Chapter 25
Letitia stood just inside the weapons pod, her hand still on the manual release lever, examining the chaos. Bolts and access panels lay scattered on the deck. Machine parts rested nearby. Wiring hung exposed.
The harsh overhead lights glared off the curved bulkheads, illuminating the two point-defense turrets mounted on articulated arms near the pod’s apex.
Sark was already there, perched precariously on a rolling maintenance scaffold pushed up against Turret Beta.
His orange skin looked sallow under the unforgiving light, the red fin on his head twitching erratically.
He was elbow-deep in the housing, his webbed fingers fumbling with a bundle of thick, insulated cabling.
Norvik stood below, holding a magnetic tray of tools, black eyes watching Sark’s clumsy movements.
He looked utterly calm, a statue of indifference amidst the tension.
“About time,” Sark muttered, not looking up. His voice was tight, strained. “Thought maybe you’d decided hiding in your bunk was a better career move.”
Letitia ignored the jab. She strode across the deck plating, the sound of her boots echoing in the confined space.
“Had to check the schematics Zed sent,” she said, her voice clipped.
She pulled a data card from her thigh pocket and slapped it onto the workstation port. It showed the internal layout of the turret housing, highlighting the power conduits and regulator clusters in pulsing red.
“Zed says the superconducting cabling runs from the main reactor conduit junction here,” she tapped a spot near the turret’s base, “through this secondary channel, and terminates at the capacitor bank here, beneath the firing assembly. The plasma-flow regulators are mounted dorsally, right above the main pivot joint. Two per turret.”
Norvik moved silently to the screen, his yellow pupils scanning the schematic.
“Efficient design. High-density power transfer necessitates the superconducting properties. The regulators manage the plasma-flow surge during rapid discharge cycles.” He looked up at Sark, still wrestling with the cabling bundle.
“You are attempting to disconnect at the capacitor end. The primary junction cluster offers a cleaner extraction point and minimizes risk of damaging the insulation.”
Sark grunted, pulling his arm out. A thin smear of dark lubricant stained his forearm. “Yeah, well, the junction’s buried under half a ton of targeting servo-mechanisms. Easier from this end.”
“Easier is irrelevant,” Norvik stated flatly. “Undamaged components are essential. Captain’s orders prioritize successful repair of the jump-drive over expediency.”
“Captain’s orders,” Sark echoed, his voice dripping with a bitterness Letitia hadn’t heard from him before.
He wiped his hand on his jumpsuit, leaving a greasy streak.
“Right. The orders that got us stranded in the middle of nowhere with no drive and now no way to fight back if some pirate junker stumbles across this floating coffin.” He gestured wildly at the turret.
“We’re ripping out our own teeth, Letitia!
For what? For that … that thing down in engineering? ”
The word, “thing,” hit Letitia like he’d thrown a wrench at her. It wasn’t just disrespectful; it was ugly.
“Her name is Mila, Sark,” Letitia snapped, sharper than she intended. “And we’re doing this, so we don’t die slowly, sucking down the last of the recycled air while we count the microfractures spreading. This isn’t for her. It’s for us.”
“Is it?” Sark climbed down from the scaffold, his movements jerky with agitation. He paced a tight circle in front of the workbench, his webbed feet slapping the deck. “Because it sure feels like it’s for her.
“Captain’s been different since she came aboard.
Obsessed. Making calls that don’t make sense.
Ignoring the numbers. Ignoring us.” He stopped, facing Letitia, his brown eyes wide with a fear that went beyond their current predicament.
“You saw her in the mess hall. That look in her eyes when she was talking to Mila. Even through the viewscreen, she’s gazing on her with … hunger.”
Letitia couldn’t meet his gaze. She stared at the schematic, the pulsing red lines representing the veins they were about to tear out of their ship.
Sark’s words echoed her own unspoken doubts.
Jealousy stung Letitia’s heart again like a scorpion.
The way Carmen had looked at Mila on the comm screen, even through her anger and quarantine orders.
The way the two of them had gotten on so easily before the pheromone reveal, like old friends.
Like lovers. It hurt. Damn, but it hurt.
“It’s the Xena, Letitia,” Sark finished. “Those pheromones. She’s got Cap under her spell.”
“Sark has a statistically valid point,” Norvik interjected, his calm voice cutting through the tension.
He picked up a micro-wrench from his tray, examining it as if it held the answer to their predicament.
“Captain Díaz’s decision-making parameters have demonstrably shifted since acquiring the XenX asset.
Her rejection of the economically optimal solution in favor of a high-risk, low-probability, altruistic mission represents a significant deviation from her established risk-aversion profile regarding crew safety and ship integrity. ”
“Damn you, Norvik,” she growled, “I’m only gonna tell you this one more time: She. Is not. An asset! She’s a sentient fucking being.”
He placed the wrench back with precise care with a shrug.
“Whatever she is does not change the analysis,” he said. “A competent captain prioritizes the survival probability of the collective over individual ethical quandaries, especially when the individual in question represents both the source of the jeopardy and a readily available solution.”
Letitia’s hands knotted into fists. He shoulders bunched. She ground her teeth to avoid punching him in his prioritizing-the-group face.
“So selling a sentient being into slavery is just an ‘ethical quandary’ to you? A math problem?” Her voice vibrated with the old, familiar outrage. “She’s a person, Norvik! Not cargo!”
Norvik’s black eyes met hers, utterly unreadable. If he saw the restrained violence in her posture, he appeared untroubled by it.
“I acknowledge her,” he replied smoothly.
“However, her cultural framework assigns her a specific societal role.
Voluntary servitude is her stated purpose and value proposition.
Liquidating her fulfills that purpose while simultaneously resolving the existential threat her presence poses to this crew.
“Refusing this solution is selfish. It prioritizes Captain Díaz’s subjective moral discomfort over the objective survival needs of the group.” He tilted his head slightly, a gesture that somehow managed to convey cold analysis. “It suggests impairment. Emotional or chemical. Or both.”
The accusation hung in the air, colder than the vacuum outside.
Letitia felt a fresh wave of that treacherous heat, mixed now with a chill of dread.
She’d been the one to push the pheromone revelation.
She’d confronted Carmen, forced the quarantine.
Had she made it worse? Had she cemented the crew’s suspicion that Carmen wasn’t thinking straight? That she was compromised?
She thought of Carmen in the mess hall, making the call to strip the turrets.
The flat, final tone. The exhaustion etched around her eyes.
The way she’d taken the blame, shouldered it all.
It hadn’t felt like impairment. It had felt like despair.
Like the grim acceptance of a captain with no good choices left.
But what if Norvik was right? What if the pheromones, the stress, were all twisting Carmen’s judgment? Making her see Mila not as a liability, but as something worth sacrificing everything for? Even her crew?
“Look, we can’t blame Carmen for all of this,” she said. “I’m the one who convinced her. She might’ve decided to save Mila anyway. She probably would have.
“But she was at least considering selling her, Norvik. She understood exactly what Mila represented – the solution to all our financial problems.
“And, Sark, by the time we knew about the pheromones, it was too late to change course. Carmen was right when she said the encounter with that pirate ship forced our hand. We can’t defend ourselves from anyone who wants to take her from us by force. Even if we weren’t stripping the weapons.”
Neither of the men said anything for a moment. Sark didn’t look at her, his gaze locked on the deck as if the answers to their predicament were written there. Norvik simply watched her.
“Tell me something, Letitia,” Sark said, still examining the floor “Let’s say we pull this off. We fix the jump-drive, make it to the UPA frontier, hack the kill-sat, and sail smoothly to the XenX home world. Then what?”
He looked up at last, drilled her with his brown-eyed gaze.
“You really think Cap is going to let her go? You believe she’s just going to turn Mila over to her people? With the way she looks at her?”
Letitia tried to answer, tried to tell him they needed to trust Carmen. But she had no idea what to say that he would believe. She had no idea what she would believe.
“Just get the parts,” she said, her voice suddenly tired.
The fight had drained out of her, replaced by a hollow ache. She pointed at the schematic.
“Sark, Norvik’s right about the junction.
It’s tighter access, but the cabling comes out cleaner.
Get back up there. Start with the dorsal regulators on Alpha.
They’re easier to reach. Use the micro-grippers and the thermal shunt to disconnect the feed lines.
Be careful – that plasma is nasty stuff if it leaks. ”
Sark stared at her for a moment, his mouth working silently.
The fear in his eyes hadn’t lessened, but the frantic energy had banked, replaced by a kind of sullen resignation.
He nodded mutely and hauled himself back onto the scaffold, reaching for the tools Norvik handed up.
The Collectivist watched him for a moment, then turned his unnerving gaze back to Letitia.
“Your loyalty to Captain Díaz is noted. And statistically anomalous given the circumstances. Loyalty is a useful crew dynamic until it becomes a liability. Blind adherence to impaired command endangers the collective.”
Letitia flinched.
“It’s not blind,” she snapped, but the words lacked conviction.
Was it? She believed in Carmen. She always had. The fierce, stubborn woman who’d carved out a life for them in the Belt’s underbelly, who’d fought for every credit, protected her crew with a ferocity that bordered on reckless.
But this? This felt different. Like Carmen was fighting for something else entirely. Something personal.
Grief washed through her. Forget the ethics. Forget the pheromones. Carmen might want to fuck Mila, but that wasn’t what this was about. The look in the captain’s big, brown eyes wasn’t hunger like Sark had suggested.
It was love.
Letitia blinked away tears. She watched Sark wrestle with the first regulator housing on Turret Alpha.
His movements were hesitant, clumsy with fear and resentment.
Norvik stood below, a silent, judgmental presence, handing up tools with robotic precision.
The rhythmic clank of metal on metal, the hiss of releasing pressure seals, filled the pod.
Unwanted, she caught a whiff of warm fur, of cloying sweetness.
She closed her eyes, taking a slow breath.
Behind her eyelids, unwanted images flickered: Mila’s calm expression, the sleek curve of her back, the way her tail twitched slightly when she was concentrating.
A jolt of pure, unwelcome arousal shot through her, sharp and distracting. She gritted her teeth, forcing it down.
Chemistry. Just fucking chemistry.
But the jealousy remained, hotter than before. It coiled in her stomach like a fiery serpent and bred doubt. Sark’s fear. Norvik’s group priorities. The pervasive, maddening scent that seemed to cloud everything.
And the memory of Carmen’s haunted eyes.