Page 29 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone

Maltese blinked, confusion momentarily overriding the terror.

“She? Who? Corso, I have a lot of?—”

“The Xena!” He slammed a fist down on the steel surface. “Where. Is. She?”

Understanding dawned slowly on Maltese’s face, followed by a flicker of something else – not guilt, not yet, but dawning horror. He swallowed, a thick, audible gulp.

“Corso, she was loaded onto your ship. Are you telling me you lost her?”

For a moment, Nick’s eyes flared. Then he started laughing.

“Ilost her?” he said with a guffaw. “You hear that, James? Apparently,Ilost her.”

Fear jumped off Maltese in thick waves. The greasy bastard reeked of it.

“Listen, Corso, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he whined. “I hired you for this job, because you’re the best. My people put the containment unit aboard your ship.”

“NO, THEY DID NOT!” he screamed. He was sick of playing games with this slimy bottom-feeder. “If your people had put the containment unit aboard my ship, it would have been in the cargo bay when I went to inspect iten routeto Babcinq. Instead, there was a different shipping container there, one that was not on my manifest. Would you like to know what was in that container, Maltese?”

The fat fixer’s face had gone pale. Sweat streamed down his temples and onto his bloated cheeks.

“What?” Maltese managed.

“Coffee!”

Maltese’s eyes went wide and what little color was left in his face drained away. Nick threw him his cruelest smile.

“I’ll give you credit, Maltese,” he drawled. “As far as double-crosses go, this one is epic. I don’t know who paid you to do this, but they are clearly Grade-A Stupid or have balls the size of planetoids. But whichever it is, you made the worst mistake of your life thinking their money could buy you out of trouble.”

“Oh, no,” Maltese mumbled. “Oh, hell, no.”

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen here, you fat fuck,” Nick spat. “You’re going to tell me where my package is and how to get it back. Otherwise, my first mate is going to introduce you to her plasma-cutter weight-loss program.”

For a moment, Maltese directed his attention to James. She smiled wickedly and gestured with the plasma cutter. But then he returned his gaze to Nick.

“Corso,” he babbled, “it’s so much worse than you know. It’s the most colossal fuckup in the history of the galaxy.”

“You’re damned right it is. Fix it if you want to live to write the history book.”

“The coffee wasn’t supposed to go to your ship?—”

“No shit, Maltese! Tell me something I don’t know – like where the fucking Xena is.”

“Corso, the coffee … it was supposed to be loaded onto … ontoAntilles.”

His gaze went distant, inward. The pieces clicked together in his mind with almost audible force. The confusion vanished, replaced by pure, unadulterated dread.

“Oh, fuck me sideways,” he swore. “You were berthed right next to her in the adjacent bay. The dock manager must have mixed up the numbers for the shipments.

Nick straightened, the cold fury inside him crystallizing into something sharper, deadlier. This couldn’t be.

“Díaz?” he said, pronouncing the hated woman’s name like a curse. “Carmen Díazhas my Xena?”

Maltese nodded, his jowls quivering.

“The manifests ... the dock codes ... they must have gotten swapped,” he blathered. “The crews loaded the wrong containers onto the wrong ships. Standard procedure mix-up, happens sometimes with rushed jobs....” He trailed off, seeing the murder in Corso’s eyes. “An honest mistake! A fuckup by the dock chief! I’ll have his balls for this, Corso, I swear! I’ll?—”

“Shut up.”