Atomic Underworld: Part One

by Conner, Jack

  “Well, this is it, lads,” Vassas said. “We’re goin’ to hit Grund so hard he’ll wish he’d wedged himself in his mamma’s fun tube and never come out. We’re gonna end this fuckin’ war right now, and when we come out the other side of this I’m gonna mount Grund’s head over the bar and use it for fucking target practice!” This was greeted by rough cheers, and Vassas’s teeth gleamed briefly in something that was not quite a smile. “To war!”

  Boss Vassas revved his engine personally, and as his boat blasted off into the darkness with him at the bow, still smoking, submachine gun clenched in his meaty fists, it seemed as if the breath of everyone nearby was let out in a great rush—even Tavlin’s—and then, one by one, the boats stormed off after him, six boats laden with cursing, heavily armed men and a few women.

  “Where are we off to?” Tavlin asked Harry Scraggs, a man he used to drink with back in the day.

  “One o’ Grund’s strongholds.” Scraggs was a big man, heavily bearded, with wartstar encrusting his arms. “A warehouse where he stores drugs he sells. Nasty shit, like gunsai. All alchemical.”

  Tavlin knew Vassas turned his nose up at dealing drugs, especially the alchemical kind. Grund must smuggle them in somehow, because Vassas actively discouraged such industry in Muscud.

  “Will this really end the war?” Tavlin asked.

  Harry Scraggs rolled his lumpy shoulders. “Depends on what resources Grund has, I guess. At any rate, we can’t just sit back and let him gore us up the ass like he’s been doin’. Let him sit scared for awhile.”

  As they motored through the blackness, Tavlin tried to control the rapid beating of his heart. He realized he was sweating and trembling. Can’t believe I’m fucking doing this. The last thing he needed was to get involved in a gang war, of all things. He’d been half hoping he could simply tell Vassas the situation, the location of the briefcase, what the Octunggen were after, and let him deal with it while Tavlin went back up to the surface world. There was nothing here for Tavlin anymore, especially not after what Sophia had said. And as far as Tavlin was concerned, he’d already cocked things up enough. Vassas couldn’t do any worse. But now here he was, a gun in his hand and likely a bullet in his future.

  Thanks, Boss.

  The boats plowed on, stinking and smoking. All too soon they entered the Infested Quarter, where Grund made his lair. Vassas sent two boats ahead with their engines cut, presumably to deal with any sentries Grund might have placed on the water—he was expecting attack, evidently—and they came back with their blades bloody. Vassas had all the boats cut their motors, and as a small, grim armada they rolled forward.

  They came up to a small dock with a ladder leading up to a trapdoor, and Vassas whispered, “Here it goes, boys. Remember the war plan.”

  “Plan?” Tavlin whispered. “I didn’t ...”

  Three goons fired their shotguns up into the trapdoor, obliterating it. While they fell back to reload, others scrambled up into the warehouse interior. Guns roared. First the occupants of one boat, then Vassas’s boat, then, Tavlin’s boat. Suddenly he found himself propelled up the ladder, and he was climbing, awkwardly holding his shotgun at the same time, trying not to blow anyone’s head off, trying not to think, and then he was hurled up in the warehouse itself. Goons swarmed around him.

  Guns cracked. Boomed. One man’s head exploded right beside Tavlin, throwing bits of brain matter and skull onto his right arm.

  Tavlin threw himself to the side, beside a crate. Chips flew from it. Dark shapes fired at him from around a corner. He shoved the shotgun stock against his shoulder and fired back. Then again. The gun rocked him. One of the shapes ahead reeled back, but he wasn’t sure if it was from his blast or another. Guns were shaking the hallways, and bodies were toppling everywhere. The smell of gun smoke pervaded everything.

  A bullet whizzed by Tavlin’s cheek. He scurried to the corner, where he breached the barrel of the shotgun and hastily reloaded—his fingers barely trembled, he noted with bemusement—using shells Harry Scraggs had given to him. He snapped the barrel shut. Looked up.

  A man was training his submachine gun’s sights on Tavlin from about twenty feet away. Tavlin fired. The shotgun was double-barreled, and he fired first one barrel, then the second when another shape replaced the first. He wasn’t sure if he shot either of them, but they both dropped out of sight. More targets appeared.

  The warehouse wasn’t what Tavlin had expected. The room he hunkered in was actually fairly small, made of lichen-covered stone, the ceiling low and spanned by cobwebs. Many hallways snaked off from this chamber, the loading chamber. Shapes that must be Grund’s people vanished into them, and other shapes that must be Vassas’s people followed.

  Someone slapped Tavlin on the back. “After them!” The shape—Galesh—vanished with two others down a hallway in pursuit of a group of Grund’s men.

  Gathering his courage, Tavlin followed. Galesh and the other two fired at something up ahead, then pressed themselves against the walls. Tavlin saw why instantly. A broad figure up ahead let loose with a machine gun, and sparks split the darkness as rounds filled the hallway faster than Tavlin could count.

  Ducking out of the way, he plunged into a doorway and saw a shape wheel to face him, gun raised. Tavlin fired. The man toppled backward. Another man stood in the far doorway. He had been headed out, likely leading the first man, and at the sound of the gunshot, he turned and raised his own gun.

  He and Tavlin fired at the same time. A bullet whizzed by Tavlin’s neck; he felt its heat. The man in the doorway stumbled, clutching his gun arm. With a glare at Tavlin, he spun about and darted off.

  Tavlin gave chase. The halls twisted and turned, and he realized that the warehouse was actually assembled out of a collection of preexisting buildings, some smaller, some larger, some with high ceilings, some with ceilings so low he had to stoop. It all stank of mold and chemicals. Gunshots crashed from the battle all around. The halls had begun to stink of gun smoke.

  Tavlin followed his quarry up a flight of crumbling cement stairs to a second story. There the man turned and fired. Tavlin dodged out of the way, but when he glanced up the man was gone. Gritting his teeth, Tavlin rushed forward. He rounded a bend, swiveled and turned, gun raised and ready. Nothing.

  A sound came from a side-room.

  Hairs raised on the back of his neck, Tavlin leapt inside. It was dim, and he had to strain to see. Conscious that he might be visible silhouetted against the doorway, he moved aside, rotating this way and that to find his quarry. Nothing but shadows. It was a dark, crowded room full of shelves laden with what looked like technical equipment—plenty of hiding spots. Below, gunshots rang. Men yelled.

  A small, dirty window admitted a scant amount of light, and by this radiance Tavlin searched the room, finding nothing but shadows and equipment. Just as he was about to give up, he heard a noise behind him.

  He spun.

  A man—not the man he’d been chasing, but one he recognized nonetheless—stepped out from the shadows. The man struck the shotgun from Tavlin’s hands with one hand and with the other raised a gun of his own.

  By the faint glow of the window, Tavlin saw a polished pistol of foreign manufacture aimed at his head. And holding it, bald head gleaming greenly in the light, was the man who had offered his hand to Tavlin in Taluush.

  Chapter 10

  “We meet again,” said the bald man. He spoke with a thick brogue, and though he sounded like a well-traveled sort—his voice showing flecks of various accents—there was nothing in that voice to indicate nationality.

  “Maybe this time we can chat,” Tavlin said. It seemed an appropriate comment, as the other option was less amenable. Before the man could either answer or shoot him, Tavlin added, “It was you that conspired with the G’zai, wasn’t it—to destroy Taluush?”

  The man showed no reaction, save a vague hardening of his craggy, pocked face. “You destroyed Taluush, Tavlin Metzler,” he said. “You destroyed it by not cooperat
ing with us. Do you want the same thing to happen to Muscud?”

  “You didn't give me much chance to cooperate, did you? Anyway, you’re Octunggen, aren’t you? That’s how you communicated with the G’zai. Octunggen can deal with the old races.”

  The man didn’t deny it. “You know what we want. You know how to get it.”

  “What are you doing here? Why are you with Grund’s men?”

  Gunshots crashed from below, and there came an explosion. The floor jumped beneath Tavlin’s feet, and dust rained down from the ceiling. He leapt for the bald man’s gun. The man lunged aside with astonishing speed and clubbed Tavlin on the head with the butt of his pistol.

  Tavlin collapsed. A hand went to his head, and he felt wetness there. The world gyrated around him.

  The dark shape of the bald man remained steady, though. He seemed older than Tavlin had thought, his face heavily lined, his bushy white brows showing many curling, wiry hairs. The pox that had ravaged his face had not made him ugly, strangely, but somehow only more distinguished. The scars drank up the light, creating numerous dark wells all over his wide, heavy face. His eyes glared like arctic blue ice.

  “Tell me where the canister is,” he said.

  Tavlin spat. “No.”

  “You don’t even know what it is.”

  Tavlin’s right hand skittered over the floor surreptitiously, feeling ...

  “What, then?” he asked.

  “It could end the war.”

  “Some weapon, I suppose.”

  “You say that unthinkingly. Weapons end wars. It is their purpose.”

  “Or start them. And it would be used against my own people,” Tavlin reminded him.

  “Are they yours? Look around you, Tavlin Two-Bit. You’re in a sewer. Is this where you would be if your people gave a shit about you?” The man sighed. “If you care about your friends down here, though, you will agree. Or we will do to Muscud what we did to Taluush.”

  Tavlin’s hand found what it was looking for. He flipped his wrist, and a stone, shaken loose from the ceiling, sailed through the air. The stone struck the bald man’s pistol, and the gun spun away. Tavlin threw himself at the shotgun, grabbed it and turned about.

  The door burst open. Galesh and another man charged into the room, guns firing. Glass shattered, and Tavlin glanced at the window to see the shape of the bald man squeeze through it and vanish.

  Galesh fired after him, then stood there, panting. Gun smoke curled around him.

  “It’s over,” he huffed. “The fight’s over.”

  Dusting off his pants, Tavlin climbed to his feet. “No,” he said. “I think it’s just begun.”

  *

  Tavlin’s words were more accurate than he knew. Before Boss Vassas and his men could trigger the small explosive devises they had planted throughout the warehouse—larger ones might destabilize the surrounding structures, which would bring Vassas no end of hell from the mayor and the consortium of businesses that supported him, all of which had their own goons—the sound of motorcycles filled the air. At the head of a fleet of motorcycles, Grund stormed in. Before Boss Vassas could even organize a defense, Grund’s enforcers burst in and drove Vassas and the rest back toward the loading room. Tavlin fired and ducked, and he had to squint to see in the gunsmoke-filled hallways. Grund’s men had come in large numbers, and they proved too numerous and well-armed for Vassas’s people to repel. Grund drove Vassas’s faction through the trapdoor and onto the water.

  Tavlin fired his shotgun at the shapes on the dock even as his boat shot off into the darkness in the churning wake of Galesh’s boat until at last the invaders were safely away. Tavlin’s limbs trembled, and sweat drenched his hair and stung his eyes. His stomach quivered. Please don’t puke.

  Harry Scraggs, who had received a bullet in the gut and was slouched against the gunwale, grinned a bloody grin at him. “Fun, wasn’t it?”

  Tavlin felt a swell of dismay. “What happened?”

  “Whattaya think?”

  Blood pooled around Harry, pumping fast from the wound on his abdomen. His face looked very pale, even in the faint light filtering down through the floorboards above. Other men gathered around him. One squeezed his hand. Tavlin found a flask and gave Harry a sip, then another. Harry took his last sip before they reached the Wide-Mouth. Tavlin closed his eyes when he passed.

  *

  Tavlin got good and drunk with the others. Together they toasted each other and the dead long into the night. Toward dawn, Tavlin saw Galesh whispering to Vassas in the corner, their eyes on him. Soon Vassas sent for Tavlin.

  “Galesh says you were talking with Havictus,” Vassas said.

  “Havictus?”

  “The Octunggen bastard. I met with him before, remember. He was the leader of the ones looking for a factory to rent. That’s what he called himself, anyway. Gods know what his real name is. Right Bad Bastard, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Talking with him’s just the start of it,” Tavlin said. “I’ve got a lot to tell you.” He was slurring his words a bit by then, but not enough to be unintelligible. Adrenaline still buzzed through him, and grief too.

  “Come with me,” Vassas said.

  He showed Tavlin up into his study on the top floor, and there they shared an expensive bottle of wine. Laughter and toasts still drifted up from the ground floor, but the sounds were muted and somehow strange. Moths battered the streaked window, which was lit by gas-lights below, illuminating the stains and algae that coated the glass and filtered the light. The effect was a sort of green hue, which complimented the eeriness of the muted cheers below. In this light, sipping the fine wine, Tavlin told Vassas most of what had happened over the last two days, and he watched Vassas grow grayer and more ashen with every word. Finally, as they were slurping the dregs of the thick red wine, Tavlin finished.

  Vassas gazed at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Taluush is gone? All of it? Are you sure?”

  “It’s a pile of rubbish, although maybe something could be rebuilt from it. I’m sure you’ll see some refugees from it over the coming days. Where the G’zai went I don’t know.”

  “Back to their black, watery hole, I’d guess.” Vassas stood and stretched. Pacing back and forth before the green-streaming window, he said, “So the Octs want the briefcase, or what’s in it—this canister of yours. The one that gave you nightmares.”

  “Havictus said it was some sort of weapon. Maybe it's alchemical, but if so it’s like no alchemy we know. They needed those ancient jewels to make it, remember, wrought by some pre-human means.”

  “But why were they delivering it to this church? The Temple of Magoth, if that’s what it was."

  "Good question. They must be working together, the worshippers of Magoth and the Octunggen. And Octung is also working with Grund, too, it seems; that's why Havictus was in Grund's warehouse. Maybe Havictus is the one who's been supplying him with guns and motorcycles, maybe even money to pay for mercenary soldiers. Havictus is using them all—toward what end, who knows, but we have to stop him. It can’t be good, whatever it is. And it has to be us. No one else will do it or even believe us.”

  “Shit, I’m not sure if I believe us.”

  Tavlin paused. “You don’t doubt me, do you, Boss?”

  Vassas returned his stare, gray and ill-looking. His eyes looked very red. At last he said, “No. No, I guess not. Still, what can we do about it?”

  “You just launched a raid on Grund. Launch a raid on the Octunggen factory. Smash their equipment to bits so they can’t make any more of this weapon, and we’ll work to hide what was made. Maybe destroy it.”

  Vassas stopped pacing. He stood framed in the green window so that a dark shadow flung before him and green light bathed the air to both sides. “You just saw what happened to us, Two-Bit. We lost some good men tonight, and that was against enemies we know. The Octs have weird weapons. Powerful weapons. Shit, you saw what they did to Nancy and my people, and that was in the next room. You would have us make
war on them?” He shook his head. “We’re not fucking with the Octunggen.”

  “Then they’ll find me—or you, now—torture us for the location of the briefcase, retrieve it and use it on Ghenisa.”

  “Ghenisa is responsible for us living in a sewer.”

  “Yes, but it’s a sewer of Ghenisa. You really think the Octunggen will let you stay down here once they overrun the country? Besides, Ghenisa’s not so bad. It’s a good country, maybe one of the best in all of Urslin. The best food, at least that appeals to me. The best art. Hell, prostitution’s even legal in some counties.”

  Vassas scratched his ear, looking agitated. “What do you want me to do, huh, Tavlin? I can’t take on Octung.”

  Tavlin sucked in a deep breath. “I’m working on that. Meanwhile, I need to lay low. And Sophia, too. She’s staying at the Twirling Skirt.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. She just sent a runner little while ago. Forgot to tell you. Wanted to know where you were. I told the runner to tell her you were with me, and you were fine.”

  “Good. Thanks.” Then Tavlin sat up straight.

  “What is it?”

  Tavlin felt cold all over. “Havictus, he knows I’m working for you. He knows now if he didn’t before. He’ll know I’m here, and he would have had people watching the Wide-Mouth. They would have followed the runner back to the Skirt!”

  He lunged out of the chair and made for the door. Vassas stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.