Page 3 of Sheltered in the Storm (The Fortusian Mates # 1)

CHAPTER 2

VOS

On the surface, the water frothed and churned, tossed by the winds and rain of a nuoia —the locals’ term for a strong storm not as large or powerful as a hurricane.

But here in the ocean’s dark, purple depths, I drifted in contented silence.

The swift, deep currents carried me parallel to the shore. Even in my relaxed state I had to be mindful of how far I journeyed along the sea floor before I turned and swam back against the current toward the inlet that was my habitual spot to enter the sea.

All too often, the more troubled my thoughts, the further I ended up traveling before I noticed the distance I had covered. Tonight, I had drifted farther than was safe. The ambassador’s child had reappeared in my dreams lately, their endless calls of “ La ka na! ” stealing the comfort of sleep.

When I roused myself from my meditative state and opened my eyes, I found myself less than half a kilometer from the camp set up by a group of about a dozen interplanetary raiders .

The bastards had cut down trees to build their base, from which they launched their half-dozen ships that went on day- or week-long runs attacking ships passing through the area. As if that were not bad enough, they had placed mines in the sea only meters from where I now floated. I hated them for that, and a thousand other reasons. The sea was my solace, but they had transformed its beauty into a deadly trap.

I would have killed them all if I did not think it would attract too much attention from their brethren throughout the sector. Solitude and anonymity were more valuable to me than anything—even ridding this otherwise quiet area of murderous raiders and their deadly traps.

So, once again I hissed in the direction of the mines, then slowly turned and rose from near the sea floor to midway to the surface for the journey back to the inlet. My tentacles swirled around me, stretching and preparing for the long swim.

BOOM .

The force of an impact on the surface rolled through the water. I scarcely had time to realize what had happened before it reached me. Ears ringing, vision reduced to gray mist, and limbs heavy as lead, I sank to the ocean floor. I did not lose consciousness, but disorientation left me dazed and lying in the sand.

The first coherent thought that drifted through my cottony brain was, Had I been closer to the surface, I might have been killed .

The realization of how close I had come to death just now barely elicited an emotional or physiological response—much as my earlier proximity to the raiders’ deadly sea mines had not. The Guard’s indoctrination, or my own apathy about my life? Could I even distinguish between the two?

Lingering discomfort and some residual dizziness aside, I seemed uninjured. My need to monitor my environment and identify potential threats compelled me to find out what had crashed. My tentacles stirred, undulated to relieve their aches, and propelled me from the ocean floor to the surface.

Given my proximity to the raider camp, I suspected the object was one of their ships. But when my head rose above the water’s surface just enough to see the debris, I found I had been wrong.

The ship was unmistakably an Alliance Defense long-range fighter, or what was left of it.

The nose and one triangular wing of the fighter had crumpled on impact, tearing open the cockpit. The starboard wing was gone entirely, as was most of the tail section. The damage might have occurred during the ship’s passage through the atmosphere, or in the attack that had left telltale scorch marks on both sides of the fighter’s hull. The once-proud fighter—a Delta Seven model, if I was not mistaken—had been reduced nearly to scrap metal, save perhaps some of its inner workings.

My tentacles swirled in irritation. Of all the oceans in the galaxy, this fighter had chosen to crash into mine.

If the pilot had managed to send a distress call before crashing, or the ship had an automatic emergency beacon, the Alliance would send a rescue team and investigators to retrieve the pilot’s remains and the wreck.

I had chosen Iosa as my home for the same reason the small group of raiders created a base here: the moon attracted so little notice, even as a satellite of a popular planet like Jakora. Its violent weather patterns ensured it had no risk of becoming a tourist destination and its sparse population density allowed for solitude.

As the site of a Defense fighter crash, however, Iosa would be of definite interest to the Alliance Defense. Highly motivated to find out what had caused this crash, they would investigate the area and immediately find the raider camp. If they arrested the raiders and destroyed their ships, I would find that agreeable .

My homestead was far enough away that I might avoid their notice. My best hope would be to retreat to my home and keep my head down until the inevitable investigation ended and the Alliance Defense departed with their wrecked ship and dead pilot.

The sound of engines and shouts drew my attention to two boats approaching the wrecked fighter from the direction of the raider camp. During daytime I would have slipped beneath the surface and disappeared. In the dark and rain, I doubted they would be able to see me with only the top of my head and eyes above the surface of the water.

The raiders approached, navigating through their minefield to the wreckage. The fighter would likely sink soon. At the moment it remained afloat, tossed roughly by the waves. The cockpit had been badly damaged and broken open. If that had happened in space or in the atmosphere, the pilot would certainly be dead. If it occurred on impact, though, they might have survived. Not likely, but possible.

The raiders would want to salvage what they could from the wrecked ship and disable any distress beacons. Indeed, one of them—an enormous red-and-black Atolani male, wearing leather from collar to boots and sporting large gold rings on his horns—stood at the front of the lead boat, holding a scanner probably designed to detect signals.

The Atolani let out a shout, tossed the device into the boat, and pointed at the vessel. It sounded like he had not detected any signals. This was welcome news to me as well.

Boarding wave-tossed debris from small boats was no easy feat, but the raiders managed to throw hooks on long ropes and tether their vessels to the wreck. In moments, three of them had clambered onto the fighter. The smallest of the group jumped immediately into the cockpit.

I was about to leave them to their salvage operation when more shouts rang out. The urgency in their voices drew me closer—enough to see clearly, even in the rain and dark, that they were struggling to lift something out of the cockpit.

It was the limp, bloody body of an unmistakably human female pilot.

One of the blue-skinned raiders on the fighter shouted a word to the Atolani in the boat, who might have been their leader. The language was Ymarian. I knew only a little Ymarian, but I recognized the word the raider had shouted. The word meant alive .

The pilot had survived the crash—and now she and her ship were in the hands of raiders. At best, the raiders would try to keep her alive and ransom her. At worst…well, she would certainly wish to be dead.

Like the crash, her fate would not be my concern if it were not for the probability it would draw attention to this quiet corner of Iosa.

The raiders shouted back and forth in Ymarian, debating how to get the badly injured pilot to one of the boats. Finally, the Atolani leader called out a command. Two of the Ymarians aboard the fighter tossed the pilot’s limp body across three meters of water and into the waiting arms of the Atolani—who promptly dropped her on the boat’s metal deck and shoved her out of his way with his foot.

Their casual cruelty and callousness toward a defenseless person set my sharp teeth on edge. My human hands clenched into fists and my eyes glowed. My tentacles trembled with their own anger. I had not felt such visceral fury in…years? Not in recent memory, for certain. Even the sight of the raiders’ sea mines spoiling the beautiful ocean depths had not generated this much rage.

After more shouting, the Ymarian raiders on the fighter unhooked the rope that tethered the Atolani’s boat to the wreck. The Atolani reeled up the line, shouted one last command to the other boat, and turned his vessel around, heading for the shore and the camp with the pilot. The raiders left on the fighter set to work stripping what they could and tossing the salvaged parts to the three remaining raiders in the boat.

I should swim back to the inlet and return home. The fighter and its pilot were not my responsibility, and I preferred not to draw any notice to myself.

But by all the gods above and below, I hated these raiders. I did not want them to benefit from the crash. If I could sink the fighter—or even better, destroy it using one of the raiders’ own mines—they would end up with nothing. If I could do so without leaving clues as to who was responsible, I should take the pilot from them as well and bring her to the closest hospital. No one needed to know who her benefactor had been.

When the Atolani’s boat was well out of sight, I swam underwater to the wreck. I surfaced next to the fighter on the opposite side from the raiders’ boat and out of sight of the Ymarians working to extract usable items.

Just as I began formulating a plan to bring one of the raiders’ mines to the surface to dispatch the fighter, the wind changed direction. Through the rain, I caught a scent that blanked my mind and made me freeze in place.

The smell was unmistakably human blood, but it was a universe more than that.

The scent was of home, hearth, and safety. I had never had any of those things, but I knew this scent in my soul.

While my human brain struggled to grapple with this feeling, all four of my tentacles, moving instinctively and entirely of their own accord, tried to forcibly haul me up the side of the freighter toward the cockpit—the source of that entrancing scent. Each tentacle had its own small brain that controlled it without conscious commands from my central humanoid brain.

I roused myself enough to pull back into the sea before the Ymarian raiders spotted me, but my tentacles would not relinquish their grip on the fighter’s crumpled hull .

My body sang of comfort and belonging.

My mate was here.

No, I had no mate. Could not have one. A member of the Silent Guard could not have distractions. Sex, yes. Pleasure, yes. But no mate…or so I had been told. So I had believed until this very moment. But with every cell in my body, I knew more surely than I had known anything in my life that my mate had been in this fighter.

A chill swept through me, and right behind it a rush of warmth that both terrified and thrilled me all the way to my core.

And behind it came rage —white-hot, all-consuming rage.

My mate was bleeding and terribly hurt. Possibly dying. And the raiders had yanked her unconscious and vulnerable from her pilot’s seat, flung her carelessly over a stormy sea, and tossed her onto the hard deck of a boat like trash while they carefully handled the parts they pulled from her fighter. My fury was so great my body trembled and my vision tunneled, turning dark red around the edges.

As long as the fighter remained afloat, the Ymarians would stay to fill their boat before heading for their camp with the first load of plunder. The other boat would be halfway to shore. Once my mate was within the camp itself, extracting her would be far more difficult.

Continue with my plan to sink the fighter and kill those left behind, or head straight for the Atolani’s boat?

The decision was so easy and instinctive it was not a decision at all.

Quivering in fury and anticipation of the fight to come, my tentacles relinquished their grip on the fighter’s hull. I plunged into the water and took off in pursuit of my mate and her captors.