Atomic Underworld: Part One (18 page)

When
he glanced back up, his gun trained in the direction Havictus had been, the
bald man was gone into the gloom.

Water
began to fill Tavlin’s vessel through the bullet holes.

Sweating,
knowing that he would be infected if he became submerged, Tavlin started the
engine of the sinking craft and aimed it at a nearby boat. It struck, knocking
one Octunggen overboard and sending the other two to their knees. Tavlin shot
one in the chest and dodged a blast from the other. One of Vassas’s men, or
perhaps even Vassas himself, finished off the surviving gunman, and the man
toppled over the side with a shattered skull even as Tavlin leapt into his
boat. The boat he’d been on sank with a pop and a gurgle.

Tavlin
piloted his boat toward the one Sophia occupied, barreling toward her even as
bullets tore the air around him. Some smacked into the boat or dotted the
water, while others ricocheted off the walls, and Tavlin felt more than one
whiz by his head.

Too
late, the two men in Sophia’s boat saw him coming and adjusted their guns to
fire on him. He shot one through the face—the man flew backward and
vanished—and the other collapsed when Tavlin rammed his boat. Tavlin shot him
point-blank through the chest before he could reorient himself.

Sophia
had thrown herself to the floor, and as Tavlin hunkered over her, fumbling at
her ropes, she thrashed and cursed through her gag. Soon he had her hands free,
and she tore off her hood herself and spat out the gag. Her eyes were wild, her
hair in disarray, and someone had given her a black eye. Nonetheless, she was
the most wonderful sight Tavlin had ever seen. Even as she swore at him and
struggled against him, he took her in his arms and kissed her.

She
didn’t exactly melt, but her struggles turned less aggressive. Then she pulled
away and slapped his face.

“Don’t,”
she said.

“But—”

Her
voice softened. “Thank you, Tav. I
do
appreciate you saving me. But … no.”

By
the time he’d started the motor and glanced around, several of the other
Octunggen boats had taken off in the same direction as Havictus, and one more
was just vanishing. The Octunggen that had stayed behind were quickly dying,
and bodies littered the small boats or bobbed in the water between them, water
which was now slicked with blood. As Tavlin watched, some thing below the
surface dragged one of the corpses down with a sudden sharp movement. Bubbles
frothed the surface filled with pink and red, and the body did not reappear.

Boss
Vassas’s men pushed their boats forward, even as Tavlin did, and Tavlin met
Vassas in the middle of the intersection. All the Octunggen had fled or
perished. Vassas appeared hard and winded, his face red, a submachine gun
clutched in a meaty fist. A bullet had grazed one of his arms, and blood
trickled freely from the wound. He didn’t seem to notice.

“You
got her,” he said, nodding once at Sophia, who nodded back. “Good. And I saw
the briefcase go back under. Now let’s lam it.”

“No,”
Tavlin said. “We’ve got the bastards on the run. Now it’s time to finish them
off. But have one of your men take Sophia back."

“I’m
not going anywhere, except after
them
,”
she said.

“Fine,”
said Vassas, and there was a gleam in his eyes. “Let’s end this.”

They
roared after the Octunggen. Tavlin allowed Vassas to take the lead before his
men, but Tavlin and Sophia occupied the next space in line. They tore down dark
halls, slowing only enough to let their lantern-light show them the way; Sophia
knelt in the bow, holding a lantern out over the water. When it shone off a
moss-covered wall that threatened to crack their boat to splinters, they curved
sharply off. At times they lost the Octunggen only to see one of their boats
vanishing around a bend ahead.

At
last Tavlin and Sophia burst out in a large chamber, huge and high and
cavernous. The boats of the Octunggen flew across the black water before them
... right toward the Temple of Magoth.

Tavlin
swore.

So
did Sophia. “Not this again,” she said.

The
Temple blazed ahead, massive and phosphorescent, a shining, glowing beacon in
the dark. Its graceful columns proudly held up the great canopy, and the work
being done on it was even more advanced than last time, the strange angles and
facets even more pronounced. The whole thing shone a ghostly pearl-white. The
brightest light came from the interior, flooding out from windows and doorways.
The illumination bathed the surface of the cistern lake, throwing light far out
into the great chamber. And, just as before, the sound of singing carried
across the waters.

The
boats of Vassas’s men slowed momentarily. Vassas’s eyes bulged, and his mouth
hung open. The singing washed over them.

Tavlin
clamped his hands over his ears, and Sophia did likewise.

“Back!”
Tavlin shouted to Vassas. “Go back! Cover your ears! Don’t listen.
GO BACK!”

Instead,
one boat at a time, Vassas’s men revved their boats’ motors and started
forward, though whether toward the Octunggen or the Temple Tavlin couldn’t say.
He wasn’t sure if they knew, either. Vassas started to motor toward the Temple,
as well.

“Hells,”
Tavlin said.

He
aimed his own boat toward Vassas’s and gritted his teeth.

“Hang
on,” he told Sophia.

They
struck with such suddenness that Vassas was knocked to his knees, and the other
man in the boat with him nearly went overboard. Shock passed across Vassas’s
face, but then a look of
dazzlement
replaced it—as
the singing drove reason from his brain—and Tavlin saw Vassas start to look
around for a means of continuing toward the Temple.

His
eyes settled on Tavlin’s boat.

Vassas
rushed him. Tavlin hit him on the head, hard, with an oar. Vassas toppled like
a sack of spuds, and Tavlin wrestled him aboard the vessel. Vassas’s man tried
to tackle them, but Sophia shot at him. Startled, he leapt back. She blasted
out the engine, leaving him stranded. He cursed them as they moved away. Tavlin
wanted to believe this might have saved the man, but he thought he knew better.
The cultists would round him up soon enough, or maybe the Octunggen would.

Tavlin
sat Vassas down as gently as he could, then returned to the motor. Plugging one
ear with a finger and trying to press the other to his shoulder, he piloted the
boat out of the Temple chamber and into the halls beyond. He looked back over
his shoulder once to see the other boats vanishing into the white glow emitted
by the Temple. Among the men in the boats was Galesh, whom Tavlin had known for
many years and liked a good deal.
Dear
gods,
Tavlin thought.
What will
happen to them now?
Anguish rose in him, and he wished there was something
he could do to stop the men from going to their dooms—for what else could it
be?—but there was nothing he could think of, nothing that could turn them back.
They were lost. The singing was all around them, somehow both crashing and
mellifluous at the same time, beautiful and terrible, and completely
overwhelming.

Feeling
his eyes burn, Tavlin turned back around and continued piloting the boat
further from the chamber of the Temple. The sound of the singing lessened with
each yard. At last the sound became too faint to master Tavlin, and he
unstopped his ears. Breathing heavily, he shared a look with Sophia.

“They’re
all gone,” he gasped. “All Vassas’s men. Or at least the ones he took with him.”

She
looked as shaken as he felt. “I wonder what the people at the Temple will do
with them.”

Tavlin
continued on, and soon Vassas stirred and cracked an eye. He groaned, sat up, and
Tavlin braced himself for any sudden movements. Vassas was fine, though—or as
fine as he could be. He swore and vomited over the side, then rubbed his head.

“What’d
you bastards do to me?”

“Tavlin
saved your life,” Sophia said.

Vassas
glared around him. “Where’s … my boys?”

When
Tavlin told him, Vassas was inconsolable. He raged and screamed, kicking at the
gunwales. He shouted so loudly Tavlin had to remind him some of the enemy might
still be out here, hunting them. After that Vassas grew very quiet, and he
picked up a submachine gun and clenched it tightly, peering all around them at
the darkness.

At
last he said through clenched teeth, “They’ll pay for this, the sons of bitches.
See if they won't.”

Tavlin
nodded but didn’t reply. Soon he saw a familiar-looking passage. The pattern of
water reflected off the arching stone ceiling, slapping up against the stone
columns. A half dozen boats bobbed there, their gunwales eaten away by gunfire.
Bodies lay over their sides, and blood slicked the scummy surface. It stank of
gunpowder and split intestines. Sophia placed a hand over her nose, and Tavlin
tried not to breathe in.

“What
are we doing here?” Vassas said, training the gun all about them.

“We
have to retrieve the briefcase,” Tavlin said. “They may have dropped it when
you attacked, but they know where it is now, and they’ll be back for it.”

“We
shouldn’t waste time. We need to get back to the Wide-Mouth and regroup.”

“Tavlin’s
right,” Sophia said, sounding reluctant. “We have to move that damned thing. It’s
too dangerous.”

“Havictus
said it contained some sort of formula,” Tavlin said, “but that doesn’t make
any sense to me. To me, a formula means math or chemistry or something. Maybe
baby food.
He
was talking about the
end of the world … and gods. And the formula is in a container for a
fluid
.”

“And
he’s giving it to the worshippers of Magoth?” Vassas said.

“That’s
right. Apparently Octung is using them for some purpose. Havictus wants the
formula activated, whatever that means, although it sounds like if that happens
… well, he said it would be the end of all I know.”

“Damn.”

“He
also said only Magoth could activate it."

"Magoth
..." Vassas looked pale. "Havictus spoke of the god as if it
existed?”

Tavlin
nodded. "At any rate, I suppose Octung needs the cultists just like the
cultists need Octung, since only Octung can
provide
the formula, at least that we know.”

“I
wonder if this has anything to do with the construction that’s going on at the
Temple,” Sophia said.

“You
noticed that too?”

She
nodded.

He
found a long pole the Octunggen had been using to dredge the water and began
hunting for the briefcase. He searched right below the boat whose crew had
found the object. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he encountered an obstruction
and brought it up, and he almost laughed to see the dripping, seaweed-entangled
briefcase. He shook it off and reeled it into the boat.

Sophia
backed away from it. “I can
feel
it.”

“Yeah,”
Vassas grunted. “Me too.”

Tavlin
noticed it, also—the same sensation he’d felt before, or at least a small drop
of it, when he’d touched the side of the container in Taluush. It was an
uncomfortable throbbing in his skull. Something bitter grew on his tongue. He
tried to push it away.

“Just
ignore it,” he said. “Don’t let it get into your mind.”

“What
does that even
mean
?” Vassas’s voice
was ragged.

Tavlin
lowered the briefcase to the deck, then threw a blanket over it. He didn’t
answer the question, but he remembered the missing hours from the last time and
the dim recollection of awful nightmares.

“What
can we do with it?” Sophia said. “I mean, if it is some weapon of Octung, or
the cult of Magoth? Can we
destroy
it?”

“I’ve
been giving that a lot of thought,” Tavlin said.

“And?”
Vassas said.

Tavlin
scratched his cheek. “I learned in Taluush that the G’zai are enemies of the Ualissi—the
pre-humans that live in Muscud.”

“I
do business with them sometimes,” Vassas said, nodding.

“Well,
if the G’zai are helping Octung because they share the same gods, then that
might mean the Ualissi are opposed to those gods, maybe even that they worship
gods who regard Octung’s gods as their enemies. A religious dispute between
fanatical peoples. Anyway, they might know more about all this than we do—what
the contents of that canister mean and how to counteract it. I say that when we
get back to Muscud we look them up.”

“They
have strange technology,” Sophia nodded. “Maybe they really
could
do something about it, or help
us
figure out how to do something.”

“We’ll
do it,” Vassas said. “That thing … it makes my skin crawl.”

“Mine,
too,” Sophia admitted, her voice small.

Tavlin
bent over the engine, planning to pilot them back to Muscud, but, before he
could even open the engine up,
she
appeared.

The
girl in white.