by Jade, Elsa
“Uh, I meant, let’s not speak of it.”
He pivoted fully around to face her. “Is this some Earther custom? To pretend a mating did not happen?”
She winced. “We didn’t… I mean, yes, we had sex, but we didn’t mate. Or date, or whatever that word means to you.” She fingered the pistol in a way that made him nervous. “I was having a bad moment, and you got me over the hump…” She grimaced again. “Anyway, we don’t have to make a thing out of it.”
“What thing would we make? I explained that I cannot impregnate you at this time—”
She groaned, not the deeply satisfied sound she’d made while he was within her. “See? This is why we don’t need to talk about it. It was just a moment together—a good moment, yeah—but now it’s over. Like this conversation. Wait…” Snagging the bottle from his grip, she unsealed it and swilled from the dregs. As she finished, her satiated gasp was more exaggerated than he thought was really necessary. “Now it’s over.”
He scowled at her. “Is this how you were taught to shoot? A blaster in one hand and a bottle in the other?”
She lowered the bottle, shaking her head, whether at him or the sting of the ethanol, he wasn’t sure. “No, but I also wasn’t half alien back then.”
“Not half,” he corrected her, as if it mattered. “Over so many generations of Earther crossbreeding, the percentage is likely miniscule.”
“Yeah, great, just enough to get me in trouble. Just like always.” With a hard stare at him, she took another drink. “At least I don’t need the breath of rising desire for this.”
Her defiance and reckless disregard for safety would have forced him to kick her out of his squadron if they’d been at war. Or maybe not. At the end, they’d been desperate enough to recruit anyone. But that was why so many had died on his watch, and he was done with that.
Just like he was done trying to understand her refusal to acknowledge the breath they’d shared. It wasn’t like the Intergalactic Dating Agency had matched them anyway.
In one deft motion, he twisted the bottle from her grasp, capping it again, and slammed it into the crook of a tree branch, only the round bottom facing out. “It’s not empty, but we’re done with it,” he growled at her. “Now walk back to the edge of the pavement there. That’s where you’ll be firing from.”
She scowled. “That’s too far and it’ll be too dark. You’re trying to make me fail so you can take back the blaster.”
“The ocean is vast and dark,” he snapped back as he stalked away from her. “Don’t make excuses.”
She fell into step with a shiver. “This isn’t the ocean.”
When her voice shook too, he realized even visualizing the open water was starting to affect her. Not a good sign.
“Deepest ocean or smallest bathtub,” he said deliberately, “the conditions will never be favorable. You need to be able to take your shot however it presents itself.”
She raised her chin. “Take your shot, right,” she drawled. “You are so confident, that’s why you paid for a closed-world mail order bride.”
He paused at the pavement where he’d told her to take her stand. “If you don’t think you can handle the blaster—”
She whirled and fired. Bark flew from the tree trunk along with a shower of needles, bouncing off the intact glass.
“The sights are off,” she complained.
“It’s an energy weapon. Unlike your primitive projectile weapons, there’s effectively no bullet drop. The blaster fires true.” He didn’t want to admit that for a first shot, freehand and not steadied, with an unfamiliar weapon and more than a few drinks of ethanol, not to mention the stressors of the last few days, the shot wasn’t bad. If the target had been bigger—humanoid sized, for example—it would’ve been effective enough. “Again,” he said. “Take a moment this time, give it a chance to learn you. The pistol has some basic AI that will adjust to your touch.”
She let out a slow breath and squeezed off another shot. The orange beam was the briefest pulse, so delicate it knocked the bottle from the tree without breaking it.
Ridley gave a short nod. “Set it up again.”
He did as she ordered and they practiced until the last of the light left the sky. When he called a halt, she marched down to the tree line to retrieve the unbroken bottle. She twisted off the lid and took a swig before handing it over to him.
He took a drink this time and they drained the last of it. “Not bad,” he commented.
She smacked her lips. “Actually, that’s some of the best tequila Earth has to offer.”
“I meant your shooting.”
“Oh. Yeah. When it was obvious I wasn’t going to be diving anymore, I had to do something to make myself useful to the Navy. Got some commendations for it.”
He glanced down at her as they headed back to the house. “You make it sound as if your military had no use for you.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted to be on the water. Or really, in it, I guess.”
“Why was it so important to you?”
“If I had to be alone, at least out there, it made sense.” She spun the empty bottle restlessly. “Or that’s what I would’ve said before. Now…I don’t know.”
“Maybe you weren’t trying to get away. Maybe you were looking for something.”
She side-eyed him. “My long-lost tribe. In hiding, like my gills.” She made a gulping noise, though he was sure it was inadvertent. “Or not hiding so much as forgotten.” Her accusing stare pierced him.
“Our spawnlings were sent away to save them. They weren’t forgotten but lost when contact with the exodus ships was lost as our war with the soilers worsened.”
Her gray eyes were bleak in the harsh light at the back door. “I should warn you, that’s probably not as much consolation as you might think to the ones who were abandoned.”
When she reached around him for the door, he kept his big foot in the way. “You thought you’d lost everything when you couldn’t dive anymore. But now you have a new world waiting for you.”
“Tritona?” She coughed out a laugh that sounded almost as bad as when she’d sucked down lake water before dropping unconscious in his arms. “You’re just someone else who wants something from me that I probably can’t give. I’ll disappoint you with my miniscule percentages and that’ll be the end of it. Again.”
Shocked by her hostility, he stood back. “Tritona’s ancestral seas were yours, could be again. And we can fix you.”
She straightened, her lips set in a hard line. “Maybe I’m done with thinking I’m broken.”
As she swept past, the force of her anger set him back another step even though she never touched him. “Ridley.”
She didn’t stop.
Maybe not broken, but definitely hurt. And he’d just made it worse.
Chapter 14
Sucking down precious air, struggling to claw her way up, Ridley woke. The taste of saltwater choked her. She was drowning…
No, she was crying.
Before she could make sense of the fading imagery—memory?—of hard black tides, her door rattled with a knock. A second knock, actually. The first one had awakened her from the nightmare.
“Dammit.” She dashed away the wetness on her cheeks as she stumbled out of the too-soft bed in her borrowed room. “What is it?”
Wrenching open the door, she stood toe to bare toe with—of course—Maelstrom. His gaze lingered on her damp cheeks. If he asked why, she would scream.
“Call from my commander. His contact at the alleged IDA responded to his threat to leave orbit.”
She stiffened, the thrill of anticipation zinging over her skin. “And? What next?”
“The relay we set at the outpost gave us the origin of the signal. From there, Coriolis caught the embedded info in the data packet…with what seems to be the identification of a ship.”
She backed into the room, waving him to follow while she grabbed for her jeans and a hoodie. �
��At this point I assume you mean spaceship.”
“Yes. And we believe it’s a ship that belongs to Tritona’s enemies.”
She froze with her hands on the zipper of her jeans. “The ones who lost the war.”
His voice was gravelly, as if he too had just awakened. “We all lost the war. We drove the Cretarni off world, but they never formally ceded their right to citizenship.” He grimaced. “Eons before our recorded history, we shared a common ancestor. But any harmony between our two peoples was severed when those soil-suckers took to the land and we stayed in the water.”
She swallowed hard, forcing herself to finish dressing as she processed the new information. Now she was joining a war that had never ended on behalf of a people who had sent her away against others from this unknown home world. How much did she really know about Tritona except what Maelstrom had told her?
“When I was a kid, I liked the idea of family reunions, and I always wondered what they’d be like.” Checking to make sure the intensity dial was locked on the pistol, she slid the weapon into her pocket then straightened to face him. “Believe me, it wasn’t anything like this.”
“Tritonan mythology has stories where soilers and our kind would seek to mate.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “The stories were always tragedies.”
She winced. “If they want to claim the planet for themselves, what do they stand to gain by bringing your people and your lost tribes back together?”
“Maybe we’ll ask them when we get to their ship.” His smile was mostly teeth.
She hissed out a short breath, like releasing pressure from an overfilled tank. “You came for a date,” she reminded him. “Are you ready for a fight?”
“It’s not what I wanted,” he admitted, his voice even huskier than before. “But whatever they’re doing here is part of the counterfeit IDA claim, which will at least get them into legal trouble with the IDA’s business alliance and hopefully with the transgalactic council. While we are repatriating our lost citizens, they are perpetrating fraud and breaking closed-world protocols.” His smile was definitely a snarl this time. “And if it comes to war again, so be it.”
She scowled at him. “Not on this world. Maybe it’s not my real home, but it’s the only one I’ve known. Not going to have it ruined by aliens.” She let her grimace dissolve into a sigh and added, “Not when we’re doing such a bang-up job of ruining it ourselves.”
After a moment, he nodded. “We’ll summon reinforcements from planetary authorities if we must. But first, we’ll find out why they wanted us here: you lost spawnlings and us last Tritonyri.”
While she’d been out with Maelstrom, Thomas had laundered her small supply of clothes—which made her feel weird, but it was a little late to complain now—and she was grateful for the clean socks as she jammed her feet into her boots. She glanced at her small duffel bag. “So where did the signal originate? How far are we going?”
“North of someplace called”—he checked his datpad—“Yellowstone.”
She frowned, following him out of the room. “Not far from here, and pretty remote, so not well covered by telecom. Maybe they’re taking advantage of the same interference as the IDA siting itself in Sunset Falls.” She shook her head. “I know there’s been various reports of alien abduction all throughout the West, going back way before cell phones. But you should know, any spaceship battle in the skies above Old Faithful now is going to show up everywhere.”
Maelstrom nodded. “Coriolis is prepared to keep the Bathyal under mimic shield. We want the moral and legal high ground as well as the strategic one. But the Cretarni don’t realize we know their actual position. With luck, we can get there, take them by surprise, take whatever advantage they have.”
“Luck, huh?” She sniffed. “At least I have a ray gun too.”
“Just remember—”
“Point it where you tell me, yeah, yeah.”
At the top of the stairs, he stopped abruptly, taking her shoulder to spin her and face him. “I told you the pistol is preset to stun, and the charge will last longer at that setting. But if necessary, you dial it up to kill.”
Staring up at him, she swallowed hard, and even though she’d brushed her teeth after she’d left him following target practice, the taste in the back of her throat was a confusing mix of pheromone, tequila, and tears. But no fear.
How awful that facing potentially murderous aliens was less terrifying than a bubble bath. She set her jaw and nodded once.
In the foyer, Marisol and Thomas were waiting, both of them dressed for a new day despite the old grandfather clock that showed the time as four a.m. Lana was lurking in the library doorway, wrapped in a robe, although Ridley wasn’t sure if it was one of the smaller woman’s lushly outrageous outfits or a nightgown.
With her pale hair in a single braid down her back, Marisol looked younger than an heiress should be, but the quaver of her hand where she held onto Thomas betrayed her frail condition, as if she were a century older. “Coriolis—that is, your commander asked me to stay here in case the enemy comes this way. But I don’t like that you two are going on your own. We’re spread too thin.”
“We’ve always fought losing odds,” Maelstrom told her. “But the roughest tide carries the richest fish.”
They all stared at him disbelievingly, and Ridley let out a snort. “I suppose that’s something you tell your spawnlings?”
“It sounds more inspirational when my commander says it,” he admitted.
“Don’t need inspiration, got a ray gun.” She looked around at the others. “I’ve no doubt none of you are excited about me being on the advance team.” When Lana stepped forward with a sputter of disagreement, Ridley held up one hand to silence her. “It’s pretty obvious I don’t have much to show for my time on this planet. Not to mention, it’s not actually my planet. And now these assholes are here teasing us with something, we don’t know what.” She stuffed her hands in her pockets, feeling the reassuring bulk of her blaster. “But I promise I’ll fight to find out what it is.”
“Go get that rich fish, Miss Ridley,” Thomas said. He reached behind him to present a large paper bag with a flourish. “And here’s some coffee for the road.”
“If you bring the fishes back,” Lana said decisively, “I’ll do my best to fry them.”
They all marched out the front door, and Ridley thought there should be a victorious blare of trumpets or something. Instead, a discordant splash made her stomach churn uncertainly.
Lana’s little voice drifted past her. “Uh, what’s that in the fountain?”
Maelstrom huffed out a hard breath. “Sting.” He held one hand behind him. “Stay here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
“What’s a sting?” Lana repeated in an even smaller voice.
Ignoring his gesture and his order, Ridley followed him to the fountain. She couldn’t stand the touch and the sight of water, and now the sound, really? She wouldn’t live like this.
In the center of the fountain, a large, pale shape eclipsed the marble mermaid like one moon eclipsing another. It was a Tritonyri. For some reason, she didn’t need the battle harness to tell her that. He was even bigger than Maelstrom, and the metallic straps of his gear crisscrossed his enormous body like chains holding a dangerous beast.
“What the hell?” she muttered.
“Not hell,” Maelstrom murmured back. “Not exactly. An upwelled Tritonyri, combat enhanced. Only a few survived the war.”
The massive alien stood unmoving, as they approached. Even the droplets clinging to his skin and hair were static, as if frozen there.
“Fathom, what are you doing out?” Maelstrom stopped at the edge of the fountain. A few steps back, Ridley also paused so she didn’t have to look into the black pool. Which left her plenty of room to notice that Maelstrom’s hand strayed near the blaster at the small of his back.
“For the assault on the enemy.” The Tritonyri’s voice was so low, the water around him rippled and dance
d with the sound waves.
Maelstrom shook his head. “This is reconnaissance only, maybe a bit of neutral negotiation.”
“Maybe. So I only brought you the rifle, not the cannon.” The hulking Tritonyri strode to the edge of the fountain and laid a dark bundle on the marble. “Also, the cannon wouldn’t fit through the aquifer.”
Ridley peered at the massive male. “How did you fit?”
He didn’t look at her. “The tunnel is bigger now.”
Maelstrom grumbled under his breath. “We can’t go in blasters blazing.”
“We might not go in that way,” Ridley argued, “but if we have to go out that way, be nice to have the firepower.”
This time, Sting—or Fathom or whatever his name was—angled his gaze to her. The nacreous glow of his unblinking white eyes made her freeze like one of those water droplets. “Listen to the little hai-aku, Mael. Hai-aku teeth are too sharp to ignore.”
It wasn’t until he stepped back, angling away again, that she caught her breath. The veils over his eyes were permanent, she realized, and when he walked, the water barely splashed around him, his monstrous body cleaving the surface like a knife. Or a broadsword.
Maelstrom hefted the bundle. “You’ll stay close while I’m gone?”
Sting glanced over his shoulder toward the house. “Not too close.”
With a brusque nod, Maelstrom turned toward Ridley. “I’ll drive.”
She didn’t object, partly because she wanted to poke through the bundle, but also because her knees were sort of shaking. She kept one wary eye on the fountain as she scuttled into the passenger seat. In the mere instant that she broke line of sight as she pulled the door closed, the pool was empty.
She gulped. “It is safe to leave…that with Marisol and Lana?”
“No. But it’s less safe to leave them alone.” Maelstrom growled as he bumped his knees on the wheel.
She might’ve been inclined to let him suffer in the too-tight space without telling him about the seat adjustment options—oh, say, like someone not letting her know about her damn gills—but she wasn’t that petty. Or she was that petty, but she wasn’t interested in watching him hunch all the way to Yellowstone.
