by Elsa Jade
She’d instinctively clamped her own hand over his forearm when he grabbed her, and through the silky fabric of his long-sleeved tunic, the flex of hard muscle was unmistakable under her palm. The close fit of the dark blue uniform suggested that the rest of him was equally, er, hard.
In that way at least she supposed he was similar to the marble mermaid.
“Mermen,” he continued blithely, “live in the waters, not in the skies. So of course my first time was awkward.”
He seemed far too self-contained and well-balanced to experience many awkward firsts. “And when was your first time?”
He cut a glance her way. “Coming here.”
When his mouth quirked again, this time it was definitely a smile. Maybe a little tentative, waiting to see how she’d respond.
In the midst of her own existential crisis, she’d not given much thought to his. He and his fellow Tritonyri warriors had come to Earth to claim a bride from the Intergalactic Dating Agency, not realizing their search for compatible mates was being hijacked to expose the location of the treasure on the Yellowstone exodus ship. And after paying for a transgalactic date, now he had only…her.
She had no intention of becoming anyone’s alien mail order bride. All she wanted was to find a therapy for her genetic flaw. Saving his world was the price she would pay, considering she would die without him.
Well, not without him personally.
It was complicated.
Cautiously, she slid her hand off his arm, her fingertips tingling in the instant before the contact between them was severed, as if the heat of him that she’d noticed before was still smoldering. “Thank you for catching me,” she said even more stiffly than her knees. “I promise not to chum on your ship.” And then in the spirit of full of honesty, she felt compelled to add, “If I can help it.”
“It helps to fly on an empty stomach, I think.”
“Since I haven’t been able to eat anything except dehydrated foods rehydrated with our wellspring water, I think I’m about as empty as I can be,” she assured him.
“Your guardsman packed several crates of such foods in the Bathyal’s galley,” he told her. “But we also have some native Tritona dishes you might try. Since you respond well to the micronutrients in the Atlantyri’s water, perhaps that will fulfill your needs.”
“Would be nice to have something that isn’t all dried up,” she said. “If it kills me…” She shrugged one shoulder.
He stiffened, that military bearing like a shard of ice down his spine, cold and brittle. “I signed a contract with the Intergalactic Dating Agency that any bride matched to Tritona would be honored and cared for.”
“That contract was a sham,” she reminded him. “The Intergalactic Dating Agency or Intergenetic Data Agency lied to both of us. Your vow is null and void.”
“I swore it on the First Waters,” he said, his voice dropped an octave. “The deeps heard my truth even if everything else was a lie.”
She shook her head. “Obviously I don’t know these First Waters of yours, but it seems unreasonable to hold you to a promise when there’s no one on the other end.”
“You’ll swim in the First Waters soon enough,” he told her. “That’s where the Tritonesse are, and they are the ones who keep the history of our world, including the exodus ships and your ancestors. They will know best about your condition.” He took a step back, gesturing behind him. “If you’re ready…”
Swallowing hard, she focused past him to the dark bulk at the end of the circular drive. It was a spaceship, parked in her driveway, and she was going to the stars.
Chapter 2
Coriolis ushered the Earther female on to the Bathyal, watching her closely for any hint of retreat. He knew the signs well enough, having been forced to flee on more than one occasion when his cruelly outnumbered forces had no other option against the relentless land-dwelling Cretarni. He’d persevered against the soilers, eventually leading the western fleet to a shallow victory on their ruined world. If Marisol Wavercrest ran…
He’d have to let her go.
He had signed what he thought was the IDA’s contract to take an alien bride. She’d been contacted by the Intergenetic Data Agency promising to heal her from her half-alien blood. He had told her that the Tritonesse would know what to do, but what if they didn’t? What if taking his false bride to Tritona ended in her death? But he had killed before, and as she’d noted, on her world, she was already doomed.
Despite the slowness of her steps and a hitch in her breath, she didn’t hesitate at the hatch of the Bathyal. He let out a breath of his own, a silent sigh of relief. No matter what happened next, they had the preserved specimens from Tritona’s pure waters, conserved in stasis on the Atlantyri for centuries. With those samples, they could reseed the oceans of his dying world. And with Marisol Wavercrest on board, they could show the transgalactic refugee commission that Tritona was committed to healing from its terrible past.
He’d learned to be ruthless during the war, and maybe those days were not yet over.
At the top of the hatch, she did pause. But of course she would. It was her first time on a spaceship.
“It’s smaller than I thought a spaceship would be,” she murmured.
Inexplicably, he bristled a little, although that had been his exact thought when he’d been sent to purchase a ship for this mission. For as many credits as it had cost them, he’d at least hoped for a full defensive and offensive weapons package. Instead, they’d had to finance this intragalactic vacation cruiser barely worthy of interstellar travel.
Holding himself up straight, he said as mildly as he could, “It got us here. It will get us home.”
She cast one sharp glance at him, as if reminding him it was not her home—or at least not any home she’d ever known.
With a twinge of unease, sharper than a hai-aku’s bite, he dropped a step behind her as she continued her inspection.
When the Cretarni had been seeking a way to find and access the Atlantyri, it had been her search for an answer to her genetic quandary that attracted their attention. If she had legitimately signed up with the Intergalactic Dating Agency, would she have caught his attention? She was frail from her illness, but even fleshed out, she would be smaller than most Tritonesse. Her Earther blood was thin compared to his world’s females. Even her coloration was like nothing seen on Tritona. The undertone of her skin was the soft golden-green hue of the sunlit shallows on Tritona, and her long, pale hair like spindrift whipped off the top of shore-breaking waves. As far as he’d seen, she had no protective lenses over her dark eyes, no gills, no webs between her slender fingers to facilitate swimming, not even the faint remnants of scales that were mostly ornamental on his people, involuntarily displaying during the mating storms. If he’d had to judge her suitability as a bride for Tritona, he would’ve passed her over as too young and vulnerable, like a spawnling not ready for the dangerous deeps.
Yet here she was, stalking through his ship, judging it more fairly than made him comfortable. What would she think of war-torn Tritona?
Before he could offer her a tour—the Bathyal had some few pleasures since it had been a vacation rental—his second in command strode through the hatch with the other Wavercrest females behind him. Maelstrom Amyth had broken transgalactic laws by revealing their extraterrestrial origins to the oblivious Earthers. But in doing so, he’d found the lost Atlantyri with its precious cargo of untainted Tritona genetics. A war-time commander might be forced to condemn and punish such misbehavior from a subordinate. But so far, it seemed that these post-war skirmishes had new rules that they were writing in the sand.
Maelstrom gave him a steady look and a nod, all that was needed to make clear that his second had everything under control on his end.
If only his commander could say the same.
Coriolis sidled out of the way as the other two Earther females barged toward Marisol. The taller one, Ridley, had been a soldier on this world, and she’d assisted
Maelstrom with retrieving the Atlantyri treasure. The shorter one, Lana, seemed too small and soft to do much of anything.
But Marisol smiled at them both. “I guess we’re really doing this.”
Though the three had known one another only a few days, the energy between them felt like his Tritonyri warriors priming for battle. Maybe it was the same, considering all of them had been facing personal disasters caused by their non-Earther genetics.
Ridley at least had stabilized. With Maelstrom’s help, she’d overcome her paralyzing fear of dark water to end the Cretarni attack on the Atlantyri. Now she and his second seemed attuned on a different wavelength.
She touched Marisol’s hand, a fleeting gesture. “Hard to believe, but yeah.” She glanced over her shoulder, including Lana when she said, “Mael gave me a tour earlier. How about I show you around the ship while they start pre-launch?”
After one last look from Marisol, the three moved off together, Ridley’s brisk review of the Bathyal as “kinda like a mini van for space” making Coriolis squint.
When they disappeared down the main corridor, he shifted the look to his second. “That was a tidy split of opposing forces.”
Mael shrugged. “Thought it might be better for them not to hear if you had any last orders for me.”
“I’m surprised your Ridley agreed to be kept in the dark.”
“My Ridley…” The tough Tritonyri fighter, who dove into danger without ever waiting for orders, blushed so hard that the involuntary bioluminescence of skinshine sparkled on his cheeks. “That pings me, yeah.” He gave himself a little shake. “She knows when it matters I’ll always be her light.”
Coriolis scowled. “Maybe I shouldn’t send you alone with her on the Diatom.” After the battle over the Atlantyri, they’d commandeered the Cretarni ship as their own and renamed it. Not that anyone besides them knew that since the Cretarni had ignored Earth’s no-contact status to attack them. Since intergalactic law enforcement had never deigned to aid in Tritona’s civil war, keeping outsiders in the dark seemed even more prudent now that they were flirting with a bit of interplanetary irresponsibility themselves.
Mael’s skinshine flashed again, a wordless signal that he was unwilling to hear his commander’s opinion about his deepening bond with the Earther female. “We need to track down the Cretarni who stole our IDA payment. And we need to find out what they wanted on the Atlantyri. The creatures in stasis might be treasure to us, but we know they wanted something more.”
Since they’d already agreed on this separation, Coriolis couldn’t change the mission now without implying a loss of confidence in his friend. The Diatom with Mael in charge and Ridley as his sole crew would retrace the tracks of its former crew, hopefully to find answers to the remaining mysteries, while Coriolis took his would’ve-been bride back to Tritona before the refuge commission sent their representative to rule on the planet’s fate.
The pang of uncertainty bit him again. How had everything seemed simpler when those shriveling soilers were shooting at him?
“Any trouble, you aim for homewaters.” He didn’t use the command frequency, the one that could bubble water—or exposed flesh. But he hoped the order was clear enough.
Mael nodded. “Ridley wants to see Tritona. But she knows it’s crucial to find our credits and whatever hole the Cretarni are hiding in. We’ll come home as soon as we can.” He half closed his blue eyes. “Definitely before your mating.”
The bite in Coriolis’s gut seemed to reach all the way through to his spine, chewing through every vital internal organ on the way. “Marisol Wavercrest is too fragile for the storms.”
“If not her then maybe some hungry Tritonesse.” Mael’s teeth shone in a wide smile.
Too wide. Coriolis snarled back soundlessly.
And almost jumped out of his battle skin at the grating noise behind him.
With a sidelong glance, Ridley slipped past him—it was she who had cleared her throat—to stand beside Mael. “Marisol and Lana have seen it all. Well, not Sting’s quarters, since he’s locked up tight, but everything else. It’s not quite so unnerving if you pretend it’s a submarine.”
“Um, speak for yourself,” Lana squeaked from behind Marisol.
The taller Earther was looking at him. “I’d like to watch our departure from the cockpit, Commander, if that can be arranged.”
Did she not believe they would actually leave her planet for space? Or did she doubt his piloting specifically? “There are seats for you both.”
Lana made a muffled sound of distress, but Marisol inclined her head a scant degree.
Despite her severe stance, Ridley hugged her. “I’ll see you on Tritona. Don’t see all the sights without me.” She mimed hugging the smaller woman. “Don’t shock everyone, at least not ‘til I get there. Earther girls rule!”
While Lana grumbled and Marisol waved them off, Coriolis paced Mael and Ridley to the edge of gangway.
“Be watchful,” he warned them. “It seems the Cretarni haven’t conceded defeat after all.”
“Watch yourself,” Mael shot back. “The halls of the Tritonesse have their own dangers.”
As the Tritonyri crossed the open ground to the Diatom with his Earther mate at his side, Coriolis looked up. These stars were not his, but they would nevertheless guide him home.
Hope warred with his disquiet. And in the end, neither mattered. He’d do as he’d always done.
Whatever was necessary for Tritona.
Setting the hatch to retract, he found the other two Earther women waiting for him. He gestured down the corridor toward the bridge. “This way.”
Lana asked a few questions about the ship as they made their way forward, and he answered with what he knew though most of his attention was on the silent Marisol.
When they settled—Marisol in the copilot seat and Lana at comms—he leaned over to show her how to engage the restraint harness. “Are you feeling all right?”
“No chumming,” she assured him, flicking the pale waterfall of her hair out of the way.
A few silky strands brushed his knuckles when he checked her buckles, and his breath hitched at the inadvertent contact. Tritonesse usually bound their hair to prevent tangling. “This is only my second time.”
Was that a smile flickering in her dark eyes?
“What’s chumming?” Lana piped up.
While Marisol explained, he shortened the straps on the comm seat.
“Don’t touch me,” Lana warned when he reached for her buckle. “I don’t want to blow a fuse in the ship.”
He held his hands out of the way but watched as she followed the steps he’d taken with Marisol. “The Tritonesse will be intrigued by your power,” he told her. “We have legends of lightning-wielders from long ago. Would’ve been useful during the war.”
She wrinkled her petite nose. “I’m not much of a fighter, but if you ever need something toasted, you know where to find me.”
His translator provided a probable meaning for toast—a grain mixture baked into various shapes and then…cooked again?—and a colloquial meaning for toasted—to be defeated or destroyed.
Yes, that was exactly what they’d needed.
But as he ran through the pre-launch checklist with the Bathyal’s rudimentary AI, he thought about what his world needed next. Not destruction, but new life. And here he had the cryo-preserved specimens from Tritona’s unspoiled past in the hold, plus a bride representing the future.
While the AI clicked through the launch routine, he glanced at Marisol in the seat beside him. Her dark, serious gaze roamed the bridge control panels. The three Earther females had been fitted with external translators—the unobtrusive devices tucked right behind their ears—but the interpretations weren’t always as reliable as more comprehensive implants. Still, she seemed interested, so he relayed the sequences aloud and the AI took his cue.
When the last safety check had cleared, he said, “Firing engines now.” He glanced back, including Lana.
“You’ll feel it. Don’t be frightened.”
“Oh, why would I be?” she muttered under her breath. “Just launching into outer space.”
He touched the ignition, and the ship rumbled to life. The shiver passed through his bones. It felt strangely seductive, maybe because he was Tritonyri, born to the weightless world of water where every sensation seemed magnified by the perpetual caress of his world’s liquid medium. He gave himself a little shake to shed the prickle across his skin.
“Lana, if you would toggle the comm to the Diatom.”
“Who? Me?” She leaned forward. “Where…? Oh, thanks.” She followed Marisol’s pointing finger. “Uh, Diatom?”
“Here,” Maelstrom replied. “Ready on your mark.”
“I have authorization from planetary security to exit,” Coriolis relayed. Aside to the Earthers, he said, “The local interference meant to disguise extraterrestrial activity for the IDA outpost is still active, so the sensor obstruction should cover both our ships if we stay close.” They’d already decided they didn’t need the security around Earth’s closed-world status to harass them about why they suddenly had two ships—not to mention the ancient one they were leaving half buried in the mantle of the planet disguised by geysers and hot springs.
“Right behind you, Bathyal.” Ridley’s voice was clear and calm, as if she prepped for spaceflight every day. “Let’s do this.”
One more bite of uncertainty and then he punched the engines. The ship sprang upward, shoving him into his seat. The rental cruiser had been generically outfitted to accommodate as many species shapes as possible, and the padding was mostly in the right places. Still, his backside felt a thin spot in the protection.
He angled his head against the backrest to check his passengers. Marisol’s gaze was locked on the viewport in front of them. And even though this was only his second launch, he found himself looking at her instead of the starscape zooming toward them.
The incendiary heat outside reflected through the transparent plasteel, gilding the highpoints of her cheekbones and the strong arch of her nose. Even her pale hair caught the red-gold light as if she burned with the ship.
