Sam wasn’t sure what she expected, but nothing like this. She didn’t know how to unpack it. The words sounded nothing like James: Scripted, arrogant, messianic. The last time he communicated with her, Sam saw shreds of humanity, of the boy she grew up with. Why go to the trouble of hijacking a ship, killing most of the crew and passengers, and sending children to deliver his message? Why not try to break into her stream’s admin stack like last time? Realign the Collectorate? Major Lancaster was listening from another room. Was he as terrified as she?
“Rosalyn,” she asked, “What did Brother James look like?”
“He was enormous.”
“The biggest man I’ve ever seen,” Brayllen added. “Eight feet tall. His muscles made peacekeepers seem puny.”
“What about his face?”
“He has a beard,” the boy said. “It’s gold, like his hair. But his eyes … there’s something wrong with them.”
Rosalyn calmed her brother, who was trembling again.
“His eyes have a glow.” She pointed to the corners of her own. “A red glow. When he burned that crewman, I saw the color change. It was like a sunrise. Maybe he really is a god.”
Sam had no idea what to say. Perhaps Rosalyn was right. She pushed herself to her feet and felt lightheaded.
“Would you two be good with telling the major the other details? Those are more important for the Guard.”
“Yes, but …” Rosalyn started before Brayllen cut her off.
“But what about our parents? You’ll contact Brother James now? Tell him we kept our promise?”
Her heart sank. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where he is. Nobody does. Did he give you instructions?”
The twins fell silent.
Sam’s heart told her the truth: There were no hostages. James probably killed their parents as soon as they sent the crippled liner on its way. After all, they were Chancellors. What did he care?
“I’m sure we’ll get a message to him,” she told the siblings, not meaning a word.
You will stand with me, Samantha.
Her heart ached for the man she loved.
4
The Entilles Club
Boston Prefecture
M ICHAEL’S HEART ALSO ACHED, but from fear of running out of material before finishing his mission. As he made his way across the seating tiers, eyes on his target, Michael interacted with his audience using the same gusto of a circastream performance. He paced himself; any aggressive maneuver toward Finnegan Moss might draw suspicion.
He improvised. Among the many standup videos he used to watch on YouTube, Michael remembered the antics of Don Rickles, a first-Earth comic who insulted everyone but drew love and laughter from the audience. He decided to interact one-on-one.
Michael entertained jokes about what he called the “two-note Chancellor fashion sense: Sari and sorry.” He approached a woman whose evening dress – a gold and red-laced sari bejeweled with stars – seemed a fine punch line.
“Excuse me, sweet thing. Are you from Boston?”
She looked stunned, glancing at those around her with a broad smirk. “Why yes. I am.”
“You don’t seem too sure. The questions only get harder. Try to keep up.” Ripples of polite laughter followed. “No, seriously. I gotta say, that’s a beautiful dress. Does it have a name?”
The woman threw up her hands in mock ignorance as the spotlight focused upon her. “A name?”
“Yeah, a name. Like I Give Up or Why Bother. But seriously, hun, I kid.” He paused for effect as the laughter rose. “Chancellor women are the most beautifully dressed in the Collectorate, and they ain’t gonna change a thing. They been shopping at the same store for nearabout eight hundred years. Am I right, people?”
To his continuing surprise, the women soaked up the joke in delirium, as if his insult was bringing to light their open secret of rigid conformity. He was sure Sam – who fell in love with saris after her rehabilitation – would not have appreciated the dig.
He moved along, finding something to hit – clothes, hairstyle, Newcastle (jokes about the nearest metropolis were low-hanging fruit inside the prefecture). At last, in minute twenty-five of his act, Michael reached Finnegan Moss. He needed to act fast.
Moss sat stoic amid the laughter, his stern jawline a relic of his early years. Decades of post-Guard genetic recursion therapy did little to disguise the sadistic warrior they trained him in childhood to become. Yet Michael saw a hint of the reason the equity movement wanted to protect him.
“He bends the arrow,” Rikard said. “He wants to stand apart from the hardliners. He sends them a sign whenever he’s in public.”
“So, he’s with us?” Michael asked.
“No. I doubt he knows who we are. Or cares. We need to change that dynamic. If he survives the night, we have a new angle.”
Moss highlighted his jelled jet-black hair with a streak of silver below his left temple. The same decorative dash dotted the edge of his left brow. Men of his stature considered the style an insult to the accepted norm.
Michael knew Moss would be a hard sell, but he needed the Chancellor to play along. The delivery of the bleeder couldn’t be forced, so he took a chance.
“Now here’s a guy who knows how to walk on the wild side,” he said, pointing to Moss as the spotlight loomed over them. “I figure either you got a mad streak of cool, or you’re really a hundred years old and you missed a spot.”
The chuckles were polite – from the women nearby. Moss sat rigid, as if daring Michael to probe further. He did.
“No, seriously. I’m all in, dude. I mean, look at me. I tie my hair in knots. So, when I see a Chancellor trying something new, holy shit on a stick! I reckon I’m not the only dumbass on the planet. Am I right?”
The punchline hit. This time, he heard the laughter of men. Moss forced a half-smile. Michael went in for the kill. He extended his right fist, the backs of his fingers exposed, his signature move.
“Fist bump, dude. Let me have it.” Moss hesitated. “I got nowhere else to be. Whatdya say? Bump it! Bump it!”
Moss’s features softened. He complied. The impact lasted but a second. Long enough – Michael hoped.
“You’re a beautiful man. Don’t let these other assholes tell you different. We’ll hook up later. Party for the cool kids at your place.”
He moved along, his act wrapping a couple minutes later.
The applause was steady, business-like. He never expected a raucous sendoff, unlike his performances at less elite venues.
The stage lowered. Michael jumped off before it completed its descent. He grabbed the flask, took more than a small swig, and raced past the other performers – including the opera singer who had offered motivation.
He followed the predesignated route, hoping his extended act did not throw off the timing. Once Moss left for a private landing, everyone else needed to be in position.
Aside from a few of the club’s private guards – stacked chests meant former peacekeepers for sure – the sublevel was clear of all but Solomon staff. At the weapons check kiosk, just inside the rear staff entry, Michael tapped his amp and fingered his licensure data into a new holocube. He aligned his eyes against an inset retinal probe and waited for confirmation. A pleasant voice accompanied a green flash above the probe.
“Stack data verified. Cooper.Michael.Invidia.3-9-64.Onyx. Public armory license, established SD152, SY5355. Solomon exemption status. Item: Ingmar Pulse Gun, Model 16. Maintain your weapon with prudence and have a safe night.”
A dispensary opened, and Michael’s sidearm ejected. He tucked it inside his jacket and ventured toward the kitchen, though he was not authorized to have a weapon beyond the check kiosk.
After a few twists and turns, he entered the kitchen. Entilles was one of the few entertainment venues offering fresh-prepared food rather than automated kiosks using nutritional algorithms. Michael set his eyes on the sous chef, one of two inside informants.
Rikard said this woman was
their key operative. She spent eight years at Entilles and knew every inch of the facility, often catering directly to the private landings. The bearers of food and drink moved through the club without suspicion. Though Chancellors found many creative ways to assassinate each other during the war, they did not bother with poisoning because simple holocube analytics scanned every consumable for lethal chemicals or compounds.
The sous chef oversaw meal prep, presentation, and deliveries. She also monitored credit transfer holocubes, a vital link to securing each host’s name and party guests. Per Chancellor tradition, the host paid only fifty percent the cost of food or facility, unless all present belonged to the same descendancy. Club policy required the host to register guests before receiving service.
When the chef saw Michael, she turned to a colleague and pointed to food being prepared on the line then excused herself. She walked past Michael as if he weren’t there and disappeared into a back room. Michael played it cool, got a few sniffs of the food, offered a cook the thumbs-up, then followed his informant.
When he entered the club’s hydroponics farm, the chef motioned him past three rows of tomatoes, greens, and eggplants. She threw open a holographic window and punched up the reservations for Finnegan Moss.
“You have thirty seconds,” she told him. “This had best work.”
“Tell me about it.”
Michael had yet to master every stream amp function, often stumbling on matters of data transfer protocols. He had struggled enough with first-Earth algebra; memorizing basic stream algorithms eclipsed such fundamental math. Matthias – Rikard’s husband – spent hours tutoring Michael on the transfer technique.
Only Chancellors or fully educated Solomons could launch a holocube and manipulate a data swipe by hand. Thus, Michael relied on a young child’s strategy.
He tapped his amp and internalized the stream patterns, silently counting off code inside the device itself. His mind’s eye showed him the evolving stack, which was searching for the closest data window. He grew tense with each passing second and felt the jubriska clouding his vision. Twice, he backtracked, as if clearing the combination on a padlock.
Snatch.
He saw the reservations and private guest profiles drop into his stack, a stunning breech of Chancellor security.
“We’re good?” The chef asked. When Michael nodded, she said, “Me first. Wait fifteen seconds, turn right on your way out. Do not go back through the kitchen. Understood?”
“Yeah. We’re cool.”
He followed instructions and ducked out to a private corridor.
Michael reached for his flask and double-blinked, triggering his amp’s internal comm nodes.
“Tell me you’re seeing this shit,” he whispered.
Inside his mind, Rikard whispered back, like a ghost infiltrating Michael’s admin stack. “We have it. Amazing work, Michael. We’re running down the profiles now. Hang on.”
“What about the bleeder?”
“We’re in him, albeit with limited audio. I don’t think the transference was entire, but good enough for our needs. He doesn’t seem interested in drifting opera. He and his guests are leaving the theater. Guess nothing could top your routine.”
“Yeah, right. I reckon I oughta call it a career. Ain’t fun telling jokes to these assholes anymore.”
Silence. A delay. A long swig. The comfort of jubriska.
Then finally, Rikard’s voice. “We have a problem. Moss is on his way to his reserved landing, but the three women on his guest profiles do not match the ones with him.”
“What? Why would he fake that?”
“Two possibilities. He doesn’t want to leave a trail tying him to these women, so he bank-swept his admin’s data reporter with false identities, intending to pay the entire sum himself. Or …”
His pause made Michael nervous. “Or what?”
“Or one … maybe all three … of these women violated his admin stack. Only a few Chancellors, mostly military, can do that and slide away clean.”
“Can’t be that hard.” Michael rolled his eyes. “James did it to Sam months after he left the solar system.”
“What’s that, you say?”
Michael realized his error at once. He and Sam long ago agreed to keep James’s haunting message under wraps, believing it would sow distrust of them among Chancellors and Solomons alike. They agreed only to share with Patricia Wylehan, who was Sam’s human firewall.
“Never mind,” Michael told Rikard. “I ain’t thinking right. Just tell me what we’re gonna do.”
“One of those women is going to kill Moss. I’ll reposition our other asset. Leander, Matthias, and I are ready to move and …”
Maybe it was the jubriska, or perhaps he was becoming experienced enough to recognize a brilliant con. Either way, Michael’s stomach roiled as he saw a third possibility.
“Fuck. It can’t be them. It’s too lazy, Rikard. Everybody saw them, and he’s not meeting with another Presidium. They can’t do this without committing suicide. Fuck. I should have seen it.”
“Seen what, Michael?”
“The only other one who could’ve changed the data. The goddamn sous chef. Our informant, Rikard. She’s playing both sides.”
“No. Alise has been with the movement for three years. She’s been waiting for a chance to contribute. She’d never …”
“She would if a damn Chancellor came along and offered a pot of gold. You said she’s been in that kitchen for eight years, and she’s number two fiddle. Get my speed, Rikard?”
The comm went silent, but Michael reacted. Every instinct said they walked into a trap.
He grabbed his pulse gun and armed it.
As if on cue, the corridor was no longer private. Shadows appeared from both ends.
He thought of the woman he loved more than life and fired.
5
Vasily Intersystem Transfer Station
E VERY DAY FOR ALMOST TWO YEARS, Sam tortured herself with the unwinnable game of “what-if.” She could have stopped Jamie Sheridan before he became a monster. The history-turning moment bounced through her memory on autoplay. He stood in her lake house bedroom, pointing the pistol he’d stolen off her. He spoke of desperate plans to run away, taking her hostage into the deep woods. He planted the gun in her chest and said, “You crawl out that window, or swear to God, I’ll kill you.” He was inconsolable, raging, reckless. All she had to do was swipe the gun – a lightning-quick move she was trained to handle. Instead, she weakened, gave in to love and mercy. And they ran.
Had she followed instinct, they might have died together in the lake house attack soon thereafter. Or perhaps Jamie would have survived in captivity but been reborn compliant. Either way, a quarter million people would still live. The more she thought of it, the more she hurt. Had she stopped Jamie, Michael would have died from his wounds, alone and forgotten. Sam couldn’t imagine a life without Michael’s love.
“You’re doing it again,” Patricia said, snapping Sam out of her self-inflicted misery. “It’s not your fault. Any of it.”
They sat across from each other at a portside dining table, a spectacular view of the docking quays one level below, extending outward like equidistant spokes into open space. Sam’s dinner sat uneaten, but her second glass of wine neared extinction.
“Thank you for the weekly reminder, Pat, but it doesn’t change the history.” She grabbed a fork and took pokes at the fluffy brown entrée. “What is this supposed to be, again?”
“A house specialty. Braised gen-lamb smothered in a smashed vegetable roux. Tourists lay over just to try this dish.”
She tried a small helping, but nothing tasted good at the moment. Her rage remained unchanged an hour after her interview with the surviving children of the Kilmurry and hearing James’s message. She dropped the fork and stared at the stars.
“I know what you’re going to say, Pat. I need to eat. I’m drinking too much on an empty stomach.”
“No, I wasn’t
planning to be your mother. But I was going to suggest you stop pouting. You’re at your weakest in these moods.”
Sam finished the wine and looked for the mobile kiosk to arrive with a refill. The rotating restaurant’s promenade hummed with the small talk of hundreds of guests from across the Collectorate.
“Pat, did I ever tell you I used to dream about Jamie? I got it into my head that somehow, we’d be together one time before his fifteen years ran out. I thought of every scenario, from trickery to flat-out begging. It was insane. Daddy taught me how to kill a man in cold blood, but I never figured out how to get close to a boy. Right before we crossed the fold, Jamie kissed me. I knew we’d never be together after that.” The kiosk arrived with fresh wine. “I should have seen it, Pat. For everyone’s sake, I should have had the courage to kill him.”
Pat rolled her eyes. “But the moment passed, and you were a coward. Is that what you want me to confirm, Sam? Or should we continue this merry stroll down your avenue of regret? We have to focus on the here and now. Eat your dinner and clear your mind. Maj. Lancaster should be here shortly. If those children told him anything useful, he’ll want to square it with James’s message.”
“None of this squares, Pat. There’s no logic to what he’s doing. Why so elaborate? Kill all those innocent people, stage the Kilmurry’s return, then draw us out here. For what? To threaten me?”
Pat frowned. “But was it a threat? To be honest, Sam, it sounded more like a prediction. A promise, even. He said you will come to him willingly. The level of certainty in his words bothers me most. Look, Sam. I only met James at the IDF during our firefight. I briefly shared a trench with him, and I saw a fearless, calculating creature. But he was also untrained. Since then, he’s had two years to prepare, and he’s been on the offensive. I’d bet my credit wealth he has a long-term plan. He knows where you fit.”
“The only place I fit is with Michael. Earth is our home, and nothing will drag me out there to stand beside James.” Defiant, she shoved her fork through the entrée and swallowed quickly chewed bites. “If he thinks he can fuck with my head, he’s …”
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 65
