Fathom: Intergalactic Dating Agency (Mermaids of Montana Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Fathom

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 21

  Sneak peek! Beast Battalion: Cross

  About the Author

  Romancing the Alien

  Thank You!

  FATHOM

  MERMAIDS OF MONTANA

  BIG SKY ALIEN MAIL ORDER BRIDES

  INTERGALACTIC DATING AGENCY

  Elsa Jade

  WEBSITE | NEW RELEASE ALERT | FACEBOOK

  If Tritona’s war is over, who feeds the forgotten sharks of war?

  Designed and trained to be a war-torn planet’s merciless killing machine, Sting was sent to the deeps when the battles ended. But the end of the fighting doesn’t always mean peace. Then one of the Wavercrest women from Earth goes missing, and he’s tasked with finding her. But how can this one small mission soothe the monster he was made to be?

  Lana Wavercrest has been running for what feels like forever. She thought she’d finally found her home on a faraway ocean world…only to discover that her heritage—the same unnerving powers that ruined her life on Earth—is considered a curse on Tritona too. Is there nowhere in the universe she can be herself?

  But when Tritona’s enemy returns, they will have one last chance to decide the fate of worlds—and their lonely, drifting hearts.

  Read all the MERMAIDS OF MONTANA

  MAELSTROM

  CORIOLIS

  FATHOM

  New to the Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides? Start with ALPHA STAR for free!

  And find all the Intergalactic Dating Agency books at RomancingTheAlien.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Elsa Jade

  Cover design by Croco Designs

  ISBN 978-1-941547-40-3

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Chapter 1

  Once again, he dreamed he was drowning in blood.

  He woke with a sated smile… Only to discover the liquid shushing over his gills was nothing more than the warm, salty geyser oozing through his prison.

  Because of course, the war was over.

  With a disappointed sigh, he opened his eyes in the darkness—though no darkness was deep enough to truly blind him—and focused on the reinforced cage that contained him. How long would he be held by these plasteel bars?

  Or by peace.

  A slow flutter of his gills washed the remembered taste of soil-sucker blood between his teeth. No bars could hold back that memory.

  So. Maybe bars were for the best, lest his hungry dreams become a nightmare for his long-suffering people. He didn’t want to hurt them.

  Even if he was nothing more than what they’d made him.

  For a while longer, he lay at the bottom of his cage, unmoving, his eyes opened to the void, and breathed. They’d given him this roomy chamber next to the deep-sea vent because they believed the minerals in the softly bubbling flow would soothe him.

  And it did. But what if the peace and serenity threatened to weaken his iron hold on the beast within? Because those plasteel bars were not the confinement his captor cousins seemed to believe they were. To truly keep them safe, he should open a vein on the edge of his tooth and let the ugly tide of what he’d done and what he was shine in the darkness.

  His battle hunger had been briefly sated when the soil-suckers attacked his commander’s ship on a recent away mission.

  Despite the calming minerals, his skin stung at the memory of his commander’s reprimand after Sting had returned to Tritona with the Axis cruiser that he’d appropriated from the Cretarni soldiers.

  “The war is over,” Coriolis had told him. “Now, we take prisoners where we can, we interview them as appropriate, remand them to the justice of the Tritonesse, and exchange them as political prisoners back to their people to our advantage. Not—”

  “Kill,” Sting finished for him in the hopes of ending the scold.

  “Not kill,” Coriolis corrected.

  Sting ducked his head. “I was saying that.”

  His commander sighed with a stream of long-suffering bubbles, and somehow the popping fizz of air bit like the vicious suckers of a hectopi. Sting had only wanted to remind the soil-suckers that such suffering would pour over them like a thousand-year flood, to assure them that their cowardly flight from Tritona had indeed been their only chance for survival.

  As for Tritona’s survival postwar…

  “At least I got you a spaceship,” he reminded his commander a little sullenly.

  Coriolis sighed again. “I need you more than I need another ship.”

  Sting stared at him, unblinking. “That’s not true.”

  The briefest flicker of silver across the Tritonyri’s eyes betrayed the lie. “We do need ships,” he acknowledged. “But the only reason for the ships, the fighting, the dying, all of it—the only reason is to save Tritona for all of us.”

  “For Tritonyri and Tritonesse,” Sting agreed.

  “And for the one-time Earthers who immigrated here,” Coriolis added resolutely. “For anyone else who believes our home is worth saving.”

  Sting let out a slow breath of his own, with no bubbles. He was too well adapted to their watery home, not just for breathing underwater, but for the stealth and savagery that had been necessary during war.

  Salvation—the world or his own—had not been part of his heritage. “There will be more?”

  Coriolis furrowed his brow. “More ships? Battles? We sent the Cretarni home in defeat once again. I hope—”

  “More females.”

  Coriolis stilled, so still that Sting was reminded the commander of the western fleet had not been chosen for his diplomacy alone, not at the start of the war. “Maybe someday. After our meeting with the intergalactic council representative. Once Tritona is granted open-world status for aid and trade—”

  Sting grunted. The hard, sub-acoustic pang he sent would’ve staggered a lesser Tritonyri.

  Coriolis just gave him a reproving look. “You asked.”

  “Not aid and trade,” he rumbled. “Mate.”

  “The Tritonesse—”

  “Would leave me on the highest mountain top to wither, dry, and blow away now that they are done with me,” Sting noted without any particular ire.

  His commander’s armored scales pebbled protectively. “You are in my charge.” The serration of his voice rivaled the obsidian-edged blades they’d used to be undetectable to the Cretarni’s sensors. “We made you to fight. And you did. Your reward for your service will not be an empty mountain top.”

  “A mate?” Sting prodded.

  His commander’s l
ips quirked, whether in amusement or frustration, Sting didn’t have the sensors to tell. “I’ll add it to my to-do list.”

  With another snort, releasing a few deliberate bubbles this time, Sting sank back to the bottom of his cage. “I rise to serve,” he snarled the Tritonyri vow, one he’d never had the personal choice to make. “Mate or mountaintop.”

  Though his commander was still speaking, if they were no longer at war than Sting had no reason to keep listening. Turning his back, he swam to the far end of his cage and sank down into the corner.

  And this time when he dreamed, the blood that passed over his lips wasn’t his own nor his enemies’ but a lure far, far sweeter.

  ***

  Eventually he let himself out of his prison—even ruthless killing machines got hungry eventually—and made a leisurely circuit of the vents. This far down, almost everything was a scavenger or a predator that fed on scavengers. Little could generate its own life at such depth of pressure and darkness.

  Exactly where he deserved to be.

  But for once, he hungered for something else. Adjusting his inner ballast, he began a slow spiraling helix to the surface. The other great creatures of Tritona’s sea sidled away into the shadows long before he arrived, as if the bow wave of his approach physically removed them from his path. He kept up his passive scanning, more out of habit than need, so he identified the surface ship approaching when it was still at quite a distance. It was a Cretarni ship of course—Tritonans not needing any vehicle confined to the air—but he held his position. All the Cretarni had been driven from Tritona’s waters and land, not once but twice. Presumably it was Tritonans in command of the confiscated ship.

  If it wasn’t…

  He continued his slow circles and shallow dives, scooping mouthfuls of rich, tasty plankton where they swarmed at the sunlit level. It took forever to feed a creature of his size this way, but it wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

  Not until the ship arrived at any rate. If it was Cretarni trying to start a third war, maybe they would have plasma cannons. Plasma in water always made beautiful rainbows, sprays of mesmerizing color made half of water, half of air. Even prettier than the squirts of soil-sucker blood.

  But as the ship closed the distance without a sound—the Cretarni had favored hydrocarbons, but the Tritonans retrofitted everything with wind and solar—he sighed out a wistful acknowledgment that these were his people, not enemies. When he shot a spume of saltwater and air straight up so they might see him, his own rainbow was a pale thing compared to a plasma blast.

  Not that he feared they’d run him over. If they were out here, in the middle of the great sea, they were obviously looking for him.

  As he lazed to the surface, rolling to expose his belly to the hazy rays of Tritona’s star, the playful breeze turned the droplets of water on his armored flesh to cold pricks, like needles. Needles brought memory of blood and pain that were nightmare, but the soft caress of sunlight took the edge off his annoyance at being interrupted.

  Still, he waited for the ship to come to him rather than meeting it halfway. As the battle skin sails furled, the ship skimmed past him and wheeled around in an arcing fountain of power and joy. As it hoved about, he caught a glimpse of another Tritonyri male. Maelstrom was not at the controls, however. That was one of the Earther females. Ridley had a fierce grin on her face as she hauled the lines with all the weight in her strong body, as if she’d become the sleek ship.

  The other female—the one they’d been sent to Earth to retrieve, wrongly—was hanging half off the bow, the cutouts in her battle skin revealing curves of dusky dark gold skin. Her black gaze riveted on him. “I found him!”

  With an aggrieved grunt, Sting rolled, preparing to dive. If they were using him as a hunting exercise, he could make this much more interesting…

  The female, Marisol, waved a large chunk of something toward him. “Sting! I have pixberry pie. Sooooo much better than ebb porridge.”

  He hesitated. A hunt-and-kill mission was one thing, but this would be just an exercise, with off-world-born, half-blood Tritonans at that. Hardly a challenge.

  And she had pie. Neither pixberries nor flakey crust could be found in the deeps.

  With a hard flex of muscle, he lifted himself above the waves, and Marisol flung the pie across the water. Extending his claws, he caught it deftly in one hand and dumped it down his throat as he settled back in the water. “Missing a slice.”

  “Had to make sure it was tastier than that low-tide sludge we had on the front lines.” Maelstrom grinned down as he offered a hand to help Marisol back onto the upper deck of the Cretarni craft.

  When she’d cleared the space, Sting launched himself out of the water. “You ate a slice of my pie,” he said mildly.

  Marisol waved at another flat disk. “This one is krill quiche,” she said in a lilting, luring voice. “No pieces missing. All for you. Just a small snack, and more where this comes from.”

  He eyed the offering. He might be just an animal, but even the simplest animal knew when it was being baited. “What do you want?”

  The Tritonyri and the two Earthers exchanged glances. Sting didn’t bother trying to ping them. Finding a floating body was easy; figuring out what words meant… Much harder. Words floated and sank and sneaked around to bite from behind. Words were trickier than licking just one plankton. Better to let them talk talk talk, then read their sound waves for lies and respond accordingly.

  “Our friend is missing,” Marisol said finally.

  The other female, Ridley, had finished securing the ship—an attention to detail that Sting appreciated. As she joined them, she shook her head. “Not exactly missing. Lana took a spaceship and ran away.”

  Sting took the second pie. It too he ate in a bite as he contemplated. “Lana,” he rumbled. “The little one that smelled of spices.”

  Ridley chuckled. “I’m not sure that’s how Lana would self-identify, but yeah.”

  “I didn’t eat her.” He licked his fingers. The krill was salty and the crust was flaky. “That was good.”

  Maelstrom lifted his eyebrows. “Yes, good that you did not eat Lana.”

  Sting didn’t bother correcting the Tritonyri. “I don’t know where she is.”

  Marisol studied him with those black eyes. The blackness of eyes he remembered too well from his years confined in the deeps, before the Tritonesse released him to battle. “Could you find her?”

  He licked his other fingers, more slowly, thinking of the drifting aroma of spices. “Yes.”

  “Even if she’s not on Tritona anymore?”

  He gazed back at the other Tritonyri. “I hunt anywhere.”

  Marisol shook her head. “It’s not a hunt… Well, it sort of is, but we don’t want her hurt or eaten or…anything.”

  “Then why send me?” The question seemed reasonable to him, considering what he was.

  Maelstrom let out a hard huff. “It should be me,” he acknowledged. “I’m the one who broke the closed-world protocols on Earth from the beginning.”

  Ridley put her hand on his shoulder and stepped closer, fitting herself to the side of his body. Like two halves of the same bivalve. “If you hadn’t, I’d be dead by now, and probably Marisol too.”

  The pale-haired Earther nodded. “Which is why we need to bring Lana back.” Her voice dropped into a lower register, thrumming with the sonics of an angry Tritonesse. “Those aqua bitches terrified her with all their talk of fire-witches.”

  Sting rumbled. “Fire-witch?”

  All three swung to look at him. “What do you know about them?” Marisol asked. “The other Tritonesse would only say that it was forbidden.”

  He shrugged. “When they made me, I heard them speak of others, like fire-witches. But I never met any.”

  “What others?” Marisol prodded. “The Titanyri?”

  “Ask the Tritonesse.”

  Marisol’s gaze was almost sharper than the needles had been, but then she nodded. “I
will find out.”

  He could like this seafoam creature that radiated disapproval of the Tritonesse and arrived bearing pies. He eyed her back with dispassionate assessment. “Coriolis should not let you wander around Tritona unaccompanied. For you are small and snackable, and things in the deeps are hungry.”

  Maelstrom stiffened. “Sting, don’t you dare—”

  “No,” Marisol said softly. A swirl of water whipped up on the breeze, though the wind was not strong enough. The spray eddied around her feet. “That wasn’t a threat, was it? Just a truth.”

  Sting nodded, pleased that she understood.

  “I appreciate the warning. Tritona is still new to us, both its dangers”—the wind gusted higher around her hips, sparkling with airborne mist—“and its gifts.”

  He gave her just the barest smile, but he included plenty of teeth. “You bring more than pie,” he said approvingly.

  She inclined her head. “And as much as Coriolis appreciates my efforts on the domestic front, he also knows that I can protect my pie.” She gave him that unblinking black stare. “And the new Tritona that we envision will not keep anyone confined to the depths, not the Tritonesse hidden for their own good, nor the Titanyri trapped like you. This planet is broken, yes, but from the pieces we can rebuild a better place for all of us.”

  After a ringing moment of silence, Ridley cheered aloud. “Marisol for mayor! You have my vote, ma’am.”

  “Abyssa,” Sting murmured. He didn’t realize his hands were in fists until his talons pierced his palms.

  Marisol shook her head. “The Abyssa—or whatever voice from your past lurks at the center of this world—has a penchant for poetry that I find difficult to put into practice. Tritona now needs something more actionable.”

  The words flowed over Sting like choppy, sandy surf, grating on his gills.

  Ridley snorted too. “Okay, too much politics,” she said cheerfully. “We’re still stuck in limbo between the war that was and the future that will be.” She glanced at Sting. “Marisol and I feel responsible that Lana is in the wind.” When he tilted his head, she clarified, “Ran away. We can’t go after her ourselves until the council rep does their planetary assessment, and they are taking their own damn sweet time.” She scowled. “Coriolis and Maelstrom have to be here too, to put on a good show for the rep. Even if they were able to go right away, they would take you because they say you are the best hunter on Tritona.”