The Atomic Sea: Volume Ten: Into the Dark Lands Read online

  THE ATOMIC SEA

  PART TEN

  INTO THE DARK LANDS

  by Jack Conner

  Copyright 2017

  All rights reserved

  Cover image by Christopher Karbach

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  MAP

  THE STORY SO FAR

  CHAPTER ONE (click here to skip the Story So Far)

  AFTERWARD

  The World of the Atomic Sea

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  THE STORY SO FAR

  (Click here to skip to Chapter One)

  BOOK ONE

  A thousand years ago, the sea began to change, and the change spread. Now the boiling, toxic, lightning-wreathed Atomic Sea has encompassed every ocean on the planet, and the creatures that live in it have become mutated and unnatural. The sea's taint can infect any human who comes in contact with it or with unprocessed seafood, killing them . . . or altering them. No one knows why the sea has become this way or what it portends, only that it's irrevocably changed the world.

  Meanwhile, world war has erupted, and the small country of Ghenisa, like many others, is tottering on the brink of collapse under the onslaught of the Empire of Octung. Middle-aged widower Dr. Francis Avery is aboard a military whaling ship far out on the Atomic Sea when a series of murders occurs onboard. There is a spy on the ship; the killer is an Octunggen agent.

  Things get stranger when a beautiful naked woman is pulled from the Atomic Sea out of the mouth of a great whale. She shows no sign of infection, which makes no sense, and no one can tell where she’s from. She’s in a coma and it falls to Avery to bring her back to consciousness and solve her mysteries.

  Meanwhile he’s carrying out a loveless affair with Jessryl Sheridan, a tough, determined woman and the captain of the whaling vessel.

  The beautiful woman in the coma, whom he takes to calling Patient X, comes to, briefly, and he’s horrified to hear her speak Octunggen. He’s the only one around. She tells him that she’s not Octunggen, never mind the language she uses, and that she wants to stop Octung. She warns him against telling anyone of this because, she claims, there are Octunggen spies peppered throughout the Ghenisan military. If he tells anyone, they’ll kill her. Then she lapses back into a coma.

  After an attack by an Octunggen submarine, Avery is working on the Executive Officer, Commander Hambry, in the medical bay, when he comes across scars that could only have been inflicted by the last person to be murdered onboard, Avery’s best friend Paul. Hambry is the killer. Avery knows this but has no way to truly prove it, so he follows Hambry when the X.O. goes outside in a storm and finds the X.O. about to toss a canister containing a message to Octung into the waters, to be retrieved by an Octunggen submarine.

  Avery confronts him, they fight, and Avery manages to kill Hambry. Afterward, knowing no one will believe him, he pretends Hambry committed suicide by throwing himself overboard. Hambry’s dying words, however, had indicated that there was a second spy on board.

  Enlisting the help of the grizzled whaler Janx, Avery breaks into Hambry’s cabin and searches it, looking for evidence of the second agent. He finds it, too. The other spy is his lover, Captain Sheridan. Shocked, Avery plans to go to the authorities as soon as they reach the mainland, but when they do the evidence is gone.

  Again, Avery brings Janx into things, asking the big man to use his criminal connections to have Sheridan followed so that her network can be uncovered and some real evidence found. Meanwhile Avery pretends to have Octunggen sympathies in an effort to convince Sheridan to reveal her plans to him. He’s trying to out-spy a spy.

  He is also, during this time, working with doctors and scientists at the ominous Fort Brunt, where Patient X is being studied and treated. One night when all the other doctors are gone, she reveals to Avery that she’s been awake for some time, waiting to get him alone. Since he didn’t betray her last time, she trusts him, as much as she can, and needs his help. Her name is Layanna and she wants to stop Octung—stop the entire war—and possibly save the world. She won’t tell him anything else, though, but wants him to get her out of Fort Brunt, a military hospital, where she is essentially a prisoner. He thinks about it. Can he trust her?

  While spying on Sheridan, he uncovers a critical piece of information when she meets with her spymaster Gaescruhd. Gaescruhd tells her that one of the Black Sect is near and to be on the lookout. The Black Sect are rebel members of the Collossum, the gods worshipped by Octung. He describes this member of the Black Sect, and Avery realizes that it’s Layanna. She’s a god of Octung! Suddenly he realizes she might just be telling the truth when she said she could stop Octung. She’s powerful, if nothing else, and not human. What’s more, as a member of the Black Sect, she truly is an enemy of Octung.

  Gaescruhd orders Sheridan to kill Layanna. Panicked—the only hope of stopping Octung is about to be murdered—Avery enlists Janx’s help and breaks Layanna out. The whaler’s underworld cronies help, among them Hildra, a young woman with a hook for a hand and a pet monkey. Sheridan, an admiral now, heads up the hunt for them and leads an assault on them at Janx’s apartment.

  Layanna, awake and with her powers gathered to her once more, repels the troops, at the same time showing Avery and the others in the band just what she really is—inhuman and terrifying. In her other-self, she possesses tentacles and pseudopods and is altogether a horror from another dimension.

  After they escape, she tells them that her plan is to rendezvous with others in the Black Sect in the mountains. Once together, they will journey to Lusterqal, the capital of Octung, and assemble the “Device” they went so far to learn how to build. Once assembled, this so-called Device will render Octung’s extradimensional weapons impotent and will allow the enemies of Octung to rise up against them, halt the march of war and throw the Octunggen back. If they can complete and activate the Device, they can stop the war.

  All Avery and the others have to do is get Layanna to her friends in the Black Sect and they can do the rest. Thus they journey into the mountains, Sheridan and an entire army on their heels.

  BOOK TWO

  They reach the place where the other Black Secters are supposed to meet, but it’s a trap orchestrated by the vile Uthua, a Collossum who had pretended to break away from the others in the Great Temple but who really still serves the Great Elders. He kills one of the members of Janx’s crew. Avery manages to critically wound Uthua, but Uthua then captures Muirblaag, a great fish-man and Janx’s best friend. Muirblaag stays behind while Avery, Janx, Hildra and Layanna flee in a dirigible.

  Their only hope is to reach Cuithril, an all-but-mythical city underground. There will be a functioning altar there through which Layanna can send the plans for the Device to her cohorts in Lusterqal. Unfortunately Cuithril lies on the other side of a war zone. Octung is invading and defeating the mountainous country of Ungraessot, land of the God-Emperor, and Cuithril is deep inside Ungraessot.

  Along their journey, Layanna reveals more about her people, including that they are responsible for the Atomic Sea. Known as the R’loth (those of the R’loth who have taken human form are called the Collossum), they dwell beneath the sea and hail from another set of dimensions, which they fled after the rise of the dreaded Muug. The R’loth want to transform the world into a reflection of their own reality and turn all humans into slaves and food. They’ve been using Octung as their
puppets to this end.

  Avery and the others manage to meet the God-Emperor of Ungraessot and gain access to the Hallowed Halls, which lead to Cuithril, but before they do Avery encounters Sheridan. She reveals that Anissa, his nine-year-old daughter who died four years ago along with his wife Mari, has been revived and restored to life by a secret new scientific process, and that Sheridan will give Ani back to Avery if only he’ll deliver Layanna into the hands of Octung, whom Sheridan is openly working for now.

  Avery refuses but in his mind he’s unsure. Meanwhile he and Layanna become lovers. The band reaches Cuithril only to find that Uthua has arrived before them. The evil Collossum has possessed the body of Muirblaag and co-opted the temple and its priesthood, thus making it all but impossible for Avery and the others to reach the altar inside the temple. Yet they sneak in, send off the plans amidst a great battle, and escape.

  Unfortunately, in sending the plans to the surviving members of the Black Sect in Lusterqal, they allowed the Collossum to trace the connection and locate the Black Sect, which had been in hiding. Now the members of the Black Sect are dying, hit by an otherworldly weapon during the attack that followed. They might be able to begin building the Device, but it will be up to Layanna to complete it and to activate it.

  Avery and the others agree to accompany her to Lusterqal, into the very heart of Octung.

  BOOK THREE

  They arrive in Lusterqal only to be confronted by Sartrand, another Collossum, apparently rogue and no longer serving the Elders that rule the Collossum and all R’loth. Layanna believes him to be a Muugist. The reason the R’loth had to escape their own set of dimensions was because of the awful beings known as the Muug, mighty god-things dredged up from a nightmarish abyss. Some of the R’loth worship the Muug, and it is feared that some of these Muugists managed to infiltrate those who fled their home set of dimensions to this world.

  Whoever Sartrand serves, he gives Layanna a way to summon him and his allies, presumably other Muugists, if they need help. He wants the Device for himself, though he doesn’t say why.

  Avery and the others arrive at the secret headquarters of the Black Sect to discover, as they feared, that the renegade gods are diseased and dying. The Device isn’t finished and activating it will be arduous, though Avery isn’t told how, not then. He does learn that the Great Temple of the Collossum is summoning all Collossum to it for an urgent meeting about how to end the threat of the Black Sect. The only way to gain access to this meeting is for some infected person to infiltrate the Great Temple and listen in on the gathering.

  Avery takes this task upon himself. He eats diseased seafood and becomes infected by the Atomic Sea. His only mutation is some subtle striations across his torso, neck and lower face. He enters the Temple, overhears the plans of the Collossum (as delivered by Uthua, who has become a near-Elder), and escapes, but on the way out he bumps into none other than Sheridan … and Ani. True to her word, the admiral had brought the girl back to life and now she is Ani’s guardian. Seeing Avery, Sheridan sends the girl away.

  Furious, Avery kidnaps Sheridan and escapes with her, meaning to get Sheridan to help him release Ani from Octunggen custody. The others are upset when he takes Sheridan into the heart of the Black Sect camp, where she is locked away. Avery tells them what he’s learned, they compensate, and the Device is completed. Now all that’s left is to activate it. Finally Avery learns what this means.

  The Device is to be taken by underground train back toward the Atomic Sea, for only by the powerful, otherworldly energies of its waters can the Device be activated and Octung defeated. The Black Sect is expecting pursuit, as Octung desperately wants the Device for themselves. If the Octunggen can reverse its functions, they can make their otherworldly weapons even more powerful.

  Sheridan escapes and signals the Octunggen authorities. Uthua himself leads the attack on the Black Sect, who are wiped out. In the chaos, Sheridan grabs the Device, steals one of the underground trains and takes off, having shot Hildra before she left.

  BOOK FOUR

  Avery, Layanna and Janx take the wounded Hildra to the second underground train and take off after Sheridan. Avery doctors Hildra while Janx drives. Avery manages to save Hildra, but Janx is angry at him. All of this is his fault. Because he wanted to save his daughter, ruin has been brought to them all. If Sheridan can manage to put enough distance between the two trains, she will be able to get away and bring the Device to her overseers. Octung will have won the war.

  Instead, her train crashes into an enormous underground bug, which is blocking off the tracks. Avery and the others come across the wreckage, but her body and the Device is nowhere to be seen. They’re in the middle of an enormous alien-looking city far underground. Setting off into it, they quickly realize the city is inhabited by intelligent insect-people, who immediately try to kill the invaders. Avery’s group find Sheridan, still alive, if badly wounded, and in possession of the Device, and they fight the bug-people side by side, until it’s clear that the bug people are too many.

  Reluctantly, Layanna summons Sartrand and his fellow Muugists, who arrive via some sort of teleportation device and repel the bug-people. It had been Sartrand who had ordered the bug-people to block the tracks. Sartrand demands Layanna hand over the Device. Sheridan manages to drive the Muugists back through their teleportation portal, which closes behind them. She’d been injured in the wreck and will die without medical help.

  So, still in possession of the Device, she kidnaps Avery and takes off in the second train, stranding Janx, Hildra and Layanna in the strange subterranean city.

  Avery and Sheridan, former lovers, reconnect somewhat as they hurtle along through the darkness. He doctors her back to health and she keeps him chained up. They cross beneath the borders of Octung and go far beyond, eventually coming upon Laisha, an exotic country occupied by Octung.

  Finally Sheridan is able to hand the Device over to Octunggen authorities. Instead of having Avery arrested, Sheridan allows him to roam free. The two form an odd bond. Avery and Layanna had been on a break because of her refusal to forgo human sacrifice, and he and Sheridan resume their old physical relationship. On the side, he works with Laishan rebels to try to overthrow Octung and steal back the Device.

  During a revolt organized by the rebels, he attempts to do just that, betraying Sheridan, but she had seen this coming and switched the Device with a bowling ball. He got away with the bowling ball while she retained the Device, which is to be taken to the Over-City, that great aerial construct of Octung, now approaching Laisha. Avery escapes, but in the chaos the locals take him for an enemy and nearly kill him; they’re massacring all the outsiders they can find. Luckily Janx, Hildra and Layanna finally show up and save him.

  He discloses to them that Ani is aboard the Over-City, along with Sheridan and the Device. Sheridan had had Ani brought here to be given to Avery once the Device was aboard the Over-City. He’d given up having his daughter back for a chance at getting the Device away from Sheridan, thus partially redeeming his earlier mistakes. Layanna forgives him and they resume their relationship, although they have to hide out from angry Octunggen occupiers (who have retaken control of the city) in the meantime.

  While Sheridan and the Device get away aboard the Over-City, Avery and the others are hunted. They find shelter with Layanna’s human son Frederick, who lives in an expatriate quarter of the city. He’s never forgiven Layanna for leaving his father, and he’s become a bitter junkie hooked on hava.

  Determined to end the threat Layanna poses once and for all, the Octunggen occupiers bomb the city with an alchemical gas, causing strange effects among the populace. Octung sacrifices the entire city to kill Layanna.

  BOOK FIVE

  Avery uses Frederick’s addiction against him, and the group secures a dirigible, going after the Over-City and rising above the toxic gas. They infiltrate the aerial brothel known as Paradise, kidnap a high-ranking Octunggen officer and take possession of his aerial yacht, a very exp
ensive dirigible.

  In this, they pursue the Over-City and at last land on it, posing as loyal Octunggen. They rescue Ani and confront Sheridan, who informs them that Uthua is leading the ceremony that will activate the Device in favor of Octung even then. They have reached the sea and Octung has reversed the Device’s functions.

  Avery, posing as Sheridan’s plus-one, attends the activation ceremony with her, having concocted a plan with the others. Sheridan is arrested at the ceremony but Avery is left free. Sartrand attends the ceremony, as well, and Avery tricks him, getting him to attack Uthua. While the two Collossum fight, Avery steals the Device and runs. He rejoins the others and they fly away with all the forces of the Over-City in pursuit.

  Layanna restores the Device’s original functions just as the dirigible is shot down by Uthua. She prepares to activate the Device aboard the sinking ship when Uthua arrives in person. Sheridan, who is with them at the time, fights Avery while the others hold off Uthua. Frederick sacrifices his life to wound the Collossum, and Uthua is sent into the sea. Avery asks Sheridan why she’s siding with beings like Uthua, and she tells him it’s because she wants Octung to win; if it doesn’t, the R’loth will rise up and prosecute their war themselves, and it will be terrible. She begs Avery not to activate the Device or the world will suffer.