Einstein Must Die! (Fate of Nations Book 1) (48 page)
Read Einstein Must Die! (Fate of Nations Book 1) Online
Authors: Chris Kohout
Sunshine warmed her alloy skin and played across the thick steel emblem George had welded to her front quarter panel: a lightning bolt, with the words “1st ARMORED CAVALRY.”
Then she drove forward, leaving the lab and stepping out into the new day. She slowly worked her way down the winding road to the water’s edge and the docks, where her ship waited for her. Tesla and her mother walked behind her.
She cautiously maneuvered herself up a ramp and onto the waiting oil tanker, turning herself carefully to face forward on the giant platform.
She powered down the thirty-foot-tall treads. A ground crew scrambled around her, securing thick chains to her for extra stability. She was ready.
Savannah ran up the ramp and stood in front of her daughter. She felt hot tears pooling in her eyes, then spilling down her cheeks. She wiped at them absently, looking up at the mammoth tank.
“Be safe, honey,” she said. “Please.”
Madelaine had her own fears about her future. But she pushed them aside for later.
“I will, Mom. Don’t worry.”
Tesla joined Savannah at the ship’s bow and looked up at Madelaine.
“You will do great things,” he said. “And we will celebrate each one.”
“Thanks, Nikola,” she said, knowing that if she were in her human body, she’d be bawling her eyes out. “I’ll make you proud, both of you.”
Savannah reached out and stroked the steel alloy tread. “We already are, my love.”
“Hey, Nikola!” someone yelled. Tesla turned and saw George racing toward him, a bottle of champagne in one hand and the other pulling Sophia behind him. He held the bottle high. “For a proper christening!”
“Of course, how could we forget such a thing?” said Tesla, smiling.
George and Sophia joined them, and he handed Savannah the bottle. She took it and looked up at Madelaine’s forward armor, forty feet above their heads.
“Do the honors?” she asked, handing the bottle to Tesla.
“Delighted,” he said. He took the bottle by the neck and stepped back several feet, looking up at his target.
“Bon voyage, Madelaine,” he said, rearing back and throwing the champagne high into the air. It twirled as it flew through the air, clearing the high armored panel, before gravity took hold and brought it back down. The glass bottle struck the armor solidly, and it shattered in a foaming explosion, splashing champagne across her alloy skin.
The group filed back down the gangway and stood together on the dock. Dock workers released mooring lines, and her transport ship was free.
A horn blared twice. The oil tanker eased its engines forward and pulled away from the dock.
As it cleared the area, the ship increased speed, bound for a foreign shore. As the ship grew smaller in the horizon, George and Sophia slipped away, back to the lab.
Savannah stood unmoving, her eyes fixed on the distant horizon, watching the ship carry her daughter away. Tesla waited with her. In minutes the ship was a distant speck, a dark dot where the sky met the water.
And then it was gone.
They stood there together in silence for several more minutes before Savannah turned to Tesla. She smiled bravely, but her chest hurt from an invisible wound.
“Shall we get to work, Nikola?”
He nodded. The sooner they finished the radio tower, the sooner they’d be able to speak to Madelaine again.
He walked beside her, back up the winding road to their lab.
“A capital idea,” Tesla said.
Author’s Note
Hi, and thank you for reading. This is my first novel, and it’s my hope that you had a great time with it. I love writing, and as I keep growing my skills, I also love getting your feedback. What worked for you? What didn’t? Please feel free to email me:
Being an indie author is a pretty amazing thing. Not many jobs let you create something, put it out into the world, and then have people get in touch, sharing their feelings with you. It’s something I’m grateful for every day.
Amazon gives new authors like myself an incredible opportunity to connect with readers. But before they will throw their marketing muscle behind a title, they want to see it prove itself. The way Amazon decides a book is relevant or not is through the reviews it gets, so if you have time to write one, I would
really
appreciate it. I’ll definitely read it, and hopefully it will help others decide if they would enjoy the book.
Thanks again for reading!
- Chris
About The Author
Chris Kohout lives in Seattle, WA but was born and raised in southern Georgia. After burning out on computer programming, he thought writing would be a good way to work the other side of the brain.
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If you liked Einstein Must Die…
You may enjoy my latest novel,
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Welcome to the near future, where law enforcement has evolved. Attorneys are judge, jury and executioner in one. Police officers are free to investigate, interrogate and apprehend at will. Working together in pairs, they are called Lawgivers.
Like all attorneys, Sarah Jordan delivers justice with a katana blade. Moderate offenses result in the telltale scar of a Lawgiver sword through the palm. More serious crimes end with a blade through the heart.
When a young girl stumbles into their office after witnessing her father’s murder, Sarah and her cop partner Robert seek the murderer but soon find they’re on the trail of a vast conspiracy revolving around a new drug that vaccinates against all genetic diseases. Going up against its creator, Integrated Life Sciences, would be the case of a lifetime. But against ILS and its shadowy backers, even the law offers little protection.
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