Asherex of Adreia

E. Claire

Description

Set in a future world where religion has been eradicated, this religious fiction novel follows characters who begin to question the meaning of life.
Born and raised on a manmade continent orbiting Earth where history was changed and religion eradicated, Asherex is caught in a battle that reaches beyond the age-old Adreian-Brashex war for control of the Surface. Ambushed by his terrorist father-in-law and near death, he lands in a town filled with believers in Yeshua where he hears about God for the first time.
Torn between returning home and needing to know if their religion is true, Asherex is infected with Zeron’s, a deadly, incurable disease that kills within two months. Quarantined to the Surface, Asherex relies on hotheaded Roark to solve the mystery behind his infection. Unable to investigate, Asherex turns his attention to his hosts’ religion, hoping it holds the answer to the question that’s plagued him his whole life: Is there something more to this life?
Roark, promoted to Crimson Soldier, is thrown into a conspiracy to overthrow the government by eliminating his high commander and killing the commander and chief while trying to keep his best friend alive. After years of watching Emet abused by his cruel master, and still embracing his childhood faith, Roark refuses to believe in a God who allows his faithful one to suffer. As things become more heated, he questions his beliefs.
Messianic-Jewish believer, Emet, clings to his faith despite years of abuse. Under his master’s roof, he overhears a plot to overthrow the government. Dare he brave his master’s wrath and stop it before it’s too late?

Sujets

• Adventure (Guyana)
• Science fiction
• Conspiracy
• Adventure
• Christian
• Fiction
• Action
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 25 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664282322
• Langue: English

Extrait

Asherex of Adreia
 
 
 
E. CLAIRE
 
 
 
 

 
 
Copyright © 2022 E. Claire.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8233-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8234-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-8232-2 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022919812
 
 
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 11/08/2022
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
I want to thank Tonya for being my sounding board while I was writing. Without you, I would still be working on this book, which took me six years to finish. Thanks for sticking it out with me over the years.

Chapter One
Asherex
I stood in the small bathroom connected to the tiny room assigned to me during the summit meeting. For six days now, I had endured the madness of seemingly random meeting schedules and an endless list of useless formalities that only seemed to apply to Adreia’s war council. There were twelve members of the council. Each had served at least twenty years as a high commander. Once a person was accepted into the councillor position, the position lasted until the day he died.
The purpose of the war council was to interact with the high commanders set over ten thousand soldiers and their commanding officers. The high commanders oversaw the commanders of a thousand, who were over the heads of hundreds. The heads of hundreds were over the unit leaders, who had ten soldiers under them. The war council was presided over by one man, the commander in chief. There were only three ways to obtain that high honor. A new commander in chief could be appointed to the office by the previous commander in chief or rise to power through a challenge, or the war council could temporarily promote a high commander to fill the position. A temporary commander in chief would serve a term of two years and then either be voted back into office at his request until he retired or lost his position or return to his high commander position and allow another to be appointed to serve in his place.
At times, the politics of the military were confusing. I had wanted to be a soldier since I was five years old, and now at twenty-six, I was the youngest man to reach the position of high commander. My father was trying to persuade me to reach for commander in chief, the second-most-powerful position in all of Adreia. The commander in chief ruled over all of Adreia with a people-elected senate to keep him from focusing entirely on the military and neglecting the needs of the people. There were thirty senators in all, and I knew them all personally and was glad I didn’t have to deal with them on a daily basis.
Adreia was a strange place, even for those born and raised within its borders. During the two hundred years following the Global War, the elite had built the floating continent referred to as the World Above. The war had left the planet’s surface scarred. One-third of it was uninhabitable because of the biological and nuclear attacks. In the aftermath of the Global War, the wealthiest and most intelligent people left on Earth had come together to build the World Above.
After its completion, they had selected the best of the best to live in the World Above, which the builders somehow had fixed just outside Earth’s atmosphere. Anyone with a genetic defect or below-average intelligence had not been allowed entrance. It had been paradise above the surface of Earth for a time, but it soon had come crashing down around the people. The government had made it their mission to blot out everything they perceived as a threat to the security of the World Above. Thousands of years of history had been discarded as irrelevant, and strict rules had been implemented to give the people a sense of security. Just a few generations after its establishment, the World Above had forgotten what it was like to live on the Surface.
That detachment from the rest of humanity had brought about the ruin of the World Above. Four hundred years after the Global War, a new war had begun. Two men had opposed each other on the policies enacted upon the people on the Surface. Senator Asherex Adreia had politically challenged Commander in Chief Brashex. Brashex had imposed a harsh tax on the people of the Surface, causing many to fall into poverty and enslaving those who couldn’t meet harvest-time quotas. Because of Brashex’s cruelty, the people of the World Above had suffered due to the decrease in crops.
Senator Adreia had rallied the people behind him as he threw his political career into overdrive. Adreia, well loved by the people, quickly had stolen away the support of the majority of the military. The war had started the day Brashex struck Adreia during a press conference. The crowd had erupted into full-blown violence, and in less than thirty-six hours, the World Above had divided into two factions: the East and the West. Some had followed Brashex and believed that the Surface was theirs to command. The others had devoted themselves to Adreia and set about trying to make a way for the people above and below to live together without being unfair and cruel.
Now, nearly seven hundred years later, the two countries of Adreia and Brashex were still at war with each other. Unlike those on the Surface, who fought against one another, the World Above adhered to strict rules governing warfare. Nearly all fighting occurred either on the Surface or in the skies below the floating continent.
Every trip to the Surface posed its own threats. The natives had become immune to the deadliest disease released during the Global War, which had mutated and had no cure. Once a person was infected, he or she had less than two months before death came. The disease, known as Zeron’s disease, was highly contagious until it reached the final stage, when blood-to-blood contact was the only means of transference. Because of this, people who suspected they might have been infected entered quarantine on the Surface for seven days. If no symptoms were present, they were free to go home. If they showed signs, primarily a cough that wouldn’t go away, they went into quarantine on the Surface. After two months, if they didn’t show symptoms, they received a full medical workup and went home if the results were negative for the disease.
An announcement came over the intercom system, snapping me back to reality, reminding the ten high commanders that our meeting with our commander in chief was in sixty minutes. I had been high commander for nearly four years and had participated in three summit meetings. This was the first time Commander in Chief Vaxis was meeting with us. It was exciting—or it would have been if I hadn’t been feeling so poorly.
I’d started feeling sick two days ago. The doctor had given me antibiotics and a steroid shot to knock out whatever I had. Unfortunately, I felt worse today, and I had an appointment to have blood drawn and tests done after the meeting. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been sick. I’d never even had a cough, except when I’d tried to be a fish and breathe water, but that was a different story.
I swallowed that day’s round of antibiotics, chased it with a good sixteen ounces of water, and then stared at my reflection in the mirror. My ash-brown hair was longer than I