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

by Conner, Jack

  Sheridan cocked her pistol, still pressed to Layanna’s skull, and Layanna winced. “Do it,” Sheridan said.

  “Then what?” Avery said. “You still have to kill Layanna or risk her eating the remnants of the egg, or drinking its nectar. What do you have to bargain with?”

  “She could agree to come with me,” Sheridan said. “I’ll send for the dirigibles, as planned. The rest of you can have one and go your own way. You will be no threat to us, not anymore. Though, Doctor, if you did want to come, with me ...” Something flickered across her face. “There will be a place available.”

  “And Layanna will be your lab rat?”

  “She will be handed over to my superiors, and they will decide her fate. I have no part in that. All I can do is give her the chance. Now—the grenades.”

  He hesitated. “What is in the egg?”

  Looking back at it, he saw it looming, black and glistening, and he thought ... no, he felt ... there was a sort of hum coming from it. The back of his teeth vibrated.

  “That’s my business,” Sheridan said. “And my superiors. The grenades.” She sounded impatient. As Avery watched, a bead of sweat trickled down to her eye, and she blinked it away.

  “Do it!” she said.

  “Don’t.” This came from Layanna. “I must have living nectar, Francis. Once the plant is dead, unless I am very, very fast, the nectar will congeal and won’t be potent enough to do what we need it to. I know that much from experimenting with the nectar in Sevu.”

  Another patch of sweat was growing, this from under one of Sheridan’s armpits. Her cheeks glistened.

  This was it, Avery thought. Sheridan had been pushed to her limit. She was in an alien place, surrounded by superior numbers and arms (assuming Avery could be said to be in possession of the grenades) only trying to follow some vague order, whatever that might be. If there was ever a chance to defeat her, this was it.

  Furtively, he felt for the knife.

  Gone.

  Damn it all.

  No, wait. Not gone. Looking at Sheridan, he noticed the hilt of the weapon at her hip. She’s fast. I never felt a thing.

  “Get going,” Sheridan said.

  Instead of moving toward the egg, Avery, slowly, began circling around Layanna and the admiral, going the other direction.

  “What are you doing?” Sheridan said, and he heard the faintest trace of something that might be fear in her voice.

  He passed where she and Layanna stood, then moved around behind them. Sheridan still had Layanna, Janx, and Hildra to the fore, and she had to decide whether to swivel and reposition her gun on Avery or leave it where it was.

  She kept it pressed to Layanna’s head.

  Avery approached Sheridan from behind. Going slowly, making no sudden movements, he reached his hand around her side, slid it down her hip—she gasped, and he was surprised by how warm she was—and pulled out the knife in its sheath. With her free hand, she grabbed his wrist, stopping him.

  “In my left hand I hold the belt of grenades,” he said, practically breathing in her ear. “With my mouth, I can pull a pin.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “If you stop me using the knife, I have only the grenade. With a choice of only one weapon, do you really want it to be the grenade?”

  “You’re bluffing. You would kill us all.”

  “No, Janx and Hildra are far enough away to get clear, and I think your body might shield Layanna from much of the blast.”

  “Ani would be fatherless.”

  “She might be dead if you win and the Starfish devastate the world.”

  “You’re a fool! The Starfish are our only hope.”

  With his left hand, he raised the belt of grenades toward his mouth—

  Sheridan eased her hand off his wrist.

  Slowly, he drew the knife and placed it at her throat. Then, almost gently, he shoved down on her gun hand, his left hand still trailing the belt of grenades, forcing the pistol toward the ground. She resisted for a moment, then allowed it, and the gun lowered.

  Free, Layanna wheeled around, her eyes blazing, grabbed the gun in one hand and punched Sheridan across the jaw with the other. Sheridan was flung back, but she kept her grip on the gun and tugged it free of Layanna’s grip even as she fell. Blinking away the blow, she took aim at Layanna and—

  Avery flung the belt of grenades at Sheridan. The belt struck her gun arm and sent the shot wide.

  Avery stepped forward as Sheridan climbed to her feet and aimed a punch at her jaw. She ducked, clubbed him over the side of the head with the butt of her gun, and he collapsed. Stars flashed before his eyes.

  Janx and Hildra rushed forward, but they couldn’t fire, as they would all die here if they did; they needed Sheridan, she was right about that. Behind them, Layanna reached the egg and began crawling up it, toward its apex, searching for a spot that would accommodate her jaws. Sheridan fired at her again, but she was distracted by Janx thrusting his rifle butt at her face and missed.

  Tense—the bullet hadn’t missed by much—Layanna swung around the far side of the egg, putting it between her and Sheridan.

  The admiral swung the pistol toward Janx. Hildra dove into her. Tackled her to the ground. The two rolled about, kicking and gouging.

  Layanna, just visible to Avery—he still lay on the floor, shaking off the blow—bit down savagely on the black flesh of egg. She ripped and tore at it for a moment before it spurted, then she put her mouth to the hole and sucked up the glowing fluid.

  Sheridan staggered to her feet, Hildra dazed on the ground, bleeding from the ear. Janx came at his former captain, swinging his rifle like a club, not giving her time to aim, but she wove and kicked him in the side of the knee. He howled and collapsed. Not wasting the time it would take to shoot him, she navigated around his clutching hands, then moved about the egg, trying to get a bead on Layanna, and for a moment, to Avery, time stood still.

  Leaking from around Layanna’s mouth, fluid cascaded down the sides of the egg, and Avery could see that it glowed much brighter than the nectar of the flowers. Of course, it wasn’t nectar at all, he realized. It was blood. The egg-thing was in all likelihood neither animal nor vegetable but some altogether different classification of entity, whether conscious or not he had no idea, that had grown in the epicenter of the fantastic energy of this place, perhaps deliberately, a beacon placed by the giants or the things that the giants had worshipped—the Ygrith, possibly—or perhaps a by-product that had grown around the object that Sheridan desired, if indeed that was the case.

  None of that mattered now.

  Picking himself up, Avery placed himself between Sheridan and Layanna, not giving the former a clear shot at the latter.

  “Get out of my way,” Sheridan growled.

  “Don’t you know what’s happening—what the R’loth mean to do?” he said. “The Starfish will destroy us all! How can you fight for that?”

  Almost snarling, she stepped to the side, trying to get a clear angle, but he kept with her, continuing to block her.

  “Damn you,” Sheridan said. “Those who die will die for a reason.”

  “You’re insane!”

  “You’re a fool.”

  “THEN SHOOT ME!”

  She cocked the gun, striding toward him. Her jaw bunched and unbunched. She drew her gun back to strike him with its butt like before, but he danced back, slashing blinding with the knife, simply trying to fend her off.

  She scooped something off the floor—the grenade belt—ripped a pin out with her teeth and flung the belt onto the egg. It landed about a third of the way up.

  Avery’s heart skipped a beat.

  Layanna, seeing the grenades, sucked with renewed vigor.

  Sheridan raised her gun to fire.

  Avery threw himself before the muzzle of the gun, expecting a flash, searing pain, then blackness. Instead, Sheridan simply clubbed his head and sent him sprawling to the ground again. The realization that she would not shoot shock
ed him. Even with everything—everything—on the line, she wouldn’t kill him.

  Exhausted, Layanna raised her face from the egg.

  “Get clear!” Avery cried. “The grenades—”

  She moved—

  The egg exploded, showering them all with fluid and gore. The remains of the egg folded in on itself, fluid gushing out from it in great glowing streams, which they danced away from, and sagging to an unsightly green-black pile. The members of the group, all having gotten clear, if barely, looked at each other, panting and swearing—all save Sheridan.

  Her attention had been occupied by something else. In the center of the pile of flesh that had been the egg shape, an object shone—not a glow, really, more a winking of metal.

  “What the ... ?” Hildra started.

  Sheridan strode over to it, through the wilted remains of the egg, shoving her gun away. She used two leaf-like sections of egg-skin to cover her hands, then, protected, hefted the object up; though coated in egg material, it seemed of a wholly different order, something made, not grown—some artifact of the race of giants or the beings they had worshipped. Sheridan didn’t seem surprised to see it. In fact, she seemed to have expected it. The object resembled two sheets of beaten brass joined by a short brass rod, but where a sheet should be flat, the two flat portions of the object were a web of raised and lowered surfaces, a complicated network of some unknown system.

  “The Key,” Avery heard himself say.

  “‘You must retrieve the Key’”, recited Hildra.

  Sheridan grimaced at the artifact, obviously annoyed at its weight. It might have been built by beings much larger than humans, and though the Key must be tiny to them, it was quite large to her—almost four feet long, and not particularly light, to judge by the way she carried it.

  “What do you mean to do with it?” Layanna said.

  Sheridan shook off some of the gore from the Key, then said to Janx, “You. Carry this. Use something to protect your hands. I don’t know what contact will do to your flesh, but I don’t recommend taking a chance.”

  He arched his eyebrows. “Why should I haul that fucker anywhere for you? Why are we even talking to you? We should be wringing your neck.”

  “Do it for yourself,” Sheridan said. “Because I’m not leaving without that, and you need me to leave.”

  “What do you want it for?” Avery said. “What exactly is it the key to?”

  “Do I know everything? It looks like an interesting relic my superiors might have some interest in studying, that’s all.”

  “Bullshit,” Hildra said. “You knew it was here.”

  Sheridan marched over to Janx, just out of arms’ reach, and set the Key at his feet. Then, very slowly, she drew her gun.

  “This isn’t up for a vote,” she said. “I can shoot any of you, but you can’t shoot me, and I will start shooting if I don’t get what I want.”

  They didn’t move.

  “How do we know you won’t shoot us anyway?” Layanna said. “You were trying to kill me, especially, only moments ago.”

  Eyeing the Key, Sheridan said, “Things have changed. I now have this, and if I shot you your friends would most likely kill me, whether it be in their best interests or not.”

  “And your superiors would not get the Key.” Confused, Layanna said, “It’s more important than stopping the Starfish?”

  “What are you standing around for? Hop to it!”

  * * *

  Sheridan prodded them back through the mists toward a far wall. They followed a trail of glowing blooms, which shone fainter and fainter as they went. Avery supposed the ghost-flower species was gone now, and he thought of all the native tribes who had depended on harvesting it for their livelihoods; they would suffer because of this. He consoled himself that there were plenty of other exotic species in the Crothegra for them to exploit—assuming, of course, that they weren’t all consumed by the maggot infestation first. As he went, Avery was more and more bothered by the fact of the Key, and that Sheridan had known what it was, where it was. Had it been her main objective all along?

  But no, he’d seen her attempt to kill Layanna outside the village. If she had meant to retrieve the Key from the beginning, she would need Layanna to open the Dome’s door for her. She would not have tried to kill her.

  Unless, of course, she hadn’t been doing that at all. What had Avery seen, really? He had seen Sheridan coming at Layanna with a knife, about to cut her with it in the only exposed place she could, what with the armor Layanna had been wearing—the knife which could render Layanna powerless. It had looked like Sheridan was about to slit her throat, but had Sheridan merely been making sure Layanna couldn’t bring over her other-self, the better to compel Layanna through the jungle and to the Dome? If so, that meant that Sheridan had just gotten what she’d wanted all along. If it were true.

  The group found the wall and walked along it till they came to a stairwell leading up into one of the towers. This one had no stairs, really, but was a long, curving ramp, curling ... up. With Sheridan trailing behind, her gun ever at the ready and Janx just before her so she could keep an eye on the Key, the group ascended the ramp, a long, grueling climb requiring several stops, before finally bursting into sunlight at the top of a slender black tower.

  Drawing away from them, Sheridan spoke into her radio, and they waited, as wind howled all around them and the sun began to lower toward the jungle to the west. How long had they been in the damned Dome? Avery’s head throbbed from where Sheridan had clubbed him, and he still heard the roar of the carapaced behemoth or god-thing in his ears, though at least that was beginning to fade.

  Several times Janx drew too close to the edge of the tower, perhaps planning to hurl the Key into oblivion, but always Sheridan’s gun jerked in his direction, and he moved back to the center.

  Once, looking over the side, Sheridan said, “I’ll tell you one thing. The first order I give when I’m picked up will be to firebomb this whole fucking area.”

  Avery made himself say, “Have your people in Ezzez do the same to the chapels of the Restoration. The maggot people are there, too.”

  Two shapes appeared in the sky, growing larger, and at last resolved into dirigibles, both Octunggen. The craft docked with the tower, and the crew from one transferred to the other, which Sheridan boarded, her minions having taken possession of the Key. While Hildra kept her gun trained on the admiral, Avery and Layanna checked the dirigible they were being given for booby-traps and other sabotage, then made sure the ship’s guns were loaded. They were. The two trained them on Sheridan’s dirigible as Janx and Hildra climbed in.

  Looking at Avery, Sheridan said quietly, “You could come with me, Doctor.”

  “Come with you?”

  Her expression didn’t waver. “Yes.”

  He was aware of a certain feeling, a sort of tug. Part of him wanted to go. Just a short time ago he had wanted to finish what he and Sheridan had begun. He still did. And, he hated to admit it, but there might even be something more to it than that.

  Flicking her gaze to Layanna, Sheridan added, “You don’t seem wanted here.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “No.”

  Sheridan nodded, perhaps sadly, and Avery—to his chagrin—felt a pang in his own chest. Damn her.

  “Shove off,” she told her crew, speaking Octunggen, and they obeyed. Her ship sailed away, presumably to rendezvous with her fleet or the zeppelin they operated from. The two ships’ crews kept their weapons locked on the other all the while.

  As Janx shoved off the group’s own dirigible, Avery powered up the engines and steered it away.

  “You are wanted,” Hildra told Avery. “Maybe not by blondie, but you’re still our doc.” She indicated Janx, who nodded. “So you fucked up. You are a guy.”

  To all this—to whom it had surely been directed—Layanna said nothing.

  In a low voice, Janx told her, “He did throw himself on a gun for you, darlin’.”

  For a
moment Layanna remained rigid, but then she began to relax, just slightly. Instead of addressing any of this, she said, “What is the Key?”

  “We might never know,” Avery said. “And if we do find out it can only mean it accomplished something terrible.”

  “She indicated it was more important than anything,” Layanna said. “I don’t understand it.”

  “Think she’s really gone?” Janx asked. “I mean, is she goin’ back to Octung now? She’s a hero there.”

  Avery peered over his shoulder, watching Sheridan’s dirigible recede to a tiny pinprick against the clouds.

  “I doubt it,” Layanna said. “She’s most valuable to them in Ghenisa, and I suspect that’s where she’ll be bound to next.”

  “I hate to admit it, Doc,” Janx said, “but we’d have been dead without that bitch. Stuck in the jungle and surrounded by those things. Maybe she didn’t mean to, but she saved our asses.”

  Hildra snorted. “Yeah. Shit. If she’d died on Activation Day, we’d be dead now, wouldn’t we?” In dawning dismay, she said, “She’s the one got us away from that big maggot, too. Fuck! Maybe saving her wasn’t a total cock-up.”

  At her words, Avery felt an unexpected lift, as if a weight had been removed from his shoulders. With a start, he realized that in some strange, inexplicable way, Hildra had just forgiven him. Absolved him of allowing Sheridan to continue living.

  Wordlessly, blinking in surprise (and blinking away some tears, too), he nodded to her. Thank you. Just as wordlessly, she nodded back, seeming just as surprised.

  “What about the nectar?” Janx said. “We went through a lot to get it. Is it ...?”

  “Soon we’ll be far enough away for me to bring over my other-self,” Layanna said. “Then I can store the nectar in an organelle until it’s time for me to use it. When the Starfish arrives.”

  Avery thought, Ani, I’m coming home.

  Chapter 3

  Black times had come to Ghenisa, that much was obvious as soon as Avery and the others stepped off the plane at Hissig. For one, the airport was packed, as if any that could afford it were desperately fleeing by air; others must be going by bus, car, even by foot. There were only a few planes going out, and, as with Ezzez, Avery’s group had had a hard time finding one coming in. This had been a major problem, as the wave of Starfish had been getting closer every day and Avery’s group wouldn’t be able to reach the coast by the time the creatures arrived, thus unable to stop them. Then, even as the group flailed to find a connecting flight, came the day when the Starfish were due to have begun their assault—but, for some mysterious reason, they didn’t.