Apocalypse Rising (Episode 1 of 4): A Christian Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Thriller (Ichthus Chronicles Book 5)

by J A Bouma

  Alexander’s eyes widened at the mention of the slur used for Ichthus ministers. “So I’d been discovered, then, by Solterra?”

  “That’s what we’d worried once there was word on the magnaroad from sources in southern Roma. Just happy we got to you before the Republic did.”

  He leaned forward, heart pounding now. “Were they coming for me?”

  “Eventually. They always do.”

  Taking a measured breath, Alexander leaned back and offered a grateful nod. “So what has been transpiring in my absence? With Ichthus, with the Ministerium—with you all?”

  “Oh, you know,” Ford said, “just jumping phases back to the time of Jesus to retrieve his story for Ichthus in your absence.”

  Alexander sat up with a start. “Really?”

  He laughed, passing a knowing glance to Lucy. “Long story, homefry.” Ford looked to Father Jim now, who took over.

  The cardinal shifted toward Alexander and fixed him with a serious gaze. “What have we been up to, you ask? Same as you, lad. Survival.”

  The word rattled inside him, compounded by the look Padre was giving him. A cross between a serious dread from all it meant for Ichthus, but also a hint of disappointment. It was the closest Father Jim came to chiding him for fleeing.

  He turned away and nodded silently.

  “What happened to the Ministerium headquarters in former Nicaea was the shot across the bow,” Father Jim continued. “Similar destruction was wrought from Antakya to Alexandria, from millennia-old Catholic Orthodoxy cathedrals still servicing Ichthus congregations in Germania and Francia and Britannia, to those megachurch monstrosities of Evangelical Orthodoxy strewn across Noramericana and Louisiana all the way over to California and up the Pacific coast to Cascadia. Asiatica has been somewhat more immune to the Purge, as well as your homeland in Alkebulana, the Church in both the Asian and African continents knowing the full measure and might of authoritarian and radically extreme regimes stretching back generations. Brothers and sisters on those parts have been hiding out underground for generations, so they’ve been tougher to root out and purge from Solterra. It’s been dreadful, Alex, simply dreadful…”

  Father Jim shook his head with a moan, slumping back into his seat and resting a hand against his head. He went on, “And that’s not even touching the surface of the internal strife caused by the likes of Cardinal Dominic Weiss and Josiah Abasi, Apollos Nicolai even, all of the wicked men and women inside the Church casting aside the once-for-all faith of God’s holy people like some used garment, soiled in the waste of their adulterous affairs with heresy. Woe to them!” Father Jim exclaimed, pounding his fist into his knee. “Blemishes on Ichthus, they are, scoffers who follow their own ungodly desires, dividing the Body of Christ and sowing seeds of discord—bringing swift destruction on themselves, even as they tear apart the Church!”

  Guilt rose like bile from Alexander’s gut, the truth of what Father Jim and Ford, Rebekah and Lucy and others had to face without his help a weight he didn’t want to bear. But he had to, facing the fact he’d left his teammates, his family, high and dry.

  Father Jim continued, “We’ve tried regrouping the Ministerium the past year, mostly thanks to John Mark’s valiant efforts under Solterra’s nose.” Ford waved silently from the front. “We’ve made progress, even forming a Resistance front to the Republic’s incursions against Ichthus of former Ministerium agents and everyday believers willing to risk it all for the Church’s safety. Sasha has managed to get all of your video and audio recordings of the past up onto some node or something or other in DiviNet, accessible by the community of Ichthus across Solterra.”

  Alexander forced a smile. “That’s good to hear. At least my trips through time were worth it…”

  Padre chuckled Alexander’s favorite belly laugh and slapped him on the back. “I’d say so, my boy! Your travels retrieving the Church’s past has made a real difference in galvanizing the Resistance and informing everyday believers of their faith in Jesus Christ. Most of all, you’ll recall Kareema Salam, the woman Ford and Lucy rescued from what used to be ancient Antioch, the woman you briefly met on the beach.”

  Alexander vaguely remembered the woman, but nodded Father Jim along anyway.

  “Well, she has been using the map drawn on the Shroud of Turin you helped recover to locate her fellow members of the Order of Thaddeus Remnant. It’s been a slow go of it with plodding progress, but with a dose of providential intervention we’ll be able to reconstitute the Order to get us through these dark times—with you at the helm, I might add.” Father Jim smiled and winked.

  The prospect of Alexander assuming the role as Order Master sent a chill ratcheting up his spine. But he smiled and nodded anyway.

  Glancing toward the polished chrome ceiling held up by those steel girders, he said, “What about up top, the signs of the…” He trailed off, not having the strength to voice what he feared he believed to be true.

  “You mean the signs of the times?” Father Jim answered lowly. “The apocalypse?”

  He nodded quickly, fixing him with searching eyes. “What is it?”

  “You tell us, homefry. We’ve been stuck down in this tin can hunting down your as—err...blessed baby bottom.” He glanced at Father Jim, who frowned but didn’t say a word. “Anyway, what the heck happened?”

  Swallowing hard and rubbing his hands perspiring with the memory against his drying pants, Alexander recounted everything that had transpired—from the start of the earthquake to the dimming sun and on to the blood-red moon and fading, falling stars. Finishing, he looked to Ford and Jin behind him, then to Rebekah and Lucy, their faces registering the same shock and fear.

  “‘I watched as he opened the sixth seal,’” Father Jim intoned, quoting what Alexander had mentioned to Mateo from the Book of Revelation. “‘There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind.’”

  “The Book of Revelation, chapter 6,” Ford said, arms folded and bobbing back and forth on the balls of his heels with a nervous energy.

  Alexander nodded. “That’s what I thought when it all went down. But I had always assumed it was figurative, symbolic language. After all, most of Revelation is, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, lad,” Father Jim said, “‘tis true. Yet the language is clearly prescient of some grand, cosmic catastrophe.”

  Ford scoffed. “I’d call the sun blotting out and moon turning red and the freakin’ stars fallin’ to earth more than prescient language of some grand, cosmic catastrophe!”

  Alexander nodded. “The end of the world as we know it.”

  “And I don’t feel fine, thank you very much!”

  “Then why they hey-ho day are we still here?” asked Lucy, the petite blonde’s lilt reflecting the same twang Ford carried from Noramericana.

  “What is your meaning?” Rebekah asked in return, Alexander’s heart leaping at the sound of her voice, her own tone and timbre lilting with echoes of his own homeland.

  Lucy turned to her. “Meaning, dear sister, the Lord Jesus Christ was supposed to come back and beam us out of here, Star Trek style, before the apocalypse. If what you say is true, Alex and Cardinal Ferraro, that the sixth seal has been darn well near severed in two—then, well, what the hey-ho day happened?”

  Father Jim went to answer when he was cut off by the blare of a warning.

  It cried out from the digital panel of controls at the front. Something red and alarming and signaling some disturbance.

  The whole hydrocraft seemed to seize with as much alarm, not understanding what it meant but understanding enough to be snapped to high-alert status themselves.

  “What’s the problem?” Alexander asked in ignorance, his heart picking up pace.

  Ford spun back toward the controls and leaned over Jin’s shoulders again, letting a curse slip under his breath.


  “An Enforcer Stingray,” he said, face white and drawn with worry.

  “The Republic Legion…” Alexander muttered, his mouth going dry now at the truth of the matter.

  It just got crazy serious.

  Again.

  Chapter 4

  Ford’s heart sank to the steel grating beneath; his bowels went with it. He eased into the captain’s chair next to Jin and tapped the alarm, silencing the darn thing. Reminded him of a goat from childhood, an annoying critter that would follow him all across their family peanut farm, pestering him for a snack and snappin’ at his backside if he didn’t give up the goods.

  He ran a worried hand across his close-cropped blond hair, the memory of that darn goat pretty well summarizing his annoyance but recognizing the threat was far worse than a missin’ patch from his trousers.

  Not good, Johnny Mark…

  A cold dread swept through him and his mouth ran all sandpapery and coppery from the corresponding sudden surge of fight-or-flight adrenaline, the dreaded Grip wrapping its tentacles around him like those sea creatures he’d read about on DiviNet washing ashore during the Armageddon climate change decades ago. Boy, did he hate how he got when the pressure mounted, pressing in and tightening around his chest like a vice grip and flaring without warning.

  Had stretched back to boyhood, having a rough time of keeping it together under pressure. And Pops had smacked him around plenty for it. Basic training with the Legion helped some, and he eventually managed to get it under control. Mostly thanks to bottles of moonshine his grandpappy had taught him to brew.

  No moonshine was in reach now, and there was no way in hot Hades he’d let the Grip take hold bobbin’ under the water like a rubber ducky.

  If his years with the Republic Legion taught him anything, it was that wherever there was an Enforcer, the authoritarian law-and-order brigade of the Republic, that meant nothing good—whether for the polis, or Ichthus.

  Or them.

  Him especially, given he was a Defector.

  Get it together, Ford. It’s go time…

  Alexander rushed up to his side. “What does that mean?”

  Ford eyed the water, the midday sun bright and strong above as they floated several meters below the surface. A few PSV hydrocrafts, with their orange-glow headlamps, ran this way and that farther off into the darkened void that was the sea, a shroud hiding the threat that meant no uncertain doom for his Ministerium passengers.

  He replied, “Remember when you asked if you’d been discovered by Solterra, cashing in on rumors of your whereabouts?”

  “Yes…”

  “Looks like the Republic has come to claim their merca credits, homefry.”

  “Has he spotted us?” Father Jim asked on a shaky breath from the seats. “Is it coming in for the kill, so to speak?”

  “First off,” Ford said, continuing to eye a part of the control panel that had turned into a radar display, “never utter the ‘K’ word while a hundred meters under the water, especially when the Legion is nigh. And second, no. Not yet anyway. We’ve got an early warning system on this puppy that’s dialed into the Legion’s monitoring systems through DiviNet.”

  “It can do that?” Alexander muttered over his shoulder.

  “Not until I am outfitting the PSV with a special touch of Pavlovich love,” Sasha said with a grin from back at his seat.

  “Hold up…” Ford said.

  “What is the matter, John Mark?” Father Jim said, coming up next to Alexander now.

  “Looks like we’ve got more company than we bargained for.” He pointed at the digital panel, two more pulsing red dots joining the one.

  The original one stayed put while the other two began spreading out in both directions.

  Not good, Johnny Mark…

  “Bases loaded…” Ford mumbled, tapping the panel.

  “What’s that?” Alexander asked.

  He twisted around and explained, “An Enforcer maneuver named after the old American baseball pastime from back home. Had been standard-op when I was in the service with Legion capture-and-command missions. A three-point spread that swoops in for the kill.”

  Alexander replied, “I thought you said never to use the ‘K’ word while a hundred meters under the water, especially when the Legion is nigh…”

  “Look, there—” Ford pointed to the radar as the three points arrayed in a straight line began morphing into a triangle, the one original Stingray holding fast while the two wings started sweeping forward.

  Toward their position.

  “Hey, doc!” he exclaimed, gesturing toward Sasha. “See if you can work some of your technowizardry and confuse our new friends on the DiviNet side of things.”

  “I am already being on it, partner,” Sasha said from his seat, his tight blond curls bouncing as he clattered away on a laptop far more powerful than your average computer. Had been used to leverage the full power of DiviNet along with an algorithmic kernel to carry Ford and Alexander back through time. So it was a real powerhouse.

  Ford watched the Stingrays continue their maneuvering into position, the one hydrocraft moving forward now as the two outer units zoomed forward to close the net. Didn’t have long until their little yellow submarine was caught in their death trap.

  With no hope of any escape.

  Time to get to it.

  He crossed himself on instinct. Which was weird, since he wasn’t raised in the Catholic Orthodoxy tradition. But whatever. The maneuver was Christian, no matter how you sliced and diced the factions, and invoking the protection of the cross seemed about the only thing that made sense.

  As well as his next move. Which was why he crossed himself.

  “You really must have pissed off the Republic, homefry, for them to send three Stingrays to haul your backside to a reprogramming camp.”

  Ford grabbed hold of a dual-control stick that was divided in halves, both ends operating independently, and eying the radar for the right moment to act.

  “Who’s to say they’re not coming to send your backside to a reprogramming camp!” Alexander said. “I seem to recall you sufficiently pissing them off a time or two, what with deserting them and all. Not to mention killing off their Purifiers and running away with the Order of Thaddeus Remnant they were interrogating.”

  Ford chuckled. “Suppose I have, haven’t I. Either way, they’re coming in hot and heavy with a bone to pick with someone.”

  “Then what do we do about it?”

  He held his breath as the red pulsing orbs on the radar slowly locked into position, two faint corresponding red orbs coming into view dead ahead now. Two headlamps looking like demonic peepers waiting to suck the life out of them.

  Wait for it…

  “John Mark,” Father Jim said, “now seems as good a time as any to launch whatever plan you’ve been cooking up in that head of yours to whisk us away to safe harbor.”

  Wait for it…

  Alexander chuckled nervously. “Yeah, mate. What’s the plan?”

  “The plan? I’ll tell you the plan.”

  One end of Ford’s mouth curled upward.

  Now!

  “The plan is to get the heck—”

  The PSV suddenly dipped at his command, like an elevator falling down a shaft without its cable, sending everyone’s stomachs into their throats and bracing themselves for the underwater plunge.

  “—out of Dodge, homefry.”

  Ford cranked one end of the control stick down, pulling the hydrocraft deeper and deeper into the depths of the sea. He chuckled and added, “Oh, yeah, hold on by the way.”

  “John Mark…” Father Jim complained, sliding back into his seat and connecting his belt buckle in place. “A bit more warning next time before you take the plunge into the abyss!”

  “Sorry about that. But no time to waste when you’ve got Enforcers on your ass.”

  “John Mark…”

  Ford cleared his throat. “Sorry about that, chief.”

  The windshield darke
ned quickly into blackness as the PSV continued plunging deeper down under. The strong, midday sunlight filtering through the surface was gone now. The few other hydrocrafts he had spotted earlier roaming through designated hydrochannels, their headlights slicing through the seawater’s depths, blinked dim the farther they fell.

  “Where are we headed, Captain Nemo?” Lucy asked.

  That bleating goat cut off any response, blaring up something fierce again as the triangle turned more unto a funnel.

  Heading straight for their position.

  “Well, if there was any doubt the Stingrays were coming for us,” Jin said, throwing up a pair of high-powered headlamps to illuminate the darkness, “that went out the window.”

  “Thanks, Captain Obvious…” Ford said, holding the controller steady as the cone of pursuing Enforcers narrowed into an arrow.

  No doubt is right.

  “Where are you taking us?” Alexander asked with a rushed panic.

  “Spotted a volcanic ridgeline on the topographical mapping display a few klicks down below.”

  “Volcanic ridgeline!” Alexander settled into his seat and buckled in. “Is it safe?”

  “Don’t worry, homefry. Looks like it’s been dormant for a century or two. Should be the perfect hideout until the minions of our Dear Leader lose interest.”

  “If we make it that far,” Jin added, pointing at the radar. “They’re gaining on us.”

  “This seems mighty crazy,” Lucy said, voice showing clear strain from the moment. “Even for you, Johnny Mark.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, sassafras,” Ford said.

  “Hope you know what you’re doing…”

  He turned around and flashed her his pearly whites. “Always—”

  The PSV suddenly tilted with a rattling shudder, tipping to the left before dipping down with increased speed.