3. Roma #2
Dux remains standing near the alcove entrance, half turned toward the room, as if he can monitor every patron while also interrogating me by existing nearby. “Why you?”
I frown. “That is not a useful question.”
“It is if you answer it.”
“I designed the ship.”
“Because nobody else would?”
“Because nobody else could.”
Loklo whistles softly. “Modest.”
“Accuracy is not arrogance.”
Dux’s eyes catch mine. “Sometimes it wears the same coat.”
I dislike how quickly he answers. Most large men in bars rely on intimidation because wit requires maintenance. Dux uses both, which makes him worse.
I open the compad and bring up a sealed file.
“My father specialized in adaptive systems. He believed that ships entering unstable environments should behave less like fixed architecture and more like living organisms, constantly redistributing stress, power, and thermal load. His last transmissions contained fragments of an emergency adaptation protocol that was never included in the official report.”
Loklo’s expression loses some of its play. “You have the transmission?”
“Pieces.”
“How did you get them?”
“I was twelve when he vanished,” I say. “I was not dead.”
Dux’s brow shifts. “That’s not an answer.”
“It is the answer you are getting.”
The truth is too large for this table. Too old.
Too embarrassing in its rawness. A child in bare feet outside a locked office door, listening to adults decide which lies were gentle enough to tell.
A girl with red hair and shaking hands copying restricted files while her mother cried herself sick down the hall.
Years of hiding grief inside competence because competence frightened people less than hope.
I do not tell them that.
I show them instead.
The compad projects a palm-sized component into the space above the table: a drive-ring stabilizer, rendered in precise layered detail.
Not the full assembly. Never the full assembly.
The stabilizer rotates slowly, exposing the crescent-shaped braces and braided micro-conduits that make most engineers either frown or lean closer.
Loklo leans closer.
Dux frowns.
Predictable.
“This is one of six external correction fins tied directly into the ship’s stress-response system,” I say.
“The fins alter micro-positioning during gravitational shear events before the hull experiences dangerous torque. Standard ships react after deviation. Mine anticipates the beginning of deformation and shifts load before the structure commits to failure.”
Loklo points at a cluster of conduits. “That junction is too thin.”
“It would be if it were carrying primary load.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. It carries interpretive data from the strain sensors.”
Dux tilts his head. “Interpretive?”
“The system reads stress patterns the way a medic reads muscle tension before a seizure. Not perfectly, but fast enough to matter.”
“That sounds pretty,” he says. “Pretty gets people killed.”
“Only when stupid people confuse it with sufficient.”
His mouth twitches. “You practice being insulting, or does it come free with the engineering degree?”
“I was homeschooled in disappointment.”
Loklo laughs, then catches himself. “Sorry. That was bleak as hell, but tidy.”
I flick the projection, and the alcove wall screen activates remotely from my compad.
The bar’s back systems resist for half a second, then accept my override because their security is approximately as sophisticated as a wet paper bag with delusions.
A live feed appears: an external camera view of Docking Bay Twelve, where my ship sits under maintenance lights like a folded blade.
Loklo sits upright. Dux goes still.
There she is.
My vessel is not beautiful in the decorative sense.
She is compact, dark-hulled, and narrow through the spine, with external rings folded close for dock configuration and shielding vanes tucked like layered wings along her flanks.
Her surface drinks light rather than reflecting it, broken only by pale maintenance markings and the faint blue pulse of systems running low but awake.
Around her, dock workers keep a respectful distance because even people who know nothing about engineering can sense when a machine has been built for dangerous purpose.
I feel my pulse steady at the sight of her.
“This is live?” Loklo asks.
“Yes.”
“You hacked our wall screen.”
“Yes.”
“I feel violated and impressed.”
“You should feel embarrassed. Your security protocols still use default handshake architecture from twelve years ago.”
Dux looks at him. “I told you to update the system.”
Loklo throws up both hands. “I thought you meant spiritually.”
I allow myself half a breath of amusement before closing it away. “The component I showed you is currently engaged in dockside test mode.”
I input the command.
On the screen, one of the folded fins along the ship’s flank slides outward with smooth, deliberate grace.
The movement is almost silent on the feed, but my compad transmits the diagnostic audio: a low mechanical hum, a faint hydraulic sigh, the delicate click of magnetic locks releasing in sequence.
The fin angles, splits along its inner seam, and exposes the nested micro-thruster lattice beneath.
Loklo’s mouth opens. “Well, damn.”
Dux’s eyes do not leave the screen. “How far is that dock?”
“Three levels down and two towers over.”
“You’re controlling it from here?”
“Yes.”
“Through bar security?”
“Partially through bar security.”
Loklo places a hand over his heart. “Our poor little firewall died doing what it loved: failing.”
I continue, “The point is not remote control. The point is responsiveness. That fin just executed a correction sequence based on false stress telemetry I fed it from here. It identified the pattern, redistributed simulated load, and opened the micro-thruster lattice without manual intervention.”
Dux says, “Can it tell the difference between false telemetry and the core lying to it?”
I look at him.
He is still watching the ship. No smirk now. No casual mockery. That question is not stupid.
Annoying.
“No system can always tell the difference,” I say. “That is why I remain in command.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The part where everything still depends on you being faster than disaster.”
I close the fin and terminate the feed. The wall returns to a flickering advertisement for synth-ale that probably tastes like battery acid and regret.
“Everything always depends on someone being faster than disaster,” I say. “Most people simply prefer not to notice.”
Dux steps closer to the table, and the alcove shrinks again.
“Out there, disaster doesn’t announce itself.
It doesn’t file a flight plan. You can model shear fields until your eyes bleed, but then a dead cruiser tumbles out of a blind pocket where no wreck should be, or a gravity eddy folds your nice corridor in half, or something hungry decides your clever little ship smells like lunch. ”
“I accounted for debris drift.”
“Did you account for panic?”
“Yes.”
“No, you accounted for procedure under stress. That isn’t panic.”
Loklo glances between us, the humor fading from his face. “He’s not wrong.”
I turn on him. “You have no idea what I accounted for.”
“I know people,” Loklo says quietly. “People make a mess of clean plans.”
His words land somewhere I do not want them.
My hand tightens around the compad until the edge presses through my glove.
I think of my mother refusing to look at the workshop for three months.
I think of my instructors telling me I was too young, then too intense, then too personally compromised.
I think of every person who said impossible with the same gentle tone, as if gentleness made surrender less obscene.
“I am not asking for clean,” I say. “I am asking for capable.”
Dux holds my gaze. “No. You’re asking for obedient.”
“Yes.”
“That’ll get you killed.”
“Disobedience gets crews killed.”
“Bad command gets crews killed faster.”
The words strike sparks in me. “You are not crew.”
“Not yet.”
The alcove seems to lose air.
Loklo’s eyes move to Dux. “Oh, that sounded ominous.”
“It sounded premature,” I say.
Dux smiles, but there is nothing lazy in it. “You came here for someone useful.”
“I did.”
“I’m useful.”
“You are uncontrolled.”
“Only by people who don’t know what they’re doing.”
I lean back, forcing space into the conversation by posture alone.
“You assaulted a drunk patron with the efficiency of a man swatting an insect, exposed my identity in front of a room full of opportunists, insulted my work, and are now attempting to insert yourself into a mission requiring discipline, discretion, and respect for chain of command.”
“You forgot handsome.”
“I did not forget.”
Loklo coughs into his fist. “For the record, she declined to confirm or deny.”
I ignore him. “You are precisely the kind of variable that destroys missions.”
Dux rests one hand on the back of the empty chair beside him. The wood creaks under his grip. “And you’re precisely the kind of commander who thinks the universe gives a damn about her checklist.”
I stand before I decide to. The chair legs scrape softly over the sticky floor. “My checklist is why I am still alive.”
“No,” he says, voice lower now. “Your checklist is why you made it this far. It won’t be why you come back.”
For an instant, I have no answer.
Not because he is right.
Because part of me understands the shape of what he means, and I hate him for giving it words.
I retrieve my compad and slide it into my coat. “This conversation has stopped being useful.”
Loklo rises too, more slowly. “Roma.”
I pause at the mouth of the alcove.
His voice has lost its teasing edge. “Why now?”
I look back.
He does not elaborate. He does not need to. Why after nine years. Why tonight. Why walk into this bar with a half-burned plan and too much money. Why risk exposure.
I could lie. I am good at lying when the truth is nobody’s business.
Instead, I give him a piece of it.
“Because three days ago, I found a repeating signal in a dead band near the inner drift field,” I say. “It carries my father’s old engineering checksum. Not a memory. Not a memorial beacon. An active sequence.”
Loklo exhales. “Hell.”
Dux’s face changes again, and I cannot name the expression fast enough to protect myself from noticing it.
“My launch window opens in thirty-six hours,” I continue. “After that, the corridor collapses for at least seven months. I am done waiting for other people to become brave.”
No one speaks immediately. From the main room, glass clinks, someone laughs too loudly, and the music grinds into a new verse about betrayal and black-market saints.
The ordinary ugliness of the bar flows around us as if I have not just placed the last living piece of my father on a sticky table between strangers.
Dux releases the chair.
“You’re still wrong about one thing,” he says.
I brace myself, already tired of him.
“What?”
“You don’t need bravery,” he says. “You need someone who knows what to do when bravery gets its throat cut.”
I study him: the scarred red scales, the golden eyes, the easy violence held barely behind his skin. He is not offering comfort. He is not offering belief. He is not even offering help, not exactly.
He is offering chaos and calling it expertise.
My mind begins building a column of liabilities. Impulsive. Combative. Publicly indiscreet. Poor respect for command structure. Probable trauma history. High physical utility. Strong situational awareness. Effective intimidation factor. Unclear motives. Dangerous ego. Worse, dangerous insight.
The final assessment arrives cold and clear.
Dux is a liability.
Unfortunately, liabilities are not always useless.