Chapter 4
Carmen paced the narrow space between the bolted-down table and the food-synthesizer unit of the cramped mess hall.
The ship was quiet, too quiet, hiding in the shadow of a pockmarked moon orbiting a nameless gas giant.
Outside the small viewport, the swirling ochre bands of the enormous planet filled the black, a silent, indifferent witness to their crisis.
The emergency drop from hyperspace had been rough, a bone-jarring lurch that slammed Carmen against a bulkhead and sent tools clattering in Engineering. Sark had managed it, bleeding off velocity with a skill born of desperation, but the silence now felt fragile, like the calm before a storm.
The smell of cheap coffee hung in the air, untouched in the mugs on the table.
No one had the stomach for it. Not after what they’d found in the hold.
The alien’s presence seemed to have permeated the ship’s very bones, a constant, unsettling reminder lurking beneath the familiar scent of grease and the rumble of the engines.
Her crew sat around the scarred metal table: Sark hunched over, orange fingers nervously tracing patterns on the surface; Norvik unnervingly still, his light-blue hands steepled, black eyes fixed on nothing; Letitia radiating furious energy, arms crossed tight over her chest, her gaze burning into Carmen; Zed perched motionless on his treads near the door.
Carmen stopped pacing, planting her hands on the back of an empty chair. The cold metal bit into her palms.
“Okay,” she rasped. “We’re stopped. We’re breathing. Talk to me. What the hell do we do?”
“The situation presents a clear, albeit ethically complex, solution, Captain,” Norvik said.
He turned his head fractionally, his black eyes meeting hers.
“The XenX female represents significant value. Conservatively, I estimate her market price within the UPA’s illicit networks at approximately two hundred thousand credits. Minimum.”
Sark’s head snapped up, his orange skin flushing slightly.
“Two hundred thou? Minimum?” His voice cracked. “That’s … that’s more than enough! Fines paid, debts cleared, Antilles fixed up properly, maybe even some upgrades! Shields that actually work!”
Hope warred with unease on his amphibian features. Norvik inclined his head in confirmation.
“Precisely. The immediate capital influx resolves our most pressing operational and financial constraints. Our obligation to Maltese is voided by his deception. We possess the cargo. We control the asset.”
“Asset?” Letitia cried. “She’s not an ‘asset’, Norvik! She’s a person! A sentient being! We can’t just sell her! That’s slavery! It’s monstrous!”
“Her species practices voluntary servitude, Letitia,” Norvik countered, his tone unchanged, infuriatingly reasonable. “Cultural relativism dictates—”
“I don’t give a damn about their culture!” Letitia slammed her fist on the table, making the mugs jump. Coffee slopped over the rim of one. “Slavery is slavery! It’s wrong! Here, there, anywhere! Are we really that desperate? Are we really going to become slavers to save our own skins?”
Her words hung in the air, heavy and accusatory. Her gaze locked onto Carmen’s.
“Is that who we are now, Captain?”
Carmen flinched internally. The word, “slaver,” landed like a lash. Images flashed – Corso’s smug face, Maltese’s greasy smirk, the XenX’s vulnerable form in the stasis chamber. Trapped. Used.
Were they now just another set of predators in this cutthroat galaxy? The shame from the cantina, from her failure to secure a decent job, curdled in her stomach, mixing with the fresh horror of their discovery. Control. She needed control.
But the options felt like choosing between drowning in acid or suffocating in vacuum.
Sark shifted uncomfortably.
“Look, Letitia,” he said, “nobody’s saying it’s right, but …
two hundred thousand creds? That’s life or death for us.
Literally. Those COPS fines? The debt for the seized cargo?
They’re gonna catch up. And when they do …
” He trailed off, his large, brown eyes wide with remembered fear.
“We all know what happens to crews who can’t pay. ”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. Everyone knew they would be lucky if the worst that happened to them was getting spaced.
“This … this Xena … it’s awful, yeah,” Sark continued. “But it’s also a miracle. A way out.”
A miracle. But miracles were always expensive, she’d thought only an hour or so ago. Carmen suspected the price of this one was astronomical.
“A way out built on selling another living being!” Letitia shouted, her voice trembling with fury. “How is that any different from what Maltese or his client planned? We just become the middlemen in her misery!”
“Her cultural practice suggests she may not perceive it as misery,” Norvik interjected smoothly. “The XenX view service as—”
“Stop hiding behind her culture!” Letitia whirled on him. “It doesn’t matter what she thinks! It’s wrong! And we know it’s wrong! We’d be profiting from it! Using her!
“Captain, please. We can’t do this. We find another way. We let her go. Drop her somewhere safe, far from UPA space, near her own people.”
“And how do we find her people, Letitia?” Carmen snapped, the frustration boiling over. She pushed off the chair, resuming her pacing. “Zed? What’s the data say? Can we even get to the Forbidden Zone?”
Zed’s head unit swiveled towards her, lenses focusing.
“Navigational data on the Forbidden Zone is restricted and fragmentary within UPA databases. The barrier network surrounding it is extensive and heavily monitored. Projecting a safe penetration vector would require precise coordinates we do not possess and navigational calculations beyond the capacity of the Antilles’s currently damaged systems. Probability of successful, undetected entry: less than 0.
8%. Probability of catastrophic failure during the attempt: 97. 3%.”
The numbers landed like hammer blows. Less than a one-percent chance.
Near-certain death. Carmen stopped pacing, leaning her forehead against the cool metal bulkhead.
The chill did nothing to soothe the heat building behind her eyes.
Letting the Xena go wasn’t an option. It was a suicide run dressed up as nobility.
The gas giant’s swirling bands filled the viewport, a vast, uncaring prison.
“See?” Sark said, his voice small. “We can’t get her home. And we can’t keep her. If the COPS find her here, it’s not fines. It’s life. For all of us.” He looked pleadingly at Carmen. “Selling her … it’s the only practical choice. Get the creds, fix the ship, disappear. We survive.”
“Practical?” Letitia spat the word. “It’s cowardly! It’s evil! We survive by becoming the very thing we’re running from!”
She rounded on Carmen again, her intensity almost physical.
“Captain, think! What if it was you in that box? What if it was Sark? Or me? Would you want someone to just sell you off to the highest bidder because it was ‘practical’?”
Carmen closed her eyes. The image flashed – not herself, but Captain W’Ooshlee, falling under Corso’s mutineers. Helpless. Betrayed. The old guilt, a constant companion, flared white-hot.
Was she about to betray someone else? Condemn this alien woman to … what? Some rich pervert’s private zoo? The thought made her skin crawl.
But Sark’s terrified face, the memory of the COPS boarding party, the crushing weight of their debts. Survival wasn’t just a desire; it was an imperative.
“It is not merely an ethical quandary,” Zed stated, his synthesized voice cutting through the emotional turmoil. “There are significant tactical considerations.”
All eyes turned to him. Zed wasn’t the tactician on the crew. That was usually Carmen’s role.
“Such as?” she asked.
“Attempting to sell a XenX on the black market would necessitate contacting known traffickers or intermediaries. This action would inherently broadcast our possession of such a high-value, illegal asset. Given the Antilles’s current operational deficiencies – compromised shields, degraded sensor suite, unreliable point-defense turrets – we would be exceptionally vulnerable to interception or seizure by rival parties seeking to acquire the XenX without payment. ”
He extended a manipulator arm, gesturing with precise articulation.
“Entities such as Captain Corso’s Star Shrike, or Maltese’s own enforcers, possess vessels significantly more capable in direct combat scenarios.
Probability of successfully completing a transaction without hostile engagement is negligible.
Probability of the Antilles surviving such an engagement in its current state: 23.
1%. And decreasing with each potential encounter. ”
Silence descended again, heavier than before.
The stark reality Zed laid out was undeniable.
Even if Carmen could stomach selling the alien, trying to do so was like painting a target on their hull and inviting every pirate and opportunist in the sector to take a shot.
Twenty-three percent. Less than one in four.
Those weren’t odds; they were a death sentence with a slight delay.
Norvik’s calm facade cracked, just a hairline fracture. A slight tightening around his eyes.
“The Collective calculus prioritizes the survival of the group. The risk, while significant, must be weighed against the certainty of financial ruin and the high probability of lethal reprisal from our creditors or law enforcement if we do nothing.”
Carmen sighed. Norvik’s cultural adherence to his species’ principles of what’s best for the group drove her insane sometimes. As a general rule, she agreed with him. But always prioritizing the majority was a slippery slope that led to tyranny.
“The potential reward justifies the elevated risk profile,” he went on. “We require capital. The Xena provides it. We must leverage the asset.”
“She is not leverage!” Letitia shouted. “She’s a prisoner! And you’re talking about her like she’s a crate of spice!”
She pushed away from the table, pacing now herself, mirroring Carmen’s earlier path.
“There has to be another way! We fix the ship ourselves! We take smaller jobs, build up slowly.”
“Slowly?” Sark’s laugh was hollow, desperate. “Letitia, the COPS fines are accruing interest daily. Velasco is not gonna wait for us to ‘build up slowly.’ He wants his money or his goods, neither of which we have. He’ll send collectors. Violent ones. We don’t have time!”
He ran a webbed hand over his forehead.
“Zed’s right about the risks of selling her, sure. But what’s the alternative? Keeping her? How? Where? Every port we approach is a deathtrap! Letting her go is suicide! Doing nothing is suicide! Selling her is the only chance we’ve got that doesn’t end with us spaced or breaking rocks!”
“So we trade her life for ours?” Letitia stopped pacing, facing Sark, her expression one of profound disappointment. “Is that the crew we are? Is that what the Antilles stands for?”
Her gaze swept over Norvik, then settled back on Carmen, pleading, accusing.
The weight of their stares threatened to crush her.
Norvik’s cold pragmatism. Sark’s terrified practicality.
Letitia’s burning moral outrage. Zed’s grim tactical assessment.
They pulled her in different directions, each argument valid in its own terrifying way. Money or morality. Survival or suicide.
Control. Where was her control?
It was fracturing, crumbling under the weight of an impossible decision. She’d led them into this. She’d signed Maltese’s manifest. This was her mess. Her responsibility.
Focus. She needed focus.
Her gaze drifted to the empty chair at the table. The space felt accusatory. They were arguing about this woman’s fate, her life, her freedom, and she wasn’t even here. They hadn’t heard a single word from her. They didn’t know her name, her story, what she wanted.
Was she content with her supposed “voluntary servitude?” Did she yearn for freedom? Was she terrified? Did she even understand the danger she was in?
The thought struck Carmen with sudden, unsettling clarity. They were making decisions in a vacuum. Treating the woman like cargo, like an abstract problem, just as Norvik kept calling her – an asset. But she was a person. A person currently frozen in a box in their cargo hold.
Carmen had railed against being powerless, against the humiliation Corso and Maltese heaped on her. Was she about to do the same thing to someone else? Impose her will, her desperate need for a solution, onto this alien woman without even consulting her?
It was wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong. Control wasn’t just about commanding her ship or her crew. It was about responsibility. Seeing the people affected by her decisions. Including the one locked in the life-support chamber.
Carmen straightened up, pushing away from the bulkhead. The movement silenced the brewing argument. Four pairs of eyes snapped to her. Sark hopeful, Norvik expectant, Letitia defiant, Zed’s lenses unreadable.
“Enough,” Carmen said, her voice low but cutting through the tension.
She looked at each of them in turn as she continued.
“We’re talking in circles. Arguing about her like she’s a damned side of beef.
We don’t know her. We don’t know what she wants.
We don’t know anything except what Maltese screwed us with and what Zed pulled from the database. ”
She took a step towards the center of the room, her boots echoing in the sudden silence.
“We’re not deciding her fate behind her back. Not like this.” She turned to Zed. “Revive her. Safely. Get her out of that box. Bring her here.
“We’re going to ask the Xena what she wants to do.”