I screamed as the net sliced through my ungloved hands but kept working, the dive knives in my tendrils sawing between the fibers even as it was pulled upward by men on an unlit boat. I spared a tendril to hit the distress beacon on my phone before returning to my work. I was a couple hundred meters away from where I entered the water, Star at my back watching for other divers and difficulties.

I pulled against the lines, gaining enough slack to slip the panicked porpoise free of the tangling nets. It floundered in the water for a moment before I grabbed it and shot to the surface with it, begging it not to breath yet, that air was near. We burst to into the air in a spout of water, the meter-long juvenile gasping as we bobbed only fifteen feet away from the boat. I slipped under the mammal, keeping its body at the surface as I propelled us away from the boat. There was nothing else living caught in the net and the living took priority.

I heard the powerful engines of the Sulaco before the poachers did and sent up another burst of water to mark my location. Phytoplankton caught in the geyser began to glow at the turbulence, guiding Peter to my location. Star grumbled beneath me as he saw a small female white shark pulled up with the net, her body limp as only death could make it.

A spotlight landed on the boat and Peter’s voice came in a harsh growl over the Sulaco’s PA system. “You are fishing in sanctuary waters, cease and desist.”

A burst of gunfire took out the spotlight and I could hear Peter’s curse echo across the water. Maria’s scream was louder, joined by Jonesy’s high pitched puppy barking.

I pulled the vaquita to the Sulaco, shouting once I was close to the hull, “Maria! I need you in the water with this one, keep him at the surface and breathing!”

She didn’t argue, just plunged off the stern of the ship, leaving Jonesy to pace nervously until she surfaced again. I brought the vaquita to her, the pair of them shielded from the poacher’s boat by the bulk of the ship. Peter was saying something else over the PA system but I was too enraged to care.

The wave from me forcing my way back under the swell rocked the Sulaco and nearly swamped the smaller fishing boat. The men on board probably cursed but it didn’t matter. Their boat was a standard one for the area, a single outboard motor, a wench set up to pull up the nets and four men aboard. Two of them held long guns, visible even from beneath the boat. Muzzle flash is an excellent give away, especially on a moonless night. The wench on the boat screamed as it was thrown in reverse to drop the net, but that wouldn’t be enough.

I hit the bottom of the boat in a rush, tendrils pushing the aft side enough to tip the oppose edge into the water, adding more water inside the hull. I could hear cursing from the men on board as I circled for another strike. The muzzles flashed again as I came closer, a bullet slicing through my hair and lodging in the base of my right upper tendril. I howled and the water around me vibrated with the noise, leading to more gunfire.

I sent Star to the far side of the Sulaco, hoping he stayed away from the gunfire. At that range it shouldn’t be a danger like it was within ten feet of the fishing boat. A danger I faced as I grabbed the net and used my tendrils to drag it to the rear of the boat. I wrapped it around the propeller, knowing that Peter was calling in our Naval allies.

The deep belling rumble of the Sulaco’s foghorn told me we had company inbound and I darted back to my home away from home. My tendrils threaded around my torso, disguised by the heavily patterned rash guard I wore. I was getting more practice than I wanted at hiding parts of myself.

Maria was struggling with the vaquita, her thin arms struggling to keep it afloat as she kicked. I joined her beside the creature, whispering soothing thoughts to the young female’s mind. She calmed as I laid hands on her, pulling the water from her lungs with my abilities. The water blew out of her blow hole with enough mucus to cover half of my face and part of Maria’s as well.

My sister gave that tell-tale hurping noise as she tried to swallow back the bile that was rising in her throat, a hand going to scrub at her face. I let myself sink under the swell, the vaquita moving with me, regaining her muscle control as we moved in slow circles, rising to the surface when she needed to breath. I called Peter over to grab pictures and tag the female with a satellite tracker before we released her back to the sea.

She swam away with a wave of her pectoral fins, grateful to be alive. I ran a hand through my hair and noticed we weren’t alone anymore. A pair of Naval gun boats formed a triangle with us around the fishing boat. There were guns pointed at the poachers and orders were being shouted to them about dropping their weapons and surrendering.

Did they? Of course not. That would have been logical and easy.

They fired up their engine and tried to make a break for it, only to be slammed to a halt by the net entangled in the prop. The sudden halt threw one man overboard and two others went face first into a bench. The final man had been seated for the stop and was the least effected by the sudden stop. He picked up a gun and aimed it at the spotlight on one of the naval ships.

Blistering lead blazed through the air, striking the man with the gun in the torso. He fell onto his prone companions, their startled yells a symphony of vengeance. I took it to heart when men killed white sharks for no reason other than greed and carelessness. Of course, Mr. Trigger-happy had shot at us as well, I remembered as the bullet lodged in my tendril shifted slightly, ramping up the pain.

I yelled over the cacophony to Maria, “Get back on the Sulaco! Get warmed up!”

She was shivering as she climbed out of the water and I caught Maria as she slipped going over the rim of the boat. She cursed vividly in Mexican and Guatemalan Spanish. I caught the gist of it and couldn’t help but laugh as I steadied her and followed her onto the deck.

“Peter, we’re both on board and good,” I said. Yes, a single bullet wound was good in my book. The lights on the deck came on, the brilliance ruining my night vision. I hissed at the sudden pain in my eyes, shielding them with my hand.

More gunshots rang out from the other boats as the men on the fishing boat tried to shoot their way out of their predicament. There was return fire for a couple of moments and then the sea went silent aside from the slap of waves against various hulls.

A gasping cough came from the man who’d been thrown overboard, a spotlight finding him quickly in the water. He submitted to being fished out of the water by one of the gunboats and was handcuffed at wrist and ankle by the marines on board the military vessels. Tow ropes were run out to the body-filled fishing boat to be taken back into harbor. The dead men would be returned to their families, the live one would be given medical treatment if needed and then get a cold berth on the destroyer that was the base of Naval operations.

They’d had a land base but after the murder of two marines, a destroyer had been brought up to serve as the military home base. Hopefully, after interrogations on the destroyer, the man would tell then who he’d been working for. He certainly looked upset as his gillnet was dragged onto the boat by the marines, live fish being tossed back into the sea and dead ones being photographed as evidence. It had been made a federal crime to be caught with a gillnet and every animal caught in it would increase his prison time. Vaquitas would add a minimum of ten years, totoaba five per fish. There were three totoaba on the net plus a few dozen other animals. Maybe the hope of lessening that time would get him to talk.

I wasn’t holding my breath though. The local fishermen were infuriated over the gillnet ban, the military presence, the arrests, and the efforts to save the vaquita. They’d broken other criminals out of jail and on shore officials had been so heavily bribed that holding someone on land was impractical.

Once the action was over and Peter had talked with the Captain on one of the gunboats, we were left alone in the sea. Peter let the ship drift and came down to the deck where Maria was handing me a mug of hot chocolate as I sat on an equipment locker.

“I can smell that you’re bleeding, Gwennie,” he said to me, a hand under my chin tilting my face up. I met his galaxy-touched eyes with rueful ones of my own.

“Worth it,” I said, hissing as my hands wrapped around the mug. I looked down at them and saw my left palm was laid open from the net burn. I held my palm out into the lights and sighed. “I’ve got that, a couple of scrapes and a bullet in my right upper tendril base. Wanna fish it out?”

“You ask me to do the sweetest things,” Peter said with a soft smile. He looked at my hand, fingertips running along the edges of the friction cut. “We’re going to have to clean this out.”

“That’s gonna burn like all fiery fuck, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Maria, grab me the first aid kit then go dry your hair. You’re wet enough to get hypothermia and that’s unacceptable. Take care of yourself first, others second. Can’t help anyway if you’re incapacitated.”

She gave him a roll of her eyes but went off to grab a towel and a first aid kit. “You didn’t tell Gwen to dry off.”

“She doesn’t get cold like a human does,” he reminded her, taking the kit from her hands. He waited until she started drying her hair and went on. “Her body retains and generates heat more efficiently than yours does. Part of her being a denizen of the deeps. As long as she’s not below freezing for prolonged periods of time, Gwen will maintain her core temperature.”

“Tendrils and a heating core, that’s me,” I quipped, wincing as he began to flush out the wound. After the first round, I pulled off my rash guard, whimpering as it moved my tendrils. My upper right one was sluggish, the bullet shifting again as I moved. “Peter, my hand’ll be fine, but I need that bullet out before I heal over it.”

His hands were warm on my cool skin and I pulled away the sodden mass of my hair to give him more room to work. Peter had to call Maria over to hold a flashlight so he could see the wound on the darker flesh of my tendrils. He ended up needing to fish the bullet out with a pair of tweezers. I admit it, I started crying as he worked but we couldn’t wait for any kind of anesthetic to kick in, there wasn’t time.

An hour later, I was mostly dry (my hair takes hours to dry), wrapped in a mink blanket next to Peter on our birth. He was running his hand up and down my side, shoulder to hip as we lay face to face. My injured hand was wrapped in enough gauze to look like I was auditioning for a mummy hand commercial. My tendrils were coiled under the blankets with me, the heat helping the injury there heal faster.

“You should have retreated when they started shooting,” he told me in a soft voice. Maria was asleep in the next cabin over but the walls weren’t exactly soundproof. “You could have been killed.”

“I’m aware of that,” I told him. “They were shooting at you and Maria. That was a more pressing concern. The bullet that I did take was a fluke.”

His lips tightened as he studied me. “Gwen, you need to be more careful.”

“Careful doesn’t win wars,” I told him and sighed. “I’ll try though, for you. I didn’t think they’d fire into the water after I hit the boat. Next time, I’ll stick to staying under the hull. They can’t shoot down without giving themselves a leak. And I did hit the beacon this time.”

“Yes,” he admitted with a smirk. “Unlike the last one where you threw the net over the boat and delivered it to the Navy wrapped like a damn Christmas present.”

“They’re still trying to figure that out,” I giggled before sobering. “They weren’t caught in the act by the powers that be and they’ll go free, sadly. Hope they’ve got a hell of a case of PTSD from it though.”

“I imagine they do,” he said, kissing me gently. “I was scared for you.”

“I’ll be okay, I always am.”

Me and my big goram mouth.

It was cold in my father’s halls, but I walked through them anyway. The lights on the walls were a violent crimson, as if they were furious with me. It didn’t bode well, I thought.

I came to the ledge before my father and gave a short bow. “Hiya, Daddio. What’s up?”

“You,” he snarled, voice loud and vicious through my skull. “How dare you!”

“I thought you liked killing humans,” I said, confused at his fury.

The halls rumbled around me as he shifted his sleep. A baleful eye opened to fix on me, the lurid colors shifting as he spoke. “Not the humans, I couldn’t care less. That mongrel is unacceptable.”

“Jonesy? He’s just a puppy.”

“You’re not fucking a puppy, daughter-mine,” he snarled, the eye narrowing. “Mating with a human would be irksome but acceptable. Your human female is a fine mate.”

“I’ll tell her you said so.”

“Quiet!” I flinched at the shout, falling to my knees. I cradled my head in my hands as he went on. “You are attempting to breed with the spawn of that damn Ngirrth’lu and I forbid it!”

“You’re pissed about Peter?” I braved a look at him and saw the tendrils around his maw shifting like a writhing mass of snakes.

“You will not continue your association with that damned dog-son,” he roared at me. Guess he did mean Peter. “I will not allow it!”

My own sense of anger flared at that. Until my escape, someone had told me what I could and couldn’t do, where I could and could not go. Who I could and could not see. I would not allow that to start anew with a Daddio-come-late to the scene. I surged to my feet and yelled right back at him. “NO! You don’t get to allow or disallow anything in my life!”

“I forbid it!”

I snorted. “You’re stuck in an icy cave. What are you going to do about it? He loves me, I love him and I’m way too young to get pregnant, not that its any of your damn business.”

“What am I doing about it,” he repeated, the cavern shaking enough to knock me off my feet again. The eye I could see flared open, power bringing a hideous light to it that made me look away. His voice was a cruel hiss as he went on. “You will cease your association with the mongrel.”

“No.”

“My children will obey me!”

“Not this one, not on this. I will love as I choose.”

“Then you will be cut off!”

The cavern shook again, rocks falling from ceiling and crashing into the ledge around me. I scrambled backward, worried for my safety and that of #40. She’d said she was the bridge and ledge in my dreams with my father. Was this hurting her?

I lost the time to worry about her as a lurid green light slammed into me. It threw me away from the ledge, down the halls and out of the dream realm. Pain seared through my entire body, forcing me back into the waking world with a scream.