by Elsa Jade
He inclined his head. “So you noted before.”
She glanced up at the edge in his voice. Had she insulted his ship? It wasn’t like she was criticizing him when she knew his world was struggling to make ends meet. Maybe alien males weren’t so different from Earth men if they bristled at any suggestion that their assets were not particularly large.
It was a mistake to get too casual when she didn’t know him at all. Even if the Intergalactic Dating Agency had approved him—which it hadn’t, because the IDA contract had been a lie—still, she would’ve done her own due diligence. Her grandmother had instilled such business basics in her from childhood.
Not that being a mail order bride was just business.
She scowled to herself. She was not anyone’s bride.
Forcing herself to meet the commander’s gaze, she gave him the same sort of nod. “Lana was right about it being an exhausting few days. I shall try not to distract you with any more seagull noises.”
Despite her stay gesture, he followed her to the doorway of the lounge. “Since this was a vacation cruiser, each berth has a sleep enhancement system. If you activate it, you can set parameters for theta and delta wave optimization.” His gray eyes flickered silver with the protective membranes. “It can lull the dreams.”
The way his voice dropped made her wonder what dreams—nightmares?—he’d had to fight with high-tech sleep aids. War wasn’t all camaraderie and campfires.
“Thank you for the suggestion. Will you please forward me the timeline for our arrival? I want to be prepared.”
Another nod and this time he didn’t follow as she headed down the corridor toward the sleeping quarters.
She didn’t look back but somehow the sensation of his focus lingered like the heat of the lava-leaf spice.
It might not be the threat of dreams keeping her up tonight.
***
The next morning—was it morning?—she found Lana in the galley, reading from the tablet while she mixed up something for breakfast.
“Morning,” she chirped. Then her pert nose wrinkled. “Is it morning?”
Marisol laughed. “I’m still trying to figure it all out.”
“I’ve only made it through about a third of the introductory modules in our Tritonan immersion classes.” Lana angled the tablet toward Marisol. “Confession: I skipped the war years. It was making me…zappy. So I’m working on cuisine instead.” She waved something like a spork in her hand at the containers strewn around the counter. “Want to try it?” Then she sucked in a breath. “Oh, I forgot. Your allergies.”
Glancing warily around the galley, Marisol bit the inside of her lip. “You used the ship’s stores?” At the confirmation, she sighed. “All the water aboard is from Tritona, supposedly the same as the wellspring water on the estate which doesn’t hurt me. I have to try it at some point. Might as well be now when I’m close to the med bay here. Commander Kelyre said—”
His deep voice interrupted. “Commander Kelyre did not say you should poison yourself.”
“Morning, Commander,” Lana said.
Marisol pivoted on her slipper to face him. “Not so much poisoning myself as…experimenting.”
“Experimenting is flashing new skinshines,” he said, “not exposing yourself to suspected toxins.”
She blinked at his intensity—and the word that didn’t translate through her earpiece. “Skinshine?”
“Their bioluminescence,” Lana supplied helpfully. “It’s mostly reflexive, in response to emotion or some external factors. But with practice and effort, they can sort of do their own personal insta-makeup, and I am very, very jealous.”
Marisol slanted a glance at the commander. She narrowed her eyes, picturing him in grand Sephora array…
He did have the cheekbones for the brightest highlighter. And if his lashes were a bit too militantly straight, a warmed curler and touch of hairspray could fix that. A classic smoky eye and a bright lip…
Her gaze lingered as those lips pursed softly—
“What?” he said, tilting his head at her.
She jerked herself up. “What?” The puckered shape of her mouth felt too suggestive. Probably her skin was shining now. “Nothing. I had no idea about the natural cosmetics. I haven’t read the section on Tritonyri biology yet.”
Lana tsked at her teasingly. “But you are the bride.”
Marisol swiveled to glare at her. “I never signed anything.” Realizing her tone was too sharp when Lana recoiled, she added more moderately, “Because we were all tricked.”
Ducking her head so her curls fell across her eyes, Lana focused on breakfast. “Not all tricks are bad.”
Said the head shop astrologer. Marisol held back another volley of snark. Little Lana didn’t deserve it; she was just so naïve it seemed a miracle that she’d survived this long.
Into the moment of awkward silence, the big Tritonyri male offered, “I see you are making ebb porridge. Might I assist?”
With an eager nod, Lana spun the tablet toward him. “That would be wonderful, Commander. I can’t seem to find all these ingredients.”
“Call me Coriolis. Commander was for the war.” He strode past them toward the galley wall. “We don’t have everything aboard, but with some substitutions…”
Forgotten, Marisol glowered at them both, knowing the whole while that she was being ridiculous. No one was forcing her to be a bride, so there was no reason to be prickly about it.
She drifted closer to the counter where the commander—Coriolis—had spread the ingredients of…low-tide porridge? Did she really want to read through the rest of their immersion modules?
She peered into one container. “More of the seaweed powder?”
He gave her a look. “We can make yours with the Earth water.”
Wishing she had a spork to stick in him, she bristled. “I don’t want to be the freak.”
“You are half alien,” Lana reminded her.
How the cheerful little woman managed to snark while being so…cheerful was a skill Marisol’s grandmother would’ve admired. She forced herself to smile but held her ground. “Ridley figured out how to dive again with Maelstrom’s help. I just need to know if I can drink.”
Lana glanced at Coriolis, her brow furrowed in worry. “She can’t go forever without water.”
He closed his eyes, his lashes like storm shutters against the turbulent dark gray. Except the storm was inside.
“I’ll still do everything I can to help Tritona,” she told him, “even if I can’t drink the water. There should be enough in the tanks from the Wavercrest wellspring to sustain me for awhile. After that…” She looked away when his eyes popped open, bright with fury.
“I’m not going to deliberately poison you,” he snarled. The protective membranes flickered across his eyes, like hoarfrost. “I am not Cretarni.”
With a faint, strangled sound of dismay, Lana backed away from him, her face averted.
Though she was sympathetic to his obvious lingering trauma, Marisol widened her stance. “This isn’t about the war anymore,” she reminded him. “This is about healing your world. And me.”
They faced each other across the counter with all the strange ingredients of an alien planet between them. Deliberately, she reached for the pitcher he’d poured from the main galley spigot, which presumably wasn’t plumbed to the special tank where they’d pumped the estate well.
Keeping a wary eye on him—if he tried to jump her, there was no way she could fend him off—she lifted the lip of the pitcher over her cupped palm.
He took a step toward her…
Not lifting her head, Lana slid into his path, one hand half raised. An almost imperceptible twinkle, like distant heat lightning, played around the many rings on her fingers.
Although he didn’t look at her, he stopped in his tracks. His jaw flexed so hard, Marisol would’ve sworn she heard the grind of his teeth.
Still watching him, she tipped the water into her palm.
Cool, soft and silky, but with the distinct mineral tang she associated with the wellspring. Holding her breath, she glanced down at her palm. And let out the air in a gasp.
Lana jerked her head up. “Is it…?”
“Fine,” Marisol said, relief making her voice shake a little. “No blisters. And these days, it happens immediately. So, next step…” She tipped her hand toward her mouth, stopping at just lips and tongue. No burn. She sipped. Still nothing. Except the warm rush of happiness.
Not drying to a husk like a dumb goldfish flopping out of its fish bowl would be so nice!
She grabbed the pitcher and dragged it closer. “I can take a bath again!”
Lana laughed. “Well, not right here in our ebb porridge.” Her grin was all harmless head shop astrologer again, no hint of the lightning menace from a moment ago.
The commander, however… Ooh, his face was dark with fury.
She lifted her chin. “Not your life. Not your choice.”
Despite the composure—not to mention the truth—of her comment, his expression didn’t change. “Just my world’s future, resting in your pretty little hands.” He aimed that stormy gaze at Lana. “As for your hands… Are you sure those sparks will stop me or anyone else?”
She looked down at her rings, though the lightning was gone. “It did stop you.”
At the low, angry rumble from somewhere deep in his chest, Marisol clutched the pitcher tighter. She’d had the basic self-defense training any billionaire heiress needed, but she’d never actually deployed it in a real attack.
Before she had to experiment with getting personal on the commander, the ship’s AI did the computer version of a throat clearing. “Prepare to transition to standard spacetime for recalculation optimization,” it announced. “Receiving updated telemetry, plus the latest episodes of ‘So You Think You Can Marry Your Fated Mate’, available with your entertainment package for a small upgrade fee. Also, incoming reports from the Diatom will be routed to the bridge.”
With one last imperious stare at them both, Coriolis wheeled around and stalked from the galley to attend to whatever spaceship commander-y demands were being made of him.
Through cupid’s bow lips, Lana let out a slow whistle. “That was scary.”
Too giddy from the idea of a body-enveloping bath, Marisol drank deep from the pitcher. There was a whole planet of ninety percent water she could drink. She would live… Belly sloshing, she set down the pitcher with a smacking gasp. “He’s used to junior officers and subordinates leaping when he says how high. There’s a simplicity of command in conflict that he’s probably not finding in peacetime.”
“Can you leap underwater?”
“If Commander Coriolis Kelyre, brooding Tritonyri war hero of the tempestuous gray eyes, says jump…” Not that she would jump him or anything, but she didn’t necessarily blame his fighters for following him. It was just the thought of a bath making her skin shiver in anticipation.
“Tempestuous eyes?” Lana prodded.
Pivoting toward the spigot, Marisol filled a fresh container before returning to the galley counter. “Oh, I think he knows he has nice eyes, don’t you? He flashes them often enough.”
“According to our lessons, the third eyelid is a protective response, when they are feeling vulnerable.”
Marisol blinked—just with her regular eyelids. “Really? I thought it was more a threat display.”
“Yes, where you are the threat.”
“Huh.” The commander had flashed her more than once. Was she that scary to him?
Maybe she was just another way for him to fear for his world.
“Hematite,” Lana said abruptly.
“Bless you.”
“I mean, his eyes are like hematite. The blood stone.”
Marisol frowned. “Gray isn’t blood.”
“Hematite is silver-gray from all the iron in it, like blood. In energy stones, hematite is used for grounding and root work.”
With a snort, Marisol consulted the tablet recipe. “There’s no ground in the ocean.”
“Sure there is. It’s just…farther down.”
“I’m not going down anywhere near the commander,” Marisol reminded her.
Lana smirked. “Well, you can think about his stormy, stony eyes in your bath tonight.”
Marisol winked. “I’m nobody’s bride, but… How long is a one-night stand in space?”
They laughed together, and then Marisol forgot all about baths or males of any species as she enjoyed her first real food—even if it was alien—in almost a year.
Reluctantly, she stopped after two bowls, but Lana laughed again at her sigh. “It’s kinda funny watching an heiress eat porridge.”
Marisol squelched a pang of embarrassment. Forcing herself to grin back, she said, “I’ve never liked the poor little rich girl drama, but let’s be honest, ebb porridge is actually pretty good. Maybe for our next Alien Iron Chef Interstellar, we’ll try—”
The world dove out from under her. No, she wasn’t on a world anymore. The ship fell below her feet.
Chapter 4
The seething passage of the starfield out the viewport had felt like a reflection of Coriolis’s innermost thoughts—streaked and chaotic. But as the Bathyal dropped into standard spacetime while the AI reset their course, the restless feeling didn’t abate.
To take the edge off his agitation, he checked the downloading messages.
The reports from Maelstrom were only preliminary. He had found a semi-reputable shipyard that agreed to review the Diatom’s records in an attempt to re-create its tracks to find where the Cretarni had come from and to see if there might be any information to be gleaned on what they were doing next. Maelstrom didn’t say what it was going to cost Tritona, and Coriolis didn’t bother asking for clarification, not just because the Diatom was already gearing up for its next jump. Whatever price, whatever risk. It wasn’t like his world had other options.
Have you ever thought of going somewhere else? As the AI began its countdown to the next jump of their journey, Marisol’s innocent question reverberated through his mind more sharply than her smooth, cultured voice had actually been.
He’d been a commander of the western fleet, but he’d never been privy to the Tritonesse debate on the future of their world.
With Tritona’s lack of contacts and resources after so long at war, he knew he’d sunk in his heart when he realized their ancient enemy was behind the sham IDAs. After so long, to believe that the fight was over, only to have it rise again, seeping like noxious ooze from the sewage and debris that the Cretarni dumped into the oceans and their own land with equally foolish abandon. The general he had fought under had lived and died in the war, and Coriolis had resigned himself to the same fate. If there’d been a moment when he hoped for something else…
The Bathyal jolted hard, nearly tossing him from the pilot chair, and multiple alarms blared. The screens in front of him lit with frantic signals.
“Second plasma burst incoming,” the AI announced, with more calm that the frenzied lights and sickening tilt seemed to warrant.
“Evasive maneuvers, code nephos,” he snapped.
The ship complied, although it added another alarm as the abrupt twist exceeded its design recommended parameters. But he’d reviewed its capabilities immediately after purchase and programmed in a few tricks. The ship had been intended for leisurely pleasure excursions through peaceful systems, but even settled space had its dangers.
And he’d been fighting too long to believe any place could be truly safe.
“Initiate complete Tritonyri override,” he continued as he engaged the restraint harness. “And identify source of plasma burst.”
All the alarms and flashing lights cut out as the ship shifted to battle mode. In battle mode, it was a given that everything was alarming. Which was not the diplomatic impression he’d wanted to present to the Intergalactic Dating Agency—but then, that all had been a lie anyway, hadn’t it?
&
nbsp; Following his presets, the Bathyal dodged and went dark. Since the Bathyal didn’t have a full weapons arsenal, they didn’t have a lot of choices, but hopefully, hiding in the abyss worked as well in space as it did in the ocean. At least long enough to counter and/or escape…
The AI reported, “Both plasma bursts originated with an Axis-class ship, unregistered, that was already present at this location and partly shielded, according to residual energy readings.” The AI sounded almost apologetic at its lapse.
The other ship had been lying in wait.
“What happened? Did we hit something?”
The disapproving question form behind him almost made him laugh. “Yes, Miss Wavercrest. We accidentally ran over a vinoot that just swam out of nowhere between two stars.”
“I think a vinoot is kinda like a sea squirrel,” Lana said in an undertone.
He cast a quick glance at them. In the emergency lighting, their eyes were huge and almost darker than the viewport, but neither looked hurt despite the rough moments. “Sit down. Strap in. They’ll shoot again once they recalibrate.”
“Shoot?” Lana squeaked. “Who’s shooting at us?”
“The Cretarni?” Marisol slid into the seat next to him, already pulling the harness around her.
“If I had to guess.” He fed all available power into the mimic shield. On a closed world like Earth, the shield was enough of a disguise from primitive sensors and ignorant eyes. But in the emptiness of deep space, without the interference of sufficiently energetic radiation sources, the ship couldn’t hide forever. And while their engines were passable for cruising, fighting and fleeing would be more problematic. He sniffed. “Why do I smell lava-leaf?”
“I spilled it on myself,” Lana whispered.
“Ah. I thought…” He shook his head. “I won’t lie. This is bad.”
“But you’ve gone through worse,” Marisol said.
The certainty in her voice steadied something that had been briefly unmoored by the overwhelming bite of the spice in the tight confines of the cockpit. “Yes.” But never alone with innocents like this.
