Chapter 36
Letitia’s palms were slick with sweat. She wiped them surreptitiously on her jumpsuit thighs, leaving dark smears on the worn fabric.
The bridge felt smaller than usual. The red emergency lights had been dialed back to a dull, throbbing crimson, casting long, distorted shadows that seemed to pulse in time with the ship’s wounded engines.
Norvik sat in the command chair – Carmen’s chair – his blue face emotionless in the gloom, his yellow pupils fixed on the main viewscreen. His calm was unnerving, a glacier in the face of a supernova.
On the screen, the Star Shrike’s lander hung in the void, a predatory insect silhouetted against the broader mass of the pirate vessel. It was close. Too close. Letitia could almost feel the targeting sensors crawling over Antilles’s battered hull.
The memory of Zed’s chassis vanishing in that silent, searing flash made bile rise in Letitia’s throat. She swallowed hard, forcing it down.
She knew the bluff was their only logical play. But what if Norvik decided logic dictated cutting their losses? Handing over Mila for real? Abandoning Carmen? The thought sent ice water coursing through her veins.
“Probe status?” Norvik’s voice cut through the tense silence, flat and devoid of inflection.
“Charging sequence complete,” Letitia replied. She didn’t look away from her weapons console, his fingers trembling slightly over the controls. “Ready for launch on your command.”
She refused to call him, “captain.” She didn’t want to put any put any ideas in his head.
The lander drifted closer, its maneuvering thrusters flaring briefly, adjusting its position. It slid slowly across the screen, its dark bulk momentarily obscuring the viewport of the Antilles’s port-side probe launch tube.
“Now,” Norvik ordered. His voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of command.
Letitia pressed the firing button. A muffled thump vibrated through the deck plates beneath her boots.
On the secondary sensor display, a small icon detached from Antilles’s hull.
The transponder probe drifted silently, propelled by minimal thrust, a tiny speck aimed directly at the lander shuttle’s blind spot.
“Probe away,” she confirmed. “Minimal thrust vector established. Drift trajectory looks good. Impact in—” She consulted her board. “—ninety-seven seconds.”
Impact. The word felt wrong. This wasn’t a weapon.
It was a distraction. A desperate flare in the dark.
Letitia watched the probe’s icon crawl across the display.
Ninety-seven seconds. An eternity. She imagined Corso’s smug face on the lander’s bridge, counting down the minutes until he could claim his prize. Until he could break Carmen.
“Sark,” Norvik said, his gaze still fixed forward. “Initiate slow retro-burn. Increase separation from the lander. Minimal power. Make it look like drift.”
“Aye,” Sark replied, his fingers dancing. The familiar rumble of the sub-light drives cascaded up from below them. The viewscreen image shifted minutely as the Antilles began a slow, almost imperceptible retreat.
Letitia forced her eyes away from the probe’s slow progress.
She looked at Norvik. Really looked. His blue skin seemed almost gray in the crimson light.
His posture was rigid, utterly controlled.
No telltale tension in his shoulders. No flicker of doubt in those strange yellow eyes.
He was a statue of Collectivist pragmatism.
He wants to live, Letitia told herself fiercely. We all do. This is the only play.
But the image of Carmen’s face, raw with grief and fury after Zed’s destruction, flashed in her mind. The way she’d stalked off the bridge, surrendering command. The ultimate loss of control. And Norvik, stepping smoothly into the vacuum.
He sees Mila as cargo. He always has.
The probe icon blinked on the sensor display, nearing its target. Fifty seconds. Letitia’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat counting down to oblivion or salvation. She wiped her palms again.
Trust us.
She closed her eyes for a second, breathing through the panic. When she opened them, she focused on the comm panel. Waiting for the signal. Waiting for the storm.
The low roar of the Antilles’s engines vibrated through the deck plating, a constant, anxious pulse that matched the frantic rhythm in Carmen’s chest. She paced the cramped confines of Engineering Bay Alpha, her boots scuffing against the metal grating.
The air here was warmer than the bridge, thick with the smell of hot circuitry, lubricant, and the ever-present, clinging sweetness of Mila’s pheromones.
It wrapped around Carmen like smoke, amplifying the raw edge of her nerves, making it hard to focus on anything but the suffocating pressure of the trap they were in.
“He’ll do it,” Carmen muttered, more to herself than to Mila. She raked a hand through her hair, the dark strands escaping her usually tight bun. “Norvik. He sees a logical out, a way to save the ship, save the crew. He’ll hand you over. He’ll actually hand you over.”
The words tasted like battery acid. She stopped pacing and put a hand against the cold bulkhead near the primary interface station she and Mila had reassembled maybe an hour before.
“He wanted to sell you from the start. This just gives him the excuse.”
Mila sat at the console, her furred fingers moving with calm precision over the interface.
The soft yellow hair of her back was turned to Carmen, the striking red stripes stark even in the bay’s functional lighting.
Her thick tail pushed Mila right to the edge of the chair.
She didn’t look up, but her voice, when it came, was a low, soothing murmur that cut through the engine’s drone.
“Norvik understands the parameters of the gambit, Captain.” Her tone held no reproach, only quiet certainty. “He understands the value of the deception. His logic is sound. This is the optimal path for collective survival.”
“His logic!” Carmen pushed off the bulkhead, resuming her pacing. The tiny space felt like a cage. “His logic said sell you to the highest bidder! His logic says you’re a liability! What’s to stop his logic from deciding that handing you to Corso is the fastest way to make this all go away?”
The image of Corso’s triumphant sneer, of Mila in his grasp, sent a fresh wave of icy dread through her. It mingled sickeningly with the heat pooling low in her belly, a treacherous response to Mila’s proximity and scent.
“He doesn’t see you, Mila. He sees credits. He sees a problem solved.”
Mila finally turned. Her gaze met Carmen’s, luminous and calm in the dim light. There was no fear there. No doubt. Only a deep, unwavering focus.
“He sees the survival of this crew,” Mila corrected gently. “As do you. The paths differ, but the destination is shared.”
She stood and took a step away from the console, her movement fluid, almost silent on the grating. The space between them shrank. Carmen could smell her more intensely now.
“Norvik acts according to his nature. As do you. Your strength, Captain Díaz, is not just in control. It is in inspiring loyalty. In making others believe in your destination.”
Carmen stopped pacing. She stood rooted, staring into those fathomless, green eyes.
The raw vulnerability she felt – the fear for her crew, the terror of trusting Norvik, the gnawing guilt over Zed, the terrifying, magnetic pull of the woman before her, were all a chasm opening beneath her feet.
Mila’s words shouldn’t have landed. Not now.
Not with Corso breathing down their necks.
But they did. They hit some deep, bruised part of her that craved validation, that desperately needed to believe she hadn’t led them all to slaughter.
“I sent Zed out there,” Carmen whispered, the confession torn from her. “I gambled his life on thirty-eight-point-seven percent. And he’s gone. Because of me.”
Her voice cracked.
“Now I’m gambling you. Gambling the whole damned ship on Norvik sticking to a script.”
She shook her head, a bitter laugh escaping.
“Some fucking captain.”
Mila didn’t flinch. Didn’t offer empty platitudes. She simply closed the remaining distance. She didn’t touch Carmen, but her presence was a solid wall, grounding. Her scent intensified, not aggressively, but like a warm blanket offered against the cold void outside the hull.
“Zed understood the odds,” Mila said, her voice low and resonant. “He chose the mission. He chose you. As did Sark. As did Letitia. As do I.
“Your crew does not follow your calculations, Carmen. They follow you – your fire, your defiance, your unwavering commitment to bring me home, against all logic, against all odds.” A ghost of something fierce flickered in her gaze.
“That is not a weakness. It is your strength. And it binds them to you.”
Carmen’s breath caught. The sincerity in Mila’s voice, the absolute conviction, was a lifeline.
It cut through the fog of doubt, the phantom whispers of Corso’s taunts about pheromones and manipulation.
This felt real. Mila’s faith in her felt real.
And the ache in Carmen’s chest wasn’t just fear or arousal; it was a desperate, clawing need to be worthy of that faith.
To not fail this woman who looked at her like she was something more than a desperate smuggler making terrible choices.
Before Carmen could find words, the ship’s comm system crackled to life, shattering the fragile moment. Nick Corso’s voice, thick with furious disbelief, roared through the engineering bay speakers:
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Díaz?”
Carmen stiffened, her hand instinctively flying towards the comm panel near Zed’s station. But Norvik’s voice, cold, calm, and totally devoid of Carmen’s presence, cut in first, transmitted ship-wide:
“Captain Díaz is no longer in command, Mr. Corso.”
Carmen froze, her fingers inches from the panel. A fresh wave of icy dread washed over her, momentarily eclipsing the warmth Mila’s presence had kindled. She stared at the comm speaker, waiting.
Trust us, Sark had pleaded.
The scent of Mila, sweet and demanding, was the only thing keeping Carmen from screaming.