Chapter 16
Letitia stared at her terminal. She’d fallen down a rabbit hole researching Kovoid fiscal policy.
At a glance it was even more rapacious than the UPA and its emphasis on mega-corporation business.
The Kovoids practiced a type of financial feudalism that saw wealthy warlords command vassal states based on who had the most money and could hold onto it.
Conflict – mostly monetary but occasionally violent – was common, and influence was fleeting.
Consequently, their government was largely decentralized and lacked any sort of uniform policy on virtually anything.
XenX were second-class citizens. The Kovoids largely left their culture and their institutions alone.
But they forced them to accept Kovoid overlords, and because what passed for law and order was the might-makes-right policy of the brutes in charge, XenX had little legal recourse against abuses.
They were allowed to own property and have wealth.
But unlike their Kovoid masters, they had no protection from someone taking it away.
Letitia sighed. This wasn’t helping. She’d been conducting research for nearly two days, and she hadn’t found anything that might help them penetrate the Forbidden Zone. And what she had discovered seemed like it would be largely useless once they were inside.
She rubbed her temples and tried not to think about Carmen naked before her, Letitia’s mouth on her sex and listening to her moan. Their last tryst had been intense, satisfying in a way the ones before it hadn’t.
Especially because it shouldn’t have even happened.
What the hell had she been thinking? Why would she have gone to Carmen’s quarters so soon after friend-zoning her? What did she think would happen?
Not that, obviously.
And why did it happen? What the hell was the matter with her? She could barely remember anything leading up to the kiss. They were arguing about the Xena. Carmen was being a total bitch about something.
And then they were kissing. Letitia fucking kissed her, not the other way around. Carmen even offered her an out.
But Letitia hadn’t taken it.
She’d pressed on. She’d fucked her captain – the woman she was pretty sure she loved – but good. She didn’t even know why. Maybe it was Carmen’s frustration with not having a good option. Maybe it was Letitia’s own fury at Sark and Norvik wanting to sell Mila.
But, God, it was good. Everything – the heat of the cabin, the taste of Carmen’s cum, even the funky-ass smell left over from the Xena’s shower – was delicious, sensual, perfect.
And now? Now, Carmen was spending her time with Mila. With the woman Letitia had insisted they rescue.
The memory was a physical ache, a hot flush crawling up her neck.
She’d stormed in there, righteous fury burning, ready to tear strips off Carmen for even considering selling Mila.
It was slavery, plain and simple, no matter how the alien woman dressed it up in cultural respectability.
Letitia had arguments lined up, ethical frameworks, historical precedents. She’d been prepared to fight.
But all she’d had to do was fuck Carmen to get what she wanted.
Except that she didn’t. She wanted Carmen.
And Mila had her instead.
Her terminal chimed softly, an alert she’d set earlier. Saved schematics for Kovoid-patrol corvettes. Potentially useful. Critical, even. She dismissed it with a flick of her finger, irritation flaring.
She couldn’t focus on enemy ships when the enemy was inside their own hull – a rival for Carmen’s attention.
The image flashed again: Mila on the bridge, standing beside Carmen’s command chair, those calm, green eyes taking in the damage reports. The way Carmen had glanced at her, just a flicker, but Letitia had seen it. Not lust. Not the raw hunger Carmen sometimes turned on her.
Something different.
A spark of respect? Interest? Something that cut deeper than physical need. And Mila, serene, unruffled, offering solutions, proving her worth beyond the obvious. Engineering knowledge.
Who was this woman?
Jealousy, hot and ugly, twisted in Letitia’s gut. It was ridiculous. Illogical. Carmen was her captain, her friend.
Her occasional mistake.
Not her partner. Never that. Carmen didn’t do partners. She did control. She did release. She took what she needed, when she needed it, and moved on. Letitia had accepted that. Embraced it, even, for a while. Until she realized she wanted more than Carmen’s carefully curated surrender in the dark.
So why this sharp sting seeing Carmen look at Mila like she was … interesting? Like she was more than a convenient body? Was Mila just another toy? A fascinating, exotic diversion for Carmen to dissect and dominate?
The thought should have been repulsive. Instead, it felt like a betrayal. Carmen knew how Letitia felt. Knew she craved connection, intimacy, something real.
And she was giving that to Mila.
The camaraderie. The companionship. The sharing. Everything Letitia wanted.
And Letitia had made it all happen with her insistence on rescuing the alien. If she’d kept her damned mouth shut, if she hadn’t fucked Carmen again after ending things, they could have sold the Xena back to Maltese, and all their problems would be solved.
Except Letitia couldn’t have lived with herself. And she still wouldn’t have had Carmen.
She sighed. Why did life have suck so much?
At least Mila was trying to help solve their problems. She’d identified the pirate ship’s weakness, offered a solution. She’d volunteered to help Zed, not demanded attention or cowered in fear. There was a quiet strength there, an intelligence that demanded acknowledgment.
So what was niggling at the back of her mind? Was it just raw jealousy? Was she that petty?
She decided it didn’t matter. XenX in general, and Mila in particular, were an unknown quantity. If they were going to risk their lives for this woman who had no business being aboard their ship, she wanted to know more.
Driven by a sudden, sharp need for answers that had nothing to do with enemy patrol corvettes and barbaric financial systems, Letitia abandoned the article she was reading.
Her fingers flew over the console, calling up the ship’s encrypted research archives.
She bypassed the tactical files, the astrogation charts for the nebula fringe.
She needed something else. Something deeper.
Search parameters: XenX species. Cultural database. Restricted UPA archives. Cross-reference: Physiology, biochemistry, known psychological effects on other species.
The console whirred, accessing Zed’s meticulously organized, if fragmented, data repositories. Public XenX cultural entries scrolled past – superficial glossaries about the Harimi tradition, vague geographical references to Lintensia, sanitized summaries of Kovoid foreign policy. Useless.
She refined the search, digging deeper into the restricted layers, the stuff flagged by the Collective or scraped from illicit UPA medical servers. Terms like “bio-contaminant protocols” and “xenopsychological impact assessments” started appearing.
Her pulse quickened. What was she looking for? She wasn’t sure. She just knew the puzzle pieces weren’t fitting. The files and factoids she found didn’t jive with what they already knew.
A file header blinked, tagged with a high-level UPA security cipher and a biohazard symbol, dated decades ago:
Subject: XenX Physiological Secretions – Pheromonal Analysis (Project Chimera). Classified – Omega.
Letitia’s breath hitched. Omega clearance. That meant planetary-level threats. Weapons of mass destruction. Why would XenX physiology warrant that?
She bypassed the encryption with a sequence Zed had shown her years ago, a backdoor into fragmented UPA data streams. The file opened, text scrolling, dense with technical jargon. She skimmed, her eyes catching phrases:
… unique class of volatile organic compounds …”
… extraordinarily potent neuroendocrine effectors …
… target species: Pan-Sentient Mammalian Derivatives (PSMD), including Humans, Sensoori, Collectivists …
Pan-Sentient Mammalian Derivatives? That covered everyone on the Antilles, except Zed. Letitia’s palms felt slick. She read faster.
… primary function: induction of heightened sexual arousal states in target species. Amplification of pre-existing attraction pathways. Suppression of inhibitory neurological controls …
The words blurred for a second. Heightened sexual arousal. Suppression of inhibitory controls.
The heat in Carmen’s quarters. The sudden, overwhelming urges.
Her own body betraying her, responding to Carmen’s proximity with a ferocity that had shocked her.
The way Carmen had looked at Mila – not just with respect, but with a raw, almost painful intensity Letitia had never seen directed at herself.
She forced herself to keep reading, scrolling down to the effects summary.
Observed Effects on PSMD Subjects:
Stage 1 (Exposure < 24 hrs): Heightened sensory awareness, particularly olfactory and tactile. Increased distractibility. Mild to moderate amplification of libido. Subjects report unusual “attractiveness” of the XenX source individual, often attributing it to cultural fascination or exoticism.
Stage 2 (Exposure 24-72 hrs): Significant amplification of libido, often focused intensely on the XenX source.
Irrational possessiveness or protective urges regarding the source.
Impaired judgment in scenarios involving the source.
Increased suggestibility to the source’s expressed desires.
Suppression of ethical or logical objections regarding the source.