Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga) Read online

  Dedication

  Dedicated to my wonderful daughter. May your life be rich, rewarding, and filled with joy.

  Acknowledgements

  I owe many debts of gratitude to my family and friends.

  To my friends, who endured my distraction and undoubtedly insufferable conversations about the project. To Carlin Schwartz, in particular, who edited the initial draft and delivered the necessary feedback with tact and discretion. And to Rob Blackwell, a talented writer, who offered so much good counsel.

  To my father, who cultivated a love of art and nature and who delivered the last push to get it all started.

  Most importantly, to my daughter and my wife, Heather, whose patience and encouragement were nearly boundless. My daughter—and my hope for her future—have been both inspiration and motivation. And Heather, who could not possibly have known what she was signing up for when she blessed the project, has been my most steadfast and loving supporter. This saga would have ended much sooner were it not for them.

  Embers Saga

  Book 1:

  Fire, Ruin, and Fury

  Matthew Taylor

  Copyright © Matthew Taylor 2019

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1: A Proposition

  Chapter 2: The Road to the MAC

  Chapter 3: Re-Useful

  Chapter 4: The Las Vegas MAC

  Chapter 5: Fetch the Lancasters

  Chapter 6: The Gang of Seven

  Chapter 7: The Nautilus

  Chapter 8: Negotiations I

  Chapter 9: Negotiations II

  Chapter 10: The Gala

  Chapter 11: Hangover

  Chapter 12: Guard Duty

  Chapter 13: Homestretch

  Chapter 14: Founding of the PetrolChurch

  Chapter 15: Joshua’s Reflections

  Chapter 16: Return from the Rescue

  Chapter 17: Building the PetrolChurch

  Chapter 18: No Admittance

  Chapter 19: A Contract

  Chapter 20: Battle for the Crash

  Chapter 21: Indulgences

  Chapter 22: Joshua’s Narrative II

  Chapter 23: The Lottery

  Chapter 24: Recreation

  Chapter 25: Arrested on the Coit

  Chapter 26: Troubles

  Chapter 27: A Debt

  Chapter 28: Recovery and Preparation

  Chapter 29: Guarding the Aid

  Chapter 30: Broken Hearted

  Chapter 31: Wooden Finger I

  Chapter 32: Baumgarten Frenzy

  Chapter 33: Erstwhile Allies

  Chapter 34: Business Pitch

  Chapter 35: Emily and Patrick

  Chapter 36: Outbreak, Mid-Atlantic Province

  Chapter 37: Outbreak, Southern Rocky Mountain Territory

  Chapter 38: Outbreak, Overseas

  Chapter 39: Outbreak, Desert Plains Territory

  Chapter 40: Outbreak, Troy Township

  Chapter 41: Repairing Chaos

  Chapter 42: Reconnaissance of Ruins

  Chapter 43: Battle Homeward

  Chapter 44: Recovery and Recuperation

  Chapter 45: Ambush in Arlington

  Chapter 46: Battle for Troy

  Chapter 47: Blood and Faith in Salt Lake City

  Chapter 48: Evidence

  Chapter 49: The Fall of Troy

  Chapter 50: An Appeal

  Chapter 51: Breaking Point

  Chapter 52: Captured

  Chapter 53: Confession

  Chapter 54: Revelation

  Chapter 55: Wayward

  Chapter 1: A Proposition

  (Alias Goodwell)

  Two passenger jump-jets touched down, along with a small flock of aerial drones, kicking-up a tempest of swirling dust that blocked out the early light of dawn and the fading moon above the cluster of tents and dilapidated vehicles. Alias Goodwell was disoriented by the twisting darkness and the helmet that encapsulated his head, so he clung to the guards on each arm and followed them to the waiting airships. The son of a small-time traveling evangelist, an urchin of the Desert Plains Territory, Alias couldn’t help but feel excited about whatever lay ahead.

  Not a month before, Alias had found himself battling a creeping sense of despair as he watched his father, Minister Alias Goodwell Sr., proselytizing outside one of the Migrant Assistance Camps dotting the region. Minister Goodwell, a native of the Desert Plains Territory in his early fifties, was one of the multitude of ministers parlaying spiritual comfort for sustenance and necessities for the family and their tiny nomadic ministry.

  Minister Goodwell made enough in his trade that the family was better off than most in the badlands. He had escaped the most common physical tolls of growing up in the region—malnutrition, frailty from sickness, and disfiguring fighting scars. In fact, Minister Goodwell was striking for his height, brawny build, thick black hair, and neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He’d been blessed with a low, clear voice, a knack for words, and a charisma that ingratiated him quickly with strangers. He was an expert orator with a welcoming demeanor—perfectly suited to life as a preacher.

  Alias could sense, though, that his father had fallen well short of his own expectations, never reaping the full benefits of his natural gifts. Minister Goodwell hadn’t even escaped the badlands, and Alias had begun to fear the same fate for himself, as they meandered along the dry and dusty expanse of the North American Commonwealth.

  Alias had navigated the inhospitable badlands with his family’s ministry his entire life. They wore dignified, but unpretentious, robes to distinguish themselves as People of Faith. This afforded them some exemption from the vicissitudes of life in the Wilds—robbery, assault, rape, enslavement, and murder. The regalia of the faithful curbed most criminal temptations, and Alias was at least grateful for that.

  Beyond that modicum of relative safety, Alias also appreciated the love, respect, and core values binding the rag-tag group together. To the ministers who followed his father and tended to the transient, but impassioned, parishioners around the region, Minister Goodwell was a loving patriarch, who offered welcome measures of forgiveness—and hope for some cool, green afterlife.

  Still, the constantly shifting weather and fleeting employment in the badlands shuffled people hither and yon like tumble weeds—mile after mile, day after day, year after year. Where settlements, industrial outposts, and hollowed-out cities had endured from the High Times, established churches—mostly the Big Five—jealously guarded their territory, often paying underemployed thugs to move traveling theologians along.

  Then there was his father’s own restlessness. His sense of “purpose” and “destiny.” Values that prevented them from ever finding the “perfect spot” to settle and build a proper church.

  “There is suffering and struggle everywhere,” his father explained to them whenever he decided to move the camp. “Our ministry must tend to the needs of people wherever they are. Would we abandon the people of the Desert Plains Territory and only tend to the Ellies in the agri-belts? Who gets left behind?”

  The most needy. It went without saying, now that Alias and his sister Jasmine were older, that focusing on the Ellies—the elite families that enforced a tenuous order on the Commonwealth—was an unmentionable proposition.

  They wandered through the parched region as the Holy Church of Christ and His Apostles. Their caravan of rusty old school buses, campers, and thrice-disused military transport lorries lumbered over smoldering, potted roads at night, unloading and reloading their tents, religious accouterments, and meager possessions, only to repack them days later and start again.

  Like e
veryone in the region after the collapse of the Ogallala Aquifer, they clanked and clattered as they rode, dragging chains behind their vehicles so the dust storms’ static electricity wouldn’t short out their vehicles. They put on greeting gloves to mitigate against the spread of disease and prevent a handshake from sending a shock of electricity to the recipient. They donned surgical masks outside to keep from inhaling the dust that led to the black-dust flu.

  Like everyone, they battened down their belongings during the dust storms, sealing windows with wet cloths. Through the storms, the heat, and the insect infestations, they lugged themselves from place to place, always managing to trade God’s Word for enough gas, food, decontaminated water, and a few creature comforts. New boots every year. Basic-Plus data subscriptions with OmniComms, including training programs, research materials, the GEO ubiquitous geospatial data system, and even a few games.

  As the life his father had chosen dragged Alias deeper into a malaise, destiny finally found them outside a construction site, ironically near the scrappy desert town of Ogallala. That is where Alias and his father encountered Gilbert Calden and three executives from the International Energy Consortium. Alias had seen the petroleros when they first arrived to hear his father’s sermon, decked in the region's most formal attire—thick iridescent shell jackets with pressed collared shirts that flowed past their knees. Baggy trousers with broad satin stripes down the legs neatly tucked into tall boots with fat rubber soles. Broad-brimmed hats, the requisite insect-screen mesh rolled up and tied to the brims with small colored ribbons that matched the pant striped.

  After checking-in their weapons at a stall on the Church’s perimeter, the petroleros had queued up in the church’s foyer tent beneath a flickering lighted sign reading “CURRENCY DONATIONS.” Like all Ellies out of their element, they glanced discreetly at the people waiting in the long line next to theirs, watching the dirty workers deposit sealed jugs of water, canned goods, MREs, and various small widgets and machines—desalinators and such—onto wheeled palettes under a flickering sign labeled “INERT DONATIONS.” The petroleros ignored the still-larger crowd milling outside under the sign flickering “LIVE DONATIONS,” offering livestock, peaked fruits and vegetables, and fuel in an open-air inspection pen tended by church ministers.

  Finally reaching the front of their line, the petroleros used their OmniComms wrist-platforms—as inconspicuously as they could—and transferred the 300 Kroner donation required for VIP access.

  As the sun drifted lower on the horizon and the sky glowed pink, Alias followed the petroleros from a distance, watching them trundle from the donation line towards the church’s big-top tent. In the waning twilight, he observed them squinting to discern the countless patches stitched over the faded, dingy stripes that ran from the tent's base to the tiny triangle flag flapping at its top. Nearer the entrance, they fixated on the sun-bleached images of exotic animals—tigers, elephants, seals and the like—faded reminders of the High Times, the bright paint long-since peeled off and blown away, much like the creatures themselves.

  The petroleros had surely seen big-top gatherings before. Traveling fairs crisscrossed the badlands almost as often as ministries did. Fair tents always featured freshly painted images of human acrobatics, genetic freaks, and carnal peep shows. Many were thought to be funded by the Ellies themselves as diversions for the restless urchins. From the executives’ expressions, though, they had never been in a traveling ministry’s event, relegated to using one of the old big-top circus tents that used to bring long-vanished exotic performing animals. Alias guessed they were sizing up his father’s operation, though he couldn’t imagine why. He wondered if the faded animal images made their hearts ache for the High Times, as it did for him and his mentor, Minister Joshua Goldbloom, even though none of them had ever experienced it.

  For all I know, he thought bitterly, they all keep elephants on their goddamned estates.

  When the petroleros entered the big-top tent, the church’s ushers guided them to the padded folding chairs nearest the stage, where the more generous benefactors sat. Safely separated from the masses, they craned their necks to survey their surroundings. Bare light bulbs dangling by their power cords from the heights of the tent. The ministry’s industrial-grade OmniComms Virtual Immersive Media Experience generator—albeit four generations obsolete. The dusty and God-thirsty multitudes filling up the tall bleachers in the cavernous tent.

  Realizing the time, Alias abandoned his reconnaissance of the petroleros and paced quickly to his position at the VIME command console. It was show time, and his computer-generated audio-visuals were as critical to the spectacle as his father’s honeyed words. Alias entered his codes to launch the show, and he looked out upon the crowd to see the expressions of delight as the lights dimmed and his blue-green color-swirl enveloped the tent’s inner walls. The audience, as always, quieted to see what was happening around them, faces agog.

  A few more swipes and keystrokes, and Alias’ color-swirl sharpened into images of babbling creeks, all cascading inward toward the gobsmacked audience. Alias paused for the collective sigh that always came when woolly rain clouds appeared overhead, coalescing on a cool, gray sky. A swipe on his console, and mist began drifting amongst the lush virtual trees, now floating just above the aisles and bleachers. He dropped the temperature in the tent with flowing breezes from the hidden ducts. The tree leaves shimmered, and their gray-green branches swayed sensuously, as if fondled by God’s endless, loving caresses.

  Alias faded-in the image of Jesus amongst the clouds, followed by the scene of Christ’s birth in the manger. The North Star grew in size and intensity, gradually casting a cone of shimmering light onto Alias Sr., who had appeared on the dark stage, unseen by the awe-struck badlanders and petroleros. Alias Sr. was hooded in a forest-green robe that swept the floor at his feet. As Alias swiped again, bidding the clouds and streams to blur almost imperceptibly, so his father could begin his sermon as he always did: with a whisper.

  From his perch, Alias could see the faces of the three visiting petroleros, who were listening attentively to his father’s sermon. They appeared mesmerized, like children finding living shapes in drifting white clouds for the first time. Soothed by the same spiritual balm that relieved the three-hundred-or-so others in the big-top, the petroleros had clearly forgotten their task.

  Alias noticed the petroleros wake-up from their trance well after Minister Goodwell had left the stage and Alias launched the closing sequence. The floating clouds and trees dissipated, the flowing water blurred back into the color-swirl, the cool breezes gave way to the creeping heat from outside, and the overhead lights slowly overtook the darkness. It always took a few minutes for the dusty crowds to awaken, let out their typical collective groan, and start filing toward the doors.

  With his duties complete and a half-hour before his father’s mandatory show-review meeting, Alias stealthily made his way into the orbit of the petroleros to eavesdrop.

  “That is what we wanted you to see, Mr. Rashid,” one of them called out over the din of the departing crowd. He was a tall, thin man with sun-blotched skin, and Alias could see straight away from the man’s deferential and nervous demeanor that he wasn’t a person of significance. “I hope it was worth your long trip.”

  “You did not exaggerate, Mr. Calden,” came Rashid’s reply. “I think we have found what we are looking for.” Rashid looked to his other colleague as if to verify the sentiment.

  A tall, striking woman with unusually fair skin for someone Alias guessed to be in her early thirties nodded silently in agreement.

  Smarter than Calden, Alias thought of the beauty.

  A short, stalky Asian man, who adorned his Ellie uniform with a handful of military medals on his chest, agreed as well.

  Alias didn’t know much about military regalia, but he knew that Commonwealth Ellies did not wear such things on their civilian attire, and the dragons weren’t common symbology here. Foreign. But still prob’ly higher on t
he totem pole than Calden. But this Rashid guy’s clearly the one in charge. Whatever’s coming’ll come from him.

  It was unusual to see three foreigners together in the Wilds, and even rarer to see them without a Commonwealth Ellie in the lead.

  “And you think he will be receptive?” Rashid asked, turning back to Calden, who nodded enthusiastically, like a love-starved dog hoping to get a chew treat for a fetched a stick. “Well then, let’s go introduce ourselves to the good minister.”

  The four petroleros approached the entrance to the back-stage area, showing their wrist-plats again to the Minister Kim Li, who was standing guard, one hand on her stunner-gun. They craned their necks again to spy Alias’ father at the rear of the tent, shaking hands with his fellow clergymen on his way to the exit.

  “Minister Goodwell,” the sun-blotched Calden called out, threading his way through the residual crowd. “That was a wonderful sermon.” He extended his hand, already covered with the customary greeting glove.

  Classy, Alias thought, admiring the floral brocade pattern on Calden’s glove. The colors matched the rest of Calden’s suit perfectly, as if the were made together. Even if he’s lowly in rank, he comes from money. That was something among the Ellies—especially the among the Commonwealth’s great Twenty-Eight Families.

  “Thank you. That is very kind,” replied Minister Goodwell, pulling on his simple greeting glove and shaking the man’s outstretched hand.

  Alias noticed a tinge of embarrassment creep into the back of his mind.

  Minister Li leaned in to whisper to his father that these were the VIPs who paid for a post-sermon audience. Minster Goodwell grimaced at the miscommunication, but he quickly recovered his welcoming and friendly expression in coming back to the petroleros.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize we had a meeting set up. But you look familiar, Mr.—?”

  “Calden. Gilbert Calden. I am in town quite a lot for business, and I have attended your sermons before. …Wonderful,” he fawned.