The Atomic Sea: Volume Two

by Jack Conner

  “Crap.”

  Avery scanned the gauges. “I think we still have time.”

  “For what?” said Hildra.

  That was a good question. Avery knew they couldn’t simply stop and ask the Octunggen to refuel them.

  “Perhaps we can steal some fuel,” he said.

  Janx rubbed his stubbled scalp, big fingers digging into scarred flesh, molding it, wrinkling it up. “We don’t even know what fuel to steal. Or gas. Shit, the fuel depots’ll be guarded anyways.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Maybe steal another ship.”

  Hildra rolled her eyes. “You think those’ll be less guarded?”

  Layanna, who had been dozing fitfully, glanced up from her pile of blankets. “Keep going,” she said. “Maybe we can outfly the warzone, set down behind Ungraessotti lines and go from there.”

  Avery translated, then added, “It sounds like our most reasonable course of action.”

  Janx and Hildra reluctantly concurred, and they flew on. Clusters of dirigibles, giant zeppelins and in-sweeping bombers grew tighter and tighter. Airships of all kinds surrounded the commandeered dirigible, some passing very close. Avery feared at any moment the alarm would go up and the ships would converge on them. The group was passing right through the front lines of the enemy. Their colors had saved them so far, but surely, eventually, someone would stop them.

  At last, toward dusk, just as Avery was about to ask Janx to relieve him at the wheel, the concentration of aircraft grew very dense indeed. The ships buzzed and zoomed and drifted to the northwest, and Avery stared at the confusion of activity, trying to make it out. There was something there, something large, something at the heart of all that commotion, something ...

  He gasped.

  That drew the others’ attention, and he pointed. Their eyes roved toward the activity, and, as one, they cursed and made sounds of surprise.

  All except for Layanna.

  “So,” she said, in musing tones. “They’ve done it.”

  “Done what?” said Janx.

  Avery’s eyes roved over the clustered zeppelins, roped together, bound together, hundreds of them. They supported great platforms, runways, airstrips, mooring docks for vessels of all kinds. But there was more. Buildings, huge buildings, rose from the highest, most central platforms. The structures loomed—large, monolithic—thick spires and heavy domes. A city, he realized, with dawning dismay. The Octunggen had built a city in the sky. It was unwieldy and bulky. It looked like something that should not possibly exist, that could not sustain itself, support itself, and yet ...

  “Done what?” Janx repeated. “What the fuck is that?”

  Layanna rose from her blankets and leaned against the gunwale. “The Over-City. For years, ever since the war started, the generals have complained of the scattered fronts, the need to centralize command, a mobile command that could be on one front a certain day, a different front the next. They built small ones at first, floating stations for the officers. But the high authorities demanded to be involved, to be active in the day-to-day running of the campaigns. So ... they expanded. They’ve been working on it for a long time. They must have deployed it while I was away.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Hildra said, her voice low and filled with wonder.

  Crimson light bathed the city in the sky, outlining its buildings and courtyards in red. The buildings were square-hewn and gave the impression of great solidity. Typical Octunggen architecture. But around the city buzzed constant air traffic, fighters racing off runways in large convoys, zeppelins docking and much more. Some of the zeppelins carried large objects dangling below their gondolas. Avery saw cranes, building materials and supplies being unloaded and moved. The city was still being built, even as it flew.

  “Amazing,” he said. Unconsciously he had aimed the dirigible toward the Over-City—to get a better look or out of simple gravity he wasn’t sure, but he recovered and veered away. The last thing he wanted to do was get too close.

  Layanna frowned and stepped away from the bow, toward him, though not by intent. It was almost as if she were stepping away from the city, drawing back from it. Recoiling. Curious, he glanced at her, and what he saw surprised him. There was fear in her face. Not wonderment, not consternation. Fear.

  She reached him and gripped the steering column absently, as if fumbling to keep herself from falling.

  “What?” he asked. “What is it?”

  Her eyes remained fixed on the floating city. “A Collossum,” she whispered. “A Collossum is in that city. An ... Elder. I can feel him.”

  Sudden dread coursed through Avery. He swung the dirigible wide, aiming it directly away from the nightmare of Octunggen engineering. He felt his legs shake. His stomach twisted into a knot.

  “I can feel him,” she went on. “And ... yes ... yes, there it is ... oh no ... no, why did it have to be now?”

  “What?” Avery demanded. “What is it?” But inside he already knew.

  Layanna turned and stared at him, her face full of horror. “He can feel me too.”

  Chapter 5

  Almost instantly, the ships in the immediate vicinity of the Over-City stirred. It was as if a great confusion gripped them. No. A great urgency. They scrambled about in the air, reversing positions, changing formations. Then, as one, they aimed for Avery’s dirigible.

  Janx began cursing in the manner only a veteran sailor could.

  Avery no longer cared about preserving the dirigible’s fuel reserves. He punched buttons and stomped pedals wildly, throttling the rear propellers up to full speed. The dirigible shot forward. He aimed it toward a city smoking on a nearby mountain, the same city he had seen the bombers returning from. He didn’t know what he hoped to find there, but if nothing else there was resistance to Octung behind its walls.

  He heard a roar of planes behind him. He wrenched his head around to see a wedge of fighters zip past the dirigible, their aluminum skins glinting in the sunlight. The grind of their engines rattled his ears, and the wind from their passing knocked the dirigible off-course and whipped what was left of his hair. He tasted their greasy smoke on his tongue and spat it out.

  “Damn,” he said, jerking the wheel back, returning the ship to its trajectory.

  “They don’t want to destroy us,” Layanna said. “Not yet.”

  “They want you alive.”

  “Remember what you promised.”

  He looked behind them. Dear gods. Ships, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, raced toward him. Some bore huge guns, some small. Any of them could take the dirigible out. But, if Layanna was right, he needn’t fear the fighters which now flooded the air around him, shouting through loudspeakers for him to draw the vessel to a stop and prepare for boarding. No, what he feared more were the dirigibles, filled with their strange Octunggen weapons, which could, among other things, paralyze him with pain and force him to stop flying.

  A hundred dirigibles and a score of giant, glittering zeppelins—likely capable of carrying even larger, more powerful weapons—struck out from the floating city, their red-lit prows aimed directly at him. Even as he watched, he saw soldiers wrestling with bulky machines in the gondolas. Strange lights began to blink on the vague bulks.

  “Shit shit shit,” said Hildra.

  Ahead, the smoking city drew closer. Individual buildings began to materialize, huge and shattered, burst like rotten fruit by Octunggen bombs. Streets snarled along winding, angled mountain slopes. Portions of the city sat higher while the rest hunched lower along the mountainside. There seemed to be several different wide areas where slopes had been hewn out and made level, and upon these stood the primary buildings of the city, old and proud. Others had been hewn out of the mountain itself. Avery saw a familiar landmark, and his heart sank.

  The Amber Ziggurat of Azzara, a wonder from another age that sat on the top tier of the city, was composed of huge amber blocks, each one with a prehistoric insect trapped inside; some alchemy i
n the blocks’ construction gave the insects the illusion of life, and supposedly when one walked through the amber halls it seemed as if the bugs buzzed all around. The Ziggurat lay smoking and sundered, and shapes that must be corpses littered its now-pocked tiers. Once, long ago, it had been the capitol building of Ungraessot before L’ohen conquerors had relocated the capital to Maqarl, where they had been able to send out armies through the Tunnels of Ard.

  Avery expelled hot gasses from the dirigible’s balloon and lowered it from the sky. He pointed the ship straight at the Ziggurat.

  Behind him bullhorns called from fighter planes and dirigibles. They shouted in a myriad of languages, trying to make themselves understood, but they all said the same thing: “DRAW YOUR VESSEL TO A HALT NOW OR BE FIRED UPON. PREPARE TO BE BOARDED. REPEAT, DRAW YOUR VESSEL TO A HALT!”

  Avery plowed on. Janx, Hildra and Layanna huddled around the steering column, around him, as if seeking protection from the group. Hildebrand clung tightly to Hildra’s arm, his eyes huge and darting all around.

  Avery guided the dirigible over the first walls and buildings of Azzara. Ahead he saw a stir of activity. Men swarmed around what he at first thought to be a factory but then recognized as a processing plant, designed to filter the air from Octunggen plagues and defend Azzara from otherworldly weapons. That gave Avery a flicker of hope.

  Ungraessotti soldiers on the rooftops wheeled large anti-aircraft weapons around to face him.

  As the first ones fired, Avery jerked the dirigible aside. Something exploded to his right. Shrapnel filled the air. He heard it punching into the gunwales, heard the sharp rasp of fabric tearing. Another shell exploded, then another. Black smoke swirled around him, acrid and sooty. He coughed it out of his lungs, blinked it from his eyes. Over the sound of explosions he heard the hiss of air.

  The dirigible was sinking.

  “We’re hit!” Hildra said, needlessly. She and the others hunkered low against the gunwales, protecting themselves from shrapnel. Avery stood alone.

  Buildings thrust up at him. He steered wildly, swung the dirigible around one building, passed down a street. Tanks and soldiers fired at him. A building to the side erupted in stone and glass. Something chipped his arm, his back. Grunting, he steered on. He guided the dirigible away from the soldiers, down a side street, swinging the wheel and shoving gears wildly. His stomach dropped at the sudden turn, and Janx cursed. The dirigible scraped along a building, the dirigible vibrating at the contact; Avery’s stomach lurched. Glass shattered.

  Avery swung the vessel back. More soldiers and tanks down this road. His muscles strained as he jerked the wheel again, aiming up another street.

  The Ungraessotti down this road were no longer interested in him. He saw pointing fingers and was close enough to see ashen, tense faces. The Ungraessotti had noticed the dirigible’s pursuers. With a look over his shoulder he saw the full fleet of dirigibles, zeppelins and fighters sweep in over Azzara.

  Anti-aircraft guns boomed. Tanks fired. The air before the advancing ships filled with explosions and shrapnel. The Octunggen flew on, through the fire and smoke. Several of their craft erupted, scattered in pieces to the roads and buildings below. Heedless, the rest came on.

  Avery turned to face the front. His dirigible sank faster—faster.

  The road shot up at him, littered with debris and broken cars, bodies strewn between broken pieces of buildings.

  “We’re going to hit!” he said. “Brace yourself!”

  Everyone grabbed hold of gunwales and ropes. Avery held onto the wheel with both hands, mashed gears, shoved the dirigible up so they would hit level.

  The road pitched up—

  The impact knocked him off his feet. For a moment, he was weightless. Then his back struck the floor. Air exploded from his lungs. He slid, his back rasping. He bit his tongue and tasted blood in his mouth. The screams of Hildra and the curses of Janx filled his ears. The dirigible had hit the street and gone sliding.

  Wood scraped loudly on asphalt. The friction shook Avery even through the hull of the gondola. Rumbling and juddering filled his body. The friction slowed the dirigible, and at last it struck something that squealed with metal. The impact flung Avery toward the bow. He hit something and cried out.

  They had stopped. His head spun, and he spat blood. He tried to get his bearings. He felt strong hands beneath his arms. Janx pulled him to his feet and patted him on the back.

  “You did good, Doc, but we gotta get movin’.”

  Avery coughed and nodded.

  The others picked themselves up and dusted themselves off. As they climbed from the wreckage of the dirigible, Avery saw that they had struck the ruin of a truck. Up the street massed lines of soldiers and military vehicles. Soldiers rushed toward the downed dirigible, guns drawn.

  Avery stumbled into the street, stepping over the corpse of an old woman. Her teeth, coated in dust, shone in a ghastly smile.

  Janx shoved him toward an alley.

  “Com’n, hurry!”

  Staggering and disoriented, the band pressed between the high, cracked walls of the buildings.

  The Ungraessotti were better organized than Avery had bargained for, however. One group must have radioed another, for before Avery and the others had gone fifty feet a score of soldiers burst from a side-alley. Avery, still muddle-headed, could only blink and sway as soldiers surrounded him. He knew he and the others must present an odd sight: bedraggled, covered in fading boils, obviously not Octunggen soldiers.

  The band pressed tight against each other, back to back. They eyed the soldiers that surrounded them warily.

  The troops’ leader stepped forward, a stalwart-looking fellow of medium height. Several days’ worth of beard grew on his not-unhandsome face, and where it grew out over his scars it was white. He stared at the group and questions flickered behind his eyes.

  “Come with us,” he said.

  * * *

  “I’m Captain Hunried,” he said as he led them through alleys and down blasted streets. In the distance, Avery could still hear explosions. Fighters whizzed overhead, their machine guns rattling. There came a concussive bang as an anti-aircraft gun was destroyed.

  The Ungraessotti soldiers surrounded Avery and the rest, herding them, but they did not point their guns directly at any of them, and Avery wasn’t sure if the group had been taken prisoner or not. As he went, his mind cleared. He smelled grease and gun smoke and the rot of days-old bodies. He waded through heaps of debris, through burned-out cars, some with corpses still sitting at the wheels. Whatever had happened here had happened fast.

  He asked Capt. Hunried about it, and the captain said, “We were hit by a time-bomb. You’re heard of them? Well, it suspended us. In time. We just froze stiff, while the rest of the world moved on. Just for a few seconds, but it was enough. When we came out of it, the Octs were swarming everywhere and half the city was bombed to hell. We just barely managed to drive them back. One of their spies had disabled a processor, leaving us vulnerable. We got it running again, though, and we’ve held out this long. We stockpiled hot lard and other substances before the Octs arrived, but they’re running low. Luckily they’ve mainly been hitting us with their regular troops; their weird shit must’ve been tied up elsewhere. But now the damned Over-City has arrived.” He spoke the name with dread.

  Capt. Hunried led them out of the narrow streets into open areas, and they crossed a great courtyard. Finely-made statutes of Ungraessotti heroes posed defiantly, those that still stood. Several had been reduced to blackened stumps or lay shattered across the stone tiles. All around loomed the impressive edifices of Ungraessotti buildings. A few of the pre-L’ohen structures remained, proud and gray, but by far the majority of the buildings bore the more elegant craftsmanship of L’oh. Avery saw graceful arches, weightless flying buttresses, airy domes, all the more impressive for being fashioned of granite and marble in the Ungraessotti way. Many bore black scorch marks and great rents, and some had collapsed entirely.r />
  The captain ushered them toward a wall of tanks and soldiers and anti-aircraft guns, then through it. Soldiers eyed Avery and the others strangely. Many grouped around artillery cannons and anti-aircraft guns, or filed behind hastily-made walls and readied for combat in case of Octunggen land attack. Others smoked cigarettes, cleaned guns, and listened tensely to radios. Rows of dead and wounded sat directly on the ground, with frantic-looking doctors and nurses crouched over the living, tending to them with what meager supplies they’d managed to save. Avery could not resist feeling the urge to roll up his sleeves and help them, but Hunried led them on, deeper into the Ungraessotti encampment.

  Finally the captain drew them toward a still-standing but non-functioning fountain, a grisly piece of art depicting, Avery knew, the beheading of Emperor Nuanis, the so-called Half-Lord. Water would have gushed from the place Nuanis’s head would have sat; the head itself was held up by the hair, in the grip of a victorious Emperor Mortel, the Half-Lord’s brother-in-law and the rival for his sister’s affections; it was a strange old story. In the statue, Mortel held his sword in the hand not holding the head, and Avery noted that the sculptor had even managed to depict blood coating the weapon. The statue, of course, had been commissioned by Mortel to celebrate the event and even long after his death no one had dared remove it.

  Before the fountain a group of commanders stood over weather-beaten fold-up tables and studied maps and files. Some barked orders to junior commanders. Hunried, apparently a leader of some standing, dismissed most of his men and instructed Avery and the others to come with him.

  The captain sat down upon the rim of the fountain and went about the motions of building and lighting a cigarette, then stared up at them. A few of his men had remained, and they stood as unobtrusively as possible, baring their guns but not aiming them in any particular direction. Avery was only partially reassured.

  Hunried studied Avery and the rest, smoking silently. Finally he said, in Ungraessotti, which Avery spoke a smattering of, “You’re not Octunggen, that much is obvious. And you had the whole fucking Octunggen fleet after you. Clearly you’re no friend of theirs, which should make you a friend of ours.” Fighters whizzed overhead, and Avery jumped. Hunried didn’t bat an eye. “Who are you?”