Page 74 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone

A knot of anxious anticipation, wound tight during the jump, tightened further in Carmen’s chest, pressing against her ribs like a vice. This was it. The gatekeeper. The automated sentry that stood between them and delivering Mila home. Between survival and becoming another cloud of expanding debris.

“Norvik,” Carmen said, her cool tone cutting through the tense silence on the bridge. “Initiate the hack. Zed, feed him everything you’ve got on that bird’s protocols. Sark, keep us steady. Minimal emissions. We’re a freaking ghost.”

“Acknowledged, Captain,” Norvik replied, his tone as unnervingly calm as ever.

He swiveled his chair towards his comm station, his blue fingers already flying across the interface. The Collectivist’s impassive face showed no hint of the stakes. Just another variable to manipulate.

“Transmitting,” he reported. “Schema cross-referenced with known UPA perimeter defense protocols. Initiating primary intrusion vector.”

Carmen’s knuckles whitened on the armrests of her command chair. She forced her breathing to stay even. In. Out.

Control. It was all about control. Control the ship. Control the situation. Control the impossible odds.

On the viewscreen, a thin, almost invisible beam of coherent light lanced out from theAntillestowards the distant satellite. The hack. A digital probe seeking a chink in the fortress’s armor.Silence descended, thick and heavy, broken only by the frantic clicking of Norvik’s console.

Each tick of the chronometer on the console felt like a hammer blow. Sark fidgeted in his pilot’s seat, his orange skin looking sallow under the bridge lights. Letitia stood rigid near the now-useless weapons console, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her dark eyes fixed on the viewscreen, radiating a tension that mirrored Carmen’s own. The unspoken fracture from Carmen’s defense of Mila hung between them, a cold wall neither had breached.

“Status, Norvik?” Carmen demanded, the words snapping out.

“Encryption layers are formidable,” Norvik replied, his voice still infuriatingly level. His yellow pupils flickered as he scanned scrolling data. “Secondary counter-intrusion protocols activated. Zed is deploying adaptive decryption algorithms. Processing.” He paused, a micro-frown briefly touching his blue features. “Resistance is unexpected. Exceeding Collective predictive models.”

“Intrusion attempt repelled,” Zed announced abruptly. The beam on the viewscreen winked out. “Security subsystem Gamma activated. Firewall integrity at 98.7%. Adaptive countermeasures detected.”

“Mierda,” Carmen hissed under her breath. The knot in her chest tightened another notch. “Again. Try the secondary vector Zed identified. The backdoor protocol.”

“Executing secondary intrusion vector,” Norvik confirmed. Another beam lanced out, subtly different in frequency. The wait resumed, even more oppressive than before.

Carmen’s mind raced. Eleven-point-four percent. Had she gambled everything – the ship, the crew, their last shred of defense – on a number lower than a crapshoot? For what? A moral stance that felt increasingly like a millstone?

She glanced at Letitia. The weapons officer met her gaze for a fraction of a second, her expression unreadable, before looking back at the screen. No support there. Only Sark’s fearful eyes briefly met hers, full of unspoken questions she couldn’t answer. Norvik might as well have been carved from ice. The isolation she’d felt after the containment argument settled over her again, colder than the void outside.

“Secondary vector failure,” Zed reported. “Countermeasures deployed with increased efficiency. Probability of successful remote intrusion recalculated: 0.03%.”

“Damn it!” Carmen slammed her fist down on the armrest. The sharp crack echoed in the tense silence. “What’s the block? Why can’t we punch through?”

Norvik swiveled his chair fully to face her. For the first time, his usually impassive expression held a flicker of something resembling frustration.

“The satellite possesses a military-grade comms shield, Captain. It’s not just encryption. It’s a physical barrier. Our transmission beams are being scattered, absorbed. We cannot establish a stable data link sufficient for intrusion. Remote access is impossible.”

The words sliced through her like laser beams. Impossible. The hope she’d been desperately hoarding – the fragile belief that Zed’s brilliance and Norvik’s cold logic could find a way – turned to bile in her mouth. Anxious anticipation curdled into a cold, sinking dread that pooled in her stomach, heavy and nauseating. They were stuck. Trapped between a kill-sat and the vast, unknown dangers of the Forbidden Zone. Sitting ducks with a drive that could blow any second.

Options? They had none. Turn back? To what? The void? Or straight into the waiting guns of COPS patrols, Velasco’s hunters, or opportunistic pirates?

But staying here was death. That satellite would detect their UPA chip signature eventually. Passive sensors or not, it was designed to find intruders.

“Anyone got a solution?” she said, trying to keep the defeat from her tone.

“Yes,” Norvik said. “Though the risk factor is incredibly high.”

For moment, she stared at him in stunned amazement. He’d opposed her so hard throughout this insane mission. Now, he had a suggestion? That was high-risk?

“I’m all ears,” Carmen said.

“The code cannot be beamed to the satellite,” he said, “but it could theoretically be input manually.”

Utter silence engulfed the bridge. Everyone gaped at Norvik. Carmen struggled to get her mind around what he was saying. She didn’t know what was crazier – the idea or that it was Norvik who suggested it.

“What?” Letitia said, giving voice to what everyone thought. “How?”