Page 52 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone
Mila absorbed the data. Twenty-one-point three percent. A low probability – barely better than one chance in five. Yet, she hadn’t considered it. Her focus had been on survival, on adapting, on finding a way to be useful within this unexpected confinement aboard theAntilles. She hadn’t paused to explain her fundamental biology, any more than she would have explained the function of her lungs. The oversight felt colossal now. Catastrophic.
“How do I fix this, Zed?”
The plea slipped out, raw and unfiltered. She wrapped her arms around herself, an unconscious gesture seeking comfort her own body couldn’t provide. The warmth of the engine bay felt suddenly oppressive.
“How do I make her understand? How do I regain her trust?”
She thought of the captain’s intensity, the fierce protectiveness warring with the rigid control, the unexpected vulnerability she’d glimpsed beneath her sharp exterior. She wanted, no,neededCarmen Díaz to seeher. Not the Harimi. Not the contraband. Not the walking bio-contaminant. Just Mila. The being who respected her, who admired her strength, who felt something complicated and warm unfurling in her chest whenever the captain was near.
Zed’s telescopic neck extended slightly, bringing his primary camera cluster closer to her face.
“Trust is an organic social construct based on perceived reliability, integrity, and benevolence,” he stated. “Its restoration typically requires consistent demonstration of non-threatening behavior, adherence to agreements, and actions thatalign with the aggrieved party’s values or benefit their well-being. Time is also a statistically significant factor.”
Mila blinked. Non-threatening behavior. Adherence to agreements. Actions benefiting the captain. Time. It was a logical framework, cold and precise.
But it felt utterly inadequate for the chasm that had opened between her and Carmen Díaz. How did one demonstrate non-threatening behavior when one’s very presence was now deemed a threat? How did one adhere to agreements when confined to an engine bay? How did Mila act for Carmen’s benefit when she wanted nothing more than her absence?
“The captain values the ship,” Mila murmured, thinking aloud, her gaze drifting over the humming consoles, the exposed conduits, the flickering schematic still displayed on the main engineering screen. The successful thruster reroute, her handiwork, was now overshadowed by betrayal. “She values the crew’s survival. She values control.”
Carmen’s need for command, the way she gripped the arms of her chair, the sharpness of her orders, was a fundamental part of her. And Mila’s biology had stolen that control from her. Violated it.
“Perhaps …” Mila turned, her eyes fixing on the access panel she’d recently crawled out of. “Perhaps I can still be useful. Here. With the ship.”
She walked towards the main console, her steps regaining some of their purposeful grace. She called up the full damage assessment schematic Zed had compiled. The crippled thrusters now reading thirty-nine-percent efficiency, the fractured shields, the damaged point-defense turrets. The microfractures spiderwebbing through the ship’s frame. The unstable jump-drive in Sector Theta-7.
So many vulnerabilities. So many ways for everything Carmen Díaz cared about to be shattered.
“She gambled everything to bring me here,” Mila whispered, tracing a claw tip over the schematic representation of the hyperspace drive core. “Against logic. Against the crew’s advice. Because she believed it wasright.”
The memory of the captain’s defiant declaration on the bridge –Trafficking sentient beings is wrong.– resonated deeply. It was a moral stance Mila didn’t fully understand, rooted in a concept of freedom alien to her own society. But the sheer conviction behind it, the willingness to risk everything for a principle had stirred something profound within her. It was the opposite of the brutal authoritarianism of the Kovoids, the transactional nature of her Harimi existence. It was beautiful.
And she believed Mila had manipulated her into that stance, that the conviction wasn’t truly hers.
The thought crushed her. She leaned against the console, the cool metal a counterpoint to the heat of shame and frustration rising in her chest.
“Probability of Captain Díaz’s decision being solely influenced by XenX emotive effectors is calculable but requires complex behavioral modeling beyond current parameters,” Zed offered, perhaps misinterpreting her silence. “Her established ethical framework, prior decision-making patterns under stress, and documented aversion to exploitation suggest a significant probability of independent moral agency.”
Mila looked at him.
“You think her choice, taking me home, might have been her own? Truly?”
“Affirmative. Estimated probability: 68.7%. The pheromonal influence likely amplified pre-existing protective urges and suppressed secondary concerns regarding risk assessment, but the core ethical imperative appears consistent with her behavioral profile.”
Sixty-eight-point-seven percent. Not certainty, but a strong likelihood. The captain’s anger, then, wasn’t just about the violation of her body’s responses, but also the violation of her mind – the fear that her deepest convictions, her most fiercely held sense of right and wrong, had been hijacked. The betrayal cut deeper than Mila had initially grasped.
She straightened, a new resolve hardening within her. She couldn’t undo the biology. She couldn’t erase the compounds saturating the ship’s air. But she could honor the choice Captain Díaz had likely madedespitethe influence, not because of it. She could make that gamble worthwhile.
She could ensure theAntillessurvived to reach the Forbidden Zone.
“Show me the sub-light thruster diagnostics again, Zed,” she said, her voice firmer now. “The portside cluster is stable at thirty-nine percent, but the starboard cluster is still fused. There must be a way to bypass the damaged control conduits entirely, perhaps reroute through the secondary power grid used for the docking thrusters.”
Her mind began to map pathways, tracing energy flows on the schematic, her innate engineering focus providing a welcome anchor in the emotional storm. This was a problem she could solve. A system she could fix.
“Rerouting starboard thruster control through the docking auxiliary grid presents a 27.4% risk of feedback into the primary life support atmospheric processors during high-power maneuvers,” Zed reported, highlighting the potential route on the schematic. “Additionally, the docking thrusters utilize a lower voltage standard. Sustained operation of the main thrusters via this pathway would require a step-up transformer we do not possess.”
Mila studied the highlighted path, her claws tapping rhythmically against the console edge.
“Life support feedback is unacceptable,” she said. “What if we isolated the reroute with a double-buffer capacitor array? The logs I read said we salvaged several high-capacity units from that derelict freighter near Alora. Zed, confirm inventory.”