Mercury Revolts: (Book Four of the Mercury Series) Read online

  Copyright ©2014 Robert Kroese. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or other—except for brief quotations in reviews, without the prior permission of the author.

  Published by Westmarch Publishing

  http://westmarchpub.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.

  Cover design based on Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze. This painting is in the public domain. Mercury’s wings were designed by Amiamy11 on DeviantArt.com: (http://amiamy111.deviantart.com/). Mercury’s body was adapted from a photograph by Barry Kidd Photography. (http://www.barrykidd.com/) All photos used in the composite image are used with permission.

  For Xtoph.

  ..……………………………….

  With thanks to: Joel Bezaire, Mandi Amaya, Colleen Diamond, Lars Hedbor and Mark Fitzgerald for their help in

  making this book more betterer.

  Thanks also to those who supported the Kickstarter to get this book published, particularly TC Gemmell, Karen Minick, Elisa Lorello, Kristi Michels, Sean Simpson, Christopher Turner

  and Jeremy Kerr.

  Author’s preface

  When I began writing Mercury Falls in 2007, I had no idea what I was doing. I’d tried to write a novel a few times previously but had never gotten very far. I liked coming up with the ideas, but my enthusiasm always began to flag after I got a few pages in. Having mapped out the plot in advance, I would get bored and my characters would rebel, making smartass remarks and generally not doing what they were supposed to be doing. I would be tempted to go off on tangents or deviate from my outline, but I knew you couldn’t do that if you were writing a Serious Novel. So I kept trying, and kept failing.

  Finally it occurred to me to give in to the temptation: to let the plot go where it wanted to go, and let the characters do what they wanted to do. Thus was born the irreverent Mercury and his somewhat chaotic adventures—as well as his narrator, the pompous and tangent-prone Ederatz. Originally I’d planned for Mercury Falls to have no plot, per se. I wanted it to be the kind of book where absolutely anything could happen. Ultimately I decided that readers wouldn’t much care for a book that had no point whatsoever, so I did corral the action into a semi-coherent plot. The book became one of the first big indie successes on Amazon’s Kindle platform, and shortly after I published it Mercury Falls was picked up by Amazon’s publishing venture, Amazon Encore. I’ve since written two sequels, Mercury Rises and Mercury Rests, published by Amazon’s sci-fi imprint, 47North.

  I’d fully intended for Mercury Rests to be the final Mercury book. At the time I wrote Mercury Falls, I was thinking a lot about various theological issues, and Mercury Falls was a way of working through some of those ideas in a light-hearted manner. Rises and Rests diverged from theological matters, and Rests in particular dealt more with political themes. The religious dogma of Mercury Falls gave way to the crazed jingoism of Mercury Rests. I’d said what I needed to say, and the character had run his course.

  Then, in the summer of 2013, I found myself trying to decide on my next project. I’d just finished a humorous sci-fi adventure, Starship Grifters, and a quantum physics noir thriller, Schrödinger’s Gat. The Internet was awash with the news of egregious violations of privacy by the National Security Agency, and President Obama had just gone on The Tonight Show to proclaim, in a stunning example of Orwellian double-speak, that the United States government “has no domestic spying program.” Journalists were being threatened with prison time for doing their jobs, and Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning had been sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for exposing war crimes—while the criminals themselves remained free. American drone strikes targeted civilians—and in some cases, American citizens—indiscriminately. The prison population of the United States, fueled primarily by the “war on drugs,” continued to be the highest in the world, both in relative and in absolute terms, and 164 men, most of whom had never even been charged with a crime, languished in abysmal conditions in Guantanamo, as part of the ill-defined and apparently eternal War on Terror. Meanwhile, in an eerie bit of symmetry with Mercury Falls, the president seemed to be angling for war in Syria, for reasons no one seemed quite able to articulate. (In an even more bizarre parallel with the Mercury books, genetically modified corn that had been banned for human consumption was found running rampant in Saudi Arabia in August 2013.)

  It seemed to me that in a very real way, the America that I had grown up in was disappearing before my eyes. Part of this was simply an awakening to the horrors of American history that are downplayed by the media and our schools, but much of it seemed like a genuine sea change that had occurred at some point. We had become a country that valued security over freedom, power over justice, and war over peace. I wanted to do something about it, but what could I do? I’m just a guy who writes silly books about angels.

  So I once again considered writing a Serious Novel. It would be satirical, with elements of humor, but it would have some Serious Points to Make. As before, however, I found myself bored nearly to tears when I tried to write such a novel. It wasn’t enough to tinge the prose with irony; to keep my interest the book needed to have a genuine sense of chaos and unpredictability.

  At the same time, the ideas I came up with kept dovetailing strangely with the situation I had set up at the end of Mercury Rests. The basic premise was that some sort of alien beings had taken up residence in Washington, D.C. and were manipulating our government behind the scenes. Catch-22 meets They Live, if you will. It bothered me that I’d already done something similar in Mercury Rests, but I also thought the idea deserved to be explored further.

  Finally I gave up fighting and decided to write another Mercury book, which would pick up a few years after Mercury Rests left off. So this isn’t a Serious Novel; any novel featuring an angel known for his wisecracks, short attention span and silver hair obviously isn’t meant to be taken seriously. For all that, though, Mercury Revolts does touch on some serious matters. One matter, in particular, deserves some explanation.

  If there’s one moment in which the political climate of America changed, it was the morning of September 11, 2001, which saw the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. In Mercury’s world as in our own, these events served as a catalyst for a number of changes in government and society—a few of them good, many of them not so good. But despite the occasional eerie parallels, Mercury’s world is not our own. The events of Falls/Rises/Rests take place over a span of about six weeks in 2012, and the events described in those books (notably the destruction of Anaheim and the implosion of a third of the Moon) have not occurred in our world. Given these discrepancies, I decided to take a little license with the events of September 11 as well.

  It’s widely known that a fourth plane, United Flight 93, was also hijacked, and was kept from hitting its target only by the courageous actions of a few passengers. We aren’t sure what the intended target was; it may have been the U.S. Capitol. Mercury Revolts asks the question: what if Flight 93 had hit its target? What if, in fact, the other planes were hijacked only to distract us from the actual purpose of the attack? And of course, in Mercury’s world, the actual purpose is particularly diabolical and borderline ridiculous.

  I’m well aware that the events of September 11 are fresh in the minds of many of my readers, and it’s certainly not my intent to make light of the tragedy of that day. My sense of humor, for good or ill, has always been my means of coping with tragedy, and be
ing able to laugh in a world filled with pain and stupidity is what the Mercury books have been about from the beginning. Sometimes humor also helps us to see truths that are otherwise too painful to accept.

  Anyway, here it is, the fourth book in the Mercury series. Having learned my lesson with Rises and Rests, I’ve done my best to make this book accessible to those who haven’t read any of the other books. Obviously there’s a fair amount of background information in the prior books that would enhance your comprehension of this book, but as long as you’re not one of those readers who insist on knowing exactly what’s going on all the time, you should be fine starting with this one. I think of the first three books as a complete trilogy and Mercury Revolts as a separate, mostly standalone book. Whether it will be the first of another series I wouldn’t presume to say.

  A Note on ANgels, Demons and persons

  Occasionally a reader will note that I’ve referred to a particular character as an “angel,” when in fact that character is a demon, or that I’ve called someone a “person” who is in fact an angel. I’ve done my best to explain this in the past, but just so there’s no confusion:

  Demons are fallen angels. They do not cease being angels when they fall. In fact, “fallen” is a rather arbitrary, bureaucratic category, and it’s often not clear whether a particular angel is a demon or a regular (non-fallen) angel. I will usually refer to a fallen angel as a “demon” and a non-fallen angel as an “angel,” although technically they are both angels.

  The ranks of the angels are further divided into two distinct castes: cherubim (singular: cherub) and seraphim (singular: seraph). The vast majority of angels, particularly the lower level “worker bee” angels, are cherubim. The ruling class of angels, including the archangels and the Seraphic Senate, is comprised almost entirely of seraphim. The distinction between cherubim and seraphim is primarily sociological, not biological. In other words, you can’t tell the difference between a cherub and a seraph just by looking at them.

  I use the terms person, persons, and people to refer to both human beings and angels. Non-angelic persons are usually referred to as human beings or mortals.

  To sum up the key points:

  · All demons are angels. Only some angels are demons.

  · All angels are persons. Only some persons are angels.

  Here, maybe this will help:

  That’s right, folks. This is the sort of novel that starts with a fucking Venn diagram. Buckle up, bitches.

  Dramatis personae

  Eddie Pratt (Ederatz): A cherub who worked for the Mundane Observation Corps

  Mercury: A cherub employed by Apocalypse Bureau

  Nisroc: A dim-witted cherub now working for Chaos Faction

  Izbazel: A fallen cherub (demon); former servant of Lucifer, now leader of Chaos Faction

  Suzy Cilbrith: Software tester working on the Brimstone Project

  Gary Rosenfeld: Former Washington Post journalist now writing for BitterAngels.net

  Lucifer (Rezon): The devil

  Michelle (Michael): Archangel; the general of Heaven’s army

  Gabrielle (Gabriel): Archangel; herald of Heaven

  Perp (Perpetiel): A cherub who worked as a porter/escort at the planeport; friend of Mercury

  Tiamat: Demoness; founder of Chaos Faction

  Travis Babcock: Former President of the United States

  Danton Prowse: Current President of the United States

  Uzziel: Head of Apocalypse Bureau

  Gamaliel: A fallen cherub (demon); servant of Tiamat

  PROLOGUE

  To Your Holiness the High Council of the Seraphim,

  Greetings from your humble servant, Ederatz,

  Cherub First Class,

  Order of the Mundane Observation Corps

  “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

  So that’s the when sorted. No word yet on how or why. Now there’s a question I’d like to have answered. Why?

  Because he was bored, God created the Heavens and the Earth.

  For his senior cosmology project, God created the Heavens and the Earth.

  To fuck with Ederatz the Cherub, God created the Heavens and the Earth.

  I was leaning toward door number three for a while, but it’s been pretty quiet around here lately. In fact, it’s been nearly four years since I was fucked with on a truly epic scale.

  The whole apocalypse business turned out to be something of a bust;

  [1] Heaven couldn’t get its act together, and Lucifer’s plans to destroy the world didn’t pan out either. If Mercury is to be believed, the End is still coming, but it’s about ten thousand years off—and in any case Mercury said it’s one of those “not with a bang but a whimper” deals. Of course, he also claimed that the world ends with a ping-pong match between Job and Cain, so it’s hard to know how seriously to take him.

  Given the fact that Mercury also blew up the planeport with a nuclear bomb, there’s virtually no chance of this report ever getting to you. Travel and communications between the Mundane Plane and Heaven—as well as between all the other planes—has been disrupted, perhaps indefinitely. Angels in Heaven can’t get here, and we poor saps stuck on the Mundane Plane can’t get back to Heaven. On the plus side, travel to and from the Infernal Plane has been cut off as well. And I assume that Lucifer is still in Heaven’s custody, so at least he won’t be wreaking any more havoc here.

  Anyway, here I sit, somewhere between the Beginning and the End, filling my days with beer and futile ruminations. I’ve given up on ever returning to Heaven; I assume most of my kind have come to accept their fate as well. Many other angels, both seraphim and cherubim, have been stranded on the Mundane Plane, but I’ve had minimal contact with them. Most of them have presumably been content to blend in with the human population, but of course the more ambitious seraphim were bound to cause some problems eventually.

  And that’s where this story begins.

  Chapter One

  Milhaus, Texas; August 2016

  The summoning wasn’t going well.

  Sean Simpson, who had been elected High Priest by dint of his encyclopedic knowledge of Demonology for Imbeciles, had accidentally drawn a hexagram instead of a pentagram, at which point the ceremony had devolved into an extended argument about whether a hexagram was an acceptable demonic gateway.

  “What is your concern, exactly?” demanded Sean. “That the demon is going to be confused? Or offended, maybe? That he’s going to show up and say, ‘Whoa, hang on, that’s a hexagram, I’m out.’”

  “Don’t be a douche, Sean,” replied Brayden, an Unholy Acolyte. They were all Unholy Acolytes except Sean. “The book says the ceremony has to be conducted perfectly, or there’s no telling what might happen.” Brayden was the newest member of the group, and he was still a bit skittish about the idea of summoning a demon. He had suggested they start smaller and work their way up to a demon. “Maybe do a marmoset first,” he had said, hopefully. “Or a ferret.”

  But the other Unholy Acolytes had overruled him. They didn’t share Brayden’s love of exotic furry animals, and in any case Sean was fairly certain that marmosets were mythical creatures.

  All told, there were four members of the First Satanic Church of Milhaus, Texas: Sean, Brayden, Clay and Neva. The four of them had met in Mrs. Cheatwood’s remedial Spanish class at Smith & Wesson Public High School and had bonded over a shared hatred of irregular verbs and Mrs. Cheatwood’s in-class proselytizing, which was of dubious legality even by Texas standards. “Repeat after me,” she would say. “Vamos a la iglesia a orar por nuestros pecados.” Let’s all go to church to pray for our sins.

  “Screw that,” said Sean defiantly one day, “I’m a Satanist.”

  This declaration had gotten Sean sent to the principal’s office. The principal, a tired old phys-ed teacher, had insisted that Sean recant, but Sean sensed (correctly) that the longer he maintained this ruse, the fewer irregular verbs he would be subjected to. Eventually
the ACLU got involved, and someone suggested that Sean would have a stronger case that his religious freedoms were being impinged upon if there were some solid evidence that he were a practicing Satanist. The next day he found a copy of Demonology for Imbeciles in his locker, and he had no trouble recruiting a few more aspiring Satanists whose struggles with conjugation left them feeling spiritually empty.

  That was several weeks ago, and the ACLU had dropped its suit in exchange for assurances that Mrs. Cheatwood would curtail her proselytizing during school hours. The First Satanic Church of Milhaus, however, lived on. It never grew beyond its first four members, though, who met irregularly in Brayden’s aunt’s basement, and lately it had started to feel like they were just going through the motions. Enamored of his newfound authority and desperate to keep the group going, Sean had suggested that summoning a demon might spice things up. The idea wasn’t as popular with the other members as Sean had hoped: Neva and Clay were convinced the summoning wouldn’t work, and Brayden was terrified that it would.

  “Seriously,” said Brayden. “We need to be careful. If we do this and something goes wrong ...”

  “What?” interjected Neva, through a menagerie of painful-looking piercings. “What’s the worst case scenario, Brayden? We fail to summon a demon?” Neva was the only female of the group, and also the smartest of the four, which wasn’t saying much. Her parents substituted permissiveness and cash for affection, which had resulted in Neva weighing nearly three hundred pounds, approximately six of which was in the form of hardware attached to her face.

  Brayden shrugged. “I just think if we’re going to do this, we should do it right.”

  “And by ‘do it right,’ you mean that we should try to summon a tamarind?”