by Elsa Jade
He looked at her. “I was made a monster. Of course I’m odd.”
She snorted again. “I meant odder than usual.” She put her hands on her hips, puffing herself up as big as she could, at least compared to him. “Now spill, or I’ll zap you.”
His gaze dropped to the jut of her breasts, which filled out even the generous cut of the alien fabric. It was good to know that even an alien monster could be distracted by boobs. “Either you can control your zaps to torture me at your whim, or you can’t.” He dragged his attention upward. “It can’t be both.”
She huffed out a disgruntled breath. “Fine. I can’t do it on command. But if I was a Tritonesse and ordered you to tell me, you would.”
He straightened. “Are you ordering now?”
A hidden edge in his tone sent a shiver down her spine. Not exactly menace, but something dangerous nonetheless.
But she didn’t back down. “Oh, just tell me.”
He inclined his head. “It’s possible you were followed back here. I found signs of another ship on the Diatom’s scans caught as you were crashing. It may have been the Cretarni.”
Another jolt went through her, not her own zap but the zing of fear. “Why would they come back here? Everything that was sent away on the Atlantyri mattered to you Tritonans, not to the Cretarni. And I thought you’d already taken everything of value back to Tritona.”
He stared past her. “I thought so too. I don’t know what they could want.”
“Would they…” Her voice shook despite her best effort to be as calm and cool as a fish. “Would they attack the Earth as they did your planet?”
“The war on Tritona was an internal matter, which is why intergalactic security forces didn’t interfere. Attacking a closed world would be much different.”
“The Cretarni don’t seem to care much about what’s right.” After all, they’d poisoned their own planet when it became clear that they were losing the war.
“As a practical matter, they lack the resources to wage a planet-wide battle, even against an unprepared populace such as your Earth.” His silvery gaze returning to her was steady, unflinching, as if he wanted her to know he was telling the truth. “We may have kept control of Tritona only because the Cretarni expended their reserves, but that also means they aren’t able to come after your Earth, even if for some reason they thought it worth pursuing.”
That wasn’t really consolation—that her whole world wasn’t worth the fight—but she’d take what assurances she could get.
She swallowed hard. “If it is the Cretarni, how are you and I supposed to fight them alone? I crashed the Diatom, and you have no way to contact more Tritonyri—”
He closed the distance between them and clamped his hands on her shoulder. As if he didn’t even care if she zapped him in her burgeoning panic. “We don’t have to fight them. Yet.”
The weight of his big hands somehow made it easier to draw a steadying breath. “Okay, first steps first then. How do we find them, whoever it is, and make sure they aren’t bad?”
“Bad,” he rumbled, sidling away from her again and letting his hands slip free. She resisted the urge to wind up and smack him if he asked what that meant. Much as she believed in nuance, she wasn’t going to quibble when possibly both her planets were at stake. “The Atlantyri is old,” he continued, “but it has some of the technology I can use to repair the Diatom and upgrade the systems at the estate. If the other ship turns out to be just a random visitor, we do nothing.”
“And if it is the Cretarni?” She peered at him. “Don’t hide things from me. I want to know what you know.”
His flat gaze never changed. “The Tritonesse weren’t interested in hearing my thoughts.”
“They made it very clear to me that I am not them.” When he gazed back silently across the small distance of the alien ship, she sighed. “And I shouldn’t have tried to evoke their name to order you around. That was wrong. So I’m simply asking because…it’s just the two of us, and we’re in this together.”
After a heartbeat, he inclined his head. “What I know I will share.”
As if she could actually be of any use. “So where do we start?”
He rolled his hand, flashing the small computer on his wrist. “The Diatom’s AI sent the list of damaged components, what can’t be reproduced from the production printer Maelstrom left behind. First, we need a sample of the nav data gel.”
Astrology she knew. Deep space navigation? Not so much. But she’d skimmed enough of the IDA handbooks—intended for new-and-clueless intergalactic citizens—to get a sense of how the scoby-like gel was cultured with artificial neurons to support sentient life with the trickier aspects of galactic existence, such as hopping across the interstellar void.
He moved quickly through the ship, and she had to hustle to keep up with his longer strides which kept her from being as nosey as she wanted.
This had been the path of her ancestresses. Their feet—probably bare as the Tritonans usually were and as she was now—had trod these halls. But eventually they’d left the Atlantyri and found Earther mates—a path that led to her.
A dead end.
Well, not quite dead yet.
Though Lana knew the Atlantyri was buried under centuries of sediment below one of the small lakes that fed tributaries to Yellowstone, the hallways that Sting led her down felt surprisingly open. And still when they emerged from the peripheral corridor to the core, she gasped with surprise and delight.
Though Ridley had described the core cavern as a massive, multi-chambered heart circulating the waters that kept the Tritonan ship alive, seeing it in front of her was something else. They’d emerged from one of the main conduits high in the cavern wall, which left them overlooking the segmented wheel, like a circular slice of a futuristic city, where waves sluiced from one segment to the other in an artificial tide divorced from the pull of the moon.
At least not the small, solitary moon of this world, anyway.
She let out a slow, wistful breath. “Just in case I didn’t believe in aliens…”
Beside her, Sting let out a hard grunt that she felt the center of her chest. “You didn’t believe in me?”
Though her brain knew better, her hand reached out of its own accord in response to the undercurrent of hurt in his tone. “I have to believe in you,” she said. “Since you’re right here.”
Maybe he wasn’t lying when he had told her that Titanyri were engineered to feel nothing, but the taut muscles in his forearm relaxed under her fingertips. “Right here.” He jerked his chin out across the open expanse. “But we need to be right there.” The central tower that pierced the wheel and reached toward the cavernous ceiling somewhere in the darkness above gleamed with its own light like an abalone shell. “How much do you believe in me?”
She sidled a half step closer to him as he advanced to the edge of the cliff where they’d emerged. She wrapped her fist into his harness. “I haven’t zapped you on purpose yet, have I?”
His grunt this time was softer, but it reverberated through her whole body as he pulled her close, as if he didn’t care at all about the risk of being hurt. “Gill,” he reminded her. “And hold on.”
He launched them off the ledge toward the dark water below.
She braced for impact, her teeth tight on the gill, but with Sting’s big body wrapped around her, they sliced through the water as if it were welcoming him home. Which she supposed it was, in a way.
Once submerged, he let her go under her own power. The water was cool but not cold—although she knew it would eventually sap her warmth—and mineral soft on her skin. When she opened her eyes, there was almost no salty sting, and the pearly glow emanating from most parts the ship gave her enough of a view that she longed to explore the exotic setting. But when Sting handed her the end of his tow rope, she remembered they were here with a purpose.
As he hauled her across the space the emptiness of the wedge, she realized how empty it was. At one time there
might’ve been hundreds of Tritonans fleeing their war, seeking a better place. Until they had crashed here and now she and the other Wavercrest syndrome sufferers were all that was left of their diluted blood.
Her heart ached. Even those who’d escaped hadn’t been able to truly leave behind the trauma of their war. But at least those holes torn in the fabric of their society had left a space for Marisol and Ridley to start a new life.
No room for her, of course. She’d only make more burned-out holes.
When she blinked hard, maybe the salinity of the water went up the barest degree. But she wasn’t crying, definitely not that.
Sting’s powerful stroke propelled them quickly across the wheel to the center where a submerged stairway led to a door that took them up into the airy antechamber at the base of the spire. She spat out the gill and disconnected herself from Sting as she glanced around. All the handbooks and the universal translator she’d been given didn’t tell her everything about Tritonan language and culture, but she understood the language of loss clearly enough to translate in the graffiti etched along one wall: So much water and yet my tongue withers with the thirst for home.
Tears prickled in her eyes again as she tagged along behind Sting. Once inside the spire, he led them down another set of spiraling stairs that plunged into the waters again at one point only to emerge again into another airy chamber—lower than the water-filled one?—until she felt completely turned around.
Finally, at a sealed portal, Sting held up his wrist datpad to an iris beside the door and spoke a complicated code. The portal irised open with a faint sound of reluctance.
“Data gel is the one thing we don’t have the time or components to re-create,” he told her. “Whatever gel survived here is old, but the Diatom should be able to reconfigure the synthetic neurons it needs to patch the gaps left by your electrical storm.”
She groaned. “I fried the poor ship’s brain.”
“And we can fix it,” he said. “At least enough to get back to Tritona.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “For you to get back to Tritona.”
His blank stare never changed. “That’s what I said.” He crowded her toward another portal. “This cooling conduit services the gel storage. You’ll need the gill again.”
When she opened her mouth to press the point of who exactly was going back to Tritona, he plucked the gill from her slack hand and popped it between her teeth. Did his fingertips linger for just a moment against her lips?
Before she could really wonder, he deftly wrapped her in the tow rope and pulled her close. He positioned them inside an airlock—a water lock, actually—that flooded around them before opening another access door that whisked them upward with a speed even more terrifying than their initial descent.
She was still blinking away the breathlessness of their rapid ascent when Sting detached her and strode toward a long bank of what looked like glass-fronted drawers. He held his datpad to controls beside the first drawer but it beeped back a sound that must be universal for “your account is overdrawn”. With one of those hard grunts, he moved down to the next drawer and it gave the same reply.
“Too much of the gel’s higher functioning has been lost over the centuries,” he reported. “There’s enough to maintain the ship’s basic functioning, but if I take too much it could destabilize.” He pivoted slowly, scanning the drawers from a distance before choosing another.
After a quick glance out the concave wall of windows that framed a vertigo-inducing view of the wheel—were data gels sentient enough to appreciate a view?—she followed behind him. “We need just enough for the Diatom to culture its own gel, right?” When he turned a surprised white stare on her, she tutted. “I did the assigned readings,” she reminded him. “Might not know exactly how it works, but it’s not that different from a sourdough starter or kombucha mother.”
He cocked his head. “Sourdough? Kombucha?”
“Earther foods.” She gave him a quick smile. “Maybe I could give you some reading.”
“I would eat or read whatever you gave me.” He turned back to the drawers. “Help me find one lively enough to share with us.”
She blinked again in even more confusion. “How can I help? Doesn’t your datpad interface with the ship system to find what you need?”
“Mine isn’t calibrated for the fine energy of the gel. Use yours.”
“My what? I don’t have a datpad.”
“Your own power.”
A little zing having nothing to do with her zaps went through her. “Power?”
“Your energy is a living thing, more like the data gel than my unit.” He twisted his wrist and flicked a gesture toward the drawers. “Find the one that’s still alive. Call to it as you called the seahorses.”
“I failed at that,” she reminded him.
“Don’t fail at this or I won’t be able to leave.”
She wrapped her arms around her belly, though she could scarcely feel the embrace through the already tight hug of the e-suit. “What if I hurt it,” she whispered. “Or even kill it?”
“Then I won’t be able to leave.”
She dropped her hands to her side with a glare. “You aren’t giving me a lot of choices here. And if I ruin it, I could kill the whole ship.”
“We won’t take more than it can spare,” he said. “If we can find anything of what we need.”
When in her life had she ever found what she needed? But back then, she hadn’t known she possessed this strange power. So maybe…
She closed her eyes, trying to remember how it felt to reach out to the seahorses. She’d had her palm flat on Sting’s bare chest, felt the silent timpani roll through her veins as he’d showed her how to sound her summons.
Reaching out, she put her hand on the controls of the drawer he’d rejected. Even with her eyes closed, his presence loomed over her, and she imagined his body in her signal like a black hole. Without opening her eyes, she angled her chin toward him. “Step back,” she murmured. “You’re sucking up my signal.”
He made some sort of noise she couldn’t decipher, but the interference of his presence diminished. Not gone, though. He’d have to be in another zip code at least for her to be unaware of him. And once he’d left Earth forever…
That was the point of all this, wasn’t it?
On the static and darkness that was the back of her closed eyelids, flickers of hazy light emerged. From her entry-level reading about spaceships, she imagined it was like seeing the electrical systems of the Atlantyri, basically the nervous system of a body. The lights brightened as she contemplated them, and she could almost imagine mapping the network against her own figure. She could hold her breath and slow this pulse or quicken her breath and move things faster or flex over here—
“Not the whole ship,” Sting cautioned. “Just the data gel.”
She released her hold on the brighter lights and turned her focus to another network—finer also brighter. Command lines, delicate but powerful.
Elation tingled in her. “I see it,” she whispered excitedly. “At least I think I see it.”
“Do you see any nodes where the synapses are thick enough to spare a vial or two?”
In her imagination she traced her fingers across the scintillating lines, seeking spare power. She found a few thin places and smoothed out a few tangles to reinforce them but she needed more…
She came up against a darkness. Not the blood-tinged shadows of her own closed eyes, but blackest obsidian, layers of translucent glass so thick they stopped all light.
“Sting,” she breathed.
“Stop calling me,” he said, his voice even rougher than usual. “I’m not what you’re looking for.”
That blackness was a wall she couldn’t reach around or over. In her mind, she reached out her hands as she’d done with the threads of electric light.
But there was nothing to touch.
“Lana.” His growl this time was a warning she felt in her sternum that re
verberated around the cage of her ribs to shiver down her spine, an absence so cold it converted in a sensory overload that turned to fire, burning toward her core… She jerked her wandering hands back to her chest before her fingertips ignited. “What was…?”
“Don’t touch,” he said, the same way she’d warned him. “Find the data gel so you can get rid of me.”
Oh yeah, the mission. She would’ve made a terrible soldier for Tritona or anyone else. But against the obsidian burned into her vision, the paler lines of the electrical nodes stood out more clearly.
She swiveled, her fingers tracing along the invisible line. “There.” She snapped her eyes open, her index finger extended at one otherwise unremarkable drawer.
Not hesitating, Sting strode to the compartment she indicated and triggered it open. Inside the drawer were hundreds of interconnected capsules. He glanced back at her. “Which one?”
She bit her lip. “That one?” When he gently disconnected the capsule and lifted it from its companion, the glow inside was less than her imagination. “Or maybe not?”
When he held up the small, barely flickering capsule, his big fingers made it look even more inconsequential. “It’s been centuries since it was charged, like a mind that is asleep and dreaming.”
With her eyes open, she couldn’t be sure that the flickers of light weren’t a reflection of the ambient ship’s glow off the capsule itself. “Dreaming? Or dead?”
“Find out,” he said. “Wake it.”
She grimaced. “Find out? Not even sure I found it.”
“Like you sent the call, but stronger. Give it what it needs to live.”
“How?” His challenge stung. She wasn’t a warrior like Ridley or leader like Marisol. According to the Tritonesse, she wasn’t even a killing machine like Sting; no, she was something worse. “I can’t…”
He took one step to close the distance between them and thrust the data gel capsule between her interlaced fingers. “Bring it to life,” he demanded. “Use your power to light it up.”
Something twisted deep inside her, a behemoth of panic about to be unearthed. “It’s not my power.”
