The Atomic Sea

by Jack Conner

  At the sight, the pain behind Avery’s right eye returned, throbbing in full force. He had to clutch at the bed to steady himself.

  “Are you all right, Doctor?”

  “I’m ... fine.” But you won’t be.

  It took all of Avery’s will not to kill Hambry during the surgery to remove the pieces of shrapnel. It would have been so easy. A slice here, a nick there, and Commander Hambry would die of complications to his wounds. Avery himself would perform the autopsy and certify the cause of death. No questions asked. A quick, effortless murder. Even neater and cleaner than Paul’s.

  Avery knew he could never prove Hambry had done it, not in a court of law. So the Commander had odd bruises, that didn’t prove anything.

  Avery’s fingers itched as he held the scalpel, but he held himself back. He needed proof. He needed to be sure. Also, and just as importantly, he needed to know why the Commander had killed Paul. And if he had killed Paul, Hambry had almost certainly been the one that murdered Lt. Nyers two weeks ago. The killings were just too similar.

  Avery’s craving for a drink doubled and trebled during the procedure, and afterwards he allowed himself to sneak a few swigs. He did not take care to keep the stitching particularly neat or straight.

  Hambry would recover. And when he did, Avery would have his answers.

  * * *

  With all the injured men and women seen to, Avery shrugged off his white coat, said goodbye to Paul and left the bay to return to his private cabin. It was dark, rusty and stank of mold, but it was home. After the stimulant come-down, he felt exhausted, both in mind and body.

  “At last,” he muttered, taking out a bottle from a cabinet, then a second. He knocked down a shot of bourbon with a chaser of brandy, and sat on his narrow bed. He gulped down deep breaths and tried to let his mind calm.

  His gaze wandered where it always did, almost against his will, to a small framed picture mounted to the wall opposite the bed. He felt something twist inside him at the sight. In the picture a smiling woman with long black hair stood before a modest stone house, and a girl with short, equally dark hair and an impish grin held her hand. Moss grew in the house’s cracks, and a crowded flowerbed ran along its windows. Muted sunlight shone down on them.

  Avery stared at the picture until his eyes burned. He felt suddenly unsteady, as though his sense of equilibrium had been taken away, and the world moved around him.

  He knocked back another sip of bourbon, and the world calmed.

  Visions of fire, blood and screaming men chased him through his dreams that night, but other, older haunts were there, too. Memories. He dreamed of walking through a dead city, bodies lying scattered all around, some still twitching. He was dressed in a bulky environment suit, hot and cumbersome. A desperate need spurred him on, and he heard himself screaming out two names, again and again. He staggered through the streets, over bodies, around stopped cars, vaguely aware of a bright light flaring from one of the mountains that reared ahead—a red, terrible light. At last he came to a simple cobbled house, the same one from the picture, and time seemed to slow. He screamed, exhausted, tears caking his cheeks, but even though he knew he was running toward the house it never seemed to get any closer. It loomed before him, beautiful and horrible, and he found himself terrified and at the same time desperate to see what waited inside. But the house came no closer, and the red light flared even more brightly from the mountaintop. Fires raged behind him, and somewhere planes droned. The house ... Mari ... Ani ... please, let it have spared them. Let it—

  He woke with a gasp. Sweat beaded his brow. Shakily, he dressed and performed his necessary functions. He tried not to let his gaze linger on the picture.

  Before he left, he found a cigar in his top cabinet drawer. It was the last one Paul had given him. Together they had often sat in this cabin of an evening, smoking and bullshitting about legends from the L’ohen Empire, or heroes of the Revolution—both men were history buffs—while whale songs groaned outside and lightning lit the portholes. And sometimes, just sometimes, they would talk about their lost families. Only then could Avery speak of his wife and daughter. Of Mari and Ani.

  After studying the cigar a moment, he replaced it in the drawer. Perhaps he’d smoke it when Hambry was dead.

  With leaden feet, Avery returned to the medical bay. Paul’s autopsy held no surprises. He had ultimately died by drowning in his own blood, coupled with severe bodily trauma after being stabbed half a dozen times. Avery had expected it, but he had owed his friend nothing less than a full post-mortem.

  In a fit of perversion, he placed Commander Hambry in the bed adjoining Paul’s corpse—not that Paul would stay there long, of course. The group funeral that was to be held for the slain whalers would include him, too. The dead from the submarine attack had yet to be tallied, and there were some who had yet to be found or identified, so the group funeral for them would be delayed. At today’s funeral, only one of the caskets would be occupied. Paul would enter the next life, if there was such a thing, alone.

  * * *

  Subs hunted them.

  Along with the other ships of the whaling fleet, the GS Maul limped toward safety. Several of the ships had been attacked by Octunggen subs the same night the Maul had, and three had gone down. Every few hours a report of a new submarine contact came from one of the ships, and the entire fleet would veer sharply away.

  They made for a passing naval convoy, where a fleet of Ghenisan warships shepherded a large number of cargo vessels bound for Hissig, capital of Ghenisa. The cargo was being transferred from Vlakresk, an ally that lay across the Atomic Sea to the east. The Vlakreskin had not yet been drawn into the war waged by Octung and its vassal states, the war which had engulfed the continents of Urslin and Consur, so they still possessed the resources to be philanthropic—not that they had given the cargo away, of course. They’d sold it for a shiny tzan, Avery was sure. But they were bitter foes of Octung and knew that prolonging the war across the sea would delay the arrival of Octung’s forces in their own land.

  If the Maul and her sister ships could reach the convoy, they would be reasonably safe from marauding submarines. Until then they were at the subs’ mercy. They could not even radio for assistance, as the Octunggen had triggered some device of theirs, one of their mysterious pieces of technology, which limited the reach of radio signals or blocked them altogether. The ships could communicate with each other if they did not stray beyond a certain range, but the outside world was off-limits. They existed in their own bubble, a limbo between life and death.

  It would take a week to reach the convoy.

  An Octunggen submarine could come upon them at any time.

  The race was on.

  * * *

  “Good as ever,” said Lt. Orin, wrinkling her face as she took a bite. They were eating tinned beef and potatoes tonight, and neither tasted particularly fresh, unless one counted the tang of metal.

  “At least it’s better than what the whalers and enlisted men get,” said Lt. Mason, which got a round of groans.

  Avery ate without comment. Though he usually dined with the officers in their private mess as was expected of him, he’d never felt a part of their group, always feeling more at home for some reason among the enlisted men and whalers—though he doubted they reciprocated the feeling.

  “We’re just lucky to be alive,” someone said. “After the last few days ... I mean, my gods.”

  Murmured assent greeted this. The days since the attack had been rough for the whaling fleet, with one ship being attacked after another. Two that had survived the initial assault had broken up, and privately Avery wondered if the Maul would be the next to go—and if there would be any ships left to aid them if it did.

  “We’ll reach the convoy in another two days,” Avery said, if only for something to say.

  Lt. Orin started to respond, but the blare of the ship’s intercom interrupted her. The voice of Captain Sheridan, made metallic by the speaker, rang out:

/>   “ALL HANDS TO YOUR STATIONS. THE AGARA HAS JUST BEEN HIT. REPEAT, THE AGARA HAS BEEN HIT. WE’RE UNDER WAY TO ASSIST HER. PREPARE YOURSELVES.”

  Sheridan clicked off.

  Instantly Avery and the rest of the diners quit their meals and joined the press of people in the hallways leading outside. Avery went first to the medical bay, which he ordered prepped for immediate use, then rejoined the traffic in the halls. He donned an environment suit and with a group of nervous sailors emerged onto the outer deck. Rain and wind lashed him, and he staggered to clip himself in.

  “Bumpy night, ain’t it?” said a voice beside him.

  Janx.

  “What are you doing out here?” Avery asked. Technically the whalers were not part of the Navy but were civilian contractors that lived and worked apart, held in reserve to hunt whales.

  “Thought I’d see what’s what,” Janx said. “Hell, maybe I could pitch in. Gets awful restless down in the Pen.”

  Around them the sailors readied themselves to board the Agara and help shore up the damage, possibly even take on as much of the crew as the Maul would hold if it appeared the ship would sink. Avery secured one group’s services if he needed them to transport wounded to the medical bay.

  Sheridan emerged onto the deck surrounded by officers. From the forward gunwale, she stared out at the night through binoculars, and Avery was close enough to hear her say to her officers, “There it is. Get ready.”

  Avery strained his eyes and made out the dim bulk of the Agara, its thick chimney towers blocking out the stars.

  “There’s no lights,” Janx said.

  He was right. The Agara was simply a wall of blackness on the sea.

  “Perhaps their generators were hit,” Avery said.

  Janx said nothing.

  Sheridan ordered searchlights to illuminate the Agara, and the beams played over the other ship’s decks at her direction. When Avery saw people there, he smiled.

  The smile vanished instantly.

  “Dear gods,” he muttered. “They’re not wearing suits ...”

  Though the decks of the Agara swarmed with activity, Avery couldn’t see a single person wearing an environment suit.

  “The idiots,” Janx said. “They’ll get infected.”

  “Perhaps a fire forced them outside.”

  The Maul neared the distressed ship, which was riding low in the water, surely due to the torpedo strike, and Avery couldn’t help but feel a wave of grief at all the people being infected right in front of him. To see a whole ship-full of people sicken and die ... or change ... As a doctor, it offended him to be so impotent. There was nothing he could do for them.

  “Hells,” Janx said.

  “What?”

  Then Avery saw it, too. The people on the decks of the Agara acted strangely. As the Maul drew closer, Avery saw Agarans crawling over each other, biting and ripping at one other, some even hurling their crewmates overboard. It was as if a madness had possessed them. Every one of them. They were raving. Foam gathered at their mouths. Blood dappled their bodies. Some ripped at their chests and faces with their fingernails, as if so eager to cause pain that even their own would do. As the Maul approached, the Agarans turned their bloody, shredded faces toward the Maulers, and their eyes gleamed like embers. As one, a terrible howl rose up from the Agarans’ throats.

  It was almost too late. The Maul had pulled alongside the Agara and sailors were preparing to throw across ropes and boarding ramps. At a sudden shout from Sheridan, the crew of the Maul abandoned the boarding ramps and took up arms instead.

  One of the Agarans leapt across the gap that separated the ships and, before the Maulers could stop him, grabbed a sailor and hurled him over the side. As the madman reached for another victim, Captain Sheridan shot the man through the head. He toppled backward over the gunwale.

  Other Agarans leapt over, screaming and tearing at the Maulers. One landed near Avery. Janx smashed him over the head and threw him over the side.

  While Avery fought for breath, Janx crossed to a rack of harpoons, grabbed one and returned.

  “Shove away!” he bellowed to all nearby, and demonstrated by pushing against the hull of the Agara with the butt of the harpoon.

  Others followed suit, and soon the ships were separating. Meanwhile, Sheridan orchestrated the effort to destroy any Agarans that had made the leap.

  Avery helped reel in the sailor who’d been flung overboard; the man’s lifeline had saved him. By the time Avery pulled him over, with some assistance from nearby sailors, the Maul had pulled away, and the howls of the Agarans were fading into the mist. As he bent over the sailor, Avery noticed blood.

  “Damn,” he said.

  The man’s suit had been ruptured. A bloody bite showed under the right nipple.

  Avery steeled himself to deliver the bad news. “I’m very sorry, sir. I’m afraid your suit has—”

  The man seized Avery. His eyes were bloodshot and the pupils had dilated to pinpricks. The man’s teeth chomped, and spittle sprayed from chewed lips. The man brought Avery in close as if to bite him, but their helms simply knocked against each other. Spittle sprayed the inside of the man’s helm.

  Sailors grabbed the fellow and pulled him away from Avery. It was quickly determined that whatever contagion had swept through the crew of the Agara had been passed onto the Mauler through the bite. Sweating, Avery made his way to Sheridan, who stared at the receding bulk of the Agara grimly.

  “We have a problem,” he told her, and outlined what had happened.

  Surprisingly, she said, “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “As soon as I saw the Agara’s decks, the people there, I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “The Octunggen must have hit the Agara with a plague torpedo. The Agarans were able to shore up the damage, evidently, but they couldn’t stop the gas. It contaminated them all. Turned them into ... well, you saw.”

  Avery stared at the Agara, at the still-swarming masses there, just dim shapes in the mist.

  “A plague torpedo ...” he said. He’d heard of them, of course, but he hadn’t known what they did exactly. He wished he still didn’t. “What should we do with the contaminated man?”

  She shook her head. “There’s only one thing.”

  She strode up to the raving man and, after some words to Avery and the others to mollify them, shot the man through the head. Along with the other corpses, the man was flung overboard and the deck hosed where he’d lain.

  “Scrub the deck well,” Sheridan instructed her crew. “Use the strongest cleansers you have.”

  “I need a drink,” Avery said.

  Sheridan sighed. “Come with me. We’ll drink together.” She paused, then said, not without a trace of sadness, “But first I must scuttle the Agara. We can’t let the contagion spread. I don’t know what bothers me more—scuttling it or the fact that we’ll have to use one of our last torpedoes to do it.”

  * * *

  On the eight day, the Grengas, the only ship of the fleet not crippled, had had enough. It broke off from the others who’d been slowing it down and made a run for the convoy. Just before the Grengas passed through the radio silence bubble, its captain sent a frantic communiqué to the ships it had abandoned: “... am turning around now ... full speed ... blockade ... repeat, submarine blockade ahead ... have been spotted and am going full thrott—”

  It never returned to the others. A great conflagration was seen just over the horizon to the south, the direction it had vanished in.

  News spread throughout the ships. The Octunggen lay in wait, sealing off the convoy from the surviving whaling ships. There was no way around, not with the other subs out hunting them. They were all doomed. Everyone was dead already.

  * * *

  “And how are we doing today?” Avery asked, making his rounds in the medical bay.

  Lt. Hinis grimaced and fingered the bandages that wrapped the stump of her right arm, which had been severed just bel
ow the elbow. “I’d be doin’ fuckin’ better, Doc, if you could grow back my arm.”

  “Well, while I work on that, you should be up and about by tomorrow.”

  She snorted. “We’ll hit the blockade by then.”

  “I’m sure Captain Sheridan knows what she’s doing.”

  “Yeah? Then why doesn’t she go another way? Why’s she goin’ into the blockade?”

  “There’s no other way. We’re low on fuel—the Grengas was our remaining fuel storage ship—and we wouldn’t be able to make a detour wide enough to avoid the subs.”

  From his bed across the aisle, Ensign Cashim said, “So we’re just going to commit suicide?”

  “I believe the hope is that the convoy will draw so close that the Octunggen will break up their blockade and scatter,” Avery said.

  “Hope Sheridan’s right, Doc,” Hinis said. “We won’t survive another hit.”

  Form the bed nearest her, a man named Myers, who’d been badly burned in the attack, said in his raspy voice, “I just wish I knew what it was all for—the war, I mean.”

  “World domination, what else?” Hinis said. “Octung’s ‘Forever Empire’. Fucking idiots.”

  The man grimaced, his mutilated flesh pulling back to reveal white teeth. “They’re doing it for their gods. It’s a holy war.”

  Cashim adjusted his stump of a leg, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “Don’t talk about, well, you know.”

  For some reason, Avery felt an uncomfortable flutter in his own belly. The gods of Octung ...

  “It’s bad luck,” Cashim added.

  “Bullshit,” said Hinis, spitting a wad of tobacco juice, but even she didn’t look convinced.

  “Is it?” rasped Myers. “It’s not about world domination, don’t you get it? It’s about ... them.” He looked around significantly and added in a low, awful voice: “The Collossum.”

  Avery tried to wave it away. “The Collossum might be the deities of our enemies, but that doesn’t mean we should treat them with any greater respect or fear than any other gods. They’re just as—well, not to sound anti-religious, but they’re just as insubstantial.”