The man leaning over the railings of the boat smiled in a chilling manner as his sharp, faded blue eyes peered over at her. He ran a rough hand through the length of his beard, stroking it over and over, his expression calculated rather than concerned. A younger man with dark curls came into view, his green eyes widening at her before he backpedaled. The older man turned his head, his lips tightening as they dipped into a frown, and he watched the younger man for a moment before leveling Nerida with his sharp gaze. His lips immediately twisted into a lopsided smile as he raised a hand to touch his fingertips to the edge of his knit cap.
“Good day to you, missy. What are you doing out here in these treacherous waters?” he called out pleasantly. His brow furrowed in an expression of concern. “Are you lost, by chance?”
Nerida stared across water between their boats nervously. What should she say? She couldn’t think of an appropriate reply that wouldn’t give away her suspicions. Her eyes fell on the dark peeling paint on the hull of the boat and shivered.
She couldn’t outright scream, “Pirate!” Part of her wanted to do just that and desperately try to steer her boat away, despite the minimal chance for escape.
It couldn’t be anything other than a pirate boat. Strangers encountered far into the territory of the Greater Sea were unlikely to be the friendly sort, since few went out there unless they were hiding from something. For men traveling in a boat painted in a manner clearly meant to obscure it, it seemed most likely that the thing they would be hiding from would be the law and human prey they wished to catch unaware.
The stranger cocked his head and leaned farther forward, squinting at her in a way that made her heart hammer with alarm. Why the hell was she standing there staring at him? Of course that was going to make him suspicious.
Say something, you idiot!
“Just fishing,” she lied. “My family went out ahead a bit to find us a better place to anchor through the winter weather. With our deep-freezing units, we should be able to store enough to make us a sizeable amount of trade credits come spring.”
“Fishing, she says,” he announced with a chuckle. “Clever answer. And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you are not all alone here.”
“Pssh! Alone? Now that would be crazy. They’re expecting me at our meeting place. In fact, they will likely be worried, wondering what’s keeping me. My pod is quite large, but never fail to notice my absence if I’m gone too long.”
Playing up the family angle was her only real chance of getting away. Everyone knew that a strong pod was the only thing that gave pirates pause. Unless several crews joined together to take on a pod, they stuck to picking off lone boats or smaller, weaker pods.
“And such a concerned family would have left you moored here for the last few days without a word, I’m sure,” he said, his smile widening. “A large pod would have let a lone female out all by herself to roam the seas and walk upon the sands by her lonesome too, I imagine.”
He had her there. Anyone who knew pod dynamics knew that no pod would let anyone out alone, especially not women.
Laughter greeted his amused observation, and her stomach dipped as three other men joined his side. The younger man had appeared again with them, though he seemed to hover around the outskirts of the crew like an uncertain pup trying to find his place. Each man who arrived seemed hardened from their life at sea, their beards tangled, and one had a mass of scars running down one side of his face that bisected his ruined eye. He leered at her and wiped the spittle from his lips with the back of his hand.
Not good.
“Well,” she said, offering a weak chuckle, “as fun as this has been, I think I’ll be going now. Like I said, my family pod is waiting, and there is much to do with winter coming, you know.”
“Oh, we know. And a fine boat like yours will fare much better out here than what we have.” He lifted a blaster and leveled it at her. “So I’m thinking that you’re going to let us board before I blow you to the gods below.”
Nerida froze, her mind going several directions at once as she considered her options. If they boarded, she was as good as dead—or passed around until she died. She swallowed and slowly slid her leg back. As she did so, she caught the sound of muffled scraping. Frowning, she tilted her head, listening.
“What are you doing, girl? Don’t think you will be delaying the inevitable!” the pirate shouted.
“Trust me, I’m not trying to antagonize you… but… tell me if you hear that!” she called back as another loud scraping sound greeted her ears.
It sounded closer, whatever it was.
One of the men with ruddy skin and a wild tangle of copper-orange hair nudged the one who appeared to be in charge with a worried look.
“Captain, I think I hear it—something—I don’t know what. It’s unnatural sounding is what it is. Let’s just get out of here.”
“I don’t hear anything!” the captain barked and backhanded the other man. “You’re just letting that girl get in your head. Try not to be as brainless as I always took you for.”
The other man went silent, but his eyes continued to rove the seas nervously. A louder creak and scrape made him jump, and then Nerida understood. The sound was coming from their ship. Now the captain frowned and looked around, his knuckles whitening around the grip of his blaster.
A loud hiss filled the air, the sound of it chilling, edged with some sort of unnatural, rattling shriek. The pirates immediately began to mill nervously, and the captain began to shout out orders, the whites of his own eyes showing in clear fear.
“Find whatever it is and kill it! Kill it now!” he bellowed.
“It doesn’t sound like anything natural from these seas!” another shouted in a shrill voice. “Not even the leviathan makes a sound like that!”
“Dathli?” another called back nervously.
The first shook his head. “No. They just shriek when they kill their prey, like animals. This is nothing like that. Sounds meaner, intentional. Warning us, scaring us. By the way it’s fallen silent, it’s likely stalking us,” he announced grimly.
Chaos descended as panic swept over the men. They ran the length of the deck, leaning over the sides, searching for any sign of their attacker, weapons drawn despite how they trembled. A loud thunk and a dragging, clawing sound made one of the men standing at the stern of the boat jump back, wild-eyed.
That was Nerida’s cue to get the hell out of there while she had the chance. Spinning around, she ran to the steering cabin and shut off the gravitational anchor that kept her boat idling in place near the iron-filled rise of the small island. Placing her hands on the steering wheel, she threw the boat into forward propulsion. The engine rumbled with an eager roar. As the nose of her boat pushed by the pirate ship, Nerida glanced over as one of the men shouted and jerked forward over the side of the boat as if something had yanked him overboard. His scream filled the air, making her blood curdle.
Her boat was entirely forgotten as the men scrambled in a frenzy of shouts. Nerida turned slowly, her eyes scanning the other deck. Something was dashing along, a white blur, as blood spurted and bodies were flung out to sea as if blasted away by a percussion bomb.
As if captivated, Nerida stepped out from the cabin and walked to the side of her boat as it continued to speed by. The deck of the pirates’ ship was stained a deep red from the blood drenching it. The screams were dying as the crew were torn apart. She should have felt horrified by it, and some part of her was scared as fuck—worried that it would make its way over to her boat if she didn’t clear out fast enough. But she couldn’t dredge up any remorse for the pirate crew. In a way, it could be considered poetic justice for all the men and women they had butchered in their attacks on the sailors and wavelanders along the trade routes.
The captain turned to face her. His face was stark and pale. He caught her eye, his lip trembling as he raised his blaster. Something leaped from behind and gripped his wrist, yanking his arm back with such force that bones sn
apped. Nerida cringed at the sound, but more at the gurgling scream torn from the pirate’s lips as a clawed hand pushed through his stomach. It drew back, and in the next moment, bloodied hands lifted around the head. It was snapped to the left, ending his screams permanently.
Bile rose in her throat, and a whimper left her as she met the vacant stare of the dead pirate captain. His body slowly slumped to the deck, fully revealing the half-crouched creature behind it. A long white tail whipped. Sharp spines raised between finlike webbing, glinting ruby from the blood under the sunlight.
Aside from brilliant splashes of color, and the blood covering it, the lean, muscular creature was the palest pearl. Glowing yellow eyes peered at her, its horned head turning as its tangled mane, equally smeared with blood like the rest of it, fell around its shoulders.
Those eyes, though.
Everything else about it felt indistinct, almost blurry. She was in shock—she was certain of it—but those glowing yellow eyes, slitted with a thin slash of a pupil, drew her in. She saw them with crystal clarity, despite how foggy everything else was in that moment.
Nerida turned away and hurried back to the cabin as the boat pulled away. She glanced back at the pirate vessel again, but other than striding leisurely across the deck it did nothing more than watch her.
It didn’t attempt to follow or attack her. Just watched.
That was perhaps more unnerving than if it had.
Whatever the creature was, she was certain that it was as fully sentient as any human. Unfortunately, that potentially didn’t bode well. With its superior height, nearly a head over the pirates, strength, and speed—in addition to its other natural defenses—knowing that it wasn’t just another animal to be avoided, her hands trembled on the steering wheel.
“Maybe it’s a benevolent species. It didn’t attack me… just the pirates,” she whispered in a choked voice. “The likelihood of it following me and killing me is probably next to nothing. And who knew what the pirates were doing around its territory until now?”
She swiped a hand over her eyes as she continued to whisper reassurances to herself. She knew that her mumbled voice was slowly growing frantic as she attempted to talk herself down. Pressing up on the propulsion handle, she drove her engines to the maximum, not letting up until she was certain that considerable distance separated her from the island and the creature.
Her hands shook so badly that she had to pry them from the wheel and force them to her sides. Even though the thing hadn’t threatened her, the very real danger from the pirates paired with witnessing their violent deaths had pushed her mind too far.
Despite the hard life of wavelanders, their large pods discouraged predators like pirates from preying on them. She had spent her entire life sheltered from such violence. Even in the floating cities, her father steered them carefully in a specific route that avoided specific parts of the city. Outside of her monthly, the occasional nosebleed, or some idiot catching themselves on a fish hook, her exposure to blood had been minimal.
Swallowing the bile in her throat, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand again and stumbled into her quarters, down into the food prep area. Turning on the spigot, she took a cup from the cabinet and rinsed her mouth out twice before turning off the water and leaning her head against the cool metal fixtures.
“What the fuck have I gotten myself into?” she mumbled to herself.
There was no answer, naturally. It was only by sheer willpower that she stood again and made her way back on deck. Although there were no signs that she was being followed by anything—not even revealed by the sonars she was constantly checking to ensure that nothing was following—she couldn’t allow herself to rest yet despite the fatigue flooding through her veins.
Nerida stood at the helm, exhausted, squinting out at the crystalline violet water sparkling beneath the sun, willing herself to forget everything that she had seen. If it wasn’t following her, she could only hope to never encounter it again nor witness such savagery at its hands.
Chapter 11
Ji’wa watched as his female’s boat sped by, her face unnaturally pale and drawn with fear as she stared vacantly at him. There was no sign of life in her gaze, and so he did not attempt to approach, no matter how much he wanted to soothe away the terror in her eyes.
She was afraid of him now, but he couldn’t be sorry for saving her life.
Glancing down at himself, he grimaced with a painful wince. No wonder she was frightened. He looked as if he had painted himself with the blood of the males. It had been a messy affair. It had been a shame that he had been forced to leave his cannon, but such tech was equipped with trackers that he could not afford to have on him. That left his gauntlet, his fin spines and his claws. Such methods were crude but effective.
Ger’se popped up from the water, nostrils flaring with disgust. “I was going to ask if your attempts were successful, but I do not want to know what happened if you look like that.”
“This is not her vessel,” he snapped seconds before diving into the water beside his friend. His tail and dorsal fins spread wide, catching the current as he floated a short distance away. “I had intended to watch her and find a way to introduce myself in a reassuring way. I had no way of knowing that I would arrive to find these males threatening her. I merely dealt with them.”
“And scared your female,” his friend said. “That reaction should have been predictable from the moment you began slaughtering them. Even a sirein would have bolted at such a sight—except those enlisted as warriors—and they at least theoretically know of our natures when it comes to protecting to our mates and nests. I can’t imagine what this female, unfamiliar with our ways, would have thought of such a sight.” He cocked his head as his eyes scanned the water. “Not off to a good start. If this isn’t your female’s vessel, where is she?”
Ji’wa sighed and lifted his wrist, showing the thin band around his arm. “I have a tracker on her vessel. I allowed her the space she needed to feel safe. I will keep my distance for now and follow her. It will allow me to make sure she’s safe while I try to come up with another method of approach.”
His friend plucked a bit of torn flesh from one of his horns with a grimace. “You do realize the females enjoy sweeter things in courting, yes? I would try that route next time.”
“I really had no idea,” Ji’wa returned dryly.
The other male grinned. “But hey, at least we did a good deed. We will win her yet!”
“We? What part did you do?”
“Critique of performance,” Ger’se offered with an amused chuckle.
“Hilarious. That’s certainly not going to help me any. Remind me again why you are accompanying me…”
Ger’se shrugged dismissively. “I have no desire to cross the Record Keeper, so I’m here to help you however I can. Al’hana can be a nasty piece of work, but ultimately, she has a good heart. She wants to see you succeed. I think that might also be for the sake of her pride to add to her own record file that her work was successful.”
Ji’wa sighed and pushed forward over the surface of the water, enjoying the sun and the warmer currents. He hadn’t realized how much any serious physical exertion under the sun would tire him out. He imagined that being above water without a shelter to rest in could easily become painful. For now, however, with the embrace of the waves lapping at his face, the sun was warm and comfortable.
Ger’se squinted up at the sky as he swam at a steady pace at Ji’wa’s side, their tails flicking from side to side in a rhythmic mirror image. Synchronized swimming came naturally after many revolutions of drills from their youth. It kept them safe, providing few openings for attack, and avoided mishaps of tails getting tangled at unfortunate moments. In the open waters, it was of little surprise that they would do it without thinking considering the potential danger that surrounded them.
Despite how freeing it was, the open expanse of the sea was dangerous—and not only because it was a completely alien planet.
Except for a few diplomatic meetings, he had spent his entire life within the confines of a starship. He wasn’t accustomed to so much space around him. Now that he did not even see his female’s boat, it seemed even more so as the waves appeared to stretch out for an eternity before him.
After encountering the great beast that had attempted to kill his female, he was naturally concerned. The memory of her attack was a constant reminder that, ultimately, he had no idea of what might lie between him and his female, or what all dwelled within the waters.
“I think your sisters would love to see this,” Ger’se said. He had turned onto his back as he swam, eyes fixed on the rolling clouds above them. Noticing Ji’wa’s frowning at his carelessness, he rolled himself back into correct formation with an apologetic grin. “Sorry. I do get distracted at times. But you have to admit that it’s beautiful.”
Ji’wa grunted in agreement, though a prickle ran down his dorsal fin. He didn’t want his sisters surfacing at all until he had found a safe nesting place. If those males were any indication, the surface had its own threats. As if those swimming through the water weren’t enough.
“I hope you did not tell them,” he muttered crossly. “The less they know about the surface at this time, the better.”
Ger’se let out a sharp laugh. “You would think I would risk my fins by telling your five older sisters—who have threatened to rip every fin off of my body should one of my crazy schemes cause harm to you—that you made a deal with the Record Keeper and are now on a quest that could end with your death? No, thank you, I prefer not to be murdered by your nestmates.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Ji’wa grinned. Although Gan’thro had sired a number of daughters before the birth of his son, each female had the temperament of their father rather than the mild sweetness of their mother. In retrospect, Ji’wa felt a new respect for his elderly mother, raising such a household of wild offspring.
Sirein: A Dystopian World Alien Romance Page 9
