The Atomic Sea: Part Five: Flaming Skies

by Conner, Jack

  “Don’t!” he screamed. “Don’t do it! I have a family!”

  “We have a few questions,” Layanna said. She looked grateful to have this distraction, to not be dwelling on Ayu, though she did seem a bit flushed and tired from the barrage of jellies.

  The captain of the yacht scrutinized them. “Wait. Wait. I know you.”

  “Yes, well, you would, being a colonel in the Octunggen Army,” Avery said. Vun Cuvastaq had been fully uniformed when they’d found him, though he had had two rather more scantily-dressed women of the brothel with him at the time. Since then they had presumably found accommodations on other vessels.

  “A highly placed one, too,” Layanna added.

  “Just so,” Avery said. There were colonels and then there were colonels.

  Vun Cuvastaq stared at them levelly. “You’re enemies of the gods.”

  “Not exactly. Your gods—most of them—are enemies of your people.”

  “Blasphemy!”

  Avery framed his reply carefully: “It is not blasphemy if it’s true.”

  “Your heresy illustrates just why you people are doomed—why all people who resist the Lightning Crown are doomed. The Revered have foretold it. All who do not kneel will perish.”

  “They’ve done more than foretell it,” Layanna said. “They’re making it happen.”

  “But not all of them,” Avery said. “Some gods ... the true gods ... are committed to destroying the enemies of mankind.”

  “I weary of your ignorance,” the colonel said.

  Avery switched tactics. “We need some answers, and some help.”

  The colonel grunted. “I won’t help you.”

  “You will,” Layanna said. “You must.”

  Avery hid a smile. So far their act was going according to plan. All that remained was to see if vun Cuvastaq would play his part.

  “Just leave me,” vun Cuvastaq said.

  “We need to enter the Over-City,” Avery said. “I think you can help us. A high officer in the army, probably a nobleman, judging by this yacht, or whatever passes for a nobleman in Octung these days, you’re almost certainly stationed there. It’s why we picked this vessel. You must have simply gotten left behind in the chaos.”

  “True, I didn’t think they’d leave so abruptly. It will be a nuisance to return. Anyway, I will never help you. You’re the servants of demons of the Outer Dark.”

  “No,” Layanna said. “We are not.” She hesitated, then pounced: “Have you ever seen one of your gods?”

  Some of the rage left vun Cuvastaq’s face. “Yes ... several times, at the Great Temple. It was a tremendous honor.”

  “Good. Then you know what one looks like.”

  “I suppose.”

  “What if I told you I was a god?”

  “Ah. I see. You’re her. I’d expected ... I don’t know, flames perhaps.” He laughed bitterly. “I’ve been abducted by worthy foes, if nothing else. But you’re still a traitorous whore, god or not.”

  “Am I traitorous? Or am I the one standing up for humanity? Those in the Temple have lost their way, or perhaps they never had a particularly good way in the first place. Worse, they serve gods even more terrible. There are some, however, who fight them, fight the Collossum—Collossum themselves trying to bring about change within the order.”

  “Traitors! Heretics!”

  “No.” Layanna shook her head, then said firmly: “Saviors.”

  He glared at her with open hostility. “They couldn’t even save themselves. They’re all dead now, Bitch. You’re the last.”

  “Only one is required. But we’re going to need human help to defeat the false gods of the Temple.” She paused significantly, then, with great force of will, said, “I choose you, Colonel vun Cuvastaq.”

  “Me? What? How?” The colonel glanced all around, as if expecting an attack from some quarter.

  And, in a way, Avery thought, that is just what he got.

  Layanna changed. She brought forth her amoeba-facet. She still existed, her shape the same, but a white, globular sac seemed to emerge from her, quickly encompassing her and continuing to expand ... and expand ... and expand, shoving aside chairs, brushing up against the wall, even pushing through it. Avery was forced to step away. Strange lights filled the sac, and Layanna floated off the ground, buoyed by the otherworldly substances, within which strange organelles bobbed and pulsed. Countless cilia-like limbs jutted from the outer sac wall, and here and there longer tentacles curled out, coiling and swaying to otherworldly currents. Avery knew the tentacles could electrify or poison, or simply rip victims apart.

  They did not sting nor harm him, however, even as they brushed up against, him. He coexisted with them like a clownfish seeking shelter in an anemone—and that would be his lot in life, he supposed, to be like a clown fish. And all around him Layanna, or her amoeba-form, was aglow with lights and colors: purple and pink, fuscia and lavender. The lights filled the room, pulsing on the walls like the glare off the sea. The light bathed the face of Col. vun Cuvastaq, which was tight and drawn, his eyes huge, his mouth hanging slack, a bead of drool gathering in the corner. He may have seen his gods from afar, but never like this.

  Then Layanna threw back her head and roared—her voice audible, even through the substances of the sac, indeed much louder, shaking the walls and even making the air vibrate; Avery clapped his hands over his ears and even then it was too loud—“I—AM—YOUR—GOD!”

  On the last words, she plunged her tentacles forward, wrapping around vun Cuvastaq, and passed into him her otherworldly energies. What looked like electric sparks flashed from the contact, and he screamed—screamed—and arched his back so high off the bed that Avery half-expected to hear it break. Blood wept from the colonel’s wrists and ankles as they strained against the ropes that bound him to the bed posts. Agony filled his face, and sweat stood out on his limbs and torso. Avery wanted to shout for Layanna to stop, that she was killing the colonel, but he forced himself not to.

  At last she withdrew her tentacles. Vun Cuvastaq slumped, gasping, to the bed. He sucked in great lung-fulls of air, and Avery saw that the sheets between his legs were wet. The colonel looked to have aged ten years in as many seconds. His eyes, filled with wonder and terror, fell on Layanna—and stared.

  Avery stepped forward, but vun Cuvastaq’s eyes remained on Layanna. Nauseous with what he had set into motion, Avery said, “Now. Will you help us enter the Over-City?”

  Still he refused.

  So Layanna tried again.

  Chapter 4

  Avery was on deck on the fifth day, helping direct the crew, when suddenly Hildra swore and pointed. Avery, Janx and Layanna joined her eagerly. Please be good news, Avery thought. They had been passing through clouds for hours, and so it had snuck up on them, but as the wraiths thinned and vanished, Avery saw what Hildra had seen, and he swore, too.

  Below stretched the Atomic Sea.

  Without realizing it, they had overshot the shore of Cumnal and flown out over the water. There was no sign of land.

  “Dear gods ...” Avery said. Unconsciously a hand went to his neck and loosened the top button, as if he needed more room to breathe.

  Below, the sea crackled and boomed, churning and boiling, roiling and heaving and mad. Lighting blasted up from it, a flash that seared the retina, then another, and another, each strike punctuated by a rolling peal of thunder. An unwholesome fog stirred above the Atomic’s waves, but just visible through it, something large breached the surface to port, then sounded with a spray of foam.

  “Ain’t it a sight?” Janx said. “Home sweet home.”

  Avery wished he could feel so cavalier. For almost a week, they had passed over nothing but misery. The yacht had flown over endless swamps, then cities on a wide, rolling plain. The flag of the Lightning Crown hung everywhere. Octunggen soldiers marched through the streets at the head of victory parades. Mass graves were dug in the parks. The yacht passed beyond the borders of Laisha, past Omgetz, ov
er Gerhedden and beyond, and at last into the airspace above Cumnal, the last nation between them and the sea in the direction of the Over-City. Cumnal, too, was occupied by Octung, but its fall had come recently, and the signs of violence were everywhere. Smoke poured from gutted buildings in the countryside where rebels still lurked. Firing squads riddled others in town squares, scattering birds that squawked and flapped about the yacht as it flew above.

  Meanwhile the Over-City had raced ahead of them. Layanna had not lied; it was faster than it looked. With every day, the floating citadel closed the distance between it and the sea with ever-greater speed. Layanna said that she could feel the Device, that indeed the Octunggen were reversing its functions and would soon activate it. By the time they reached the sea they should have it ready. The best those in the yacht could hope for was not to get too far behind. Four weeks had passed since Avery and the others had left Golna. According to Uthua’s timescale, that left one more week before the Collossum ended the war on two continents.

  Frederick had joined them at the gunwale. Pale and haggard after days of suffering hava withdrawal, he stared down at the sea bleakly. “It’s not like I imagined,” he said.

  “You’ve never seen the ocean?” Layanna asked him, sounding surprised.

  “Never. After the factory closed down, Dad and I couldn’t afford to go on trips, so all I’ve ever seen of it’s from talkies and photos. They don’t do it justice. It’s so ... big ... and strange ... What the fuck’s that floating there?” He pointed, and Janx grinned.

  “That’s a gas-squid,” the big man said. “Not full grown, yet.”

  “Hells,” Avery said.

  “What, afraid of a little water?” Hildra asked, but Layanna seemed to sense his sudden change of tone.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Well, if we’ve reached the sea, so has the Over-City,” he said. “They’ll be ready to activate the Device soon.”

  “Yes,” Layanna said. “What’s more, I can feel that they’ve almost succeeded in reversing—”

  Her eyes flicked over his shoulder. He spun about, reaching for the pistol at his hip, expecting some enemy bearing down on them, guns firing. Instead he saw the thing he’d been both dreading and hoping to see for five days.

  The Over-City was a thunderhead of steel and smoke on the near horizon—and getting near—and for a moment it arrested Avery’s attention. Dear gods, we’re there. But then he saw something that required more immediate action. A wing of fighter planes roared across the sky, leaving black trails in their wakes, making a patrol around the Over-City. They were probably one of many. They roared straight toward the yacht, and out of reflex Avery prepared to give the order to dive, to evade, but before he could squawking erupted from the radio.

  After looking at it warily, Layanna picked it up.

  “That who I think it is?” said Hildra, after Layanna had spoken into it for a minute.

  “The Over-City,” Layanna confirmed, face grim. “They want to know our intentions. I’ll have to give them the codes we got from the colonel.”

  She shared a look with Avery, and neither had to say that the codes had better be correct. If vun Cuvastaq had lied to them, if he had been only pretending at loyalty to draw them here, everything would end right now.

  Taking a deep breath, Layanna spoke in rapid-fire Octunggen for several minutes into the radio transmitter. Janx moved to the forward machine gun emplacement, Hildra to the stern. Finally Layanna set the transmitter down and turned to them. They braced themselves.

  “Good news and bad news,” Layanna said.

  “Yes?” Avery said, swallowing.

  “Good news is: they’re letting us into the Over-City.”

  “What’s the bad news, darlin’?” Janx said.

  Layanna smiled. “They’re letting us into the Over-City.”

  Somewhere thunder boomed. For a moment, that was the only sound. Then Janx threw back his head and laughed.

  “I do believe that’s the first joke I’ve heard you tell,” he said.

  “Let’s hope it’s the last,” Hildra said. “I think she just turned half my hair white.”

  Avery smiled. “Then it worked.”

  Layanna returned the smile, if a bit tensely. “It worked.”

  “Great,” said Frederick, who stared at the Over-City with a face rapidly turning pale. “I still can’t believe we’re going there.”

  “Hey, we coulda dropped you off somewhere,” Hildra reminded him. “You’re the one that wanted to come.”

  He didn’t reply.

  Layanna laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I’m very proud that you came, Frederick, but part of me wishes you hadn’t.”

  “Too late now.”

  The Over-City rushed up to swallow them. Together they watched it fill the world. Avery had not appreciated just how truly vast it was till now. But as it approached, and still approached, and approached some more, never seeming to get any nearer, he began to realize that it was bigger than any floating thing had a right to be. Doubtless a lot of Octunggen and even R’loth technology kept it up. But still ...

  Zeppelin after zeppelin was lashed together, and these supported vast platforms, and upon these were plazas and buildings—huge, monolithic, in the square-hewn style of Octung. Great military structures and temples, yes, but there was so much more. It truly was a city, with apartments and businesses, probably shopping districts, whorehouses, theaters, restaurants ... The mind reeled. Set on many levels, with a complex layout, each congregated around its various airfields, the city floated high in the sky, higher than most clouds, majestic and powerful, a million windows glittering in the light of the sun like the eyes of insects. Avery wondered just how many airplanes it kept in reserve. More than half a dozen aircraft carriers combined, surely. The Over-City alone could conquer a small country.

  Avery was too moved to speak.

  Colonel vun Cuvastaq emerged from below, looking unperturbed—he was an officer of the Over-City, after all—and directed his crew with calm cool efficiency. Throughout the last few days, he had seemed to loyally obey any and all of Layanna’s commands. He had, so it appeared, completely sworn himself to her service. Not only could he guide them through the skies, he even claimed he could help them navigate the Over-City’s labyrinths once they arrived. He had also supplied helpful information, such as telling them that scientists aboard the Over-City had already figured out how to reverse the functions of the Device and were already actively seeking to accomplish it.

  Avery privately doubted vun Cuvastaq’s fidelity, but the colonel gave no sign of deceit. He even tried to lead his crew in prayers to Layanna during the nights. They would gather in his stateroom—now hers—and he would direct them in songs of devotion to the goddess, even sacrifices of blood. For their part, the crewmen remained watchful. Avery knew that they at least only pretended at loyalty.

  Working in tandem, vun Cuvastaq and his crew steered the ship around the immensity of the Over-City, then toward a certain section. The yacht soared through the aerial moat, past innumerable planes, helicopters and other dirigibles, having to veer around several of the latter, and at last was flying into the city, or above it, threading between great towers and buildings, through its canyons of steel and aluminum and canvas and blood. Avery could not help the thrill of wonder that swept through him. Thick chimneys drooled smoke into the clouds just above, and lumbering cranes swung payloads through the air, the city building itself as it flew. The yacht was obliged to swing below one payload, a steel beam, and above another. Avery could taste all that metal and smoke on his tongue. The Over-City was one big machine, or maybe engine—and not a normal one. Not just smoke but gouts of steam and gas and chemicals billowed from its many processors, creating thick and unwholesome trails that glommed around the top layers of the city, sticking to the buildings before being swept away by the ever-present wind. Sometimes the air shimmered around the processing plants and factories, or strange sparks would leap from th
e chimneys, or the billowing gas would seem to flicker ... No, no normal energies held this monster aloft.

  The yacht mounted higher and higher, and Avery saw again that the platforms the buildings rose from ascended like the steps of a pyramid, or perhaps like gentle mountain slopes, toward the central peak far above. And it was all so crowded, bustling with activity, planes taking off and landing constantly, a veritable hive of industry.

  Birds nested in the high places, of which there were many, staining the metal below. Avery saw winged lizards, too, and hunter snails lurking in the shadows, and other, stranger things—giant, chameleon slugs, a creature like an inflated puffer-fish that was long as a snake and walked on its spikes. The Over-City had become its own unnatural ecosystem, mutating the creatures that had populated it with its extradimensional processors.

  Colonel vun Cuvastaq guided them toward a certain docking bay which yawned like a great metal cave. Reddish light spilled out of it, gleaming on the metal all around. Banners of the Lighting Crest flapped in the breeze.

  The yacht slowed, neared the hangar, and passed inside.

  We’re in, Avery thought with a shudder.

  The crew lowered the airship toward the floor, which was crowded with ships and activity, and set it down in a spot indicated by air traffic operators. The craft trembled as it touched down, and Avery winced at feeling the vibration through his toes, his first true contact with the city. Lines were tossed down and tied off, and those aboard threw down ramps and moored the ship.

  “Look sharp,” Janx said.

  A representative from the city, with several troops as escort, approached. Janx was glancing at the three crewmen, who surveyed the approaching soldiers and shared furtive looks.

  “Send the crew below,” Avery ordered the colonel.

  Vun Cuvastaq only raised his eyebrows, but when Layanna repeated the order he did as he was bid, and the three crewmen, hard-faced, retreated below-decks. Avery’s party followed, leaving Col. vun Cuvastaq to speak with the official alone. Through the bulkhead, Avery couldn’t hear what they were saying, and he began to grow nervous.