Page 79 of Journey to the Forbidden Zone

CHAPTER 30

Carmen crouchedin the cramped access tube in Engineering, her aching shoulder jammed against a coolant conduit vibrating with the ship’s wounded heartbeat. Grease smeared her tank top, her knuckles were raw from wrestling stubborn access panels, and the pervasive, cloying sweetness of Mila’s pheromones hung thick in the air, a constant, unwelcome caress against her skin. It wormed its way past her defenses, a low purr of arousal beneath the gnawing dread that had settled like lead in her gut.

“Captain, reroute the primary power conduit from Junction Delta-9 to the auxiliary coupling,” Mila’s calm voice came from inches away.

She was wedged opposite Carmen in the narrow tube, her eyes luminous in the dim work-light, focused intently on a nest of multicolored cables she was untangling. Her furred arm brushed against Carmen’s as she worked, a fleeting touch that sent a jolt of unwelcome heat straight down Carmen’s spine.

“The original pathway is wired for Zed’s direct neural interface,” she said. “We need a physical bypass.”

“Right. Delta-9 to auxiliary,” Carmen grunted, forcing her attention onto the spaghetti junction of wires in front of her. Herfingers, slick with sweat despite the bay’s chill, fumbled with the heavy-duty connector. “This whole fucking setup is a monument to Zed’s efficiency. Not exactly user-friendly for organics.”

“Efficiency often sacrifices accessibility,” Mila agreed softly. Her clawed fingers moved with unnerving precision, stripping insulation and splicing wires. “But necessity breeds adaptation. The auxiliary coupling here—” She indicated a heavy socket recessed into the bulkhead. “—requires a manual hardline jack. The one you’re holding.”

Carmen shoved the thick connector into the socket. It clicked home with satisfying finality.

“Done. Now what?”

“Initiate the power transfer sequence from the secondary console,” Mila instructed, nodding towards the small, flickering screen embedded in the tube wall nearby. “Authorization code Zed provided. Then monitor the thermal bleed-off. We don’t want to overload the junction.”

Carmen punched in the complex string of characters Zed had drilled into her. The screen flickered, then displayed scrolling lines of status reports. Power levels climbed. She watched the thermal readout like a hawk, her jaw clenched. Every spike felt like a premonition of disaster.

She turned her head, meeting Mila’s steady green gaze. The proximity was unbearable. The scent, the warmth radiating from her furred body, the quiet intensity in those eyes – it all pushed against the walls Carmen had spent a lifetime building.

Mila didn’t flinch. Her gaze held Carmen’s, deep and knowing.

“We’re done here,” she said, her voice soft, lilting. “Why don’t you climb out and test the control board? I’ll close up the access panel.”

She didn’t want to. She wanted to keep staring into those mesmerizing, green eyes. She wanted to drink in the scent of her, let it sweep her away from all this chaos, all this responsibility.

But she couldn’t. Too many people depended on her. And that was always the way. Carmen Díaz took care of everyone else. No one took care of her.

With a heavy sigh, she forced herself to break the spell and climb out of the tube. Outside, the air was cooler. Mila’s scent still hung in the air, but it wasn’t as immediate, didn’t fill her mind and strip away every coherent, mission-focused thought. Here, it was grease and engine oil – familiar, comforting, safe.

She wandered over to the control board. They’d had to reinstall it; Zed had ripped it out long ago and replaced it with interface ports and wireless transceivers.

It hung at an imperfect angle. Carmen hadn’t been able to get it back into the housing properly. Mila had told her it was fine as long as it functioned, but Carmen’s need for control, her zero-tolerance for anything out of order, grated at the sight of thing.

“Control what you can, Carmen,” she said with a deep breath. Then she called to Mila, “Ready?”

“Yes, go ahead and switch it on.”

Carmen pressed the red power button and held her breath as she watched the boot. Lines of code ran across the display screen, interspersed periodically with words like, “Initiating …”, “Connecting …”, “Scanning …”, and more. At last, the readout spit out the words:

Interface complete. Enter passcode to initiate control access….

“All right, we’re online,” she called.

“Great,” Mila replied. “I’ll be right out.”

Carmen stood back and tried not to think about what they were about to do. She was going to send her most valuable crewmember on a suicide spacewalk. Even if he was successful, she wasn’t entirely sure how they were going to recover him.

And meanwhile, she and Mila were making their broke-ass shiplessefficient. No matter how good Mila or Carmen were at starship engineering, they weren’t as fast or as knowledgeable as Zed.

The stress of the situation threatened to break Carmen in half. No one wanted this mission. The whole crew objected to it on some level – even Letitia, whose idea it had been in the first place. She may have wanted to rescue Mila, but she was convinced Carmen was doing it all wrong, drunk on their Xena refugee’s pheromones.

And wasn’t she? She wanted things she couldn’t have, thought about things she could never seriously consider.

Stop being distracted. Control yourself.