The Atomic Sea: Omnibus of Volumes Six, Seven and Eight

by Conner, Jack

  “What’s wrong?” He forced a chuckle. “I mean, besides everything?”

  “I’m just—this may sound strange—but I’m homesick, Francis. Seeing the body today, realizing there's another Collossum so close, so close and yet I can't make contact." She made a frustrated noise. "I just feel so isolated. Homesick and alone.”

  “Of course you’re homesick. But you’re not alone.”

  “I know.” She wiped her eyes. “It’s just that ... I am alone. Cut off. Cast off from my own kind. I know you’re here, and I appreciate that, but it’s not the same. Humans are so limited. Not intellectually,” she added hastily, though he wondered if she meant it. “I mean, you exist only in this one dimension. I exist across many, at all times, but you can’t interact with those parts, only this one. This one facet. It’s the most important facet, yes, as this is our anchor-plane, but still, you only know part of me, a small part, and I can never again be among those that could know me on those other levels. On them, I am alone. A pariah. Cut off from all love and affection, even contact, at least with others like myself.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, sincerely, kissing the top of her head. “It must be hard.”

  “I was one of a great people, Francis. I was one of many, and we had purpose. Vision. Power. I loved my people. Loved them so much I sacrificed my very physical form to become human in this dimension in order to promote their agenda. Then I was one of the Collossum. One of few but still plenty, and united with purpose and vision and power, bonded even more strongly than ever, with a great destiny before us. But then ... the war. The Black Sect. I severed myself from the main body of the Collossum. I became one of the Sect, tiny in numbers, but in our smallness we were bonded so closely we were almost one flesh, one mind, and we had a purpose even greater than before. Then ... Uthua. They all died, and I fled, alone ... alone. No one was left, only myself and my son, who was only partly what I am, but that part was there. My other children were murdered because of my allegiance. Now Frederick is gone, and I’m utterly, utterly bereft. Yes, I have you, and Janx, and Hildra, and Ani, and I’m grateful for that, truly I am, but ... you can’t know. We’re a social people, we R’loth, communal to the point of losing one’s individuality at times, and on some planes our bodies and minds do join, sometimes in great, roiling groups. To be isolated ... I can’t take it.” She pounded a fist against a wall, then grimaced and sucked on the heel of her hand. “I hate it! Hate this!”

  He felt the emotion in her words, the tension in her body that almost vibrated, and he wished there was something he could do, something he could say, that would make it better, but he knew there wasn’t. In this, as with Ani, it was something she would have to struggle through herself. Layanna could never go home again, and there was nothing he could do to change that.

  “We’re here for you,” he said.

  She sobbed against him. “The lights! The lights of the deep, Francis! The lights!”

  Chapter 10

  During the next days, Avery all but lived in the laboratory. He and Layanna tried substance after substance, chemical upon chemical, but nothing proved even the slightest bit effective at killing the Starfish blood or tissue. One substance they tried was the nectar of a species of exotic plant known as the ghost flower. On the eleventh day, Avery arrived at the lab to find Layanna eating one of the blooms.

  “What are you doing?” he cried. The species was known to be toxic if ingested. Not only that, but they had already tried using the substance in various ways, and it had failed to produce any appreciable result.

  Layanna held up a hand to stop him as he took a step forward, meaning to do what he didn’t know—stick a finger down her throat, maybe. Shocking him still further, she reached out and grabbed the sample of Starfish tissue before her. Closing her eyes, she concentrated, and the air blurred around her.

  * * *

  “Here’s what we’re dealing with,” Avery said to a collected Prime Minister, Janx, Hildra and Layanna in Denaris’s office. They did not know what members of her cabinet may have been corrupted and so did not involve them. “We’ve discovered that the R’loth are controlling the Starfish psychically.”

  Off their blank looks, Layanna explained: “I ate the bloom of a certain plant, and it connected me to the Starfish tissue on psychic levels. That piece of tissue, frozen aboard the Verignun and kept alive, served as a relay, connecting me with the Starfish it had come from. I was able to touch the creature’s brain, just lightly. From there I could sense that the Starfish, all of them, are linked by a psychic net, the links of the net being the brains of the Starfish, and that the net is controlled by the minds of R’loth beneath the sea. Using the sample tissue as a relay, I could just dimly sense them. The controllers. As soon as I did, I backed off, not wanting them to sense me.”

  “Good move,” Janx said.

  “The secretion from this flower increases Layanna’s mental abilities,” Avery said, “giving her the ability, we think, if she was able to ingest enough of it, to send out a psychic pulse—a lethal pulse. In theory, if she can absorb enough of this substance to build up her strength, bore into a Starfish’s interior and plug herself into its brain—and as the R’loth control them all in what Layanna describes as a psychic net, each of their brains is linked to the rest—well, if she can plug herself into one’s brain, Layanna can send out a deadly psychic blast to the others.” He gazed around at the group. “She can kill them all.”

  Silence. The group looked at each other cautiously, then back to Layanna and Avery.

  “You’re shitting us,” Hildra said.

  Avery felt the corner of his lips twitch upward. “We are not.” Smiling fully now, he said, “We can kill them all.”

  Another moment passed as they made sense of this, watching each other with new excitement, their eyes veritably sparkling with the possibilities.

  Again the first to speak, Hildra said, “That’s fucking amazing.” Even Hildebrand chirped excitedly from her lap.

  “You can really kill all the Starfish?” Janx said, skeptical, and Avery didn’t blame him.

  “I won’t know till I’ve done it,” Layanna said. “But yes, I believe so. If I can plug into one’s brain, I can use it to connect to the whole net and send out the pulse.”

  Surprising Avery, Janx threw back his great bald head and laughed. “Finally! We can strike back at these bastards.” His hands flexed into fists, then opened them, then flexed them again, as if he was imagining ripping the R’loth apart even then.

  “It’s incredible,” Denaris said. “I’d hoped for something like this, but to have it achieved ...”

  They all congratulated Layanna and Avery and let out whoops and celebratory chuckles. The sense of relief in the air was so palpable Avery felt like he could have wrapped his jaws about it and taken a fat bite. He felt it too, that hum, that glorious sense of imminent victory—or at least the possibility of victory. For too long they’d been running and hiding, unable to do anything but cower and hope the terror would pass them by. Now finally they could, as Janx said, strike back.

  Still laughing, but now more serious, Hildra swung her gaze at Layanna. “Why the fuck did you eat the damned flower, blondie? It could’ve killed you, you dumb bitch.”

  Smiling a little, Layanna gave a gentle shrug. “There was a shift in energies, I can’t explain it, I just ... felt it.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Avery said.

  “Me as well,” Denaris said. Hesitantly, as if afraid of the answer, she added, “And these R’loth can’t counter what you plan to do?”

  With utter confidence, Layanna said, “The psychic blast will override their defenses.”

  Avery rubbed his mustache thoughtfully. “It’s strange. Layanna and I tried the substance a few days ago, but it had no effect. But then there was some ... change ... Layanna said she could feel some trigger, and the nectar became effective. When that happened, she knew she could eat it and use it.”

  “That makes no godsdamn
ed sense,” said Janx.

  “No,” Avery agreed. “It does not.”

  “There’s a catch, isn’t there?” Denaris said.

  “Multiple,” Avery said. “One, we still need to complete the extradimensional drill that will enable us to bore a hole in the Starfish’s exoskeleton. Two, the lethal substance is the nectar of something called the ghost flower. Its uses include assorted medical applications, as well as being made into various alchemical compounds such as the one that makes certain tattoos glow at night.”

  Janx slapped his arm, looking shaken. “Shit, I’ve got one right here. There’s a lovely lass whose, well, parts, you can only see after dark. Her clothes’re inked with regular ink, but her body’s done with the nectar ink. Now I’m wonderin’ if I should have that bastard removed.”

  “Obtaining more of the substance is problematical,” Avery continued. “There isn’t enough in this whole continent to enable Layanna to kill a single Starfish, or so we believe.” He spread the map on Denaris’s desk. Janx and Layanna crowded around, and the Prime Minister leaned forward in her chair to get a better look when Avery tapped the unrolled paper. “The substance we need,” he said, “the nectar of the ghost flower, is collected and shipped by Coleel Industries, a company located in this city here—Ezzez.”

  “In the fucking Crothegra,” Janx said.

  “The Atomic Jungle,” Hildra added blackly.

  Avery nodded. As all could see from the map, Ezzez, capital of the exotic country of Kusk, was indeed located directly in the middle of the vast, continent-spanning jungle known as the Crothegra. The continent in question was Gulth, a great misshapen oblong south of Consur and Urslin. As for why it was known as the Atomic Jungle, Avery understood that the local system of precipitation, combined with certain unique phenomena, had led to the corruption or infection of much of the vegetation. Ezzez was a city that had long piqued Avery’s interest—a place notorious for dark alchemy and barbaric practices.

  “Apparently the countries of Gulth have been affected by the war just as we have,” Avery went on, “and Kusk has been hit pretty hard. It is, or was, a Ghenisan colony, but it was occupied by Octung during their great push south, and, with Octung’s collapse, Kusk has degenerated into a state of chaos. Apparently the region is home to numerous races, human and other, as well as various combative religions, and with the absence of a strong authority the locals have taken the opportunity to settle old scores. That’s my understanding, anyway. Car bombings, assassinations, death squads, rape squads ... At any rate, Coleel Industries’s inability to produce more of the substance is a direct result of the anarchy.”

  “If this country is, or was, a Ghenisan colony,” Layanna said, “there should be people there with whom we can deal.” She said this pointedly to Denaris.

  “We were actually coordinating with the people who served as military officials there before Octung’s arrival,” the Prime Minister said, “helping them orchestrate a resistance to the Octunggen occupiers. It is my understanding, Doctor, that Octung still controls large parts of the country and has a strong, if contested, presence in Ezzez itself.”

  “I’m sure your intelligence is better than mine,” Avery said. “So Octung still occupies the country?”

  “After the Octs’ otherworldly weapons failed, the locals rose up against them, and they withdrew to their strongholds and have lived in sort of siege-like state. Lately they’ve been faring out, though, as the people of the country have become preoccupied with their own internal problems, allowing the Octunggen to secure certain areas. The city of Ezzez is very much a debated territory—many different factions and interests, all struggling for power. Octung is just one of many. It’s a lucrative area, as I’m sure you know—all the vegetable and mineral resources of the Crothegra are especially thick in that region, as well as many exotic substances used for alchemical purposes. Octung wants to subdue it to exploit the resources there to help Octung get back on its feet.”

  “I remember we made the country our colony for much the same reason all those years ago,” Avery mused.

  “Our stewardship has been benign,” Denaris said. “Octung’s has not.”

  Avery let that pass.

  “But you have people there,” Layanna pressed, her focus on Denaris.

  “We do,” Denaris said. “The Resistance they were leading is still partly underground, but a lot of the fighting is open now. I’ll contact the leader of the movement and have him make inquiries with this company, Coleel Industries. Maybe they’re still producing the substance, just not able to deliver it, or maybe they know of another company that can get it for us.”

  “We need a large amount of concentrated nectar,” Avery said.

  “It must be fresh,” Layanna said. “From living flowers, if possible. For best results I must go myself.”

  “We need you here,” Denaris said. “Remember the other R’loth.”

  “Yes. But I cannot be in two places at once. Find me the substance and I’ll go there, ingest it, and come right back.”

  It wasn’t that easy, though. A few days later Denaris summoned them back to her office and laid it out for them.

  “Captain Vursk, the head of the Resistance throughout Kusk, couldn’t contact the company. Power’s down in large parts of Ezzez, and so are phone lines. He sent a small team across town to talk with the company’s owner directly—it’s a dangerous thing, apparently, going across town, sometimes requiring two or three days. The team never returned.”

  “Shit,” said Janx.

  Denaris nodded. “Apparently the owner of the company, one Losgana, or Losg, Coleel, holds the monopoly on harvesting and distributing the ghost flower nectar. That seems to be the way it’s done in Kusk. It’s a strange region with many alchemical source elements, and businessmen and women purchase or bribe their way into controlling the monopolies on certain ones. At any rate, this Losg Coleel controls the substance, and he’s proving a difficult man to get ahold of. General Vursk refuses to send another team out to find him unless we’re willing to send our own people with them.”

  Avery glanced at the others, and Janx swore. Layanna seemed disappointed, but if there were a deeper, more violent reaction under the surface Avery couldn’t tell it. As for himself, he felt physically sick. He had been standing, but now he hastily sat down. His legs had felt very weak all of a sudden. A fluttery feeling came to his stomach.

  “We’re going to have to go, aren’t we?” he heard himself saying. “We’re going to have to go to Ezzez.”

  “I don’t see another way,” Denaris said. “Captain Vursk refuses to send any more men, and I don’t blame him, and we don’t have time for another failed mission. Our newly acquired Octunggen submarines report that the nearest Starfish is coming our way, closer every day.”

  Avery didn’t need her to tell him that. He read the papers, and every morning or two he was greeted with news of another island vanishing, its people either killed or put to flight, and every day the destroyed island was a little closer to home. There weren’t that many left between here and there.

  “They’ll reach us in three weeks, maybe less.” Denaris let a moment of silence go by, then said, “I’ll send a couple of men with you, but beyond that ...”

  “No,” Avery said, thinking of the business card on his pillow. “We’ll go alone. Just provide us transportation.”

  “Shit,” Janx said, as if the reality of it were just sinking in. “Shit.”

  “We’d better not have to go into the fucking Atomic Jungle,” Hildra said. “Ezzez is bad enough.”

  “I’ll arrange it so that you meet up with Captain Vursk or his people upon your arrival,” Denaris said.

  “Why us?” Hildra said, and they looked at her. “I mean, why does it always have to be us?”

  “Because we took an oath,” Janx said.

  “I could send some of my people to escort Layanna,” Denaris said. “Really, she’s the only one of you that must go.”

  Silence met
this, and in that moment Avery pictured himself staying in Hissig with Ani, being a father and at rest for the first time in what seemed like forever, while Layanna went into the war-torn city with men she did not know and could not trust on a mission to determine the fate of what could very possibly be the world.

  He sighed. “I’m going. I’m the one that activated the Device and brought all this on us. I’ll help make it right if I can.”

  “Well, shit,” Janx said. “I ain’t lettin’ you go into the godsdamned Crothegra without me. Besides—see it through, right? Mu didn’t die for nothing, and that oath still matters.” He seemed to say this last part more for Hildra’s sake than his own.

  “Well, I can hardly let you die alone, you idiot,” she told him.

  Layanna touched Avery’s hand. Quietly, she said, “What of Ani?”

  * * *

  “Well?” Avery asked. “What did you think?”

  Together he and Ani walked away from the motion picture theater after having just seen Vengeance from the Grave.

  “It was great!” Ani said. “Wow, when that witch came out of the graveyard I thought I would piss my pants.”

  “Ani!”

  She laughed and hugged herself.

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Hildra.” It was true. In the days since their return, Ani had been spending many hours with Hildra and not enough with Layanna—one as a playmate, one as schoolmaster. Of the two, Ani imitated the former more than the latter, much to Avery’s chagrin.

  “You really should spend more time with Aunt Layanna,” Avery said.

  “She’s in the lab all day. And all she wants to do is study.”

  “Study is important.” He heard the lecturing tone of his voice and despaired. He wished he could be a fun, exciting father, but knew that he was not. At least he’d gotten to take Ani to the picture show alone; Janx and Hildra had begged to come along to help celebrate Ani’s birthday, but Avery had insisted on some father-daughter time. Besides, there was important business to take care of. Important, terrible business.