by Jack Conner
Desperate, fully aware of the creatures he shared the water with, he struggled to the surface, latched onto the boat and hauled himself up, spitting water as he did. Hildra was there, helping him. He floundered to the deck and rolled over, gasping and sodden.
Around him tentacles flailed wildly, and between them Janx ducked and wove, harpoon flashing out, darting in. Everywhere he struck ichor gushed, and the kraken screamed its weird cry. Then he was at the gunwales, stabbing down into the bulk of the beast. Aiming for the eyes. With a powerful hunching of his shoulders, he stabbed one last time.
The squid screamed even louder than before. With a sudden rattle of claws on wood, it released the boat. The water churned as it squirted away.
Avery and the others stared up at Janx in amazement.
He turned to them, his chest heaving, stained with ichor, harpoon clutched in one huge hand, and said, “I think we’d better be goin’, mates. There’ll be more out there.”
Hildra restarted the motor and the boat shot off. Avery, dripping toxic water, climbed onto a bench and tried to catch his breath. The wind howled around him, chilling him.
Janx hiked a leg against the gunwale nearby and leaned there, staring out into the night, on the lookout for more hunters.
“Thanks,” Avery told him, panting. “You ... were amazing.”
Janx shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’ve handled a few squids in my time. But that thing ... it knew to attack the boat.”
Avery nodded. “Maybe it has a brain in it—like the eye-spies Layanna told us about.”
“Mebbe.”
Sheridan sat next to him. Sygrel had taken her shock-stick away. The Black Sect man was currently shaking his head and wiping away the blood that had soaked his hair, and the other sole surviving member of his group was dabbing at it. Avery would have volunteered to help, but he needed a moment to rest.
“That was just one of many,” Sheridan said. “There’ll be more, Janx is right. We’d better get off these waters quickly.”
Already Avery could hear sirens wail in the distance. Dirigibles had begun to buzz in the skies above like a hive of bees disturbed. Sheridan and Janx were both right. Whether from above or below, the Octunggen would pounce again.
“Why did you help us?” he asked her.
“It was going to kill us all,” she said. “Intelligent or not, I didn’t see it offering to spare anyone, did you?”
“I don’t trust her, Doc,” Janx said. “Neither should you.”
“I don’t,” Avery assured him.
Sygrel approached, a strip of cloth about his head. Blood seeped through it, just over the ear. “Who is she?” he said. “We came for information, not hostages.”
“She’s an Octunggen spy,” Avery said.
“She was captain of the ship the Doc an’ I crewed on,” Janx elaborated. “Back in Ghenisa. But she was working for the Octs the whole time.”
Sygrel’s face tightened. “Then why is she aboard?”
Keeping his voice as civil as he could, but at the same time as irrefutable, Avery said, “Sheridan goes where I go.”
“Why?” The blow to his head had not improved Sygrel’s disposition, and he looked especially sour.
“Because she has my daughter. Ani. She’s on the island.”
“Shit,” said Janx, sounding startled. “Is that true?”
These last words had been addressed to Sheridan. She looked up at him, seemingly unimpressed by his size and physicality. She had been his superior for years, and she still wore a certain aura of command, as if her status as prisoner was merely temporary and at any moment she would resume her old authority.
“Ani’s under my care,” Sheridan allowed.
Janx glowered at her, then sucked in a deep breath. He turned a pitying look on Avery.
“I don’t care who she has,” Sygrel snapped. “She’s not coming with us. Markus, help me throw the bitch overboard.”
The other Black Sect man stepped forward, and together they prepared to seize Sheridan and carry out the order. She watched them approach with a characteristically inscrutable expression.
Avery stepped between her and them. “If she goes, I go. And trust me, you need what I have.”
“Damn you,” Sygrel said.
“Fuck it,” said Markus. “Let’s toss the bitch and pin the little one down.”
“Do it,” said Sygrel.
They started forward again.
Janx had been observing all this with a thoughtful frown. Now he turned his head to Avery, as if asking if Avery wanted him to intervene. He clearly wouldn’t help Sheridan under his own initiative, but he would if Avery requested it.
Hoping he was doing the right thing, Avery nodded.
Janx stepped between Avery and the Black Sect men. In one hand he gripped his ichor-stained harpoon. He raised the other, palm out, keeping the two men at bay. He shoved one back, then the second.
“She’s comin’ with us, like it or not.”
“But we’re going ...” Sygrel lowered his voice. “We’re going to the Sect. We can’t take an Octunggen spy to them!”
Janx flexed his fist. “She’s goin’.”
They cursed and fumed. Sygrel glared at Avery and said, “This is on your head.”
“I know,” Avery told him quietly.
Swearing, they retreated.
Janx shot Avery a wary glance. “I hope you know what you’re doin’, Doc.”
Avery sighed. “So do I, Janx. So do I.”
He turned to Sheridan, but she seemed as calm and cool as if this were a summer outing back home.
* * *
They bound and blindfolded her before finding an old entrance into the sewer system, and for a while they motored through the pungent blackness. Janx lit a cigar to drive away the smell and stomped back and forth swatting mosquitoes while Hildra piloted. Sygrel and Markus crouched at opposite gunwales, shining flashlights with one hand and clutching guns with the other, alert for ambush. This left Avery and Sheridan sitting next to each other in the darkness.
She lit a cigarette, an Octunggen brand, and offered him one. He declined. They perched in awkward silence as Hildra drove them, Sygrel giving directions from time to time. If Avery had been expecting Sheridan to thank him for defending her, he was disappointed. Her offer of a cigarette was as close as she came.
“Can you really get Ani back?” he asked.
She blew smoke at the ceiling, where bats chittered and shifted, though he could not see them. “Yes,” she said. “I can.”
He wanted to ask her more about Ani—what she had been learning, doing, talking about, anything—but this wasn’t the place. Still, it required an effort not to ask. He needed to know. It was almost a physical compunction.
Eventually they abandoned the boat in the sewer canals and made their way afoot through the grimy labyrinth. From time to time a flail flew overhead, the winged slug-like thing dripping mucus as it went. The echoing slap and gurgle of the filthy river rang unceasing in Avery’s ears, where the roar of the boat’s motor had left an imprint that faded only slowly. Sygrel led them to a certain door, down a set of stairs, then through a false wall into an earthen corridor. Avery led the still-blindfolded Sheridan, and she accepted his touch with a patience that he had to assume was mocking. Surely she felt nothing for him. Once, to his dismay, he’d felt a glimmer of something for her, but that had been before he’d realized she served Octung.
Sygrel led them through the tunnels and at last into the subway system. At one of the platforms, he found a payphone and punched in a number. “Thirteen blue. The sky is red,” he said into the phone.
They descended, level by level, until they arrived at a deserted platform on the lowest finished level, where spiders and other, stranger things spun webs in the shadows. Avery sat Sheridan down on a moldering bench while he checked Sygrel’s wound, and the fanatic suffered his attentions reluctantly.
Hildra, tasked with watching Sheridan, seemed to enjoy the opportu
nity too much. At her direction, Hildebrand clambered all over the admiral, crawling up and down her back, her arms, even tugging at her hair.
Still working on his cigar, Janx merely stood nearby. He neither helped nor stopped her. Sheridan bore it all stoically.
“You know you made our life a living hell, dontcha, lady,” Hildra said. “We had to watch our backs for you every step of the way. Couldn’t even take a piss without wondering whether the big bad Captain Jessryl Sheridan was going to pop out at us and offer us a wipe.”
Sheridan, still bound and blindfolded, said, “I did my job. And it’s Admiral.”
“Yeah.” Hildra grunted. “You’re a good little worker. You killed Jaimsyn and Holdren, you bitch. Was that part of the job?”
“Yes.”
Hildra raised her hand to slap Sheridan. Avery started to intervene, but Hildra paused and let out a ragged laugh.
“Someday,” she said. “When you can see it comin’.”
Sheridan, still blindfolded, remained impassive. “I’m ready now.”
Janx collected Hildebrand, returned him to Hildra and put himself between the two women. “That’s enough,” he said.
Sheridan smiled. “Oh, I’m ready for you, too.”
Janx frowned.
A train whistle blew, and Avery jumped.
The subway cars roared in out of the blackness and squealed to a stop at the platform, sending papers and debris flying every which way. Avery and the others boarded and the train set off, having barely stopped. It seemed to take forever to reach Golna this time, at least to him, who had to endure the silent accusations of everyone aboard. Why had he taken Sheridan? He was a fool and he knew it. But he could not abandon Ani.
Finally they arrived and made their way through the squatter settlement to the main building, now a temple, and deep within it Sygrel found a bare cement room to use as Sheridan’s cell. He shoved her in, then searched her thoroughly, even forcing her to submit to several scans by extradimensional equipment to be sure she wasn’t hiding any device on her person. They took her cigarettes and lighter. Only then did they unbind her and restore her sight.
She blinked around at the cracked walls and the naked light-bulb hanging overhead. There was no furniture, nothing. Not even a bucket.
“Homey,” she said.
Sygrel slammed the door in her face.
“I better not regret this,” he warned Avery.
“I already regret it,” Hildra said.
Sygrel assigned a full half dozen men and women to guard the cell, then accompanied Avery, Janx and Hildra into the realm of the priests. After giving his report to the clergy, the captain left, and Riusta Hirz, the High Priestess of the Black Sect, showed Avery and the others to the laboratory. As always, the members of the Sect worked a few at a time, for a few minutes at a time only (the longest the sick ones could manage) on the Device while the rest nursed themselves and prepared for another frenzied few minutes. Layanna, clearly exhausted, had probably been working for many hours, but she nonetheless led two others in working on the Device, all in their other-forms.
Her attention was currently distracted, however, by two robed Sivusts, who bowed to her while a priest made grand gestures. The two worshippers’ faces had already been daubed with glowing paint, and they shone, not just with paint but with youth, beauty and innocence. One was a girl, blond and tiny-boned, perhaps thirteen, her body just ripening toward womanhood. Her eyes shone lovingly up at Layanna. The other, so similar of build and facial feature, had to be her brother, a year or two older than she, lissome and comely with curly golden hair, his expression a mirror of her own. Faces serene, earnest, they prayed to Layanna, offering themselves to her for consumption.
Avery shuddered. If he had arrived a few minutes later would he only have seen them as bones and red swirls through Layanna’s amoeba sac?
Layanna quit her discussion with the siblings as soon as she saw Avery. Immediately she released her amoeba-form and came over to him. Relief flooded her features, and he could see her struggle with herself whether to embrace him or not before the others; she didn’t like to show too much affection for him in front of the R’loth. They might be sympathetic to humans, but some things were just not done. In the end, she just smiled.
“Francis,” she said, and he was surprised at the emotion in her voice. Perhaps she hadn’t expected him to return. “Were you able to get the information we need?”
He made himself smile, but he could not make eye contact with the young boy and girl, kneeling patiently nearby. “Indeed I did.”
“Wonderful!” She squeezed his hand tightly, all the affection she would allow herself here.
Yaslen approached, looking nervous. “What did you learn?”
As the others of the Black Sect gathered to hear his report, Avery launched into a telling of what he’d seen and heard in the Great Temple. Layanna’s face turned ashen, as did Yaslen’s and the others’, and their expressions only became grimmer as Avery continued. By the end of his recounting, they looked ready for a funeral
“The Collossum will lead from the front,” one of the Black Secters breathed, naked dread on his once-handsome, now glass-pocked face.
Janx hovered nearby, and he wore a strange expression. “It was Mu, Doc? It was really him?”
Avery nodded sadly. “Yes, Janx. I’m sorry. The Elders have set Uthua on our trail, or he’s set himself. He’ll be coming after us.”
Layanna appeared particularly bleak at the thought. “I’ve heard that his cult has gone through a revival. It’s now rising to become one of the dominant sects, and its rituals have only become more ... eccentric.”
“Five weeks,” Yaslen said to Avery. “You’re sure that’s how much time they gave?”
“I’m sure. By then the Elders predict they can bring the war to a close. At least, in this theater—Consur and Urslin.”
Layanna nodded. “They mean to finish their conquest here and begin the process of occupation. After that they won’t fear the Device.”
“But if they’re able to get it,” Avery said, “they can continue the war. Bring it to the rest of the world.”
“We can’t let this happen,” Yaslen said.
“What can we do about it?” Janx said.
“Perhaps bomb the Temple before they leave,” Avery suggested. “They won’t depart until tomorrow, I heard it said. They’re having a revel, whatever that means.”
“We’d love to destroy the Temple, of course,” Layanna said. “But if such a thing were possible, we would’ve done it long ago. The island’s well shielded.”
“It’s hopeless,” said one of the Black Sect, a female. “They’ve won.”
“Yes,” said a man. “She’s right. If the Collossum are willing to throw themselves into the war, then there’s nothing we can do. There’s no way we can finish the Device in time, let alone activate it. Not at this pace. If we hadn’t been poisoned ... if we hadn’t been raided, the parts stolen ...”
Several of the others murmured assent.
Layanna stared at the man who had spoken, then the woman. “We can finish it,” she said firmly.
“How?” asked the woman.
“We work round the clock. All of us. And we accept constant infusions of blood and sacrifices from our flock. We’ll ask—demand—bloodletting on an hourly basis from as many as we can. With this number of worshippers gathered to us, we should be able to bring in more than enough to keep us functioning.”
They stared at her in horror. So did Avery, if for different reasons.
“But ...” Yaslen started. He swallowed and began again. “Working like that, round the clock, we won’t have the strength to go for long. To live. Even with constant infusions of blood and flesh, we’ll weaken too fast. We’ll die.”
“He’s right,” said another. “We’ll burn out within hours. Days at the most. Layanna, we’re too weak.”
Layanna fixed them with her eyes. Even Avery was tempted to take a step back at the
force of her anger. “You’ve already sacrificed your lives!” she said. “You’re dying. Nothing can stop that. I’m asking you to take control of the hour and manner of your death. If all you can give is one more day, then I’m asking you to make it a glorious day. A glorious death.”
They stared at her. Several looked away. Others stood straighter.
“That’s all well and good for you to say,” one woman replied, “but you might feel differently if you were poisoned.”
Yaslen studied Layanna, then the others, and many seemed to regard him as if he were the voice they would listen to. “I hate to say this, brothers and sisters, but Layanna’s right,” he said. “We knew what we were getting into when we began all this. And we’re all but spent, anyway. Why not go out in a way that will redeem some of what we’ve done to this world? Why not make our ends matter?”
They fell silent for a long, dark moment. Avery saw angry glances, hints of rebellion. At first he thought they would flat-out refuse. A tense moment passed.
“We’ll have to talk about this,” one said.
“Of course,” Layanna said.
They withdrew and spoke among themselves, consulting with those that had been too weak to attend Avery’s report. He watched them murmur and debate, and he prayed they made the right decision.
Layanna hung back. “Thank you,” she told him, then thanked Janx and Hildra in turn. “Without you, the war would’ve been lost today.”
“It won’t make any difference if your pals puss out,” Hildra said.
Layanna inclined her head. “I believe they’ll decide to go forward, to finish the Device in one last burst of activity. I hate to ask them to do it. They’ve been my friends for ... eons. But they must.” She watched the Black Secters sadly. “Just to be sure, I’d better make my voice heard.”