Page 58 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone
Pheromones,she told herself fiercely.Just pheromones.
But the order that came out of her mouth felt like a leap into the void.
“Zed,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Start working on the hack. Find a vulnerability. Build whatever algorithm you need. Use every scrap of processing power we’ve got not keeping us alive. You have sixteen hours.”
“Acknowledged, Captain,” Zed responded instantly. “Task initiated. Allocating non-essential computational resources to satellite-intrusion-protocol development.”
Mila’s ears twitched. Her lips parted slightly, as if she might speak, but then closed. Her gaze held Carmen’s for a heartbeat longer, filled with something complex and unreadable, before she gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.
Carmen turned away from the screen, from those green eyes, before the confusing mix of respect, longing, and sheer, stupid terror could show on her face. She looked at her crew – her family, her responsibility.
“Dismissed,” she said, the word feeling like a viper in her mouth. “Get some rest. It’s going to be a long run to the perimeter.”
As the others filed out, Sark casting nervous glances back, Norvik collecting his data pad with methodical calm, Letitia lingering for a moment with a worried frown, Carmen remained standing by the table. The comm screen went dark, plunging that corner of the mess hall into shadow. The silence rushed back in, thick and heavy.
Alone, the question echoed louder, pounding in time with her heartbeat:
Why? Why are you risking everything for her?
She had no answer.
CHAPTER 22
Carmen sat slumpedat the small, bolted-down desk in her quarters, her elbows digging into the cold metal surface, fingers buried in the dark tangles of her hair. She’d scrubbed the bunk frame, the deck plating around it, even the ventilation grille above. She’d run the air recyclers on maximum-purge three times.
But the smell persisted – a warm, musky sweetness that clung to everything, insidious and inescapable. It was in the fabric of her thin pillow, woven into the rough fabric of the blanket, a phantom presence that invaded her nostrils, her lungs, her thoughts.
It was the smell of the engine bay after the thruster repair. The smell of Mila leaning close, green eyes focused, claws deftly manipulating the micro plasma cutter. The smell that had filled the space between them in that charged, breathless moment before Letitia shattered it.
Pheromones.Zed’s cold, precise voice echoed in her memory.Class-4 bio-contaminant.
Carmen squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her palms harder against her temples. But Letitia’s fury couldn’t be drowned out.
It’s not real, Carmen!
The accusation felt flimsy, worn thin. The heat that flared low in her belly when the scent hit her, the involuntary clench of muscles, the way her gaze kept drifting towards the sealed hatch as if expecting Mila to walk through it, was that just chemistry? A biological trick? Or was it something else, something deeper and more terrifying that had taken root despite the poison in the air?
She opened her eyes, staring blankly at the schematics flickering on her desktop screen – theAntilles’s compromised jump-drive, the unstable Sector Theta-7 highlighted in pulsing red. According to Zed, they had barely better than a coin toss to reach the perimeter. And then what? An eleven-point-four percent chance of hacking the kill-sats? Those weren’t odds. They were a death warrant signed in her own stubborn handwriting.
Guilt, cold and heavy, settled in her gut like ballast. She’d gambled everything. Sark’s nervous terror, Norvik’s cold logic, Letitia’s fierce moral outrage, steamrolled over them all. Just like before.
The musk in the air shifted, triggering a memory, sharp and unwelcome. Not Mila. Different. Older.
The air aboardThe Buccaneerhad always carried a faint, greasy tang of lubricant and stale sweat. But today, standing near the starboard sensor array access, it smelled … tense. Charged. Like ozone before a storm.
Sark was there, his orange skin flushed a deeper shade beneath the harsh bridge lights, the red fin on his head twitching nervously. His webbed fingers plucked at the seam of his jumpsuit sleeve.
“Ms. Díaz?” Sark pitched his voice low to avoid carrying across the busy bridge. “A moment? It’s … it’s about Corso.”
Carmen barely glanced up from the engineering console display.
“Make it quick, Sark. We’ve got that ore run to Epsilon Four, and Captain W’Ooshlee wants us prepped yesterday.”
“I know, Captain, I know. It’s just …” Sark had swallowed, his throat working. “He’s been gathering people. Late at night. In the lower cargo bay. Brask, Voss, that new navigator, James. They talk low. Stop when anyone else comes near.”
He leaned closer and dropped his voice to a whisper.
“Ma’am, you know he’s always saying Captain W’Ooshlee is too soft. He’s always saying we need to go for bigger prizes, to become pirates instead of smugglers.”