THE ATOMIC SEA:

VOLUME THREE

 

THE ENGINE OF RUIN

 

 

by Jack Conner

 

 

Copyright 2015

All rights reserved

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

“Something’s wrong,” Layanna said.

Lightning flickered up from the waters. A strange, slug-like fish leapt out of the river, speared a low-flying bird on a sticky, barbed tongue, then dragged it under the waves to be consumed at leisure.

“How?” Avery asked.

She did not answer immediately. A muggy wind blew over the upper deck of the riverboat, and Avery enjoyed it ruffling the remains of his hair as he sipped a glass of brandy. He reclined on one of the deck chairs, Layanna alongside him. Music belched up from a lower deck, or perhaps one of the rooms—a thumping, hip-shaking tune—and somewhere people laughed and danced. Around him, the night loomed huge and black, while far away, on the distant shores of the mile-wide river, Octung waited. Great factories, smoking and oozing, blotted out the low-flung stars, and Avery had to imagine the workers in them frowning over the water, irritated by the music, or perhaps, who knows, wishing they were on the boat themselves.

A divot of concentration appeared between Layanna’s eyebrows. “I can feel it. Like … an itching … at the back of my head.”

“What sort of itching?” Avery wasn’t sure if he spoke as her doctor, lover or co-conspirator.

She regarded him levelly. “I think one of my people is near.”

The wind turned cold. “A Collossum?” He said the word softly. He and Layanna had the upper deck to themselves except for some boatmen smoking hashish on the other side against the rail and couple of drunks sleeping it off on distant recliners, but it paid to be careful.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been feeling it for some time. I didn’t want to alarm you until I was sure.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. It’s been growing, subtly at first, but now …”

“You sure it’s not just because we’re nearing Lusterqal?” The Great Temple of the Collossum stood there, the capital of Octung, and it would hold many of Layanna’s people, if they could be called people. She would likely be able to sense their presence. And Avery and the others were almost there.

She shook her head. “I feel like one of my kind is near, only … only it’s trying to mask itself from me.”

Avery rubbed his cheek. The last thing they needed was a run-in with one of the Collossum, a R’loth in human form, here in Octung. His skin crawled just to be inside Octung’s borders, let alone near one of its infernal gods, so-called or otherwise.

“Perhaps—” he began.

A cry came from below. Then another. Avery heard sounds of alarm, running and the thudding of planks, a woman crying.

He and Layanna jumped to their feet.

A large form materialized out of the darkness, and Avery had to catch himself from flinching at the suddenness with which the man appeared. It was Janx. The massive whaler stepped into the small circle of illumination cast by Avery’s alchemical lamp, his many scars thrown into vivid relief against his long, square-jawed face, his bald head agleam, a leather patch covering the hole where his nose should have been.

“Come quick, Doc,” Janx said. “The cap’n told me to fetch you.”

Avery and Layanna fell in behind him as he strode from the deck. A haze hung thick over the river, and lightning flickered sporadically through it, up from the water. The haze stirred as the riverboat bore a furrow through the murk, and gray, oily banks of cloud glommed across the decks. Avery spat it out as he walked. The air tasted of pollution, sludge and ozone. The nearby factories, combined with the naturally foul air over the Atomic River, gave the air an acrid bite, greasy and oily and electric, and Avery half-wished it were bad enough to warrant the full-body environment suits necessary on the Atomic Sea itself. Unfortunately doubling up on the daily pollution pill proved sufficient.

“This way,” Janx said, leading them down from the ladder and along a lower deck.

A motley assortment of individuals gave way for them, oil-stained boatmen who had been enjoying the festivities after a hard day, well-dressed travelers returning to Octung after journeys abroad, tired-looking businessmen, drifting youths, likely a few spies, and more. What surprised Avery more than anything else was how many were infected, as there were near-countless mutants. He brushed past a man with translucent skin and glowing spines protruding from his back, nearly collided with a woman with an anemone riot on her head in place of hair. Many had fish-like skin, some striated, some gray, green, silver or brightly painted.

Avery had never known until he had crossed its borders how much Octung revered the Atomic Sea—and its many fruits. The river was one of the countless waterways that had been tainted by the sea over the last millennium, but it was one of the few that had remained that way after scientists and alchemists had devised methods, expensive and laborious though they were, of cleansing the rivers, and that owed itself to a very simple reason: the Octunggen wanted it this way. No other country had dared defy them on the issue, never mind that the Atomic River, also known as the Curlusc, or the Om-ghen-ezz, or the Haag, or a dozen other names, ran through several nations before arriving at the sea. It was a vast river, wide and sprawling, bustling with merchants, pleasure craft and, these days, ships of war. It was Octung’s main avenue to the ocean, though most of their navy was perched along the coast of Vursul, a large vassal state of the Lightning Crown.

Countless factories and research companies squatted along the shores of the Atomic River, belching their smokes and chemicals into the hazy air. Octung mined the energies of the river, as well as deriving many goods from it. These were but a few of the reasons, profit and research, why the Octunggen kept the river the way it was, and one of the obvious by-products of this decision was the spread of infection—not a detractor to the Octunggen, who worshipped beings they believed to be the gods of the sea. It had been these gods, the Collossum, who had corrupted the Atomic Sea in the first place, and it was this corruption which had caused the mutations, when it did not cause death. To them it was a blessing, not a curse.

Avery coughed away the smoke as he followed in Janx’s wake. Mutants and normals scattered before the advance of the huge whaler.

“This way,” Janx said, shoving through a doorway and down a passage.

Music from a gramophone surrounded them, thumping and jazzy, as well as the scents of smoke, body odor and grime. The riverboat was ancient, rusting and falling apart. It had plied the river for a century, hauling goods and people up and down its length countless times, and each year, each month, had marked itself on the riverboat in chipped gunwales, peeling paint, rust, stains and scars. Nevertheless the Surugal plowed on, and Avery had heard the captain boast that it would ply these waters for another century before it fell apart. Judging by the rattling noises, hisses, screams of metal, howls of steam and groaning of bulkheads, Avery thought another day would be a victory.

The concentration of people grew thicker down the hallways, but they made room for Janx. The press grew thickest around a particular cabin door, a stateroom actually, where two of the riverboat’s crew kept the curious out.

The crewmen stood straighter when Janx approached, and Avery saw respect cross their faces. Janx was a veteran sailor, of course, and to hear him tell it had also been a pirate, a king, a thief and many other colorful things thrown in too during his career on the seas. Legend of Janx’s stories (more properly the stories of Horax, his assumed name at the moment) had obviously circulated among the Surugal’s crew during the weeks Avery and the others had been aboard, and they seemed to believe it more than disbelieve it.

“Did you get him?” asked one of the crewmen.

Janx hiked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating Avery. “In tow.”

Avery swallowed. “Am I needed?”

“You’re a doctor, right?” asked the crewman who had spoken, a young lad with suckers growing from the side of his face. They closed and opened with squelching noises as he spoke.

“I, ah …” Avery cast an anxious glance at Layanna. The false identifications he and the others were traveling under said nothing of medical training.

“It’s okay, Doc,” Janx said, speaking Octunggen surprisingly well. Avery had coached him and Hildra in it over the past few months, Layanna pitching in when needed. “They understand.”

The suckers on the youth’s face shook as he rubbed his cheek, and water splashed off. “Half the folk here are using fake IDs,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t care, long as you can help.” Turning, he led the way inside the cabin, obviously expecting them to follow.

Janx barreled through, having to lower his head and squeeze in his shoulders to fit. Without apparent qualm, Layanna followed. Avery glanced at the gawkers, then the remaining crewman. He sighed and stepped through.

Instantly the reek of ammonia hit him, and he lifted his shirttail to cover his mouth and nose. Only then did he take in the room.

He sucked in a deep breath through his filter.

Blood was everywhere. It ran off the walls, pooled on the floor, slicked the wreckage that lay strewn all about. Whatever happened here had been catastrophic. Tremendous force had been expelled. Shards of a great table lay heaped on the floor as well as the ruins of several chairs and other pieces of furniture. Broken paintings hung on the walls, their torn canvases splashed with blood, tacky and drying. And over it all hung that scent of ammonia.

A few crewmen sifted through the ruins, and in their midst stood the tall, stately form of the Surugal’s captain, one Henri Sagrimund. A native Octunggen, he bore their most typical look, black-haired and gray-eyed, but he had obviously seen battle of some sort, for he was scarred and carried himself with the surety of someone who had dodged bullets and lived to see his enemies skewered.

Captain Sagrimund’s gray eyes fell on Avery.

“You.”

Avery stiffened. “Yes?” Unconsciously he moved closer to Layanna, only to find that she had moved off and was inspecting the room. “May I be of assistance?”

“Horax told me his friend was a doctor, but you … didn’t you say you were a salesperson?”

Avery adjusted his collar. “Ah, yes … about that …”

The captain waved it away. “Save it. Tell me what the fuck happened here.” His eyes speared the wreckage.

Avery went to work inspecting the ruin. He noticed details he hadn’t before, most notably the bodies—or what was left of them. A severed leg jutted up from a mound of table shards on one side of the room, an arm stuck out from beneath a chair on the other. A torso sat under what had been a couch, while its legs waited several yards away. It was one of only two whole bodies, or bodies that would be whole if reassembled. Which of course begged a question.

When Avery came to a particular severed head, he understood why he had been called for.

“Doctor Cuelor,” he said, dismayed.

Captain Sagrimund had come to stand beside him. “Yes. He was attending.”

“Attending?”

The captain gestured to piles of chips and cards that Avery had only half-noticed before. “Card game. Everyone here was gambling when it happened.”

Avery raised his eyebrows and glanced over at Janx, leaning against a bulkhead and impassively preparing to light a cigar. When Janx saw Avery’s look, he nodded.

“Yeah,” Janx said. “Was comin’ to get dealt in when I found ‘em.”

Avery blinked. “You’re the one that found them?”

Janx lit his cigar. He took a few quick puffs, getting it started. “Lucky I got here late, wasn’t I, Doc?”

Avery felt dizzy all of a sudden. All but gasping, he stumbled to a bulkhead and propped himself against it. The stateroom spun around him.

“What did this?” said Captain Sagrimund. “What the fuck killed my doctor, my men?”

Avery tried to shove down his fear. He cleared his throat and stood straighter. Looking the captain directly in the eye, he said, “I have no idea.” If only I didn’t.

“And where did they go?” Captain Sagrimund continued, as if he hadn’t heard. There was something lost in his expression as he gazed about the room and gestured at the bloody wreckage. Half mumbling to himself, he said, “I just don’t get it. Only two whole bodies, the rest just … pieces. An arm here, a leg there, but … where did the rest of them go?”

 

*     *     *

 

“We have ourselves a problem,” Janx announced.

Avery and Layanna had just accompanied him back to one of their two adjoining cabins, where they had found Hildra playing a drinking game with herself and Hildebrand, her monkey.

“’oblem?” she asked, then burped.

Hildebrand chittered and climbed down from her bunk. She gave him a sip from her shot glass. He appeared woozy.

“One of my kind is aboard,” Layanna said. “It’s just fed.”

Hildra blinked. “You sure, sweetcheeks?”

“We’re sure,” Avery said. “It must have revealed itself in the middle of a card game, catching everyone by surprise. I can only assume that most of those present at the table were mutants—”

“They were,” Janx said.

Avery nodded. “Our R’loth must have … changed.”

“Exerted its other-dimensional self,” Layanna clarified.

“Became a monster, you mean,” Hildra said.

“At any rate, it devoured those that had the sea in their blood,” Avery said. “The infected. They resisted, and there was some struggling. Several had limbs ripped off. But the bulks of them were … consumed. It left the normals’ bodies behind like refuse.”

“It can only draw nourishment for its other-facets through extradimensional flesh,” Layanna said.

“Why not just eat some fish, then?” Hildra said, a frantic note to her voice. “I mean, this is the fucking Atomic River, right? The things what live in it would be … uh, you know, other-dimensional, right?”

Layanna appeared as if she regretted what she was about to say. “Consciousness married with other-dimensional abilities opens up dimensional facets exponentially.”

Hildra stared at her. “Right …”

“It gets a better meal when it eats people,” Avery clarified. “Well, infected people. Like when Layanna gorged on those bodies in Ungraessot.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“I would have gotten an even better meal had they been alive,” Layanna said.

“So what now?” said Hildra.

“We must assume this R’loth has come for us,” Avery said.

“Well, it’s got a full belly now,” Janx noted, then turned to Layanna. “Guess that means it’s ready to take you on, honey. You up for it?”

A look of what might be fear passed across Layanna’s face. “It’s been two months since Ungraessot. Since then I haven’t fed my over-dimensional facets beyond a few fish. I would be weak compared to one who’s just fed on infected humans, and it’s possible he would be more powerful than me even if I were at peak strength. So … no. I’d rather avoid confrontation.”

“I don’t get it,” Hildra said. “How did it find us?”

“Layanna gives off a powerful extra-dimensional signature,” Avery reminded her.

“I’ve been trying to mask it,” Layanna said. “I think I’ve been successful, too. I don’t know how this one’s found us.”

“Great,” Hildra said. “We’re stuck on some godsforsaken riverboat with another fucking god-thing, or whatever you are, sister, and you’re telling us you’re not strong enough to fight it? So, what, we’re fucked?” She groaned. “I knew this would happen. We should never have come here, never have followed the bitch in the first place.”

Avery made his voice hard: “You swore an oath.”

“Well, fuck my oath! And fuck you, too! Going to Lusterqal—it’s mad.”

Avery raised his hands, placating. “Once there we can stop them. Stop the Octunggen. We can save Ghenisa, the world. We can end the war.”

Hildra grunted and collapsed back onto the bed. “So you say. That’s if Miss Amoeba Monster there can find the rest of her fucking loser friends and build their godsdamned tinker-toy.”

“You’d better hope they do, honey,” Janx said. “Cause if they don’t, we’re all dead. And I mean all of us.”

Hildra glared at him. “So now what? Wait for the terror from beyond to come find us and finish us off? For all we know, it could come through that door any second.”

Avery glanced behind him, half-expecting the door to blow open.

When it didn’t, he turned about and nodded. “Which is why we need to get off this riverboat as soon as possible. If we could survive the water, I’d say we should swim for it, but since we can’t …”

“We could steal a lifeboat,” Janx said.

“We will if we must,” Avery agreed, “but the decks are patrolled regularly. I doubt we could steal a boat without a confrontation, and the only way we could survive one is for Layanna to exert her other-self, which would let everyone know who we are. The whole city of Lusterqal would know we’re coming and it would make rendezvousing with the Black Sect that much harder.” He shook his head. “The riverboat docks in the morning at Lusterqal. I suggest we be in the front of the line to get off.”

Hildra reached for a shot glass. “And hope that thing doesn’t follow.”

 

*     *     *

 

Sluggish mist drifted over the waves, and something large and oily breached the surface, clacked its mandibles, then sounded with a splash. Lazy lightning flickered up from the waters, and soft thunder rolled over the river, half muted by the mist. Sounds of music and revelry blared ahead.

“Five dead boat-mates hasn’t slowed ‘em down any,” Janx said as he and Avery walked along the deck.

“Maybe they’re celebrating to relieve tension,” Avery suggested.

Janx’s shoulders rose and fell. “Long as they’re still servin’, makes no difference to me.”

They reached the cantina at the stern, overlooking the wide, mist-shrouded river and the long, foaming wake of the riverboat. Occasional dark blotches in the mist hinted at other boats, and if Avery squinted he could see winking lights, coming and going in the fog.

Mutants and normals congregated in the cantina, drinking, smoking, talking, even a few dancing on the scuffed-up floor to sounds from a jukebox that had seen better days. The jazzy music that emanated from it was tinny, scarred and strange—Octunggen—yet Avery couldn’t resist a lighter mood at the sounds. He did notice that most of the faces he could see through the smoke, gloom and frenzy of the cantina appeared tighter and more grim than otherwise, and many of the conversations seemed to be exchanged in terse, hard whispers. Surely they were talking about the murders.

Avery and Janx took seats at the bar and the nearest barkeep, a large, dark-complected man from the south, perhaps the continent of Consur, furnished them with two mugs of foaming ale. It amazed Avery how many people from various nations were aboard the Surugal—all deep behind Octunggen lines. He would have thought Octung guarded its borders with an iron fist, but apparently it allowed trade to survive and thrive. A healthy, even intelligent view, if surprising. Not for the first time, Avery found himself encouraged. Perhaps Octung was not too far gone after all. A whispered conversation to his right caused him to rethink this.

“… you sure?”

“Yeah. Mazguirene’s wiped off the map. The Octs came in hard, aeroplanes dropping gas—some alchemical shit.”

“Damn …”

“It ate the Mazzies up like acid. Just dissolved ‘em, right where they stood. When the Octs came in after the cloud had cleared off, they found only bones in puddles of melted flesh and organs. Whole families heaped together, where they must have been hiding, their skeletons all mangled together, their fleshes merged … The Octs hosed the remains into the gutters. I heard the flesh congealed there. Got stuck. Began to stink bad by the next afternoon. The flies were so thick—”

“Please! I had friends there.” A pause. “Can’t believe we’re actually here, in Octung. Sons of bitches. What’ll we do if …”

Avery didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, as Janx, sipping his ale noisily, said, “You sure we should be grabbing drinks, Doc? I mean, with the … the terror runnin’ around out there?”

Avery sipped his ale and wiped his upper lip, where foam tended to cling to his small, thick mustache. He licked it off. “We’re safe in the crowd, I believe. I don’t think it will attack us in the open.”

“Still, a risk just for a pint.”

Avery shrugged, smiled. Drank.

Janx grunted, let a beat pass, then lifted his mug as well, looking faintly amused.

Avery found it strange that he and Janx had become drinking companions of late. Sure, they’d shared plenty aboard the Maul over the years, but rarely just the two of them. Almost always they had been in some group, usually playing cards. Now, though, despite the nearness of Hildra, the whaler and the doctor sat together at the cantina. Avery knew he was no substitute for Muirblaag, Janx’s best mate, who had been lost to them in the Borghese, possessed by Uthua, but he still felt an odd closeness to the whaler.

“How’d it find us, anyway?” Janx muttered.

“The Collossum?” Avery frowned. “The Temple must have dispatched agents to hunt for us. The Collossum know we’re coming to them, and so they’ve got agents lying in wait. The river’s a natural place to watch. There’s probably other agents out here on other boats.”

“You tell me now.”

“Obviously I didn’t know. In retrospect, though …” He drew his brows together. “Of course, that might not be it at all.”

“No?”

“Remember, Layanna said she’d been able to mask her presence. If that’s true, then this new Collossum has some means of finding her that the rest of the Collossum don’t. And he must have found her, otherwise why the urgent need to feed?”

“Yeah.” Janx finished his ale and ordered another. “Also, you gotta wonder why this fella didn’t just call in his buddies in the Temple. Him killin’ all those people at the poker game means he wants to take Layanna on by himself. Why, when he doesn’t have to?”

“That’s a troubling question.”

A group of colorfully-dressed merchant-types approached. All were mutants. One cleared his mottled throat, looking embarrassed, and asked, “Are you Horax? Horax Marcly?”

Janx downed a sip, wiped the foam off his lip, and stared at the merchant, making him wait for it. “Yeah. I’m him.”

The merchants exchanged excited glances.

“Is it true you were once a pirate in the Sevenfold Seas?”

Janx smiled widely, revealing several false teeth. “Why, I wasn’t just a pirate, my friends, I was a pirate king!”

“Excellent! Well, in that case, let us buy you a drink. We’d love to hear all about it.”

Avery sighed. Drinking with Janx held its downsides.

Janx patted Avery’s shoulder. “Ya haveta buy m’friend a pint, too.” Avery raised an eyebrow, and Janx winked. “They can afford it,” he whispered. The merchants eagerly paid up, and Janx swept an arm wide. “Well, let me tell you about a time ‘fore I became king, about the time I was captain of the Mary Ann and a bad bet lands me neck-deep. Well, I made the mistake of bettin’ against an alchemist from the Savach Cleft. Worse, when he ran out of honest money, I let him bet the Deep-Spear.”

“The Deep-Spear?” a merchant asked eagerly.

“Oh, yes.” Janx’s eyes went wide. “A thing o’ beauty it was, a great spear made all of gold, but light as a goose egg, some say it was fashioned by the Malechites after the Fall of Lere. Well, o’ course I won it, and the alchemist, he storms off in a rage, then later that night he steals a boat and sets off toward an uncharted island—though I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that I hear a knockin’ on me cabin door. I open it and lo! what appears but a beautiful woman, naked as the day she was born, wet as an eel, with seaweed for hair and eyes like the devil’s depths.”

“A mermaid!” gasped one of the merchants.

“So it was. But not any mermaid, my good man. She was a queen of the black cold sea, and she was on fire for the love of a man. And not just any man, but the man who wielded the Deep-Spear. Well, she was on me like a dog on a bone, and afore I knew it she was shovin’ me down on the bed, rippin’ at me clothes, and outside a great storm howled, and whirlpools spun off to our flanks. Weird fish hooted, and mutants sang dirges in their holds. Well, that sea-queen she rides me like lightnin’, and I never known such a lover. Her breasts were like coconuts, her lips like a brand. And in the morning, I woke up exhausted.”

“Amazing!” The merchants exclaimed excitedly.

“But that ain’t the end o’ it,” Janx said.

“No?”

Janx shook his head, all seriousness. “No. For when I woke in the morning, my men were a-callin’ to me, all exclaiming and carryin’ on. I go outside, pull on my environment suit, and ask what the hell’s goin’ on. And then they show me.”

“What? What was it?”

Janx peered each of them in the eye, letting the suspense build. “Fish-eggs. The sea-queen had laid fish-eggs all over the decks.”

“Dear Huantha!”

Janx nodded gravely. “I’d knocked her up, and for kicks she’d left me little ones behind.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well, what could I do? I couldn’t very well take ‘em with me, now could I? And I couldn’t fry ‘em up for breakfast, much as my crew was callin’ for it. So I had ‘em thrown overboard, to hatch an’ live in the sea where they belonged.” He finished off his mug. “And did you know, to this day in that stretch of the Sevenfold, sailors still swear from time to time that they see little Horax-fish swimmin’ to their flanks, all bald and big-jawed, sometimes followin’ the ships for knots on end, jumping and jumping in the water, as if they know their father’s on a ship somewhere and they’re just waitin’ to find him. For what purpose, I don’t know, and it’s why I’ve never returned there.”

The merchants loved it and clamored for more. Avery noted how perfectly timed Janx’s story was, to last just the exact amount of time it took him to finish off a pint. Fortunately Janx declined another tale, claiming exhaustion, and the merchants reluctantly let him go back to his drinking. Talking excitedly among themselves, they filed off.

Avery just shook his head. “Was one word of that true?”

Janx raised an eyebrow, seemingly wounded. “Why, Doc, every word. I’d swear on me honor. Why, don’t you remember the golden spear at my apartment?”

Avery nearly swallowed down the wrong pipe. Gasping, he looked up to study Janx’s expression. As usual, he could tell nothing. But he did remember that spear, that long, ornate, golden spear, heaped among one of the many mounds of eclectic treasure that had consumed the whaler’s former home.

It wasn’t for another long moment that Janx let one side of his mouth curl up, and Avery laughed and ordered another ale.

For awhile they drank, talking sparingly, both enjoying the nighttime sounds, the revelry, the slap and slurp of water, horns calling through the fog. Avery watched the faces of the patrons, saw the tension there, and felt a like tension in his bones. He found himself starting at odd noises, and beads of sweat slowly, maddeningly worked their way from his pores. He tried not to let the nervousness affect him, but he began drinking faster than normal and slurring his words. He forced himself to go slower. He couldn’t afford to get drunk, not with the Collossum out there hunting them. He frequently patted the gun in his pocket.

He became aware of Janx looking at him out of the corner of his eye.

“What?” Avery asked.

Janx seemed to be wrestling with something, as if afraid to bring up a sore subject.

“What?” Avery pressed. “Just say it.”

Janx frowned. “I saw you starin’ at the picture again yesterday.”

Damn it all.

“I thought you were gonna quit that,” Janx added.

“I was. I am.”

“It ain’t healthy, Doc. Listen. You had to do it. You didn’t have a choice.”

Avery said nothing.

Janx eyed him levelly. “You did what you had to do. If you’d done what that bitch Sheridan asked, we wouldn’t be here right now. Octung would be conducting victory parades in every city on the continent.”

Avery knew he was right, but that didn’t make it any easier. I betrayed my own daughter. He allowed himself to take a sip. As he did, he saw that his hand was shaking.

He started as Janx clapped a big hand on his shoulder. Janx squeezed, firmly but gently. “If it’s in our power, Doc, we’ll get your little girl back. Just keep it together a mite longer. I—”

“I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

Avery broke off from him and pushed through the crowd. He found sanctuary in the cantina’s cramped restroom and locked the door behind him. He looked around, greeted by the sight of peeling walls, cracked mirror and the vague stench of vomit. The ship moved about him, the metal creaking, music flooding in from outside. He braced himself over the sink, gripping its grimy edges in his hands, and prepared to throw up. When it didn’t come, he stared at himself in the mirror. The sight made him flinch.

His appearance, in a way, had actually improved over the past few months. He was still the somewhat short, balding forty-two-year-old he had been, complete with glasses, neatly trimmed black mustache and comb-over, but his skin was tanned, his muscles fitter, his belly reasonably flat. Just the same, he seemed to have aged five years. Gray hairs sprouted at his temples, and lines flowered from the corner of his eyes, which were rimmed in red. He looked haunted, desperate.

He sagged back against the wall, forced himself to close his eyes and take deep breaths.

When he opened them, he realized he was holding something. With a jolt, he looked down at the photograph of Mari and Ani, his wife and daughter. They stood outside their modest cabin in Benical, in front of the familiar potted plants and moss-covered stones, holding hands and looking content. Avery remembered that day. He had been the one taking the picture. He hadn’t known it then but it had been the happiest time of his life. How he wished he could get those days back! Mari and Ani, alive and well, before the Octunggen-engineered plague had struck, before it had all gone to hell.

With a trembling hand, he pulled out the second picture from where he kept it, in a pocket over his heart. It was the picture Janx had warned about. It showed Ani, alive and well, looking frightened but whole, holding up a newspaper dated three months ago. Four years after she’d died. Sheridan had given Avery that photo. She had brought Ani back from oblivion and dangled her before Avery, promising her return if only he would deliver Layanna to Octung.

I chose Layanna over my own daughter! In a rage, he slammed a fist against the wall, then choked back a gasp. Blood wept from his hand. He washed it off in the sink, averting his gaze from the man in the mirror.

He told himself that Janx was right. He’d only done what he had to do. But his own daughter …

Where was Ani now? Had Sheridan sent her to be a test subject for Dr. Wasnair and his team as she’d promised if Avery refused her? Were they sticking needles in Ani even now, or doing something worse?

Avery needed a drink. Suddenly wanting to be elsewhere, with sound and music and laughter, he left the bathroom and returned to the bar.

Janx, lifting a mug to his lips, eyed him over the brim. “You’ve looked better.”

Avery nodded to the bartender, who poured him a mug, then downed a long, healthy sip. “I’m fine,” Avery said.

“You keep sayin’.” Then Janx grinned as if he’d thought of something that would cheer Avery up. “I met some fellows yesternight. Yep, some right good blokes they were. Heard ‘em talking about L’oh and Rausgin, the old Laric gods. History buffs, Doc, can you believe it? I told ‘em to look you up. You and them should get along like whores and crabs.”

Avery smiled for Janx’s benefit. He wanted to say that he wasn’t interested in discussing history at the moment. It might be his hobby, but he couldn’t concentrate on it just now. Instead he said, “Thanks. I … appreciate it.”

“Well, good. I—”

Commotion outside stopped him.

Avery frowned, but when the noise grew louder he and Janx quit their conversation and left with the others to see what was happening on deck. When he saw it, Avery felt his flesh turn cold.

“Gods below,” said Janx.

It was an Octunggen patrol boat, and it was docking with the Surugal.

 

END OF SAMPLE

 

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