Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga)

by Matthew Taylor

  Predictably, Nanner took pause at her gesture, looking askance at her outstretched hand, if only for a moment while he did the math. It wasn’t a gesture he could spurn. Nanner looked around the room quickly to see who might be watching. Then he shook her hand lightly—a distant, overly respectful shake—before letting go and taking a conspicuous step back.

  She had interacted with Nanner and Billy when she visited Alias in the hospital in Troy Township months earlier. But the church was bigger now. More important. And her status wasn’t the same as it had been.

  Still, Jasmine could immediately tell by his uncomfortable smirk that this small gesture, as uncomfortable as it was, put her in his good graces.

  Such a little sign of respect, she always thought, with such enormous impact—if done discreetly.

  She had no intention of spending the next several days alone, wandering the Baumgarten Estate by herself. The lesser-Ellies in the guest house were a tiresome, pretentious lot. With Emily gone almost all the time she hoped that time with Nanner and Billy might at least be interesting—and safe.

  “Nanner,” she said quietly, “what have you heard from Ben and Alias. …and Vic?” Nanner glanced at her, unsure how to respond, especially with a throng of Baumgarten functionaries passing. He offered only a wink, enough to tide her over. She wasn’t inclined to push the conversation, despite her desire for news and her need for social interaction, so the rest of the walk to the comms room was awkward and quiet.

  They came to the main lobby outside the comms room. It was bustling with militia officers and soldiers, corporate security, government officials, and small-time bureaucrats. All were racing this way and that on one assignment or another. It had been like this for days, but she still found the pace—the sense of urgency—unsettling. Each person, she figured, was busily on their way to save lives, or take them.

  They arrived at the double door to the comms room, where a tall, muscular woman with brownish-red hair waited stiffly. She was adorned in an officer’s uniform of the Mid-Atlantic Provincial Militia. Though Jasmine was never sure how insignia’s denoted rank, the fleet of medals and pins on the woman’s chest messaged authority—and probably some measure of mercilessness. The woman stood conspicuously upright, formal and intimidating. Her presentation had the desired effect, as a shudder rolled from the small of Jasmine’s back to the base of her neck, and all her senses came alive.

  “Lieutenant Colonel Patty McDermott,” the officer said, extending her gloved hand.

  Jasmine accepted the handshake, did the customary half-curtsey, and forced herself to make eye contact and smile. Lieutenant Colonel Patty McDermott, she said to herself, recording it to memory. She suspected that her knack for remembering people—a trait she shared with her father—might be useful later.

  People love being remembered.

  “Nice to meet you, Colonel McDermott,” she replied.

  “Lieutenant Colonel,” McDermott replied. Jasmine knew it was the kind of error that lieutenant colonels loved to correct.

  “Yes, of course,” Jasmine answered with a weak smile.

  “Your comms booth is right this way, Ma’am,” McDermott motioned, her shoulders slightly less rigid. “I’m afraid the call has been limited to ten minutes,” she offered apologetically. “Not my doing, but I will be the one you see terminating the call when the time expires.”

  “I understand,” Jasmine answered with a sympathetic tone. “I appreciate you letting me use your comms, especially when you’re all working so hard on important matters.”

  Though God knows how many people you’ll kill over the next couple weeks to earn your next lapel pin.

  McDermott keyed in her access code and presented herself for her face and iris scans. The huge double door to the comms room bleeped, clicked, hissed, and swung open. She gestured for Jasmine to proceed inside, while holding up a hand to stop Nanner. Jasmine noticed the awkward situation and turned back to assuage Nanner.

  “I’ll only be a few minutes,” she whispered, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ll see what I can find out about the others.” She watched Nanner disappear as the doors again bleeped, hissed, and clicked shut.

  She then found herself on the mezzanine of a dark and cavernous room lined with glass cubicles and aglow with screens of all sizes. Silhouettes moved through the room’s narrow corridors at the same feverish pace as the ones outside. Small groups were huddled around banks of V-plats in command pods with signs suspended from the ceiling.

  [Evacuation]

  [Search and Rescue]

  [Relief]

  [Security]

  Servants came and went, adding and replacing food on the large buffet table at the center of the room.

  They’re eating here. Probably sleeping here, too.

  She craned her neck to get a glimpse of the screens in the pods, though she had seen much of it already over the past several days.

  The Search and Rescue pod panned through images of watery destruction in the coastal regions and waterways. Neighborhoods and shanties disintegrating into torrents of brown, frothy water. Skyscraper’s windows had been plucked and tossed onto the enfeebled streets below, squatter residents being blown into freefall. Blurry video feeds from aerial drones shaking as they blew in the wind. An elevated train tube had snapped like a twig and plunged into the rushing water below.

  The Relief pod focused on regions farther south, where lines of displaced people stretched for miles. They trudged through water and wreckage. Relief camps and MACs were stuffed to overflowing. Misery and desperation on every face.

  The Security pod trained its sights on the southern areas of the province, where the storm had passed, but battles now raged as security forces fought to restore order. Columns of smoke billowed over the swaths of destruction. Soldiers scrambled over debris and urban ruins. Aerial drones and gunships fired and dropped gas bombs. All these miles away from the safety of the comms room. Small clusters of helmeted soldiers reclined in Immersive Command Spheres, their consoles illuminating them a ghostly green. With deft movements of handles and buttons, they rotated and spun smoothly this way and that.

  “Drone controllers,” the officer said, following Jasmine’s stare.

  Jasmine already knew that, and she wasn’t sure if McDermott was patronizing her or taking a sincere interest in educating her. She chose to believe the latter.

  There was something new in the comms room today, though. An unmarked pod with a small group of officials staring at a smaller panel of screens. It’s ICSs were motionless, unmanned, and the vibe seemed like one of perplexity instead of frenzy. She was in turn transfixed by them and strained to make out the incongruous images on their screens. Armored vehicles firing ferociously in chaparral-covered hillsides, bathed in bright sunshine. Soldiers shooting in towns with craggy-mountainous backdrops. Explosions in browned desert cities.

  “Miss Goodwell,” McDermott whispered to Jasmine, “we should keep moving.”

  Jasmine didn’t move, engrossed by the incongruous images.

  “Miss Goodwell,” McDermott repeated, more firmly. “Please follow me if you want to make your comms window. I must insist.”

  Jasmine snapped-to and followed her guide, fighting the lure of the chaos and ruin unfolding on the screens and wincing at her social faux pas. The Ellies—including the military officer corps—looked down on the lower castes’ propensity for distraction, so she restored as dignified a presence as she could muster.

  Jasmine was both relieved and excited to finally enter the comms booth. Operetta was already on and waiting her arrival, and after a moment of instruction on comms security rules. Operetta melted into the walls of a clear holograph of the vestry in the Park City cathedral. Her mother and father soon appeared, sitting on the couch, as if they were a just a few feet away.

  “Hi Mom and Dad!” she gushed.

  “Hello Dear,” her mother said, feigning a smile. “We’re so glad you’re safe and sound.”

  “Safe and sou
nd,” Jasmine confirmed. “Looking forward to coming home, though.” Her father fidgeted in his chair and took a deep breath.

  Uh oh, she thought. What now?

  “Honeybee, it might take longer than we expected to get you home,” Minister Goodwell said reluctantly.

  “Yeah, I know, but the storm is already moving—”

  “It’s more than that, mi flora,” Camila interjected solemnly.

  “There’s more going on than the storm,” her father added, his tone grave. “We’re not sure what, yet. But we want you to stay there for a while longer. Until we can get to you.”

  Get to me? The words made Jasmine’s heart thump. More time stranded here, with no real company? Will the Baumgartens even let me stay? The images on the screens came back to her, but she knew better than to test the limits of whomever was censoring their conversation.

  “Honey,” her father continued in his most serious of tones, “you need to stay there. I’m concerned that your dust-flu is acting up.”

  Dust flu?

  “Find Patrick,” he pushed. “Ask him to make an appointment at the infirmary. Assure him it’s not contagious, but you need lots of rest, so your spells don’t come back.”

  The penny dropped.

  “O—O.K., Dad. I’ll do that right away.”

  “When Alias gets back,” her father continued, “we’ll make arrangements to come see you.”

  Alias. She had forgotten him and hadn’t connected his mission to the desert images on the screens.

  She has become so unsettled that she didn’t know what else to say, and the rest of the conversation was a blur. Before she knew it, McDermott was standing at the door, rotating her wrist so she’d wrap it up.

  “Mom, Dad, I’ve gotta go now,” Jasmine said weakly, already playing the part. “I’ll call you again as soon as—”

  But the hologram was gone, and she was back in the drab, empty comms pod. Jasmine’s shoulders slumped as she looked at McDermott, who was now holding out her hand and gesturing for her to get up from the chair and vacate the room. Jasmine complied grudgingly.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” she whispered to McDermott, figuring the stiff lieutenant colonel had been monitoring her call. She expected no response, but she had to try. McDermott put her hand on Jasmine’s forearm and picked up their pace toward the exit.

  “Take my advice,” she whispered at the door of the comms room. “Do exactly what your father said. You aren’t feeling well. You can’t travel. While you’re here, keep your eyes down, your ears open, and your mouth shut.” McDermott then presented her face to the door panel, lay her finger on its pad, prompting the door to bleep, click, and hiss open again. McDermott straightened her posture and pulled her uniform taught.

  “Straight to the guest house, please,” she said more loudly and formally to Nanner. “You’re autocar is waiting.”

  Nanner simply raised his chin to acknowledge, as if his compliance were more of a favor than obedience. He turned to Jasmine, smiled pleasantly, and gestured for her to accompany him.

  Chapter 37: Outbreak, Southern Rocky Mountain Territory

  (Minister Alias Goodwell Sr.)

  Minister Alias Goodwell Sr. pulled himself from his bedroom window and walked downstairs to the kitchen at the rear of the Silver King Cathedral. With a deep sigh, a clear head, and a heart filled with the mountain’s ghosts, he was pleased to have his daughter safely in place at the Baumgartens’ estate and his son on his way home. At the time he went to bed the night before, Camila was finalizing travel arrangements for the entire family to move east, one of the greenest areas left in the country. Anxiety over whatever was about to happen lurked just below his consciousness, but he was prepared as he could be. The need for haste in preparing everything to keep his family safe had given him an energy he hadn’t felt since the PetrolChurch deal had started to sour.

  Downstairs, he found his wife Camila at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee—uncharacteristically fixated on the V-plat. Though he thought it odd to enter a room without so much as a look from her, he nevertheless bee-lined to the coffeemaker and poured himself a cup. Real coffee was one of the most satisfying benefits of his deal with PetrolChurch Ellies.

  Still nothing from Camila. He turned to see what was so completely captivating her attention.

  “What in the name of the Lord—” he muttered. “Where’s this happening?”

  “Everywhere,” Camila replied flatly, unable to turn from the images. Minister Goodwell shot an incredulous look at her, but she didn’t even notice. “The Ministry of Information hasn’t issued a statement yet, and private channels on the media stream don’t know what’s going on.”

  “This doesn’t look like the usual,” Minister Goodwell added.

  “It’s mostly in the southwest, but it’s spreading.”

  Minister Goodwell sat down slowly next to his wife as her words sank in. In a moment, he too was transfixed by the images.

  Los Angeles. Old Dallas. Houston. Denver. Las Vegas. Boise, Regina, Bismarck, Minneapolis. Border shanties, rural towns, and industrial compounds. Migrant Assistance Centers. Immigrant Processing Camps. All along the Green Line separating the arable lands from the exhausted or contaminated regions.

  As the images of bedlam rolled in from more places than he could track, he began to recognize some familiar features in the backgrounds.

  “Did you see that, Cam? Was that the church in Butte?”

  “I missed it, but I saw the church in Sioux Falls a few minutes ago.”

  A painful lump of dread crept into his throat. All of his senses opened, and the din of grumbling engines crept slowly into his consciousness. He stood up from the table, abandoning his treasured coffee, and hurried back upstairs for a better view from his bedroom windows.

  He pulled open the blinds, shielded his eyes from the sun’s glare, and squinted down the valley toward the Nautilus and the International Energy Consortium’s compound. He didn’t have to look far. A caravan of vehicles with roof-mounted machine guns and rocket tubes snaked down Park Avenue toward the old Highway 224. Two massive bull-shark jump-jets blew trails of charcoal exhaust as they thundered overhead, machine-gun-toting soldiers crammed into their bellies. Three smaller tiger-shark assault ships and two recon-attack dragon-fires followed, flanked by flocks of aerial drones with missiles nestled under their fin-like wings.

  Minister Goodwell stood dumbfounded at seeing the Consortium’s logo concealed by a thin layer of tan paint on their underbellies.

  He squinted again to make out who was in the jump-jets, but he couldn’t identify their uniforms or insignia. None of them were Domestic Security Service, territorial militia, or Consortium security.

  He raced back downstairs and pulled on his face-plat.

  “Operetta,” he began urgently, summoning the OmniComms virtual interface avatar.

  “Welcome to OmniComms, Minister Goodwell,” she answered cheerfully.

  “Operetta: Create conference. Encrypted comms. Participants: All Ministers. Mark: CRITICAL. Send invitation.”

  He sat back down, nearly out of breath, to wait for his ministers around the Commonwealth to appear. He shifted impatiently in his chair as some of their faces took shape. But after several minutes, only a fraction of them had joined, and he noticed that most hadn’t even viewed his message.

  “Thanks to you all for joining,” he started anyway. “Let’s begin.”

  He took their reports in turn. Some had logged-in from church panic rooms. Others from their homes, where they had shut themselves in. All of them looked disheveled and frenzied. Their situations were precarious, and they were afraid.

  I’ve got to galvanize them.

  “We need a better understanding of what’s happening,” he insisted, hoping an air of authority would instill calm. “And we need to keep our people safe. Our churches will be sanctuaries. I need you all to get to your churches and send for your parishioners who are strong and able to defend it. Once the chu
rches are secure, organize small groups to locate and gather other parishioners under threat.”

  He could see the resolve return to some of their faces, though not all were equally inspired.

  “We’ll conference at o-eight-hundred and again at sixteen-hundred every day until this—whatever it is—is under control. It’s time for courage. The Lord will protect—”

  The V-plat flickered. The faces of his clergy pixelated, quivered, and disintegrated. His screen went transparent.

  Comms’re down?

  Throughout his life, comms-loss was as common as energy blackouts, but that was life in the Wilds. Since the Nautilus Accord, he had ridden on the Consortium’s networks. Like the clean water in their church’s new tanks, comms were now so reliable that he had come to forget how unusual stability really was. Losing it was unthinkable, and it sent a bolt of fear though him.

  He quickstepped back to the kitchen to rejoin Camila.

  “Cam, are the travel plans all set?” he asked. But his words couldn’t penetrate her unbending focus on the V-plat. He reached over and gently put two fingers on her chin and steered her to face him. “Camila,” he repeated as calmly as he could, “are we ready to travel as soon as Junior returns?”

  All the color immediately drained from Camila’s face. “Oh my God,” she panicked. “Alias is still on his way back. How did I not think of him?” she chided herself. “And Jasmine. She’s on the other side of the country!”

  “OK. It’s OK,” he soothed, his normal calmness returning. “Jasmine is safe with the Baumgartens. Comms are down, but I’ll send a repeater to Thomas to put us in touch with her as soon as he can. How long ago did Junior leave, do you know?” He tried to veil his worry.