Page 78 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone

“Yes, yes, okay,” he said. “I know the shipment you mean.”

“Where is it?”

Maltese whimpered, but he didn’t answer. He seemed to be regressing fully to childhood. Julear sighed. Vek extended his arm and took aim again.

“Okay! Okay!” Maltese blubbered. “It’s gone! It was loaded wrong! Went onto the wrong fucking ship!”

“I am aware of the mistake made at the loading dock,” Julear said. “If I weren’t, I would have no need to speak with you. I want to know where the package went instead of where it belonged.”

“How should I?—”

Vek shot him again, this time in the elbow on the other arm. Julear nodded approvingly at his subordinate’s marksmanship as Maltese howled.

“TheAntilles!” the fat man wailed. “That Díaz bitch’s rust bucket! The loader screwed up the manifests! The Xena went on theAntilles; the coffee went to Corso! I tried to fix it, but Corso showed up, went ballistic, wrecked my damned door....”

Julear processed the information.Antilles. Captain Díaz. Excellent. It would be easy to draw up all the necessary intel. But he wasn’t done with Maltese yet.

“And this Díaz, where is she taking the shipment?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Maltese whined, squirming in his seat. “She’s a bleeding-heart! A fucking liability! Always was! Thinks she’s got morals! Probably tried to ‘rescue’ the damn thing! Or sell it herself! She’s desperate enough!”

Rescue.

The word landed with cold clarity in Julear’s mind. A captain with misplaced morals. A desperate crew. A highly valuable, illegal asset. The logical endpoint was obvious.

“The Forbidden Zone,” Julear said. “She would attempt to return it.”

Maltese blinked, then a harsh, wheezing laugh escaped him, tinged with hysteria.

“Return it? To the fucking Kovoids? Yeah, maybe! Stupid enough! Thinks she’s some kind of fucking saint! Always did! Thinks rules don’t apply to her ‘principles’!” He spat the word like a curse. “Shoulda sold it when she had the chance! Coulda fixed that wreck of hers!”

The confirmation was unnecessary. Maltese’s venomous description of Díaz’s character painted the picture clearly. A fool guided by sentiment, not survival. A predictable fool.

The XenX asset was not aboardStar Shrike. Corso had not recovered it and attempted to complete the transaction.

Instead, the target was aboardAntilles, heading towards the one place a smuggler with a conscience would take it: home. The Forbidden Zone. The net tightened.

The immediate threat assessment was complete. Maltese had served his purpose.

He nodded to Vek. Maltese knew in an instant what he meant.

“Wait! I told you what you wanted, right? We can deal! I know things! Lots of things!” Vek took aim. “Noooo!!!”

Vek shot him in the mouth, blowing a hole through the back of his head. Maltese died with a look of horrified protest plastered to his fat face.

Julear gazed on the corpse without a flicker of emotion. A problem solved. A vector eliminated.

“Clean it,” he ordered Vek, his voice unchanged. “Scorch the data cores. Leave no traces of our presence or the target’s recent comms.”

He turned towards the shattered doorway. Tarn fell into step beside him. No evidence of their presence would remain beyond two dead criminals. Alora would chalk it up to another underworld dispute. Just another day in the Belt.

“Tarn, frag that Mechan,” he ordered. “I don’t want its memory core to be able to identify us.”

“Yes, sir.”

He was already reaching into his pocket for a magno-beacon that would implant a lethal virus into the computerized lifeform’s mainframe. Soon, they would be out of here, specters slipping quietly away from a place where no one remembered faces.

Within an hour, they would be on their way to the Forbidden Zone.