Page 62 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone
Sark slumped forward, resting his forehead on the table. Letitia stopped pacing, leaning her head back against the bulkhead, staring at the ceiling as if it could offer answers. Norvik simply waited, his expression unreadable. Zed’s damaged arm sparked again, a small, futile protest in the gloom.
“Captain,” Mila said, her voice, still soft, cutting through the suffocating quiet like a laser.
Carmen opened her eyes. Mila was looking directly at the camera, her gaze steady, focused. That intense, analytical look was back. The one Carmen had seen in Engineering when she diagnosed the thruster failure. The one that had saved them from the pirates.
“Yes, Mila?”
Carmen kept her voice level, wary. Hope was a dangerous thing out here.
“The parts Zed listed,” Mila said, her clawed fingers tracing invisible schematics on the surface before her. “The high-temp superconducting cabling and the additional plasma-flow regulators are not entirely absent from the ship.”
Carmen straightened, pushing off the bulkhead.
“Where? Spares locker Gamma is empty. We checked Beta and Delta after the thruster job. Nothing.”
Mila’s green eyes met Carmen’s through the screen. There was no triumph in them, only calm certainty, and perhaps a flicker of reluctance.
“They are not in the spares lockers, Captain. They are installed in active systems.”
Carmen frowned.
“Active systems?” she asked. “Which systems?”
A cold prickle of dread started down her spine. She knew. Some part of her knew before Mila even spoke the words.
Mila took a breath, her chest rising slightly. Her gaze didn’t waver.
“The point-defense turrets,” she answered. “Their power distribution networks utilize identical high-temp superconducting cabling to handle the rapid energy discharge cycles. Each turret housing contains two redundant plasma flow regulators of the exact specification required. And the capacitorbanks feeding their rapid-fire sequences are operated by cabling sufficient to withstand the heat of the jump-drive.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Deafening. Sark slowly lifted his head from the table, his eyes wide with dawning horror. Letitia froze, her head snapping down to stare at the comm screen. Norvik’s impassive mask cracked for a microsecond, a flicker of something like disbelief crossing his blue features. Even Zed’s sparking arm stilled.
Carmen felt the blood drain from her face. The cold dread solidified into a block of ice in her gut.
The weapons. She was talking about cannibalizing theirweapons. Their only defense against pirates, against COPS patrols they might miraculously stumble across, against anything.
“You’re joking,” Letitia breathed, her voice barely audible. She took a step towards the screen. “Tell me you’re fucking joking, Mila.”
She shook her head slowly.
“I am not,” she replied. “The specifications match precisely. The cabling runs from the main reactor conduit through Junction Sigma-9 directly into the turret housings. The regulators are mounted internally on the dorsal aspect of each turret base. The capacitors are housed in armored compartments beneath the firing mechanisms. Access is challenging but feasible with Zed’s assistance.”
“Feasible?” Letitia’s voice rose, sharp with disbelief and rising anger. “You want us to rip out ourguns? Our shields are already fried! You take the point-defense, and we’re a fucking sitting duck! A blind, toothless duck, floating in the worst neighborhood in the galaxy!”
“She’s right!” Sark said, finding his voice, high-pitched with panic. “Without the turrets, if anyone finds us, even a garbagescow could pick us apart! We’d be space dust before we knew what hit us!”
Norvik steepled his fingers again, his black eyes calculating.
“The proposal presents a significant tactical disadvantage,” he conceded, his tone neutral. “However, the alternative is a one-hundred percent probability of death within a finite timeframe, preceded by significant degradation in crew cohesion and functionality. The weapons offer no survival utility if we cannot travel to a habitable system. Mila’s solution provides a non-zero probability of encountering resources or assistance before life-support exhaustion.”
“Non-zero?” Letitia scoffed. “It’s practically zero! We’re talking about jumping to the Forbidden Zone! Anyone we encounter is either a smuggler or the COPS trying to catch them. We’d be dead.”
“That presumes we will encounter traffic at the perimeter,” Norvik countered. “If the captain’s plan works as designed, we will arrive at the frontier, hack the security satellite, and continue on without being detected.”
“If,” Letitia spat. “Ifthe plan goes according to design.IfZed can hack the kill-sat.Ifwe’re not detected. That’s a hell of a lot of if’s you’re counting on. What do you suppose the odds of all them coming true are?”
“The alternative is zero, Letitia,” Carmen said, her own voice sounding strangely calm in her ears.
The ice in her gut was spreading, but it was a clear kind of chill. The cold of no-choice.