Chapter 8
Carmen sighed as the heavy mess hall hatch slid shut behind Zed and Mila with a soft, final hiss. The silence that followed was thick, fragile, charged with the tension of a coiled spring.
Then the dam broke.
“Two hundred thousand credits!” Sark blurted, his orange skin flushed, the red fin on his head twitching erratically.
“Minimum! Cap, that solves everything! The fines! Velasco! The stabilizers! Shields that don’t flicker like a dying glow-worm!
” His webbed hands slapped the table for emphasis. “We could be safe.”
“Safe?” Letitia roared. “Safe by selling a person? She’s not cargo, Sark! She has a name! She has a life!”
She hadn’t moved, still rigid in her chair, arms locked across her chest. Her dark eyes burned with an intensity that made Carmen’s headache pulse behind her temples.
“Her cultural framework defines her status as contractual property, Letitia,” Norvik said, his tone academic.
“She articulated acceptance of her role. The transaction aligns with her expressed values and provides the capital necessary for the Antilles’s continued operation and our collective survival.
“Emotional objections, while understandable, are counterproductive to optimal group outcome.”
“Counterproductive?” Letitia shoved her chair back, the legs shrieking against the deck plates.
She loomed over the table, her tall frame radiating fury.
“She said it was her choice, Norvik! Because her family faced debtor’s camps!
Because it was the only way out! That’s not freedom!
That’s desperation dressed up as tradition! ”
She jabbed a finger towards the hatch.
“She was relieved her family was secure! Doesn’t that tell you anything? She sees herself as a means to an end! That doesn’t make it right for us to treat her like one!”
Sark flinched, shrinking back slightly.
“But she wants to be sold!” he protested. “She said so! ‘You are free to determine my disposition’! Those were her exact words! Disposition! Like, like spare parts!”
He looked pleadingly at Carmen.
“Captain, she wants to help us,” he said, softening his tone. “Why are we fighting this? It’s the answer!”
Carmen closed her eyes for a second. The whine of the Antilles’s straining engines vibrated up through the deck plating, a constant reminder of their precarious state.
The numbers Zed had thrown out earlier echoed in her skull: Ninety-seven-point-three percent chance of death trying to take her home.
Twenty-three-point-one percent chance of surviving an attempt to sell her.
And the crushing certainty of what would happen if they got caught with her.
She opened her eyes. Sark looked terrified, desperate for the lifeline. Norvik was a statue carved from ice, his Collectivist logic a wall against Letitia’s fire.
And Letitia glared at her with that fierce, unwavering intensity, the same look she’d had when she ended things in her quarters. Expectant. Demanding.
“Her wanting it doesn’t make it ethical,” Letitia pressed, her voice dropping, thick with emotion. “It makes it tragic. We’d be profiting from her desperation, from a system designed to exploit her people! We become part of the machine that grinds her down!”
“The ‘machine,’” Norvik countered, his head tilting a fraction, “is the reality we inhabit. Our survival requires capital. The XenX female provides it. Refusing this resource due to abstract ethical principles endangers the entire group, including yourself, Letitia. Your moral stance does not shield you from COPS detention or Velasco’s collectors. ”
“Abstract?” Letitia’s voice cracked. “What’s abstract about selling a living, thinking being?
About handing her over to God-knows-who to be used?
” She turned fully to Carmen, her gaze locking on.
“Captain, please. You can’t seriously be considering this.
After everything ... after what we saw? What we are? We’re better than Maltese. Aren’t we?”
The question hung in the air, heavy as a neutron star. Aren’t we?
The image flashed: Corso’s smug face on Alora. Maltese’s greasy smirk. The cold dread in the cargo bay when they’d opened that container. The vulnerable curve of Mila’s striped back as she’d followed Zed out.
Carmen pushed her untouched coffee mug away. The dark liquid sloshed, mirroring the turmoil in her gut.
“Sark’s right about one thing,” she said, her voice rough, cutting through the charged silence. “We need options. Real ones. Not just ‘sell her’ or ‘die trying to be heroes.’”
She looked at Norvik.
“You said the value was minimum two hundred thousand. Where? Who pays that for a ... for her? And how do we contact them without painting a target on our hull the size of Babcinq Station?”
Norvik’s black eyes met hers, unblinking.
“I could not say without research,” he answered. “If you’ll forgive my terminology, Letitia, Mila is a product unique to this market.”
“Fuck you and your terminology,” Letitia said.
Carmen winced. She hated when her crew insulted each other personally. But Norvik continued unperturbed.
“While I am sure there are other XenX Harimi … working in UPA space, they represent the ultimate taboo. Their presence in the UPA is forbidden and enforced with our strictest laws. As sound as selling Mila is, it will admittedly be a difficult task to accomplish.”
“Why can’t we just sell her back to Maltese?” Sark proposed. “Make him pay our debt to Velasco and our fines. Even if that was all we got, it would remove the knife from our throats. He’d probably be grateful to get her back.”
“What makes you think he didn’t put her here on purpose?” Carmen said.
The room fell silent. Try as she might, she couldn’t put this down to simple incompetence.
Sure it was possible the dockworkers loaded Mila onto Antilles by mistake.
But it seemed every bit, if not more, likely that this was a deliberate setup.
She couldn’t imagine why Maltese would want to fuck her over like this.
But why had he given them a run to Babcinq, when he knew they were in deep shit with the COPS?
The whole thing stank. There was something she hadn’t discovered yet, some dark secret that threatened to destroy them all. But she couldn’t begin to fathom what it might be.
“Captain, listen,” Letitia said. “Forget the money for a second. Forget Maltese. What about her? What happens to her after we take the creds? Some rich pervert buys and uses her. She becomes a thing. A toy. Do we want that on our consciences?”
“Survival often requires difficult compromises, Letitia,” Norvik said, his tone unchanged.
“The Collective recognizes that individual sacrifice, even unwilling sacrifice, can be necessary for the greater continuity of the group. Her cultural conditioning suggests she would view her role in our survival as fulfilling a purpose.”
“Her conditioning?” Letitia’s laugh was short, harsh. “You sound like you’re talking about reprogramming a robot! She’s a person, Norvik! With thoughts, feelings! Did you see her? Hear her? She was calm, yes. Accepting. But there was intelligence there. Depth. She isn’t some mindless drone!”
“All right, enough!” Carmen snapped. “This isn’t helping. I asked for options. For analysis. Not a fucking ethics seminar.”
She glared at Letitia, then at Norvik. “Sark sees cash. Norvik sees a logical asset. Letitia sees a victim. And none of you are giving me a way out of this shitshow that doesn’t end with someone getting screwed!”
She slammed her palm flat on the table. The mugs jumped. Coffee slopped over the rim of Sark’s.
“We are stuck with illegal contraband that breathes, in a ship held together by Zed’s genius and hope, hiding from the entire fucking galaxy! I need solutions, people! Not arguments!”
The outburst hung in the sudden silence.
Sark looked like he wanted to crawl under the table.
Norvik remained impassive, though a slight tightening around his eyes suggested he was recalculating.
Letitia stared at her, the fury in her eyes banked, replaced by something harder – disappointment, maybe. Accusation:
You’re the captain. Fix it.
The weight of it pressed down, crushing.
The responsibility. The fear. The impossible choice.
Sell Mila, condemn her to God-knows-what, and risk dying in a firefight for the privilege.
Try to take her home and probably get killed trying to break into the Forbidden Zone.
Keep her and live every moment waiting for the COPS to kick in the hatch. Or for Velasco’s thugs to find them.
You are free to determine my disposition.
Disposition. The word tasted like failure.
Letitia broke the silence, her voice lower now, strained.
“There has to be another way, Carmen. We find a neutral port, somewhere off the main lanes. We drop her off with enough money to disappear. Let her make her own choice, truly free. Away from the UPA, away from her ‘patrons’.”
“With what creds, Letitia?” Carmen snapped, the frustration boiling over again. “The coffee money? The insulting pittance Maltese paid us for a suicide run? That won’t cover a week’s air on a backwater rock, let alone set her up to vanish!
“And how does she vanish?” She gestured sharply towards the hatch. “Look at her! She stands out like a supernova in a dust cloud! Every scanner, every bounty hunter, every back-alley snitch would spot her a light-year away! She’d be picked up before she could blink, and we’d be next on the list!”
“Then we protect her!” Letitia shot back, her own frustration rising. “We find a way! We use the Antilles! We hide her! We fight if we have to!”
“With what?” Carmen’s laugh was harsh, brittle. “Point-defense turrets that jam? Shields that flicker? Sensors that pick up every piece of space junk like it’s a dreadnought? We’re not ghosts, Letitia! We’re a target! A slow, noisy, busted-up target hauling the most illegal thing in the sector!”
She ran a hand over her face, the gritty fatigue settling deep into her bones.
“Fighting isn’t an option. Not against what’s coming. Not in this rust-bucket.”
“So,” Sark ventured, “selling her is the only way we can fight? Get the cash, fix the ship, get teeth?”
Norvik nodded, a single, precise dip of his chin.
“Correct. Investment in capability increases survival probability exponentially. The initial high-risk transaction enables long-term security.”
“Security built on her back!” Letitia insisted, her voice trembling. “How is that any different from the Kovoids? From the system that trapped her in the first place? We just become another link in the chain!”
The chain. The word resonated. Carmen felt it like a collar tightening around her own neck. The chain of debt. The chain of failure. The chain of responsibility she couldn’t seem to escape. And now, the chain linking them to this alien woman whose fate felt heavier with every passing second.
She looked around the table. Sark’s terrified hope.
Norvik’s detached pragmatism. Letitia’s burning, righteous fury.
They were pulling her apart. Each argument had its own brutal logic.
Each path led to darkness. She needed clarity.
Space. Air that wasn’t thick with conflict and the lingering ghost of desperation, of failure.
“I’ve heard enough,” Carmen said.
She pushed her chair back. She stood up, the movement abrupt.
“Sark, get back to the bridge. Monitor passive sensors. I want to know the second anything bigger than a dust mote twitches within a million klicks.
“Norvik, run the numbers again. All the numbers. Survival odds for every damn scenario you can think of, including ones that don’t involve selling sentient beings.
“Letitia ...” She paused, meeting the taller woman’s defiant gaze. “... check the point-defense systems. Run diagnostics. See if Zed can coax another ten percent efficiency out of the targeting arrays. Or just make sure they don’t blow up in our faces if we need them.”
She didn’t wait for acknowledgments. She turned and strode towards the hatch, her boots loud on the deck in the sudden, heavy silence.
The argument hung behind her, unresolved, a toxic cloud she needed to escape. She needed to think. Alone. Without their voices, their needs, their desperate eyes pulling her in three different directions.
The hatch hissed open at her approach. She stepped through into the cooler, quieter corridor.
She didn’t look back. The weight of the decision, of the impossible choice, settled onto her shoulders like a leaden cloak.
But for now, the silence was a relief. A small, temporary sanctuary before all hell inevitably broke loose.