by Jack Conner
The attackers savaged Uthua, and his blood flamed and flew upward in bizarre rivers, not bound by the rules of gravity. His sac grew smaller and smaller, and soon his Muirblaag-self was visible through the murk.
The Valanca descended toward them, larger now, so close, so very close, but too far. Light winked on its balconies—snipers. Avery saw the flash of a muzzle, then another. Bullets tore off chunks of ice from the walls but did not seem to strike the attackers. Still, the snipers gave them pause, and their assault on Uthua slowed, just for an instant. Then it resumed in full, and it seemed all the god-thing could do to maintain his grip on the Codex. They seemed to be trying to jerk it from his grasp.
The snipers increased their assault. One of the invisible attackers cried out, and Avery saw blood—red, visible blood—spatter the ice of the terrace.
The Valanca reached the terrace, and Avery and Sheridan scrambled onto the docking deck, those aboard giving them aid.
The invisible attackers strove against Uthua until the last, when he gathered his remaining strength and hauled his gargantuan mass, still bearing the Codex, aboard the airship. Without wasting a moment, the zeppelin ascended. The invisible attackers lashed the air of the terrace in rage, but they could do nothing, and when the snipers redirected their fire to the balcony the shimmering in the air vanished inside.
* * *
Uthua laid the Codex on the deck floor, then released his other-self. The world shifted and realigned around him, and Avery found himself popping his ears and working his jaw. Even the light was different somehow. The stench of ammonia retreated. Uthua staggered for a moment, then righted himself, standing tall and arrogant amidst the Octunggen soldiery, who instantly fell to their knees and bowed their heads in worship.
“Bless us, Great One,” said Captain Marculin. Avery had barely noticed him before, but he was not surprised that the commander of the airship had come out personally to oversee the rescue of his god—and to bear the praise for it. “We’re honored by your presence.”
Uthua indicated the Codex. “Place it somewhere safe.”
“Yes, your majesty.” Glancing up, the captain said, “Your priests have a sacrifice prepared.”
“I have already taken several myself, but ... Take me to it.”
We helped save that thing, Avery thought. For a moment he was filled with disgust, most of it directed at himself. Whose side am I on?
Nodding, Captain Marculin rose from his crouch, surrounded by several subordinates, and led the god inside, saying over his shoulder, “We have a suite aboard prepared for you, along with whatever you require ...”
Uthua disappeared with them, no one giving even a glance to Avery and Sheridan, who lay gasping on the floor, staring at Xlatleb receding below them. The sound of gunfire was very distant now. Avery’s back throbbed.
The remaining Octunggen stood. A woman who Avery recognized as Marculin’s Executive Officer, Commander Lasucciv, addressed Sheridan, who still sat on the floor, back propped against the balustrade. “We’re glad to have you back, Colonel. Should we have Segrul attack? I don’t believe he received your order.”
Sheridan darted a look sideways at Avery. “No,” she said, voice sour. “That will not be necessary. We have what we came for.”
Troops, apparently dispatched by Captain Marculin, arrived and took custody of the Codex, then disappeared with it into the interior of the zeppelin.
“It’s safe,” Sheridan said, standing and helping Avery to his feet. “We really ...”
The Collossum Temple, glowing purple below them even during daytime, bucked once, then collapsed in a huge geyser of ice and snow, shooting a foam of white down the channels of the neighboring block-domes and sending a pall of ghostliness to envelope half the city. Bombs had leveled it.
Sheridan broke off in midsentence and stared at the destruction, then whirled to Avery, catching him in the middle of a grin.
“What did you do, Doctor?”
He wiped the joy off his face. “What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”
Her jaw bunched, and for a moment he thought she was on the verge of hitting him again. Her violence surprised him, but only a little. He had betrayed both her and her cause, and after she had let him in on her mission, too. She opened to me, and I stabbed her in the back. At the realization, he felt another annoying tug of guilt.
She seemed to see it. Her anger subsided. Commander Lasucciv was looking at them oddly, then darting glances at the devastation below. The Commander had shocking orange eyes with bifurcated pupils. They were the eyes of an amphibian, but though they were alien Avery could still see suspicion in them.
“Colonel, is everything all right?” she said.
Meaning, Avery knew: Should I have this man arrested?
“Everything’s fine,” Sheridan said, but she said it through clenched teeth, and the guilt Avery felt deepened.
I hurt her, he realized, surprised by how much that pained him in return. He had the absurd urge to apologize. Don’t be a fool. I helped stop Octung!
“What ... of the others who went with you?” Commander Lasucciv asked. “Are we to pick them up somewhere, Colonel?”
Sheridan’s expression flickered. “They didn’t make it.”
“None of them?” This seemed to be a blow to the Commander, and Avery realized that she must have lost someone. Lover? Brother?
Sheridan made her voice as gentle as she could. “None.”
Lasucciv opened her mouth to say something but seemed too stunned to form the words.
“I need a bath,” Sheridan said, getting the woman moving again. “Are our rooms ready?”
“They are,” the Commander said, clearing her throat. “Shall I escort you to them?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Still furious at Avery, Sheridan stalked inside. He spared a glance over the railing at Xlatleb, white and alien and conflicted, but now, perhaps, with a hope of restoration, and followed her in. The walk back to their adjoining rooms was silent and awkward (and bizarrely hot; Avery’s jacket would no longer be needed), and when they reached their doors they both hesitated. Here was when they would usually and without question go into one of their rooms or the other, but now, with everything that had happened—with everything Avery had done—they paused.
She opened her room and slipped inside without him.
What have I done? Not only did he have feelings for her, regrettable as they were, but she was his one ally in this madhouse. If she turned against him, that might as well be his death warrant.
He opened his door, stepped inside—
She shoved past him, coming from nowhere, tripped him and fell on him even as he toppled to the floor. The door slammed just as his back hit the floor, and all his air exploded outward.
A knife glimmered at his throat. Pain burned him where the steel bit down.
Sheridan’s blazing eyes hovered overhead.
“Tell me,” she said, and there was a strange mix of heat and cold in her voice, “what—exactly—did you do?”
He started to swallow, then felt his apple bob against the knife and forced the urge down. “I ... went to Lord Onxcor.”
“After he heard the bids?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I told him our plan.”
“What?”
He blinked. “Well, not the part about stealing the Codex, but I told him that the Octunggen would see to it that the god came with us or they would break themselves trying to free him. Either way they would make themselves vulnerable. And if the greater part of their force was coming to his dome, leaving their headquarters unguarded ...”
“The perfect time to strike.” Surprisingly, Sheridan was nodding.
“Yes. It’s something he’d mentioned before, but I reinforced the notion. And if Onxcor could make some overture to the other clans, could unite them as they were once united before ... if they could destroy the Temple, the symbol of the Octunggen influe
nce in the area, and if the remaining Collossumists didn’t have their god ... both the symbol of their order and the heart—and power, too; Uthua’s strong—all of that gone—”
“The Octunggen and the Collossumnists would be greatly weakened. Yes, yes, I see that. It was good strategy, and it doesn’t surprise me that Onxcor had sense enough to listen to it. He was—perhaps is—no fool. But it does surprise me that someone I trust would have been the one to feed him that strategy.”
He gazed up at her, feeling the knife at his throat, but also feeling that strange sense of guilt burn inside him as well.
What was more, he could feel her thighs pressing against him to either side of his hips, and her groin was, just slightly, perhaps unconsciously on Sheridan’s part, pressing into his.
Very slowly, but not too slowly, he slid his hands to her hips ... and squeezed. They were strong and muscular hips, tight under his fingers. And warm.
“Damn you, Doctor.”
“I know, Jess. I’m ... sorry.”
He worked his hands, squeezing her thighs, then her buttocks.
“Are you?”
“Yes,” he said, and found that he actually meant it. “But what I said to you earlier—I’m not Octunggen. I’ll help you save the world, but not give it to Octung. We didn’t need Segrul to get the Codex to the zeppelin.”
“We might have. If the combined forces of the clans had—”
“But they didn’t.”
He ran one of his hands up her flat, hard stomach, cupping, then squeezing a round firm breast.
The knife pressed into his throat again. He felt a line of hot blood trickle out.
“Damn you,” she said again, but this time she said it in a whisper.
She pressed her lips to his even as she held the knife to his throat. He squeezed her breast hard, feeling his member stiffen painfully. He took her knife wrist, pulled it away. She fought him for a moment, her hips grinding against his, then allowed it.
He brought her hand behind her back and flipped her over, his groin never losing contact with hers, so that she was under him, her legs around his hips. He fumbled at his buttons and she tore at hers, jerking her pants down. His member popped blessedly free. He found a condom in his pockets (he was always hopeful), slipped it on, and in moments was plunged inside her. She gasped and arched her back.
She still gripped her knife in her hand, but she allowed him to grab that wrist and pin it down even as he thrust into her, at first slow, then fast, very fast, pounding her against the floor. She gasped, and he moaned and thrust. It all became a mad blur, the two of them grinding and rolling about, still half dressed, furs thrown about them, the knife still in her hand, before finally she cried out in release, clawing his back with her one free hand, sliding herself up and down him frantically. He couldn’t control it any more but burst inside her.
They collapsed panting to the floor, his member still standing up comically encased in its condom, her right hand still clutching the knife.
Gasping, she said, “This ... doesn’t change anything, you know.”
“I know.” He also knew that it did. Of course it did.
They lay there panting for another moment. Then a terrible thought struck him.
“Do you think ... ?” He bit it back.
“Yes?”
Reluctantly, he said, “Do you think he’s ... eating someone right now?”
She glanced sideways at him, and he met her gaze. Neither said anything. The ship hummed steadily around them.
Chapter 6
“By a whale?” Commander Lasucciv said. “I can’t believe you lost all of the troops under your command to a fucking animal.”
“It is unfortunate,” Sheridan said.
“Unfortunate?” The X.O. sneered. Her orange eyes with their strange bifurcated pupils seemed to glow brighter. “You led twenty men and women to their deaths, and all you can say is it’s unfortunate?”
Sheridan visibly curtailed her impatience. They—Captain Marculin, his X.O., Avery, Sheridan, Uthua and two of his priests—were grouped around the long table in the officers’ quarters, discussing what had happened in Xlatleb and its implications. “I’m sorry for what happened,” Sheridan said, “but I cannot control all the fauna in the sea.”
“That’s if they died from this whale attack at all.” The Executive Officer’s gaze moved to Avery, who squirmed. “More likely they were killed by the design of your little playmate and you’re just covering for him.”
“The vast majority of them died from a whale attack,” Sheridan said. “The doctor had nothing to do with it. The others were killed by these mysterious attackers.”
“Enough about the whale,” Captain Marculin said, with a warning look to his X.O. “We knew crossing the wastes would be dangerous. I want to know more about these attackers. What the hell were they?”
“We don’t know,” Sheridan said. “Not what they were, nor whom they were acting on behalf of. Perhaps themselves, perhaps some third party.”
“They shed red blood,” Avery said. He was as surprised as anyone to be speaking at an official Octunggen debriefing, an environment every bit as alien and hostile to him as Xlatleb—perhaps more so.
“That means nothing,” said Uthua, hunched at a great armchair at the head of the table. His two priests stood behind him, their purple-cowled heads lowered so that the cowls half hid their faces. Avery had wondered at the priesthood’s presence aboard the Valanca during the last few weeks. He knew they conducted various rites for the congregation—which comprised everyone aboard the ship save Avery; Sheridan went to keep up appearances—but now he realized they had been awaiting the arrival of one of their gods. As such, they must have been seeing to various captives in their elaborate suite, people they were holding for Uthua to consume in private sacrificial ceremonies.
Some were private, anyway. Already a public ceremony had been scheduled for that night—a chance for the whole airborne congregation to lay eyes, and, if they were lucky, hands, on the being they called Lord. A few people aboard had even belonged to the cult that had worshipped him above other Collossum, and these were looked up to by the rest. In any case, it sickened Avery that there had been captives kept as sacrifices aboard the ship the entire time he’d been here and he hadn’t even known about them. What did the priests do with the captives away from prying eyes? He remembered the treatment of the captives in Rigurd’s holy place below Hissig. What other secrets were the Octunggen keeping?
“It’s only significant that conventional bullets were able to penetrate to the attackers’ skin,” Uthua said. “If they were ... like me ... it’s possible I may have weakened them enough for a bullet to puncture, but I think not. They were not one of the Godhead.”
At the word, the priests murmured and pressed the fingers of one hand to their lips.
“I wish we could have killed one and brought it aboard to study,” Avery said. “I would be very curious to examine one of these things.”
“You may get your chance,” Captain Marculin said. “They’ve been dogged in their hunt for the Codex so far, and there’s no reason to think they’ll stop now. We must assume their resources are considerable. This is not an isolated group of individuals that just happen to have the ability to take on one of the Great Ones—” he nodded at Uthua, who sat impassively—“as well as having an overriding interest in the Codex. Not only that, but the means of locating it and, one assumes, retrieving it.”
“We’re overlooking something,” Sheridan said.
“Yes?”
“What if they did get their hands on the Codex? It’s useless, isn’t it?—without the Key.”
Commander Lasucciv visibly started. “You think they would go after it, too?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense. What’s one without the other?”
“Then their resources must be vast,” Marculin said. “The Key is quite well protected—and soon the Codex will be, too. We’re in route to the Flying Fortress even no
w.”
“Flying Fortress?” Avery said.
“A scientific station,” Marculin said. “Airborne. Before the destruction of the Over-City—” He frowned at Avery “—it had only been that. Now it’s been expanded and taken on additional duties, filling in some of the gaps left in the absence of the Over-City. Two other Collossum have already arrived and have been working with the Key, ferreting out whatever secrets they can without the Codex.”
“An airborne Octunggen scientific station,” Avery said, half under his breath. “Why does that sound particularly ominous?”
He felt a heavy gaze on him and turned, dreading it, to find Uthua staring at him, the god-thing’s black eyes huge and glistening.
“Whose side are you on?” Uthua said, and his voice sounded like gravel being ground together.
Commander Lasucciv seemed to want to pitch in, to add weight to Uthua’s question, but she respectfully kept silent.
Holding his ground, Avery said, “I’m on the side of humanity.”
Uthua’s mouth twisted—in amusement?
“There can only be two sides,” Uthua said. “Before me, in the path of destruction, or by my side. Which is it?”
At your back, Avery thought, with a knife in hand.
“I saved you, didn’t I?” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”
Any trace of amusement had vanished from Uthua’s face. He sat, grim and awful, his fish-man self merely his imprint on this reality, his avatar on this plane. Layanna had felt real, and human. Uthua’s flesh was merely a mask for something else, something far greater and more terrible. Even when the air wasn’t rippling about him he seemed otherworldly, a nightmare walking in daylight. Frowning, he stared at Avery, and Avery could not begin to guess at his thoughts. He merely hoped Uthua couldn’t read his.