The Atomic Sea: Omnibus of Volumes Six, Seven and Eight

by Conner, Jack

On cue, the great squid tensed, tentacles going into a rigid cone, then, with a blast of gas, shot toward the water, disappeared in a geyser of foam and sparks and poisonous vapor, then rose again, a large squirming something caught in its tentacles, being drawn toward the great hidden beak; Avery could almost feel its chomp chomp a hundred yards out. The fish it had caught, assuming it was a fish—he thought he saw a glimmer of silver scales, and what might be a set of mandibles—thrashed violently as the beak bit into it, then went still. Gradually the animal, what little could be seen of it, vanished upward as the squid consumed it.

  “Wow,” said Ani.

  “Something, ain’t they?” said Janx.

  Sailors gathered at the bow and began taking pot shots at the creature, passing a rifle from one to the next.

  “Hey!” Ani told them. “Cut that out.”

  The sailors kept firing.

  “Why are they doing that, Papa?”

  Avery turned this one over to Janx.

  “For fun!” Janx said, trying to put on an infectious smile. This was difficult with his haggard face and blood-shot eyes; he’d been drinking heavily since the day he’d put a lance through Uthua, the being wearing his best friend’s body, and it hadn’t slowed after the Azads. “Hell, little girl, when you’re stuck on a ship for months on end there ain’t much entertainment to be had. I’ve been on some ships where ... well, let’s just say I’ve seen guys pretty hard up for kicks.” Avery was glad he didn’t elaborate. “Shooting at one o’ the big uglies is better’n some things.”

  “It’s not ugly,” Ani said. “It’s pretty. Look how it shines. And you can kind of see the stars through it. See, around the edges?”

  Janx gave her a wounded look. “I said she was a beaut, didn’t I? Well, didn’t I?” When Ani nodded, he added, “Folk like me—” he indicated his nose-less face “—have got to find the purtiness where we can.”

  “And me,” Ani said, her voice suddenly lower. A small hand went to her own face-plate, and Avery knew she was imagining running her fingers over the small white scars that were ravages of the disease that had killed her. Avery didn’t know what to say.

  “Honey, you’re a doll,” Janx said, saving the moment. “A damned sight better’n that, anyway.” He jerked his thumb at the squid, and Ani giggled.

  “Doesn’t the squid take offense at being shot at?” Avery asked. Having seen this particular sport before, it was a question he’d often wondered.

  “Oh, sure. And if the lads keep it up too long without droppin’ it, it’ll either squirt away or attack.”

  “Attack?” He’d never seen that before.

  “Oh, aye. What would you do if little folk kept peltin’ you? That’s part of the fun—nail it ‘afore it nails you. The trick is it’s brain is so small it’s hard to find, and that’s purty much the only thing can drop it.”

  “And the captain allows this?”

  Janx regarded Avery solemnly. “Cap’n is hopin’ it will attack—so his men’ll have to kill it.”

  “Why?”

  “Some valuable parts on those things. Why, the ink-gas alone has properties alchemists kill for, an’ the glands that change color—well, it’s worth the risk to some captains, and ol’ Greggory ain’t one o’ the best.” Janx indicated one of the two smoking chimneys, the aft one, where a riot of colorful coral stalks rose swarming with various fauna. Seedpores could infest a ship, but most captains kept their fruits cleared back—not so Captain Greggory.

  “I hope they miss,” Ani said.

  “I hope it goes away,” Avery said.

  “Where would be the sport in that?” said a new voice, and all three turned to regard the speaker, who strolled toward the bow. Ani recoiled, shrinking against Avery’s side.

  “You leave her alone!” Ani shouted.

  The woman she’d addressed—Admiral Jessryl Sheridan, former captain of the whaling ship Janx and Avery had worked on, traitor and spy—reached the gaggle of sailors at the bow and said, “Let me take a crack at ‘er, boys.”

  They turned, laughing, then sobered. They may not be Navy men, but she was an admiral. One handed her the rifle and stepped back. Avery felt a twinge of discomfort at the sight of Sheridan armed, but she made no move to use it on any of the humans. She examined the weapon smartly, checked the chamber, then put it to her shoulder and squinted down the length of the barrel toward the squid.

  “Leave her alone,” Ani repeated, stomping her foot for emphasis.

  Sheridan fired.

  The squid fell.

  Like a great diaphanous gown with its tentacles billowing up around it, the floating horror plunged toward the sea and splashed down with a terrific spray of water. The sailors, too surprised to cheer, regarded Sheridan in awe. They’d spent approximately two dozen rounds on the creature, and she’d felled it in one.

  Ani stood paralyzed for a moment, then stormed over, and Avery had never been so proud. Sheridan, handing back the rifle to an admiring sailor, watched her come in shrewdly.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Ani said. “She wasn’t doing anything to you.”

  Putting on a motherly smile, Sheridan bent over and reached out to pat Ani on the shoulder, but Ani flinched back. The girl stared defiantly up at Sheridan with her hands made into fists at her sides, and Avery and Janx approached to referee.

  “She was beautiful and you killed her,” Ani said.

  “She was an animal,” Sheridan said. “She would have eaten you without a thought—except possibly yum.”

  “I should shoot you again!”

  “Ani,” Avery said. “We don’t talk like that.” He was on the cusp of asking Ani to apologize but realized how absurd that would be; Ani probably should shoot Sheridan again.

  “Fine,” Ani said and stomped back toward her cabin.

  “That went well,” Sheridan said, straightening. She spoke almost sadly, her eyes on the girl’s diminishing shape.

  “You did rather deserve it,” Avery said. He could feel Janx tensing beside him, as if preparing to hurl Sheridan overboard. The idea amused Avery.

  “Did I?” said Sheridan. “All I did was help the crew make a catch. It’s not a whale, but then I’m not a big strong whaler.” She said this as her gaze moved to Janx.

  “Bitch,” Janx said, and went to shepherd Ani; a whaling ship was not a place for a little girl alone. The guard assigned to watch the group hesitated, then stayed with Avery. He traded a look with the guard assigned to watch Sheridan and shrugged.

  “Alone at last,” Sheridan said to Avery as sailors bustled around them and Captain Greggory emerged, calling for the ship to haul ass for the squid before it was all et up by the creepy crawlies. Dutifully, the ship started in its direction, and indeed Avery could make out the water bubbling vigorously around the flailing, lifeless tentacles of the squid. He felt uncomfortable being alone—nearly—with Sheridan. He’d been the one to save her life, performing surgery on her in the ship’s crude medical bay at his own insistence, and he had also overseen her recovery, but always there had been people around—other doctors, nurses, patients. Now there were only the guards, but he was so used to them by now that they almost didn’t count.

  “You two could get along,” Avery said. “There’s no reason we have to be enemies now. We'll reach Hissig in a few weeks. Home. Once we get there things will take their course.”

  “I’ll go to prison, you mean. Stand trial. Be executed as a traitor.”

  What was there to say? Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy. Avery and his group would have to move swiftly to ensure that Sheridan was not given safe harbor by the Navy.

  “I could testify in your defense,” he said. “As a character witness. Tell the judge why you did what you did, what your motivations were. Tell him that you were only doing what you thought right, acting in the best interests of humanity, misguided as you were. It might affect your sentencing.”

  She eyed him with an unreadable look, and he glanced away.

  “I
was right,” she said softly. “You see that now. After Ethali.” When he said nothing, she added, “You beat Octung, not them. The puppets, not the puppeteers. And they will prevail. Many more will die than should have. Unless steps are taken.”

  He started to say something, to tell her about the Starfish samples, but thought better of it. Better if she didn’t know.

  “Why are you on deck?” he said. “We’re supposed to trade off shifts so that we won’t have situations like this.”

  She did a strange thing. She reached out and squeezed his hand. He could feel the pressure of her strong fingers through his glove. He was so startled he didn’t pull away.

  “Things won’t go the way you think they will, Doctor.” So. They were back to Doctor now. “I will not be able to protect you.”

  “What do you—?”

  “Just keep your head down.”

  “You mean once we reach Ghenisa?”

  The pressure eased. She gave him a look that might have been pitying, then vanished into the crowd. He frowned and turned to watch the sailors haul in the squid.

  * * *

  Layanna didn’t glance up as Avery knocked and entered the cabin. Ani had flung herself on one of the two narrow cots, belly down, and refused to face him. Hildra was nowhere to be seen. Avery plunked down by his daughter, across from Layanna, who sat with her eyes closed and legs crossed as if in meditation.

  “I know you’re upset, Ani,” Avery said, “But that’s no excuse to say you should shoot someone.”

  “Not someone. Her.”

  “Even her.”

  Sulkily, Ani faced him. She seemed much smaller out of her environment suit. More frail. He recognized the determined glint in her eyes.

  “She’s bad,” Ani said

  “You didn’t always think so. You used to call her Aunt Jess, and she looked after you.”

  “She poisoned me.”

  “No, now remember, that was all a trick. She never actually poisoned you.”

  “I had seizures!”

  There was some amusement in Layanna’s voice when she opened her eyes at last. “She’s got you there, Francis. Sheridan is a hard person to defend.”

  “Well—”

  “No!” Ani said, and turned her face to the wall again. Her voice somewhat muffled, she said, “You should have let her die.”

  But if I had, little one, what would that make you? It was this thought that had guided his hands during surgery that night long weeks ago, and even now he could not think that it was the wrong decision.

  He pulled the covers up over his daughter’s shoulder and tucked her in. “Why don’t you get some sleep? You’ve done enough for one day.”

  She didn’t answer, but she looked tired, and Avery moved to Layanna’s bed.

  “How are you?”

  She appeared tired, too. Exhausted, even. She always did after her attempted spyings.

  “Fine,” she said, but she sounded ragged.

  “Learn anything?”

  She shook her head and lay down. He curled up behind her, which she allowed, though not as yieldingly as she once had.

  “They’re blocking their thoughts from me,” she said.

  Ever since the firing of the Device, Layanna had been trying to see into the minds of the R’loth, to see what their reaction—or counterattack—might be. Now, after they’d had a glimpse of what that response entailed, it was vital to discover more, to find some weakness in the Starfish, perhaps, or where it would be deployed next, or how many of the things there were.

  “”Do you sense anything when you reach out to them?” he asked. “Anything that might help us?”

  “No. At least ... I think not.”

  “So there’s something.”

  “Maybe. When I push, I get an overall sense of—I’m not sure. It might be an appeal to the gods.”

  Avery felt a ball form in his gut. The gods of the R’loth ...

  “There’s ... no chance they could answer, is there?” Little frightened him more than that notion.

  “I doubt it, not in this set of dimensions. The only gods around, at least in this region, if they were gods ... well, they’re gone now, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We’ve been searching for them for years. Centuries. Ever since we arrived on your world. Remember when I told you, that night on the dirigible after fleeing the ngvandi city in the Borghese, that there were two reasons we chose this world—the sea and one other?”

  “Yes. One thing that your people wanted, and one that you needed. You never explained.”

  “Well, these gods, the Ygrith, are that other reason, the one we wanted. It was more than you needed to know at the time, and it would only have confused things.”

  “And your people couldn’t have found them now?”

  “After all these years? Unlikely. Besides, like I said, they’re gone.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Gone from this plane. Just ... gone.”

  He let it go. He knew it was wrong, especially with Ani right across the cabin (although he could begin to hear her snoring softly), but he found himself relishing the feel of Layanna’s backside against him. We could move to the other cabin, Janx and Hildra might be gone ...

  She sort of chuckled and turned to face him, her blond hair spilling across the spots of color dancing in her cheeks.

  “No,” she said, and though her expression was warm her voice was firm.

  “Still?”

  She nodded. “Still.”

  He sighed. She’d refused to sleep with him since the night he rescued Sheridan. “Layanna, you have to know I didn’t save her for that reason.”

  “No?”

  “It was for Ani.”

  Her voice turned brisk. “For Ani, of course.”

  “I want no part of Sheridan, and I mean that literally. She’s the enemy.”

  “An enemy whom you defend at every turn. Whom you slept with in Ayu. And with whom you insist on meeting privately on the deck.”

  How does she know these things? “I would hardly call that private. Listen, Lay, I—”

  “You brought her into our encampment in Golna, nearly costing us everything, and now you bring her amongst us once again. What will she cost us now, I wonder? She’s bewitched you, Francis.”

  “I did both of those things for Ani—”

  “No.”

  He held back a curse. As lightly as he could, he said, “Then I’ll see you girls tomorrow.” He kissed her on the cheek—which she permitted—and climbed out of bed.

  “What was the commotion out on deck?” she asked before he could leave. “I heard gunfire.”

  “Oh. Sheridan shot a squid.”

  Layanna frowned, as if trying to decide if this meant something, then dismissed it.

  “See you in the morning,” she said, and there was some warmth, however forced, in her tone, which he was nonetheless relieved to hear.

  He made his way down the corridor, his guard trailing him. Another stayed at the women’s door, and another waited several doors down where Sheridan slept. At least one guard still followed them everywhere, and they were under a strict curfew. The members of Avery’s party weren’t prisoners, exactly, but they were, to use the captain’s phrase, under my eye. Captain Greggory had saved their lives by taking them aboard, and he had listened to their story, even seemed to believe much of it (after all, the Over-City had fallen and Octung was in retreat, and Layanna was undeniably ... other, as she had been forced to demonstrate in order to elicit his cooperation and partial faith in their story), but that did not mean he trusted them. He trusted them even less when Sheridan woke after the surgery and pointed the finger at them as traitors and liars, while they had at the same time pointed their fingers at her. Unable to decide between the two camps, Captain Greggory suspected them all.

  Avery entered the cabin he and Janx shared to find the big man deep in his cups, eyes bleary, face drawn and yellow. He had looked
bad on deck. He looked worse now, curled up on his cot against the wall, beer clutched in his burned right hand. He barely glanced at Avery as the doctor shut the hatch and shrugged out of his jacket. Bottles of beer nestled in Janx’s bed next to him, some filled with cigarette butts. The room stank of smoke, and Avery coughed as he sat down and regarded his friend. Avery had expected to find Hildra here, but he immediately saw why she wasn’t.

  The whaler indicated an unopened bottle. “Help ‘erself.”

  Avery hesitated, then took a sip. It was an exotic brew he had never tried before. Janx had bought it in the Sigdan Islands during a brief stop. Avery had cautioned against it—the only money they had had come from selling the contents of the ruined air yacht, or what was left of it, to Captain Greggory—but Janx would not be denied.

  “We need to talk again about what we’re going to do when we reach Hissig,” Avery said.

  Janx just sipped his beer, his large hand so tight around the bottle the glass seemed as if it might shatter. Then he relaxed somewhat, and his gaze slid to Avery.

  “We’ve been through all this before, Doc.”

  “Yes, but you keep getting ... distracted ... before we can solidify a plan of action. We need to contact someone in the government as soon as we arrive home. The moment our feet touch shore, we’ll be arrested, Captain Greggory has assured us of that—we’re still wanted fugitives, after all, until we can get the charges dropped—and we need to get somebody on our side, somebody opposed to Haggarty.”

  Janx’s eyes flickered with dim interest. “So you checked? e’s still there?”

  Avery nodded, heartened at Janx’s attention. “Yes. Grand Admiral Haggarty still runs the Navy.”

  “But he’s Sheridan’s stooge!” Janx coiled his arm to hurl his bottle against the wall, and Avery tensed, expecting an explosion, but the big man dropped his arm, too morose even to be furious.

  “He is,” Avery agreed. “Or at least she is the one who recruited him for Octung. But our fellow Ghenisans don’t know that. From what Captain Greggory tells me, Haggarty and Prime Minister Denaris are still at each other’s throats, just like when we left, but worse. We need to contact her or her people. You were a well known figure in Hissig among certain circles. You likely know someone.”