The Atomic Sea: Volume Nine: War of the Abyss

by Jack Conner

  “I’m sorry, Janx, but I am.”

  Janx glared at him, then glanced upward. At last air escaped his lips in a hiss. “Fuck it.” Without another word, he slung Avery over his shoulder and scrambled up a pile of loose bricks toward the natives who were gesturing frantically above. Sheridan followed immediately after.

  * * *

  The natives urging them on, they left the area and, navigating through a system of connected or nearly connected ruins (some separated by a street or park) moved a safe distance away from the area the pirates both on land and in the air were nearing. At last, out of breath, they came to a stop in a shelled church of some sort—Avery didn’t recognize the symbology but he did note the presence of bird motifs—caught their breaths and introduced themselves.

  “I’m Naesyn,” one of the natives said, when it was his turn. “I’m glad to see some friendly faces. What could have brought this about? I know the reavers have gotten bold lately, but this?”

  “It seems crazy, I know,” Avery said. “But there is a reason behind it, trust me, and it’s something we need to stop from happening. Somehow we need to liberate your people.”

  Naesyn looked ashen. He turned to his group, and the golden men became equally as solemn. “We’re not soldiers, just survivors,” he told Avery, “though we’d been wondering whether we should pitch in with them.”

  They were hard men, Avery saw. “Can you take us to the soldiers?”

  “Impossible. The reavers are entrenched near the barricades and all around the perimeter of the resistance areas. We’d have to go through them to get to the fighters, and if we did the soldiers would probably shoot us thinking we were the enemy.”

  “What, then?”

  Naesyn shrugged his bony shoulders. “We just survive.”

  They pressed deeper into the ruins, into a ruined hotel Naesyn’s group and various others were using as a base of operations. Gaps showed in the cracked walls, and flowering vines burst through, most fragrant by moonlight. Avery breathed it in with a sense of wonder, thinking how strange it was to smell something so good and pure in the midst of so much carnage. The locals showed his party to a row of rooms, and since the hotel had largely emptied they each were allowed to select a room of their own, however listing and covered in dust shaken from the ceiling.

  “I don’t like this,” Janx said some time later, peering out the window of Avery’s room—all three had all gathered there—then spinning about and pacing.

  “What’s there to like?” Sheridan said. “But it’s what it is. Deal with it.”

  “Give him a break, Jess,” Avery said.

  “She’s right, though,” Janx said, but he didn’t look happy about it. “We have to find a way to deal with it.” By the wetness in his eyes, Avery wondered if he meant something else by that.

  “That was a stupid thing to do,” Sheridan told him. “Segrul raising the alarm like that nearly got us killed.”

  “Well, it didn’t. And he didn’t die, either.”

  “He may well have bled to death,” Avery said.

  “Naw. They would have cauterized it. They worship him, the stupid bastards. He’s their high priest, not just their admiral.”

  “Then we’ll have to get him later.”

  The fact that Avery didn’t argue that Segrul needed to die seemed to mollify Janx. “He’s mine,” the big man said. “Nobody else tries to take him out.”

  “You can have him,” Sheridan said.

  “We’ll get him when we release the prisoners,” Avery said, “but we’ll have to wait before the Ghenisan and Ysstral Navies arrive and distract the pirates to do it. Then we’ll make our move.”

  “What will that be?” Janx said.

  “I have no idea. But when the navies attack, we’ll find a way to release the prisoners, kill Segrul and, most importantly, retrieve the Sleeper’s head.”

  Janx looked at him, frowned and said nothing.

  Later that night, toward morning, after the survivors had given the group a meal of some local soup, a pork stew mixed with local spices, a great noise erupted from the west—inland—and many of the hotel’s squatters moved onto the rooftops to see what was going on; Avery and the others joined them, and immediately they saw scores of Segrul’s zeppelins bearing west, where smoke drifted up from several buildings, along with the glimmer of fire. One of the zeppelins shuddered, then sagged toward the ground as enemy fighters whizzed around it.

  “Can it be?” Janx said. “Surely Ani ain’t here yet ... and from the wrong direction ...”

  “It’s Layanna,” Avery said. “It must be. She’s gathered the people of the Rim to her, just like we wanted, and they’re fighting back.”

  “More than that,” Sheridan said. “Look, they seem to be coordinated with the armies already in the city, and perhaps some of the other Core cities, too. I doubt the Rimmers have planes. The Core and the Rim are working together.”

  By the sound of gunfire rattling in the distance, Avery knew the incoming armies were coming to the town’s rescue by land as well as by air. Droves of pirate-driven vehicles tutted through the narrow streets toward the area of combat, pirates firing out the windows at the islanders’ planes when they came in sight overhead. They must be joining many already fighting. Avery and the others stood on the rooftop for a long time, and the locals shared their binoculars with them so that Avery could see the combat itself, one army versus another, street to street, house to house. Fires spread from building to building in that area.

  Those on the roof said little. Around them many hundreds, even thousands, of other survivors stood on their own roofs all throughout the ruined quarter and gazed toward the violence, praying that the island’s defenders would breach the pirate lines and drive them back. Avery imagined that in some areas of the city, rebels would be organizing themselves, readying themselves for battle in case the new army came close enough for the city folk to lend aid.

  Resistance or no, Segrul’s forces pushed forward, his fighters equipped by the Muugists to overwhelm most enemies. Great cages were dragged out of zeppelins setting down on the ground just behind the line of combat, and the terrible, lightning-wreathed lobsters that had assaulted Salanth were prodded out, then somehow guided toward the front, where they tore into the Rimmers with lightning, pincers and their otherworldly, melting screams.

  “Shit,” Janx said. He and Avery were on watch while Sheridan rooted about for some food. “This doesn’t look good.”

  “No,” Avery agreed. Wind blew smoke over the rooftop, and he coughed and rubbed at his eyes, then cleaned his glasses of the soot. When he could see again, he caught Janx watching him. “What is it?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Janx.”

  “It’s just ... thanks. I mean, before, after Segrul ... I was ready to ..."

  “I know.” Avery hesitated, then said, “I know how it hurts. I lost the love of my life, too.”

  Janx hitched his chin backward, meaning Sheridan. “And her? And Lay?”

  Avery amended: “The first love of my life.”

  Janx shook his head. “Hildra wasn’t my first.”

  “You’ve never talked about it.”

  The big man adjusted his nose patch. “Let’s not start now.”

  “But you’re better now?”

  “Yeah. I’m better. I wanna live to see Segrul die. After that, we’ll see.”

  Avery supposed that was the best he was going to get for the moment. “It gets better, Janx. It does. In time.”

  Wind hissed again, bringing with it another pall of smoke. After Avery had coughed it away, he realized Sheridan was approaching, but as she reached them she stopped and swore.

  “Look,” she said, pointing, “the pirates are coming this way.”

  Chapter 10

  Sure enough, one of the pirates’ lines of attack crept toward where Avery and the others had made camp. Naesyn’s men swore and checked their weapons.

  “What now?” Naesyn said. “We have n
owhere to go.”

  Avery indicated the nearest part of the city where resistance to the pirates thrived. “We have no choice.”

  Segrul’s people advanced quickly, and Avery and the others had barely hit the street before gunshots cracked behind them. Worse were the familiar eerie shrieks and cracks of great pincers, which turned Avery cold

  After running around a few corners and down an alley, the party spilled out into a broad plaza where battle already raged. The terrible crustaceans Avery had first encountered in Hissig fought against the combined forces of the people of the Rim and Core. Many of the latter rode ilithins armored for war, and to see the bird-mounted knights battle the lighting-wreathed decapods filled Avery with a paradoxical sense of boyish wonder and adult despair he never would have believed.

  “Screw this,” Janx said, and they edged back toward the alley.

  Sounds behind them made them spin around. Around a bend pirates poured into the alley, apparently searching for anyone fleeing into the arms of the enemy; the pirates wanted captives for their pens, although no one knew precisely what for. In any case, it couldn’t be pleasant.

  “Halt!” shouted one of the pirates. “Halt or die!”

  Several of the pirates cracked guns over the heads of Avery’s party to prove they weren’t kidding.

  Sheridan pulled out her own pistol and fired, then dove to the side, as did the rest of them. Janx fired as he moved. Avery hit the ground, biting his tongue and scraping his palms. He scrambled up, as the others glanced about nervously.

  “We only have one choice,” Sheridan said, and pelted out into the plaza, evidently expecting the others to follow.

  They did. Stumbling and starting, Avery ran out into the battle, making for the side of plaza from which the forces of the islanders were pouring. A great lobster-like creature snapped its pincers in the rain, spraying water, and Avery narrowly ducked in time to avoid being halved. Lightning crackled around him, and a puddle ahead sparked with electricity. Avery leapt over it.

  The hairs on the back of neck stood up as the creature shrieked. The wall of sound hit him with bone-shaking, almost bone-dissolving force. He ran fast, though, and the blast of sound only rocked him, didn’t melt him.

  The others in his party ran all around. One of the natives twisted an ankle and fell, and a decapod scooped him up and cut him in two. Janx half-turned as he ran, firing his pistol behind him. Sheridan led the way ahead.

  The wall of islander cavalry rushed toward them, then around them. The islanders didn’t fire, evidently seeing the natives in the party and knowing they were not the aggressors. A huge, long-legged ilithin thundered right over Avery’s head, and he could smell the birdshit on the thing’s backside as it passed seven feet overhead, the legs to either side of him. He turned, unable to resist, to see the ilithin knight skewer the lobster with an iron lance, then shower it with bullets from an automatic weapon. He must have missed a vital spot, though. The lobster shrieked, and the knight wilted, and half his mount, too. The lobster drove on. Around it, the others of its brood did the same, though the knights did take a few down.

  The lobsters came forward faster than Avery would have believed. To his shock, the things were overrunning him. The ground trembled beneath his feet, and he could smell their mineral reek and feel the heat of their lightning blasts.

  Suddenly, from ahead, appeared Layanna in her other-form. She bounded forward, her sac glowing with pink white light, her tentacles propelling her forward as if she had no weight at all. She blew right past Avery, and he glanced briefly over his shoulder to see her tearing into the first crustacean. He wasn’t sure if she’d seen him or not. Then he heard the word Francis in his head.

  Layanna, he sent back. You’re alive.

  She didn’t reply, but he knew she still fought the lobster, or maybe she had killed it and was fighting the next one. He concentrated on getting to the other side of the conflict. Rim infantry troops streamed by him, rushing into the fray. Almost all showed the insectile mutations of the townspeople of Ri’ithla, with clacking mandibles, multi-faceted eyes and wiry hairs erupting from strangely-jointed limbs. At last Avery reached the far side of the plaza and was taken in by the support functionaries of the Rim army, or one of them. Avery wasn’t sure just how unified they were. For all he knew, there were a dozen Rim armies, only some of them fighting under Layanna.

  He and the others recuperated, Naesyn’s people melting way, while the two armies fought. As the lobsters’ advance slowed, a long, low horn blew, and the creatures began to withdraw from the battle. Pirates fired at the Rimmers from cover, forcing the Rimmers to come to them, then met them with force. Zeppelins drifted in from the direction of the sea and bombed behind the lines of the Rimmers, disorienting them and breaking up their formations. The Rimmers began to retreat, leaving the broken carapaces of their dead in their wake. Slowly the Rim army or armies moved backward, but it wasn’t a complete rout. They fired as they went and retreated to prearranged fallback positions. When one was overrun, they moved back to the next, and so on, until at last the pirates stopped advancing and created barricades of their own, or inhabited those left by the resistance.

  Avery, Janx and Sheridan had been ushered backward at the rear of the lines by functionaries apparently under Layanna’s direction, and when the battle finally ended they waited for her while she gave speeches and attended meetings. Runners informed them hourly that she would be with them right away. They had been installed in the second-floor offices of a half-bombed museum, and they shared drinks and cigars as they stared out over the mad city with haunted needle pyramids lit by multi-colored strobes of lightning while bug-men warred with fish-men on giant birds below and zeppelins and dirigibles patrolled the skies above, searchlights shining from their bottoms. None of the moons were visible between the black walls of clouds. Thunder rolled, and lightning took strange shapes.

  “Hell of a thing,” said Janx. He raised his glass. “To Vinithir.”

  “To Vinithir.” They drank.

  Avery puffed contentedly on the cigar. They had stymied Segrul’s army and stalled the Muugist agenda. Killing Jivini had been worth it, even though it had almost gotten them killed in the doing.

  “I’d love to see the look on Thraish’s face right now,” Sheridan said.

  Janx laughed. “Me, too.” Almost reluctantly, he cast her a glance. “You know …”

  “Yes?”

  He looked back to the city. “You weren’t completely useless out there.”

  She seemed surprised by this admission; Avery was. It was the kindest thing Janx had ever said to her, almost an offering of peace, if not friendship … though, perhaps, someday, even that, too. Yes. Avery thought so, and, almost startled by it, realized he approved.

  Her voice just slightly rough—Avery was sure only he noticed—she said, “You, either.”

  Janx nodded, once, but they still didn’t look at each other. Lightning stabbed down in a scarlet trident to the boom of a crack of thunder, but none of the three moved. They drank. Far in the distance, over the growl of the storm, they could hear the intermittent pops of guns.

  Eventually they realized Layanna wasn’t coming, or that it could be several more hours, and they were all exhausted, so they found rooms and settled in.

  Sheridan pulled Avery aside when no one else was about. Solemnly, she peered up into his face. She said nothing. Sighing, he nodded. For several days they’d been able to resume their old relationship, and that had been the one happy note in a dark time, the one thing to cherish, but that was impossible now that they were once more in Layanna’s proximity. Not just impossible, but suicidal, not only for them but possibly the world.

  Sheridan took his hand and squeezed it. She didn’t offer a kiss or any parting words. However, he did think her eyes were just slightly moist.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, before she could go. He didn’t know why. He only knew he didn’t want her to leave him yet.

  She didn’t reply, but
he thought her eyes grew moister. She nodded once, patted his hand again and left him standing in the corner of the ruins.

  Avery had been asleep for some time when Layanna returned. Thunder shook the building, and pale green lightning lit up the window curtains as he started, feeling her slide into the bag beside him.

  “Francis,” she said, softly, and her breath tickled his nose.

  “Layanna.”

  She gazed at him, and by the blast of green outside he saw her eyes, strange in the light, but warm and beautiful just the same. She looked down on him with love. Something went hollow inside him. As if of its own accord, his hand rose and squeezed one of her high, firm breasts. She moaned and caressed his thigh with her leg. They kissed, and he felt himself grow hard. Thunder cracked.

  Afterward, they lay together for a long time, saying little, as the storm spent its fury outside.

  At last, he said, “You came. We weren’t sure you would.”

  “I received your note—it was from you, wasn’t it? That’s what I thought. Thank you … for dealing with Jivini. I don’t know if I could have.”

  “It was either that or get eaten.”

  There was a smile in her voice as she said, “Then I’m doubly glad. When the priests of the Rim knew she was dead, they sent out word to all of her former flock proclaiming me their new god. They said that justice had been delivered to the unworthy Jivini and that a new Collossum ruled them now. I told them her first order of business was marshalling an army.”

  “How’s it going—working with the people of the Core?”

  “Difficult. The two sides have hated each other for so long, and there are so many different groups, on both sides, and they’re all fragmented. But yes, the Rim and the Core are now working, however badly, together. I don’t know if it will be enough, though. Segrul’s people are better armed, and the islanders don’t have anything to deal with their air force. Not enough, anyway.”

  “That’s fine, and it’s as we expected. We only meant for the armies of the island to hold Segrul and Thraish back for a time. We always knew they couldn’t defeat them. We’ll need the navies for that.”