Chapter 39
The silence in the lander’s cockpit was thick, charged with the aftershock of victory and the sweet, simmering anticipation of vengeance.
Nick Corso leaned back in the command chair, the synthetic leather creaking under his weight.
The image of Norvik’s impassive blue face agreeing to hand over Díaz played on a loop in his mind’s eye.
Agreed.
The word was a drug, potent and heady.
He traced the scar on his jawline, a souvenir from a dockside brawl years ago, a reminder of the grit it took to claw his way up from nothing.
Díaz, with her unearned moral superiority, had never understood that.
She’d looked down on him, dismissed him as insignificant trash.
Now, she was the garbage. Confined. Beaten.
Offered up by her own crew. The symmetry was beautiful.
Brutal. He pictured her face when they dragged her out.
The defiance finally broken. The fear in those dark eyes he’d once found compelling.
Nick would take his time with her. Remind her of every slight, every condescending word. Make her beg. Make her scream. And then?
He hadn’t decided the finale yet. Slow spacing? Hand her over to Velasco’s less savory appetites? The possibilities were deliciously dark.
The payment stung, though. Twenty thousand credits and settling their debts? Norvik had balls, he’d give him that. Squeezing Nick dry when he had Díaz by the short hairs.
But it was a price worth paying. For the Xena. For the completion of the contract that kept the government hounds off his back.
And most of all, for Díaz on her knees.
Oh, he’d recoup it. Once the Xena was delivered, once Díaz was dealt with, he’d hunt down the Antilles.
Find them limping through some backwater system.
Norvik’s cold logic wouldn’t save him then.
Nor Sark’s sniveling fear. Nor that fiery bitch, Anderson.
He’d carve them up, piece by piece, sell the Antilles for scrap, and pocket every credit. With interest.
A chime cut through his vengeful reverie. The comm panel lit up, displaying the ID:
Star Shrike – Hadley James.
Nick jabbed the accept button.
“James. Report.” He kept his voice low, controlled, masking the eagerness.
His first mate’s face appeared on the cockpit’s secondary screen. Her features were tight, professional, but her eyes held a flicker of relief.
“Signal’s back, Captain. That EM static burst from the probe finally faded. Sensors are rebooting. Took longer than expected. Their attack was clever and effective.”
“Status of the Antilles?” Corso demanded, leaning forward.
James’s gaze flicked down to her own console readouts off-screen.
“Scanning.…”
Nick held his breath. Did Norvik have another trick up his sleeve? Was he powering down from the overload he’d threatened?
“Shields are patched but weak,” James reported, “fluctuating between forty- and fifty-five-percent efficiency. Weapons signatures non-existent. No power to point-defense turrets. No active targeting locks.”
“To hell with all that!” Nick snapped. “Scan their engines. Are they on a buildup to detonation?”
He watched anxiously as her fingers flew over unseen controls.
“Energy signature from their core is stable. No thermal buildup. No radiation spikes consistent with overload initiation. Readings are nominal for a ship running silent on minimal power.”
Relief warred with fury. Relief that his prize wasn’t about to vaporize. Fury that he’d been played. Thoroughly.
That fucking Collectivist bastard.
Norvik’s cold voice agreeing to terms, the core overload threat – all of it smoke and mirrors. A desperate stall. And Nick had fallen for it.
The rage surged, hot and blinding, eclipsing the lingering satisfaction. His fist slammed down on the armrest.
“They bluffed me!” The words ripped out, raw with fury. “That blue-faced, logic-spouting worm!”
James flinched slightly on the screen but held her composure.
“Confirmed, sir. No self-destruct sequence detected. The Antilles is vulnerable.”
Vulnerable. The word was a balm and a catalyst. The game wasn’t over. It had just gotten more interesting. Norvik’s betrayal of Díaz might be real, but his bargain was a lie.
Fine. Two birds, one stone. He’d take the Xena. He’d take Díaz. And he’d erase the rest of the Antilles’s pathetic crew from existence. A message. A final, brutal punctuation mark on Díaz’s failure.
He leaned into the comm, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper.
“Listen carefully, James. Target Antilles. Vaporize the bridge. Maximum yield. Right fucking now.”
James’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
“Sir? The Xena and Captain Díaz … they’re likely on the bridge or—”
“Did I stutter?” Corso snarled, the control snapping. “The bridge, James! Turn it into cosmic dust! NOW!”
“Aye, Captain,” James’s voice was tight, professional, deadly. “Targeting bridge coordinates. Charging ventral plasma cannon to maximum yield. Firing solution in ten seconds.”
Nick watched the main viewscreen eagerly. The Antilles hung there, a battered, defenseless silhouette against the star-strewn backdrop of the nebula and the looming dark wedge of the security satellite. So close. So gloriously helpless.
His fingers tightened on the armrests. He imagined the plasma bolt lancing out, silent in the void, striking home. The flash. The expanding cloud of debris that had once been Sark’s nervous face, Anderson’s defiant eyes, Norvik’s calculating brain.
Díaz’s scream when she learned what he’d done….
The Star Shrike vanished in a silent, blinding eruption of light.
Not from its own weapons. From the outside.
One moment, his beautiful ship hung beside the security satellite. The next, a searing blast of energy – impossibly fast, impossibly precise – slammed into its starboard engine.
The impact wasn’t a hit; it was an annihilation. The engine simply ceased to exist in a microsecond bloom of superheated gas and vaporized metal.
Secondary explosions rippled along Star Shrike’s flank as power conduits ruptured and fuel lines detonated. Debris fountained outwards, glittering cruelly in the starlight.
The main viewscreen in the lander cockpit flared white, then dissolved into static as the proximity sensors overloaded.
Nick stared, frozen. His mind refused to process the image. His ship, his power, his home – vaporized.
Hadley James’s voice screamed through the comm, raw with panic, cutting through the static.
“Captain, Star Shrike is hit! Massive damage! Engines gone! Hull breach on decks three through seven! We’re losing power! Who the HELL—?”
The static cleared for a split second. The viewscreen showed his magnificent pirate vessel listing violently, trailing a comet’s tail of debris and escaping atmosphere. Where the starboard engine had been was a gaping, ragged wound glowing white-hot.
And emerging from the nebula’s dust clouds, sleek, dark, and utterly silent, came a vessel shaped like a stingray. No running lights. No energy signature beyond the fading ripple of its devastating weapon.
The government assassins. They hadn’t just come for the Xena. They’d come to erase every witness. Every loose end.
Including him.
The cold void inside Nick ignited. Fury, pure and incandescent, flooded his veins, hotter than the plasma that had vaporized his engine. It wasn’t directed at the killer ship.
Her.
This was her fault. Her bleeding-heart defiance.
Her refusal to just hand over the fucking alien.
If she’d just rolled over like the insignificant gutter trash she was, the Xena would be delivered, the contract fulfilled, and the Star Shrike would be light-years away, counting credits.
Not bleeding out in the shadow of some fucking automated sentry.
His fist slammed down on the console beside him. Plastic cracked under the impact.
“DíAZ!” he roared, screaming at the stars for the injustice of it all.