The Atomic Sea: Part Nine

by Jack Conner

  Marculin didn’t answer. Avery wished he had a good-sized bottle of port at hand. He could use something to steady his nerves.

  A radar operator looked up. “Sir, contacts approaching—fast. Fighters from the Ysstral battle group.”

  Suddenly pale, Captain Marculin spun to the priests. “Do something.”

  Confused, Avery saw the priests lowering their heads and closing their eyes, as if communing. The senior one said, “The Great One is stretching out his mind ... yes, yes, he has them now ... He’s at them!”

  Avery turned to the radar operators, then over their shoulders to their screens. Many small dots, flickering in and out of existence, swarmed toward the central point, the zeppelin, moving in broad, tight formations. Suddenly the formations trembled and began to disintegrate, unraveling like a tapestry in a fire pit. The dots moved erratically this way and that, some spinning out of control. Still moving forward, they reached the central point but veered around it in every conceivable direction. Avery heard the sound of motors and leapt when a flashing shape shot by the windows of the bridge. Another spun by, pinwheeling, and plowed into a third. Fire and smoke expanded, and both shapes spun to the sea. Lightning flashed up where they struck.

  “How is this possible?” Avery said. His voice sounded faint to his ears, incredulous. None but Sheridan seemed to hear him. “How?”

  “The Collossum.” Her voice was tight, as if in distaste. “Once their physical weapons ceased working, they began developing psychic ones. They’re physical things, tools, but they warp minds, not dimensions. The Device’s effects can’t hamper them.”

  “Hells.”

  In a low voice, she added, “They’re limited ... so far. The machines are big and blocky. Lord Uthua has one in his suite. He must be strong in order to use it.”

  “You mean ...”

  “Yes.”

  He tried to keep his expression neutral; one of the priests had taken an interest in him. Still, it disturbed him that he had been forced to take up company with such people, people that must sacrifice to their god in order to make him strong enough to use his powers to protect them. How many? he wondered. How many victims had Uthua fed from to enable this defense?

  “It’s ironic, in a way,” Sheridan said. “The technology was inspired by the abilities of the Ysstral lords. I wonder ... If any are aboard those ships, they might be able to counter Uthua.”

  The fighters, those that could, quickly congealed into a semi-organized mass and retreated back toward the battle group that had dispatched them; Avery watched the blips on the screen.

  “The zeppelins are still coming,” a radar operator said.

  “Are they mad?” Captain Marculin said. “After what just happened?” To the priests, he added, after clearing his throat—the sacrifices must have disturbed him, too, on some level—“Can Lord Uthua move against the zeppelins?”

  The priests closed their eyes again, then: “The machines need more fuel. So does the Master.”

  “Damn. What about the captives?”

  “He took them all to allow the defense you just saw.”

  Marculin glared through the windows, and Avery could almost feel him willing the pirate fleet on. “Come on, come on.”

  “Shall we call for volunteers?” one of the priests said. “Some of your soldiers might give themselves to the Great One in order to aid the effort. If not, you can help some volunteer.”

  Marculin didn’t answer. The radar operators hunched grimly, the larger blips that denoted enemy zeppelins moving in. Avery wondered if indeed an Ysstral lord commanded the group and if he was about to witness a psychic battle—or, more likely, die from one.

  “Fine,” Marculin said. “I’ll give the men a choice.”

  He began to lift a telephone handset from a wall, perhaps to deliver a request for sacrificial volunteers through the intercom, when suddenly from over the horizon the sun winked on metal, not just on one shape but many. The aluminum-skinned bi-wing and tri-wing fighters roared toward the Valanca, smoke trailing behind them. As they grew larger in his vision, Avery saw that, much like the pirates’ naval fleet, the craft were patchwork things, held together with tape and glue and luck, each one different from the other, from what looked like every country in this hemisphere of the world. Their original emblems had been painted over—replaced, Avery soon saw, by the trident-and-two-moons sigil of Segrul.

  “About godsdamned time,” Marculin said, and the priests shifted angrily at the blasphemy. He seemed to realize it, and a strange, almost frightened look passed across his features. Avery felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. If the captain’s afraid, I’d better be careful indeed. To the helmsman, Marculin said, “Aim for those planes. All speed ahead.”

  Avery almost sagged in relief, not just at the deliverance from the Ysstral fleet but at the deliverance from mass sacrifice. This voyage had almost gone terribly dark. Sheridan seemed to have seen his reaction. Bizarrely, and so quickly no one else could have noticed, she reached out and squeezed his hand. Then, just like that, it was over. Avery was shocked; it was the warmest thing he’d ever seen her do.

  He turned to her, but her attention was fixed solely on the incoming ships, not even acknowledging what she’d done.

  “Sir,” said a radar operator. “The Ysstral ships are heading back along their course. Repeat, the Ysstrals ships are heading back. They’re breaking off!”

  “Thank the gods,” Marculin said with a devout, and perhaps apologetic, nod to the priests. They barely recognized the gesture.

  The pirate fighters swept in, past the zeppelin, and closed on the retreating Ysstral warships. As Avery watched on the monitor, and then in real life as Marculin had the ship swung around to observe the activity, the Ysstral fighters, and the cannons and other weapons of the bigger ships, eventually sent the pirates back, but not before the rout was complete and the Ysstrals driven far away. The pirates returned and circled the Valanca until the larger pirate vessels closed in and took up flanking positions. Most of the fighters returned to their host ships, landing on a long strip supported by three interlinked zeppelins, a makeshift aerial aircraft carrier.

  With some ceremony, Admiral Qasch of the pirate fleet—now known, Avery learned (with some ruefulness, he was sure) as the Air Force of the International Coalition—boarded the Valanca and was officially thanked by Captain Marculin, who then asked Admiral Qasch to have his force escort the Valanca the rest of the way to the Flying Fortress. Qasch agreed and departed, but not before installing a handful of his men and women aboard the zeppelin—“My eyes and ears,” as he said—to monitor conditions there in his absence. The crew of the Valanca watched the pirates with naked suspicion, and Avery could practically hear them wondering if the Valanca had just been taken over.

  * * *

  That night a ceremony was to take place honoring Uthua. It had been meant as a sacrifice attended by almost all of the crew of the Valanca, but now Marculin extended an invitation to Qasch and his people to take part in it, as well. The pirates accepted, and that night Avery was bemused to see the Octunggen and the pirates—soldiers of the International Coalition, that is—collaborating on preparations for the event. The pirates moved fast, long accustomed to making do in an aerial environment, and the Octunggen approached it all with their usual calculated resolve, not as fast as the pirates but with skill and speed, and what they accomplished was much sturdier than the work their counterparts did. When he ventured outdoors that evening, Avery was impressed and unnerved to see the scaffolding and platforms that now hung suspended in the air between the Valanca and the nearest five airships, as if caught by a massive spider’s web, and especially the great stage that was to serve as the scene of sacrifice. Eyes lingering on the great black slab, he shuddered, and it had nothing to do with the wind, which gusted coldly over the decks.

  “I don’t want to witness this,” he told Sheridan, beside him.

  “You think I do?”

  “I don’t know.”
When her eyes narrowed, he immediately recanted. “I’m sorry. It’s just ... this ...”

  She let out a breath. “I know. But hiding in your room will only raise eyebrows. Trust me, you can’t afford that. You’re on thin enough ice as it is, if you’ll pardon the phrase. You’re very lucky I didn’t report your little stunt back in Xlatleb to the Captain.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

  He paused, feeling a shadow cross his soul. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, for the gods’ sakes. Just watch the damned sacrifice, or close your eyes if you have to, but be there. When that bastard eats the captive, you just better be there.”

  To be sure of it, she collected him at midnight. Howls and gibbers had been rising into the night for hours, the pirates, led by their own priests, celebrating and building up to the main event in their insane, nerve-wracking fashion. Avery, listening to the nightmarish sounds from the safety of his cabin, had been fortifying himself with whiskey while Sheridan had been otherwise occupied. It had been him drinking alone, starting at every howl and holler, terrified and saddened by what was to come, when she rapped on the door, at which he jumped again.

  “It’s time,” she said, sticking her head in.

  She ushered Avery by the arm up out onto the deck, where the wind was so strong it almost picked him up and hurled him overboard, and colder than ever. Pirates danced and sang all around, but there was nothing of the holy or wholesome in it. They moved in unnerving jerks and twitches to eerie rhythms provided by pipes and strings and strange instruments unknown to Avery. Darkness closed in all around them, but alchemical lanterns threw varied light on the participants, coloring them in hellfire and stretching their leaping shadows long behind them. Two of the moons cast down their own bone-yellow light on the proceedings when they could, but the roiling clouds often hid them. Even the heavens had become agitated.

  The Octunggen gathered on the central platform, kneeling and singing softly to themselves or their deity, but at some signal the pirates, those that could fit, congealed on the platform, too, ceasing their awful dance and music to join the more somber Octunggen tradition. The Octunggen played their own music, a great organ that took up half the chapel aboard the Valanca and now sent its ghostly, melancholy tunes to wash over the gathering from speakers placed strategically all around, and to its eerie melody the worshippers prayed and sang. Avery and Sheridan took their places among them, kneeling on a middle row, and Avery tried not to stare at the black slab on its dais or the man that had been laid upon it. He was a handsome fellow in his early twenties—handsome despite his infection, which was severe: golden scales covered most of his body, save one arm, his upper chest and head. He must have been drugged, as he lolled senseless on the slab, and he had not even been tied down. Strange symbols had been painted on him, and Sheridan told Avery this was to help guide him to the House of Joy in the afterlife. The man was a splendid specimen of altered humanity, and Avery supposed that was why he had been chosen for the event. Some might have thought it a greater waste sacrificing beauty to a god, but the Octunggen considered it a more worthy offering and more pleasing to the Collossum.

  The music swelled, but all other human noise ceased, the wind continuing to rise and fall, and all about them was the creaking of wood and ropes. The ranks of the priests behind the altar parted and the clergymen fell to their knees as a tall, broad-shouldered shape passed through them. The alchemical lanterns threw strange illumination across Uthua’s face and body, making his eyes gleam and his teeth shine but seeming to throw much of the rest of him into shadow. The high priest bowed last, but not before formally offering the sacrifice to Uthua, then moving, with well-practiced speed, aside.

  Uthua erupted in strange colors and limbs, bringing over his other-self so that it towered overhead, glistening and lurching, alien and phantasmal. The moons’ light played across the strange, half-solid flesh eerily, half seeming to seep through, half seeming to illume. The congregation gave a cry of devotion, making gestures with their hands. The organ reached a nerve-jangling climax, and with that Uthua stretched out his limbs, gathered the sacrifice to him and brought the man within his sac wall. Instantly the Collossum’s otherworldly acids began to dissolve him, but luckily most of the deterioration was hidden by Uthua’s dark coloring and the absence of strong light. The man never even opened his eyes.

  Avery started to breathe out, relieved that it was over, but then priests brought out a second victim, a young woman this time, and laid her on the altar. She was just as drugged as the first offering and made no protest as words were said over her and she was scooped up by Uthua. A third sacrifice was led out, and then, to Avery’s horror, a fourth. More followed, and Avery’s head swam. The pirates must have contributed their own captives. Bile choked his throat, and he wanted little more than to leap to his feet and curse Uthua and everyone here, then pry the next victim from Uthua’s tentacles.

  Seeing his distress, Sheridan grabbed his hand and squeezed it—hard—trying to provide some anchor for him. He squeezed back.

  Closing his eyes so as not to witness any more, he waited for the event to end. Eventually, after who-knows-how-many sacrifices, it did. Swollen and sated, Uthua retreated back into the shadows, his other-self slipping away as he vanished. The congregation said some more words, then broke up. Many of the pirates resumed their celebration, even more wildly than before, but the Octunggen began disassembling the platforms and scaffolding. Soon the fleet would be able to resume its journey.

  Shaken, Avery slunk back to his cabin and his bottle of whiskey, hoping to numb himself to the spectacle he’d just seen, and also to the company he was keeping. What am I doing here? How can I HELP them?

  Sheridan followed. They didn’t make love that night, but they drank together, listening to the songs of the pirates outside, which diminished over time, then lying in bed together and holding each other tight.

  He dreamed of Ani that night, as he often did, and as all too often occurred, she was in danger, but the threat this time did not come from Octunggen scientists or giant sea creatures or (as too often happened these days) evil relatives, but a swollen, monstrous form, alien and horrible. Uthua smashed the ground to either side of her with his pseudopods and lashed the air over her head with his tentacles. Falling under his shadow, her pale white face lifted in a scream that she couldn’t seem to find the strength to let out. Avery tried to reach her, but he couldn’t move, could only watch as another great pseudopod lifted over Ani and began to slam down …

  In the morning when he checked his bedside nightstand, Avery found that his god-killing knife was gone.

  THE END

  OF VOLUME NINE

  OF

  THE ATOMIC SEA

  The Atomic Sea series continues with Part Ten, which will be available soon. Until then, if you're jonesing for more stories set in the world of the Atomic Sea, be sure to check out Atomic Underworld, Nightmare City and City of Shadows. The last two take place in the strange city of Lavorgna, far from the main action of the Atomic Sea series and with different casts of characters, but full of the same mix of action, horror and weirdness.

  Or you might consider some of my other work, such as my medieval epic fantasy series Lord of the Black Tower or my contemporary fantasy / horror series The Living Night.

  Keep reading to check out the first chapter of Atomic Underworld: Part One.

  Set in the world of The Atomic Sea, Atomic Underworld takes place in the sewers beneath Hissig and stars Tavlin Two-Bit Metzler, gambler, rogue and amateur detective. Can he outwit mobsters, mutants, cultists, Octunggen spies and horrors from beyond in time to save the world? Find out today! Find it here:

  Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01F06DIQQ

  Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01F06DIQQ

  Set in the world of the Atomic Sea. When stranger-than-usual things begin to happen in the nightmarish coastal city of Lavorgna, only a wisecracking, chain-
smoking orphan teen named Stevrin can stop what's going on before it's too late. Features cultists, alchemists, the undead and things even more terrifying. You can find City of Shadows here:

  Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B87E3KW

  Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00B87E3KW

  Also set in Lavorgna, Nightmare City stars Katya Ivreski, a feisty cat burglar who has just bitten off more than she can chew. When otherworldly terrors start to stalk the streets, the local crime boss forces Katya to investigate ... or else. Mad scientists, zeppelins, zombies--oh my! No pressure, Kat.

  You can find Nightmare City here:

  Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J190EC0

  Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00J190EC0

  If you're looking for another epic series to start, try my five-part medieval epic fantasy Lord of the Black Tower or my contemporary fantasy / horror series The Living Night. If you're interested in "traditional" epic fantasy, a la Lord of the Rings (but darker and more action-packed), check out Lord of the Black Tower. You can grab the first two volumes, which together tell a complete story, in the Lord of the Black Land Omnibus:

  When a dark power rises, only one man can stand against it.

  Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J17DSE8

  Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00J17DSE8

  If you enjoy urban fantasy / horror / contemporary fantasy, like the works of Clive Barker or Anne Rice, try my series The Living Night. Can two vampires on the run save the world from destruction? Find out today!

  Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KJJT8E6