Atomic Underworld: Part One (20 page)

Avery
saw Janx touch the spear to his helmet and hold it there for a moment, as if
communing, before moving off with the others.

The
sailors readied the boats and affixed the whalers’ lifelines. Despite himself,
Avery felt a smile creep across his face as the boats, laden with cursing
whalers, lowered to the toxic black waters. Lightning arced from wave-top to
wave-top, one bolt striking a boat—sparks flew high over the sea—but the
specially-wrought craft splashed down unharmed. A hiss of steam coiled up from
its hull. The sailors gave a hurrah.

Avery
hurrahed, too. For a moment, he wished he were down there, adrenaline coursing
through his veins,
seaspray
splashing his face-plate,
right in the middle of all that excitement and importance. The lard from a
single good-sized whale could stave off the army of Octung for a day or more.

The
whalers manned the oars, and the little boats bobbed up and over the heaving
waves, headed away from the
Maul
.
Ship-to-whale projectiles could be used in an emergency, but only then, as a
whale would be drawn to any vessel that fired on it. In the distance, the
animals’ occasional plumes of mist shot high up into the night, geysers of
steam and poisons, the plumes growing further apart as the whales separated.
The pilot had aimed the
Maul
at the
largest animal and then turned sideways to it.

It
was very close.

The
whale barreled straight toward the boats. Avery’s desire to be down there
vanished in an instant, and he uttered a prayer under his breath for the men’s
safety.

The
whale slipped beneath the surface. The boats slowed, and the whalers stood and
coiled their arms, ready to hurl their harpoons. Where had the animal gone? The
whalers remained steady, but Avery could imagine their sweat, their fear, their
rapid breaths fogging their face-plates.

The
whale erupted right under one of the central boats. It flung the craft high
into the air and the men inside it flew in all directions, lifelines moored now
only to splinters. The men struck the water and sank. Their heavy suits dragged
them down. Only two managed to fling their lifelines to nearby boats in time to
save them.

Before
the whale submerged, Avery saw it, and he felt the blood drain from his face.

The
whale had blossomed from the sea like a dark god, a mountain, mist spraying
everywhere, its great jaws open, sharp teeth gleaming. Several whalers vanished
between those jaws along with what was left of the boat. As the spray spread
away from it, the light of the two visible moons shown down on the whale,
revealing a horror covered in boils and stalks, milky blind eyes staring out
from its sides. Its fins sprouted many and jagged, at odd places from its body,
some ending in things that might be teeth. Sharp protrusions jutted from its
flanks along with curling, groping tendril-like appendages. Some actually grew
through the milky eyes. The whale’s real, functional eyes glared madly, rimmed
in pustules and scars and barnacles.

Then,
with a huge splash that rocked the nearby boats, the leviathan vanished from
sight—but not before three or four harpoons sailed through the night and
embedded in its sides and underbelly.

For
several breathless minutes the boats bobbed up and down on the waves. The men
that had been flung from their destroyed craft reeled themselves in and with
help from their mates scrambled aboard the boats. Avery hoped their suits
hadn’t ruptured.

The
whale returned. It opened its huge, tooth-lined maw and shot toward another
boat—the one Janx occupied. Avery felt suddenly cold. Janx had become something
of a mascot to the
Maul
, and the crew
adored him. Were he to die so would the ship’s morale. Not only that, but Avery
liked the big whaler.

Visible
from far away, Janx stared up at the whale, harpoon cocked and ready. He did
not throw, although the men to either side of him hurled theirs right into the
whale’s oncoming head.

It
drove on.

With
a thunderous crack, it smashed the boat to splinters, devouring several of the
whalers instantly and plunging beneath the waves with such force that one of
the nearby boats capsized in the swell. There was no sign of Janx or the other
whalers that had been on the destroyed boat.

“Damn,”
Avery said.

Hambry
snorted. “Maybe he’ll find his nose in the afterlife.”

Mist
blew across the sea, and somewhere a few leagues off a burst of lightning must
have struck a gas bubble, as a furious ball of orange and white expanded over
the water. Expanded, then faded. By its light Avery saw one of the other ships
of the line, several leagues to the east, he couldn’t tell which one. The night
was too dark for him to see any of the other ship’s boats, though they must be
out there, too, hunting, hunting. The whole fleet would be scrambling.

The
whale emerged from the depths.

This
time it breached more slowly, and for a moment Avery thought it had grown
arrogant, that it would leisurely move to destroy the remaining boats. As if it
had heard his thoughts, it swam toward the nearest one, and the men there
braced themselves, ready to throw their harpoons.

The
whale closed in, mouth agape, but for some reason the men didn’t throw. As it
neared them, its mouth began to close, and its tail slowed.

Limp,
the whale drifted, carried by momentum, until finally it reached an utter stop.

A
ragged cheer drifted across the waves.

Only
then did Avery see, as one of the moons came out from behind a cloud, that a
tall, broad figure stood on the whale’s head, leaning on a harpoon—Nancy, it must be Nancy—driven
deep into the creature’s skull.

Avery
laughed and clapped Hambry on the shoulder. “It’s Janx!” he said. “He’s alive!
He’s alive! The bloody idiot! He must have ridden it as it went under! Ha!”

The
others on the deck—there was quite a crowd—laughed and cheered. Out on the
water, the whalers ringed the animal and Janx climbed down its sides to much
slapping on the back.

Hooked
ropes sliced the air. Sharp steel sunk deep into fatty flesh. The boats began
to haul their catch back toward the
Maul
,
the boats small and puny against the vast blackness of the whale. They searched
for survivors as they went, but there were none. The whale had slain perhaps
ten men.

And
yet Avery could not help but feel an enormous sense of relief. With the amount
of hot lard that would be harvested from the monster, the machines that powered
Ghenisa’s defenses could be fueled for dozens of hours. Though other substances
were used, few were as readily (if not easily) obtainable as the lard of a
whale from the Atomic
Sea—hot lard. Not
radioactive in the traditional sense, but holding powerful concentrations of
energy just the same. With the whale slain, the army of Octung might be staved
off, at least for a time. Hopefully the other ships of the fleet would make
kills, as well.

The
whaling boats drew their prize to the
Maul
,
and whalers and sailors coordinated tying it to the sides. A celebration broke
out. Avery wasn’t sure if Captain Sheridan had called for it or not, but she
certainly seemed to allow it. Janx clambered aboard and was instantly
surrounded by admirers. With him in their center, men and women retreated
inside, removed their suits, and were passed double rations of grog. Avery
followed. Somewhere around a corner, he heard Janx toasting the dead. “Tonight
they dance in the deep!” Others echoed him.

Before
Avery could remove his suit and pour a glass of his finer officer’s whiskey,
Ensign Tapor ran up to him. Her breath masked her face-plate, and he could just
see her wide eyes behind it.

“Doctor,
you must come quickly.”

Avery
had just been in the process of taking off his helm. “Is it necessary?” he
said. “I was just about to—”

“It’s
an emergency.”

She sounds odd.
“Show me,” he said.

He
snapped his helmet back on, and the ensign hurried him through the air-lock and
outside again. Assaulted anew by wind and mist, he grumped. He’d been looking
forward to warmth and whiskey, to toasting Paul’s memory and Janx’s victory.

Overhead
a great gas-squid floated against the stars, tentacles squirming, moonslight
filtering through its half-translucent flesh, making it seem to glow in places
with a ghostly sheen. Celebrating sailors near the bow took pot-shots at it,
laughing.

Ensign
Tapor led Avery to the port gunwale amidships. Ropes strained and creaked, and
when Avery looked over the side, he saw that they ran from the ship to the
whale, which had been tied off snugly—a huge, misshapen, cancerous growth
sprouting from the
Maul
, its sides
slip-slapping against the ship. Avery had thought all the boats had been raised
and secured, but to his surprise he saw that one remained on the water directly
below. It bobbed, oddly, in front of the whale’s mouth, which sagged open.
Something was being lifted from the boat toward the ship’s deck in a canvas
sling.

Avery’s
frown deepened. “I don’t ... Did that
thing
come from the whale’s mouth?”

He
glanced sideways. Ensign Tapor stared downward at the ascending shape, but she
turned to look at him, a mix of fear and wonder in her eyes. “Yes, Doctor. She
did.”

“
She
?” Avery frowned. “A woman?” When
Tapor didn’t answer, he said, “A crewwoman from one of the other ships of the line?”

“I
don’t think so, Doctor.”

The
body reached the gunwale, and Avery rushed over to assist the sailors in
setting it down. Only then did he step back, away from it, and see it for the
first time.

Impossible
.

It
was a woman, naked, breathing, with hair too long for her to be Navy, and
showing no obvious signs of sickness.

“Amazing,”
he said. “She should be dead. No one could survive those waters, uninfected,
without a suit ...”

Thunder
rolled, and lightning lit up the seas. Avery hardly noticed.

****

TO
CONTINUE READING, FIND PART ONE HERE:

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