by Elsa Jade
Caught…
Oh, he thought he caught her, with his masterful touch and his alien pheromones. There’d been a banker’s indolent son who insisted on taking her sportfishing in Florida even though she’d told him she was vegetarian. He been everything she hated about boarding school: too self-aware and too oblivious at the same time. He’d yelled at the crew and told the captain where to go despite the sonar’s suggestion of better luck elsewhere, and in his frustration he’d even snapped at her. When he’d finally hooked a “sport fish”, she’d just been ready for the day to end. When the massive creature—a swordfish with its scales glinting bluer than the sky—had leaped from the water, she’d wanted to cry from the beauty of it. As it powered out of the water, coming straight at them, she could only gape in wonder. And when its suddenly enormous beak speared through the upper arm of the banker’s son, making him scream and drop the reel and lose the fish forever, she laughed so hard she’d cried.
And that was the end of that date.
In this case, Coriolis had the spear, but instead of a weapon, she’d found it was usually a male’s weakness. She reached for him, trailing her fingers down through the soft water to his hard flesh.
She couldn’t be the only one caught…
His fingers wrapped in an unbreakable manacle around her wrist, hotter than the water churning around them.
Despite the intensity of his grip, his lips parted from hers with a palpable reluctance.
He gazed down at her—when had he lifted himself above her?—his dark gray eyes streaked with opalescent color.
“Marisol.” His breath was spiked with that pheromone. “We had a taste, and that’s enough. It’s like the lava-leaf. Too much will keep you awake at night.”
She blinked at him, the chaotic swirl of her mind starting to clear a little. “But…”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, and he skimmed his thumb over the swollen flesh. The pang of desire shot from plumped flesh straight down to her clit, as if a plumb line connected the two. “Maelstrom told me about Earther kissing, and I was…curious,” he admitted with an apologetic tone in his voice. “I didn’t believe him when he said it could trigger the breath of rising desire against my will.”
Against his… She pulled back, even though losing his touch turned the pleasurable pang into something closer to real pain. “You’re saying you didn’t want this?”
That silver screen dropped over the shimmering rainbow of colors in his eyes. “The fake IDAs tricked us into proximity. I don’t want our…curiosity and loneliness to suck us down into choices we might not otherwise make.”
“Suck us down,” she muttered under her breath. Was he saying that their first alien encounter with little better than a drunken hookup?
She wondered if they covered this in the Intergalactic Dating Agency handbook.
She pushed away from him, her back slamming into the side of the hot tub hard enough to send water splashing in all directions.
“Of course, she drawled. “We wouldn’t want mere pleasure to derail us from the demands of personal and planetary preservation.
He tucked his chin, eyeing her uncertainly. Maybe his universal translator was getting the meaning of the words but not the actual sarcasm. Or maybe it was.
“I’m probably done soaking,” he muttered.
“You’re definitely all wet,” she agreed. “But I think you need it more than me. I’m done anyway.” She’d been alone and scared for so long now that hardly seemed to matter that he was rejecting her because—what? He couldn’t control himself?
Fumbling around one foot to find one of the submerged ledges, she pushed herself up out of the water, letting the bubbles slide off her nude body while she stared down at him imperiously. She hadn’t signed her life away to the Intergalactic Dating Agency, but even if she had, she certainly wouldn’t have chosen a planet of impoverished fish-men struggling to prove their virility or whatever.
She stood there, poised, just long enough to give him an eyeball full and then stepped over to the hook where she’d left one of the silk wraps Thomas had packed for her. When she turned back around, the erstwhile commander of the western fleet was submerged over his nose, only those brooding, silver-shielded eyes and the droplet-bejeweled black hair poking above the now still water. “Good night, Commander. I hope our little gasp of rising desire or sinking desperation doesn’t keep you up too late.”
Her only answer was a stream of bubbles.
And although the small device fitted behind her ear that was supposed to give her insight into alien languages provided no translation, she rather guessed that that was a Tritonyri curse.
Spinning on her bare heel, she palmed open the door and sailed out, managing to close it behind her without ever looking back.
***
Despite her jab at the commander, Marisol slept well that night—or whatever passed for night in space. Almost too well. She woke abruptly, mid snore, and sat up with that strange dislocation of not remembering quite where she was. The generic quarters with its unremarkable mattress made her think it was a humanitarian mission of some sort…
Oh wait, not human at all.
After using the small bathroom in her quarters, she dressed for the day—or whatever passed for day in space. Her stomach growled, reminding her she could eat again. Joy! As she headed for the door, she glanced at the data tablet on the storage unit beside her bunk and squelched a twinge of guilt for not having finished her lessons yet.
Did hot tubbing with an alien count toward extra credit?
But she wasn’t going to begrudge herself the unconscious hours, not when she was feeling the best she had in the very long time. Maybe even before the symptoms of the Wavercrest syndrome has become noticeable. She’d meant to poke at Coriolis with the crack about sinking desperation, but maybe her aim had been off by a hundred and eighty degrees. How could an heiress with an active social life and important, fulfilling work complain about some mysterious, yawning chasm beneath her designer shoes? She had everything and didn’t deserve more. But something had been missing.
Was she going to be so maudlin as to believe that she might’ve signed up with the Intergalactic Dating Agency if she’d known it existed?
She scowled to herself as she headed for the galley. Just because she’d turned down the banker’s son—and the other investment banker and the diplomat’s nephew and a couple actors and and and… All right, so maybe there was a pattern in her life of isolation even before her aquagenic urticaria developed. Before she’d been allergic to water, she’d been allergic to little shits.
She served herself some porridge and took her bowl into the lounge along with the shaker of lava-leaf. Lana, already there and curled up diligently with her tablet, smiled at her. “A hie kharea-wy.”
The translator behind Marisol’s ear glitched a moment, trying to reconcile the Earther speaking Tritonan. “Good morning?”
“Literally, sweet morning currents to you.” Lana beamed. “It’s that beautiful?”
“It is.” Marisol took a seat where she could see the other woman and the viewport of flowing stars. “I can’t believe you’re already speaking the language.”
“Just a few phrases, but I’ve heard foreigners appreciate when you make an effort.” Then she blinked. “Although I suppose we’re the foreigners. Or only partly foreign?” She shook her head. “I’m getting nervous. Commander Kelyre—Coriolis—said we’re only a few hours out from Tritona.”
Marisol made a commiserating noise as she stirred lava-leaf into her breakfast. She’d asked him to warn her when they were approaching the planet. Apparently she’d scared him off after their hot tub close encounter.
Lana gazed at her. “You’re not nervous?”
“Of course I am. We’re going to another planet.” She took a bite of the porridge and winced a little at the spicy flood across her tongue. Maybe she’d overdone it a bit. We had a taste, and that’s enough. She hissed under her breath.
“Carefu
l with that spice,” Lana advised. “It’s got some kick.”
“And so do we, which is why you shouldn’t be too nervous.” When the smaller woman cocked her head in confusion, Marisol said, “We have something they want.”
Lana squinted. “We do? I thought they were saving us.”
“True, but they also want our watered-down Tritonana blood.” That got her a nose wrinkle, and Marisol chuckled. “And our presence. When the refugee commission rep shows up, these Tritonesse we keep hearing about will be able to point to us to prove there’s still hope for their world.”
“And they got three of us for the price of one. What a bargain.”
“We’ll make an international financier out of you yet.”
Lana buffed her nails ostentatiously on an imaginary lapel of her boho dress. “Intergalactic.”
“Aim for the stars,” Marisol agreed, not mocking at all.
While she quizzed Lana on useful Tritonan phrases—they forced the tablet to give up some profanities too, even though their temporary translators didn’t want to provide the meanings—she leisurely worked her way through breakfast. So good to be able to eat.
“Grak-cret,” Lana said.
“Um, foul ends?” Marisol closed her eyes. “Say it again?” When Lana repeated the expletive, Marisol listened to the translator in her head. “No. Maybe…ugly feet?”
“That’s what I hear too.” Lana snorted. “As insults go, I’m not sure I’m impressed.”
Coriolis stepped through the lounge doorway. “Dirty toes.”
Lana choked. “Eww.”
“Exactly,” he said. “It’s aimed at Cretarni walking in the dirt instead of swimming in the cleansing water.” His mouth quirked wryly. “Probably because we were lurking there.”
Lana made another noise of distress, although Marisol wasn’t sure if it was for the unkind insult against the land-dwelling species or the implication of violence.
The commander must have heard it too because he gave her a searching look and asked in what Marisol thought was a deceptively neutral voice, “You object to the slur?
“It just makes me sad. I finished reading the history section about the war. It went on so long.”
“I’m not sure we ever weren’t at war,” he admitted. “Early in our shared history, the Cretarni considered Tritonans little more than animals, to be hunted and exterminated, sometimes eaten. Over the centuries, dealings between our people did not improve much.”
Lana gulped. “Eaten?”
Marisol looked at her porridge. “Uh…”
“That was a long time ago,” he assured them. “There was a brief period that our historians call the Estuary Era when our people tried to find confluence where all currents mingle—or common ground, you’d say. But when an intergalactic appraisal team contacted our world to assess our readiness to join the wider community, the Cretarni tried to cut us out of the dealings.”
“Seems like that would’ve been a sign that they weren’t ready at all,” Lana mused.
He shook his head. “Civility has never been a prerequisite for civilization.”
“Not on Earth either,” Marisol said.
His gaze shifted to her, and in the gray shadows, she saw echoes of the night before, and her pulse skipped like a perfectly thrown stone across still water. Those moments had been private between them, but only because of a strange convergence of the history he’d survived.
“I just wanted to tell you—”
A chiming alarm went off in her head. Oh crap, he was going to give her some cosmic blow-off. Could he actually ghost her on a ship this small—?
It took her half a second to realize the buzzer was the ship’s.
“Dropping into standard spacetime,” it announced.
“Oh, geez,” Lana said a little breathlessly. “This is starting to get a little too real.”
Marisol quirked one eyebrow at her. “Really? The spaceships, laser gun battles, and the big scary alien didn’t bring it home for you?”
“Well, all that was just sort of happening to us. Now were going to be really part of it.”
Coriolis tilted his head. “If it helps, I don’t think many of the surviving Tritonesse have ever met an alien either., Not since Tritona has been designated a conflict zone by the intergalactic community. So you’ll be as different to them as they are to you.”
Lana peered at him uncertainly. “No,” she said slowly. “I think that’s not helping.”
“It’s all right,” Marisol reassured her. “I haven’t been this nervous since my grandmother took me to meet the Queen of England. Which it sounds like these Tritonesse are kind of like.”
“You met the Queen of England?” Lana groaned. “I am so out of my depth here.”
Marisol winced. “My point was,” she said a little urgently, “Queen Elizabeth might have a lot of power and prestige, but in the end she’s just another woman, like us.”
Lana’s sculpted brows pulled into a frown. “These aren’t women just like us,” she said quietly. “We’re part Earther and part Tritona. No one is like us.”
“Then we’re blazing our own path,” Marisol said firmly. “And no one can tell us we’re doing it wrong.”
“Your difference is important to Tritona,” Coriolis said. “It proves that Tritona can attract new blood as we rebuild.”
She arched other eyebrow at him. “As long as it’s not actual blood this time.”
“We’ll have planetary defenses and the full might of the Tritonyri fleet around us,” he said firmly. “The Cretarni lost their foothold on Tritona and they won’t get another chance.”
Lana took a breath as if she had more she wanted to say, but then she bit her lip and just nodded.
Marisol stopped herself from reaching out to the other woman, knowing how much it bothered Lana to be reminded of her shocking problem. “At least we’ll be together,” she said instead. “Half Earther girls forever, right?”
Lana dredged up a tentative smile. “Will you help me find something appropriate to wear to meet the Queen of England? I packed for Montana.”
“You always look so bright and beautiful. Anyone would love you.”
Finally, Lana’s natural big smile returned. “Also, you make excellent ebb porridge.”
“And you’re so elegant and tall. You’ll fit right in with queens, even alien ones.”
Fitting in had never been a deciding factor as far as Marisol had ever noticed, but maybe Tritona would be different. “Come on. Let’s go through our closets and see what we’ve got for ourselves.”
As they headed off to their quarters, she mused that while she might’ve rejected becoming an alien mail order bride, this felt very much like date night jitters.
Chapter 7
As the Bathyal’s AI answered the planetary defense challenges and descended through the clouds, for the first time Coriolis was grateful for the Cretarni’s ruthlessness. Once they’d abandoned their outposts, all that tech and expertise had come into Tritonan hands. Turning those resources against their old enemy was as eminently satisfying as releasing a flood of bloodsucking ember mites into the Cretarni water supply. And watching them itch through a pitched battle.
Marisol and Lana sat in their bridge seats, both of them leaning forward as if they could force the clouds to part and show them their new home.
“These are the stormy months in this hemisphere,” he told them. “Even in the quiet part of the year, the weather on Tritona is volatile. These clouds can burn off into bright sun or freeze into snow, depending. Being underwater is some protection, but the spaceport is here on Finimarwy, the largest landmass, so this is where we have to land.”
“Also there’s the little problem that we don’t know if we can breathe water like Ridley can,” Lana muttered.
“Tritona can be a home to air breathers and water breathers,” he said, “to anyone who believes that Tritona can be the beautiful, peaceful world of our dreams.”
Marisol sidelonged a g
lance at him. “Very good,” she murmured. “The refugee commission rep will be impressed.”
He frowned at her. “It’s true.”
“Which is why they’ll be impressed.” She returned her attention to the viewport. The Bathyal was low and slow enough now that drops beaded and streaked on the sensors, like the stars turned to water. “Although dreams are hard to quantify on stockholder reports and grant applications.”
The words glitched in his translator, and he shook his head but didn’t ask for their meaning. Whatever happened next was up to Tritonesse. He was only a few hundred leagues from completing his mission.
A strange twist, as if his battle skin had gotten snagged, made him shift restlessly in his seat. Although he’d sent a terse recap of the situation back to Tritona, he wasn’t sure how much had gotten through in between their clandestine jumps. Technically, he had broken closed-world protocols—even if Maelstrom had been the one to first reveal their presence to Ridley, he’d been under Coriolis’s command, so the fault lay with him—and worse, the IDA contract was an unenforceable sham. So, a qualified success at best. But they would be adding three willing immigrants, two commandeered ships to their space fleet, so maybe one exhausted commander could finally rest.
But if rest was what he wanted, why were all his muscles wrenched as tight as the shells of the carnivorous bone-cracking bivalves that infested the poisoned trenches?
He didn’t want Marisol Wavercrest to step off into the deeps without him.
It was a not unreasonable fear. She wasn’t wise to the ways of the oceans or the Tritonesse. And he’d brought her here with the promise of a new life. So he was responsible for her and Lana.
Even as he thought it, the Bathyal broke below the clouds. The sea tossed with unquiet waves of purple-gray, spumes of white winging up toward them as the wind of their engines whipped the surface.
“The waves are enormous,” Marisol said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And look at that break.”
“Surfers would die to ride here,” Lana agreed. “Assuming people surf in space?”
