Page 105 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone

“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.

“Theybluffedme!” The words ripped out, raw with fury. “That blue-faced, logic-spoutingworm!”

James flinched slightly on the screen but held her composure.

“Confirmed, sir. No self-destruct sequence detected. TheAntillesis 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 theAntilles’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. TargetAntilles. 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. TheAntilleshung 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….

TheStar Shrikevanished 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 alongStar 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.