Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,22
monstrousness—he returned his attention to the comm panel. Transferring the prioritized list of replacement parts and repairs to his battle skin datpad, he authorized the AI’s task list to attend to their eventual launch.
In the seat next to him, Lana stared at his hands, although he had the feeling she wasn’t really watching him. Just as well since he didn’t want her to think that watching him would give her the expertise to flee again with the Diatom.
Although missing expertise clearly hadn’t stopped her before.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured finally. “I shouldn’t have called you a monster.”
He looked at her hands, clenched hard in her lap. The hands that had blown him off the ledge of the Wavercrest abode. “Does this word monster mean something more to you in your language? To me, it sounds accurate enough.”
She wrinkled her nose in a way that made her mouth pucker as if she’d sucked unripened pixberries. “It’s not usually a good thing.”
“Maybe good doesn’t mean the same thing either, at least not when you’re at war.”
Now when she gazed at him, the water moved across her dirt-dark eyes like a salty tide. “I read the histories that the Tritonesse had to file with the intergalactic development council regarding Tritona’s trade status. The war sounded brutal, terrible.”
“A proving ground for monsters,” he agreed.
“And for heroes.”
“I don’t think any of those words mean much in the midst of war or its aftermath.” He returned his attention to the comm panel. “Save them for the trade council.”
He finished locking down the AI’s new commands and was just about to leave the neural net to its assigned tasks when an anomaly in its scans caught his attention.
He played it back. As the Diatom had been in-bound, it had defaulted to passive sensor mode, both to preserve power after the zaps and for closed-world protocols to avoid detection. But even so, it had caught the presence of another ship.
If the Intergalactic Dating Agency had still been in operation, the presence of other ships might’ve been expected. But since the IDA’s closure, there was nothing else of interest to the intergalactic community in the vicinity of Sunset Falls, Montana, Earth.
So who else was here?
He had fought enough battles to not take on one that didn’t belong to him, but with the exodus ship Atlantyri still embedded in the planetary crust not far from here, he doubted the randomness. The universe was very large, after all.
With the Diatom damaged and the Wavercrest abode lacking even the most rudimentary of Tritonyri battlement tools, he had no way of identifying or tracking the intruder.
Nothing except himself.
Since that had all too frequently been the way of things, he didn’t flinch as he contemplated how he might fight any invaders. He had not even his Tritonyri brethren behind him… But that had been the case on Tritona often enough as well.
Phantoms weren’t known for friendliness, just the fatalities.
“What are you looking at?”
He angled a thoughtful stare toward her. How had she picked up on his interest? He hadn’t made any betraying noise or gesture to reveal the surge of bloodlust. “Checking the sensor logs,” he said, not lying. “That’s all I can do for now until I get the relays to make repairs.” He pushed to his feet. “We can go.”
She looked up at him. “You’re not going to try to keep me imprisoned here on the ship until you’re ready to leave?”
Another strange sensation fizzed in his blood as if he’d been injected with the sparkling gases that bubbled from the deep-sea vents. “No.” He peered at her. “Did you want me to?”
“I… No!” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to have to zap you when we leave.”
His gaze dipped to the new curves and hollows she’d made of her body with the tightness of her embrace around herself.
If he wrapped his own arms in those places on her, what other curves and hollows might he find?
With a certainty, he would find himself zapped.
Rather than grab her or taste the lingering mark she’d left on her lower lip, he pushed to his feet. How annoying to suddenly have to make good, thoughtful choices about his mission when his wartime commander wasn’t even around to appreciate it.
Returning to the hatch, always conscious of her padding steps behind him, he stood staring down at the dark water. “I need to go to the Atlantyri,” he told her. “Shall I take you back to your vehicle so