by Elsa Jade
Letting out another shuddering gasp, she tried at least the little ping that Sting had taught her to envision her surroundings. Again, nothing. She might as well be floating in the void by herself without an e-suit. “Let me out!” she screamed. “Let me out right now or I will…” How much did Cretarni know about nul’ah-wys? “Or I will blow up this ship from the inside.”
She screamed again until her throat was as raw as sushi. It was a long time before the door opened.
The Cretarni doctor stood in the way, glaring in dull orange. “You can’t blow up this ship,” she snarled. “We took it all. You have nothing left.”
Lana backed away until her spine pressed against the opposite wall. “Then why did you take me?”
The doctor revealed all those teeth again. “You are the enemy. Empty, but still the enemy. The high dominion will make an example out of you so the Tritonans know that the seeds of their destruction were cast by their own hand.”
Lana flattened her palms against the bulkhead behind her, as if she could draw some strength from that silvery metal. There was nothing, just like the interstellar void on the other side. Her throat tightened. “Why couldn’t you just live in peace?”
The doctor tilted her head, ear tufts flaring. “Why couldn’t you?”
And although Lana wasn’t sure if the alien meant Earth or Tritona, she supposed it didn’t even matter.
When she didn’t answer, the Cretarni clicked her egg tooth. “It’s over, almost. The fleet is gathering in the sky over Tritona where your dead-eyed Tritonyri can’t reach us.” The rictus of her smile exposed double rows of blunt back teeth that somehow managed to be as terrifying as her sharp canines. “When we arrive with the switch charge we will begin the targeted strikes against the Tritonans. The sea will be emptied, finally.”
The malevolent glee in the Cretarni’s hooting hiss needed no translation, and Lana flinched back.
“Why did you even take me?” Her voice broke. “You could’ve just left me back on the Atlantyri as empty as you want the sea to be, as dead as my long-lost ancestors.”
The doctor’s black pupils pinned. “I said as much. But tossing what remains of your burning corpse into the sea that rejected you will be even more satisfying in the end.”
If she’d had even a moment of wondering if she might make some sort of connection with the Cretarni, Lana decided that moment had whooshed right on past.
Kinda like the sound she’d make falling out of the Cretarni ship into Tritona’s waters.
As if sensing Lana’s helpless despair, the doctor stabbed again. “And maybe when we’re done with Tritona we’ll turn with the might of our armada on your little Dirt and purify the ocean there too, and move our people to your land.” Turning to stalk away, the doctor tossed over her shoulder, “Captain Cinek demands your presence on the bridge,” as if that order was an afterthought now that the insults and threats were done.
Lana glowered. Like she was going to just—
Two armed Cretarni soldiers crowded into the doorway.
Okay, apparently she was going to just.
Sullenly she pushed away from the wall and stepped out into the corridor. A few storage crates were stacked to either side of the door, and her translator quickly unscrambled the Cretarni script on the boxes as ‘hygiene wipes’ and ‘UV cleanser strips’; it was basically a broom closet where she’d been stuffed, how nice.
The engine thrum under her bare feet was stronger out here, and for the first time she could sort of understand Sting’s preference for going shoeless. All her senses seemed honed by the vulnerability. Minus, of course, the power she’d thoughtlessly rejected and then had forcibly taken from her.
Though she might not have any power left, she wasn’t going to miss another opportunity to fight Tritona’s enemies, so she kept surreptitious watch on every corridor they passed, reading every sign they passed and committing every turn to memory. Not that she could imagine how useful it would be to know the way back to her broom closet, but…
If she was going to save herself, she needed to get good at this, fast.
At a wide, bright archway, one of the soldiers gestured her to pass, and she eyed the secondary weapon holstered at his side as she sidled around. Maybe if one of them looked away for just a second…
Could she destroy the whole ship with one of those weapons, considering she no longer had her own power? If she could stop them before they made it to Tritona—
“Fire-witch,” Cinek said, clacking his teeth. “Who comes for you?”
“No one,” she said in a small voice. “Your cursed switch made sure of that.”
“We came for you,” the Cretarni captain said reasonably. “And now there is another blocking our way.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Is space not big enough to go around?”
“If we deviate from this course, we will draw the attention of closed-world security.” Though she tried not to react to this potential intel, Cinek snapped his teeth. “If planetary forces confront us, we may as well bomb your little world. We can sterilize your seas right now. Is that what you want?”
Her knees wavered. Tritona or Earth, she was supposed to decide which one died because of her? What kind of choice was that, especially when she suspected the Cretarni wouldn’t honor any choice she made. “How am I supposed to know who blocks your way? I can’t see through walls.”
With a high-pitched sound of exasperation, Cinek gestured to the big screen at the front of the room, enlarging an image there. Even with her translator, it took her a moment to make sense of the symbols as she peered at the screen. “It appears to be”—she waited until the Cretarni captain leaned in—“a spaceship of some sort.”
He straightened with another angry clack of teeth. “It’s not planetary security or they would be transmitting their ident. What are the ID codes for the exodus ship?”
She shrugged. “How would I know that? I didn’t even know I was an alien until recently.” She peered at him. “Which was all your fault.”
He ignored her pert response, focused on the screen, and barked a few orders at the other bridge crew that she was sure made sense to anyone who knew how to fly a spaceship. Which she didn’t, as evidenced by the crash of the only ship available.
She hardened her heart against the possibility that the small blip closing rapidly on their centered location could possibly be the Diatom.
And Sting.
She edged closer to the soldier who had crowded her down the hallway and was now partially blocking her view of the forward screen.
“Power up plasma cannons,” Cinek snarled. “And hail that ship.”
“Cannons primed, Captain, but we can’t open ports without disengaging the mimic shield, which will expose us to long-distance scans from planetary security.” When Cinek snarled again, the hapless Cretarni crewman added, “But the other ship can’t fire either, for the same reasons.”
“The other ship is opening comms,” another crewman called. “No vid.”
Lana took a sliding half step toward the soldier whose attention was fixed on the blinking light of their on-screen enemy.
“Blockading ship,” Cinek called. “You are interfering with an authorized trajectory. Withdraw at once.”
A moment of tense silence crackled across the void of space. “Return the fire-witch. She is mine.”
The growl, deeper than the hum of the engines, went through her bones, and though she tried to stiffen against the effect—she was trying to be strong, remember?—she swayed.
He was here. Sting had come for her.
“You are in violation of closed-world protocols,” Cinek blustered. “We are repatriating a long-lost Tritonan native. Retreat at once or you will be neutralized.”
“Give me Lana or I will not move.”
“Lana?” Cinek cut a glance her way. “The light switch?”
“Mine.”
That growl sank deeper than Lana’s bones and into her very atoms. The chill that had sa
pped her ever since she woke up on the Atlantyri evaporated in the rush of heat from his declaration.
Cinek just made a rude sound. “And who are you?”
“You knew me as Phantom.”
The words were simple and yet had a profound effect on the bridge of the Cretarni ship. The crew sat frozen at their consoles, and Lana would’ve sworn even the computronic sounds ceased. When Sting had first told her the name Phantom, she’d been sad for him that he’d still been stuck with the reminder of nothingness. Now…
Well, now she could appreciate the dread rising like a noxious fog from the invaders around her.
Cinek straightened, but slowly, as if he had to remind himself who was captain of his ship. “Those were just stories—a myth to strike fear. Phantom never existed.”
“Yes.”
Lana held back a hysterical giggle when the Cretarni didn’t seem as reassured by that confirmation as Cinek obviously hoped.
The Cretarni captain ruffled his head feathers. “Blockading ship, if you think—”
Abruptly, the forward screen flicked over to utter darkness, as if the front of the bridge had blown away to reveal the void minus its stars.
Until Sting sat forward, coming into view. His shielded eyes reflected the glow from indicators somewhere on his own screen, and the red pinpoints swam like demonfish in the silver. Instead of the beautiful luminescent shimmer she’d seen on their dives, his skinshine was matte black, like an ominous tattoo spelling out doom in some language even her universal translator didn’t know except instinctively.
Even knowing him, even wanting him, still she shivered with atavistic terror at the nightmare rising from the deeps of her own subconscious.
Oh god, how she wanted him.
The Cretarni obviously didn’t have that same complicated response. As if the intervening space between their ships wasn’t enough, the soldier in front of her retreated a half step, bumping into her. Gaze still locked on the screen, he snarled like it was her fault and edged away.
She stepped back too, closer to the bulkhead in an empty slot between control consoles.
Sting’s white stare gave no clue to his focus or if he even saw her—maybe the Cretarni ship hadn’t activated their cameras—but somehow she knew he knew she was there.
Or was she fooling herself again? Oh, he might know the Cretarni had taken her, but did he actually care? Well, of course he’d want to stop the Cretarni—it was all he’d done his whole life—but did he care about her? After all, he’d been ready to leave her behind and return to Tritona.
It would be her fault if his home, which he’d fought so hard for, was destroyed.
Wedging herself deeper into the gap between the consoles, she brandished the small pistol she’d snagged from the distracted soldier when he bumped into her. Apparently learning to palm tarot cards was going to prove useful after all…
“Sting!” she yelled. “Fire on this ship! They are going to bomb Earth and use my zaps to sterilize Tritona. You have to fire—!”
Cinek whirled with a clattering curse. “Close comms!”
And lose her connection to Sting? Panicked, she swiveled the pistol toward the comm console and fired. Designed for a seven-fingered hand, the weapon jumped in her grip, and the beam of concentrated light went wild even though Ridley had given her and Marisol some shooting lessons. But the Cretarni seated there dove out of the way—and Sting stayed on the screen, a lifeline she couldn’t touch no matter how much she yearned.
She jerked the gun back toward Cinek. “Maybe I can’t blow up this ship, but I can put holes in all of you.”
It wouldn’t have worked if his crew hadn’t been distracted and unnerved by Sting’s looming presence. But she’d made use of his borrowed power.
The Cretarni spread all his fingers, though she wasn’t sure if that was a gesture of peaceful intent or a threat. “If you think you can stop us—”
“I can’t,” she acknowledged. “You took my zaps. But the Phantom will end you!” Triumphantly, she pointed at the screen.
Where Sting said softly, “No.”
She ducked her head between her shoulders and sidelonged a glance at the screen. “Sting…”
“The war is over,” he continued inexorably. “Give me the fire-witch, and I will clear the way.”
“No!” She waggled her weapon, as if she could force them to listen now, when clearly that had never worked before. “Sting, we have to stop them—”
Cinek turned his back on her to face Sting, as if he’d already decided where the real threat lay. “You’d risk your status with the intergalactic council to challenge us for her? But Tritonans ended the light switch trials.”
“I am Titanyri. I was made, as the fire-witch was made, as a weapon of war. And the war is over.”
Cinek tilted his head. “If I say it’s not over?”
“Then you can keep fighting. But do it without us.”
“Sting.” Lana took a step out of her protected nook. “We can’t just walk away.”
“Walk, no. But dive, or maybe fly.” The nictitating membrane over his eyes flickered, so quickly even the high-tech projection almost didn’t catch it, but she did. “I’ve fought long enough for a cause that had no place for me in the end. I want more. I want you, Lana.”
Again, the bridge stayed in frozen silence for a heartbeat until Cinek shook himself. “We give you the fire-which and you clear our outbound trajectory?” His tone dripped suspicion. “That’s all?”
“Or you deny me and I aim this ship at your face and send us both to the void.”
Cinek’s fur-feathers ruffled. “You’d kill her too.”
“Yes! That’s what I said,” Lana shouted.
They both ignored her. “There is no place left for me in this universe, except what I make for myself. With her.” The blank shield flicked away from his gaze, exposing the pearly luminescence of his raw gaze. “The Intergalactic Dating Agency, that you counterfeited to lure us here, has a test that claims to know who will be our perfect mate.” His vulnerable gaze shifted to Lana. “I failed that test. I won’t fail this one. The fire-witch is my match, my mate. Lana is my love.”
His rough voice wavered like a ribbon of light through misting water—and the rainbow cast shimmered in her soul.
The Cretarni captain also swayed on his feet, as if mesmerized by the broken lilt of the Titanyri song. After another long heartbeat, Cinek shook himself free of the spell. “For the fire-witch’s sake, you would let your world die?”
“And this one too,” Sting said. “And all the rest until the galaxies burn. And I would take her deeper and deeper into the black, where nothing matters but us together.”
“Sting, no,” she despaired softly. “That’s not what I meant. This is not how we end the fight.”
“And what do you want?” His voice broke again, like a wave on rocks. “Because I would give you whatever you ask, i kharea nul’ah.”
My sweet fire. Tears burned in her eyes. All this time she’d questioned what she wanted. She’d consulted tarot cards and tea leaves, cast runes and thrown bones and thrown up when she took too much peyote once. She’d traveled the country, always staying just ahead of her fears and her memories, dreading what would happen if they found her.
And considering what was happening right this very second, she’d been right to be afraid! But he was giving her a chance. Now, at her lowest point, he held a hand out to her, offering…
What was she asking for? What was she brave enough to want?
“I want to be with you,” she said raggedly. “Wherever that is. Diving or flying or singing. I want to do that with you and if there is no place in the universe for us, we’ll make our own place, sing it into being, you and me.” The pearl of his eyes was like the delicate inner spiral of a shell she could gather around herself, tucking herself in deep like a home she’d bring with her everywhere. Her heart ached to touch him, but she kept a tight grip on the laser gun instead as she lifted her chin high to g
aze at him, wishing the space between them were nothing. “I want you, i shah-lan.” My strong night tide.
After an endless moment, the armored white dropped across his eyes again, and the growl in his voice was all serrated edges, no music left. “So give me the fire-witch, Cretarni, and the Phantom will give you your lives.”
Cinek shook his head, and a small furry feather drifted away. “You’d lose the war over this?”
“I won everything I wanted.” Sting faded back away from the screen until only his shielded eyes glowed from the darkness of his bridge. “I wait for you, i nul’ah.” My fire.
The screen flicked back to the ominous blinking of the Diatom alone on the pale outline of the defunct IDA trajectory. One of the crew let out a breathless whistle, and Cinek silenced them with a hiss, before turning to her. “The Phantom and the fire-witch. What monstrosity is this?”
She narrowed her eyes. “None,” she said tartly. “You took mine, and he was only ever the monster you all made him.”
Cinek stared past her. “I could take him too, turn him against the Tritonans.”
She let out a harsh laugh. “You could never do to him what you did to me. He is what he is, through and through.” Which was what she’d come to love. “He’s a monster of few words, but I suggest you listen to them if you want to fly away tonight.”
His egg tooth flashed over his lower lip. But after one last fulminating glare at the screen where he seemed to hope his fury would incinerate the dot that was the Diatom, he flared his many fingers at his crew. “We’ve been hanging here too long. Even with the mimic shield and low power comms, we risk detection by planetary security. Get her out of here. We have a war to end.”
When the soldier whose gun she stole stalked toward her, the snarl almost as threatening as Cinek’s, she hesitated. Could she shoot them all, or at least enough with this stolen weapon to force Sting to shoot them out of the sky? Could she do this alone to save Tritona? Would he let her?
For all the stormy confusion, one truth stood like a rocky spire against the tide.
They were stronger together.
Chapter 15
