by Jade, Elsa
Nah. She knew which way she was pointed now.
With a breathless scream of her own, she yanked herself over the threshold.
And almost fell into the abyss as the sloped surface of the bigger duct under her feet rounded downward.
She threw herself back toward the opening she’d made, caught halfway between the gale-force wind she’d just escaped and a fatal plummet to the churning waters.
The two conduits Mael had identified had arched toward the apex of the cavern, and the subterranean sea was far, far below. Somewhere down there, back where she’d come from, was Maelstrom. And his murderous Cretarni enemies. And a world’s worth of unborn Tritonans and sea creatures. But she was stuck up here. The angle of the ducts was too steep to safely climb down, and the suction inside the pneumatic tube was too strong to let her struggle back down from within.
Stoppered air and salty water mixed in a choking sob in her throat as she clung to the smaller duct, her boots slipping on the larger conduit.
The duct that carried water to and from the city like lifeblood.
Warily, she peered down. She’d jumped recklessly before, but Mael had been right there to catch her, to breathe for her if necessary.
It was too far this time, even with her Navy training. And no one would be there, waiting for her, because Mael was fighting his enemies, alone.
He wanted her out of harm’s way, but what was the point if she was alone when she wanted…
Wanted him?
Panic flooded her worse than any drowning, imagined or real. Yeah, they’d kissed, even breathed each other, but did she really believe there could be more?
Her breath was so shallow she was about to pass out, and the canal of air where she clung was a path upward where she could escape at any moment, just fall right in and be whisked away. Forget this lost city, this lost chance, the air hissed.
With a strangled cry, she sank to her knees, her weight thudding against the water pipe with a hollow clang.
She could live without diving ever again. She’d live without seeing a planet she’d never heard of before a few days ago. But did she want to live without him?
Numbly, she stared down at the dive harness she’d yanked right off his body. She still had her backpack too.
With shaking hands, she took out a seaweed ball and smashed it flat. Remembering how he’d set the control on the pistol, she dialed it to blow-yer-fingers-off high.
Along the curving top of the water duct, she crawled like a bug on a pipe until she found an access port. She didn’t have Mael’s strength to yank it off, but she had his trick.
She stuck the overloading pistol against the panel, grinding it into the mass of sticky seaweed, and scrambled for the other side of the piggybacking ducts. Hopefully plasteel really did deflect blaster fire—
The explosion deafened her, although it barely rattled the aqueduct. Dazed, she peeked over the edge of the smaller air conduit and stared down through the ragged opening at the rush of water circulating back to the city.
“Yes!” For the first time in forever, the sight of dark water didn’t paralyze her. Her heart raced with anticipation, not fear. This would take her right back to Maelstrom.
Gulping a deep breath, she reached around her neck for the dangling tube of the external gill. She could do this—
And found nothing. “No!”
In the place of the missing gill, panic swamped back, thicker than sludge, slowing the frantic shuffling of her fingers through her pack, her pockets, through the pouches of Mael’s harness.
Nothing. The gill must’ve been torn away by the winds in the air duct. The damn thing had probably been burped out of some camouflaged cave opening somewhere in Wyoming.
In despair, she clutched at her neck where the gill had been.
Where her gills still were…
The breath guttered out of her. She wasn’t afraid to dive anymore; she’d proved that. She wasn’t even afraid to die since the bottomless fear had been worse than death.
Now she was afraid because he’d left her. How could she forget being forsaken again?
She dug her fingers into her throat, as if she could claw the gills out of her skin.
No, he hadn’t left her. He wanted to save her. She’d tasted that truth in his kiss like the purest tang of a saltwater breeze.
Bracing herself above the breach in the pipe, she stared down at the deluge, black as night without stars or the gleam of phosphorescence.
She didn’t bother taking another breath.
Stronger than the wind had been, the water seized her with invisible, inexorable fingers and dragged her under. Her world was nothing but a roaring coffin of waves. There was just enough clearance at the high point of the tube that occasionally her fluttering fingers would touch air.
Not enough to breathe. Nowhere enough to breathe.
Maybe she’d already blacked out and was drowning, dying.
Every muscle in her body convulsed, and she ricocheted off the slick sides of the tube. But the conduit was wide enough that the water kept raging past, unforgiving.
As she tumbled in the darkness, she took a gasping breath.
Through her gills.
The mineral tang, ocean pure, rushed through her sinuses and down her throat. The taste of Maelstrom’s last kiss.
She was breathing! Breathing water! She wouldn’t die. She would find him, fight with him.
Sucking down another breath of water, just because she could, she oriented herself with the flow. Always a strong swimmer and with the force of the flood behind her, she shot through the pipe. She wouldn’t be able to kick out any access panel from inside, not when they’d be sealed tight against the water, so she’d have to wait until it dumped out at its end.
The wait wasn’t long. She had one second to note a glow ahead, and then in a sudden dazzle, she was spat out from the duct. For a confused heartbeat, she was a flying fish, suspended in the spray with limbs going every which way. Her gills sputtered in the mix of air and water.
Then she crashed down into the hidden sea that had once been home to her ancestors.
The impact hurt, not just her body but the delicate structures of her gills. She choked, tasting a warmer, saltier fluid: blood. Ugh, and she’d thought drowning in water would be bad.
Rolling to her back, she lifted her face from the water. She coughed up a spray like a miniature geyser and backstroked toward the nearest pyramid.
She’d lived, but she was lost. The aqueduct had dumped her near the central tower—the spidering crack along the pyramidal face helped confirm her position—but that wasn’t her focus anymore.
Where was Mael?
Paddling on her back, she squinted up at suddenly the fireworks show of blue-purple glowing algae—and the sudden onslaught of orange plasma fire.
“Oh, there he is,” she murmured.
Switching to her side with dolphin kicks, she aimed toward the blaster battle. Since she’d sacrificed her pistol, she didn’t have a weapon except the dive knife she’d accidentally stolen along with Mael’s harness. Though she’d kept up with her workouts even when her diving had gone to hell, no way was she as strong as a Tritonyri or a squad of Cretarni soldiers. But first she had to find them.
If the Cretarni were pitching a battle against Mael, they had to be in a drained section of the city wheel. Dammit, if only her Atlantean ancestors hadn’t bothered to learn to breathe air, the whole place would still be submerged.
Her ancestors… For an instant, her sharp, efficient strokes faltered, her fingers batting helplessly at the waves as if she could hold onto them.
Like her touch had drained the water from the surface pool when the gate to Atlantis had opened for her.
For her alone.
One of the huge sea walls separated her from the direction of the blaster fire, and when she reached it, she boosted herself up onto one of the walkway ledges. Water sluiced off her. And out of her, draining from her nose and neck.
S
he coughed a few times, her eyes watering. Hopefully she’d get used to this. According to Disney, mermaids shouldn’t snot so much.
A rumbling explosion and a mushroom cloud of black smoke rising from the other side of the sea wall made her wince. Speaking of Maelstroms…
Quickly, she clambered up the walkways and finally dropped to her belly to scuttle across the top of the wall. From there, she was peering down into one of the open ventricles of the city’s heart.
From the many traceries of orange light coming from one direction and a lone answering blast, it wasn’t hard to identify Mael versus his opponents. Unfortunately, the Cretarni were between her and Mael.
Or maybe not so unfortunate.
With everyone laser focused—so to speak—on the blasting between them, she’d have one chance to attack from behind. Mael couldn’t lead her; he didn’t even know she was here.
One chance. And she’d take her shot with him.
But there was no water to hide in. At least not yet. She’d been creeping toward the enemy along the empty walls of the abandoned city-ship, less like a ruthless, savage shark and more like a helpless sea cucumber tossed up by the outgoing tide.
Good thing Mael had told her to keep the personal mimic shield.
Of course he’d also said it wasn’t reliable and wouldn’t last long. Well, neither would she. He’d tried to get rid of her, yet here she was, the fish he couldn’t toss back. She’d stopped believing she’d find someone who would last, and looking back, she could see how she’d become so scared of getting in too deep. From now on, she’d be diving in with both feet.
Palming the mimic shield in one hand and Mael’s dive knife in the other, she took a breath that was part air, part droplets of water still dripping out of her hair, and all hope.
Saving his life and his planet might be a good first date.
***
He was trapped. Mael had figured it out before the Cretarni, for all the good it did him. The spiked pyramid where he’d retreated had no exit, and they had the numbers. Though he’d picked off a few, the charge on his rifle was running low after the repeated immersions, and a quick glance out one of the windows told him they’d settled in behind several of the anchor points at the base of the sea wall.
They could keep him pinned down as they advanced in sequence and then take him down.
At least Ridley—
He hissed out a shocked breath.
Against the smooth plasteel, her wet body was a dusky shadow. And then it was gone, as if it had never been. But the memory of her strong, sleek shape remained, and his fingers tightened on the rifle.
Had he dreamed her, wishing for one more glimpse?
Though he’d planned to conserve his remaining shots, he couldn’t let the soilers’ focus shift away from him. Not if what he’d seen was real.
Edging into the open window, he squeezed off the shortest pulse he could, remembering how she’d fired at the tequila bottle without breaking it.
An abbreviated scream across the sunken city told him he’d broken someone.
And then there was a second cry.
He perked up. He wasn’t a good enough shot to hit two enemies at once, at least not under these conditions.
Apparently the Cretarni were confused about that too. They poked partway out of their holes, trying to find the source of the second cry. And one of their soldiers staggered forward, viridian blood pouring from beneath his hand clamped over his neck.
“Hai-aku,” Mael whispered. “Bite hard, but run.”
Uncertain where she was and unwilling to risk hitting her, he fired high, wasting the energy to bring the focus back to him. A searing orange reply made him duck away—but not before he glimpsed her shadow again.
The mimic shield was failing, unable to keep up with her quick movements. An unreasonable fury swelled through him. She was risking her life, for what? A half-dead planet lightyears away? For him, failed and flailing in the wreckage of a lost war?
He couldn’t even fire back as a barrage of plasma bombarded his tower, knocking loose burning streamers of algae, though the plasteel held.
That was him, pieces chipped away by fighting until all that was left was a shell. The tidal wave of anger drained as quickly as it had overtaken him, leaving only raw shards behind. All the Tritonyri had risked their lives for their planet and for each other.
“The promise isn’t that you’ll never fail,” she’d whispered. “It’s that you’ll be there.”
He’d been there for his fighters, and they for him. And Tritona was still there, waiting for his return.
Like Ridley was waiting for him to stop shrinking from this fight.
The fight to win an alien mail order bride of his own.
Or at least the chance at a first date.
Throwing himself into the open portal, he feverishly scanned the plaza below his position. There she was! Bringing her knife—his knife—around at an oblivious Cretarni, the mimic shield flickering. But that soldier had been at war a long time too, and his instincts made him duck aside, taking the blade in his shoulder instead of the neck. He shouted, warning his fellows.
Just as Mael shot him. The soldier went down and stayed down while Mael kept shooting, forcing the remaining soil-suckers to take shelter behind the anchor points.
But they were furious at the wavering image of the enemy behind their lines. They fired almost as indiscriminately as Mael, the orange flares lighting up the sea wall.
Another scream. An Earther’s this time.
Though his blood froze, his muscles sparked into action. Leaping down from the ancient tower that had threatened to become his coffin, he emptied the last of the rifle’s energy at the Cretarni.
Overloaded by a blaster shot, the mimic shield had failed, leaving Ridley exposed on a bare stretch of the plaza between the anchor points and his tower. The crimson flash of blood beneath her shocked him—Earthers bled red?—but she was still crawling forward.
Her anguished gray gaze lifted toward him.
He scooped her up, abandoning the useless rifle. Too far to the tower.
“Aqueduct.” She pointed.
“The water is gone.” His voice cracked. “I thought I’d stop them then ride the wave out, like I sent you through the air tube, but I misjudged the timing and the canal was already emptied.” He clutched her to his chest as plasma fire arced over them. “Like I misjudged you.”
“Not out.” She grimaced as he put hard pressure on her wound to stop the bleeding. “Bring the water back. Drown them all.”
“The tidal sequence won’t come around again until it’s flowed through all the other segments of the wheel.”
“I’ll call it.”
He stared down at her for one heartbeat, then angled his steps toward his botched escape attempt. There was no other way out, not with the Cretarni soldiers guarding the plaza behind them. The huge arterial pipe that pulsed water through the heart of the city-ship was too slick inside to climb to the surface, and the gap of the massive aperture was too exposed to even provide any meaningful cover.
He hunched around her, providing what protection he could with his bulk. “You know of valves or a functioning comm or—?”
“I’ll call the water,” she repeated. “Like the pool above.”
The water there had retreated from her fingertips. “You’ll call back the water?” A flicker of wonder—and a trickle of fear. “What myth is that?”
“Not myth. My ancestors keyed the ship’s operations to their descendants—like me. And they used the water to carry the commands.” Her lashes fluttered down.
“Ridley.” When he laid her down by the conduit mouth, he felt as if it were threatening to swallow her. He knew better than to ask soilers for mercy, but if he’d had even a hope…
Lifting the sopping hem of her sleeveless shirt, he found the blaster wound scorched across her flank. She’d held onto his battle skin, but all the med seal he had was scarcely enough to stop the bleeding. And the
Cretarni would be coming to finish them.
She groaned and forced her eyes open. “Need water.”
All around them, and yet nowhere near. They’d drunk all the water they’d taken from Marisol. Frustration made him curse with every obscenity he’d learned from his young, doomed Tritonyri. As he ransacked her pack and his battle skin, he found the cutting of algae.
“Not much to drink.” He lifted the still wet strands to her mouth.
But she put her hand over his and squeezed. The algae gave up a meager stream of droplets that pooled beside them.
With one finger, she distorted the edge of the little pool, tracing a tapering line of silver across the lip of the conduit. The line thinned to nothing as she reached as far as she could…and to his shock, when she flicked her fingertip, the droplet spiraled up the aqueduct beyond the force she’d given it, drawing the rest of the silvery rivulet behind it like a tiny, watery comet that disappeared into the dark mouth above them.
“Pure water is a terrible conductor, but salt water will carry an electrical charge,” she murmured. “Did you know the proportion of salts in the human body is nearly the same concentration as seawater?”
“You’re sending a message to the ship.” Amazement crackled through him. “What are you telling it?”
“Don’t know all the commands. Gotta hope my great-great-great-granddaddies knew how much we’d forget.” She closed her eyes again. “For a heart filling backward.”
“A heart…? Hai-aku, what are you saying? Where is your breather?” A distant rumble, like thunder or a plasma fusillade, silenced his questions.
“Outta the way,” she mumbled.
There was nowhere to go that wasn’t in the line of fire from the lurking Cretarni. All he could do was gather her close to his chest and hold on tight.
As this last remnant Tritona’s ancient sea answered the call of its long-lost daughter and flooded over them in a deafening roar.
Chapter 19
He curled himself like a shining shell around her. But even so, despite being born and fighting in the fiercest ocean, Mael found himself tossed like the tiniest spawnling in the surge she’d summoned.