The Atomic Sea: Volume Ten: Into the Dark Lands by Jack Conner

Author:Jack Conner [Conner, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: steampunk, epic fantasy, science fiction
Published: 2017-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

“This is what he meant by ‘expediting’?” Hildra snarled, rubbing the back of her head. Even after three days, it seemed to pain her. “Fucking bastard! How dare he! He has no idea what business we’re about, and he has the stones to lock us up?! Fuck him. If I ever get my hook within striking distance of his throat, I’ll—”

“Can you shut your mouth?”

This came from Sheridan, who had been sitting quietly in the nearest corner of their cell.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Sheridan said. “I’m tired of listening to your blather. We’re stuck here. We can’t get out. Not without some opportunity. There’s nothing to be gained from complaining and yet you waste great expenditures of effort doing so. I don’t want to squander another calorie trying to process your bullshit.”

Hildra took an angry step in Sheridan’s direction, but Janx waved her back half-heartedly, and the young thief subsided. Janx stood still, leaning against a stone wall. There were other prisoners in the (somewhat large) cell with them, about thirty, a third female, and few seemed to speak Ghenisan. Avery stood near one of the small barred windows encrusted with purple growths, watching the sun descend toward the harbor. Below him hundreds of fat, unnatural-looking seals clustered on the small rocks that girded Curluth Point. They stared up at him out of their flat, sagging faces and laughed. Har-har-har.

“You think you’re safe because they took my hook,” Hildra told Sheridan, and cast a regretful look at her vacant stump. “Well, just wait till I get it back.”

Sheridan sat calmly. “I am patient.”

“Enough,” Janx said.

“I agree,” Avery said. “Besides, if it’s not too naïve to say so, haven’t we finally started to get along? Let’s not ruin that.”

Over the last few days, they’d had little to do but brood and converse, and eventually they’d taken to doing more of the latter than the former. Several of the other inmates possessed scratched board games, and they were willing to part with these temporarily in exchange for promise of cigarettes and other luxuries from the zeppelin; they had all heard rumor of the foreign airship coming in. The four Ghenisans had taken to spending several hours each day playing each other in various games, and after a few disagreements over cheating the first day things had gotten smoother.

“Shit, bones,” Hildra said. “You don’t really think we can be friends with her?”

“I’m up for another game,” Sheridan said.

Janx seemed to shake himself out a reverie. “I’ll play. Think my men’re alright?” This he directed at Avery.

The doctor didn’t know how to answer. The four of them had been separated from the rest of the Muirblaag’s crew and put up in these “nicer” quarters—relatively clean, dry, unisex, and populated by the less disturbing prisoners. It was far from palatial, but Avery was aware that it must be considerably better than their mates were suffering somewhere below.

The sound of alien laughing distracted him before he could answer, and Avery glanced out the window to see the seals stirring.

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