Maelstrom: Mermaids of Montana 1: Intergalactic Dating Agency

by Jade, Elsa

  A faint glimmer of hope, more fragile than the glowing algae, rose above the sludge in his veins. “You have sea monsters too? Maybe some of the other Atlantyri specimens survived.”

  But she bit her lip. “That loch is a long way from here—a few thousand miles—and I know people have searched the water, aimed sonar all the way to the bottom, and never found anything. I’m sorry. I think this is all that remains of the ship.”

  He let out a slow breath. “Atlantyri means ‘a light in the darkness’. But I’m not seeing a light for Tritona.”

  Beside him, she hunched her shoulders. “Yeah, glow-in-the-gloom moss isn’t enough light.”

  Pacing a slow circle, he went to each window, staring out at the half sunken pyramids. “Another translation might be ‘a life in the darkness’. Since the exodus ships left, all the Tritonesse retreated into the deepest trenches for safety, but that’s meant Tritona has been in a downward spiral of decay with fewer spawnlings and more dead zones. Our strongest defenders, the ones who kept our waters pure, are almost as lost to us now as the Atlantyri was.”

  “Mael, I wish…”

  When she didn’t finish, he pivoted to face her. “Wish what?”

  Her gaze was aimed out the window as his had been. “You said the Cretarni were powerful enemies, and they lured us here to unlock the ship. There must be more than what we’re seeing.” She spun away from the vista. “This was the wrong way. We need to go deeper.”

  “Ridley—”

  But she was already charging out of the tower.

  He grimaced. Such was the way of the hai-aku when it took a bite. He raced after her.

  Their descent was faster, but even once they reached their original entry point, the column of air remained, a multitude of delicate bubbles constrained by the ancient shaft. Just when he judged they had to have reached the lowest realms of the ship-city, the plasteel walls gave way to raw stone.

  Ridley ran one hand over the rough rock. “We’re not on the ship anymore, are we?”

  “They excavated underneath.” The incalculable pressure of soil and water around them weighed on him, but excitement frothed in his blood. “What were they hiding?”

  “Their treasure.”

  As they followed the spiraling twist of the crudely carved tunnel, the rock reminded him of the smaller route beneath the Wavercrest fountain. All waters flowed from a source, he’d told Ridley, but this was too similar to be coincidence.

  Yet more proof—as if he needed it—that the Wavercrest females were connected to the forgotten Atlantyri.

  With the rugged walls narrowing around them, the ping of his echolocation warned that the steep, downward passage was coming to an end. Disillusionment sapped the haste from his steps. “Ridley…”

  She had hurried one curve ahead of him, the echo of her footsteps pattering back to him against the stone. But the moment before she turned out of sight, brilliant color flushed across the beads of water clinging to her skin. Had she suddenly gained chromatophores that let her change colors?

  When she gasped his name, he jolted around the corner to join her.

  And halted when the rainbow flashed across his eyes.

  This chamber wasn’t large, barely the size of the hold on the Bathyal, but the limestone walls were honeycombed with hundreds of pockets, each holding fist-sized cylinders that glowed with multi-hued lights.

  Blood roared in his ears. No, not shock. The susurration was the pulse of water moving through the pockets, powering the system.

  Ridley’s gray eyes sparkled with all the colors. “What are these?” Her whisper rode the waves of rippling sound and lingered as a visible fog in the cold air.

  “The light and the life in the darkness. This is the treasure of Atlantryi.” Wonder made him lightheaded. “These are the other survivors of the exodus ship.”

  She froze, her eyes widening even more. “These are…embryos?”

  In a few quick strides, he circled the chamber, passing his datpad over the pockets. “Tritonesse and Tritonyri, yes, and it looks like several hundred other Tritonan species. Still calculating…” Stopping at one darkened cell, he put his hand against the transparent plasteel. The water had been rerouted around the cell, and the pulse elsewhere in the chamber was absent here. His throat tightened. “Not everything survived.”

  Drifting up beside him, her shoulder brushed against his. “I’m sorry.”

  He let out a low breath. “That anything is still here is a miracle. It looks like the Tritonyri guardians of the ship shunted all available tech here, to give these cells the best chance for enduring the centuries.”

  “Are they still viable after being frozen all this time?”

  “Not actually frozen. Suspended in the primordial waters.” All the colors of the pulsing cells swirled in his head, and he lowered himself to one knee. “Ridley, with these uncorrupted zygotes, Tritona can prove to the trangalactic council that we have the resources to restore our seas, that our world has a future.” He gazed up at her. “And you found it, buried here.” Reaching for her hand, he pressed her knuckles to the side of his neck above his furled gills—a Tritonyri gesture of trust and allegiance, giving her control of his breath itself. “I know you didn’t choose to suffer from the Wavercrest Syndrome, but you may have saved us all.”

  When she bit her lip, the shine in her eyes had more colors than all the waters of Tritona. “If I could help bring your home back to life, a bit of freaking out wasn’t so bad, really.” She threaded a finger through his hair and gave a little tug. “Do you think Marisol and Lana would be healed, or at least get better, if they came down here too?”

  “Unknown. We can’t contact them until we get clear of the remaining shielding around the Atlantyri.” He rose to her touch, casting another glance at the cells. “And we can’t disconnect any of these without a replacement support system ready to go.”

  Releasing him, she spun slowly on the balls of her feet, staring at all the storage cells and drumming her fingers restlessly on her hipbones. “Does the Bathyal have something you can rig up? Do spaceships have weight limits, because hauling this primordial goo is gonna drain energy right out of your engines.”

  Raised without any knowledge of her home, and still she was willing to bend what understanding she had to the problem. Even with the urgency of their situation—or maybe because of it—he wanted to pull her around him, as if she were an exoskeleton of support as he considered the limited options.

  “I don’t want to risk all these tiny lives,” he said. “Not when the situation on Tritona is still so precarious.”

  “Not to mention here,” she muttered.

  He grunted in wry agreement. “First, I need to get this discovery back to Coriolis. Then we can decide our best course. But at least we have a chance now.” He took her elbow and whirled her back toward him, slowly, as if they were floating in the salty First Waters. “All because of you.”

  She braced her hands on his chest, fingers splayed wide. “You’re the one who tracked the Cretarni this far. Maybe we both deserve this win.”

  Their lips met in the middle—him dropping his head, her rising to her toes—and the lightness that shivered through him was brighter than all the centuries of empowered water flowing through veins of the forgotten ship.

  With his datpad still processing all the reports it had gleaned from the cell system, they left the center pyramid spire. At the barbican portal, Mael paused to look up at the ship ident panel again. The Atlantyri crew had done everything they could for their zygotic charges and then passed along their Tritonan blood in the hopes that one day the inadvertent touch of an unwitting heir would unlock the First Waters.

  Ridley was that heir, and today was that day—

  A beam of virulent orange light blazed across the cavern. Searing through the air where Mael would’ve stepped if he hadn’t paused, it sizzled across the plasteel panel.

  He threw himself backward into the barbican, knocking Ridley back as well. “Pla
sma fire.” He swung the blaster rifle into his hands and sighted along the afterimage of the orange line still burning in his mind. If he’d let Ridley walk ahead of him…

  The scope locked on a target and he fired blindly. To a commanding officer, he would’ve claimed he identified the Cretarni shooter with the instincts of decades of war. But really, he was incensed to take down whoever shot at his companion.

  His return fire scattered the handful of soiler soldiers emerging from a round shaft opening higher on the opposite wall from where he and Ridley had entered. The intruder he’d struck collapsed back into the shaft while the rest split to either side along the ledge walkways that crisscrossed the cavern wall.

  And led into the ship-city.

  “The Cretarni have the advantage in numbers and firepower,” he reported. “As usual.”

  Ridley had ducked back to the opposite side of the doorway from him, covering the other approach angle. She had her pistol in hand but the gill was also looped close around her neck, as he’d ordered. “We have the water.”

  On Tritona, that had been the deciding factor too. Not because the water had saved them, but because the water’s dying had doomed them all, and so in the end, the Cretarni had simply left.

  “Plasteel blocks blaster shots,” he told her. “But plasma beam will penetrate water with little deflection.” His Tritonyri troops had always suffered from holding the low ground. Now Ridley was in danger, and the memories of all those wartime losses funneled to a jagged, rusty spear of terror.

  She nodded curtly, her jaw set hard. “Was that… I don’t know how to judge the strength of the shot. Was that stun or kill?”

  He didn’t glance away from scanning the situation; if he saw the same fear in her eyes that churned in his guts he’d lose all control. “Kill. They got us to open the gates to Atlantis, and now they’re done with us.”

  She was silent only for a beat, processing his grim assessment, before she moved on. “We know for sure two of those shafts lead out: the one we came down and that one they just came through. Fair to assume the other openings in the cavern wall are moving water and air to the surface?”

  He considered what he knew of the old ships. “Maybe. But no guarantees.”

  “Nah. Never are.” She huffed out a breath. “Okay. We just need to pop into one of the covered canals and follow it up to the main shafts. Once we get clear of the interference, we can summon your ship as backup. I know it’s a risk on a closed world, but another world, in miniature, could be stolen right out from under us.”

  Mentally sectioning off the fate of the zygotes, he followed her line of reckoning even as he mentally traced potential routes. “The plasteel will give us some protection from blaster and plasma fire. Could get us there. Look.” He pointed from the doorway, careful not to stick his arm out too far. “See those two matched ducts that go all the way up?”

  She craned her neck to follow his gesture. “With the smaller one that disappears below us?”

  “At that size, I’m thinking the smaller one is an air conduit, not water, that feeds the bubbles in this tower. Instead of going up, we go down to where it connects, tap in, and let it take us up and out.”

  “If we retreat, they’re coming after us—or going after the embryos—with nothing to stop them.”

  He gave himself an instant to wonder why the Cretarni even wanted the treasure of preserved Tritonan heritage. Just to destroy it? That seemed unspeakably cruel.

  And not important right now. “Give me your second pistol.” When she passed over the weapon without question, he spun the control, locking it into the far position. “And one of the reef-weed balls.”

  She grimaced. “Really not hungry.” But she followed his direction, tossing one of the snacks across the open doorway at him.

  Unspooling a nearly invisible line of monofilament from his utility belt, he cut a length of line and sliced the moist treat in two. He wadded half the reef-weed around the tip of the line and tossed it back to her. “Stretch it low across the portal.”

  “Trip wire?”

  He nodded. “The pistol is set to overload. Ugly trick but it was all we had toward the end of the fighting.” He tucked his end of the trap just out of immediate sight from the doorway. “Won’t catch more than one or two, but it’ll slow them down and remind them.” His jaw clenched.

  Ridley was watching him. “Helluva first date,” she murmured with a crooked smile.

  He wanted to kiss her, not for the breath of rising desire, just because. But instead, he set the trap and they ran for the spiraling corridor downward.

  Cooler air touched with the scent of wet earth whispered past them. They had almost raced past a small dark portal that he’d thought was another window set too low to catch the bioluminescence from higher up. He caught Ridley’s arm and hauled her back. “This way.”

  She wheeled around to follow him into the shadows. “What—?”

  A muffled thunder from behind them made him scowl. “Not much time.”

  “That was the pistol.” Her gray eyes were wide in the gloom.

  He nodded as he swung the rifle behind him. “Where’s your light?”

  She fumbled for the Earther tool and shined it around the empty walls. “Dead end?” Her voice wavered.

  He wouldn’t let it be. Not for her. “Access port.” He traced the edge of the plasteel when she steadied the light. “This joins the smaller conduit we saw.”

  She stepped closer. “It’ll go all the way up?”

  “Above the shaft where we came in, so I’m thinking this one never gets wet. It’s air only, although hard to say where the intake will let you out.”

  “Air, water, whatever,” she said fervently. “Just away from fire.” Then she paused. “What do you mean let me out?”

  “The soilers killed us for centuries. They came across lightyears to this Earth to keep trying to kill us.” He narrowed his eyes. “If they think getting our hopes up with their IDA ruse is going to finish us now, they are wrong.”

  “Then we keep fighting?”

  “Staying alive is the first step of any fight.” That was why the Tritonesse were kept safe in the depths, why their essential act to reclaim their world was attracting new mates. “I keep fighting. You are going home. Back to your life on the surface.”

  Her stunned expression of betrayal was like another blaster set to overload exploding in his chest. But it didn’t matter, not compared to her living.

  “You said we’d do this together.” She stepped back from the duct and from him. “That you’d help me.”

  “You’re not broken,” he reminded her with a glare. “You never were. You just didn’t know what you are. Tell my commander about what we found.” He stuffed his datpad into the pocket of her pants. Despite the urgency, he let his hands linger on her hips, memorizing the swells of her like the deepest currents. “Tell him to take you home. To Tritona.”

  “Maelstrom—”

  “You will live. And so will Tritona.” Forcing himself to let her go, he turned to the access port in the canal conduit. With a powerful wrench—his ferocity fueled with regret—he ripped back the protective covering. The howl of wind through the conduit snatched away the rest of her objections.

  Almost snatched him off his feet too, the suction was so strong.

  Ridley staggered at the fierce drag, and it was a simple thing for him to pluck her right off her boots. As he stumbled toward the open port, she grabbed at him, knotting her fingers through the straps of his battle skin.

  As her knuckles pressed into his chest, their gazes clashed, and in the shimmering luminescence, he kissed her. One last gentle bite of yearning hunger…

  Then, with a flick, he released the harness. Her eyes widened almost comically as she found herself holding onto nothing.

  He upended her bodily into the conduit. The smooth bore of the plasteel would’ve barely fit his shoulders. Even her smaller form was a bit of a plug, and the wind shrieked around her, making any wo
rds impossible.

  Not that he had anything to say, not that she’d ever forgive him for this desertion.

  And there was no time left. The pulsing, breathing sequence of the city could change at any moment, reversing the flow of water and air, trapping her with him.

  For a bare heartbeat, he wanted that, more than anything, more even than he wanted peace and a future for his distant world.

  As she scrabbled at the threshold, trying to get a grip, her desperate gaze caught his. He suspected she saw the guilt in his eyes because her lips formed around his name.

  He took a step closer and she reached up to him.

  He pried her fingers loose from the edge and closed the panel, sealing her into the screaming vacuum.

  Chapter 18

  For a tumbling eternity, she was blind, unable to catch her breath, like her nightmare of drowning in darkness.

  Except she was drowning in air. And instead of black panic, her mind was illuminated with the fucking pure white-red rage at Maelstrom’s treachery.

  As the pneumatic tube sucked her away, feet first, she folded her elbows around her ears to protect her head. But once she was aerodynamically prone, the cushion of wind over the metallic alien stone flowed without effort, and as long as she didn’t struggle too hard, it slid her quickly toward some end.

  What end, she didn’t know. And neither did Mael, that alien bastard. The end for her thinking anything sweet about him, that was for sure.

  Little strobes of brighter light caught her attention in the darkness. At first she thought it was more of the glowing algae, but nothing interrupted her slick slide. It had to be the edges of more access ports, opening onto other parts of the city.

  The appearance of the light was regular—though not quite as fast as her racing heart—and as the next one approached, she readied herself—

  A savage kick smashed out the panel, and she almost shattered both elbows hooking through the opening. The suction of air headed topside clawed at her dangling legs, trying to pull her in, carrying her away, back to her old life.