Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga)

by Matthew Taylor

  He awoke with a start, sliding sideways in his seat. His restraint tightened to keep him from spilling into the center aisle. The server standing near the pilot’s cabin lifted off his feet, flew head-first into the sidewall, and then collapsed in a heap.

  “SECURE YOUR POSTION.” The crackling of the intercom could barely conceal the panic in the pilot’s voice.

  The ship banked hard the other direction and began a rapid descent. Alias floated in his seat, again held in place by his seatbelt. The unconscious server rolled up towards the luggage rack. Alias’ heart jumped at the sound of a tremendous BANG! accompanied by a flash of white light. The ship rocked, banked, and rocked again.

  “BRACE FOR IMPACT.”

  Alias pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to squeeze away the sounds and sights in the jump-ship before everything went black. But the memories weren’t quite finished with him.

  He had come-to in the shattered belly of the downed airship, face down in a pool of blood, the server’s headless torso a few feet away. He tried to lift himself from the floor, but his head cried out in pain, glowing stars shrouded his vision, and things went dark again.

  Alias felt a gentle squeeze on his arm, and whisper in his ear, snapping back from the nightmare.

  “You OK, Dear?” Nessa Lancaster stood close to him, wrapping a supporting arm on his waist.

  “Ye-yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, not even convincing himself.

  “Can you make it to the tarmac, or should we take you to the church and bring your family there. …Maybe we should take you back inside.”

  “No, no. I can make it.” He patted her hand in appreciation. “Thank you.” He noticed the looks of concern on the faces of his entourage. Nessa, her daughter Victoria, and her son Paul. His new armed escorts, Ben Holland, Felipe Arrivillaga, and Billy Washington. A tinge of embarrassment crept into his mind, and he willed himself to focus and start again down the path to the township’s landing pad.

  Alias’ mother, father, and sister had already disembarked from their ship. To Alias’ surprise, George Anderson was also in the company of visitors.

  His mother Camila quick-stepped to him, throwing her arms around him, before surveying his body for injuries to her baby boy. She didn’t have to look much, and she delicately touched the bandage wrapped around his head.

  His sister Jasmine was fast behind his mother, offering a kiss on the cheek and a rub on the back. His father followed, looking happier to see him than Alias expected.

  “We came as soon as we could,” Minister Goodwell assured him, patting him paternally on the shoulder.

  “We’re so glad you are OK,” Camila beamed, still scanning him.

  Alias avoided the eager stare of Ben Holland on the periphery of the group, thinking it best to continue ignoring him for the time being. There was no such restraint between Victoria and Nanner, who picked her up like a doll and kissed her passionately, to the embarrassment of his nurse—Victoria’s mother—Nessa.

  Ben finally broke off his gaze and turned his attention to Billy and Felipe.

  Alias then turned to introductions. Emily greeted them with her characteristic sunniness—a quality that made her attractive to pretty much everyone, including himself. Nessa became uncharacteristically demure at seeing his family, a curious look of recognition on her face. She dismissed herself quickly and made her way over to greet Ben, Felipe, and Billy with a familiarity that struck Alias as odd.

  Although Emily’s charms momentarily distracted his mother from fawning over him, Alias could sense that his family—and especially George Anderson—were eager to dispense with formalities and talk in a more private setting.

  This is more than a get-well visit, he surmised. Another shit-show of drama, no doubt. Just what I need. Guess I’ll hold off on the news of Minister Joshua being in the township. Prob’ly best anyway, though I’ll have to let Jasmine know.

  The PetrolChurch’s new church in Troy Township was a short walk from the tarmac, though the summer heat made the trek feel much longer. Alias felt guilty dismissing the coterie of friends he had made since his rescue in the desert forest two days before, but they took it well. Victoria had sleuthed away with Nanner before anyone knew they were gone. Ben followed Nessa back to the infirmary, where she had more rounds left on her shift. Paul and Emily said their goodbyes, Emily offering Alias a peck on the cheek that made his mother beam. Alias then asked Billy and Felipe to stand guard in the foyer of the church before leaning in to his sister to ask why everyone seemed so agitated.

  “There’s a lot going on,” Jasmine whispered. People are worried.”

  “More than usual?” he quipped. But Jasmine showed no interest in his sarcasm, instead shuffling past him to close the heavy double doors behind them. Anderson waved a small scanner around the room to detect hidden monitors before gesturing an all-clear. Alias swallowed an impulse of worry, reassuring himself that it was all just melodrama. As everyone found a seat, Camila gestured for him to come sit next to her. He obliged, happy to see her, though he was already impatient for the meeting to begin—and end.

  “OK,” Alias began, knowing he was already out of turn. “Anyone wanna tell me what’s got you all tied in knots—apart from my brush with death?” Though his tone came out exactly as he intended, the pregnant pause that followed let him know his approach was exactly wrong. Camila gave him a painful pinch on his uninjured arm.

  “I’ll start, smart guy.” Anderson had a unique way of grumbling with defiance. “Things are tense everywhere we go, and we think it’s gonna get worse.”

  Alias rolled his eyes.

  “Listen here, Boy,” Anderson snapped. “You were crapping your diapers when the last water war finished killin’ its thousands. And the purges after that. You weren’t even born when the last real plague did its thing—and the bloodletting that followed that.”

  Alias offered George Anderson the blankest, most disinterested look he could muster.

  Anderson moderated, and then started again. “The masses are on the move again. The Chinese are flowing into Russia. The Indians and the Caliphaties to Europe. Disease is already spreading with the displaced, and rebellions are breaking out. Millions’re hitting the borders again—people starving for work, or sanctuary, or clean water, or soil. Millions more’re gonna follow. To cities that are already heat-stroked and verging on a nervous breakdown. The MACs are bursting.”

  “We’re seeing more craziness everywhere we operate,” Minister Goodwell enjoined. “New ultra-nationalists. Supremacists from every ethnic group in every province, and in every city and township.”

  Alias rubbed his fingers across the sweat in his palms as he struggled to dismiss their words as alarmism and reconcile them with the news fragments floating in his mind. Another spring without floods—or rain of any kind. Drought, famine, and fighting in the middle east and subcontinent. Pandemics in MesoAmerica. Riots and pogroms in Europe and Eurasia. But none of the fragments had risen above the din of troubles that had filled the airwaves day after day, for as long as he could remember. None of them stood out from Uncle Joshua’s long narratives of the downward spiral since the High Times. Rashid hadn’t stitched them together this way, and Alias tried make a point of not worrying about things that Rashid didn’t worry about.

  We’re prob’ly just seeing more because we’re traveling more.

  Alias’ fingers were slick with sweat when he realized that all eyes were on him, waiting for his reaction, and he got the uncomfortable feeling that he was holding court.

  “Uhhhh—OK,” he uttered, realizing he had no idea how to reckon with the implications of these bleak fragments.

  Minister Goodwell cut in. “Colonel Shikai said the Chief Regent wants the Senators to start mobilizing their militias.” Alias thought Shikai was too eager by half—and that made him prone to storytelling. But Shikai had taken to confiding in his father, who had become the homesick soldier’s spiritual guide, of sorts, and somehow that made Shikai’s account count f
or more.

  “But they don’t want to pay,” Alias proposed.

  Anderson nodded.

  “And they’re afraid the Chief Regent will use the crisis to grab more power from the senators,” Camila expounded. “They don’t all agree that a new crisis is coming, and some of the ones who do believe it are deeply suspicious of the Chief Regent.”

  “They can’t agree on how to respond to things,” Anderson added.

  Keep them from coming in the first place? That’s more peace-keeping, relief missions, and foreign interventions for the Expeditionary Force.

  Keep them from getting in? New walls, more mines in the waterways, more patrols, and more fights in the ports and borders.

  Deal with the millions who get in anyway? More MACs camps and relief centers.

  Keep the citizenry from revolting? More surveillance and more crackdowns. …More secret police.

  Pacify them with drugs and religion?

  Silence fell over the group for a moment.

  “We’ve always known the Consortium wanted us for a release valve,” Alias finally answered.

  Though it always struck me as a long-term approach. Not well suited to short term crises.

  “They’re using us for more than that,” Jasmine interjected solemnly.

  Alias leaned forward intently since his sister rarely joined in this kind of conversation. “What do you mean?”

  “Indulgences for one thing,” Minister Goodwell interjected. “People are coming to the churches to confess all kinds of crimes. Most are spontaneous sins—arguments getting out of hand. A punch-up, a stabbing, a bludgeoning.”

  “There is nothing new in that,” Alias asserted. “The heat, anxiety, over-crowding, crime—it’s always pushed nerves to the edge. We’ve always dealt with this.”

  “It’s getting worse,” Anderson insisted.

  “Because we see more of it? We’re in ten times more places now than we were before.”

  “And more sins that are more . . . premeditated,” Minister Goodwell rejoined. “Last month a gang attacked a migrant camp. Not robbed it. Attacked it. Last week a family migrant was burned to death in their sleep when thugs lit their shack on fire. The fire spread across the whole shanty, killing dozens more.”

  Horrible, but again, not new, Alias thought to himself.

  “The man who came to confess the arson was a Consortium worker. Said he was told to do it because the family was agitating in the shanties.” Minister Goodwell rubbed his eyes in frustration. “He wanted forgiveness. His bosses said we were the only church authorized to hear confessions from Consortium workers.”

  That’s not so good, Alias admitted to himself.

  “I’ve also been asked for forgiveness in advance. One Consortium security officer came in before his mission to find—and punish—a peasant accused of sabotaging Consortium equipment. Another mercenary showed up asking for penance on his way to kidnap a petrol smuggler.”

  Minister Goodwell explained his worry that word was getting out about the Church’s links to the Consortium, and he increasingly feared that some parishioners and lower company officials were confessing to him in the hope of currying favor with Company bosses.

  “Father Good’ll,” Minister Goodwell recounted dramatically, “please bless m’boy Jaimie. He died from a bullet when the chinks attacked the shale rigs. We ask for God’s blessing t'night when we bring His fiery wrath to them slant-eyed blood suckers."

  God help us if gets out that we’re working for the Ellies. We’ll be the target of every disgruntled urchin in the Commonwealth.

  The more immediately dangerous, to Alias’ way of thinking, were his father’s stories of the parishioners who knew nothing of the PetrolChurch arrangement, and who came to confess attacks on the Consortium itself, the oligarchy, or the Ellies. Workers who felt cheated, been put out of work, or denied jobs in the first place. Relatives of workers, who’d been maimed by the Consortium’s machines or chemicals. Some just wanting retribution for the decades of defiling the earth—and they had no idea the Goodwells were one of the Ellies’ tentacles of control.

  “Father, in ma’heart them fuckers deserve it,” one had told Alias’s father. “They gots ever’thin, and we’z got nuffin’. I ain’t normally the type for violence. The Devil musta’ took holda me.

  Or the methylhol took hold, Alias reckoned.

  “Now I’m scared,” Minister Goodwell narrated. “Scared o’ what they’ll do if they find me. My family’ll be even worse off. I got kids. Who’ll feed ‘em if they get me? …And what’ll God do t’me for lettin’ Saten take me over. Fergive me Father.”

  If the Ellies ever find out what we know . . .

  Alias was usually too preoccupied at the Gang of Seven meetings to take in more than bits and pieces of the discussions about these kinds of incidents, but he knew his father had never brought up the attacks against Consortium and Ellie assets. For the rest, the Gang of Seven’s responses had been predictable.

  “That fire in the shanties cost us thousands to put out,” Calden had decried, “and it killed dozens of our workers—some of them were even skilled. I certainly hope you prescribed pharmas or re-tuners to the man.”

  Another day, Senator Templeton had offered, “I think we can agree that the retribution for—Jaime, was it?—is forgivable, given the circumstances.”

  But the exchange that had caught Alias’ attention began with Senator Baumgarten. “As I think about it, perhaps we should consider monitoring the confessionals.”

  Just when Alias thought his father was going to leap over the table at Baumgarten, Colonel Shikai intervened. “Thank you for bringing these concerns to our attention, Minister Goodwell. I believe spiritual redemption should stay between Minister Goodwell, his parishioners, and God. The police can handle law enforcement.”

  “Fine, fine,” Baumgarten abdicated with an annoyed sigh. “But I must insist that church Ministers report any criminal acts to us. Some sins may need to be exempted from confidentiality. Heaven knows some crimes may be serious and should be reported to the authorities.”

  Burning a shanty not being serious? Alias recalled thinking.

  The Gang of Seven members all nodded in agreement, while Minister Goodwell fumed. “Tend to your flock as you will,” Baumgarten continued to Minister Goodwell, using his typical patronizing tone. “Offer them whatever spiritual penance you deem appropriate. But worldly justice must be delivered through the secular authorities.”

  “And it goes without saying,” the sycophantic Gilbert Calden added, “that such reports come first—and only—to this group.” More nodding by the Ellies.

  Rashid had been conspicuously silent in the conversation, Alias now recalled.

  “What would the Gang of Seven say if he knew how many of their own people were coming in and spilling their guts?” Anderson snorted derisively.

  “Huh?” Alias queried. He knew the occasional Ellie had joined the ministry’s congregations—mostly from the lesser families—and in small numbers. And clearly Shikai was speaking out of school to his father. But he hadn’t heard that Ellies and Consortium officials were arriving at the churches in search of spiritual comfort and counsel from transgressions against other Ellies.

  “Embezzlement. Fraud. Blackmail. Extortion. Misconduct.” Anderson replied. Then he leaned forward and whispered, “Conspiracy.”

  We are a conspiracy, for Pete’s sake! Alias thought.

  “Do we report the confession of Governor Mosino’s nephew,” Anderson Pressed, “who’s skimming gas to sell on the black market?”

  Wait, what? That would be a cluster-fuck we’d never survive, Alias pined. He could see from his father’s face that there was more. Much more.

  “Assassination plots,” Anderson continued. “Schemes to destabilize rival families, other provinces, problem politicians.”

  What do we do with the confessions of criminals among the kleptocracy?

  “And the repression,” Jasmine inserted, again catching Al
ias off guard. “Poisoning the water with toxics.” She paused, choked up, trying to compose herself. She looked directly at Alias “I’ve seen it. I saw Calden meeting some mercs in the basement of the Oklahoma City church. I heard ‘em talking ‘bout riots in Dallas.” Camila learned over and rubbed her back. “They loaded crates into the mercs’ trucks, and I followed him to the aqueduct.” Alias wanted to throw up at the thought of Jasmine tailing mercenaries, but he stayed quiet. “They dumped canisters of poison into the water.”

  “And don’t forget the smuggling,” Anderson insisted.

  Alias’ head was starting to spin.

  “Alias, are you not paying attention to anything up there with the Ellies?” Alias didn’t like Anderson’s chiding tone, but he took the barb. “They’re running drugs, money, and weapons through the church. At least two of the churches are weapons caches, including this one.”

  Alias glanced around the room, as if to see some evidence.

  “The basement, idiot,” Anderson mocked, grimly. “Never thought to look?”

  “Why would the Consortium need to stockpile weapons?” Alias queried, not really wanting to know the answer. “It’s not like they face restrictions—”

  “Right,” Minister Goodwell confirmed.

  The Ellies’ tactics everyone knew—or suspected—of using now flowed openly in the confessionals, as guilt-ridden or ostracized Ellies found their way unwittingly to the PetrolChurch.

  “How can we offer them forgiveness?” Jasmine asked.

  “If their penance is sincere,” Minister Goodwell stated calmly, trying to console her, “we must offer them comfort.”

  “But how can they be penitent for things they still intend to do? Even if it’s under duress?”

  “Who would we report it to, anyway,” Alias cautioned, trying to return to practicalities. “Any word of it beyond these walls would mean scandals—scandals they’d have to silence at the source. Let’s not forget who we’re really dealing with, and how few choices we’ve got.”

  What choices do we have? he asked himself. They all paused to think.

  “I could raise this with Rashid,” he volunteered. “He’d prob’ly have the same concerns we do, and maybe has some contingencies in mind.”