by J A Bouma
“Da. Ukrainski.”
Now he grinned like a little schoolboy, the man throwing up some Muscovia jibber-jabber. Love at first sight, by the looks of it.
“Can we get back to it, folks?” Ford said. “Or do you two need a room?”
“Junia,” Father Jim said, coming back around from Alexander. “Named after the apostle commended to the ancient Church of Rome by the Apostle Paul?”
She smiled now and nodded. Then motioned toward the other two who had engaged them. “These two are Phoebe and Titus, my twin sister and her husband.”
“Named after the deaconess who bore Paul’s letter to the same Christian community and the young man Paul left in charge of his church plant in Crete?”
“Correct, you are,” Phoebe said, nodding to her husband with the dreads.
“How biblical…” Ford muttered. “How about we get the show on the road. Because I reckon the Republic won’t be sitting on its laurels while we chew the cud.” He stepped forward when Nia held out her staff, its head pulsing purple.
“This is being my station,” she said, eyes narrowing and face hardening with resolve. “And we are going at my command.”
“Alright, sassafras. No need to get your ushanka in a bunch.”
“And you are being?” she asked.
“John Mark Ford, at your service.” He bowed, then motioned toward the others. “You’ve already met Sasha Pavlovich.”
Nia turned toward the man, brow raised. “The Sasha Pavlovich. The man who was inventing time travel?”
“Sister, you have no idea. The two gals behind him are Lucy and Rebekah. The distinguished fellow with silver hair is Cardinal James Ferraro.”
“Da. Head of the Ministerium. We have been in contact.”
“Very well. And this here is Alexander Zarruq. Our resident Master of the Order—”
The room suddenly shifted again, weapons drawn and that Scythe pointed now at the guy from Tripolitania.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What the hot Hades is this about?”
“You are being a Zarruq?” Nia said through gritted teeth.
Alexander’s face fell, but the man kept it together. Had to give him credit for that.
“That is correct,” he said.
“Any relation to our new Sacradi?” Titus said with raised weapon.
He hesitated, but replied, “The man is my father. Or at least was…”
“Do you realize what he has put us through? All of us!” Nia said, waving her one free arm around the room. The others nodded and grumbled in agreement.
Now Ford stepped forward and stepped up to the plate. “Lay off the guy, would ya? He thought the old man was dead. By suicide, none the less. Had not a clue what the psychopath was up to. We’re here because we need help, because we’re fixin’ to do something about it. So are you game or what?”
Nia fixed him with those steely, slitted green eyes again, face hard and noticeably toned biceps gripping that Scythe with the purple head. She said something to her sister in that Muscovia tongue, then led the way out of the docking bay.
“Golly, that one’s a ripe one, ain’t she?” Lucy said, coming up to Ford’s side.
He huffed a sigh and nodded, rushing after the lady who was plucking every last one of his nerves.
Nia and Phoebe led the way, followed by Ford and Alexander and Lucy, with Sasha trying to push past Father Jim and Rebekah toward the front—no doubt to strike back up again with his new Ukrainski chickadee—but the tight corridors of dull-gray steel wouldn’t let him. Titus and the other two unknown Resistance men brought up the rear as they wound their way along several twists and turns and up along ramps through the deep submergence station, windows of darkened indigo water hiding the murky depths beyond and cold, hard steel shrouding the secrets of the Ministerium and Ichthus Resistance up ahead.
Stopping abruptly at a nondescript door, a zipper seam running the length of the closed entrance, Nia pressed a palm against a glass security device that glowed blue until flashing an approving green. A shudder echoed through the corridor and the seam unzipped before the doors retracted, revealing some sort of bridge, like something out of one of those Kindle bargain-bin sci-fi novels he read as a kid before Amazon was appropriated by Solterra.
It was roomy and dimly lit, warm lighting softening some of the cold harshness of the steel. It was also circular, the entire space ringed by windows looking out into the ocean depths curving toward a center point. Must be at the tippy-top of the station. Along the periphery were workstations manned by a smattering of men and women, all wearing the gray jumpsuits that had been standard-issue Ministerium garb at their former HQ. The one he had commanded but which had been destroyed. At the center was a circular table, edged by chairs.
“Nice digs,” Ford said, planting his hands on his hips and sizing up the joint.
“It is being more than adequate,” Nia said with a shrug, taking one of the seats and motioning toward the others. “Please, have a seat.”
“What is it you’ve been doing here?” Alexander asked, sitting at the other end across from Nia, Ford and Father Jim sitting on either side. Lucy and Rebekah and Sasha joined them while Phoebe and Titus and the two other Johns joined Nia—consciously or not, forming two sides.
“Safeguarding Ichthus, that is being what!” Nia said, kicking up a leg and resting her foot on top of the table.
Ford raised a brow, eyeing the interesting show of classless bravado, asserting herself while leaning back in her oversized chair, its back jutting up higher than the rest. Clearly a tell that meant she believed she was the boss of the joint. What peeved him was that as chief of Ministerium operations, he technically outranked her, even with the newly formed Resistance. Although with HQ destroyed, and what was left of their Ministerium people dead or on the run, he wasn’t even sure he had a show left for his operational dog and pony. Best to let her think she’s in control and keep the yapper shut, then assert himself when the moment called for it.
Alexander continued, “What do you mean by that, safeguarding Ichthus? From what?”
She twisted up her face and smacked her staff on the tabletop with a thudding echo. “From the Republic, you moron! And from Zarruq, the other Zarruq. Your bat’ko who has been orchestrating the Church’s destruction!”
Alexander shifted in his seat. He set a clenched fist on the table, head bowed but jaw clenched shut.
“Yeah, about that,” Ford said, intervening before things got testier than they were. “Our friends topside said you’ve been doing a bang-up job secreting away Christians from the all-seeing Solterra eyes. Saving men, women, and children from no uncertain doom from the Republic’s Purge.” Figured slathering on a heaping scoop of attagirl would do the body good.
Nia nodded. “Da. That is being correct.”
So much for modesty…
“The Purge has been more successful than we initially would have imagined,” Titus intoned with that deep, baritone voice of his, a cord of dreadlocks coming loose and falling to his shoulder. Caressing it in one hand, he added: “And also less so, in unexpected ways.”
“What do you mean by that, Titus?” Alexander asked.
The man slung his muscled arms up on the table with a thud, opening his hands to explain, “The all-out assault against the Church of Jesus Christ by Solterra over a year ago now was devastating. Leveling not only the Ministerium headquarters in former Nicaea, but also bringing the same destruction to Christian communities across Solterra. Church buildings across Europa stretching back to the Reformation and even the late Middle Ages were leveled. Megachurch monstrosities of steel and concrete were reduced to rubble in Americana and Noramericana. And what modest cathedrals dotted the landscapes of Alkebulana and Asiatica, they too were destroyed in a campaign to quell and purge the world of the obvious signs of Ichthus’s presence.”
The echo of the memory of those Queller bombing raids at the Ministerium’s HQ gave Ford a shudder. They’d barely made it out alive at the hands of a
platoon of Purifiers sent to cancel their backsides. Thank the Lord Almighty for the escape hatch—and the yellow submarine at the end of it!
“Entire worshipping communities were being smashed to smithereens,” Nia added. “The fires of Solterra have driven us out of our towns and cities, like rats scurrying for hiding with rising floodwaters.”
“Sending believers underground, you mean?” Alexander asked.
“Underground, under water, in caves and crevices across the Republic.”
He nodded, his face falling and eyes going back to the surface of the table. Ford felt for the fella, given his own experience with dear ol’ Dad. Only his had died in some backwoods border town between Americana and Noramericana before the Reckoning. At least he had that going for him. Couldn’t imagine finding out he was in fact still alive; didn’t know what he’d do if he went fixin’ to embody Satan himself as some Grand Master of a Republic-endorsed cult.
Actually, he did know what he’d do. And that frightened him to pieces.
“And what is the unexpected part of the Purge?” Alexander asked, head raised and lookin’ like he was back in the game. Good boy.
Titus smiled, a row of white teeth gleaming behind his flat black face, a gold tooth glinting in the light. “Not only has Ichthus survived, but we’re thriving! Finding ways to embody Christ like never before outside the confines and trappings of ultramodernity. With its light shows and fog machines and highly amplified worship sets, with its buildings and programs and franchised churches showing some talking head on a screen.”
Father Jim snorted. “The innovations of Evangelical Orthodoxy never cease to amaze me…”
“Not just Evangelical Orthodoxy, Cardinal Ferraro,” Titus corrected. “All branches of Ichthus had taken to accommodating itself to culture post-Reckoning in order to claw back some semblance of power and status and respectability within the Republic and ultramodern culture.”
Nia smirked. “That is not even touching on how Ichthus accommodated its beliefs to the paganism of Solterra.”
“Which led to Panligo in the first place!” Father Jim added, “And the Church’s current lot in life.”
Titus leaned back. “Which hasn’t been all bad, in my estimation.”
“What are you playing at?” Alexander asked. “Ichthus has been reduced to rubble. What good can come from that?”
“Ichthus is not being reduced to rubble in the slightest!” Nia said, waving a hand in the air. “Her church buildings and infrastructure, perhaps. But not the Church itself.”
“They are surviving and thriving in secret, yes,” Titus said. “But also rediscovering what it means to be the Body of Christ through charitable acts of everyday kindness and bold, courageous witness to the good news of rescue in Jesus Christ alone. There is a movement afoot.” The man smirked, smiling now, that golden tooth glinting with an ebullient joy that gave even Ford some hope. “A Resistance.”
“And we are helping them,” Nia added. “All of us in our network of survivors and Resistors to the pagan ways of Panligo and Solterra, combining the forces of the Ministerium leftovers and certain Remnants of Christian orders from ages past together with believers across the Republic living life in the everyday.”
“Speaking of which,” Ford said, clearing his throat and scooting to the edge of his seat. “Our friends up top also said you were in a position to be able to give us a helping hand down here.”
“Da. That is being correct. But before I am agreeing to be doing that, I want you to be answering us one thing.”
Ford leaned back. “Shoot, partner.”
Her face grew grim, falling and jaw setting in place. Then her eyes went toward the glowing ceiling above. “What is it that is happening up above?”
Ford snorted a laugh. “The end of the world, sister. What else?”
“I am being serious. We have been receiving reports from all across the Republic from our brothers and sisters in the faith, connecting with those left over from the Ministerium, and have seen the destruction that has been raining down from on high.”
There was a quiver to her voice now, a quake that betrayed the earlier bravado. She was shaken. By the looks of it around the table, they all were.
Ford took a breath and gestured toward the cardinal. “Perhaps you should take this one, chief. A bit above my pay grade, I’m afraid.”
Father Jim’s face grew slack, and his eyes narrowed with an intensity that was unnerving. “What else, my dear, but the famed Day of the Lord?”
“The Day of the Lord?”
“He means the end of the world as we know it,” Alexander answered. “The apocalypse.”
A mixture of confusion and worry rippled through the room.
“What are you meaning by the apocalypse?” Nia exclaimed with a strained voice. “We are still being here, for God’s sake!”
“Tell me about it, sister,” Ford said. “That’s what I wondered.”
“Me too,” Lucy added. “I voiced the same bewilderment, wondering if the sixth seal has been darn well near severed in two, then what the hey-ho day happened? Never got an answer.”
“Interrupted by those blasted Stingrays.”
“Stingrays?” Nia asked, brow raised with concern. “As in those crazy Solterra hydrocrafts that have been stalking the underwater church the past year?”
Ford waved a dismissive hand. “That’s a whole other ball of ugly for another time.”
“Padre,” Alexander said, “Lucy’s point is well taken, I believe. How is it possible that we have entered the apocalypse if Ichthus is still here?” He waved a hand around the room, adding: “If we’re all still here?”
Ford chuckled. “Yeah, it’s not like you’re sayin’ we’ve been left behind!”
The cardinal said nothing.
An anxious jitter suddenly ratcheted up his spine. He muttered, “Are you, chief?”
Father Jim took a breath and nodded. “I should probably explain my meaning.” He raised a finger, pointing across the table and adding: “And what I mean, what I believe the Word of God itself means, is vitally important for the days ahead. For what I am about to share is a matter of truth and lies, belief and doubt—even life and death themselves.”
He paused, fixing his gaze from one person to the next.
“It matters for the Republic, for Ichthus, for every person seated here this day.”
Ford frowned and swallowed hard. Didn’t have a clue what it all meant. Not what the Bible said, not what all the funk rainin’ down from on high meant for the world and the Church. Not in the slightest. But they were about to find out.
And he didn’t know if he was ready.
Chapter 7
Alexander glanced from Lucy to Rebekah to Ford. Their faces said it all: They weren’t ready for what Father Jim was about to reveal.
Truth be told, neither was he.
The end of the world had always been something of a distant possibility, and much more of a theological idea, born first through his instruction in the Church and then his courses training to be a priest at Oxford. Perhaps had he and the others lived a generation ago, during the Great Reckoning when the world had been set on fire through cataclysmic climate change and the wars that nearly ended human civilization—living through that would have primed anyone to believe the end was near, and prompted Christians to anticipate Jesus Christ’s second coming was one sleep away.
Now, post-Reckoning, with all the peace, progress, and prosperity the Republic offered, it was harder to believe the world as they knew it would end. Even with Solterra’s Purge against Ichthus, labeling Christians as Unfits for reprogramming and destroying their churches—even then, Alexander had a hard time wrapping his mind around it all.
The coppery tang of adrenaline was heavy on his tongue now, his heart thudding in his chest at the thought of what Father Jim would reveal. A tremor ran through a hand, and he clenched it. No time for that nonsense now. Time to keep his head in the game and get some answers.
&nb
sp; “Padre,” Alexander said before the man got into it, “do you think this is the end? That Jesus’ second coming is near, that the Great Tribulation itself is around the corner?”
Father Jim leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and making a tent with his hands at his nose. “While I cannot be entirely certain, and although every era of the world has had its share of apocalyptic-feeling events—be it the collapse of the Roman Empire to the Black Death of ancient Europa, from the two Great Wars on the same continent in the 20th century to the economic meltdowns and pandemics that popped up here and there through the 21st century and on until the events of the Great Reckoning just decades ago. And although every era has seen its share of Antichrist-like figures—be it Nero with the early Church to Pope Leo X, according to those rabble rousers of the Reformation, on to Hitler and Saddam Hussein of the 20th century and George Soros and Bill Gates of the 21st century—”
“Forgive me, cardinal,” Nia interrupted, slinging another leg up on the tabletop in a way Alexander found disrespectful, “while I am appreciating all of the caveats and hedging, we are being rather pressed for time here. Can you be getting to it, hmm, and give it to us straight?”
Father Jim chuckled and put up a surrendering hand. “Point well taken. If you were to put a Neutralizer to my head, I would say—yes, I believe the return of Christ is at hand, that we are on the brink of what the Bible terms, the Day of the Lord.”
The room went silent at his honesty. And given Padre’s hedges, and knowing he was not one who was given to flights of fancy, especially apocalyptic ones, Alexander guessed the man was surer of the truth of what he voiced than of anything he’d ever said in his entire life.
“Excuse me, Father,” Rebekah said, raising her hand. Alexander thought that was cute, as if she were sitting in one of his classes back at Oxford. In many ways, they were all being schooled in the nature of the end times by no better a professor.
“Yes, dear, what is it?” Father Jim said.
