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

by J A Bouma

  “And what does this mysterious visitor bear?” the cardinal asked.

  Nia stopped and turned around. “News.”

  “What kind of news?” Alexander asked.

  “The kind that can get us all killed.” Then the woman left, leaving the others behind.

  Chapter 8

  Ford wasted no time chasing after Nia, a woman who seemed to style herself as some sort of rogue She-Ra Amazonian woman who didn’t answer to anyone but herself. A part of him understood that, respected it even, given his own penchant for going rogue. Defecting from the Republic Legion was proof of that. But the other part was ticked to high heaven that she was stepping on his operational turf when it came to ensuring Ichthus’s survival. Yet he also knew they all had bigger fish to fry than his ego.

  Let it go, Ford. Not worth it…

  Probably so. But there was a mighty fierce battle going on in his head to reassert himself. So he took a breath and eased it out through parted lips as he caught up to the woman taking a left at a T-junction.

  Their shuffling, heavy rubber military boots echoed through the steel-lined corridor bathed in blue. Some sort of tank ran the length of one side of the corridor, lights casting undulating azure within and inside the passageway winding down and through the deep submergence station with every change in water ripples. The same metallic, oily, fishy smell from their initial docking followed them with every step, reminding him why he never signed up for Solterra’s Classis navy fleet.

  He finally caught up to Nia, reaching her side. He went to ask where the fire was when something caught his attention. Glancing its way, he gave a startled cry and jolted with a skip to the right, banging his head with a cry on a steel pipe running along the bulkhead. He cursed himself silently, then stiffened with composure before shuffling back to her side.

  Nia and the other dude laughed and exchanged something in that blasted Muscovia tongue. “I am seeing you have met our resident dolphin, Galileo,” she said, coming up to another bend in the hallway, the tank following alongside one wall and the dolphin swimming to join in the pursuit.

  “Dolphin? What are you, Doctor Dolittle?” Ford complained, wincing as he rubbed a hand against a growing goose egg at the back of his head. “Got any ducks or fish in this joint, maybe a gorilla or giraffe or fox?”

  She threw him a confused glance and shook her head. “I am not knowing about this Doctor Dolittle person, but Galileo was part of the original research team in the station from several years ago.”

  Ford glanced at the tank still running alongside them, the gray aquatic mammal bobbing up and down and throwing the guy a glance, its mouth widening to reveal a ridge of sharp teeth, some sort of chirp escaping it. Didn’t know whether it was a smile or a grimace, whether he was cussing him out or giving him a hidey-ho. Ford hustled back to Nia’s side for comfort anyhow.

  Nia continued, “He was being found when Ichthus…shall we say, commandeered the facility over a year ago. As far as we can tell, he was taking part in the research at the station until the team left elsewhere.”

  “You found him, what, like abandoned or something?”

  “Da. Jacob, here,” she said, gesturing to the man on her other side who had brought news of the newcomer, “was bringing Galileo back to health, the poor thing nearly having starved to death.”

  Ford gave the fish another sideways glance, its beady eye seeming to follow him along the way, warming up to the fella some knowing he was orphaned. Then he disappeared, finning down his own T-junction and out of sight.

  “Hey, where’d the little fella go?”

  Nia glanced at the tank as they came up to a solid steel door, another zipper snaking down the middle with a security device standing at its side. “There is being a whole network of watery passages for Galileo throughout the station. Probably was getting weirded by your sideways glances.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Besides, we are being here.” She slapped her hand against the palm-reading device, the familiar blue pulsing before giving a positive green reply.

  “Where’s here?” asked Ford.

  A shudder of gears inside the wall gave him his answer, the zipper unrolling and doors parting to reveal what appeared to be a medical facility deep inside the station, the distinct scent of alcohol and cleaning agents and blood rushing to greet them.

  Several beds were lined along the perimeter of the brightly lit space, separated by glass walls and doors. One stood open with a man lying in a bed underneath a white sheet, his feet protruding underneath but his face shrouded by thick bandaging stained crimson on one side of his head. He was attended by another man in a white coat, presumably a physician.

  “Come,” Nia simply said, rushing over to the man. Ford went to follow, but glanced behind as the others in the group finally reached them.

  Alexander rushed to his side, saying, “She said Remnant. Someone from the Remnant had arrived. You don’t suppose she meant the leftovers from the Order of Thaddeus, do you?”

  Ford shrugged, then slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Only one way to find out, Master Zarruq.”

  He led his teammates inside, eyeing a surgical table in a larger room at the back of the sprawling space with a massive disc of lights hanging above and various equipment and monitors stationed around it. Other than that, the place was empty with no other patients but the mystery man talking in hushed tones with She-Ra.

  Time to get some answers, and pronto.

  “I am just being happy you made it out alive,” Ford heard Nia say to the man as he walked up.

  He had olive skin with blood crusted underneath his large nose. One eye was blackened, and the fella was struggling to rise to propped arms, one of which was bandaged with a white bulge at the forearm, a line of red seeping through. Poor guy had been through the wringer, that’s for sure. For what, exactly, was all the more mysterious.

  “Nyet, nyet, nyet,” Nia complained, pressing a hand to the man’s shoulder. “You should be lying still and saving your energy, bratishka.”

  The man went to reply when he and the others arrived at the foot of his bed.

  “Mind if we join the party?” Ford asked with a grin.

  The man in the bed snapped his head toward the incomers, fixing Ford in particular with searching, probing eyes, narrowing as if trying to discern something about the man and saying nothing.

  Then they instantly snapped open, going wide with horror before he sucked in a startled breath and a string of foreign words flew out of his mouth, riding on a wild gallop along a quivering, frightened voice, one hand struggling to point a shaking finger at Ford while using the other to push himself back with a scramble.

  Ford frowned. “Was it something I said?”

  Nia began trying to calm him with a string of her own Muscovian words, Jacob and the doctor putting firm hands on the man to keep him from falling.

  “What is going on, Junia?” Father Jim asked, edging to her side. “What’s he saying?”

  Nia threw Ford a glance, her face going hard and draining of color. “Simeon is saying something about the Carpathians, along the Black Sea. Something about you and some Purifier raid on a monastery he was part of.”

  Now Ford’s eyes went wide; his heart sank and his bowels went with it. For he knew exactly what the man was referring to.

  The Buzau monastery. Two hundred klicks west of the Black Sea and nestled at the base of the Carpathian Mountain range that formed the spine to Vostakana.

  Father Jim glanced his way. “What’s the man going on about? Who is this Simeon fellow? And why the hysterics after glimpsing you?”

  Ford went to answer but couldn’t; the words wouldn’t come. His mouth gawped for an explanation he knew he had, but he dreaded voicing.

  The man’s hysterics seemed to suddenly lessen some now, the doctor holding a syringe after presumably stuffing his veins with a sedative and Jacob speaking to him with calming words in the same tongue.

  Nia pushed past Father Jim and pressed
a firm finger into Ford’s chest, jabbing it into his sternum like a woodpecker. “What in peklo is Simeon talking about?” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Uh-oh,” Sasha said from behind. “Now the moloda zhinka is getting angry, invoking the biblical underworld.” He added with a whisper: “Better be watching out, cowboy.”

  “Answer me!”

  “It was an early mission,” Ford stammered on loose lips while his brain tried throttling the confession. “Near the front end of my career.”

  Nia twisted up her face with confusion. “Mission? Career?” She turned toward the man named Simeon, then back again, her face steely with slitted eyes and a clenched jaw. “Purifier?”

  Ford swallowed hard, glancing at Father Jim who nodded him onward. He took a deep breath and sighed, running a nervous hand across his close-cropped blond hair. Time to atone, again; he feared it would always be like this.

  “That’s right. I was a Purifier. And apparently Simeon, here, got swept up in one of my earlier raids. At a monastery devoted to Saint Andrew, the apostle who apparently evangelized much of Vostakana back in the day.”

  “Simeon escaped from a reprogramming camp,” she growled, fixing him with those She-Ra eyes that looked like she was ready to rip his heart out. “Spent years under the torturous thumb of the Republic, being labeled an Unfit as a despised monk with Eastern Orthodoxy before it was being Solterra policy across the world for all Ichthus!”

  “I know,” he said quietly. Moving to the foot of the bed, he added: “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, partner. Truly.”

  “John Mark, here,” Father Jim said, putting a staying hand on Nia’s shoulder, making her flinch, “was led to faith in Christ by a kindhearted monk with the Benedictine order a few years ago. He defected and deprogrammed from the murderous pogroms of persecution wrought by the Republic. To great danger to his own life, might I add. He has since reformed his ways and joined the Ministerium as chief of operations, given his...well, skills in those areas.”

  “Simeon is telling me of those skills in those areas,” she growled again.

  “And we can adjudicate the fallout later,” he said with a firm voice, “but now is not the time. From what it seemed, Simeon came bearing news.”

  Nia went to reply when she snapped her mouth closed and nodded. “He has, having escaped the Supermaxx in Canadia, but not before retrieving news and intel on the Purge and Panligo.”

  Ford sucked in a startled breath, exclaiming: “He busted out of Canadia?”

  “And with an armful of intel on the Republic?” Alexander said.

  She nodded. “Da.”

  “But I thought you said he was a Remnant. Which I took him as being of the Order of Thaddeus.”

  “That is being correct. After escaping the Supermaxx, he found refuge with the Order of Thaddeus.”

  “Is that where the man suffered his injuries?” Father Jim asked, “from his escape?”

  “Nyet. These were more recent. After escaping months ago, a pair of brothers found him on the brink of death. Nursing him back to health, he was initiated into the Order, where he was sent on mission to bring the plans to the Ministerium. But he did not arrive in time. Solterra initiated its Purge, and he was nearly captured and killed by another wave of Purifiers infiltrating his city of refuge. It was in that escape that he suffered his wounds before commandeering the hydrocraft that brought him here through the Resistance.”

  Alexander brushed past Ford to Simeon’s bedside, resting a hand on the man’s leg. “Do you know who I am?”

  Simeon’s eyes carried a glazed-over look about him, brought on by the sedative, and he shook his head.

  “I am Alexander Zarruq. Master of the Order of Thaddeus.”

  The man brightened at this revelation, a smile stretching from ear to ear.

  He smiled back. “Thank you for your service.”

  “Alright, we can glad-hand our comrade later,” Ford said. “What I want to know is, what are these plans of his?”

  Alexander threw him a frown but nodded. “Yes, the plans. And where are they?”

  Nia held up a microchip. The tiny thing shined with slick crimson.

  Ford glanced at Simeon’s arm, the bandage bearing the crimson line making more sense.

  “Did you wrench that thing from the guy's arm?”

  “Da,” she said. “It was the only way he was able to be keeping it safe.”

  “And what is it that he was keeping safe?” Alexander asked, giving a nervous glance to Ford before looking back at Simeon with the same eyes.

  Ford understood the feeling.

  She nodded to Simeon and said something in that Muscovia tongue of hers. Which seemed to give the guy permission to speak freely. And freely he did.

  The man motioned to Jacob and the doctor to help him up. Each grabbing an arm, they propped him up against the bed’s backboard. He winced with pain, face twisting up as they moved him, but he held firm. Shame flooded Ford at the sight, knowing he had been responsible, as well as fearing he would never escape who he had been before he defected and decided to follow Jesus.

  “The Purge,” Simeon started, voice hoarse and strained with a Semitic lilt to it, “has been one of the most systemic pogroms launched against any religious group since the Nazi’s sought to purge Europa of the Hebrew people. My people. Or former people, until I embraced Jesus as my Messiah.” He changed positions, wincing again, then continued: “At any rate, you are probably aware of the destruction of the artifices of Ichthus, Cardinal Ferraro. The cathedrals and churches and ministries.”

  Father Jim nodded. “That I am, having been informed by Ministerium agents still in the field. At least, what little made it through to us after our headquarters were obliterated.”

  “Well, the destruction is far worse than that.”

  “How so, partner?” Ford asked.

  Simeon threw him a skeptical glance before landing back on Father Jim, jaw clenching and nose flaring for angry breaths.

  “Go on, lad,” the cardinal instructed. “After all, John Mark is still the chief of operations for the Ministerium. Which I should probably mention includes this station.”

  One end of Ford’s mouth began to curl upward with satisfaction, but he held it together. Neither the time nor the place. Nia, on the other hand...she looked madder than a wet hen at the idea. A beautiful sight to behold.

  “Very well,” Simeon said. Then he looked to Ford and answered, “Ichthus isn’t merely being destroyed, its buildings and relics, the trappings of its worship. Rather, the people, men and women and children even, are being hunted. Rounded up by outfitted Quellers that stun their targets with some sort of weapon.”

  “Quellers, you say?” Ford said, face twisted up in amusement. “Sorry, partner, but those bad boys are the B52 bombers of the 22nd century, delivering payloads that destroy, certainly, but not civilian targets the way you’re describing.”

  “You’re wrong,” the man said, narrowing his eyes and clenching his jaw. “Saw them myself, letting loose something that leveled an entire community of Christians gathering for worship.” His eyes fell, and his lower lip quivered. “One I myself had been amongst until I left to retrieve a packet of intel from an asset in the city. When I returned, the Queller had neutralized the believers, right before a platoon of Enforcer Purifiers descended upon them like the vermin they are! It’s how I got my injuries, escaping their clutches.”

  Ford took in a measured breath, bringing a hand to his chin. A Queller outfitted with some newfangled technology that neutralized the polis at the press of a button? That was something they would definitely have to follow up on.

  “Anything on the apocalyptic front?” he asked. “What’s been going on above the past twenty-four hours that the Republic seems dead set on suppressing?”

  Simeon shrugged. “Only what I saw myself before plunging underwater with my PSV. I checked a node on the Order’s secure socket on DiviNet, the same story told across Solterra of the darkened su
n and discolored moon and fallen, fading stars. There were whisperings of the end times, wondering what it all meant for the Church, and whether the Rapture was nigh or had already happened, with references to obscure theologians and interpretations of the Book of Revelation. But nothing concrete, only confusion.”

  Ford glanced at Alexander and Father Jim. “Confusion...definitely know the feeling. But what of this intel. Did you make contact with your asset?”

  “Da. And he delivered the packet.” He motioned toward Nia, who held up the microchip again. “It’s all there, on that chip.”

  “Then maybe we should take a gander at what you retrieved, partner.” Nodding toward Nia, he added, “You got any equipment in this here station of yours that can decode this microchip?”

  “I am able to be helping!” a voice exclaimed from behind.

  There was a sudden shuffle and a small medical cart toppled over, plastic containers and some expensive-looking equipment crashing to the floor.

  “Layno…” Sasha muttered, scrambling to pick up the pieces. The doctor mumbled something to himself before coming around to clean up his mess.

  “What was that, doc?” Ford asked.

  Sasha stepped back and furrowed his brow, his mouth open and hands gesturing like he didn’t know whether to help or step away. He chose the latter and threw a schoolboy smile toward Nia, holding out his hand. “Hand the microchip over. I am able to be helping decode the chip, no matter what equipment you are having or not. Whatever you are needing, I am here to help!”

  Ford folded his arms and rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help but chuckle. It was puppy love at first Ukrainski sight. But he had no chance. Life was a high school cafeteria all the way down. And jock chicks like Nia wouldn’t give the nerd the time of day.

  Although he seemed to catch Nia blushing while dipping her head and trying to hide a smile, brushing a hand past her ear to push back a non-existent lock of hair. A bashful tick leftover before She-Ra buzzed her hair short that meant the guy might have a fighting chance.

  Go, doc!

  With an outstretched hand, Sasha added, “I was seeing some mighty fine computing power in the bunker we were coming from. So hand it over, mon cheri.”