Page 89 of Call of the Fathoms

He blinked down at her. “You did all that in such a short amount of time?”

Again, she looked at him like he had lost his mind. “I am very efficient, Fortis.”

And so she was. He just hadn’t realized how efficient and how difficult that would make things for him.

Exhaling, he brought them both into the main room for them to be accosted by a hundred people trying to talk all at once. Perhaps a hundred was an exaggeration, but it felt that way.

Alexia was yanked out of the water by multiple hands, all of them grabbing at her and dragging her into the fray. There were so many humans wandering around in the room, each of them trying to talk over another as they moved in small groups toward their own goal. He didn’t know what that goal was; it was hard to hear any of them speak over the massive noise they were making.

A red hand grabbed his arm, urging him back under the water so he could speak with the others. But his eyes were only on her.

She pulled the diving helmet off her head, her long braid swinging free like a whip as she approached the crowd without fear. She was easily a head taller than even the tallest man in that room. Alexia took over any space that she was in and commanded attention wherever she went.

Daios again tugged on his arm, this time forcing him to dip underneath the water.

“What is wrong with you?” Daios muttered.

Everything.

Nothing.

He had lost his mind because a warrior woman had barged into his life and now she seemed to believe he could exist without her. She was able to shake off all that they had experienced together, and he wasn’t sure he liked that. He wanted her to be consumed by thoughts of him, incapable of thinking of anything else. Especially this close to their encounter.

Daios smacked him in the throat. Hard. “Get your head back on straight, Fortis. Listen to me. There are plans and you have to follow them, and you can’t do that if you’re mooning over some woman who you already know is going to kill you.”

Fortis glared at him. “How do you know that?”

“I know a lot of things. You forget, I have worked with the depthstriders most of my life. You’re not the only one I know,and many of your people are talking about how you are siding with the woman who is going to kill you.” Daios frowned. “Why you are doing that, I will never understand. But it is not my job to understand you. It is my job to ensure you have your head on straight enough that we all get this done the way it has to be done.”

Fortis understood the meaning behind his words. They were on borrowed time.

“Why are we rushing?” he asked as they swam to another section of the village. “I assumed we would return and have to make as many plans as we could before all of this was happening.”

A depthstrider swam past them with his arms laden with weapons. Three droids followed him, each of them already equipped with more weaponry that would likely be used in the upcoming battle.

Daios shook his head. “Before Alexia left, she gave them all the idea of what the plan should be, and it was a good plan. She’ll return in the ship, pretending to lick her wounds after she lost you. It’ll be a two month long story that they’ll need to get out of her, and she knows enough about them to lie well. Her Original will believe her, because Alexia has always been a soft spot in Harlow’s armor. It gives her a chance to reestablish connection and then let us in.”

“This is a terrible plan. You’re all leaving it up to fate that they trust she hasn’t been compromised, or that they wouldn’t decommission her at first sight.”

“This is the plan she suggested, and we are trusting that she knows what to do with her own people.”

But she didn’t. They’d already established that truth. She had fought her entire life to get out of from under the rule of Tau, and now they were all trusting that they wouldn’t kill her for it?

Daios’s brow furrowed. “Unless you fear they will get her back under their thumb?”

“No, I fear that she will do something foolish and get herself killed.” And therein laid the problem. Alexia was so angry at all of those people, and he knew it might not be reasonable to expect her to withhold that anger.

With a slow exhalation of bubbles through his gills, Daios nodded. “I believe the only thing we can do now is to trust her, Fortis. We have shown Alexia what it is like to be with us, to support us, to do all the things that we have been doing for countless months on end. We have to believe that she will do the right thing, even if it is hard.”

“Like kill me,” he muttered, before shaking his head. “Understood. What is the plan?”

“We have manufactured another battery for her to attach to her ship. The maintenance droids we stole from Beta also went to the location she revealed to ensure the ship was still viable, and the system is ready to go online as soon as you place her in it. She will return to the city in the same ship, with the knowledge that she will need to undergo vigorous testing to ensure she is still the woman they believe her to be. Once that is completed, she will open the locks on the city one by one. We will enter that way and kill as many people as we can.”

“And if they retaliate?”

“We leave through the same vents that she is opening. But we will also have many warriors taking down their exterior ships with the droid enhancements Alexia provided us with. Between our people and the weapons on these droids, we should be able to be safe outside and in. Inside, we kill a few people at a time, continually attacking through the new vents she is opening and then leaving before they are closed.”

They made it to Mira’s workshop, where he had assumed the battery would be. “They will realize it is her. No one else wouldmake the mistakes like that. They have had hundreds of years to perfect the protection of their city.”

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