by Jack Conner
A door opened to starboard. A woman emerged, buttoning her shirt. She was an attractive, leanly muscled woman with a tentacle in place of her right arm and a trident necklace dangling from her throat. Sheridan stabbed her in the neck right beside the trident and continued on, not even pausing to wipe off the blood. The woman toppled backward, twitching. Blood pooled around her, coating her hair. Her tentacle reached up to stem the bleeding, then fell away as she lost strength, making smears in the blood. Avery glanced to make sure no one else occupied the cabin, then continued on. Bile and shame burned the back of his throat.
They took a ladder down to the next level just as the airship swung sharply, throwing Avery up against a bulkhead, where he struck his head. Guns boomed, and from somewhere on a different level came the sound of an explosion. Avery wiped blood from the new cut on his forehead and continued on, Sheridan showing the way. A troop of pirates trotted up the hall toward them.
Damn.
Sheridan shoved her weapons away. Avery did likewise, and both lowered their heads slightly, refusing to make eye contact with the approaching reavers. Avery’s heart nearly leapt out of his chest as the troops, about a dozen of them, neared the two, then began to pass. They’ll know, a voice screamed in Avery’s head. They’ll know who we are and kill us. That’s if they don’t mutilate and rape us, then press us into slavery.
The fish-men jogged past without even pausing. Out of the corner of his eye, Avery noticed that none wore any sort of uniform, at least no matching uniforms, though some did wear the tunic of Octung or the pants of Ghenisa, maybe an Ysstral hat or pair of shoes. Fetishes hung about several of their necks, and almost all wore trident necklaces or displayed a trident emblem somewhere on them, just like the woman with the tentacle. That was all. Nothing went together, and it was no wonder they didn’t raise an eyebrow at Sheridan and Avery, especially in this chaos.
It doesn’t make sense, Avery thought. Why are they all wearing tridents? They BETRAYED Uthua! They turned AGAINST the Collossum!
Avery and Sheridan passed down another ladder, then a long hall with a line of turrets crashing to port, blasting at some unseen enemy; Avery couldn’t tell if they fired at fish, aeroplanes or something else altogether. At last the two reached the bridge, sealed off by a closed hatch and guarded by two fierce-looking mutants. Sheridan flung her knife into the chest of one and fired her gun into the head of the other, blowing his brains against the bulkhead. Without pausing, she reached the hatch and threw it open, then stepped through onto the bridge, gun blasting.
Avery sucked up his courage and followed. A soldier manning a console jumped to his feet and lifted his gun toward Sheridan. Avery shot him. Blood mushroomed from his chest and he pitched backward over the console.
Several bodies already lay bloody at their stations, and a broad-chested mutant that might have been the captain sprawled on the deck at Sheridan’s feet.
“Who’s next?” she shouted, sweeping her gun at them all. “I dare you, you bastards, who’s next?”
The dozen remaining officers and technicians on the bridge stared at her but didn’t move. Through the windshield that wrapped around three sides of the bridge, the battle raged on, shockingly close and vivid, even through the rain; wipers swished the water away.
“Take their weapons,” Sheridan told Avery.
Nervously, he began going from one pirate to another, collecting their side arms, then sliding them along the deck toward Sheridan.
“You’ll pay for this,” snarled one woman, tall and cadaverous, with many scars slashing through her pale blue scales. Avery took her for the Executive Officer.
“Can it,” Sheridan told her.
“Fuck you, you pagan whore. You’ll see what we do to—”
Sheridan shot her between the eyes, and the body fell over backwards to strike the deck with a heavy meaty sound. The skull broke open more at the impact, spraying blood and brains. Several of the crewmen looked ill, and more than one turned away.
“Enough!” said Sheridan and marched forward, scattering pirates, then began flipping levers and mashing buttons. The zeppelin gave a violent shudder, then tilted toward the ground.
“You’re insane!” one of the crew said. “You’ll kill us all!”
Sheridan indicated the hatch with her gun. “I give you leave to go.”
The pirates streamed through the hatch and down the hall, having to claw their way upward as they went; the craft was now quite noticeably tipping down. Avery grabbed some overhead netting, hung there for just this purpose, with both hands, having to drop his gun to the deck first.
The airship drove toward the ground, knocking through a cloud of fish and aeroplanes. One flying fish struck the windshield with a whack, then bounced away, leaving viscous smears in its wake and a web of cracked glass.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Avery said.
Sheridan didn’t reply. She maintained her footing with admirable poise, still standing over the console, but she gripped it with both hands. When the ground rushed up at them, she yanked a lever, then another, and the ship leveled out somewhat. But not enough.
“Hang on,” she said. “This is going to be rough.”
“I’m already hanging—”
The zeppelin drove into the ground at an almost horizontal angle, bouncing Avery off his feet and against the ceiling, which he still clung to as the airship plowed a furrow through land-bound combatants, scattering giant lobsters and lines of pirates, even smashing aside a tank. The windows shattered and cold rain and wind gusted in, and Avery felt something slice his arm. A trickle of warmth flowed down it. The zeppelin rocketed forward, driving toward the Necropolis—Sheridan had aimed well—which reared overhead with its blackly purple towers flickering with otherworldly light. At last the airship drew to a stop, pitching Avery forwards and pulling him loose of the netting. He was flung against a console and caught himself before he could crack open his head like the Executive Officer.
Gasping, he spun to see Sheridan pick herself up off the ground. She no longer wore a look of exultation but scowled with an almost demonic sense of determination. Shouts echoed through the hall beyond the hatch.
Sheridan grabbed up another pistol, and, after checking that it was loaded, pushed it on Avery. “We’d best get clear.”
He followed as she scrambled through the shattered glass and outside once more. Rain fell on them, and they pulled their hoods up to protect their heads. Behind them, the pirates’ land units gave battle to the ngvandi, two savage forces of fish-people engaged in close-quarters combat.
Wonderingly, Avery said, “You’ve pushed us through the enemy line.”
She didn’t pause to acknowledge the compliment. At a crouch, she darted toward the Necropolis. Avery swallowed, said a prayer under his breath to any god that might be watching, and followed. Ahead loomed the purple towers, multi-faceted spires straining toward the clouds. The grand doors were already open. Ani had already passed this way, then. Segrul must have forced her to communicate with the priests, who had opened it for her, as they were bound to do. Soft purple light from the interior flooded onto the flagstones of the Plaza of Dreams.
Behind Avery sounded gunfire, lots of it, coming from all along the line of fighting, as well as the air. He couldn’t tell if any of it was directed at him, but it would be just as easy to catch a bullet meant for someone else. The ground rocked beneath him, and he glanced back to see a zeppelin drop another bomb on a wave of charging ngvandi. The explosion tore a hole in their lines, but the warriors divided around it and came on, howling and afire with bloodlust.
Further up the line, one of the Collossum in its other-form, all pseudopods and tendrils, led another wave of ngvandi into a dense line of pirates. Surely Uthua’s so-called brother, the Collossum tore into the pirates, and they assaulted him with venom whips, but Avery didn’t have time to watch. He turned back, almost tripping over a body as he did, to find that he and Sheridan had almost reached the great doors of t
he Necropolis. Purple light from inside illuminated several flying fish just then setting down.
“It’s them,” Avery said.
Sheridan made no comment, but indeed it was Janx, Hildra, Layanna and Uthua, along with some of the Mnuthra’s priests. The high priest with the fingerbones was not among them; apparently he hadn’t made it. They formed a perimeter around their lord as he climbed down from his mount, holding up shields to protect him from gunfire with one hand and aiming their own guns with the other.
“Don’t shoot!” Avery called as he drew near, as the ngvandi had sighted on him, and at a bark from Uthua they aimed away.
Avery flinched at a roar from above and glanced up to see an aeroplane, trailing smoke, smash into the crystal side of the Necropolis and explode. Even as bits of it rained down, he and Sheridan reached the others, and the ngvandi raised shields over their heads to protect them from debris. Janx clapped him on the back and said, “Glad you could join us, Doc.”
“Me, too.”
Layanna’s gaze swung from Avery to Sheridan. Hastily, he separated himself from the admiral and embraced Layanna, but she was stiff in his arms.
“Come,” Uthua said and started to lead the way inside, but just then one of the great lobsters, still crackling with occasional lightning, reached the group and snapped at Hildra. She rolled across the ground to escape it. Janx fired at the creature’s mouthparts, chipping a mandible. It came on. The pirates are controlling it, Avery realized. One of their leaders had seen enemies about to enter the Necropolis and had sent one of their pets to prevent it. It had likely been stationed nearby specifically to prevent this.
It grabbed up one of the ngvandi, cutting it in half, and melted another with a shriek.
As one, Layanna and Uthua called upon their other-selves and attacked the decapod. Its lightning struck them, lighting them up from within, but they persevered, lashing it with tentacles and slamming it with pseudopods. It shrieked, that same soul-piercing sound that could melt a person, and Avery’s heart leapt into his throat; the thing’s mouth-parts were very near Layanna.
Her sac trembled, the cilia sprouting from it rippling spastically, and the human shape inside the amoeba-sac shrank away from the creature’s maw, as if to distance herself from the sound. Then the sound ended, and Layanna lived.
Uthua tore into the creature’s back. Still it drove on, snapping at Avery. He flung himself backward, striking the ground and rolling awkwardly. Hildra helped him up and Janx propelled him toward the gaping door of the Necropolis.
“We’ve gotta get inside!”
Avery sprinted toward the portal, Janx, Hildra and Sheridan beside him. Avery took a moment to appreciate the alien-looking hall beyond the massive doors—how many Ysstrals had stared at this structure every day of their lives and wondered what lay on the other side of those walls?—and then he was across the threshold and running. Mist swirled around him. Purple crystal walls rose to either side. Behind him he could hear the sound of the decapod shrieking.
He was just rounding the first bend when a dark figure stumbled toward him, coming from deeper within the structure and clutching a wound on its lower back. It was darker inside, but the walls glowed with an eerie violet light of their own. As Avery’s eyes began to adjust to its illumination, he recognized the figure and gasped.
It was Uthua.
Chapter 7
Uthua—this Uthua, the one coming toward them, not the one fighting the crustacean behind them, though they looked the same—reeled on his feet, blood spurting from between the fingers of the clawed hand that pressed against his lower back. He saw the members of the group without really seeing them, then, losing strength, he sank to his knees, resting his weight on his other hand. Blood dripped to the floor.
Avery and the others stopped over him and turned to stare at each other. None spoke.
Slowly, Hildra knelt beside the terrible god-thing and placed her hand on his shoulder. “What the fuck?”
He breathed in raggedly, a bit of spittle running down from his fishy lips over his chin. Still he said nothing. The sound of the battle seemed very far away now, almost in another world.
“What happened to you?” Hildra pressed.
Uthua lifted his head, and for the first time he saw her, really saw her.
“What is this, a ghost?” he said.
“What … ?”
“I saw you die.”
Her mouth opened and closed. “What—what—?”
Fury flashed across his features. He lurched to his feet. One of his claws swiped at Hildra’s throat. Janx yanked her away just as his claws would have torn out her jugular.
“I will feed,” Uthua seethed.
Then, like that, he vanished. He didn’t so much blink out of existence as slip out of it, fading like a ripple on water. He was gone, leaving the four standing in an empty hall. Avery blinked and shook his head.
“What did he mean?” Hildra said, looking pale. “He said ... that I ...”
“Perhaps the Necropolis is playing with our minds,” Avery said. “Apparently the Ygrith had great psychic powers. Maybe their buildings do, too.”
Hildra was clutching at her throat, as if Uthua had actually managed to tear it.
“Fuck that and a pile of monkeys,” she said, but her voice sounded raw.
Janx put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight. “It’ll be alright, sugarlips,” he said.
It was among the first real endearments Avery had ever heard him use for Hildra, and he knew then that Janx was as worried as he was. Hildra stared at the spot where Uthua had vanished as if staring at her own doom. Avery sincerely prayed that it was not.
Footsteps behind them. They spun to see Layanna and Uthua, the other Uthua, their amoeba-selves gone, striding up the hall toward them. In the background heaped the ruins of the decapod, its armor rent and torn away, revealing pink flesh gouged to its core. The two Collossum had ripped out its guts. None of the ngvandi retainers had survived.
“Say no word of this to him,” Sheridan said in a low voice, meeting the gaze of the other three, each in turn. Silently, they nodded. It wouldn’t do for Uthua to know that another Uthua was injured and apparently wanted them dead. He might well side with the other version of himself against them.
Layanna, her earlier coolness melted away, hugged Avery, and he could feel the heat in her skin as they embraced. That battle had gotten her adrenaline flowing, or else she’d eaten some of the lobster and found that it agreed with her. She had liked it once before, he remembered.
“It is good to see you again,” she said. “I was worried when you disappeared like that.”
She meant in the aerial battle, he knew. Apparently fighting a giant lobster deserved no comment, but losing track of him was a different matter. At least she didn’t see the kiss, he thought.
“Luckily Sheridan noticed my mount getting hit,” he said.
Layanna nodded at the admiral. “Thank you.”
Guardedly, Sheridan nodded back, saying nothing. Her eyes were very watchful.
What have I gotten myself into? Avery thought. He cleared his throat. “Let’s find Ani.”
They set off. Avery half-expected the other Uthua to lurch out at them again, or some new phantom, but for the present none did. Hildra managed to shake off her fear, but her eyes were alert and she swung her gun at every shadow. The sound of the battle faded behind, then was gone, replaced by the calm, eerie stillness of the Necropolis. Purple walls rose around them, all of beautiful diamond-hard crystal stretching to vaulted ceilings far overhead. The material seemed all of a piece, as if the entire building had been carved from one enormous lump. Of course, Avery knew it had more likely been grown, or designed to grow, into this configuration.
Studying the walls as he passed them, he developed a new theory. Many crystals in his experience had small fissures or perhaps bubbles of air trapped in them, but in this building the fissures and bubbles moved. Tiny bubbles could be seen flowing throughout th
e interior of the crystal, moving up and down or side to side, seeming to course along specific avenues. Did the crystal contain veins or arteries or some equivalent? The walls seemed to move, just slightly, the fissures flexing, bending, the various facets of the crystal changing moment to moment, but slowly, almost unnoticeable. Alive, Avery thought. This place is alive. The others made sounds of awe as they passed through the halls and he knew they felt it too.
Several times the hall branched, and they had to choose one way or another. Some of the halls led up, some down, actually leading underground. Avery, dizzy with the thought, wondered if the structure might be just as deep as it was tall. Perhaps even deeper.
“What’s that?” Hildra said, as they reached another fork. One branch led along this level, another up.
With her hook, she indicated a lumpen shape on the upward slope. The group moved over to it, and Avery saw that it was a corpse. Not a human one, however, but one of the priests of the Order of the Sleeper. Warily, he rolled it over, and its alien face, as much as it could be said to have a face, stared back at him, tiny black eyes glazed and still. Bullet holes showed along its length, riddling its lamprey-like skin, and a scintillant clear fluid that might be its blood had spattered the priest’s petal-like limbs, hardening strangely.
“Segrul,” Janx said. “He did this.”
“You think he would have come in person?” Avery said.
“He would have trusted no other.”
Cautiously, the group moved up the ramp, finding one body, then another. All had fallen in attitudes of fleeing or defending themselves, their glittery blood (Avery did a double take) solidifying in icy pools on the floor. The ice had hardened so much that it had actually cracked in places. The priests’ anatomy was even more bizarre than Avery had supposed, and conformed to no terrestrial biology he was aware of. Then again, he wouldn’t have expected the Sleeper’s handmaidens to be things of the natural world. In any event, none of the priests were armed.
