The Atomic Sea: Part Five: Flaming Skies

by Conner, Jack

  The attack ships rushed ahead, spitting bright fire at the yacht. Avery heard the whizzing and thuds around him. Frantic, he jerked the wheel, mashed the levers, aiming them downward, then sharply up, then sideways, anything to keep them from traveling in a straight line. Bullets ripped the air.

  “Man the gun!” he shouted at Janx.

  Janx, who had been fending off bats, looked to the stern-mounted machine gun, then to the dirigibles, and a glint lit his eyes. Without a word, he moved to the weapon and grabbed the bulbous machine gun weapon with both hands.

  Attack ships swarmed up at him. He took aim. The gun roared, bucking under him, but his thick arms mastered it.

  The dirigibles fired back. He tracked them through the air, one way, then another.

  Avery made an abrupt turn, bringing them out of the tight confines and over a broad expanse of buildings and airfields. Janx cursed him for spoiling his aim, then let loose again. The sun shone brightly overhead, gleaming on planes taking off and landing, on crowds of people moving down the concourses. All looked up as the yacht sailed overhead, machine gun rattling from the rear.

  The attack ships burst out of the tunnel right on their heels. One was already sinking, its envelope ruptured by Janx’s salvo, and it veered away to seek an emergency landing. The other three flew on, guns whickering. Avery ducked and wove through the skies. He tried to keep his concentration forward but could not resist glancing over his shoulder to see Janx’s broad back bunch and flex as he twisted the gun in one direction, then another, pounding the dirigibles with a storm of bullets.

  Smoke gouted up from one’s forward gun, and the gunner reeled back, dead. A moment later the pilot followed. The ship wobbled and spun out of control, striking an airfield below. Janx kept firing, trying to put enough pressure on the attack ships’ gunners that their aim suffered. Another veered away as its envelope deflated.

  One left. It came on, spitting fire.

  More shots erupted from the front. Surprised, Avery whipped around to see Col. vun Cuvastaq man the forward mount, firing at a trio of warplanes screaming toward them. One smoked and flamed and fell from the sky. The others roared on.

  Avery swung the yacht to the side, seeking shelter behind a rearing bank of chimneys. Bullets whined off the thick metal towers, and then the jets were past. Avery hoped to hear the crash of one smashing into the pursuing dirigible, but it was not to be.

  The thunder of Janx’s machine gun continued unabated. So did the whistle and shriek of bullets passing near and into the dirigible. Avery prayed none struck the cabin where Ani was staying. He imagined her curled up on one side of the bed, hands over her head, crying in fear. For her sake, he hoped no bullets hit Sheridan, either. He didn’t fear a round striking the gas bags, save that they might deflate; the Octunggen had designed these airships for war, and the gas could not be ignited by bullets.

  Finally, the metal hail stopped. Avery looked over his shoulder to see the last dirigible, flaming, smash into an airfield control tower with a shower of glass and fire. Janx whooped joyously. Hildra shouted something obscene. She was crewing the ship by herself still, a tiring job for three men, let alone a single one-handed woman. She moved among the lines and dials urgently, Hildebrand swinging through the lines above her and chittering encouragingly.

  Avery kept going. They were almost out of the Over-City.

  Almost ...

  He shot them toward the rim of the last airfield, and then out ... out over empty air—and the sea not far below.

  They were away! They’d done it! All those on deck cheered.

  It was only when Avery peered back to see the Over-City behind him, growing in size as more and more of it came into view, that his blood rushed cold. Swarms of fighter planes, dirigibles, and zeppelin war-boats were massing all throughout the city, assembling at all the myriad levels. If the Over-City was a beehive, Avery and the others had not only kicked it and beaten it but had stolen its prize honey, and the city was enraged. Avery could almost feel its fury, as though it were a living thing, and it certainly looked like one, all aswarm with evil purpose.

  He barreled them forward, out over the dark, mad water of the Atomic Sea. Gas bubbles burst below. A large one exploded, rocking the ship in the updraft. Avery could see the orange glow on the underside of the envelope brighten, then fade. Lightning blasted up, some of it reaching higher than the yacht. Thunder assaulted him on all sides. He truly could feel it in his bones. His hair stood up along his arms.

  To the east, a school of huge gas-jellies drifted over the roiling ocean, glowing and serene. The vague haze of poison fumes hung over the water. Here and there something large broke the surface, then sounded. Avery hated the thought of all that water directly below him, endlessly deep, and the things that lived in it, vast and mutated horrors, some from prehistoric times, any one of which could destroy the vessel. He wrenched his gaze away and flew on.

  “Get in your environment suits!” he shouted. “Everybody, prepare yourself!”

  Vun Cuvastaq opened a hatch and called down to Frederick. Shortly the former drug dealer emerged, environment suits under each arm, and began passing them out.

  “For all the good it’ll do,” Frederick muttered, giving one to Hildra. “We can’t stay safe from the sea if we’re dead.”

  “Grow a pair,” she said, then cast a look at Hildebrand. “But what about the little guy?”

  “They don’t make suits for monkeys.”

  Her shoulders slumped.

  “He survived Vulat,” Avery told her. “He’ll survive the sea. Though,” he added, trying to smile, “he might gain a fin.”

  She shot him a look that said not funny, but she seemed reassured.

  “Don’t forget Ani,” Avery told Frederick, meaning the suits.

  “Already done,” Frederick told him.

  They began tugging on the environment suits, some helping others into them, fastening the great metal helms and cleaning the glass face-plates of dust. They all looked like divers from centuries ago, back when people had been foolish enough to brave the seas. These days people did their exploring of the depths via bathysphere or submarine, keeping the water at a remove. Only Avery didn’t don an environment suit; already infected, he was immune from the worst of the sea’s toxins, or so he’d been taught. I hope I was schooled correctly.

  Behind, the Over-City could be seen in full now, a massive construct of lunatic, otherworldly engineering. Sections of it rose higher than they should, or perhaps others had sunk lower, and smoke billowed from portions of the city that had not been smoking before. It seemed to move slower, too, and it certainly flew more awkwardly, having to hold itself in as it went. Avery imagined a man with a slice to the gut clasping a hand over his wound to keep in his intestines as he tracked down the man who’d gutted him. Only the Over-City would heal quickly, Avery knew, and it would be stronger afterward than before. But at least the damage Layanna and the others had inflicted would slow it, hobble it. It wouldn’t be able to scream through the skies as fast as it had on the way to the sea; it couldn’t overtake the yacht.

  But its air force could.

  The glittering swarms of its planes and dirigibles were forming into distinct groups now, battle formations. Wedges and lines. Priming their guns. Readying their extradimensional equipment. The yacht had a few extradimensional weapons of its own, Avery knew. Bulky and sinister, they occupied the stern. They were useless, though, without a crew to operate them, and all those aboard the yacht were occupied. Vun Cuvastaq had activated a few of the devices, but Avery understood that these were defensive apparatuses only; they could protect the yacht from various extradimensional weapons directed at them but could not fight back.

  As one, the great aerial armada of the Over-City aligned itself and flew, fast and hard, directly for the yacht.

  * * *

  Avery couldn’t look. He could almost feel the weight of all that death rushing toward him. A panic stole over him, and he realized that he was
breathing too fast, sucking in air too rapidly, caught in an upwelling of fear. Spots flashed before his eyes, then faded. His vision began to turn red.

  Focus, he told himself. Don’t lose it now. Just a little bit more and it will all be over. One way or another.

  “We need to alert the battle group,” he called to vun Cuvastaq.

  The colonel abandoned the forward gun, squinted over Avery’s shoulder at the armada coming closer—Avery willed himself not to look—and nodded brusquely. Without another word, he darted below to retrieve Sheridan, and within moments he had brought her up. She was without a suit, and at Avery’s request Frederick went to fetch her one. He looked shaky and Avery knew the withdrawal he was going through must be ghastly even now, days after it had begun. Still, to his credit, like the son of a goddess he was, Frederick persevered stoically.

  Sheridan shrugged on her suit with the ease of someone who had done so countless times before. She did it without even looking at it. After snapping on her big brass helm, she eyed the armada though the grill that covered her face-plate, then reached for the radio.

  “We don’t have long,” she said, as she pressed buttons.

  “Yes,” vun Cuvastaq said, through the speaker of his large brass helm. “We’d counted on them being slower in their response. We’d hoped the blow we struck would have occupied them longer in repairs and rescues.”

  “You should’ve known better.”

  “Yes. I suppose we should have.”

  For several minutes, she spoke into the radio, and it was a relief to Avery to hear Ghenisan after all this time. She was transferred to several people and switchboards, but at least she was talking with the battle group. Finally she told Avery, “They’re putting on the Admiral. It’s our old friend, Admiral Jons.”

  Avery raised his eyebrows. Jons was the one who had promoted Sheridan to admiral in the first place. He had been leading another battle group at the time. Avery was glad to hear the old man still lived.

  “Sheridan, is that you?” came the Admiral’s rough voice, made even more crackly by the radio.

  “It is, Admiral. It’s good to hear you’re still leading from the front. I’ve been away from home too long. Can you confirm my identity by my voice?”

  “I believe so, and your codes check out. Tell me, how many eyes did the whale calf head mounted in your cabin have?”

  “Six.” With a glance over her shoulder back at the Over-City—Avery still didn’t look—she said, “We don’t have time for any more questions, I’m afraid. The battle that will decide the fate of the war happens now. And it’s going to be us fighting it by ourselves if you don’t get your ass in gear, scramble all your fighters and come bail us out.”

  There was a pause. “Are you on approach?”

  “We are, fast as we can go. And the Over-City’s right behind us.”

  Another pause, then, with forced confidence: “I’d been hoping to get that bastard in my sights.” The admiral allowed himself a crackling breath, and Avery could almost feel him collecting himself, putting aside his terror. Jons knew as well as anyone that he could not best the Over-City. “I’m scrambling the fighters now.”

  “We’re in a dirigible flying Octunggen colors, by the way. Don’t shoot us.”

  “Mount some sort of flag on your bow.”

  “We have towels,” vun Cuvastaq said. “Red.”

  “Watch out for the dirigible with the red towels, Admiral,” Sheridan said.

  “Will do, Admiral.”

  The line clicked dead and Jons was gone.

  “This had better work,” Hildra shouted from somewhere. “They’re right behind us.”

  Avery couldn’t resist. He looked over his shoulder. What he saw almost caused him to pass out. The armada was very near, the war-planes racing out front, their black bi-wings slapped with the white circle and stylized lightning bolt of the Lightning Crest on each upper wing. They had both tail guns and forward guns. And there were hundreds of them.

  Avery turned forward again, having to clutch the wheel to steady himself.

  “Keep on this heading,” vun Cuvastaq said. “We should reach the battle group soon.”

  “Minutes or seconds?” Avery asked.

  Vun Cuvastaq chewed his lip. “Minutes.”

  “We won’t last that long.”

  He realized he still wore the silver glove on his left hand. The right-hand glove was shoved in his pocket. He stepped back and gestured for vun Cuvastaq to take the wheel while he slipped the left glove off and put it with the other.

  “I have an idea that could buy us the minutes we need,” he told the colonel, “but first let me check on somebody.”

  The colonel didn’t ask questions. He gripped the wheel firmly, guiding them forward toward the horizon and the battle group that must be there if only they could reach it.

  Avery trooped below-decks and rapped on the closed stateroom door. There was a pause, and then Ani’s voice called out, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me.” Avery opened the door and found her curled up in a corner of the plush room, the child-size environment suit sitting beside her unused. It’s as I thought. Her mother was just as stubborn. “You need to put this on,” he said.

  “What’s going on? Why can’t I go on deck?”

  They had told her in rough outline what they were going to do, but she had no idea the entire aerial forces of the Over-City were barreling down on them.

  “We’re about to come under attack,” he said. Gently, he crouched beside her and squeezed her hand. “I want you to be prepared for some loud noises. Whatever you do, don’t come out of this cabin. Also, we’re likely to come very near the sea. It gives off toxic fumes, as you should know, and you need to put on this suit to protect you.”

  She regarded the wadded canvas and metal dully. With an over-dramatic sigh, she reached for it and held it up.

  “It’s ugly,” she said.

  “Nevertheless.” He smiled and touched his striated face. “You don’t want to look like me, do you?”

  She ran a hand across the scars on her own cheeks. “I don’t care.”

  “Well, I do. Besides, it makes you very sick.”

  “I don’t want to be sick again.”

  Neither do I. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

  Patiently, he helped her climb into the environment suit, legs first, then arms. He zipped it up for her, then snapped on the heavy brass helmet. When it was done, she stared at him through her face-plate, looking pale and panicked.

  “Will it be okay, Papa?” she said, her voice quavering.

  He wished he’d remembered to kiss her before he’d snapped the helmet on.

  “Sure it will.” He kissed the top of the helm. “Now get back in that corner, find something to grab onto, and don’t move till I tell you to.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  The dirigible rocked from side to side. Ani was flung into the wall, and Avery nearly collapsed. Gunfire sounded from outside. He steadied her, patted her helm and ran out of the cabin and back topside. Wind howled around him. Not natural wind, he realized, though there was that too. Fighters plowed toward them, guns firing. Janx blasted away at the lead one, then the next. Bullets stitched a line starting near Janx and continuing up to Layanna, where she still worked furiously on the Device. The bullets struck her amoebic wall, passed inside and were immediately dissolved by her otherworldly acids.

  More planes drove at them, firing. When they passed, Frederick cut loose with the forward gun, and wind shook the yacht.

  Slipping on the silver gloves, Avery made his way to Layanna and shouted to get her attention. When she opened her eyes, she appeared as if she’d come from far away, like one woken from deep sleep or meditation. He gestured at the spear, which she still carried in a tentacle, high off the ground. When she understood, she nodded and lowered it toward him.

  With the utmost cautious, wary that the thing could fry him, Avery wrapped his gloved hands around the spear. It had cooled conside
rably since he’d held it last, and he had to assume that some of its energies had drained away. The Atomic Sea would need to recharge it. Well, he meant to see that that happened.

  “Take her down,” he told Col. vun Cuvastaq, pitching his voice above the whine of the planes. “Down!” he repeated, gesturing. When vun Cuvastaq looked confused, Avery indicated the rod and said, “Don’t worry about the lightning. Take us to the sea!”

  Lightning blasted constantly up from the dark, heaving waves. It was death for an airship to approach the surface.

  “You’re mad!” vun Cuvastaq said.

  “Trust me. It’s the only way.”

  Scowling, clearly hoping Avery knew what he was doing, the colonel obliged. Avery moved to the gunwale, grabbed on with one hand and thrust the spear out over the water with the other. This had better work. Planes whizzed overhead and to the sides. The dirigible dipped, then angled toward the sea. Planes swooped, firing. Janx and Frederick fired back. One plane burst into flames and spiraled into the water. Struck in a geyser of foam. Another followed. Something large, with an armored shell and many legs, dragged it under.

  Scores took their places.

  The yacht neared the surface of the Atomic. Closer, closer. Toxic haze surrounded them. Something bright flashed below.

  A bolt of lightning shot toward the yacht—struck the silver spear. The rod vibrated in Avery’s hands. Glowed. The metal, if it was metal, sang an unearthly tune and heated up. Avery cried out, his whole body shaking.

  Another strike came, and another. The rod trembled in his fists with every blast. He held on with both hands. Lightning blasted again and again. His body thrummed, and he feared his bones would rattle apart or dissolve. He felt his eyes bulge, his teeth grind together. The rod began to shine brightly. He glanced away. Held on for dear life.