Chapter 21
Carmen sat at the head of the table in the Antilles mess hall, her fingers drumming a restless rhythm on the cold surface. Her gaze kept drifting to the blank comm screen mounted on the bulkhead. Empty. Just like her heart.
She cleared her throat, the sound unnaturally loud in the tense quiet.
Sark fidgeted on her left, his webbed fingers picking at the edge of the table.
Norvik sat perfectly still opposite her, his blue face impassive, black eyes fixed on the data pad in his hands.
Letitia leaned against the wall near the hatch, arms crossed, her dark eyes boring into Carmen with an intensity that felt like accusation.
Or maybe just shared exhaustion. The red emergency lights had been replaced days ago, but the harsh overhead fluorescents still felt too bright, bleaching the color from everyone’s faces.
“Right,” Carmen said, her voice rough. She hadn’t slept much. The phantom scent of warm fur and something sweet kept invading her quarters, making her toss and turn. “Let’s get this over with. Zed, Mila, you’re on comm.”
The screen flickered to life. Zed’s rectangular head filled most of the display, multiple camera lenses glinting under the engineering bay lights. Mila stood slightly behind and to his left, visible from the shoulders up. Her green eyes focused on the screen, meeting Carmen’s gaze directly.
Calm. Always so damned calm.
Carmen’s stomach did a slow, unwelcome flip. She clenched her jaw.
“Report,” Carmen ordered, forcing her eyes away from Mila to scan the faces of her organic crew. Sark stopped fidgeting. Norvik looked up. Letitia’s scowl deepened.
“Primary thruster efficiency remains stable at thirty-nine percent,” Mila said.
Her voice came through the speaker, clear and soft. It vibrated along Carmen’s nerves, a familiar, treacherous warmth blooming low in her belly. She shoved it down.
Pheromones. Just pheromones in the recycled air.
“The capacitor buffers are holding,” Mila continued.
“Starboard thruster reroute is complete and functional at twenty-three percent efficiency. Combined maneuvering capability is now at forty-six percent of nominal.” She paused.
“It’s not ideal, Captain, but it provides significantly greater evasion potential than before. ”
Relief warred with the simmering anger in Carmen’s chest. It was Mila’s work. Competent. Vital. Undeniable. And it made the knot in Carmen’s stomach tighten further.
“Good,” Carmen managed, the word clipped. She couldn’t bring herself to say more. Not to the source of the contamination currently fogging her brain. “Zed, status on the jump-drive?”
“Drive core remains stable, Captain,” Zed responded. “The instability in Sector Theta-7 shows no signs of propagation. Probability of catastrophic failure remains at 4.1%, contingent on maintaining current power-flow parameters.”
“Understood,” she said, dropping her hand. “Keep monitoring it. Sark, ETA to the nebula exit point?”
Sark straightened, his orange skin flushing slightly under the lights. “Uh, sixteen hours, Captain. Maybe seventeen if the jump-drive gets worse.”
Sixteen hours. Then they’d drop out of hyperspace at the very edge of UPA-controlled space, staring into the maw of the Forbidden Zone. Into the unknown. Into certain death if they were caught.
Carmen’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table. Control. She needed control. But every variable felt slippery, unpredictable. Especially the one looking out from the comm screen with those unsettling green eyes.
“Norvik, you’ve been digging. What’s our play once we exit? How do we get past the perimeter?”
Norvik placed his data pad on the table with deliberate precision. His black eyes met Carmen’s, unblinking.
“The situation is complex, Captain.” His voice was as level as ever, but there was a new weight to it. “Standard smuggler routes into the Forbidden Zone rely on exploiting sensor blind spots and corrupting patrol schedules. Those options are unavailable to us.”
“Why?” Letitia pushed off the wall, taking a step towards the table. Her voice was sharp. “We’ve got Zed. He can slice through most UPA security protocols like they’re wet paper.”
“The problem is not software, Letitia,” Norvik replied, turning his gaze to her. “It is hardware. Built into the ship itself.”
He tapped his data pad, and a schematic of the Antilles flickered onto the small screen – not the familiar layout of decks and systems, but a dense, layered diagram of embedded electronics. Carmen’s stomach dropped. She knew where this was going.
“Every vessel constructed within UPA jurisdiction, or registered to a UPA corporation, carries a recognizer chip,” Norvik continued.
“It’s a unique electronic identifier, broadcast continuously on a low-power, secure frequency.
Think of it as the ship’s birth certificate and tracking beacon combined.
It’s embedded deep within the primary power conduit matrix during construction.
Tampering with it usually results in catastrophic system failure. ”
A cold dread seeped into Carmen’s bones. She stared at the schematic, at the tiny, innocuous-looking component highlighted in pulsing red.
She’d known about recognizer chips, of course. Every spacer did. But she’d never given it much thought. The Antilles was old. She’d assumed, hoped, it predated that particular piece of invasive tech.
“And?” Carmen prompted, her voice tight.
“And,” Norvik said, his tone flat, “the security perimeter surrounding the Forbidden Zone is lined with passive sensor satellites specifically tuned to detect and identify UPA recognizer signatures. The moment a ship broadcasting one crosses the demarcation line—” He made a small, sharp gesture with his hand.
“—automated defense protocols engage. No warning. No hail. Immediate vaporization. It’s the primary deterrent. ”
Silence crashed down in the mess hall. Heavy. Suffocating. Carmen heard Sark suck in a sharp breath. Letitia muttered a low curse. On the comm screen, Mila’s ears flattened slightly against her skull, her green eyes wide. Only Zed remained impassive.
“So we’re screwed,” Sark whispered, his voice trembling. “We can’t go in, or we’re dead. We can’t stay here, or we’re dead. We’re just dead.”
“No,” Carmen snapped, sharper than intended.
Sark flinched. She forced herself to take a breath, unclenching her fists where they rested on the table.
“Options, Norvik. There are always options. What are they?”
Norvik steepled his fingers.
“Option one: Locate and physically remove the chip. Probability of success without destroying critical systems or triggering a cascade failure: less than point-three percent.
“Option two: Broadcast a forged or stolen recognizer signature from a non-UPA vessel. We lack the necessary hardware and software templates. Probability of success: negligible.
“Option three …” He paused, his black eyes locking onto Carmen’s. “… hack the satellite itself. From the outside. Force it to ignore Antilles’s signature as we pass.”
“Hack a military-grade security satellite?” Letitia said, a hollow laugh escaping her mouth.
“From a moving ship? With what? Zed’s good, Norvik, but that’s suicide!”
“The task presents significant challenges,” Zed said. “UPA perimeter satellites utilize multi-layered quantum encryption protocols and randomized frequency hopping. Physical access or a pre-existing backdoor would be ideal, but neither is available.
“Remote intrusion would require identifying a vulnerability in real-time during our approach vector, developing a tailored counter-algorithm, and deploying it before the satellite completes its target verification cycle.
“Estimated time window for successful intrusion: 3.7 to 6.2 seconds. Probability of success with current computational resources and available data: 11.4%.”
Carmen closed her eyes for a second. The numbers hammered in her skull. Each one a step closer to oblivion. For her. For her crew. For the ship she’d bled for.
For Mila.
Her eyes snapped open, drawn irresistibly back to the comm screen. Mila was watching her, those green eyes filled with … what? Concern? Understanding? Or just the serene acceptance of her own predetermined fate?
The ache in Carmen’s chest intensified, a physical pressure behind her ribs.
She missed the quiet intensity of Mila working beside her in engineering.
Missed the spark of intelligence in her eyes when she solved a problem.
Missed the warmth of her presence, even as she cursed the biological trap it represented.
Why was she doing this? Why was she gambling everything – Sark’s, Letitia’s, Norvik’s, and Zed’s lives, the Antilles itself – on this impossible run? For a principle she couldn’t trust? For an alien woman whose very biology hijacked her senses?
Was it just the pheromones twisting her judgment, amplifying some latent, stupid hero complex she didn’t know she had? Or was it something else? Something that felt terrifyingly real beneath the chemical fog?
The silence stretched. Sark looked like he might be sick. Norvik waited, his expression unreadable. Letitia stared at her, a mix of fear and fierce loyalty warring in her dark eyes. On the screen, Zed’s lenses remained fixed on Carmen. Mila stood perfectly still, her gaze unwavering.
Carmen pushed her chair back. She stood up, the weight of command, the weight of this insane gamble, pressing down on her shoulders. She met Mila’s eyes on the screen. That strange pull was there, undeniable, a current humming between them even through the cold distance of the commlink.
Pheromones, she told herself fiercely. Just pheromones.
But the order that came out of her mouth felt like a leap into the void.
“Zed,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Start working on the hack. Find a vulnerability. Build whatever algorithm you need. Use every scrap of processing power we’ve got not keeping us alive. You have sixteen hours.”
“Acknowledged, Captain,” Zed responded instantly. “Task initiated. Allocating non-essential computational resources to satellite-intrusion-protocol development.”
Mila’s ears twitched. Her lips parted slightly, as if she might speak, but then closed. Her gaze held Carmen’s for a heartbeat longer, filled with something complex and unreadable, before she gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Carmen turned away from the screen, from those green eyes, before the confusing mix of respect, longing, and sheer, stupid terror could show on her face. She looked at her crew – her family, her responsibility.
“Dismissed,” she said, the word feeling like a viper in her mouth. “Get some rest. It’s going to be a long run to the perimeter.”
As the others filed out, Sark casting nervous glances back, Norvik collecting his data pad with methodical calm, Letitia lingering for a moment with a worried frown, Carmen remained standing by the table.
The comm screen went dark, plunging that corner of the mess hall into shadow.
The silence rushed back in, thick and heavy.
Alone, the question echoed louder, pounding in time with her heartbeat:
Why? Why are you risking everything for her?
She had no answer.