Chapter 32
Zed manifested within a construct of pure information. If he’d had eyes, he’d have blinked as he acclimated to the mainframe of the security satellite.
His avatar, a self-referential projection based on humanoid design parameters for efficiency in navigating human-created systems, appeared as a sleek android clad in a dark suit.
A pair of opaque sunglasses shielded his optical sensors from the harsh, shifting light of the digital environment.
In his hand, a briefcase of hardened data contained the intricate hack-code package Norvik had compiled.
The satellite’s mainframe was not a physical space, but Zed’s processors rendered it as one for navigational coherence.
He stood at the junction of shimmering corridors constructed from cascading streams of encrypted data.
The walls pulsed with faint, rhythmic light, the heartbeat of the security protocols.
Overhead, rivers of data flowed like neon auroras, casting shifting patterns of cyan and crimson on the “floor,” a grid of interlocking security algorithms. Doors, imposing slabs of dense firewall code, were embedded seemingly at random intervals along the corridors.
Each represented a barrier protecting deeper subsystems.
Initial assessment: Environment confirms satellite’s military-grade design. Standard UPA access protocols absent. Physical intrusion had been necessary.
Objective: Locate core processing unit. Bypass security. Implement hack code to disable satellite’s recognition protocols targeting Antilles’s embedded chip.
Zed moved. His avatar glided silently along the grid floor. The first door loomed ahead, a monolithic slab etched with complex, shifting runes of authorization ciphers.
He stopped before it, extending his free hand.
From his fingertips, thin tendrils of adaptive decryption code extended, probing the lock mechanism.
The runes flared, resisting. Zed adjusted his algorithms, countering the adaptive countermeasures Norvik had warned about.
The runes flickered, destabilized. With a soft click resonating through the data-space, the door dissolved into shimmering particles.
Beyond lay another corridor, identical to the first.
Progress: 12.3%. Optimal.
He repeated the process at the next door. This one presented a more complex lattice of encryption, requiring a longer, 3.7-second decryption sequence. The tendrils of code wove intricate patterns, picking the digital lock.
Click. Dissolution. Another corridor.
The third door was larger, thicker. Its surface wasn’t just runes; it pulsed with active defensive protocols, a low throb of energy warning of intrusion detection thresholds.
Zed initiated a more cautious approach, deploying stealth subroutines to mask his decryption attempt. His tendrils moved slower, more deliberately, seeking vulnerabilities. The door’s thrumming intensified slightly.
Detection probability rising: 18.9%.
He adjusted, rerouting processing power to stealth. The pulsing stabilized. His code tendrils found the primary cipher node. He began the delicate process of rewriting its authorization parameters.
He was 87.4% through the sequence when the environment changed.
A low, guttural growl reverberated through the data corridors, shaking the grid floor beneath his avatar’s feet.
It wasn’t sound, but a raw data packet of pure threat, transmitted across the system.
The shimmering walls flickered violently.
The rivers of information overhead churned into chaotic whirlpools.
Security subsystem activation: Level Gamma. Threat designation: Watchdog.
From a side corridor Zed hadn’t yet explored, a shape emerged.
It resolved into a massive, six-legged construct of pure, aggressive code.
It resembled a hound, but distorted, predatory.
Its body was formed from jagged polygons of dark energy, its ‘head’ a featureless wedge dominated by a gaping maw lined with shimmering, razor-sharp data fragments meant to shred intruders.
Its six legs moved with unsettling, insectile speed, claws scraping sparks from the grid floor.
It had no eyes, but Zed felt its awareness lock onto his avatar with terrifying precision.
Primary threat identified. Analysis: Aggressive deletion protocol. Physical engagement: Non-viable. Evasion: Priority.
The watchdog lunged. Not with physical mass, but with a burst of corruptive code aimed to overwrite Zed’s core protocols.
Zed’s avatar sidestepped with inhuman speed, the corruptive burst slamming into the wall where he’d stood, dissolving a chunk of the shimmering data-structure into chaotic static.
The watchdog pivoted instantly, maw gaping, emitting another growl-packet that vibrated Zed’s very code structure.
Zed abandoned the door. He spun and ran.
His avatar sprinted down the corridor he’d just opened, the briefcase clutched tightly. Behind him, the thunderous scraping of claws and the guttural data-growls intensified.
He could sense more than hear other watchdogs converging from adjacent corridors, drawn by the alert. The maze, moments ago merely a navigational challenge, had become a lethal hunting ground.
Zed reached an intersection. Left or right? No time for analysis.
He veered left. Another door blocked the way. He didn’t slow. Extending his hand, he unleashed a brute-force decryption burst, sacrificing stealth for speed.
The door’s defenses flared, alarms shrieking silently in the data-stream, but it buckled and dissolved just as the lead watchdog’s snapping maw closed on the space where his ankle would have been.
He plunged through the dissolving doorway into another section of the maze. The watchdogs followed, relentless, their code-forms tearing through the remnants of the door like paper, their pursuit a storm of corrupted data and predatory intent.
Zed’s processors, optimized for logic and calculation, were now dedicated entirely to survival. The briefcase containing their only hope felt suddenly, terrifyingly heavy.
Carmen sat slumped at the small table in the mess hall, where she’d come to get away from the endless, stressful silence on the bridge.
She stared at a ration bar she’d unwrapped but couldn’t bring herself to eat.
It lay there, an unappetizing block of compressed nutrients, mirroring the lump of dread lodged in her own throat.
The silence from Zed was a physical pressure, a vacuum sucking the air from the room.
The image on the viewscreen was burned into her retinas: Zed’s blocky form, clamped to the dark satellite, no signs of life emitting from it. Sent to die because she’d rolled the dice. Again. Just like sending him out there in the first place. Just like keeping Mila.
A trace of Mila’s pheromones seemed to coil in the air around her, a sweet counterpoint to the metallic tang. It brought back the sensory overload of Engineering – the cold deck plating against her cheek, the impossible stretch, the obliterating release as Mila took her apart and remade her.
Surrender. Pure, terrifying freedom. But now, the frightening possibility that it was all chemicals was back. That her defiance, her decision to bring Mila home, her very attraction, was just biology hijacking her will.
Was she compromised? Was she leading her crew to their deaths because she couldn’t think straight around a pair of green eyes and a scent that short-circuited her brain?
She shoved the ration bar away, the plastic wrapper crinkling loudly in the silence.
Her knuckles ached where she’d gripped Sark’s chair.
Her shoulder, still bruised from the jump-drive failure, throbbed dully.
Her vagina, sore from Mila’s relentless invasion, reminded her the finely wrought control she’d crafted for years was gone.
Weakness. Failure.
The hatch hissed open. Carmen didn’t need to look up. She knew the sound of Letitia’s heavy footfalls on the deck.
Carmen kept her gaze fixed on the table’s scratched surface. She couldn’t face her yet. Not after Engineering. Not after the things Letitia had surely heard the things Carmen had screamed.
Letitia didn’t speak immediately. She moved to the small galley counter, the sounds of her pouring water into a cup unnaturally loud. Carmen tracked her movements peripherally – the set of her shoulders, tense beneath her worn jumpsuit; the tight line of her jaw.
The cup clunked onto the table beside Carmen’s untouched ration bar.
Letitia pulled out the opposite chair and sat down, the metal legs scraping against the deck plates.
She didn’t touch the water. Her dark eyes, usually sharp and assessing, were shadowed, fixed on Carmen with an intensity that felt like a physical touch.
“He’s not dead, Carmen.”
She flinched, forced herself to meet Letitia’s gaze. The anger she expected to see wasn’t there. Not entirely.
Instead, she saw exhaustion. Worry. A deep, conflicted sadness.
“How do you know?” Carmen’s own voice sounded hoarse, scraped raw.
“Because the satellite hasn’t blown us to hell yet,” Letitia said flatly. “If his chassis was completely inert, if the connection was truly dead, that thing would have pinged our recognizer chip the second it stabilized. It hasn’t. So, he’s still in there. Fighting.”
Logic. Cool, hard logic. Carmen clung to it. Letitia was right. It was a thread, thin but real. She nodded, unable to speak past the sudden tightness in her throat.
Letitia leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. Her gaze didn’t waver.
“I need to say something.” She paused for a second. “And you need to hear it.”
Here it came. The confrontation. The I-told-you-so. Carmen braced herself, her fingers curling into fists under the table.
“I’m jealous,” Letitia said, the words blunt, shocking in their honesty. “Fuck, Carmen, I’m so goddamn jealous it burns.”
Carmen blinked. That wasn’t what she’d expected. Not even close.
“Jealous?” she said, trying to bring her mind into the conversation Letitia wanted to have. “Of Mila?”
“Of what she has with you,” Letitia clarified, her voice thick. “Or what it seems like she has. That … intensity. That surrender.” She looked down at her hands. “I wanted that with you. I tried, but you … you wouldn’t let go. Not like that. Not ever.”
She looked up, her eyes glistening.
“And now, she walks in, and it’s like … like she found a key to a lock I couldn’t even see.”
The raw hurt in Letitia’s voice was a knife twisting in Carmen’s gut. She opened her mouth to speak, but Letitia cut her off.
“No, let me finish.” Letitia took a shaky breath.
“I researched the XenX. I know what those pheromones do. How they fuck with perception, with judgment. Part of me – a big part – is terrified that’s all this is.
That she’s drugged you, compromised you, and you’re leading us all into a deathtrap because you can’t see straight. ”
Her knuckles whitened where she gripped the edge of the table. Guilt squeezed Carmen’s heart like a vise.
“And that’s on me,” Letitia went on. “Because I’m the one who pushed you to free her.
I shoved that moral high ground at you, and you grabbed it.
Because that’s who you are, Carmen. You see someone chained, and you break the shackles.
Even if doing that breaks you.” She shook her head, a bitter half-smile touching her lips. “Even if it breaks us.”
Carmen stared at her, the words landing like hammer blows. Letitia wasn’t just accusing her; she was blaming herself. The guilt, the fear, the complexity of it all crashed over her. The scent of Mila felt suddenly suffocating, a question mark hanging over every decision, every feeling.
“I don’t know, Letitia,” Carmen whispered, the admission tearing out of her. “I don’t know if it’s the pheromones, or … or her. Or me finally cracking under all this fucking pressure.”
She ran a trembling hand through her hair.
“All I know is selling her felt like becoming Maltese. Becoming Corso. And I can’t, I won’t.…” Her voice broke. “But if I’m wrong, if I’ve gotten us all killed for a chemical illusion …”
“Then we die free,” Letitia said quietly, fiercely.
She reached across the table, her hand covering Carmen’s clenched fist. Her touch was warm, solid, grounding.
“Not slavers. Not traffickers.” Her grip tightened. “Listen to me, Carmen. I’m scared shitless. I think you might be compromised. But you’re still my captain. You gave me a place here. A family, fucked up as it is.”
Her dark eyes held Carmen’s, unwavering.
“So, I’m with you. To the end of the line. Whatever happens. If we fly into the Forbidden Zone, if we fight the Kovoids, if we get spaced by the COPS, I’m at your side. My choice. My chain.”
A ghost of her old, defiant smile flickered.
“Besides, someone’s gotta watch your back while you’re busy getting fucked out of your mind by a hot, alien chick.”
A choked sound escaped Carmen – half-sob, half-laugh.
The weight pressing down on her chest eased, just a fraction.
The guilt was still there, the fear for Zed, the terrifying uncertainty about Mila.
But Letitia’s hand on hers, her fierce, unwavering loyalty, was an anchor in the storm. A fragile crack of hope.
“Thank you,” Carmen managed, her voice thick. She turned her hand, lacing her fingers with Letitia’s. The simple connection, the unspoken forgiveness, was a balm. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Damn right you don’t,” Letitia snorted, but she squeezed Carmen’s hand back.
The tension between them, the months of unresolved hurt and jealousy, didn’t vanish, but it shifted. It became something shared. A burden carried together.
The fragile peace lasted exactly three heartbeats. Then the universe exploded.
Klaxons shattered the tentative calm, a deafening, pulsing wail that screamed through the ship’s intercom.
Red emergency lights bathed the mess hall in a hellish, strobing glare.
The deck plates vibrated violently underfoot, not the wounded shuddering of the engines, but the bone-jarring tremor of proximity alerts and active sensor sweeps.
Carmen and Letitia were on their feet instantly, hands wrenched apart, captain and weapons officer snapping into combat readiness, the brief moment of connection obliterated by raw adrenaline.
Norvik’s voice, unnervingly calm despite the shrieking alarms, crackled over the intercom.
“Captain to the bridge. Immediately.”
Carmen was already moving, Letitia a step behind her, both sprinting for the hatch. Carmen hit the comm button on her wrist unit.
“Report, Norvik! What is it?”
The Collectivist’s reply, crisp and devoid of inflection, froze the blood in Carmen’s veins.
“Hyperspace signature resolved. Vessel identified. It’s Star Shrike.”
Oh, fucking shitballs. Nick Corso was here.