Page 11 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone
Carmen flinched. Trafficking sentient species. Harboring a XenX. Strict liability offenses. The penalties weren’t fines. They weren’t debt collection. They werelife. Life in a UPA penal colony for every single member of the crew. Asset forfeiture meant theAntilleswould be scrap. Her crew would spend their remaining days breaking rocks on some airless moon, if they were lucky. If they weren’t just spaced immediately as a warning.
Fear, cold and absolute, washed over her. This wasn’t just a dangerous run anymore. This was annihilation. Maltese hadn’t just set them up to fail; he’d set them up to die. Or worse.
And it was her fault. Her signature on the manifest. Her oversight. She hadn’t checked the cargo. She’d been too busy drowning in her own humiliation, too focused on the insult of coffee, too wrapped up in her fight with Letitia to do the one fucking job she had: keep her crew safe.
Control. She’d lost control the moment she walked into Maltese’s den, and now they were all paying the price.
The XenX female stirred slightly in her chamber, a soft, almost imperceptible shift. Carmen’s gaze snapped back to her. The fur, the stripes, the delicate features, even unconscious, there was a profound vulnerability about her and an undeniable allure.
Norvik broke the stunned silence, his voice cutting through the fog with chilling pragmatism.
“Captain, we cannot continue to Babcinq under the circumstances.”
The ship felt suddenly claustrophobic, the weight of the illegal alien pressing in from all sides. Babcinq. The heart of the UPA. Crawling with COPS.
Norvik was right. They couldn’t go there. Not like this.
“Sark,” she said, her voice cold, commanding. “Get to the bridge. Take us out of hyperspace.Now.”
Sark blinked, torn from his daze.
“Out? Captain, the nav-comp?—”
“I don’t care!” she practically screamed. “Drop us! Anywhere! Just get us the hell out of the transit lane!”
The urgency in her voice galvanized him. He turned and bolted for the hatch, his webbed feet slapping the deck in a frantic rhythm.
Carmen turned back to the life-support chamber, to the Xena sleeping within. It was impossible not to believe she had killed them all.
CHAPTER 4
Carmen pacedthe narrow space between the bolted-down table and the food-synthesizer unit of the cramped mess hall. The ship was quiet, too quiet, hiding in the shadow of a pockmarked moon orbiting a nameless gas giant. Outside the small viewport, the swirling ochre bands of the enormous planet filled the black, a silent, indifferent witness to their crisis.
The emergency drop from hyperspace had been rough, a bone-jarring lurch that slammed Carmen against a bulkhead and sent tools clattering in Engineering. Sark had managed it, bleeding off velocity with a skill born of desperation, but the silence now felt fragile, like the calm before a storm.
The smell of cheap coffee hung in the air, untouched in the mugs on the table. No one had the stomach for it. Not after what they’d found in the hold. The alien’s presence seemed to have permeated the ship’s very bones, a constant, unsettling reminder lurking beneath the familiar scent of grease and the rumble of the engines.
Her crew sat around the scarred metal table: Sark hunched over, orange fingers nervously tracing patterns on the surface; Norvik unnervingly still, his light-blue hands steepled, black eyes fixed on nothing; Letitia radiating furious energy, armscrossed tight over her chest, her gaze burning into Carmen; Zed perched motionless on his treads near the door.
Carmen stopped pacing, planting her hands on the back of an empty chair. The cold metal bit into her palms.
“Okay,” she rasped. “We’re stopped. We’re breathing. Talk to me. What thehelldo we do?”
“The situation presents a clear, albeit ethically complex, solution, Captain,” Norvik said. He turned his head fractionally, his black eyes meeting hers. “The XenX female represents significant value. Conservatively, I estimate her market price within the UPA’s illicit networks at approximately two hundred thousand credits. Minimum.”
Sark’s head snapped up, his orange skin flushing slightly.
“Two hundred thou?Minimum?” His voice cracked. “That’s … that’s more than enough! Fines paid, debts cleared,Antillesfixed up properly, maybe even some upgrades! Shields that actually work!”
Hope warred with unease on his amphibian features. Norvik inclined his head in confirmation.
“Precisely. The immediate capital influx resolves our most pressing operational and financial constraints. Our obligation to Maltese is voided by his deception. We possess the cargo. We control the asset.”
“Asset?” Letitia cried. “She’s not an ‘asset’, Norvik! She’s aperson! A sentient being! We can’t just sell her! That’s slavery! It’s monstrous!”
“Her species practices voluntary servitude, Letitia,” Norvik countered, his tone unchanged, infuriatingly reasonable. “Cultural relativism dictates?—”
“I don’t give a damn about their culture!” Letitia slammed her fist on the table, making the mugs jump. Coffee slopped over the rim of one. “Slavery is slavery! It’s wrong! Here, there,anywhere! Are we really that desperate? Are we really going to become slavers to save our own skins?”