Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga)

by Matthew Taylor

  Ben glanced at Burger, who caught his eye and smiled grimly, as if he had done the math as well.

  “Well, Mr. Rashid,” Sherman said calmly. “It’s a pleasure to see you again. I regret the circumstances, of course. The cottage across the plaza will be your home for a while. You’ll forgive the cramped space. Less than what you’re used to, I know. But there’s a flush toilet and clean running water. You’ll have electricity for two hours after sunset and a thousand calories per day. I’ve asked you to have decent bedding, free of bedbugs. Mr. Holland and Mr. Burger will walk you through all the details.”

  As Sherman walked toward the door and took his jacket from the hook, he turned to add some parting thoughts. “You’re free to walk through the village. But please make sure you have an escort to avoid being beaten.” He yawned. “Severely and mercilessly beaten. And of course, if you try to escape—well you’re in no condition to get far anyway.”

  “Now, Mr. Holland and Burger will take you to the dressing room next door, so you can change and prepare for your broadcast. The script is already in there.” He gave Ben and Burger a nod to take Rashid away. “See you in an hour.” With that, Sherman pulled his cap over his thinning hair and left.

  Ben made sure to get to Rashid before Burger, taking the old man gently by the arm and guiding him to the adjoining room. It was dark inside, the walls covered from floor to ceiling with screens projecting news, maps, and live feeds from aerial drones, helmet cams, and vehicle dashboards as well as the intermittent MediaStream. A groomer sat Rashid in a chair in front of a mirror and handed him a tablet.

  “Your lines,” the groomer said indifferently as he looked Rashid over and shook his head in disappointment with his canvas. He rubbed his hand over Rashid’s head, making his thinning hair more disheveled than it already was. He then applied some make-up, darkening Rashid’s eye sockets. In less than a minute, Ben was struck by how quickly the diminutive statesman was transformed into a foreign and sinister-looking monster. Rashid could see it too in the mirror, but he said nothing, despondent in his fate. The groomer then presented Rashid with the traditional attire of the Ellies of the Pan-Islamic Caliphate, making him look even more foreign, ostentatious, and sinister.

  From the edge of the room, Ben looked on, as Rashid tried to focus on reading his lines on the computer tablet. Ben swallowed the lump in his throat, which swelled at the sight of the man who had once been kind and gracious to him, now preparing to assassinate his own legacy and imperil the people he loved for the sake of a life he couldn’t possibly want to live. Through the corner of his eye, Burger carried a smirk of cruel satisfaction.

  When the hour had passed, and Rashid was dressed and prepared, Ben and Burger led him into a small broadcast booth with a shiny wooden podium, bright lights and multiple cameras already in place.

  I wonder how much they spent on this despicable farce.

  “There he is!” Sherman chimed, arms open to welcome Rashid. “The star of the day! You look positively authentic.” Ben had seen Sherman’s cruelty manifest itself in a dozen different ways, but the sickly-sweet greeting struck Ben as especially mean. “Ready to convince the world, my friend?”

  Convince the world. Ben hadn’t considered what would happen if Rashid failed in his delivery, or if the audience—especially the Senate and the Chief Regent—didn’t buy it. Sherman, he knew from experience, would kill Rashid on the spot.

  He might even tell me to do it. They might do this anyway, once the broadcast is over.

  He admired the broken-hearted Rashid’s determination, as the little man—the once-great general of the Caliphate—took his place behind the podium, looked into the teleprompter, and began the first lines of his script on cue.

  Chapter 54: Revelation

  (Patrick Baumgarten)

  Patrick Baumgarten’s wrist-plat blinked and chimed for the third time that morning. He sighed and answered. His father’s face appeared, flanked as usual by his head of security, Bully Bladstone, calling again to get an update. This time, though, Patrick transferred the call to a larger monitor on the wall and summoned his coworkers, Gajah Mada, Miriam Gossage, and Beez, to gather around.

  His father and Bully registered the group’s sullen looks over the V-plat right away. His father’s face became grave, as did Bully’s.

  “Should I assume the dirty dictator wasn’t far off?”

  “Dad,” Patrick started, “We need go to Winnipeg as soon as we can figure out a story.” He could feel Gajah, Gossage, and Beez staring at him, perplexed by his phrasing. He knew he’d just revealed too much, and his father shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but time was short—and their lives could be as well.

  Gajah chimed in, “Sir, I recommend withholding the topic from the Small Council until the last possible minute. In fact, if there’s any way to talk to thee Chief Regent alone, I think that would be best.”

  “We’re also going to need to bring the evidence that the Generalissimo sent,” Patrick added. “All of it. …And the scientists.”

  He glanced at the lab-techs, all of whom now had dismayed expressions on their faces.

  Thomas Baumgarten then dismissed Miriam and Beez from the call.

  “I’ll send a message to Deirdre that we are on or way with an urgent matter to discuss with her and the Chief Regent.”

  Patrick questioned the wisdom of including Deirdre, the Chief Regent’s Minister of War, thinking they could now trust no one. He traded a subtle, dubious glance with Gajah, who clearly shared his concern.

  The fewer, the better, he thought. But his father usually had a good reason when he took these kinds of risks—the epic miscalculation in the entire conspiracy notwithstanding.

  “Bully,” his father continued, “I want the provincial militia and corporate forces back on high alert—all of them. Weapons-live for all security personnel, including those in secured areas, and I want them to start local conscription. But call each local commander individually over secure comms. Don’t send a general message.”

  He’s unflappable, Patrick thought admiringly. But a secret conscription? That’ll never work.

  “Patrick,” he continued, “get us a flight corridor to Winnipeg. Load up the evidence. I want all four of you, and all the evidence on my ship in ninety minutes.”

  “Bully, I want fighter-drone escort all the way to the Winnipeg air perimeter. All remote pilots need to be in place before takeoff.”

  When Patrick arrived at the tarmac ten minutes late, Gajah, Miriam, and Beez in tow, the chilly morning wind rustled through the leafless trees on the Baumgarten Estate. His father shot him a disappointed look and climbed into the bull-shark jump-jet, already fueled—engines grumbling, two flocks of fighter drones circling overhead.

  “We had a lot of gear to load,” Patrick whispered defensively to Bully, who patted him on the shoulder in an uncommon gesture of sympathy.

  “Everything’s on the line,” Bully whispered back to defuse Patrick’s frustration.

  Two militia guards rolled the last of the carts into the cargo hold, followed by half a dozen more guards, all heavily armed and clad in battle armor. Miriam Gossage, who had clearly never flown, had turned pale. Beez, visibly in emotional distress, was being helped by Gajah, whose combat experience was paying dividends.

  Patrick fretted through the entire flight to Winnipeg, made worse by his father’s uncharacteristic fidgeting and Bully staring fixedly out the window. Patrick tried to mull over the pieces on the game board as he imagined his father was doing.

  Bully gestured for him to check on Miriam Gossage, who sat on her own, looking peaked. His father had chosen her to walk the Chief Regent through the evidence, a perfect choice to Patrick’s way of thinking. Miriam wasn’t part of the family, conveying at least some impartiality. She had light olive skin, like the Chief Regent, and her accent was somehow closer to the Ellies’ than the urchins. Best of all, she could translate science into words that laypeople could understand. Patrick found her murmuring her pr
esentation to herself when he approached and knelt beside her.

  “Five minutes or less,” he reminded her. “Just the facts. No commentary. If he asks for your opinion on anything other than the data, defer to my father.”

  Miriam nodded rapidly, conveying a nervousness that Patrick found disconcerting. Thinking forward to the discussion with the Chief Regent, Patrick couldn’t blame her for being on edge. It would even be hard for him to stay calm, think clearly, and keep his mouth shut.

  Patrick’s only consolation was his history of watching the Ellies take half-measures in response to every problem the Commonwealth had ever faced. The Chief Regent, to his credit, had cracked down hard on the massacres—rebellions—whatever it was that had been unfolding over the past few weeks. The Chief Regent’s response to the evidence about to be laid at his feet, would likely be clever and expedient, but would almost certainly leave too much dirty business unfinished. Patrick’s sinking feeling was that in the end—maybe years later, on his own watch—the final resolution of the THREM conspiracy would be even dirtier and bloodier.

  Then again, Patrick imagined that the Chief Regent’s rage and determination could be giving way to panic at the stubbornness of the THREM. The destruction of the MACs and the massacres on the migrant paths were virtually complete, but entire cities were still out of control, and the bomb blasts, assassinations, urban riots, and spontaneous firefights had crept closer to Winnipeg almost as soon as the Domestic Security Forces rolled past on their way to the heavier fighting. He had heard rumors that the Chief Regent was becoming increasingly agitated and paranoid, as he squeezed the uprising in one place, only to see it crop up somewhere else.

  The Chief Regent’s nephew, Xavier Mosino, was using unspeakable tactics to restore order in the Desert Plains Territory, the locus of most of the bedlam. Mosino was also creating a near impossible situation for the Chief Regent by allying with the Free Texas Militia—a necessary evil, he argued—and getting himself implicated in the massacres at the MACs. Taking heavy losses and provoking the “dirty little dictator” of Meso-America. On top of all that, capitalizing on the confusion to launch attacks against the Ozarks Province. Mosino would vehemently reject federal assistance—pointing his finger at other hotspots in Cali-Sur, Ozarks, and Southern Rocky Mountain Territory—to forestall the Commonwealth restoring order.

  The Chief Regent and most of his ministers were allegedly baffled by the Senators’ recalcitrance in delivering on their obligations for assistance—to the point that the Chief Regent had reportedly wondered aloud whether they were conspiring or just incompetent. Patrick didn’t know if the Chief Regent already put his father in that category, even though the upheaval wasn’t concentrated in the Mid-Atlantic Province, and they had their own legitimate security situation.

  Up to this point, his father dared not try to explain how the fighting had gotten so bad and spread so quickly. They knew who was supposed to be fighting whom, but they couldn’t say who was actually fighting whom. Even now, with the news and evidence they were bringing the Chief Regent, they had no good recommendations on how to bring the upheaval to a close.

  Their only hope was that Chief Regent Edgar Reliant would take their evidence, react with the appropriate desire for retribution—and remain unaware of his family’s involvement. But Xavier Mosino was the Chief Regent’s nephew—husband of his favorite niece. Templeton was a close ally, who had help bring Reliant to power the last time the great families competed for the job.

  But how can the answer to the evidence—the smoking gun laid before him—be nothing? If he does nothing against those truly responsible, he’ll be left dealing with the urchin fighters on the ground, the pawns. Thousands more men, women, and children’ll lose their lives as a consequence.

  When Patrick returned to his seat across from his father and Bully, his father leaned forward in his chair and asked for Patrick’s thoughts—something he almost never did—on how to structure the presentation to avoid incriminating themselves. Patrick was perennially wowed by his father’s ability to reduce a crisis to its component pieces and begin moving them on the game board. Where did the pieces start? Where are they going? Why? Where does he want them to stop? What sequence of moves and contingencies will get his result?

  They explored a series of possible ways to present the evidence, ensure it led the Chief Regent to the right conclusion, and avoid incriminating themselves.

  We will plead ignorance to anything unrelated to the evidence the Meso-Americans had given them. If the Chief Regent asks anything else, we will say we have been so busy recovering from the storm and dealing with our own pockets of lawlessness that we have had no insight into the fighting.

  The misuse of the PetrolChurch? They had been too busy to monitor it. Apologies.

  Weapons traced to Baumgarten Industries? We’ve been too busy to monitor that too. Or we say parts of legal arms transfers had been diverted by Sherman.

  Shifting blame will have to be a big part of this if we’re going to save our skins.

  Why would the “dirty little dictator” pass this information through the Baumgartens? Because the Generalissimo knows Baumgartens’ steadfast loyalty to the Chief Regent.

  Energy Consortium forces actively engaged in the fighting (though now most wiped out)? That’s a question for Ali Ibn al-Rashid. Apologies.

  But we’ll happily transfer control of the Mid-Atlantic forces soon retuning from Asia and Africa—battered as they may be—to the Domestic Security Service as soon as they disembark. We had just assumed the best service they could provide to the Chief Regent was to make sure their own province was secured and prevent further contagion.

  Patrick found his palms sweaty when the pilot announced they had arrived at the capital’s air defense perimeter and their drone escorts had departed. His heart thumped when they touched down at the National Palace and the Palace Guards insisted that their guards wait with the ship. His stomach flipped when the Palace Red Guards then told them that the cart with the console and canister would not be admitted into the Palace.

  It’s all standard protocol at the Palace, he reminded himself. But he felt how exposed they were—and how much everything hinged on the discussion that would come next. His father and Bully traded troubled looks, and he felt his hands go wet again.

  Patrick followed his father into the Palace, trailed by Bully, Gajah, Beez, and Miriam Gossage. It then occurred to him that no one from the Chief Regent’s personal staff had welcomed them at the tarmac, or at the grand entrance. That was not at all protocol. Instead, the Palace Red Guards led them unceremoniously straight to the Chief Regent’s Small Council room.

  They entered to find the tired-looking Chief Regent sitting on the Regent’s Throne, Deirdre Tealman on his right, and—unexpectedly, the rest of the Small Council filling the rest of the chairs at the massive crescent-shaped table. Patrick scanned the group in search of their allies and their enemies.

  Paulo Gershwin, Minister of Economy, was fully entrenched in Baumgarten industries and a long-time ally to the Baumgartens, as was Evan Longstreet, Minister of Diplomacy.

  Deirdre Tealman, Minister of War, was generally neutral, loyal to the Chief Regent, and keenly focused on using the security lottery to maintain the balance of power among the Great Families. Patrick and his father doubted her loyalty, though, since the disastrous concentration of their forces abroad. Madison Pitt, Minister of Internal Security, was likewise disposed, though he had slightly closer connections through marriages with the Templetons. Both had had their moments of tension with his family over the waves of immigrants that had hit Mid-Atlantic ports over the years, but Pitt and Tealman were generally fair minded and impartial.

  Josephina Thomson, Minister of Information, was a member of the PetrolChurch’s Gang of Seven, as was Francesca Carroll, the Minister of Religion. Neither were established friends or foes—and so were not to be trusted.

  Augusto Romano, Minister of Environment, and Agriculture was no friend to the B
aumgartens. He harbored deep resentment against all of the largest senatorial families, whom he blamed for the continuing degradation of the environment. His growing influence over the Chief Regent on ecological issues was a major catalyst of the cabal in the first place. Russell Johnston, Minister of Health and Disaster Management, was largely discredited now, as the THREM spiraled out of control. He’d likely be removed from the Small Council as soon as the THREM was under control.

  Guillermo Perez, the current Senatorial Representative to the Small Council and Governor of the Southeast Coastal Province, was a staunch ally of the Templetons. He would be the first to derail their effort to incriminate Templeton.

  Then Patrick noticed Ashley Templeton himself sitting in the chair designated for special guests of the Small Council, his son Carlos standing behind him. A sickened feeling descended over Patrick at the sight of him—a feeling made worse by the unexpected presence of Xavier Mosino.

  Ohhhh fuck.

  The leaders of the Big Five churches were also there, sitting behind Francesca Carroll.

  But they have no grievance against us—at least not one they know about.

  The faces at the table were all grim and troubled, when Patrick noticed wall monitors flickering with the image of Ali Ibn al-Rashid, paused. His father was doing his best to conceal his disappointment in the number of people attending their private session with Deirdre and the Chief Regent, and the chilly response they had received.

  The Chief Regent said nothing, and Deirdre bid his father to sit down in the chair facing the crescent marble table. Patrick, Bully, Miriam, Beez, and Gajah held back, standing some feet behind his father. A servant appeared, set a cup of coffee on the broad arm rest of his father’s chair, and scurried away from what now seemed to Patrick like a stage.

  After a long, painful, moment of silence, Tealman affectionately patted the Chief Regent’s arm, as if to calm a child, and turned to address his father.