member of the team, Michael was as massive as the others, indistinguishable but for his height. Not even synthetics could give him the extra six inches to look his new brothers and sisters directly in the eye.

His last act before leaving Praxis was to shave off his dreadlocks. He went for a buzzcut then realized it wasn’t enough.

“Why all of it?” Maya Fontaine asked when she saw him bald.

“I’m not that man anymore. The Guard showed me a new way.”

“I see,” she said. Maya, his comrade during the Solomon uprising, was his closest confidant in the outward trip to Tamarind. She asked, “And what kind of man are you now?”

“The one I have to be.”

“Which is?”

Michael didn’t hesitate. “A man who can kill people and not give two shits about it.”

“Ah.” Maya looked away with a pursed grin. “An improvement?”

“I know what you’re doing, Maya. Don’t even try to judge me.”

“I would never …”

“I was there when you stabbed a man through the heart. You’ve killed more than a few in your time.”

“True. But I usually give at least … oh, I don’t know … at least one shit about it afterward.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I will one of these days. But not until after I blow James’s head off.”

*

Michael wasn’t thinking about that day as he danced through the air on his way toward a Lebanese cedar, the enemy firing at him from rifters and from the ground. His body danced in many directions. The blast gun on his right arm fired intensive volleys at the approaching rifters while the Ingmar in his left hand targeted Mongols down below. His legs maintained a long stride, holding the angle of descent. Vaguely cognizant of the DR29’s targeting lock on the cedar, Michael scrolled his eyes across the breadth of the new battle, analyzing the tactical positions of his comrades and the rifter formations. He plotted the strategy he’d use after landing in the tree. Thirty meters to his left, Rachel was dancing almost parallel. He linked to her stream and made note of her landing position as well.

He took a hit in the back but held stride. The Guard proprietary body armor was a thick fabric designed to disperse energy fire through its absorption matrix. Projectile weapons similar to bullets or non-magnetized flash pegs might penetrate but not punch through the fabric. Bruises remained, a minor nuisance. The crimson fabric could not absorb limitless blows, and indigo-improvised rocket-propelled grenades had decimated peacekeepers from time to time. RPGs, however, were not Michael’s concern today.

He wouldn’t hold out long in the tree. Eventually, he would have to confront the enemy on the ground. Close combat introduced a key vulnerability: the Lin’taava sword. The Mongols’ retractable blade extended to three feet. Penetrating at an upward trajectory, it could tear through the fabric. The Mongols knew it, as did most indigos. Getting close enough to use them was always the problem. They needed to stay alive long enough to draw the Guard in and somehow avoid flash pegs as they attacked.

Michael studied the Guard’s history of guerilla battles. They revealed a pattern: More than ninety percent of all peacekeeper combat casualties occurred on difficult terrain where airpower and energy slews were not engaged. The Guard bragged about its physical prowess and overwhelming rate of victory, but it brushed over a simple reality: In close quarters, these soldiers were human. Which is why Michael carried two Lin’taava swords on body pouches, taken from Mongols he killed in earlier incursions.

When he landed firm on the targeted branch, itself as thick as the trunk of the pines that dotted his old stomping grounds in Alabama, Michael reset. He crouched and fired at a rifter turning toward him. These mobile transporters were designed for two passengers with a hold for cargo, but the enemy converted them for combat and built vertical braces for each fighter. All three unloaded on Michael.

As laser blasts raced past