Sam embraced the moment. She’d been here before. In the first hour after Jamie Sheridan’s countdown to death began in Albion, she and her mother prepared their house for a final defense against the enemy their father saw coming. She took out an assassin that night. Daddy praised her efforts when they reached the lake house.
“You were born for this, Pumpkin,” Walt told her. “The Guard will be your playground.”
Though the Guard was now as much an enemy as the man once named Jamie, she remembered all her training and embraced the cold, ruthless heart her father demanded.
The Solomon quarters represented an entire wing of the house, two levels of suites, most of which were empty since Finnegan vanished overseas. The suites opened into common areas, including a recreational room and an indoor pool. Just before Sam passed the first suites and came upon the pool, she knew she was too late. She heard the smashing of glass and crouched into a defensive position. She heard two distinct sets of footprints rounding the pool, one from each end.
Her body armor would resist laser pulses and flash pegs, but she had no idea what she was facing. If Celia Marsche funded them, wouldn’t they be as well-armored?
Sam was sick of analyzing. She didn’t have time for this crap. Michael needed her.
Sam moved toward the enemy. She amplified the DR29’s sensory scanners and took stock. To her left, the merc was within ten feet. To her right, twelve feet. They were slowing. She understood. They’d coordinate now, use hand signals, then round the corner at the same instant. All she had to do was anticipate.
She remembered Daddy’s training in the Louisiana bayou.
“Don’t wait until you see their eyes. You’ll be dead,” he told her. “Anticipate their commitment. Anticipate the instant when their hearts are settled on their maneuver and their heels are no longer planted. You will have a fraction of a second, but that is when you fire. Before they realize they’ve made a fatal error.”
The instant came, and Sam pressed the trigger button. She dispensed a volley of flash pegs to her left, shaving the corner. A shape emerged to her right, another blast rifle unleashing its complement of pegs. She felt the blunt pangs as their projectiles did no damage. The enemy never had a chance.
Both intruders crumpled, their bodies shredded. Neither wore armor. Sam moved quickly, standing over the bodies to make sure of her work. She recognized their royal blue uniforms and white crest, shaped like the scales of justice.
They weren’t mercenaries or ex-peacekeepers. They were DayWatch: Constables who investigated crime scenes, managed crowd control, and processed civil disputes. Their authority came from the regional Sanctums.
Sam tapped her amp. “Capt. Doltrice, I’ve taken out the threats on the northwest quad. What is your status?”
“Good job, Ms. Pynn. To our surprise, this operation has taken a far easier turn than expected. Our attackers do not know military combat. Just got my first look up close. They appear to be …”
“DayWatch. This is insane. Even if Marsche could make this happen, why would they go along? This mission was suicide.”
“Which is why DayWatch wouldn’t have pulled the trigger unless they believed they had superior forces.”
A thought roiled her. “Or, if they thought they were arresting a few Chancellor civilians trying to stop the Guard invasion.”
The picture made more sense. Marsche had eyes everywhere. Why wouldn’t she have latched on to Sam’s efforts? Her message was clear at the GPM: Celia would deal harshly with opposition.
“If she knows what we’re attempting,” Sam continued, “she’ll move her other people in place, especially at the GPM.” She feared for Finnegan. Had he received David’s warning? “Capt. Doltrice, round up the team and report to the Scramjet. We’re moving to the next phase right away. There’s no more time.”
“Roger that, Ms. Pynn. And the mess we’ve made here?”
“I don’t wanna think about that shitstorm now. Reassemble and prepare to leave.”
“Destination?”
“Give me five minutes.”
She raced back to David’s office. He was in mid-conference with two other chiefs of staff for allied Presidiums.
“Our status?”
“It’s coming together. They’ll be organized by first light.”
“That’s not good enough. Marsche just hit us with DayWatch. She knows we’re fighting back. Tell them all, it’s time to move. We have to take down Grandover before the Guard attacks.”
He looked pale. “DayWatch?”
“And Finnegan?”
“No response.”
“David, you and the staff need to leave, too. We don’t want to be here when DayWatch comes looking for their people.”
He vowed to fly out with the skeleton crew in an uplift. She wished him luck and raced outside, past four DayWatch bodies. Most of her strike team was assembling, others close behind. She dreaded this next bit: Telling Doltrice her plan for the GPM.
But as good luck stopped her short of killing an innocent man earlier, a different twist stopped Sam shy of the Scramjet.
Michael was streaming to her. She saw his coordinates and a message. “I love you, babe.”
Harrisboro Prefecture. He was in trouble. He was surrounded.
“Ms. Pynn,” Capt. Doltrice said. “What’s it going to be?”
Her heart told her what to do, but her mind spoke louder.
56
Marsche compound
C ELIA MARSCHE RECEIVED SKETCHY reports, the last coming from her people in Boston. The team assigned to arrest and detain Samantha Pynn went silent. Word of “unexpected, high-powered resistance” made its way out before the team went dark. DayWatch was en route, but Celia did not need their rudimentary investigative skills to know what happened. To know what she overlooked. To know how gullible she was to think Pynn and her allies would fall in line. She streamed a warning to Supreme Admiral Bastian Grandover and opened the drawer of her vanity.
The case was long, slim, and red. She flipped open the lid and admired the six-inch blade, ornate and serrated. Her favorite since the beginning of her ascendancy. She did some of her best work with this blade.
In close, without warning, driven upward at a precise target.
This would provide a new experience. She’d never taken this step before breakfast. And never inside the house.
Celia slipped the knife into a stealth pouch beneath her right sleeve and contemplated her strategy. The tone, she determined, should be soft and reassuring. Hopeful as a new day rises. Appreciative of his company at the edge of history. Perhaps she might look into his dying eyes and tell him the truth before his last, treacherous breath. But first, dismiss Ester. The handmaid couldn’t be anyway near. She’d never seen anything like this before.
Celia returned to the kitchen ninety minutes after she last saw him. And there Finnegan was still, but this time through the glass door, on the balcony, absorbing the sunrise as he vowed. A beautiful vision to be one’s last.
Did he deserve such a graceful end? Shouldn’t traitors suffer the indignity of animals led to slaughter?
That’s when she noticed he opened a holocube. He wasn’t streaming live, or she’d know it. Her security protocols would have alerted her at once. Perhaps he was capturing the moment, as if he knew he’d never see another Scandinavian sunrise.
Ester wasn’t here, although breakfast had been set out. Everything made sense to Celia. Over the balcony, down the ridge, and into the deep forest. Not the first, not the last.
She reached the glass doors and stopped, horrified.
No. He didn’t.
She almost walked past it. Celia turned and spied the breakfast table. At the center, all by itself, she saw the egg. The binary communicator. Her link to Brother James.
No. He couldn’t have.
She retraced her steps. Out of bed, down to the gallery, where James demanded she stop Sam Pynn from entering the battle. When she returned, Finnegan was exactly wher
e she left him …
But awake. You bastard.
Celia did not reach for the egg. She wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of her desperation. Yet when she turned back to the glass doors, their eyes met. He leaned against the balcony railing, hands beckoning her to join him.
You don’t know what you’ve done, Finnegan Moss.
But as Celia stepped out onto the balcony, her live-in guest proved her wrong. He expanded the cube to deliver a visual that tempted her to lunge and stab in one dramatic blow. The vid offered no sound.
Rather, she stood in the gallery, in her robe, talking to a floating, geodesic jewel.
“When I was growing up,” Finnegan said, “I admired you from afar. You made such a splash in the world’s most powerful family. But after a few years killing indigos, I lost interest in the Chancellor mystique. I wondered what drove our collective madness. And then, when I studied you, Celia, and heard all the rumors about your ascendancy, I latched upon the obvious answer.
“We’ve been done in by centuries of brontinium extract in our blood. Our price for glory is literal insanity. It is a strange psychosis that leads us to murder and steal from those not of our caste. To kill each other by hiring assassins not of our caste. And to consort with a monster whose goal is to destroy our caste.
“What do you think, Celia? Does any of this sound plausible?”
He leaned against the railing, as if he were in the midst of an ordinary chat. Finnegan posed neither a satisfied smile nor angry demeanor. In fact, he took a pipe out of a shirt pocket, tapped it against the railing, and consumed a puff of poltash.
“Oh, you sweet nothing,” she said. “Others have tried to push back against me. They’re all dead. Why do you expect to be different, Finnegan?”
“I’m not sure I won’t be the next. But I will be the last.”
“That vid proves nothing.”
“Actually, I’d say it’s damning. And that communicator,” he nodded toward the kitchen, “is unprecedented tech. Celia, let’s come to it. You do not have a single friend on this planet. No one will come to your aid on this matter. You overplayed this time.”
She laughed. These fools always think they’ve outsmarted me.
“I don’t need friends. Never wanted them, truth be told. Emotional detriments. The Admiralty is mine, Finnegan. The cities will be mine when the Guard secures them. As for brontinium extract, I’ll soon have an alternative that will extend the Chancellors another three thousand years. I won’t need friends, only supplicants.”
Finnegan took another puff. A soft morning breeze rose up the mountainside and kicked his smoke into her face.
“Then you won’t mind if I transmit this face-to-face with James Bouchet, the deadliest terrorist in three thousand years?”
“By all means. It can’t hurt me.”
She saw the hesitation in his eyes, as if he wasn’t expecting such a conciliatory response. But it was the instant of indecision she needed. Celia approached him as if to console him in defeat. Rather, she released the knife from its secret pouch and lunged off her back feet, the blade swinging upward to its target.
Did he forget they were both Guard-trained, former masters of kwin-sho? Did he not expect her to flex with such deadly aplomb?
Celia didn’t care if he transmitted the vid before she fell upon him. Before her blade steered its way into his abdomen, just below the ribs. Was a man so profoundly clever as equally naïve?
He dropped the pipe and gasped, reaching for his chest. All she needed was to turn the blade twice, allowing the serration to do its work. That’s when she detected another presence behind her.
“Please, Miss, you mustn’t do this.”
Ester leveled a small laser pistol at Celia’s head.
Of course. That’s how he made it work. He needed her help.
It was always there, a longshot possibly Ester and the Chernik Solomons did care about the equity movement after all and were seeking to leverage their access to the highest bidder. Ester was, Celia conceded, a brilliant tactician. Quiet, patient, meticulous.
“Oh, dearest Ester. Everything wasn’t enough for you.”
Celia made it happen in one continuous move. She yanked the blade from Finnegan’s torso and slung with precision toward her handmaid. Ester wasn’t former military, did not have combat training, did not understand the art of kwin-sho.
The blade cut true into Ester’s neck. The blood flowed, the pistol dropped, and Ester fell to her knees.
“All my life, you were there,” Celia said as she grabbed the pistol. “You took good care of me. I will not forget.”
She pressed the trigger and burned a hole through Ester’s skull.
“It’s too late,” Finnegan said, blood coursing between his lips. “You can’t save Grandover, and you can’t save yourself.”
“Not that you will ever know.”
She discharged three laser blasts into his chest. Finnegan crumpled, his shirt on fire and his eyes lost to forever.
“Martyrs,” Celia said. “Will they never understand?”
She set down the pistol and prepared to clean up her mess.
57
Harrisboro Prefecture
M ICHAEL WAVED HANS BRICKER BACK into the room. He rose, ignoring the pain in his back, and reached for his jacket. He coupled it and retrieved both his Ingmar Pulse Gun and standard-issue laser pistol. If Marsche’s assassins had indeed found them, they were going to be fighting in tight quarters. Though Michael appreciated the firepower of his blast rifle, he felt more comfortable with a smaller, lighter weapon in each hand. Rikard and Matthias taught him how to kill with these. Precision would be critical.
He used hand signals to position his comrades. Hans joined him at the door – they would go first, Maya watching their rear. They heard the lift slide shut, but no footsteps approached. Michael doubted they were so lucky.
On three, he signaled. One. Two.
Three.
They raced into the corridor and formed a gauntlet of weapons on a hair trigger.
Nothing.
Their enemy might have disappeared into any of several choices: The bodyroom where Michael received triage of sorts; four offices beyond the lift; or the Transport Oversight Courtroom, behind double-doors directly across from the lift.
“We should have been safe up here,” Hans whispered. “We’re past the final sanitation shift.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. Might be nothing. A wrong stop?”
A shadow slunk into view at the far end of the corridor, well past the lift, and vanished beyond the corner. Michael and Hans shared a solemn glare; they both saw it.
“Where does that go?” Michael asked.
“Judges’ suites.”
“OK, then. I’ll take point. Cover my flank. You got this, Maya?”
She grinned. “Always.”
Hans shook his head. “Michael, you shouldn’t be …”
“I got the better armor. Every time some asshole shoots me, I ask what else they got. Just cover me, will you?”
Michael advanced on pillowed feet, unsure whether aggression was the proper strategy. Why not set up a defensive perimeter and prepare for an assault? He didn’t know how many of the enemy were roaming this level, or if this assassin intended to be a diversion and separate the Solomons before the main force arrived. Either way, he needed to find out. Hiding guaranteed one thing: More hiding. Kill them until you can’t, Rikard told him.
The corridor opened into a reception area. Large, cushioned sofas formed a hemisphere behind a translucent welcome desk. Beyond them, panel windows offered a spectacular panorama of Harrisboro, looking north. The city sparkled, showing no evidence of new violence. To either flank, a large arch opened into each suite, above it the official seal of the regional Sanctum.
He followed the shadow’s path to his left. The night-lights emanating from inside the suite glowed in a faint blue hue, as if a rising fog. If the person inside was an assassin, what was his game? Why
all alone? Perhaps Hans was wrong about the sanitation shift. Was Michael hunting a fellow Solomon simply trying to do his job?
He led them toward the arch where the shadow appeared en route. Both weapons aimed, he whirled about as he entered, covering all angles. The suite descended into a well, at the center of which an oval light table was surrounded by swivels. Beyond, a long office that resembled an open space connecting a living room with a kitchen stood in full view, surrounded by glass. Inside, odd geometry cast shadows above the faint blue night-lights, and the glass reflected the twinkles from the nearest high-rise. To either side of the office, a narrow corridor extended to a destination unclear.
They traversed the well. As they emerged before the office, Michael nodded Maya to his left flank, Hans to his right. Only this close did he realize the glass had pixelated away, leaving a direct entry into the office.
That’s when Michael saw it. A flicker from beyond a dividing wall. Not a reflection from outside. Hans saw it, too, and motioned that he would take the far corridor along the office, perhaps to trap whoever was inside. Hans knew the layout, but Maya did not, so Michael motioned her close. They’d move in together.
Michael took position at the divider. One. Two.
Three.
He swung around and found his target.
A woman, long blonde hair, royal blue uniform, back turned, weapon pouched. She stood before a conical holocube, which rose from a wide, grand personal desk – perhaps belonging to a judge. Streams of data occupied her attention.
She’s not here for us.
Michael refused to relax.
“Don’t move,” he said. “You go for your weapon, and I’ll kill you.”
She obeyed, extending her arms and turning slowly.
“What are you doing here?” He asked.
“I have a right to be here,” she said, pointing to her crest. Michael didn’t recognize it at first in the muted light, but Maya did.
“DayWatch. Sweetie, you might have access, but you don’t have a right to be here. You’re not a judge.”
The Impossible Future: Complete set Page 94
