Page 36 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone
Before Carmen could decipher it, before Mila could respond, the ship’s comm crackled to life above the mess hall hatch. Letitia’s voice, usually so controlled, was sharp, tight with alarm.
“Captain! Bridge!”
The urgency in those two words cut through the charged atmosphere like a scalpel. Carmen’s head snapped towards the comm speaker, her captain’s instincts overriding everything else.
“Díaz here. Report.”
“Passive sensors just lit up like a supernova! Incoming vessel, bearing three-two-seven mark zero-one-five! Closing fast! No transponder signal, no comms hail!”
Cold dread washed over Carmen, instantly dousing the heat of her anger. Pirates. Or worse. Velasco’s hunters. The timing was too perfect.
“Raise the shields!” she barked. “Everyone get to the bridge! Now!”
Sark had already disappeared through the hatch. The rest of them made a run for it.
But they’d barely made it to the corridor when theAntillesbucked violently beneath her feet. The deck plates heaved like a living thing. Carmen staggered, thrown sideways.
A deafening CRUMPH reverberated through the hull, a sound felt in the bones more than heard.
The lights flickered wildly, plunging the ship into strobing darkness before surging back, casting frantic, jumping shadows. Alarms began to wail – a harsh, pulsing klaxon that drilled into the skull, accompanied by the frantic bleating of proximity alerts from the bridge comm.
They’d been hit.
CHAPTER 13
The klaxons screamed,a physical assault on Carmen’s ears that drilled straight into her skull. Red emergency lights pulsed, casting the cramped bridge in a hellish, strobing glare. The deck bucked violently beneath her boots as she stumbled through the hatch, the sickening lurch of artificial gravity struggling to compensate.
“Report!” Carmen barked, lunging for the command chair. Her fingers dug into the armrests as another impact shuddered through the hull – a glancing blow this time, followed by the high-pitched whine of stressed metal. The main viewscreen flickered, showing a chaotic starfield spinning wildly before resolving into the predatory shape of the attacking ship.
“Shields at twelve percent and dropping!” Letitia shouted from the weapons console, her fingers flying over the flickering controls. Sweat plastered her dark braids to her temples. “That first hit took out the starboard emitter array! Point-defense turret Beta is slagged, Alpha’s tracking is glitching – hit probability below twenty percent!”
“Evasive pattern Gamma-Seven, Sark!” Carmen ordered, her voice cutting through the din. “Norvik, jam their targeting,anything you’ve got! Letitia, focus fire on their engines if you get a lock, but conserve power! We need those shields!”
“Trying, Cap!” Sark’s voice was tight, strained, but his hands moved with practiced speed over the helm controls.
TheAntillesgroaned, her thrusters firing hard, throwing Carmen sideways in her chair as the ship yawed violently. Outside, a torrent of plasma fire streaked past the viewscreen, close enough to light up the bridge with its sickly green glow.
“They’re fast! Too damned fast!” Sark cried. “And they know what they’re doing – boxing us in against the gas giant’s gravity well!”
Carmen’s mind raced, options flickering and dying like sparks. Gravity well. Limited maneuverability. Shields failing. Weapons crippled.Mierda.They were fish in a barrel.
She scanned the tactical display on her armrest console. The pirate ship – sleek, angular, probably a modified blockade runner – was executing textbook attack vectors. Professional. Ruthless. They weren’t just harassing; they were going for full incapacitation.
“Zed!” Carmen snapped into the comm. “Status! Can you reroute power from non-essentials to shields? Life support to minimal!”
“Affirmative, Captain,” Zed replied instantly, calm amidst the bedlam. “Diverting auxiliary power from environmental systems, crew quarters, and recreational modules. Shields stabilizing at 10.7%.
“Warning: structural integrity field in cargo bay three is fluctuating. Microfracture propagation risk increasing under sustained stress.”
Ten percent. It was nothing. A stiff breeze would punch through.
“Understood. Do it. Sark, keep us dancing! Norvik, anything?”
“Jamming protocols ineffective,” he reported. “Their countermeasures are advanced. Passive sensors detect energy buildup in their forward weapons array. Estimated time to firing solution: twelve seconds.”
Twelve seconds. Carmen’s knuckles were white on the armrests. They needed a miracle. Or a damned good distraction. Her gaze swept the bridge again, landing on Mila. The XenX woman wasn’t cowering. She was studying the main engineering schematic Zed had patched to a secondary screen – the flickering, complex web of theAntilles’s failing systems.
“Captain,” she said, her voice surprisingly clear and calm, cutting through the klaxons and Sark’s muttered curses. She pointed a clawed finger at the schematic. “Their ship. The configuration resembles a modified Kestrel-class blockade runner, yes?”