Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,80
no music left. “So give me the fire-witch, Cretarni, and the Phantom will give you your lives.”
Cinek shook his head, and a small furry feather drifted away. “You’d lose the war over this?”
“I won everything I wanted.” Sting faded back away from the screen until only his shielded eyes glowed from the darkness of his bridge. “I wait for you, i nul’ah.” My fire.
The screen flicked back to the ominous blinking of the Diatom alone on the pale outline of the defunct IDA trajectory. One of the crew let out a breathless whistle, and Cinek silenced them with a hiss, before turning to her. “The Phantom and the fire-witch. What monstrosity is this?”
She narrowed her eyes. “None,” she said tartly. “You took mine, and he was only ever the monster you all made him.”
Cinek stared past her. “I could take him too, turn him against the Tritonans.”
She let out a harsh laugh. “You could never do to him what you did to me. He is what he is, through and through.” Which was what she’d come to love. “He’s a monster of few words, but I suggest you listen to them if you want to fly away tonight.”
His egg tooth flashed over his lower lip. But after one last fulminating glare at the screen where he seemed to hope his fury would incinerate the dot that was the Diatom, he flared his many fingers at his crew. “We’ve been hanging here too long. Even with the mimic shield and low power comms, we risk detection by planetary security. Get her out of here. We have a war to end.”
When the soldier whose gun she stole stalked toward her, the snarl almost as threatening as Cinek’s, she hesitated. Could she shoot them all, or at least enough with this stolen weapon to force Sting to shoot them out of the sky? Could she do this alone to save Tritona? Would he let her?
For all the stormy confusion, one truth stood like a rocky spire against the tide.
They were stronger together.
Chapter 15
Sting watched the sensors. The repairs to the Diatom had been intended only for an uneventful return trip to Tritona, not facing a Cretarni war ship with a full complement of veteran soldiers.
With Lana as hostage.
He swallowed down the fear and rage that did not taste anything like Cretarni blood. If ever he’d needed the cold clarity of the deeps…
With their mimic shields engaged, the ships were essentially invisible to long-range scans by both Earther technology and closed-world defenses, but with the two of them facing off on the narrow IDA pathway maintained to cloak the Sunset Falls outpost in anonymity, if they vacillated at all in their standoff, they would be exposed.
Which of them would be worse off? Would the Cretarni be overcome by the invocation of the Phantom, enough to give him what he demanded?
He refused to calculate the chances. Odds had never mattered to him before.
Except Lana mattered to him now.
He sat forward stiffly as the Cretarni ship pivoted. A bay door opened, exposing the light within.
And a small shape tumbled out, much smaller than an escape pod, smaller even than a weak Cretarni soldier, limbs flailing, grasping for support in the emptiness. Bright, silky fabric unfurled, frozen in the windless void.
Now he did taste blood.
His own.
With a roar that no one would hear, he spun the Diatom in pursuit. They’d ejected Lana from the hold without an e-suit to protect her. And then they’d sent her spinning out of the protected space lane. If she was seen or, worse yet, lost…
He wouldn’t let that happen.
Grimly, he aimed toward her. The Diatom had been designed as a small passenger transport, not a salvage vessel or even light hauler. It had none of the specialized gear necessary for the safe retrieval of drifting cargo, especially not soft, fragile flesh. And its med pod was rudimentary at best. If they’d hurt her…
At the edge of his awareness, the Cretarni ship slipped behind him and fled.
That didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered but that small figure gyrating against the immensity of space.
Racing down to the hold, he sucked in a deep breath, cycled into the hatch bay—
And launched himself into space.
He’d grabbed the end of a restraint cable as he ran past. If it wasn’t long enough…
It would be long enough. And if it wasn’t, he would still find a way to her. He was her shah-lan—her strong night tide.
The power of his leap jettisoned him through the vacuum. His adaptations to