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

  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 deep-sea survival would keep him oxygenated awhile, though the cold—colder than any trench—sapped him, but Lana had only some of those advantages. Her powerless tumbling meant he couldn’t make eye contact, and he had no way to tell her he was coming.

  In that timeless heartbeat as he closed on her, he knew once he caught her, he would never let her go.

  Narrowing his eyes against the cold that ached even though his protective eyelids, he reached out—and tackled her with one long arm around her middle.

  Little though she was, as he grabbed hold of her, the momentum of her spin grabbed hold of him too. His own bulk and direction were only enough to slow them, not stop. With his grip on the restraint cable unyielding, his arm wrenched hard and twisted. But he did not let go, not ever.

  As if to punish him for his stubborn resolve, a hard thunk against the back of his skull made his head spin even more than the rest of him. What… Had he been hit by a small asteroid?

  Before he could make sense of the unexpected attack, Lana hit him again and then stiff-armed him, as if trying to shove free of his grip.

  Not happening.

  In the small distance between them, he finally met her wide, terrified gaze.

  Tears had frozen in silvery spikes on her lashes, and her lips were clamped bloodless on whatever last breath she’d taken. But she pushed against him again, struggling to get loose.

  And the pulse pistol shackled to her wrist over dried streaks of scarlet blood floated past his peripheral vision. Its indicator lights signaled an imminent overload.

  Lana whipped her hand away, trying to force the about-to-be bomb past them. But the binding wasn’t long enough and even the vacuum of space wouldn’t blunt the force at this close range.

  She locked her gaze on his, and for an instant, a hazy image of her spinning out of his arms formed in his vision—and then ended in a blossom of light as she exploded.

  No. He snarled, accidentally letting out a wisp of precious air in tiny bubbles of vapor that crystalized in an instant. He couldn’t answer her, not even with a delicately constructed sonogram of his resolve.

  With a furious flex of one arm, he clamped her to his chest. Yanking his other arm, he reversed their course, flinging them toward the Diatom’s hatch.

  The gun hadn’t overloaded yet. And until it did, he’d keep her.

  Before they even reached the ship, he pulled her shackled wrist toward him. The soil-suckers had known he’d pursue Lana rather than hunting them. He’d made that clear with his impassioned declaration to her. But he wouldn’t take back those words for anything. It would be his own fault if he ended up dead from his desire. But he would not let Lana suffer the same fate.

  Ignoring everything including the accelerating blink pace of the warning light on the pistol, he focused on the tether between her and the bomb. If he’d been wearing his battle skin, he would’ve had all of his tools neatly arrayed around him. Instead he had this constricting Earther garb with not enough pockets. If only she’d stop squirming.

  With a hard, focused pulse he broke the bond between the shackle on her wrist and the weapon. In the same moment, he slung her deeper into the hold. No time—

  The vacuum of space carried no sound, but the glare of light blinded him an instant before the pressure wave slammed into him from behind, hurling him toward Lana.

  He curved his body to make a protective hollow, bracing himself away from her as his palms and knees smashed into the inner bulkhead. Her small form was almost entirely covered by his so he could pray she survived…

  He’d never prayed to any of Tritona’s deities, not even the Abyssa though he’d floated once in that sanctified glow and could not deny its existence. He closed his eyes as the radiation sliced around him.

  With his contact against the wall, the blare of the emergency klaxons reached him, the voice of the ship’s AI pitched to urgency in any language. “Detonation detected. Structural damage detected. Loss of atmosphere detected.”

  With a grunt that wasn’t strong enough to move even the molecules of dust floating in the vacuum, Sting forced himself to straighten. Lana wasn’t safe yet.

  The explosion so close to the hull had sent the Diatom into a tumble of its own, and onboard gravity had failed. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that the hatch door was destroyed; they needed to get back inside and reestablish whatever atmosphere they could save.

  Keeping Lana tight against his chest, he struggled to the inner portal, overrode its warning about releasing the atmosphere, and forced his way within. The blast of precious air almost knocked him back into the space, but he hung on to their one chance at survival with the same ferocity he held Lana.

  She was still alive, and he’d keep her that way.

  He had to manually force the portal closed behind him, as if the Diatom had given up on its warnings and suggestions. Maybe that data gel Lana had revived had absorbed some wisdom too.

  The preserved atmosphere was too thin, the gravity intermittent, but when Lana gasped, it was the sweetest sound to ever resonate against him.

  “Engine failure detected,” the AI announced, almost apologetically. “Hull failure detected.”

  Well, as the Earthers would say, fuck.

  Still holding Lana tight, he limped for the bridge. Something wasn’t right with his leg, which wouldn’t have mattered if he was swimming, but in the glitching gravity, he kept careening off walls, and sometimes the ceiling or f
loor. He could only tuck himself around her to guard her from knocks, but he didn’t have time to check her status or his own.

  Catastrophic failures probably detected there too.

  Grimacing, he stumbled into the cockpit and slid Lana into the copilot seat.

  She clung to him a moment. “Sting?”

  “Here.” He brushed a wild curl of hair out of her dazed eyes.

  “Death by deep space. Or death by exploding…”

  “Catastrophic failure imminent,” the Diatom announced.

  Lana’s dark eyes widened even more. “Both at once?”

  He leaned close to put his lips on her crown and breathed with her for just a moment. “Together.”

  She tilted her face upward to catch his mouth with hers. “Not die together. Live.”

  He dropped into the seat beside her. “It’s going to be a hard landing.”

  “Oh, I know all about those.” She grabbed the restraint harness and buckled in. She toggled the controls in front of her and reported, “Pretty much doomed across all indicators.”

  He couldn’t help it—he laughed, even though the change in pressure in his own head made his vision spin.

  She scowled at him. “Oh, you think that’s funny?”

  “I think your humor aligns with mine,” he told her. “According to the Intergalactic Dating Agency tests, your physicality appeals to me with ninety-seven percent compatibility. You are bad at flying a spaceship, but I don’t mind. You smell like everything I like to eat. We are both monsters.” He breathed out a steadying exhalation. “Lana… Lana, I… I luh…” His tongue tangled, and he inhaled again, as if this were the deepest dive he’d ever attempted. “I would like to date you.”

  “Sting—”

  “Wait,” he interrupted. “The nav isn’t automatically projecting our course, and I have to program our crash by hand.”

  She grimaced. “Ninety-seven percent compatibility?”

  “According to the metrics of the IDA matching parameters, one hundred percent compatibility is nearly impossible and not actually recommended.” He cleared his throat and said in his reciting voice, “It is in those last few percentage points of incompatibility where our IDA matches learn to appreciate the uniqueness of an intergalactic love and practice the IDA ideals of curiosity, open-mindedness, honest communication, and heart-deep pleasure in the other.”

  She peered at him, the warning lights flashing a reflection in her dark eyes. “You took the IDA matching tests?”

  “Not all of it,” he admitted. “Evens seemed to think I wasn’t ready. And I only stole a few pages.” He gazed at her. “He demanded I not try to force you to be my match.”

  She bit her lip, and it took almost all the strength left in his body to not lean over to lick that tiny indentation. “I suppose there are other high ninety-percent matches out there who also smell like things you like to eat, since you eat pretty much everything.”

  “But you taste best of all.”

  A flush deepened the dusky hue of her skin, although he might be the only one to sense it. “You should’ve left me out there,” she said in a broken whisper. “You could’ve just shot them out of the sky and saved Tritona and Earth. You’d have been a hero to two planets.”

  “The Diatom doesn’t have the firepower,” he told her. “I was lying.”

  She blinked at him. “I didn’t think you could lie,” she murmured. “So what else…” She shook her head. “None of that matters.”

  “Nothing else matters,” he agreed. “Except if you would like to date me back.”

  “Maybe we should just think about not crashing this spaceship.”

  “Oh no, that part definitely doesn’t matter. We’re crashing the spaceship, unquestionably.” He laughed again.

  Her brow furrowed. “Sting, are you all right?”

  He shook his head, trying to make the whirl of his thoughts fall into place. “No,” he decided at last. “Because you have not said that you will date me, but I can’t force you to answer. Because you are stronger than me, and because I only want what you want. And so I will wait for your answer as we fall.”

  Straining against her harness, she reached across the space between their chairs to lay her hand on his arm, and he realized for the first time that the laser overload had shredded his tough Earther clothing. He was glad to be mostly bare again, because her fingertips on his skin were warmer than seemed possible in the failing life-support even though the touch sent an ache deeper in him than seemed possible.

  Her dark gaze was liquid with tears. “You said we were a match because we are both monsters, but…” She withdrew her hand and curled it into her chest, as if she too were holding the memory of touching him. “I’m not anymore. The Cretarni took the zaps out of me.”

  The borrowed warmth drained out of him. “Took your power? How?”

  She shook her head. “They used the water purification system on the Atlantyri to separate components in my blood. They called it a light switch and said that the Tritonesse stole it from their developers to make it into a biogenetic weapon.” She gazed up miserably. “Me. But I couldn’t fight them off, and they took it. And now they’re going to use it to electrolyze the sea on Tritona and kill everything in the deeps.” She looked away from him. “And worse, there was a moment when I wanted them to do it. Not poison your world, but just…take away the zaps, let me be…”

  “You,” he said. “You are still you, even without the power.”

  But if she was no longer the mate to his monster, why did she need him at all?

  He tried to focus on the ship controls, though the panels in front of him made even less sense than the suboptimal numbers would indicate.

  “Lana, I think you need to fly the ship.”

  She grimaced. “I thought you said I was bad at it. Doesn’t that make us less of a match?”

  It made her even more precious in his eyes, when his protective lenses were down and when he pinged to the very truth. “Since we’re crashing anyway,” he murmured. “And I think I will do no better.” He touched the back of his head, and the webbing between his fingers came away slicked with his blue-green blood.

  “Sting!” She jolted against the restraint harness again as if she’d forgotten about the straps as she tried to get to him.

  He waved her back, with his not bloodied hand. “The blast… My catastrophic failure is imminent.” He tried to smile at her.

  But from the way she flinched, he failed in that too.

  She tightened her jaw. “Together,” she said between gritted teeth. “That’s the ideal. That’s a match.”

  As they plunged downward, his vision narrowed and his arms felt shackled with heavier weapons than anything he’d ever carried. “Stay to the IDA lane,” he warned. “You stray, and automated planetary security will vaporize us, and then we’ll have no chance of…anything.”

  He already had no chances left, not if she didn’t need a monster anymore.

  His vision swam as if he were underwater. Were these…tears? The blast had rattled him harder than he’d guessed.

  “Diverting resources to life support and nav,” she announced. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Transfer priority for life support to structural integrity,” he told her. “We can hold our breath, but we can’t survive reentry without a ship. Or at least most of it.”

  Her hands flew across the controls, and the way she flicked and adjusted the controls made him tilt sideways in woozy wanting for her hands on him instead.

  He might be dying.

  “You are good at flying a spaceship,” he noted. “It’s the spaceships that failed you.” As he had. He’d been sent to retrieve her—and failed. He’d vowed to protect her—and failed. He’d tried to win her… Maybe he hadn’t entirely failed at that—her words through the vacuum while she stood on the bridge of the Cretarni ship would ring in his ears—but he couldn’t keep fighting for her now, not when she was finally free of her curse.

&nb
sp; She didn’t have to fear the zaps. She didn’t need him anymore to ground her unpredictable power.

  But he’d fallen for her. And he would continue to fall, forever. She might not need him to catch her, but if ever she did, he’d be there.

  Just…not right this instant, not when their ship was falling, because the vacuum that had followed behind the blast was closing around him.

  “Sting?”

  He didn’t try to smile at her this time, since he was so bad at it, but he sent her a soft little ping. “I nul’ah-lan.” My burning night tide.

  And the abyss that swallowed him was deeper and darker than anything he’d ever known.

  Chapter 16

  “Fuuuuuck.” Lana split her frantic focus between Sting and the Diatom. Was he dead? The ship was practically dead, the controls lagging under her touch or not responding at all. If Sting…

  No. No no no. She had not gone through this—twice!—just to kill him with her bad flying.

  Unless he was already… No.

  Unwavering, she aimed the Diatom along the approved IDA trajectory. At least they’d end up back in the vicinity of Sunset Falls. The last time she’d crashed, she’d still been in shock from discovering she was a fire-witch and being exiled from her hopeful new home on Tritona. Back then, she hadn’t known Thomas very well, and she’d never have guessed her mother was soon to reappear, so crashing had been a bummer but not the trauma of thinking she might be scattering her ashes above their heads now…

  And she’d be taking Sting with her.

  She spared one quick glance at him. Still breathing, she could tell, but his head lolled to one side, that blue-green Tritonan blood seeping down in a dangling necklace over his slowly heaving mostly bare chest. Alive, but for how much longer?

  That depended on her, didn’t it?

  Gritting her teeth, she looked at the options that were left her on the board.

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” the AI broke in. “You have insufficient power remaining for life-support or stabilizers.”

  Last time that had been her fault because of her zaps. So not being personally responsible for crashing was an improvement, yeah? She dragged in a breath, the atmo already too thin to support her racing pulse.