by Jack Conner

Copyright 2015

All rights reserved

Cover image used with permission

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The World of the Atomic Sea

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To Vi Brandon, for her tireless dedication to spreading the word about my works, and her general awesomeness. Thank you, Vi!

THE STORY SO FAR

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.