The Atomic Sea: Volume Nine: War of the Abyss

by Jack Conner

  “I’ve seen one or two,” Janx said, his own gaze on Uthua.

  “You don't scare me,” Uthua said. “But remember. Even if by some whim of fate you were able to act against me, my people would complete the new cycle begun on the Central Processor. You'd only damn yourselves. The only way for your kind to have any chance at some measure of autonomy and humanity is by allowing me to do what I came here for. Once the Ygrithan weapons are secured, I’ll send for transport and this world will belong to the R’loth ... but in a way far better for you than the alternative. Also, I will hopefully be able to extract the missing psalms and equations from the Monastery that will enable the Central Processor to refashion this world more quickly and without breaking it. Should we choose that option.”

  “Which you wouldn’t, right?” said Sheridan, but it was clear she wouldn’t believe him if he said no.

  Apparently seeing this, Uthua smiled, and it was a chilling smile indeed. “Never.”

  “You’re assuming we can best Thraish and his party,” Avery said, eager to move the conversation on to other avenues. Uthua may still prove useful. “He had many troops with him, and us only a few.”

  The soldiers that had been aboard the zeppelin shifted their stances nervously, most of them with at least one hand on a weapon. Their eyes darted about at the walls and floors as if expecting another barrage of ruby blades. Fortunately Ani’s will kept the worst at bay.

  Uthua grunted. “Then let’s see about them.”

  Avery nodded and set off down the hall.

  “A king leading his people into battle?” Layanna said, coming to stride beside him.

  He made himself smile. “A king-regent.”

  “What about time rips or whatever?” Janx asked Ani. “Last place we went to, time was off.”

  “I remember,” Ani said. “I don’t feel anything like that here, though. Here there are ... different ... energies.”

  “Like what?” said Sheridan.

  Ani only shook her head. “Just different. Like reality is ... thin here. I can feel stuff bleeding over from outside.”

  Red mist swirled around their feet as they picked their way through upthrusting crystalline towers, many of which seemed to hum or pulse. Lights emanated from the depths of some or traveled up and down the lengths of others. The Blue Ghosts, Avery thought. They’re here. They’ve returned to serve their Masters, one group of ghosts helping another.

  The air tasted less like salt now and more like copper, and his eardrums vibrated to a slow, steady rhythm, as if picking up on the echoes of some monstrous heart. The hair on his arms stood on end and he constantly wiped his glasses clean of the mist; it left an oily residue and was hard to get off. When an excess of ruby bulwarks and knives blocked their way, Ani would only wave her hand and mutter and the blockage would fold away or submerge into the floor.

  “Can you feel them?” Layanna said. “Can you feel Thraish? I can’t. This place interferes with my senses.”

  “I can feel him,” Ani said. “I can feel the Sleeper, too. They’re in front of us. Thraish is distracted.”

  “Has he found the weapons yet?” Avery said.

  “I don’t know. They’re trying to block me. It’s hard to push through. I wouldn’t be able to get that far but Thraish’s got other things on his mind.”

  “Guess he does,” Janx muttered. “Just what do the fucking Muugists want with the weapons, anyway?”

  “I guess we’ll have to ask Thraish,” Avery said, electing not to criticize Janx’s language. They were very possibly at the end of the world, after all; if a person couldn’t curse now, then when? Besides, Ani had certainly heard worse.

  “How far ahead are they?” Captain Tevic said. “I need to coordinate with the men.”

  Again Ani shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s all fuzzy.”

  The hallway before them changed. The floor, walls and ceiling contracted almost organically, the previously solid crystal flowing like water, then resoldifying into a new shape. What before had been an open corridor was now a sloping wall riddled by innumerable holes, a sort of honeycomb-like edifice all of faceted ruby. Those gathered sucked in their breaths and recoiled at this sudden display, and Janx swore loudest of all.

  “Gods below,” he said. “What now?”

  As most murmured in fear, Ani stepped forward to inspect the edifice. Avery started to go forward in order to pull her back, then stopped himself. Sighing, he went to her and said, “Well? What do you think?”

  “Thraish doesn’t believe he can move against me directly,” Ani said, “so he offers me a choice of death.”

  Avery blinked sweat out of his eyes. “W-what do you mean?”

  She swept her hand at the wall. “One of those tunnels is the way through. All of the others are a trap.”

  “There must be hundred,” Janx said, approaching.

  “Can you make it go away?” Sheridan said from beside him.

  Avery raised her small fist, and the glinting shard inside it glowed brightly green for a moment, then subsided, and when it did Ani seemed to slump, exhausted. Wearily, she shook her head. “I can’t get through,” she said.

  “I don’t understand,” said Layanna. “Why does he offer any chance at all? Why aren’t they all traps?”

  “Because then I would be able to change it. As long as there’s an open path, I can’t quite reorder the Monastery. I can tell it to not kill me and it’ll obey. I can tell it to let me pass, and it’ll obey. But Thraish can tell it not to let me pass. So it finds something in the middle. Well, toward his side, really, but then he has the Sleeper’s head.”

  Avery eyed the shadows of the many corridors that faced them. “Can you sense which way is the correct route?”

  She frowned, studying the honeycomb, then closed her eyes and seemed to be communing with her shard. Avery and the others exchanged tense glances. None dared speak. Beyond, the soldiers watched on in awe and some trepidation. At last Ani lowered the shard. Opening her eyes, she pointed high up on the honeycomb surface.

  “That one,” she said.

  “Are you sure, little one?” Janx said.

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  “Are you sure?” he pressed. When she hesitated again, he said, “Maybe we should split up. That way at least some of us might make it.”

  “Do that and most will die,” Avery said. “No. We have to trust Ani.”

  “Fine. If she trusts herself.”

  Again attention returned to the girl. She made them wait for a long, uncomfortable moment, then said, “I’m sure. It’s that one.”

  Without another word, she strode boldly, even recklessly forward, and again Avery had to fight the urge to drag her back. She never should’ve come, he thought. Of course, where would that leave them? This is what she was born for, he told himself, but it was easier to tell himself that than to believe it.

  Behind, the rest followed. Most were afraid to put too much distance between themselves and Ani, so they didn’t need any prodding, although there were many pale faces as they neared the honeycomb. The sloping walls that divided the honeycomb tunnels were quite wide enough to afford access to the upper levels of the structure, and Ani led them straight to the tunnel she’d picked out. With only the tiniest twinge, she passed into the corridor, Avery right beside her. Her hand was rigid in his, and she squeezed his fingers so tight it hurt. He barely felt it. He stared around them at the tight walls with a fear he tried (but was quite sure he failed) to conceal. Red mist swirled at his feet, and lights glimmered and pulsed in the red crystal around him, providing the only illumination. His head filled with strange thoughts and visions, but he shook them away.

  The others in his party came immediately behind, then the soldiers.

  “You’d better be right about this, girl,” Uthua snarled. “It’s bad enough putting my life at risk, but you’re putting the entire fate of my people, not to mention yours, in jeopardy, as well.”

  “We don’t know that,” Avery
said. “We don’t even know what the Muugists intend to do with humanity or the other races. It could go better for us with them in charge—than you, I mean.” Obviously we’d do much better without any of you was something he didn’t have to say.

  “They feed off you just the same,” Uthua told him. “And the gods they serve ...” He didn’t finish, and the trek lapsed into an eerie silence.

  At last light filtered through the mist ahead.

  “The tunnel’s ending!” a soldier shouted, and the rest took up the cheer. Avery felt guarded relief wash through him.

  The tunnel was almost over ... almost ...

  ... just a few more feet ...

  He was actually shocked when he stepped beyond the tunnel—they’d made it! Ani had guided them through—and was enfolded by swirls of red mist. Behind him the rest came, first in trickles and then in one long steady stream.

  “What’s with this damned mist?” Janx said, attempting to swat the offending substance out of his face. Avery could hardly see him through the bloody gloom.

  “I don’t know,” Avery said, “but I think it’s active. Remember the mist at the Dome. Remember the visions.”

  All at once, the mist began to clear and vanish altogether, sucked into the surrounding walls, floor and ceiling as though inhaled through some sort of vent system, even though no apertures could be seen. The solid crystal seemed to breathe the vapor in.

  And in its place were Segrul and his pirates.

  Chapter 12

  “Back!” Avery shouted. “Back into the tunnel!”

  Before him the pirates were taking aim.

  “Back!” Captain Tevic bellowed, and then, over the sound of shuffling feet and shouts, Avery distinctly heard a solid koooom. He spun to see his worst fears realized. The tunnel had slammed closed behind the group, trapping them in a deadly ambush. There was no way out. Thraish had thought of a way around Ani’s abilities, it seemed. He would allow her to navigate through the honeycomb, then ambush the only exit. In the moment before the pirates fired, Avery had to admit it was quite effective.

  Just as Segrul’s lot began to let loose with their weapons, Layanna and Uthua brought over their other-selves and lunged at the pirate lines. The wretches were arrayed with one line of kneeling gunmen and another of standing ones just behind them as if this were some sort of ancient exchange of volleys across a battlefield. Layanna grabbed up one man infected to look like a sea slug and thrust him through her sac wall, where he began to dissolve in her acids instantly. She tore up another and another, and Uthua uprooted them by the dozen.

  The pirates fired into the Collossum, but to no avail. Segrul had come prepared, however. As Layanna and Uthua whittled away at the pirate forces, two groups of the reavers, who had been stationed in the flanks, now rushed forward cracking venom whips and thrusting venom-coated spears. Layanna’s sac lit up unwholesomely whenever a whip or lance struck her, and nasty-looking lines radiated out from the impacts. Grimaces of pain twisted her face. Determined, she fought on.

  The venom weapons clearly wounded Uthua, too, if to a lesser degree—he was far more massive and powerful, especially in his other-form—but he only paused slightly in devouring the pirates. Layanna, however, was slowing, growing weaker with every strike. Soon she would be so incapacitated that she wouldn’t be able to eat the pirates fast enough to sustain herself, and then Avery’s party would have only Uthua to protect them. Sadly, it seemed as if it would require both Collossum, and even they wouldn’t be enough. If nothing else, Layanna and Uthua distracted the pirates from firing at the soldiers, some of whom were able to scramble behind crystal stalagmites and upjutting red slabs. The rest were exposed.

  “We have to get out of here,” Sheridan said, coming to kneel beside Avery.

  Avery had ushered Ani forward to huddle behind a small fang of crystal, which was just big enough for her. He and Sheridan were all too vulnerable.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Avery snapped. To Ani: “Are you okay?”

  She was gripping her head as if in the throes of a migraine. “Thraish,” she gasped. “He’s trying to get at me through the Monastery. I ... I’m pushing him back ...” Slowly, she lowered her hands and sucked in deep breaths. “He’s going back ... distracted ...” Soberly, she stared at Avery. “Papa, he’s found the heart.”

  “The Heart?” Dimly Avery recalled that awful Herald.

  “The heart of the Monastery! We have to stop him. Soon it will be too late.”

  Avery knew what he had to ask her to do, but he couldn’t make himself. She’ll be a murderer. Worse, she might … change. I can’t ask that of her. I CAN’T.

  He thought of the Blue Ghost atop the Grand Pyramid. If she feeds to completion she’ll become … like me, the ghost had said. Beyond good or evil. The apparition had told Avery that he would need to help her through that transition, that as her father he would need to be there for her.

  I can’t! Avery thought. I can’t turn my daughter into a monster!

  A bullet whined by his ear and struck a soldier lifting his gun. The round took the fellow in the throat and flung him backward, bright red arterial blood spurting like a geyser. At any moment a bullet could take off Avery’s head or a ricochet hit Ani. Nearby Janx had hunkered behind a slab of ruby and was firing back at the pirates. Sailors fired at Segrul’s people from all around. As for himself, Segrul directed his soldiers from atop a litter, which had been set down behind a ruby mound at the first exchange of gunfire. Avery knew this wasn’t out of any sense of pomp, though, as it had been for Duke Leshillibn. Rather, Segrul simply couldn’t walk. He must be in incredible pain and doped to the figurative and perhaps literal gills on morphine, or something like morphine.

  “Do something!” Sheridan said, throwing herself prone and firing at the enemy.

  Avery took Ani by the shoulders, ignoring the screams and gunfire of pirates just a score of yards away. “Ani,” he said, hating the necessity of it, hating it more than anything he had ever done, “I need you to do something for me. Something you’re not going to like.”

  “Anything, Papa.”

  He gestured in Segrul’s direction. “I need you to close the walls there. Slam them shut just like the tunnel behind us slammed shut.”

  Ani’s dark eyes flew wide. “But, Papa, that would kill them!”

  “I know.” Avery grimaced. “It’s what I need you to do, though. It’s our only way through to Thraish. Don’t worry, honey. It’s not on you. It’s on me. It’s me, as your commander, ordering you to do this.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment, then nodded. She raised her jewel and closed her eyes, and the green shard hummed and flickered in her fist. A bullet whined off the stalagmite she was hiding behind, showering sparks, but she didn’t seem to notice. Avery ducked, terrified. At last the lights of the jewel died, and she lowered it.

  “Well?” he said. The walls hadn’t moved.

  Wearily, she slumped against the stalagmite. “I ... can’t budge them. Thraish is still present enough to have thought of that.” She roused and fixed Avery with the gravest expression he’d ever seen on her—perhaps anyone. “I can get them, though, Papa. I can kill them.”

  He forced himself to maintain eye contact. “How?”

  “I can feed on them.”

  Beyond good or evil.

  “No, Ani, you can’t,” he said.

  “The Monastery, it was made to work with abilities like mine, and Thraish knows nothing about it. He can’t stop me.”

  Avery glanced toward the battle. Layanna’s sac was in tatters. A pirate stabbed a lance through her amoebic wall, piercing an organelle, then two, and driving toward her human self. If the reaver could kill that, she would be really dead, on this plane and every other. At the last instant, Uthua ripped the pirate—a woman—off the ground and ate her. Obviously laboring, Layanna turned back to the fight, but she couldn’t last much longer. Moments, maybe. Then it would be Uthua’s turn.

  Avery regarded A
ni. She watched him, waiting for his go-ahead before she carried out the mass feeding. Gods, he thought. Has it really come to this? I tried so hard to keep her from becoming a monster. Now to save the world I have to allow it.

  He let out a breath. “Have you ever done this before? Did Aunt Issia ... ?”

  “No. She gave me lessons in how, but never on anybody. She said soon, but then we came here instead. But I can do it, Papa. I know I can. I can feel it. It’s what I was born for.”

  “You weren’t born for this, Ani. I know. I was there.”

  “Well?”

  Men are dying. Are they more important than Ani’s humanity? Some deep part of him thundered with the answer: YES.

  “Do it,” he said. “Become what you were born to be.”

  This time she didn’t close her eyes but instead turned toward the pirates. She seemed to concentrate on them, like a raptor on its prey, and suddenly the walls around the pirates began to throb with light. Curious, Segrul and his people looked around, but they didn’t slow their assault ... not until the first few fell to their knees. Then others turned to watch, puzzled. Then they began to collapse, too, grabbing their skulls and screaming. Avery remembered the way the people in the pens had screamed and turned on each other. Ani spared the pirates that, at least. Their pain was brief. They simply fell, screamed for an instant or two, then toppled forward, dead, blood running out of their ears and their tear ducts, streaking down their cheeks as if they’d been crying.

  Segrul roared when Ani began feeding from him, and Avery could clearly see the pirate admiral clap flabby hands over his ear-holes as he squeezed his skull between his white and glistening paws.

  “Nooo!” he bellowed, as blood trickled between his fingers. “You bastards, you can’t do this!”