Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga)

by Matthew Taylor

  “My Lord,” Alias said, making the sign of the cross and feigning religiosity to allay any of Buzz’s remaining suspicions.

  “I know, right? Migrant fighters marched right up 500th to Main Street and set up anti-drone sentries and mines. The Mormons tried to set-up a stronghold at the intersection with the ole Wells Fargo building. That whole spot’s just rubble now—that’s the smoke you see there.” He pointed, glancing at Alias for another sign of shock and sympathy, and Alias dutifully obliged. “As I heard it, the Territorial Militia tried to set a new line, but the Mormons pulled back to defend the Church, and that kicked off the fighting between ‘em.

  “By this point, everythin’ from the rail juncture east to Kearns Mansion and west into the industrial sectors was a fight. Street to street. That’s when the Consortium sent us. ‘Bout a thousand’ soldiers from all over. Met up here—all different kinds of people I never seen before. They dropped bombs, and gas, and Lord-knows-what—sorry.” Alias gave him a wink. “The fighting’s calmed down a lot since then.

  “Anyhow, Calden assigned me and some guys to guard General Thomas, but he got snuffed yesterday—not our fault, in case you’re wonderin’. So, now I’m your escort, and that’s about all I know.”

  They finally arrived back at their base camp, two yurts in a clearing. Alias retuned his attention to his father’s mental state before turning again to Buzz. “Buzz, would you be so kind as to give me a minute with my father? I’d like to give him a little air.”

  “‘Course,” answered Buzz, thankful for the acknowledgement and explanation. The young man dutifully walked over to a small cube of sandbags and started-up a tiny cook-stove.

  Alias watched his father rub his eyes and gaze into the cobalt sky, now sprinkled with glowing diamonds. Minister Goodwell drew a deep breath, as if welcoming the tremendous feeling of smallness that his father had tried to explain to Alias many times over the years. “The Cosmic Sense,” his father called it. “A whispered greeting from God about infinite universe above. …Miracles, each of us,” his father had preached. “Put here by divine provenance to behold and worship the splendor of His power, wisdom, and magnanimity.”

  Alias had always translated the feeling differently. “We are nothing. Tiny animals—a bundle of electrical impulses—crawling around on an obscure planet, hurdling through endless space until we die and are extinguished into darkness. A vast and uncaring universe. …Created by God? Maybe, but a God who must see us as insects—if he sees us at all. Angry, viscous little insects. Malignant parasites, slowly killing their host. Surely any God that might’ve been out there has long since tired of us and is watching our headlong charge to suicide.”

  But at present, Alias was too worried to be exasperated. “Dad,” he started, putting a hand on his father’s shoulder.

  “Of all the suffering and misery I have seen,” Minister Goodwell muttered. “All the violence and cruelty. I have never seen anything like this. It’s worse than anything I suspected or feared. …And we helped them do it.”

  Alias paused to think on that for a moment. Up until today, with all their travels—before and after the creation of the PetrolChurch—Alias believed they had seen it all. They had comforted the survivors of rape and slavery. Embraced the mourners of loved ones murdered and disappeared. Delivered last rights to the dying and eulogies for the dead. More prayers for the hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and diseased. They had seen stampedes for rations, children trampled underfoot. They had ministered to the dispossessed in the ancient cities, the cast-off and forlorn masses.

  The med-tent’s a shrine to mayhem, Alias had to admit. …The blood. The shattered bones and flesh. The rancid smell and the pall of chemicals and death. Carnage in concentrate. Not something I’ll ever forget.

  “Women and children, Junior,” Minister Goodwell whispered. “And not just the hospital. Hundreds, thousands—maybe millions—of people suffering in the shanties. On the sides of roads. In the streets. In the places made specifically to show humanity and provide refuge.” The minister broke his stargaze and looked over at Alias, eyes welling with tears and his lips quivering.

  Distant thuds echoed through the velvet haze shrouding the city down the hill. Minister Goodwell had gone silent again, but something in his gaze told Alias that his father was now feeling the Cosmic Sense in a different way—that he was grappling with a growing contest between the madness on earth and the solitude of the starry space above him.

  Alias tried to imagine what his father was thinking, wishing he could insert himself into his father’s mind.

  You had a part in this, however small, his father had to be thinking.

  You tried to stop it, Alias silently reassured. They wouldn’t listen to you.

  I didn’t try hard enough, Minister Goodwell answered.

  You couldn’t have known it was coming to this, Alias pleaded, though he knew better—and Minister Goodwell certainly knew better too.

  The indulgences? Minister Goodwell protested. The police attacks? The drugs? The contraband? I knew. We helped.

  We never wanted this, Alias insisted, now just as desperate to convince himself.

  Guilt then crept into Alias’ mind as he realized how unhelpful he had been to his father since the creation of the PetrolChurch. Minister Goodwell knew that Alias was a skeptic—that he helped the church more out of economic necessity and familial obligation than faith. Now, Alias realized that this must have come as a great disappointment to his father.

  Imagine a life’s work failing to convince your own son, Alias castigated himself with a hitherto unknown aching pity for his father.

  Minister Goodwell had always kept a tight lid on Alias’ doubts—something Alias had viewed as oppressive. Alias now appreciated that his father was trying to save him, not only from eternal damnation, but also from the pogroms against the atheists and agnostics. The beatings, disappearances, and mob lynchings of homosexuals. Up to that moment, Alias hadn’t considered that his father’s admonitions had been efforts to save Alias from himself. As Minister Goodwell gazed up at the stars, consumed in shame and anguish, Alias wilted at his own self-centered thanklessness.

  Chapter 48: Evidence

  (Patrick Baumgarten)

  Patrick Baumgarten woke up to the sound of the doorbell to his quarters in the Baumgarten Estate. Rubbing his eyes and trying to get his bearings, he had no idea how the day would unfold, though if it was anything like the past week—and he suspected it would be—then he’d prefer to go back to sleep. But the irritant at door wouldn’t be deterred. He couldn’t be sure how many times they had rung the bell before it crept into his consciousness, but they rang it three more times as he tried to ignore it. Finally, he roused himself and shuffled to the door with dread.

  “Mornin’ Shitbird,” grunted Chadwell “Bully” Bladstone, Head of Corporate Security for Baumgarten Industries and his father’s right hand. “Daddy wants to see you. Chop chop.”

  Patrick held up a finger and scanned the room for something semi-clean he could snatch off the floor—something without grime or blood on it. Something that wouldn’t smell like chemicals and smoke. He found a pair of semi-formal coveralls crumpled in the corner. They’d probably been there a few weeks—he vaguely remembered wearing them at the last escapade in the clubs—but they were close at hand and he could tell that Bully was impatient. He held them up to show Bully the wrinkles and make sure they still met Bully’s approval. With a nod from Bully, he slid into the coveralls, smacked his gob in hope of losing the terrible taste in his mouth, and eagerly grasped the cup of coffee Bully unexpectedly held out for him.

  He brought me coffee? He must want me alert. That can’t be good.

  “Let’s go, sport. Daddy’s waiting.”

  “How mad is he?” Patrick asked as he struggled to match Bully’s pace down the mansion’s main corridor, already bustling with officers and bureaucrats.

  “What, about going off your assignment to fetch Dorian and the Goldbloom girl?”
<
br />   “And Jasmine Goodwell,” Patrick offered, trying to make the trip seem more worthwhile.

  “Your father’s got plenty of heroes to send into combat. Not so many sons and heirs. But that’s not the issue at the moment.”

  Patrick was oddly relieved and troubled by Bully’s cryptic response, but he knew better than to follow up with questions. If Bully wanted him to know more, he’d have said more. That was Bully’s modus operandi.

  When they reached the ornately decorated steel security doors to the war room, Bully scanned his badge, entered his code on the keypad, placed his palm on the sensor, and leaned in for his facial scan. The access panel illuminated green and the door clicked and swung open. Bully squeezed through it before it had even opened fully, reinforcing Patrick’s sense of urgency.

  “Morning,” Senator Baumgarten said with a flat, distracted tone. He didn’t even look up from the screen he was hunched over on his desk.

  Patrick sat down in a chair at the long conference table and took a sip of his coffee. His father would get to him when he was good and ready, and Patrick knew from years of experience not to rush it. Still, the delay was anticlimactic, given Bully’s rush.

  “The dirty little dictator called me this morning,” his father continued, still not looking up.

  The President and Protector of the Meso-American Republic, Generalissimo Guillermo Montoya Esquival III, had never enjoyed his father’s respect.

  “He asked us to be interlocutors with the Chief Regent.” His father sat down in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

  Patrick was perplexed, and it must have shown on his face.

  “My reaction exactly. He also said he has critical information about the fighting. ‘Damning evidence’ were his exact words.”

  “You spoke to him?” Patrick asked incredulously.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” his father retorted. “The message was one-way. Quantum encrypted.” He gestured for Patrick to come over to read the screen on which he had been so focused.

  [Hon. Senator Baumgarten. I send you this message with great sadness and urgency. . . . ]

  Blah blah blah, Patrick skipped ahead.

  [The Chief Regent will not like this information, but it is critical he see it. . . . ]

  Blah blah blah

  [. . . estranged neighbors . . . it will be war.]

  War? Wait, there it is.

  [Transmitting 3-D print-scan codes of evidence. . . will send artifacts by drone]

  When Patrick had finished reading, he sat dumfounded for a moment.

  “What do you think?” his father asked.

  Patrick wasn’t accustomed to his father asking his opinion about such weighty matters. Patrick was invariably in the role of learner. He felt a pressure to say something clever and insightful, but he was at a loss, so he just leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his forehead.

  “Yes, me neither,” his father said.

  “Are they here?” Patrick asked, turning to Bully.

  “Who?” Bully asked.

  “Not who,” Patrick replied. “The artifacts.”

  “Oh. No. Not yet anyway,” Bully replied, giving Patrick the distinct impression that his father and Bully hadn’t fully processed that bit of information from the message.

  “Well, I’ll get some people together to look over the codes in one of the labs. Can you send over the artifacts when they arrive?”

  His father and Bully scanned each other again. It clearly wasn’t the response they had expected, but his father nodded, and Bully agreed to send the artifacts to Patrick, who was already getting up to set to work.

  “Call Gajah. He can help,” his father called out as Patrick was leaving.

  Patrick hadn’t interacted with Gajah Mada much since he arrived at Baumgarten Industries from a military tour overseas that went terribly wrong. That whole arrangement sounded like a liability, but Patrick rarely felt like he had all the information from Bully or his father to make such a judgment. He suspected Bully and his father kept him out of the loop on purpose in an effort to teach patience. Gajah, though, had made himself useful to his father from the start, and Patrick appreciated his help at the destroyed command center. Otherwise, though, Patrick had found it easy to ignore him, for there was more than enough going on.

  Until now.

  Within a half hour, Gajah met Patrick at the entrance to a tech lab in an out building on the estate. He introduced Patrick to two of the company’s forensic scientists, who had just arrived from Harrisburg.

  Miriam Gossage was only a few years older than Patrick, fair skinned with reddish-blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail. She offered Patrick a cursory and impatient smile when she shook his hand. No customary greeting glove, he noted. She quickly moved on to a large desk, where she unloaded her gear.

  Beez, who offered no other name, towered over Patrick and Gajah, despite the slight stoop in his posture. He was rail thin, and Patrick noticed burn scars peering from under his collar and on his wrists and hands. Patrick sensed right away that he was introverted and highly specialized—just the sort of person Patrick would want to investigate the kind of technical data that had landed in their laps. Beez greeted him courteously, including a greeting glove, but he avoided eye contact. He was visibly uncomfortable in the presence of an Ellie of Patrick’s stature, though he might be like that in any interpersonal encounter.

  Gajah reviewed the inventory of what data they had and helped Beez and Gossage prepare. “The drones should be here within two hours with the actual artifacts. I’ll need a preliminary report on what we have by then.”

  As Patrick turned to leave the scientists to their work, Gajah sat down at a computer terminal, as the 3-D printer put the finishing touches on a replica of a battered canister.

  “I thought you were a doctor,” Patrick chirped, having expected Gajah to leave with him.

  “I’m a scientist,” Gajah replied. “I’ll stick around here in case they need something.”

  Patrick immediately realized the inappropriateness of leaving. “Right. I’ll just be in the next room, catching up on our Meso-American friends.”

  Beez again avoided eye contact, while Gajah said nothing and returned his attention to his work. Only Gossage acknowledged his decision with a brief, disapproving nod.

  She doesn’t give a shit who I am, Patrick realized, liking Gossage more by the minute.

  A couple hours later, Patrick heard the guards arrive with the promised artifacts, but he didn’t bother to get up, knowing he would only get in the way. A couple hours after that, when he couldn’t look at a screen any more, he got up from his desk, rubbed his eyes, and returned to the main lab.

  “Well,” he started, “whaddaya we got?”

  “The makings of a real shit-storm,” Gajah replied on behalf of the group. “The analysis isn’t a hundred percent done, but between the logs and the pieces we got from the Mesos, I think we have the outlines of the story.”

  “And what’s that story say,” Patrick asked, appreciably more alert.

  Gossage stepped forward. “Well, chapter one begins with this piece here. It’s a drone command console, made by Keiretsu Industries. The fact that it’s sitting here at all tells us that someone is shipping pretty advanced weaponry into the THREM.”

  “The what?” Patrick interrupted.

  “Oh, the THREM. The Third Migrant Massacre. That’s just what the urchins are calling it.” She paused, as if waiting for permission to continue with business. “Anyhow, this thing has no business in the Desert Plains Territory.”

  Patrick raised an eyebrow. “Something I’m sure our Chief Regent will be interested to know. What else?”

  “Hang on. This piece gives us GPS and comms data showing it communicated with other units in the THREM fighting areas . . . and beyond.”

  Patrick gave her a “so-what” look.

  “—which is interesting because the comms aren’t just with a gang of scrappers. It’s been talking to aerial combat drones . . . and mu
ltiple militia units, as well as three sites in Los Angeles, two in Oregonia, and a ship in the Gulf of Mexico.”

  So much for a spontaneous slaughter between badlanders and migrants, or whatever the fuck it is we’re supposed to think is going on, Patrick noted.

  “Does it tell us anything about who was talking?”

  “Let’s come back to that,” interjected Beez, too excited about the work to contain himself any longer. “The unit also tells us that it traveled about two-hundred miles into the Meso-American Republic, where the Mesos say they captured it.”

  Gossage then directed Patrick’s attention to a small V-plat on the table projecting a holograph of a beaten and bloodied man. “This gentleman is Lieutenant Dennis Woods, apparently captured by the Mesos along with the Console and the V-plat. Lieutenant Woods confesses in this video—prob’ly under duress from the look of him—to being part of the Free Texas Volunteers.”

  “Under duress—you think? He looks like someone beat him senseless with a stick,” challenged Patrick.

  “Yup,” Gossage agreed, matter-of-factly and unmoved. “So now we come to the V-plat itself—or at least to this dongle attached to it. This is special electronics used in combat vehicles in the Expeditionary Force, the Domestic Security Service, and every provincial militia—including the Desert Plains Territorial Militia.”

  “Oooo-K,” Patrick responded.

  “The V-plat keeps its own logs,” Gossage explained, enthusiastically. She was in her element. “GPS, call logs, user credentials. Our bloodied Lieutenant Woods logged-in from multiple vehicles at numerous points from the Desert Plains to deep inside Meso-America—including the location where the Mesos say they captured him. And each point where he logged in, the V-plat was connected to both the Keiretsu console and a rattler attack vehicle from the Desert Plains Militia inventory.”

  “So, for the exhausted—and shall we say, non-forensic scientist—people in the audience, what we have is a rogue militiaman going into a bunch of the fighting areas, talking to all kinds of other people using some foreign military hardware. …Then he went over the border and got busted.”