by Conner, Jack
“Gods, bones, how could you?” Hildra said, moving forward.
Heedless of his erection, Avery climbed to his feet and approached Janx and Sheridan. “Janx—please—don’t—”
“Shut the fuck up, Doc. I’m gonna finish what I started in the Over-City.” Janx didn’t even look at him, just strangled Sheridan. At any moment Avery expected to hear her bones crack or her cartilage snap.
“Bones, you’ve really screwed up this time,” Hildra said.
“I know,” Avery said miserably. “I—” He glanced to Layanna, then back to Sheridan and Janx. Desperation filled him. He told himself to let it happen, to let Janx do what he didn’t have the strength for.
With all his will, he shouted, “JANX! STOP!”
For a moment Janx kept on, but then, as if against his better judgment, he released his grasp, just a bit, just enough to allow Sheridan to suck in a great big gulp of air.
“You have exactly one chance,” Janx told her. “For the Doc’s sakes. Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you. If I don’t like it, you won’t get a second.”
She stabbed a finger toward the base of the tree she and Avery had been coupling against, or about to couple against. Her belt was there.
“My radio,” she wheezed. “I can—call—my troops—”
“Sorry, but threats won’t—”
“Not a threat, you—idiot. My troops—are in—dirigibles.”
Janx paused. “Dirigibles.”
She nodded. With more breath, she was able to say, “How else do you—think we kept mobile—able to rendezvous with—whatever Nisaar tribe came on you first?” Some of the red was leaving her face, and the vein that had been about to burst in her forehead subsided. Avery wished he didn’t feel a pang of hurt to see her like this, but it was there.
“So what?” Hildra said. “The last thing we want are Octunggen dirigibles bearing down on us.”
“How are you going to get out of here?” Sheridan rasped. “Do you have any plan? Blunder back through the jungle to—what? Your convoy is gone, your vehicles burnt. There’s no way you could survive a trek back to civilization, on foot, through the jungle.”
Janx glowered for a moment, then, very gradually, set her down.
“What are you doing?” Hildra said. “Pitch the bitch over the side!”
Janx spat. “She’s right, doll. If she can give us one of these dirigibles, it’d probably save our lives.”
“Thank you,” Avery told him. Avery’s erection had faded, if nothing else.
He and Sheridan shared a look, then glanced away from each other. Avery turned back to Layanna, not knowing what to say, then reeled back in terror.
Surrounding her, coming out from the doorway, were a dozen maggot men.
They weren’t all men, he saw. Some were women. Two were Nisaar. One was something like a giant earthworm with arms. All of them were infested with maggots. The little things crawled under their flesh, thrust out of their lips and weaved in and out of their eyeballs.
“Lay—Layanna!” Avery said, pointing even as he stumbled back. “Look—!”
Hildra caught him, preventing him from tumbling off the building.
“We know,” she said. “They’re with us.”
“With you?”
“Well,” she amended, “more like we’re with them. But yeah. We’re together.”
“I don’t—don’t—”
“I know. It’s freaky. But believe me, it ain’t nothin’ compared to what I just saw. You two. Fuck.” Hildra made a face as if she wanted to vomit, then moved to Sheridan’s belt and snapped it around her own waist, removing Sheridan’s ability to call her backup or use her gun. She tossed the remainder of Sheridan’s clothes to the admiral, and Sheridan dressed, not seeming particularly embarrassed, though she was quiet. Her throat was turning purple.
“I still don’t understand,” Avery said, throwing on his own clothes. “The infested creatures ...”
“We’ll explain as we go,” Layanna said, and her voice was cold. “The Colony is impatient for the interview to begin.”
THE END
OF VOLUME SEVEN
OF
THE ATOMIC SEA
THE ATOMIC SEA
PART EIGHT
IN THE WORLD BELOW
by Jack Conner
Copyright 2015
All rights reserved
Cover image used with permission
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The World of the Atomic Sea
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To Vi Brandon, for her tireless dedication to spreading the word about my works, and her general awesomeness. Thank you, Vi!
THE STORY SO FAR
BOOK ONE
A thousand years ago, the sea began to change, and the change spread. Now the boiling, toxic, lightning-wreathed Atomic Sea has encompassed every ocean on the planet, and the creatures that live in it have become mutated and unnatural. The sea's taint can infect any human who comes in contact with it or with unprocessed seafood, killing them . . . or altering them. No one knows why the sea has become this way or what it portends, only that it's irrevocably changed the world.
Meanwhile, world war has erupted, and the small country of Ghenisa, like many others, is tottering on the brink of collapse under the onslaught of the Empire of Octung. Middle-aged widower Dr. Francis Avery is aboard a military whaling ship far out on the Atomic Sea when a series of murders occurs onboard. There is a spy on the ship; the killer is an Octunggen agent.
Things get stranger when a beautiful naked woman is pulled from the Atomic Sea out of the mouth of a great whale. She shows no sign of infection, which makes no sense, and no one can tell where she’s from. She’s in a coma and it falls to Avery to bring her back to consciousness and solve her mysteries.
Meanwhile he’s carrying out a loveless affair with Jessryl Sheridan, a tough, determined woman and the captain of the whaling vessel.
The beautiful woman in the coma, whom he takes to calling Patient X, comes to, briefly, and he’s horrified to hear her speak Octunggen. He’s the only one around. She tells him that she’s not Octunggen, never mind the language she uses, and that she wants to stop Octung. She warns him against telling anyone of this because, she claims, there are Octunggen spies peppered throughout the Ghenisan military. If he tells anyone, they’ll kill her. Then she lapses back into a coma.
After an attack by an Octunggen submarine, Avery is working on the Executive Officer, Commander Hambry, in the medical bay, when he comes across scars that could only have been inflicted by the last person to be murdered onboard, Avery’s best friend Paul. Hambry is the killer. Avery knows this but has no way to truly prove it, so he follows Hambry when the X.O. goes outside in a storm and finds the X.O. about to toss a canister containing a message to Octung into the waters, to be retrieved by an Octunggen submarine.
Avery confronts him, they fight, and Avery manages to kill Hambry. Afterward, knowing no one will believe him, he pretends Hambry committed suicide by throwing himself overboard. Hambry’s dying words, however, had indicated that there was a second spy on board.
Enlisting the help of the grizzled whaler Janx, Avery breaks into Hambry’s cabin and searches it, looking for evidence of the second agent. He finds it, too. The other spy is his lover, Captain Sheridan. Shocked, Avery plans to go to the authorities as soon as they reach the mainland, but when they do the evidence is gone.
Again, Avery brings Janx into things, asking the big man to use his criminal connections to have Sheridan followed so that her network can be uncovered and some real evidence found. Meanwhile Avery pretends to have Octunggen sympathies in an effort to convince Sheridan to reveal her plans to him. He’s trying to out-spy a spy.
He is also, during this time,
working with doctors and scientists at the ominous Fort Brunt, where Patient X is being studied and treated. One night when all the other doctors are gone, she reveals to Avery that she’s been awake for some time, waiting to get him alone. Since he didn’t betray her last time, she trusts him, as much as she can, and needs his help. Her name is Layanna and she wants to stop Octung—stop the entire war—and possibly save the world. She won’t tell him anything else, though, but wants him to get her out of Fort Brunt, a military hospital, where she is essentially a prisoner. He thinks about it. Can he trust her?
While spying on Sheridan, he uncovers a critical piece of information when she meets with her spymaster Gaescruhd. Gaescruhd tells her that one of the Black Sect is near and to be on the lookout. The Black Sect are rebel members of the Collossum, the gods worshipped by Octung. He describes this member of the Black Sect, and Avery realizes that it’s Layanna. She’s a god of Octung! Suddenly he realizes she might just be telling the truth when she said she could stop Octung. She’s powerful, if nothing else, and not human. What’s more, as a member of the Black Sect, she truly is an enemy of Octung.
Gaescruhd orders Sheridan to kill Layanna. Panicked—the only hope of stopping Octung is about to be murdered—Avery enlists Janx’s help and breaks Layanna out. The whaler’s underworld cronies help, among them Hildra, a young woman with a hook for a hand and a pet monkey. Sheridan, an admiral now, heads up the hunt for them and leads an assault on them at Janx’s apartment.
Layanna, awake and with her powers gathered to her once more, repels the troops, at the same time showing Avery and the others in the band just what she really is—inhuman and terrifying. In her other-self, she possesses tentacles and pseudopods and is altogether a horror from another dimension.
After they escape, she tells them that her plan is to rendezvous with others in the Black Sect in the mountains. Once together, they will journey to Lusterqal, the capital of Octung, and assemble the “Device” they went so far to learn how to build. Once assembled, this so-called Device will render Octung’s extradimensional weapons impotent and will allow the enemies of Octung to rise up against them, halt the march of war and throw the Octunggen back. If they can complete and activate the Device, they can stop the war.
All Avery and the others have to do is get Layanna to her friends in the Black Sect and they can do the rest. Thus they journey into the mountains, Sheridan and an entire army on their heels.
BOOK TWO
They reach the place where the other Black Secters are supposed to meet, but it’s a trap orchestrated by the vile Uthua, a Collossum who had pretended to break away from the others in the Great Temple but who really still serves the Great Elders. He kills one of the members of Janx’s crew. Avery manages to critically wound Uthua, but Uthua then captures Muirblaag, a great fish-man and Janx’s best friend. Muirblaag stays behind while Avery, Janx, Hildra and Layanna flee in a dirigible.
Their only hope is to reach Cuithril, an all-but-mythical city underground. There will be a functioning altar there through which Layanna can send the plans for the Device to her cohorts in Lusterqal. Unfortunately Cuithril lies on the other side of a war zone. Octung is invading and defeating the mountainous country of Ungraessot, land of the God-Emperor, and Cuithril is deep inside Ungraessot.
Along their journey, Layanna reveals more about her people, including that they are responsible for the Atomic Sea. Known as the R’loth (those of the R’loth who have taken human form are called the Collossum), they dwell beneath the sea and hail from another set of dimensions, which they fled after the rise of the dreaded Muug. The R’loth want to transform the world into a reflection of their own reality and turn all humans into slaves and food. They’ve been using Octung as their puppets to this end.
Avery and the others manage to meet the God-Emperor of Ungraessot and gain access to the Hallowed Halls, which lead to Cuithril, but before they do Avery encounters Sheridan. She reveals that Anissa, his nine-year-old daughter who died four years ago along with his wife Mari, has been revived and restored to life by a secret new scientific process, and that Sheridan will give Ani back to Avery if only he’ll deliver Layanna into the hands of Octung, whom Sheridan is openly working for now.
Avery refuses but in his mind he’s unsure. Meanwhile he and Layanna become lovers. The band reaches Cuithril only to find that Uthua has arrived before them. The evil Collossum has possessed the body of Muirblaag and co-opted the temple and its priesthood, thus making it all but impossible for Avery and the others to reach the altar inside the temple. Yet they sneak in, send off the plans amidst a great battle, and escape.
Unfortunately, in sending the plans to the surviving members of the Black Sect in Lusterqal, they allowed the Collossum to trace the connection and locate the Black Sect, which had been in hiding. Now the members of the Black Sect are dying, hit by an otherworldly weapon during the attack that followed. They might be able to begin building the Device, but it will be up to Layanna to complete it and to activate it.
Avery and the others agree to accompany her to Lusterqal, into the very heart of Octung.
BOOK THREE
They arrive in Lusterqal only to be confronted by Sartrand, another Collossum, apparently rogue and no longer serving the Elders that rule the Collossum and all R’loth. Layanna believes him to be a Muugist. The reason the R’loth had to escape their own set of dimensions was because of the awful beings known as the Muug, mighty god-things dredged up from a nightmarish abyss. Some of the R’loth worship the Muug, and it is feared that some of these Muugists managed to infiltrate those who fled their home set of dimensions to this world.
Whoever Sartrand serves, he gives Layanna a way to summon him and his allies, presumably other Muugists, if they need help. He wants the Device for himself, though he doesn’t say why.
Avery and the others arrive at the secret headquarters of the Black Sect to discover, as they feared, that the renegade gods are diseased and dying. The Device isn’t finished and activating it will be arduous, though Avery isn’t told how, not then. He does learn that the Great Temple of the Collossum is summoning all Collossum to it for an urgent meeting about how to end the threat of the Black Sect. The only way to gain access to this meeting is for some infected person to infiltrate the Great Temple and listen in on the gathering.
Avery takes this task upon himself. He eats diseased seafood and becomes infected by the Atomic Sea. His only mutation is some subtle striations across his torso, neck and lower face. He enters the Temple, overhears the plans of the Collossum (as delivered by Uthua, who has become a near-Elder), and escapes, but on the way out he bumps into none other than Sheridan … and Ani. True to her word, the admiral had brought the girl back to life and now she is Ani’s guardian. Seeing Avery, Sheridan sends the girl away.
Furious, Avery kidnaps Sheridan and escapes with her, meaning to get Sheridan to help him release Ani from Octunggen custody. The others are upset when he takes Sheridan into the heart of the Black Sect camp, where she is locked away. Avery tells them what he’s learned, they compensate, and the Device is completed. Now all that’s left is to activate it. Finally Avery learns what this means.
The Device is to be taken by underground train back toward the Atomic Sea, for only by the powerful, otherworldly energies of its waters can the Device be activated and Octung defeated. The Black Sect is expecting pursuit, as Octung desperately wants the Device for themselves. If the Octunggen can reverse its functions, they can make their otherworldly weapons even more powerful.
Sheridan escapes and signals the Octunggen authorities. Uthua himself leads the attack on the Black Sect, who are wiped out. In the chaos, Sheridan grabs the Device, steals one of the underground trains and takes off, having shot Hildra before she left.
BOOK FOUR
Avery, Layanna and Janx take the wounded Hildra to the second underground train and take off after Sheridan. Avery doctors Hildra while Janx drives. Avery manages to save Hildra, but Janx is angry at him. All of this is
his fault. Because he wanted to save his daughter, ruin has been brought to them all. If Sheridan can manage to put enough distance between the two trains, she will be able to get away and bring the Device to her overseers. Octung will have won the war.
Instead, her train crashes into an enormous underground bug, which is blocking off the tracks. Avery and the others come across the wreckage, but her body and the Device is nowhere to be seen. They’re in the middle of an enormous alien-looking city far underground. Setting off into it, they quickly realize the city is inhabited by intelligent insect-people, who immediately try to kill the invaders. Avery’s group find Sheridan, still alive, if badly wounded, and in possession of the Device, and they fight the bug-people side by side, until it’s clear that the bug people are too many.
Reluctantly, Layanna summons Sartrand and his fellow Muugists, who arrive via some sort of teleportation device and repel the bug-people. It had been Sartrand who had ordered the bug-people to block the tracks. Sartrand demands Layanna hand over the Device. Sheridan manages to drive the Muugists back through their teleportation portal, which closes behind them. She’d been injured in the wreck and will die without medical help.
So, still in possession of the Device, she kidnaps Avery and takes off in the second train, stranding Janx, Hildra and Layanna in the strange subterranean city.