Page 67 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone
“Refusing this solution is selfish. It prioritizes Captain Díaz’s subjective moral discomfort over the objective survival needs of the group.” He tilted his head slightly, a gesture that somehowmanaged to convey cold analysis. “It suggests impairment. Emotional or chemical. Or both.”
The accusation hung in the air, colder than the vacuum outside. Letitia felt a fresh wave of that treacherous heat, mixed now with a chill of dread. She’d been the one to push the pheromone revelation. She’d confronted Carmen, forced the quarantine. Had she made it worse? Had she cemented the crew’s suspicion that Carmen wasn’t thinking straight? That she was compromised?
She thought of Carmen in the mess hall, making the call to strip the turrets. The flat, final tone. The exhaustion etched around her eyes. The way she’d taken the blame, shouldered it all. It hadn’t felt like impairment. It had felt like despair. Like the grim acceptance of a captain with no good choices left.
But what if Norvik was right? What if the pheromones, the stress, were all twisting Carmen’s judgment? Making her see Mila not as a liability, but as something worth sacrificing everything for? Even her crew?
“Look, we can’t blame Carmen for all of this,” she said. “I’m the one who convinced her. She might’ve decided to save Mila anyway. She probably would have.
“But she was at leastconsideringselling her, Norvik. She understood exactly what Mila represented – the solution to all our financial problems.
“And, Sark, by the time we knew about the pheromones, it was too late to change course. Carmen was right when she said the encounter with that pirate ship forced our hand. We can’t defend ourselves from anyone who wants to take her from us by force. Even if we weren’t stripping the weapons.”
Neither of the men said anything for a moment. Sark didn’t look at her, his gaze locked on the deck as if the answers to their predicament were written there. Norvik simply watched her.
“Tell me something, Letitia,” Sark said, still examining the floor “Let’s say we pull this off. We fix the jump-drive, make it to the UPA frontier, hack the kill-sat, and sail smoothly to the XenX home world. Then what?”
He looked up at last, drilled her with his brown-eyed gaze.
“You really think Cap is going to let her go? You believe she’s just going to turn Mila over to her people? With the way shelooksat her?”
Letitia tried to answer, tried to tell him they needed to trust Carmen. But she had no idea what to say that he would believe. She had no idea whatshewould believe.
“Just get the parts,” she said, her voice suddenly tired.
The fight had drained out of her, replaced by a hollow ache. She pointed at the schematic.
“Sark, Norvik’s right about the junction. It’s tighter access, but the cabling comes out cleaner. Get back up there. Start with the dorsal regulators on Alpha. They’re easier to reach. Use the micro-grippers and the thermal shunt to disconnect the feed lines. Be careful – that plasma is nasty stuff if it leaks.”
Sark stared at her for a moment, his mouth working silently. The fear in his eyes hadn’t lessened, but the frantic energy had banked, replaced by a kind of sullen resignation. He nodded mutely and hauled himself back onto the scaffold, reaching for the tools Norvik handed up. The Collectivist watched him for a moment, then turned his unnerving gaze back to Letitia.
“Your loyalty to Captain Díaz is noted. And statistically anomalous given the circumstances. Loyalty is a useful crew dynamic until it becomes a liability. Blind adherence to impaired command endangers the collective.”
Letitia flinched.
“It’s not blind,” she snapped, but the words lacked conviction.
Was it? She believed in Carmen. She always had. The fierce, stubborn woman who’d carved out a life for them in the Belt’s underbelly, who’d fought for every credit, protected her crew with a ferocity that bordered on reckless.
But this? This felt different. Like Carmen was fighting for something else entirely. Something personal.
Grief washed through her. Forget the ethics. Forget the pheromones. Carmen might want to fuck Mila, but that wasn’t what this was about. The look in the captain’s big, brown eyes wasn’t hunger like Sark had suggested.
It was love.
Letitia blinked away tears. She watched Sark wrestle with the first regulator housing on Turret Alpha. His movements were hesitant, clumsy with fear and resentment. Norvik stood below, a silent, judgmental presence, handing up tools with robotic precision. The rhythmic clank of metal on metal, the hiss of releasing pressure seals, filled the pod.
Unwanted, she caught a whiff of warm fur, of cloying sweetness. She closed her eyes, taking a slow breath. Behind her eyelids, unwanted images flickered: Mila’s calm expression, the sleek curve of her back, the way her tail twitched slightly when she was concentrating. A jolt of pure, unwelcome arousal shot through her, sharp and distracting. She gritted her teeth, forcing it down.
Chemistry. Just fucking chemistry.
But the jealousy remained, hotter than before. It coiled in her stomach like a fiery serpent and bred doubt. Sark’s fear. Norvik’s group priorities. The pervasive, maddening scent that seemed to cloud everything.
And the memory of Carmen’s haunted eyes.
CHAPTER 26
The access tubewasn’t built for two. Especially not when one of them was Carmen, who liked her personal space like she liked her control – absolute and uncompromised. The curved metal walls pressed in, cold against her back. The air was stale, recycled one too many times, thick with the sharp tang of ozone bleeding from the jury-rigged power conduits snaking along the ceiling and the greasy scent of lubricant from the disassembled jump-drive components scattered around them.