The Atomic Sea: Volume Nine: War of the Abyss

by Jack Conner

  Around him his men and women were twitching on the ground, then growing still. At last they were all dead, all save Segrul, and Ani leaned against the stalagmite, looking ... calm. Calm but winded. Avery studied her to see if she seemed to have enjoyed it, if she was sated like some remorseless vampire, but there was no enjoyment, no victory, in her face. If anything, there was a vague disquiet … but it was only vague.

  “Did I do it, Papa?” she asked.

  He nodded, feeling sweat sting his eyes. “Did you mean to let Segrul live?”

  “He’s … for Janx.”

  The big man stepped forward, around the bodies of Ghenisan soldiers and then through the sprawled corpses of the pirates, aiming straight for Segrul. Avery didn’t call out to stop him. Avery felt numb, and his ears still rang with the sound of gunfire even though all shooting had stopped.

  Layanna and Uthua released their other-selves, the great fish-man supporting her with a scaly claw; otherwise she would have dropped. She looked sickly and pale. Though she may have eaten her fill of pirates, she’d evidently absorbed too much venom.

  Janx reached Segrul and stood over him, large pistol clutched in hand.

  “No,” Segrul whined. “No, please, Janx, no. You know you were always my favorite. It’s why I had to go harder on you. It’s why—”

  The hall echoed to the sound of one last shot and the pirate admiral crumpled in a wet heap. Smoke curling up from his gun, Janx stared down at his former captain, than shoved the gun away and picked his way back to the Ghenisans. There was no victory on his face, only a grim sense of finality. At long last, Segrul had died at his feet the same way Hildra had died at the pirate’s. Janx didn’t even light a cigar to celebrate but simply leaned against a ruby mound and seemed to meditate. Avery wanted to go to him, but at the same time he thought Janx could use a moment to himself, and Avery hated to leave Ani.

  Sheridan climbed to her feet and turned to them—no, to Ani. She watched the girl, likely for the same signs Avery had, then said, “Thank you.”

  Ani started. “Thank me? I ... I killed all those people! I ate their minds.”

  Sheridan blinked. “You saved us all.”

  “She’s right, Ani,” Avery said, though he did it through gritted teeth. “You saved us. I know you didn’t want to do it like that, but you did.”

  Now Ani did look sick—and close to weeping, too. “It was terrible, Papa. I could ... I could taste them ... their thoughts, their memories ... I could—”

  “Ani.” His voice came out firmer than he’d intended. “We can talk about this later. Right now—”

  “Is this how you felt when you killed that priest?”

  Avery went cold. Behind him he could sense Layanna.

  “What priest?” she said, still half supported by Uthua.

  Ani glanced down. “Never mind.”

  Avery’s mouth was suddenly dry. How did you know about Huos? he thought, then: She must have been watching through the walls. She saw everything. Dear gods, she’d seen her own father become a murderer, and all this time she’d been wondering why. No wonder he had felt her pulling away from him.

  “What priest?” Layanna repeated.

  “A misunderstanding,” Avery said, feeling suddenly weak. “It’s not important. We have to get on the move. Ani, you said Thraish had reached the heart.”

  “The heart?” said Uthua, helping Layanna. It still chilled Avery to see them so close, especially now. Soon it would be time to act, and then Uthua would be their enemy once again. Avery had to admit, though, that without the Mnuthra they would all probably be dead by now.

  “The heart of the Monastery,” Ani clarified. “He’s there now. We’re almost there, too. Segrul was blocking off the way. This way,” she added and moved forward. Segrul’s army had been positioned before a seven-way fork whose choices sloped up or down or to the side. Ani chose one and darted forward through the mist, which was thick about her knees. Avery followed just behind, constantly checking that same paternal instinct to stop her, to go first, or at least, the very least, to slow her down. But with every moment Thraish would be getting closer to getting what he’d come for. He could have it already.

  Hurry, Avery mentally prodded Ani, at the same time regretting the necessity of it. Let us be swift and Thraish be slow. Not idly, he wondered if Ani, newly gorged and powerful, could hear him.

  Abruptly they burst out into a vast open area. It was a massive cavern several miles in circumference, all of glittering, many-faceted red diamond, with mist swirling strangely in the very center of the space, forming a long, wispy column. The cavern was hardly empty otherwise, though. Monumental staircases and rampways curled along the vaguely circular walls of the chamber, spiraling and spiraling, twisting and meeting in strange configurations, some of which leapt into the open space, forming stairways and rampways that corkscrewed into the air. These aerial paths branched and split and spun, sometimes meeting, sometimes flowering in grand, palatial structures that jutted out at all angles, defying and even mocking any notion of gravity or physics.

  As the group gathered around Ani, all of them panting save her and the Collossum, she pointed toward the very center of the madness, where a collection of platforms and ramps clustered in the thick heart of the bloody mist.

  “There,” Ani said. “That’s where Thraish is.”

  “How do we get there?” said Sheridan, holding her pistol in one hand. In her other she still held the spear.

  “This way.”

  Ani sprinted toward a stairway, which realigned itself at her waving hand, becoming fit for humans to travel on. Presumably Thraish had changed it after his party had gone through, having first configured it for them. As Ani’s nimble legs navigated the first steps, Avery caught up, huffing, and tried to keep pace, though he knew it was a losing battle. Sheridan, Layanna, Janx and Uthua came immediately behind, followed by Captain Tevic and the soldiers, or what were left of them.

  The stairway curved along the side of the wall, so that soon Avery and the others were traveling almost vertically—then they were travelling vertically. Gravity did not exist here, or if it did then this stairway provided it. Lights glimmered at the crystal under Avery’s feet, and he remembered Ani saying this place was alive. The Blue Ghosts? Maybe, but he thought there was something else at work here, too. Mist spun around him. Visions and alien vistas pulled at him, but he forced himself on. His heart labored and his eyes stung. He looked down once and immediately twisted his head away, nauseous with vertigo.

  They were traveling upside down when Ani took a branch and led the group down another stairway, twisting along the wall, then a grand crystal stalactite—thousands thrust out from the walls—from whose tip they took a ramp into the empty air of the cavern. They hit a platform, which sprouted a collection of paths along with a strangely-shaped building, which was somehow disturbing to look upon. Ani chose a path and they navigated along this one past another, even more nightmarish building, and another. When they hit a fork, she chose a path with no hesitation whatsoever.

  It’s a maze, Avery saw, noting one dead end after another jutting out into empty air. Ani never hit one of these, though, thank the gods. He doubted those who did lived to tell about their failure. This was a test, designed for only the worthy to pass.

  The red mist thickened about them, and Avery realized they had reached the heart of the chamber, the center of the great space. Ani had led them through the labyrinth. Ahead loomed the grand platforms that composed the nexus of this place—whether that meant the Monastery as a whole or simply this one branch Avery had no idea. The Monastery would hold many secrets, he was sure.

  Thraish must have taken notice of them. Just as the group, sweating and weak-kneed, poured out onto the lowest (well, most sideways; to Avery’s left was the floor of the cavern, a thousand feet down) platform of the nexus, a shape skittered out of the mist. A terror that rose twenty feet overhead and bristled with alien limbs, the being winked with crimson facets. It�
��s made of the crystal, Avery realized. Possibly conjured from the very walls.

  Fire blazed from the thing’s dozen eyes as it descended on Ani, and one long, segmented limb stretched toward her ...

  Ani waved a hand.

  The creature dissolved in a shower of crystal shards which littered the platform about her. Avery danced back as they rained around him.

  “Nice,” Janx said.

  Ani flashed a smile. “Watch this.”

  She waved her hand again, and the automaton, if that’s what it was, reassembled itself, seeming to congeal out of the very mist, but this time it was beautiful, clean-limbed and symmetrical and human-shaped. Smiling, the crystal giantess led the way up another platform, and Ani followed.

  “I don’t like this,” Captain Tevic said.

  Avery shook his head. “Come on.”

  He trotted up the steps after Ani, hearing the rest come behind. Large, many-faceted shapes were already waiting for them. The giantess sprang on them, and Ani let her champion fight it out with its terrible-looking opponents. In seconds they were fragments on the floor, and then they dissolved and were not even that. Though missing an arm, the red giantess lumbered up the final stairway and onto the broad platform that Thraish and his people occupied.

  Various alien consoles and machinery erupted from the surface, crackling with strange energies. Thraish himself stood before one bank of crystalline machines, holding a kingly black staff in one hand. The Sleeper’s severed, slug-like head, housed in some sort of clear, fluid-filled container, had been mounted on the tip of it, and the whole staff thrummed with power. Thraish wore a gleaming gold circlet about his head, and Avery instinctively knew this was some sort of psychic control, the thing Thraish used to enslave the mind of the Sleeper.

  A gaggle of white-robed priests had come to attend Thraish in his hour of victory, and while their master finished his labor they emerged with guns and knives drawn to fend off their master’s enemies. One fired a submachine gun at the giantess’s head, and others joined him. It stomped down on one man, crushing him to paste, but a second evaded its swoop.

  A third saw Ani. His gun lifted toward her—

  Sheridan’s pistol cracked. Once, twice. The priest toppled backward, blood spurting from two rounds in his face.

  Janx and the soldiers joined the fight, and Layanna and Uthua, after some hesitation, did as well, bringing their other-selves over. Layanna consumed several priests, all infected, of course, and Avery hoped this was enough for her to recover from the poison. The group would need her strong soon.

  They would need her to fight Uthua.

  Avery got off a few shots at the priests but was unsure if he hit any of them, and within two minutes the battle was over. The giantess was destroyed by a Muugist weapon wielded by a priest. Gasping, the surviving members of the group looked at each other.

  “Let’s end this,” Avery said.

  They turned toward Thraish. He glared over his shoulder back at them, then continued interfacing with the machinery via the Sleeper’s head. Avery could hear him mutter, “Hurry, damn you.” The group moved toward him.

  The tall, hawk-faced Muugist broke away from his interaction with the Monastery and thrust his staff at them. The fluids in the Sleeper’s head bubbled and frothed, and green lightning arced inside the container.

  “DIE!”

  The ground quaked beneath Avery. Half-formed figures started to emerge from it, grabbing at those in the group. One soldier screamed as he was pulverized by a mighty fist, and another was cloven in twain by a pincer. More were simply devoured by crystal mouths, ground to bits by diamond teeth. Avery leapt aside as a mouth gaped at his feet.

  Ani waved her hand. The ground solidified.

  “Damn you,” Thraish said.

  Layanna stepped forward. She and Uthua had let their other-selves slip away, but the air still shimmered around her. “You don’t have to die, Thraish. We don’t need to be enemies.”

  His jaw bulged. “Will you convert and worship the Muug?”

  “You showed me a glimpse of their true nature, remember. I want no part of them.” She hesitated as the survivors of the group, and there were only a handful, arrayed themselves for battle. “What do you mean to do, Thraish? What exactly do you want the Monastery for?”

  He sneered. “It’s already done, in part. Even now my compatriot will be leaving this place.”

  “Your … compatriot?” Avery said. “There is another Muugist?” When Thraish didn’t reply, Avery snapped, “Where is he?”

  “Far away by now.”

  Avery shook his head and blinked. Dear gods, there really is another one.

  “And what do you do?” Layanna asked Thraish, not to be sidetracked.

  “The same thing you do,” Thraish said. “I try to seize the weaponry of this place for use against our people.”

  “For what purpose?” Uthua said.

  “To force them to convert, of course,” Thraish said. “You fled the might of the Muug before, but you cannot run forever. Sooner or later you must bow before them or suffer Their wrath. You will twist and you will die—if They allow it. But it need not be that way. Allow me to finish this business, to arm the pirate fleet with the energy weapons of the Ygrith and bring the R’loth to their knees.”

  “You dream,” Uthua said. To Layanna: “Are you ready?”

  Her attention remained on Thraish. “Will you submit?”

  Thraish braced himself and trained his staff on them. “Come and get me.”

  Their other-selves erupting, Layanna and Uthua crossed swiftly toward him. Thraish seemed to concentrate, the fluid surrounding the Sleeper’s head began to bubble, and the two Collossum slowed. Moving closer, Avery could see the scowl of concentration on Layanna’s face. Thraish was doing something to bombard their minds.

  “Ani!” Avery said, cringing at using his daughter like a weapon. Yet when he turned to her she nodded and frowned at Thraish.

  The ground moved under the Muugist. He screamed as a giant ruby fist curled around him.

  “No! Don’t do this! The Muug—”

  The fist squeezed, and he quieted. The staff with the Sleeper’s head clattered to the floor, and the ruby fist’s thumb flicked off the crown. Avery started to tell Ani to relax the fist—he didn’t want her to kill again, especially not in such a manner—but before he could Thraish brought over his other-self. His brilliant green sac blossomed from within him, snapping off the fingers of the hand, and he met the oncoming Uthua and Layanna (who were now, without the Sleeper’s head to keep them at bay, freed) with such fury that the ground leapt beneath Avery’s feet as they connected. Sparks flashed, and inhuman roars and groans filled the air. The world tilted, and unnatural scents and emotions were born and died, one sprouting from another, and another.

  Monstrous limbs slammed into bulging, phantasmal sacs, or plunged through amoebic walls bristling with cilia. Sparks leapt out, and blood-like fluid flamed upward. Venoms spread through sacs and organelles withered. The world shook and trembled. The roars, both physical and physic, sent all the humans in the area to the floor clutching their heads. Avery’s mind felt as if it were about to explode. Even Ani was on her knees, eyes mashed tight against the pain.

  Then, suddenly, it was over. Thraish was strong, but Uthua was stronger, and with Layanna to lend him support the outcome was inevitable. Uthua and Layanna devoured Thraish, first his sac, then his human self. Uthua stuffed the Muugist’s head through his sac wall, along with his torso. Layanna, having wrenched off Thraish’s lower half, ate it as Uthua finished off the top half. Thraish screamed even as he dissolved. Avery wanted to place his hand over Ani’s eyes, but he couldn’t. Something remained to be done.

  While the two Collossum ate the last remnants of Thraish, Avery stole forward and clutched up the circlet, which he placed on his balding dome, then grabbed up the staff that held the Sleeper’s head. It proved heavier than he had thought, and he sweated and strained as he levered it off the
floor, using a foot to brace its base. At last he heaved it up and pointed it, with some meaning, at Uthua.

  With Thraish’s blood still dancing through his sac, Uthua turned to Avery, who stood between him and the console that apparently operated the nexus.

  So it comes to this, Uthua sent, having to speak psychically as he was still encased in his amoebic self; Avery could just barely see the dim shape of the fish-man through the dark, nearly opaque substances of the sac itself. The great, quivering mass of Uthua loomed high overhead, tentacles waving and pseudopods swaying as if they moved to undersea currents. Beside him, Layanna’s white and pink sac seemed almost delicate. Betrayal, Uthua sent.

  “There's no betrayal,” Avery said. “You knew it could only end this way. Did you really think we would help you enslave the world?”

  Uthua lifted his lip. Then you bring the new world, what you call the Atomic World, upon you all, and any consequences it may bring, such as the shattering of reality itself.

  Uthua moved closer.

  Avery concentrated, and a ruby spike burst through the floor and drove into Uthua’s sac. Mentally, Avery rejoiced: it had worked! Until now he hadn’t quite been sure he could manipulate the Sleeper’s head with the circlet.

  Uthua ripped his way over the spike, spilling black blood that flamed away. Avery directed another spike, then another, but Uthua came on. The Ghenisan soldiers rushed to their king’s defense, lashing Uthua with venom whips and lancing him with spears. One shot a cross-bow. Uthua grabbed them up and crushed them, or melted them or fried them with otherworldly power. Smoke rose from the coils of his tentacles where human beings had just been. The remains, if there were any, he discarded carelessly as he approached Avery.

  Ani waved a hand, sending giant ruby fists to clutch at Uthua’s limbs and drag him to a stop, but the Mnuthra simply ripped free, his limbs flaming into nothingness behind him. Avery concentrated harder, trying to tap the potential of the Sleeper’s head, but he was clumsy with the power.

  Uthua had almost reached him.

  Then, before the terrible god-thing could tear Avery limb from limb, Layanna interposed herself between them.