The Apostates (34 page)

Once she traveled as far north as possible, to get close to the cathedral, she found a dock and guided the boat in, tethering the craft to a post. She jumped out of the boat onto the rickety planks of the dock. The sounds of battle raging and mortar rounds exploding echoed across the rooftops from further south. She unstrapped her Mosin-Nagant rifle and affixed the bayonet. She moved in cover and stayed low. Friar Valentine felt more and more like Consuela Grajales as the minutes ticked by. As she moved up the street at a steady
pace, she spied a man brandishing a machete. She moved closer to the man who
had not noticed her.

“Amigo. Por Favor. Estoy tratando de
llegar a la iglesia. Por favor, déjame pasar. (Amigo. Please. I’m trying to get
to church. Please let me pass,)” Valentine pleaded, She was hoping she could
reason with the man. She had the bayonet pointed toward him.

The man looked at her, confused. He panicked and postured to attack with his machete. Valentine had to do it. She ran him through with the bayonet. Feeling regretful for having taken the man’s life she pushed on toward the cathedral. She reached the cathedral plaza and spied the front entrance of the Iglesia de San Jerónimo. She remembered back a year ago when she first came here with her father. Everything was so much simpler then, and she could never go back to the way things were. Valentine rushed to the small door cut into the larger wood and brass doors, and stepped through. The interior of the cathedral was dark and cavernous. She slowly moved up the center isle, with the sound of her footsteps amplified by the architecture of the cathedral. She came upon the portrait of San Jerónimo: there was something both foreboding and blatantly obvious about the portrait, but she did not have time for art criticism.

“Padres, Hermanas. Por favor, ven. Yo
puedo salvarte. (Fathers, Sisters. Please come. I can save you!)” Valentine
cried out. The echo of her yell made it sound like there was five of her.
Activity was heard in the infirmary. The curtain opened and the Sister that had
helped them a year ago came out toward Valentine, and the Father came out
after her. They gazed upon Valentine’s appearance: clad in white, hooded,
blazoned with a black pentagram, and armed.

¿Qué clase de soldado es usted? (What kind
of soldier are you?)” Fear sounded in the Sister’s voice, and she had a hand on her chest.

“Por favor, ven conmigo. No hay tiempo.
(Please come with me. No time.)” Valentine tried to convince them to come with
her.

“Ir a dónde? Esta es la casa de Dios.
Estamos a salvo aquí. (Go where? This is the house of God. We’re safe here,)”
the Father chimed in. He stepped in front of the Sister. He gestured at the
altar with the depiction of the Crucifixion.

“Por Favor. Usted no entiende. (Please.
You do not understand,)” Valentine urged them with a hand held out.

“Voy a hacerles entender. (I will make them understand.)” Friar Francis walked in the darkness up the central aisle, toward the altar, “Me pregunté dónde ibas. Lo bueno es que he seguido. (I wondered where you were going. Good thing I followed.)” She stopped a couple feet away from Friar Valentine and the Father.

“Por Favor. Estas son buenas personas. Yo
sólo voy a sacarlos de los combates. (Please. These are good people. I’ll just
get them out of the fighting,)” Friar Valentine pleaded. She was holding her
rifle at the ready. Friar Francis had her hood up and her cloak fastened,
covering her body and arms. Her intentions were a mystery to all present.

“Por desgracia, esto es para Monsignor
Carafa para decidir. (Unfortunately, this is for Monsignor Carafa to decide,)”
Friar Francis stated in an authoritative manner.

“No voy a dejar que la gente que lo crucificaran. No. Nos vamos. (I will not let these people be crucified. No. We’re leaving.)” Valentine reached for the Father’s arm. In one motion, Friar Francis drew her saber from its scabbard under her cloak and swung it laterally across the jugular of the Father. His throat opened, consecrating the floor of the cathedral with his blood.

The Sister screamed and shirked back in
fear, dropped to her knees, and murmured something to God. The Father fell to
the ground, dead.

“No!” Friar Valentine screamed. Almost as a reflex, she thrust her rifle, bayonet-first into the facial tissue of Friar Francis. The point of the bayonet entered at the smile line on the left side of her face, punching clean through to the right side, and exiting out the right cheek nearly missing her ear. Friar Francis was silent for a second, in shock, then a gurgling, guttural scream gained volume like she was being wound up. Friar Valentine retracted her rifle, allowing Friar Francis’s face to slide off the blade. She fell to the floor, holding her ruined face in agony.

Friar Valentine tried to urge the Sister to come with her, but she was hysterical with fear and anger. The Sister cursed Friar Valentine, calling her “la diabla”. Valentine realized the fruitlessness of her situation: she could not go back to the Order and she certainly couldn’t go back to her village. She had also been fighting long enough against the cartels that she had no friends there. Her only option was to flee. She ran down the central aisle toward the massive door, as she went she threw off her white, pentagram cloak onto the marble floor.

Consuela, who retired the Friar moniker at the cathedral, made her way back to the lagoon. She could hear intensive fighting all over the town. She surmised that the Order had broken through and were going to take the town. Fires were breaking out all over, smoke columns slowly rose to the sky. Consuela reached the dock on the bank of the lagoon. The boat she had used previously was still there. She jumped in and primed the engine, then struggled with the rip cord. Some Order soldiers spotted her and they yelled for her to get out of the ship. The motor started up and she guided the boat out to open water. The men opened fire. Rounds impacted off the boat hull and in the water around her.

Consuela aimed her rifle, capturing a man in her iron sights, then she squeezed the trigger and dropped the man with a bullet to his chest. That shot was enough for the men to take cover. The boat traveled farther from the shore. Soon she was out of range of small arms. As she traveled across the misty waters, she began to cry. She had been part of a zealous religious order that was subjugating the country piece by piece. They were terrorizing the people into submission, and she was complicit. The same thing would probably happen to her home village, and she would never see her family again. As the boat carved a path through the water, she contemplated her next move. Something told her to go north, and she had unconsciously pointed the boat in that direction anyhow.

In the coming days and weeks, Consuela would cross several countries. She would traverse thousands of miles and would sleep in forest and desert. She would find goodwill in some towns and ill will in others. She would fight skirmishes with bandits and cartel patrols and travel with traders. She had made good time and progress until she had reached the Southern Border Fortress. She peered off at the wall in the distance. It was a giant, monstrosity of massive, cement gun towers. Corrugated steel, and razor wire topped the structure, which stretched one hundred feet high. The wall looked even taller because in front of it was a huge trench with a depth of twenty feet down. It was cemented over and in the pavement were embedded glass shards. At the bottom of the trench ran filthy, sewage water. She could see that the top of the wall was well-manned. Townspeople had told her rumors about artillery emplacements on the other side of the wall that sometimes shelled the town out of boredom.

Consuela would spend another six months in
the town of Juarez. In centuries past it had been a bustling city that was the
focal point of a cartel war, when the cash drugs were cocaine and marijuana.
The city turned into a war zone in the Twenty-first century because people in
the United States hungered for those drugs. Every year innocent people had been
kidnapped and beheaded, police had been gunned down and politicians bribed with
“silver or lead”: all so some Americans could have a bump at the club. After these substances were decriminalized during the
mid Twenty-first century, the cartels had waned in influence. But then the
[Virtue-net] was put into place, and the development of ‘Database’ provided a
vastly more lucrative product for the cartels. They came back with a vengeance.

Ironically, it was the power of the
cartels that allowed Consuela to be smuggled beyond the Border Fortress wall,
into New Megiddo proper. She had spent that six months in Juarez, fostering
relationships, performing favors, gathering allies and doing work for cartels.
No one knew who she really was this far north. After she crossed the border, she was ready to start a new life, which would lead to her giving up her
identity as “Consuela Grajales” again.

⍟ ⍟ ⍟

Hades-Perdition slowly paced the deck of the battleship North Carolina. He, like everyone else was engaged in the search for the potential assassin. He had been searching the deck for nearly fifteen minutes. Ravine-Gulch was also onboard. He had been giving Hades-Perdition an unusual amount of attitude, and Hades didn’t understand why. He guessed that it may have to do with his tryst with Gale-Whirlwind, but it meant nothing to him. But, Ravine was overly sensitive, and so Ravine went to check the aft side of the ship and Hades went to the fore-side.

Gale-Whirlwind was Hades’s friend. He
didn’t want anything more from her, but he began to think sleeping with her had
been a mistake. Hades told himself that he would not marry, or love again until
his objective was complete. His vow of celibacy he made to himself did not
preclude sex, however. That is why he had no qualms
about what he had done with Gale-Whirlwind. Hades-Perdition did look forward to the
day when he completed his objective, when he could cut loose at last.

Ever since Hades had discovered H.E.M.A.
training in his teens, he had felt like he found a way to transcend the petty
politics of sexual orientation. The fencing arts allowed him to pour all his
rage and frustration into a single focus for improving his skills. That’s what
he had liked about his former instructor, Craig a Briuis: he had not cared about who
Hades had been attracted to, all he cared about was how accomplished a
swordsman he was. Craig had drilled him incessantly on form, style, attack and
defense. He assigned Hades medieval treatises on sword technique written by
German and Italian Renaissance masters. The more he immersed himself in the art
and the history the more he realized that there was literally thousands of
compiled years of technique, experience and tradition contained within these
arts. Any man could pick up a gun and become a killing machine within seconds.
That was not an art. Not all men could master swordplay.

Craig a Briuis took a special interest in his pupil Hades, who at that time was known as Evan. They would spend hours even after his class proper, sparring into the late evening. Hades did not think much of it back then, but now, it seemed quite strange that he spent so much time with him.

One fateful day at the
Historical European Martial Arts school, his mentor Craig a Briuis had
disappeared, leaving his family Claymore behind for Hades. This made Hades
reevaluate his life. All the choices he had made, were they his own? Had he
been manipulated or was his neural implant tinkered with? Was his decision to
join L.O.V.E. his own? In fact his life would have been very different if these
events had not taken place. He wondered if it even mattered: if he wasn’t on
his current path Hades would be living under the dominance of the Regime, and he’d
be suppressing his true self, and would be dead within a matter of weeks with
the coming of the B.A.G.

It didn’t take Hades long to put those
thoughts out of his mind. He should be thanking Wynham for enabling the freedom
for Hades to be a force for change. He did not have to hide in his current
situation. Hades might die, but he may survive just as well. However, Hades would
not be able to thank Graham, because he had disappeared and had not kept in
contact.

Hades finished his search of the weather deck and walked toward Ravine’s side of the ship. He could see that Ravine was also done with his search and he approached.

“Find anything on your end?” Hades asked,
nonchalantly.

“Nadda,” Ravine responded shortly.

“I guess we should check below decks now,”
Hades suggested.

“Yep,” Ravine replied.

“Alright, listen I didn’t want to say
this to you, but maybe I should—,” Hades was interrupted by Ravine.

“Here it comes,” Ravine said,
sarcastically.

“You really know how to escalate things don’t you? I’ll just say this to you once. You need to cut the shit with the ‘Database’. Now, I know that you didn’t get Aqua killed, but there will be a time when we’re on a mission and you will get someone killed if you keep messing with that shit,” Hades snarled, staring at Ravine intensely.

“Yeah, well, there’s shit going on behind
the scenes that you don’t even know about. You can’t even fathom it. To tell
you the truth, I don’t even know the nature of what I’m dealing with...but it
involves doing ‘Base,” Ravine tried to explain the unexplainable. He looked out
across the water, waiting for a response.

“What? Do you know how ridiculous you
sound right now? Are you that much of a ‘Base-head’ that you’d say anything to
justify your using?” Hades accused him.

“No. But it’s something I have to see
through,” Ravine said quietly.

“I swear, Ravine. If someone dies because of your recklessness—” Hades was cut off.

“Or you’ll what? Kill me and continue
fucking my girl? Erase my goddamned existence?” Ravine yelled back.

“Oh. Is that what this is about? Your ‘ex’ decides she has a will of her own, and two consenting adults decide to sleep with each other, so you’re going to fry your brain on ‘Base?” Hades pressed.

“No, that’s not—” Ravine was
interrupted.

“When are you going to stop wallowing in self-pity? Also, you need to stop taking this shit out on me!” Hades pointed a finger in Ravine’s face. Ravine was enraged, but he wasn’t looking to get into a physical altercation with Hades. Hades was expecting an attack of some sort, but when he realized none was coming he loosened up. He walked away from Ravine.

“Get you shit together, Ravine,” Hades
said as he entered a hatchway leading below deck.

Hades did not understand why Ravine was
the way he was. Everybody had been dealt a terrible hand by the Church and the
Regime. They were all in this together, and yet, here was Ravine with his drug
habit and his over-sensitivity. Why did he feel like he was a special case? And
more importantly, why did Graham Wynham select a drug addict to be
part of their team? Why would Graham recruit his ex-girlfriend to be part of
it all? Did he intentionally bring the two back together just to cause
drama during this operation? Nothing made sense about the arrangement. Hades
generally understood Graham Wynham to be a strategic genius, but this did not
fit that trait.

Hades-Perdition mulled making an executive decision to oust Ravine from the group. Could he even do that? Did they rely on Ravine too much? After all, he did wire the battleship’s weapons system to be controlled by neural implant. Also, he did know all there was to know about the Apostates. If the Regime got a hold of him it would be game over. Hades quickly shelved that idea. Alternatively, he could kill Ravine. He figured that Graham Wynham wasn’t in the picture anymore. Hades surmised they could carry out the mission without him. Did Hades really have it in him to do the deed? He doubted it. On top of that, what if Ravine was telling the truth? What if he was getting secret information from the use of ‘Database’? Also doubtful. But, Ravine could have been privy to information that Graham shared with him that wasn’t shared with the rest of the Apostates. Hades felt that there was no good option in this situation.

Hades-Perdition descended a metal
staircase to the deck where the engine room was located. He checked the narrow
passages on the cramped deck. Hades wondered who or what the assassin could be,
or if there was an assassin at all? Could Blaze be wrong? Could Aqua have died
from natural causes? So far their search had turned up nothing. They were dead
in the water until they finished the sweep of the fleet. Were they just
spinning their wheels, and giving the Regime more time to prepare for any
contingency? Hades was finding himself worrying too much. He figured they would finish the sweep, then full-steam
ahead to the Panama Strait.

Hades entered the cloistered engine room. The chamber was filled with giant machinery and only a small space for a metal catwalk to service the engine. He felt for the personnel who were stationed down here. The smell and the heat must have been unbearable at full-steam. Hades rounded a bend and ducked under a huge, white metal pipe that hung low. He checked behind a large boiler. In the small crevasse, he found a dirty, gray blanket and pillow. Was this where the assassin had slept? There was no way to say for sure. It could have been a crewmember, although, why would anybody try to sleep here? The noise of the engines was deafening, even idling.

Hades checked the rest of the engine room, but nothing was out of the ordinary. He exited the engine room, and continued on to other decks and searched them. Everything checked out. Hades headed to the rope ladder leading to the motorboat that was moored to the side of the battleship. He figured he would move to the next battleship to continue the search. Hades started the motor and steered toward the Iowa. It was the ship that had been provisioned the best and in his opinion made the best food, and he had not eaten lunch. When he reached the Iowa, personnel on the weather deck lowered a rope ladder down to his position. Hades climbed it and thanked the men.

Hades moved to the mess hall, grabbed a tray and looked to see what the cooks had mustered up. Stew was on order, and it didn’t look very appetizing, but he was famished, so he dished up. He took his tray and sat at a table to eat. Hades analyzed the stew: it didn’t look like any kind of recipe he knew of. It looked to have been a menagerie of vegetables that didn’t belong together in one soup. There was cauliflower, green beans, broccoli, onions, potatoes, and carrots. The vegetable matter looked to have boiled too long because it was overly soggy. Worst of all there was a mystery meat in the stew. Although, he judged eating it was better than not eating, so he used a consumption method where he just shoveled it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed as soon as possible. Hades wondered if this ship had ever known good food. Half way through the chore of consuming the stew, Gale-Whirlwind appeared at his table.

“Hi, mind if I join you?” Gale asked,
taking a seat without waiting for an answer.

“Be my guest.” Hades was struggling to
swallow some stew without tasting it.

“So, how’s your search going? Find
anything?” Gale asked him, poking at her own serving of stew with a fork.

“Nothing. Except, I did find some bedding
in the engine room of North Carolina. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,”
Hades-Perdition said.

“How could an assassin evade us for so
long?” Gale asked, making a funny face in response to the taste of the stew.

“Stowaways are notorious throughout history for evading crews for months. Add in the fact that if they have had training they will truly be evasive,” Hades stated, sticking a fork in a chunk of gray meat, letting it free stand.

“We haven’t found anything yet, either.
There’s not much more to search. What do you think? Should we get underway
again? Can’t waste much more time.” Gale picked at her food.

“Well, I don’t see any other alternative.
We have to reach the capital before the B.A.G. begins.” Hades was adamant. He
had eaten all the soggy vegetable matter and left the gray, rubbery lumps of
meat in the bowl.

“Sounds about right. Eww, what the fuck is
that?” Gale spit out a half-chewed gray chunk into her bowl, and wiped her
mouth, “Is that even edible?” She asked, disgusted.

“Why would you even put that in your
mouth?” Hades chuckled at her. Gale laughed at herself with him. It was good to
laugh in the face of such dismal circumstances. She pushed her bowl away and
rested her folded arms on the table.

“So, how are you holding up in all of
this?” She asked with concern.

“I’m doing alright. Can’t complain. I’m a
little stressed out and don’t exactly know how all of this will play out,”
Hades confessed.

“I think that’s how we all feel. Don’t
despair,” Gale tried to console him.

“Listen, you have to talk to Ravine. You
need to talk some sense into the man. He’s using ‘Database’ again and he lashed
out at me because of us.” Hades said, and while looking her in the eye.

“How is he my responsibility?” She glared
at him, sitting back into the chair.

“He’s not your responsibility. He’s all of
our responsibility. I talked to him already and stopped short of beating his
ass. But, you need to give it a go.” Hades said, while he met her gaze.

“Goddamn it. I already chewed him out for
using while the Aqua thing went down. He’s pissed about what happened before we
ended up in the Apostates, but, like you said, he found out about us,” Gale
sighed in exasperation.

“I thought about kicking him out. But, it’s not that simple. I’d have to kill him because he knows too much about this outfit,” Hades contemplated the worst case scenario.

“You know that can’t happen, though? You do realize that even though he’s a ‘base-head’ and a real pain in the ass, he has also repaired all the electronic systems on the Iowa, and other ships. He upgraded the targeting and communications systems to interface with neural implants. If he’s gone, who will maintain the systems?” She made a valid point, but all the same she didn’t want Ravine dead.

“Someone could step up and learn I’m
sure,” Hades dismissed the thought.

“Right before a decisive operation against
the Church and Regime? C’mon, you know that won’t happen. Who will have the
time to learn what he knows?” Gale was the voice of reason.

“You know what: you’re right. But, if
you’re going to defend him that means you also have to turn him around for us.
You know him better than any of us ever will.” Hades suggested sternly.

“Fine, whatever,” Gale barked. She stood up from the table and grabbed the tray with the half-eaten stew in the bowl. Hades leaned back in his chair with an amused grin on his face.

“You still love him! You don’t want to be
around him because you’re afraid of getting involved again! You’re so easy to
read, girl,” Hades prodded her.

“That’s pretty fucking obvious. We were
practically married before this. I have to go,” she didn’t take his joking
well. Having to take part in an insurgency to take down a corrupt Regime was
one thing, but to have to perform an intervention on the man who committed
suicide and left her in a mess was something else entirely. She walked out of
the mess hall in a huff.