Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga)

by Matthew Taylor

  “I’m not sure,” she replied, ashamed. “I just got a short video-message from him saying he’d be home today, but he had a stopover that might delay him until tomorrow.”

  “OK. I’ll contact Rashid to see if they can reach him, or track him.”

  Something tells me they are too busy, though, he fretted silently.

  “I’m scared,” Camila added.

  “Me too,” he answered, cupping her face and planting a gentle kiss on her hairline. He knew she wouldn’t need too much consoling. She was a tough and resourceful woman from an urchin family in the badlands. She’d soon regain her composure and launch her own dauntless campaign to make sure her kids were safe. She’d fly to the Regent’s Palace in Winnipeg with a machete and cut down every soldier and guard in her path, if that’s what it took.

  Nevertheless, he made his way back to his office to make his calls so Camila wouldn’t see or hear the results, but comms were still gone. News feeds were gone. Only a simple emergency broadcast from the government occupied their V-plats.

  [By order of the Chief Regent, all citizens are to stay inside until further notice]

  Comms or no, the pixelated images of carnage and destruction stuck with him. Misty-gray smoke wafting around the panicked news correspondents. Giant columns of black smoke spiraling skyward in the background. Buildings shattered into heaps of debris. Aerial feeds showing mile after mile of devastation. Mounds of corpses, bloodied or charred. Burning tents, train cars, and autocars.

  Goodwell hadn’t seen anything like it since the last of the Water Wars in his childhood, when the Commonwealth Expeds and Domestic Security Service together marched on Old Texas and the cities of the southwest, bombing, shooting, and burning everything in its path. He pressed his closed eyes, trying to expunge the images and their implications for his family.

  He wiped a tear from his eye, cleared his throat, and swallowed his emotions before returning to the kitchen. He prayed to find Camila already back to her indomitable self, working through whatever plan she would assuredly devise.

  Thank God, he thought as he entered to find her on the short-wave radio they had used during their traveling-ministry days. He’d forgotten about the old thing, which had been stowed away in an old bus, rotting away outside in the rear of church. She was busy at work relaying messages to and from friends across the region.

  Her own water brigade, up and running in ten minutes, he marveled.

  She saw him and held up a finger, signaling him not to interrupt. Whatever worry he had harbored of Camila coming unglued vanished. The strength and resolve of the family was back to its natural center.

  He spent the next few hours sitting beside the V-plat in the living room, then pacing around the residence, waiting for updates from the Ministry of Information or the MediaStream. He clutched his face-plat, hoping its lights would flash. Then it occurred to him. The burner-comms-stick that Rashid had given him was still in his robe pocket upstairs. He was supposed to throw it away—somewhere untraceable—and he doubted it would work, but he was desperate.

  He bounded upstairs again and rummaged through his closet, patting every robe until he found the device. He had no time to admonish himself for his stupidity in keeping it. Instead he pressed its one button, set it down on a nearby table, and waited.

  When Rashid answered, Goodwell almost wished he hadn’t. The small man, a bastion of stoicism, looked completely unnerved and wild eyed.

  “Minister Goodwell,” he said, exasperated. “Why are you calling on this line? Why do you still even have the device?”

  The minister was taken aback, but only for a split second.

  “More importantly,” Minister Goodwell retorted, “what in heaven’s name is going on? You said nothing was going to happen until we got Alias back. And you didn’t say anything about such mayhem breaking out all over the place. People are dying!”

  Rashid pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

  “Few things go to plan in life,” he admitted. There was a long pause, and Goodwell could tell Rashid wasn’t going to say anything more.

  You smug little fuck. Minister Goodwell couldn’t believe his eyes and ears.

  He wished he could leap through the comms-stick and choke the small man. His neck and face had turned hot when he realized he was holding his breath. He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly in an effort to relieve the pressure.

  “Right,” the minister sighed, resigned. “So how do we get Alias back, and how do I get my family to the Mid-Atlantic?”

  “I will do everything I can to find Alias and get him back. But the way things are unfolding, you should stay put.”

  No sooner had Minister Goodwell tempered his rage than a tidal wave of powerlessness crashed over him.

  Dear God, he anguished. Please help me.

  After trading so much to the scheming, duplicitous Ellies to anchor his family and keep them safe, he now had only one way—the Ellies—to find his son, reach his daughter, protect his wife, and shield his ministers. Only the Ellies could bring them back together, and only if they desired to do so, once they had finished cutting everyone to pieces. He prayed for God’s help.

  Why would God bother to help me? After everything I’ve done. The unforgiveable sins, perpetrated in His name.

  Dear God, please help me save my family, and I’ll dedicate the rest of my days to righteousness and implementing your true will on earth.

  Chapter 38: Outbreak, Overseas

  (Paul Lancaster)

  Paul Lancaster lay in his tent, clutching his orders to return to flight duty, just a few hours from getting a clean bill of health from the camp doctor. He fumed at the thought of going back into the air after all he’d been through. What little sleep he got was fitful and punctuated by nightmares of the things he had seen since arriving on the Coit.

  At the crack of dawn the next day, he grudgingly zipped up his cammo coveralls, donned his flight helmet, and trudged toward Jizzy, the dragon-fire jump-ship he had shared with Charlie Turner since his arrival. As he synced his face-plat to the door-cannon scope, a tremor of nausea swelled in his stomach, and finally a drop of vomit flittered in his throat.

  He hadn’t stepped foot into Jizzy since just after the massacre—since being arrested for war crimes, incarcerated, released, nearly blown up in a truck bomb attack, sent to the hospital to recuperate, and reinstated to grunt work.

  His entire crew had been replaced following the attack. Charlie had been reassigned to another dragon-fire crew, on the other side of the Coit. Paul’s quarters had been moved away from his friends. Chris Parmooch, Mauricio Gonzales, and Phil Kim. They had all visited him in the infirmary, if only to show some solidarity. Still, even though the Coit wasn’t a very big place, its soldiers were kept relentlessly busy, so Paul didn’t see them much.

  Gajah Mada, one of Paul’s most valued mates, had miraculously been transferred out altogether. Gajah stopped by the M.A.S.H on his way to the transport jet to say goodbye and offer a hurried explanation. The Indian Army had demanded his amnesty, and he was reassigned to the Mid-Atlantic Provincial Militia. Some kind of advisory position on the Baumgarten Estate. Paul could barely follow it all, but it sounded like a cushy gig, so he tried to subordinate his self-pity and jealousy to happiness for his friend.

  His new crew mates seemed none too friendly to a newcomer who’d been accused of the massacre that had precipitated the devastating retaliatory truck-bomb attack. If they’d been told he had been exonerated, they didn’t let on—though he wasn’t even sure if he’d been exonerated or just released because they needed every trigger finger they could get. There was a quiet, unstated suspicion of him, presumably mixed with some resentment, since they had all been redeployed to reinforce the Coit after the attack. Wherever they had come from—no one spoke enough to tell him—it couldn’t have been as bad as the Coit, and on some level they blamed him for that.

  How could they not? he reasoned, though that empathy was little solace when co
mradery was the only salve for the lonely, terror-punctuated boredom of life on the Coit. By the time Paul had found his way to his ship to join-up with his new team, he felt terribly alone.

  Just do your job, he told himself. Do that, and everything’ll be fine.

  He swallowed hard as Jizzy lifted off from its pad and rumbled out over the Minge, a sea of swaying yellow grass at the base of the forested peninsula.

  Focus. Focus. He had tried to forget about the animatronic training targets, which moved like people—and came apart in bloody fragments like people—when hit by assault rifles and door cannons. They were designed to be realistic—to desensitize the soldiers to the sight of human bodies exploding into pieces at their hands. When the “Weapons Hot” signal appeared on his face-plat, he focused on his helmet’s luminous crosshairs and waited for the targets to emerge in the trees and grasses below.

  Movement. He shifted the door cannon, squinted, and squeezed the trigger, realizing that he’d only just purged the images of the dying automatons from his dreams. Now, as he squeezed off another burst, pretending not to notice the shattered bodies of simulated children among the hostiles, he knew the phantoms would be back.

  Better to get used to it now, he cajoled himself. The quiet won’t last, and you’d better be ready. Just don’t puke—at least not in front of the others.

  As his first training mission ended, he watched in a nauseated daze when his ship passed over the crater left by the suicide truck. He again fought the urge to vomit while disembarking, steadfastly trudging to a billy-goat ATV at the edge of the pad. Although the flight crews usually went up the hill to chow together, Paul had given up on forging bonds with his new crew. He started the climb without waiting, hoping against hope he’d stumble upon Charlie, Chris, Phil, or Mauricio.

  He straddled the billy-goat’s seat and entered the ignition code. The machine whirred to life, its duel tracks began to clatter, and he surged forward. The still, muggy air felt slightly cool on his face as he accelerated, and he drew a deep breath. In a moment he was chugging beneath the canopy of the half-dead forest, finally starting to recover himself.

  But it wasn’t to last. Over the din of the billy-goat’s rattling tracks he detected a chorus of whistles, and his peripheral vision glimpsed fiery orange meteors sailing overhead, gray smoke trailing behind like serpents. His heart sank, and he released the accelerator.

  “Incoooommmmiiiinnnngggg!” shouted a voice from below.

  The first blast came from behind him, but three more explosions erupted in quick succession, launching nearby tents, gear, and bodies skyward. The fountains of fire felt hot on his face, kicking his instincts into gear. He punched the accelerator and careened back the way he had come. More explosions shook the earth around him as he sped down the trail to Jizzy and his team.

  As he rounded the final corner to his landing pad, he became aware of burning pin-pricks in his lower leg and the hot, wet sensation of blood trickling into his boots.

  Fuck! he shouted silently at the thought of going back to the M.A.S.H.

  Whatever anger he felt about his own future was immediately eclipsed by the sight of Jizzy, laying in a crumpled heap of burning metal. Its netted camouflage tarp was in cinders, and his team’s crates of tools and parts were scattered. His heart pounded into his throat as he dismounted and limped into the field of wreckage. His head swooned as he recognized the charred body parts—what was left of his crew—strewn across the platform.

  The stench of sulphur and burned flesh filled his nostrils, and he perceived blurry, dream-like mushrooms of flame rising into the trees, corpses dotting the hillside, the clitter-clack of machine guns, and screaming. Everywhere screaming.

  How the hell did they hit it? A perfect shot, first thing.

  Where’s Charlie?

  How did they even know where to shoot?

  The pad was completely hidden.

  We just got back.

  He was struck by the epiphany that if he hadn’t left his team in a huff—or maybe if he’d come back earlier—he would’ve been blown to pieces as well. It was a revelation he knew would join the menagerie of things haunting him forever, and he finally doubled over and vomited, chills and shakes rattling his body.

  Charlie, he heard himself mutter. I gotta find Charlie. He looked around frantically, as if hoping to see Charlie—or any of his comrades beside him. Someone has to’ve seen him.

  He staggered back to his billy-goat ATV, disassociated from the mayhem unfolding around him, and robotically entered the ignition code and started again up the hill. He motored past flaming vehicles and scurrying soldiers. His black ants. A mass of swirling chaos. He finally stopped and walked methodically over to a soldier standing bewildered in the path.

  “Have you seen Charlie?” His consciousness, now almost completely disconnected from his body, couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Charlie! …Charlie Turner?” he heard himself yelling.

  The soldier just blinked at him in bewilderment. “Are you fucking kidding me?” the soldier finally answered, snapping out of his own daze. “Look around! You think I know where anyone is? We’re in a shit storm here!” Without another word, the soldier stormed off down the path on his way to god-knows-what.

  Paul numbly climbed back on his ATV and renewed his trek up the hill, though he was increasingly conscious of the fact that he had no real destination. He was moving toward the Eagle’s Nest—the Head—he realized, though he wasn’t sure why.

  He arrived moments later and found a group of soldiers hovering over George Fernandez, their company commander, who laid dead in a heap of rubble with half a dozen other corpses. The command center was a ruin.

  The whistle of another rocket sent Paul and the others scurrying for cover amongst the piles of brick and rebar. Masonry fragments pelted him from above.

  Getting back to his feet, Paul found himself alert—even hyper-conscious. He was almost one with the urgency of their situation. He scanned the group, looking for the ranking officer, but only recognized Major Ricky Boseman, who was glassy eyed, visibly out of his depth, and unable to lead. Paul could sense that the camp was already close to being overrun. They would soon be locked in close-quarters combat. He scanned the group again, looking for anyone he thought he could count on, and his eyes finally fell on Chris Parmooch.

  Like Paul, Chris had no earthly business being at Eagle’s’ Nest in a situation like this. But Paul didn’t care what dereliction of duty had led his comrade here.

  “Chris,” he barked. “Find us a V-plat.” Chris looked up at him, dazed. “Chris!” Paul repeated more sternly. “FIND – US – A – V-PLAT. NOW.”

  He then turned to the others in the group. “You, you, and you,” he pointed. “Help Chris. I want a working V-plat in my hands in three minutes.” To his surprise, the men, all of whom outranked him, obeyed, moving sharply into the remnants of the command center. “You three, I want you on the roof with a fifty-cal.”

  Paul looked at Major Boseman one more time, wondering if he would snap-to, but the befuddled major just stared at him, as if waiting for direction as well.

  Ooookay, Paul sighed to himself.

  Chris returned with a portable V-plat a moment later, and Paul brought up a GEO rendering of the Coit.

  “Chris, I need real-time GEO updates. You’re on recon.”

  “Yes Sir. Deploying drones now.”

  “You,” he called to another, “Get us air support.”

  “Calling Naval Air Command. Stand by.”

  “You,” he continued. “Get some artillery on the minge and the first ring of our trenches.”

  “Roger that.”

  The men poured over the V-plat map and began shouting into their comms mics with coordinates and armament specifications. Paul patched into camp’s loudspeaker and began directing forces up and down the Coit. He dispatched Boseman to form assault teams from the harried soldiers, directing them down the hill to forestall a route and consolidate a new defensive line along t
he Coit’s third-ring of trenches.

  Within half an hour, three bull-shark jump-jets appeared through the haze. Paul ordered his men to signal their positions and huddle as a fury of fire and noise rained down all around them. The surveillance drones sweeping over the battle transmitted images of armored vehicles exploding, enemy personnel pouring out, only to be felled by Paul’s now-rabid soldiers.

  The dry trees at the base of the peninsula burned like kindling, as did vast swaths of the grass expanse. Screams of rage and agony could be heard between the blasts. The bull-sharks made innumerable passes, spreading death and carnage from the air, before slowing into a circular pattern, like hawks scouring the landscape for prey. Flocks of aerial assault drones arrived and swarmed the area.

  Artillery fire shifted incrementally away from the Coit, pounding the tree line on the far side of the grass expanse. The inferno belched massive columns of smoke high into the air all along the horizon.

  As the crackle of gunfire and the thud of explosions became increasingly distant, Paul tried to stand back to take stock of their situation. Regardless of who they were, or where they came from, the attackers had left the Black Eagles gravely wounded. The Coit’s fortifications were in shambles. Scores of soldiers were wounded, dozens missing. Lifeless bodies lay baking in the heat. Initial damage assessments indicated that supplies of water, food, ammunition, and medicine were dangerously low. As nightfall approached, uncontained fires burned across the entire area.

  Paul, surprised to still be in charge, was spent, but he had to consolidate their defenses and coordinate reinforcements and resupply. He welcomed every ear-splitting sortie of bull-sharks, dragon-fires, and aerial drones, which guarded his shell-shocked soldiers all night.

  As the faint hint of dawn cast the sky purple, the first airships began to land on the Head, dropping off cargo and picking up the wounded. The fighting was distant now, and Paul sat down next to Chris Parmooch and the others in his new leadership team.