by J A Bouma
But now…with the ache needling him again, whether from anxious dread or the vestiges of the somatic response reactivating—now he wished he had mentioned something, the thought of that crippling pain returning sending an alarming shudder through his body.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, may your hand of protection guard us this day. And keep my head from exploding!
“Looks like we’re reaching our destiny,” Rebekah said. She stood and offered Alexander her hand. “Shall we?”
He smiled and took it, pulling into a stand. “We shall.”
Jin handed him a slate device. “Before you go, you should see this. Came in a bit ago.”
Alexander took it with a frown. What has the Republic cooked up now? What has his father?
He expected to find Solterra’s familiar logo spinning on its face, the Pangea supercontinent globe surrounded by olive branches. Instead, there was a light gray anchor set against a charcoal background, a ring of Greek characters that had become as familiar from over a year ago.
The insignia of the Order of Thaddeus, stamped on that medallion Master Theophilus had passed to him before he breathed his last.
He traced the lines cut into a V at the top (upside down) and bottom (right-side up) and the stem joining them at the center.
An anchor. A symbol of stability and hope that the earliest Christians adopted, based on a verse from Hebrews 6: ‘We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure…’ Jesus Christ, and faith in him and the Church’s accompanying beliefs, were that anchor-hope.
“The Remnant…” he said on a startled breath. He looked at Jin. “What is this? Where’d you get it?”
“It was sent over from the Resistance, shot by the Order’s paramilitary arm known as—”
“SEPIO…”
“You’re familiar with them, then?” The man pushed his oversized black glasses up the bridge of his nose and gave a laugh. “I mean, I suppose you should be, given you’re the Order Master and all.”
Alexander frowned. “No, not familiar. I had heard something about it earlier from Nia, aside from being given the name by the former Order Master as a sort of passcode. What are they?”
He took a breath and nodded, as if stalling, searching for words. “Stands for Sepio, Erudio, Pugno, Inviglio, Observo. We’ve learned a bit more about them from the Order Remnant Kareema you met since…well, never mind. Apparently, it’s Latin for—”
“Protect, instruct, fight for, watch over, heed.”
The man brightened. “Hey, you’re good!”
“I had training in the dead language like every other seminarian. But what does this have to do with anything?”
Alexander took a breath, chiding himself for snapping at the man. He glanced at Rebekah and saw the same look of embarrassment on her face, which reddened his with further embarrassment himself. His nerves were frayed, he was exhausted, but he didn’t have to take it out on anyone else around him.
“Sorry for snapping. Just give it to me straight, will you, Jin? I’m a bit knackered at the moment.”
Jin pushed his glasses up his nose again. “I understand. Well, as you also probably know, sepio is Latin for ‘surround with a hedge.’ That was the mission of a certain project launched something like 150 years ago by the Order of Thaddeus. Project SEPIO, as it was apparently named, was tasked with surrounding the memory of the faith with a hedge. To preserve and protect objects and relics of the faith, as well as the memory itself. Later, the mission got a bit creepy.”
Alexander twisted up his face. “Creepy? What, like weird and scary?”
Jin laughed. “Didn’t catch the double entendre…Anyway, more like mission creep, but weird fits too. They basically started going all Knights Templar, taking more militaristic, militant measures to protect Christians and churches around the world.”
“What’s happened?” Rebekah said, seemingly trying to move things along. “What’s the slate device for then?”
He frowned and gave a short, quick nod. “Righto.” He reached over the top and double-tapped the Order seal. It dissolved into a page with several icons. He double-tapped on a file and brought up a video.
“An operative with SEPIO that happened to be in the right place at the right time. Sent it over,” Jin said as the video started playing, a shaking camera walking through a bombed-out street, hazed by billowing smoke and smoldering buildings—and no doubt smoldering remains.
Rebekah leaned over Alexander’s shoulder. “What’s this about? Looks like more of what we saw earlier.”
Jin corrected, “It’s not apocalyptic. Looks like the Republic has stepped up its game.”
Looked that way. No doubt at the behest of Alexander’s father, the new Sacradi of that pagan religion.
Alexander swallowed hard. “Where is this?”
“Britannia. The province of Londonista, specifically. Those ruins are the Westminster Cathedral, the great symbol of Protestant Orthodoxy built a quarter millennium ago. Leveled by a Queller attack.”
Alexander didn’t want to look at the images, but he did. A burned-out husk still smoldered with memory, most of the historic cathedral having collapsed in on itself. Another image panned across the rubble. Peeking through was a pale doll, head covered with bright yellow hair and a red bow and a smile to match smudged with black ash. Then an arm, blackened and bloodied.
Not the doll. Human. Small, childlike.
Images of the children from his previous parish back in Tripolitania suddenly flooded his mind. The ones that had met the same fate as the girl whose doll that belonged to those many months ago from a terrorist attack. More images came into view on the slate, some sending his bowels watery with grim disgust at the lengths the Republic would go in their Purge to either rid the world of Ichthus and its great architecture or bring it in line with their pagan agenda.
Alexander clenched his jaw with disgust, a new resolve flooding his veins. He even made a fist, anger rising at what his father and the Patron were conspiring to bring against Ichthus, the world even. Knowing that they were also fixing to bring down the Church’s central Creed concerning Jesus Christ himself—it was all too much.
And too personal, with his father at the helm of it all.
But he wouldn’t let them. Wouldn’t let him.
Time to stop letting his anxiety about the future—his future—win over the needs of others. Time to trust in the Holy Spirit to carry him through.
“Let’s do this,” Alexander said, handing the slate back to Jin.
Chapter 16
Somewhere in the Atlantic.
Another submarine, another outpost. Seemed to be Ford’s new lot in life.
Not that he was complaining. He’d signed up with the Legion because that’s what all the kids did back home in Noramericana after the Great Reckoning, but the Republic navy was where his heart truly was. Much more of a fish than a fox, so zooming around the underwater world in hydrocrafts that would knock ol’ Jules Verne’s socks off was definitely childhood wish fulfilment. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea had nothing on the watery world!
And all of it was his oyster. At least in service of the Ministerium and Ichthus, and the whole Resistance movement against Solterra.
Ever since he was a boy, Ford had dreamed of piloting a contraption like the sleek sweet piece of Ministerium ingenuity that had been docked at Nia’s outpost and was now getting refueled at the mystery station she had brought them to. Or whoever made it. Probably Asiatica, knowing their technological prowess. The undersea world had been a childhood obsession of his, reading old books and watching old shows that plumbed the depths of the ocean blue. From Jules Verne to SeaQuest on that now-defunct peacock television network. Anything he could get his hands on to feed his curiosity and tickle his fantasies about one day driving his own sweet submergence ride.
Not that his pump had been primed to assume command of the things. He’d been as nervous as a nun in a brothel when he first grabbed hold of the reins of that yellow s
ubmarine. Or was that a saloon? Whatever it was from way back when—he was it when he first piloted the dang thing. But after navigating another hydrocraft to the seedy port of the outpost they were traipsing through at the moment, he was starting to get the hang of it—and loving every minute!
And quite the port it was, for some backwater mystery outpost at the edge of Blake Ridge sitting off the North American continental shelf. Rows of airlocks received visiting personal submergence vehicles neatly arrayed one after the other. Even had a pair of automatons that looked oddly like grizzly bears guiding the PSV hydrocrafts into port, lights blazing to lend a helping hand by cutting through the darkened void of the ocean.
Not that it was anything more special than the others littered throughout the Republic after replacing airports. But it still felt like science fiction—with that whale-like deep submergence vehicle they’d nearly crashed into pulling into the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Station hours ago to refuel, and all the other little bitty car-like submarines zooming about, going this way and that from land to deep sea submergence stations. All thanks to the Patron and his Republic cronies who’d commissioned the investment under the Solterra Earth Oceanic Organization, and before that the United Earth Oceanic Assembly.
Planes had been abandoned for a century after the world’s climate broke from too much CO2 and the oil reserves finally ran dry. That was Solterra’s official story, anyway. Ford never bought any of that propaganda mumbo jumbo. Discerning minds like his thought it was more about controlling how people moved about the Republic through carefully curated transportation access points than anything to do with power or pollution. Such was life under the watchful eye of Solterra—all ‘For Humanity!’ of course.
The world had planned for such a development long before it arrived, having dived headlong into the seventy-one percent of Earth’s surface yet uncolonized. As a wee lad, Ford had been something of a student of the world’s deep-sea colonizing efforts. While most kiddos dreamt of space after the 21st century’s second decade saw humanity finally establish its first lunar colony after the former Asiatica nation-state China beat his American people to the moon, Ford’s heart was under the water.
Like a kid in a candy store, he was as giddy as could be commanding his own hydrocraft. Which, truth be told, wasn’t all that special considering humans had been shuttling these contraptions around for the past century anyhow, after the undersea world was colonized in the 2030s. And while China’s claim to fame was the moon, the former U.S. of A’s was the first Deep Sea Submergence Station. Atlantis DS3.
Of course, the Asians followed up their lunar landing with their own DS3 version. Never one to let America get a leg up on the whole global hegemony business. But then a string of undersea conflicts nearly derailed the utopian dream of owning a plot of Davy Jones’s Locker. Leading to the UEOA charter in 2045, the national and transnational peace and trade accord governing stations and outposts.
It also led them to clomping through the narrow corridors of one of those said outposts to meet some mystery person Nia insisted they meet before reaching Noramericana. Something about needing to do something personal. Didn’t say who or why, but Ford had learned to keep his yapper shut and choose his battles carefully with that one. Besides, they needed one more fuel up before landing in Noramericana anyway, so it worked.
Laughter echoed up ahead behind some bluesy notes that sounded like a tenor sax, followed by the rat-a-tat-tat of a drum set and oddly the pitter-patter of the vibraphone. Ford cocked his head and strained for a listen as they continued winding their way through the cramped corridors of the undersea outpost. Who were they covering?
Ford had been a jazz man back before Solterra Republic yanked the plug on such artistic pursuits. Never played an instrument himself, other than giving a half-assed attempt one summer at the trombone. Although suppose his own pipes counted, which was his forte. No one not never heard ‘em either. Not in recent years. Not after that reprogramming camp, anyway…
He snapped his fingers and smiled.
Milt Jackson! That ol’ vibe-master who could work the mallets on those metal bars like it was nobody’s business.
There it was again, the vibes stronger now. Pretty good, too. Suppose you need something to do stuffed down inside a tin can underwater. While hot rodding through the ocean had been pretty sweet, Ford wasn’t so sure about living under the ocean, with the cramped quarters and no sunlight and millions of pounds of water hanging over your head. Hydrocrafting felt different. Probably because you had more control, were more mobile and had more freedom to roam. Which was how Ford rolled.
They turned a corner and a hot breeze from somewhere blew past them, leaving a whiff of something strong and sour. “This place smells worse than the last joint we came from,” Ford mumbled with complaint as he continued following Nia through a darkened corridor of gunmetal gray steel.
He scrunched up his face as they brushed past a pair of seafarers jawing it up in some tongue he couldn’t make out, a whiff of an over-ripened body adding to his misery.
“A cross between boiled cabbage and a diaper pail.”
“Do you always complain this much?” Nia asked, taking a sharp right and picking up her pace, clearly knowing the lay of the outpost land.
“Just when my olfactory is concerned. How you stand living down in these dumps is anyone’s—”
Nia spun around, that damn Scythe of hers poking in his face. “You better be watching it, mister. I’m armed, and I am knowing how to be using it.”
Ford stopped short, his nose nearly missing the end of her Scythe glowing purple. He threw his hands up and complained, “Whoa, sister, chill! Just not as accustomed to life in your neck of the Republic, that’s all. More the landlubber type.”
“Clearly.” She frowned and spun back around and resumed the lead.
Ford turned to Sasha, who shrugged, then followed after the gal. “I am getting to like zipping around in those kick-ass hydrocrafts, though.”
“Yeah, well, don’t be getting too used to it. Most of them are illegal and liable to get you thrown into a reprogramming camp.”
Ford didn’t know that! Sent up all sorts of alarms ringing in his head. “What are you talking about? Thought the Patron blessed underwater travel, compared to the airlines that the Solterra banned after the Reckoning.”
Nia replied, “Da, the deep submergence vessels that are being the size of whales. Personal submergence vehicles, not so much. Too much freedom.”
“So we’re riding around in vehicular contraband?”
“Da. Anyway, we’re almost there.”
“And there is where, pray tell?”
She ignored him, turning a corner that got them closer to that Milt Jackson wannabe who wasn’t half bad the closer they got. Looked like some sort of clearing up ahead, with lights and voices filtering down. A club perhaps. At least the joint had that going for it. Could use a paint job though, with its sad gunmetal gray steel. He wanted to slit his wrists it was so depressing, especially with the low-key yellow lighting making the place feel like one of those carnival fun houses he’d go to as a kid.
Why deep submergence outposts were made of the iron alloy was beyond him. Seemed like something lighter would be better, like titanium. Looked better too compared to the dystopian vibe of steel, with all of its angsty gothic darkness. Although, considering Solterra life, he figured steel made sense. He also supposed the point of an underwater outpost was to sit as far under the ocean as possible, out of the prying eyes of the Republic where less-than kosher happenings went on off the Solterran radar.
Hence their little rendezvous with another abandoned station past the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Station they had left hours ago. AquaSphere 13 had been its official station signature back in the day, which didn’t sit well with Ford, given his past superstitions with the number. Although the sufficiently vanilla ‘AquaSphere’ name made up for it, sounding more like an all-inclusive resort for Europan and Californian yuppies than some backwater outpos
t for hiring mercenaries and dealing in black-market thingamajigs and exchanging the latest gossip or top-secret intel among the Republic’s elite.
Nia picked up her pace now as they neared what was surely some sort of club, the band switching to a Jimmy Smith tune. “Root Down,” if he heard it right, the vibe-master switching it up to jivin’ on the organ. Even sounded like the Hammond B-3 the jazz master was known for.
Place was packed too, men and women laughing and drinking, some dancing a boogie-woogie vibe in front of the stage with bright lights illuminating the wide dim space, wood tables and velvet-covered chairs all splayed around. A long wood bar stretched nearly the length of the joint, four or five men in smart tuxes working the line slinging bottles they pulled off glass shelves in front of mirror backs lit by blue light. The whole thing looked like something out of the mid-twentieth century. Wholly out of place in some dump on the edge of the North American continental shelf under sixty meters of water.
Suddenly, Nia stopped short between two empty tables at the edge of the club. She was looking around on her tiptoes, clearly searching for someone. Then she started weaving through the crowd, bumping into a group grooving to the music. She kept at it, Ford apologizing as he and Sasha followed from behind with Lucy making up the rear.
She stopped again, scanning the room.
Ford sighed. “Who you lookin—”
Her face brightened and she ran off. Guess she found who she was looking for.
Darting for a circular booth of red velvet in a corner off stage right, a man in long dark hair stood. Broad shouldered and tall, he clearly hadn’t shaved in days, a wide smile appearing behind the scruffy face. He was wearing a black fedora and a black trench coat, black turtleneck underneath.
Ford thought it all a bit too on the nose for a mystery man in some backwater outpost at the edge of the Republic. But what did he know?
