The Atomic Sea

by Jack Conner

  “I think you’ve had enough of those. And too many while on duty. One’s enough to get you hanged.”

  “Jess, you know I’d never—”

  “Don’t call me that.” She tensed, then softened. “Get it yourself if you must. It’ll give you some exercise.”

  Grumbling, he rose from bed, threw on his pants and approached the bar. She edged away from him. She never liked to be close, except when they were amorously occupied, and even then she would not let him kiss her on the mouth and sternly guarded where he placed his hands.

  He poured himself two fingers of bourbon and sipped it neat, savoring the expensive liquor.

  She seemed to notice his enjoyment. “If you gave a shit about your life, Doctor, you’d have money to buy your own.”

  He drank. “My life ended some time ago.” He said it more to himself than to her.

  “So, what are you now, a ghost?” She glanced away for a moment, and a hint of something that might be sadness flickered in her eyes. In a smaller voice, she said, “We’ve all had tragedies, Francis.”

  He started. She rarely called him by his first name.

  Washing herself with a wet cloth, she said, “At least you’re a decent doctor.”

  Avery smiled and peered at the bed. “Apparently I have my uses.”

  “True. You make my other lovers look good.”

  He felt a small flash of something that could not possibly be jealousy. He wanted little more than to be out of this relationship, if that’s what it was. It was no surprise to him that she had other lovers. It was well known that she had conquests scattered throughout the fleet.

  Buttoning his shirt, he said, “I think I’ll go check on my new patient.”

  “See that she reaches shore alive, Doctor.” Sheridan began pulling her uniform back on, piece by piece. “The scientists will want her breathing, at least at first. She could be very valuable.”

  “To your career, you mean.”

  She didn’t deny it. “I won’t be a captain forever. Someday I’ll be admiral. Then fleet admiral. Then ... who knows?” She smiled, and it was not a little predatory.

  He drained his glass. “Well, if that’s all ...”

  Her face changed, as if she realized that she’d made a mistake. He didn’t give her time to fix it, but made for the door.

  “Doctor,” she said.

  Don’t turn. He turned. Sheridan was eyeing him strangely. She sucked in a breath, strode to the nearest bulkhead and removed a painting; it depicted the famous landing of Captain Devorre on the shores of Apolli. A safe gleamed where the painting had been. Sheridan spun the dial and opened it, retrieving a small, lacquered wooden box from the safe’s interior.

  “Here.”

  Frowning, Avery stepped forward. “What is it?”

  “Look.”

  She opened the box to reveal the empty casing of a shotgun shell. It sat on black velvet, snug inside a little depression shaped just for it.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Winter of ’57,” she said. “One of my first wins. The shell that casing belongs to won me more than just a medal.” She did not explain what she meant by that but pressed the box into his hands. “Keep it for me.”

  He didn’t know what to say. Skeet shooting contests were an ancient tradition of the Navy and were always practiced on the bow of a ship. He knew that giving him a memento from an early win was a peace offering, maybe something more. Surely it wasn’t a gesture of affection. She would consider that a weakness. And yet ...

  “I will,” Avery said.

  He slipped the box into a pocket and ran his fingers over it as he made his way back through the halls. He wondered what it signified, if anything. Don’t read too much into it. This is Sheridan. He half suspected the only reason she slept with him was because unlike everyone else aboard he had some measure of independence. She liked someone that could stand up to her—to an extent, anyway. As for why he allowed the trysts, he supposed it was mainly to avoid friction. Plus, he admitted to himself, it was nice to have at least one real human connection left, uncomfortable though it was.

  He returned to the medical bay to find it deserted save one dozing nurse. He made straight for his new patient, the mysterious woman from the sea, in her curtained-off corner.

  She blinked up at him.

  * * *

  Her eyes were the blue of mountain rivers, swift and plunging. They stared at him coolly, and he was struck by the force of personality in them. The rest of her remained fevered and sweaty, and even as he approached her eyes began to close.

  “Don’t sleep!” he said. “Stay conscious.”

  He found a syringe, filled it with a stimulant and injected her. Now that she was awake, he had to keep her from lapsing into a coma. He massaged the flesh of her upper arm to help the stimulant pass through, surprised by how hot her skin was.

  She stirred and mumbled something.

  “What?” he said. “What is it?”

  He leaned forward to hear her better, and she spoke again.

  “Gedden es un ... ?”

  Dismay washed over him. He staggered back, nearly knocking over a tray. It can’t be.

  He forced his eyes to meet hers. It doesn’t matter. She was a patient, first and foremost.

  Still, he tasted something bitter on his tongue as, cobbling together the Octunggen he’d learned over the years, he answered her question. “You’re on a Ghenisan whaling ship. You were found ... believe it or not ... in the belly of a whale. Can you ...” He heard his voice creak and cleared his throat. “Please, tell me how you got there, how you were able to survive the waters—the whale?”

  Sweat beaded her cheeks and forehead. She said nothing.

  “Please,” he repeated. “Does Octung have some way to fight the effects of the water?” Octung, he was all too aware, possessed many sophisticated and strange technologies; it would not surprise him.

  She seized his arm. Again the warmth of her skin surprised him.

  “I ... am not ... Octunggen.”

  “But you speak it.”

  She trembled, and her eyes rolled up.

  “No! No!” He shook her. “Don’t go to sleep!” He slapped her face.

  Her eyes opened. “Ghenisa ...”

  “Yes, this is a Ghenisan ship.” He took a breath. “My captain will want to talk to you.”

  Her face, which had been red from fever, visibly paled. “No ... no ... there are spies. Agents of Octung. All throughout the continent. Ghenisa ... is riddled with them. If you ... tell anyone about me ... I will die.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I ...” She started to shake again. Before she lost lucidity, she said, “I am on a ... mission ... to stop them.”

  “Who?”

  Her eyes started to roll up in her head, and he shook her again, almost desperate.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop ... Octung.”

  He stared at her, speechless.

  The fever took her, and she collapsed into the bed. He tried to rouse her, but without success. She slept on, tossing and turning, sweating and red. He realized that he was trembling.

  A noise behind him. “Did I miss something?”

  He turned to see the nurse, Jennifer, yawning, her eyes on the patient.

  Avery opened his mouth to tell her what had happened, but hesitated. The mystery woman had said Ghenisa was plagued—riddled—with spies. He didn’t necessarily believe her, of course, and Jennifer surely couldn’t be a spy even if there were such creatures about, but if he told Jennifer what had happened, and she told others, and there were spies, how long would it be before they moved against the mystery woman? He supposed he owed her claims some thought, if nothing else.

  “She came to briefly,” he said. “She said nothing and went right back into sleep.”

  “I thought I heard voices.”

  “Just me, trying to get her to stay awake.”

  “I—”

  Alarms blared. They were n
ot the long, slow beats that signaled a whale sighting, but fast, urgent, teeth-rattling peals. They could mean only one thing.

  “Octunggen,” Jennifer breathed.

  It was as if her words were a cue. Before Avery could even think the word torpedo, a great roar rose up from deep in the ship. Something exploded. Metal squealed. The floor pitched beneath Avery’s feet and flung him against a bulkhead. He struck his head and tasted blood on his tongue. Blackness overcame him.

  When it parted, he found himself on the floor. Other things joined him, various objects of the bay, a bottle of painkiller, a canister of anesthesia gas, a metal tray, rolling and sliding about. Jennifer was picking herself up, shaking her head. Screams issued from down the hall.

  She staggered over to Avery and offered her hand. Shakily, he grasped it and hauled himself to his feet.

  “Are you all right, Doctor?”

  “We’ve been hit,” he said. He heard the shock in his voice and forced himself to push past it. “We have work to do.”

  Chapter 3

  Blood dripped from Avery’s elbows onto his apron. A spray splashed his mask and dotted his glasses. He clamped off his patient’s artery and began to sew, as other doctors and nurses hovered over their own patients, bloody and burned. The torpedo had struck one of the furnace rooms, and the results had been catastrophic. Fortunately the sub had only hit them once before Sheridan had sunk it.

  “New mask,” Avery said, having difficulty breathing through the blood-soaked cotton. After his nurse replaced it and cleaned his glasses, Avery continued sealing up the artery. The sailor’s leg had been badly damaged, both by shrapnel and by fire. At first Avery had been convinced that he’d have to amputate, but he’d found a way to save it.

  “Done,” he said at last.

  “It looks good, Doctor,” the nurse told him.

  Exhausted, Avery let a junior doctor sew up the incision while he slumped back and made himself take some deep breaths. The last few hours had passed in a blur. His team of doctors and nurses had rushed to the furnace room and the surrounding chambers, found the injured men and women, some trapped behind flames and debris in the lower levels, helped unearth them, then seen them carried safely to the sickbay, where the doctors had a full range of medical equipment to aid them, as opposed to establishing a triage on-site. After long, weary hours of blood and screams, Avery’s eyes had drooped and his arms had sagged. Having no choice, he’d fortified himself with an injection of stimulants.

  Now he leaned against a bulkhead, tired and with blood dripping from him. The reek of viscera and antiseptic permeated everything. Around him, men and women were piled up, beds squeezed together in confusion, pipes tapping a beat overhead. The medical bay had only been built large enough to hold twenty patients, but twice that number had been wounded in the attack. The remainder cluttered the floor in the adjoining halls. And those were the lucky ones. The torpedo had killed thirty for certain, and there were still several men and women unaccounted for. There would barely be enough functioning sailors left to crew the Maul.

  At least they’d had their revenge, and with the submarine downed Captain Sheridan was shoring up the hull breaches and pumping out water. Avery hoped she’d acted quickly enough to prevent infection from spreading among the crew or some creature from the sea getting inside; he wasn’t sure which was worse. At least the torpedo that had struck them had been conventional, not one of the acid-explosives or purported time-warps or what-not the Octunggen delighted in using.

  Avery’s gaze strayed over the dead, the wounded, the weary doctors, exhausted nurses, finally to alight on the woman he had come to think of as Patient X. My mermaid. Mostly hidden behind a curtain, she lay still.

  He glanced around once more to make sure his attentions weren’t needed elsewhere and moved toward her.

  She was hot to the touch, and still asleep. Avery withdrew his smelling salts and tried to rouse her. When that failed, he shot her up with adrenaline; whatever risks it held were minor compared to letting the Navy scientists dissect her.

  “Come on, wake up, wake up.”

  Of course, if she did, what would happen to her when the others found out she spoke Octunggen? Neither waking nor sleeping held much hope for her.

  The woman slumbered on, her chest rising and falling, and Avery frowned. With a sigh, he checked her dressings. It was then, as he shifted the bandage on her right leg, that he saw it. At first he thought he was hallucinating, but no, there could be no mistake: the woman was half healed.

  The massive, deep purple scar tissue that had wrapped around her upper left thigh just hours ago was now normal, healthy skin, albeit red and enflamed.

  He heard a gasp and turned to see Nurse Reynolds staring at the burn. “I don’t believe it.”

  Avery inspected her other wounds. All showed the same signs of recovery.

  “Amazing,” he said.

  “How is this possible?” Reynolds said.

  “I don’t know, but this is the woman that survived the Atomic Sea. Hell, she even survived the belly of a whale.”

  A young enlisted man entered the bay, sweaty and frantic. He approached one group of junior doctors, whispered something to them, and moved on to a pair of patients. Gasps of incredulity and horror followed him. At last he approached Avery.

  “Doctor, have you heard the news? Captain Sheridan—she’s cutting the whale loose!”

  * * *

  As soon as Avery emerged onto the deck, he swore.

  Sheridan strode back and forth before the gunwale while sailors hacked through the stout hemp ropes that bound the whale. A crowd of depressed-looking whalers and sailors, Janx among them, had gathered on deck, and they watched as the ropes sprang free, one by one. In disbelief, Avery pushed his way through the crowd, coming to stand before Captain Sheridan.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said. He realized he’d misspoken as soon as the words were out.

  Sheridan stared at him through the brass grill that covered her face-plate. “Watch your tone, Doctor. I’ll excuse it this time, but don’t address me like that again or I’ll keelhaul you.”

  He blinked. “Captain, please ... I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?”

  Commander Hambry, who’d been cutting the ropes, approached. With breathing that sounded labored, he said, “It’s not your place to question the Captain, Doctor.”

  Sheridan shoved Hambry back. Raising her voice, she said, “I’ll say this one more time, to all of you. We have no choice. Octunggen subs are hunting us. A patrol has found us and destroyed three ships of the line already—and crippled the Maul. It’s all we can do just to keep the engines going and the bilges pumping. We’ll be lucky if we can make port. There is no way we can haul this carcass back with us.”

  “But the lard—” Janx started.

  Captain Sheridan glared at him. “We have to hope the other ships manage to bring something back.”

  The last rope was cut.

  Dejectedly, Avery made his way to the rail and watched the tortured mass of the whale drift away. Black fins approached it, then tangled the water around it. Avery imagined the unholy feast going on below the waves, the ripping of flesh, the gobbling of lard. His throat felt tight. The men and women of the Maul stood around him, staring out at the whale. Small gas-squid, drawn by the stench of rot and now undeterred by the ship, bobbed through the sky and alit on the mound. They slithered over its barnacle-covered hide, ripping at it with their beaks, gripping it with their tentacles. As the ship drew further and further away, they became impossible to see.

  “Gods below,” Janx said. “It’s still got some of my mates rotting in its belly, and she’s let it go.”

  If Sheridan heard him, she gave no sign.

  “I’m sorry,” Avery told him.

  Janx kicked the gunwale. In disgust, he turned about and stormed away. Several whalers followed. The Captain ordered the remaining men and women back to their stations, and with lowered heads they
slunk off. Avery remained, intending to see the whale off.

  Seemingly hesitant, Sheridan approached him. He did not turn to look at her.

  “How could you?” It was all he could say.

  Sheridan stared out at the sea. Perhaps accidentally, her arm brushed his.

  “We all do what we have to,” she said. For a long moment, neither said anything. A burst of orange and red on the horizon signaled an exploding gas pocket. At last she said, “Now your patient’s more important than ever.”

  “How is that?”

  “As of now, she’s our most precious cargo.”

  “She’s not cargo.”

  “She is what I say she is.” Sheridan shot him a warning look. “Take good care of her, Doctor. She could be very significant.”

  She said she could stop Octung.

  The Captain pulled back to confer with Hambry, then returned. “Tend to the Commander. A gas tank blew while he was helping some of our men trapped in the explosion. He was hurt.”

  Avery led the X.O. inside. Hambry moved in odd jerks, and he favored one side. When Avery got him to the medical bay and out of the suit, he saw why. Shrapnel from the exploding gas tank had caught Hambry on the upper right chest. Some of the pieces must have penetrated deep and were likely close to the lung. Every time he breathed, they cut deeper. He was not coughing blood yet, but he was close.

  It was then, as Hambry lay half-naked on the surgical table and Avery stood over him with gleaming surgical instruments at hand, that Avery noticed the wounds he had been looking for. With every patient he’d seen to over the last few hours, he had kept an eye out for the bruises Paul’s elbows would have left in his last moments.

  In addition to the bruising and discoloration around the shrapnel entry points, other bruises showed on Hambry’s torso and arms. They were small, and the wounds corresponded precisely to where Paul’s elbows would have struck, mostly along the sides and arms, avoiding the middle—and low. Paul had been a shorter man than Hambry, and the bruises were grouped above Hambry’s waist, exactly where they should have been if Hambry committed the murder.