4. Dux #2
Her anger shifts. Not disappearing. Recalibrating. She is an engineer even with people, especially when she does not want to be. “Then you are useless to me.”
“Wrong.”
“No. I need someone invested in survival.”
“You need someone useful after survival stops being guaranteed.”
“I need someone who follows orders.”
“You need someone who can ignore them when they turn stupid.”
“My orders do not turn stupid.”
“Everything turns stupid eventually.”
She exhales through her nose. “This is why you are not coming.”
“I did not ask yet.”
“You were about to.”
I grin despite myself. “You make a habit of answering questions before they happen?”
“When the question is obvious and the answer is no.”
Loklo lifts one finger. “For administrative clarity, I would like to hear the question.”
I look at Roma. “I’ll go.”
“No.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“You had reached the relevant part.”
“I’ll go with you,” I say anyway, because irritation is a form of seasoning and she brings out the best-worst in me.
“You need muscle, combat experience, emergency judgment, and someone who has been in enough collapsing ships to know which sounds mean panic and which sounds mean move your ass right now.”
“No.”
“I am also charming.”
“No.”
“Handsome.”
“No.”
“Difficult to kill.”
“That is not the same as useful.”
“It is in space.”
She steps around me. I shift with her, blocking just enough to keep the conversation alive. Her eyes narrow.
“Do not physically obstruct me,” she says.
“Then stop trying to end a useful discussion.”
“This is not a discussion. This is a man with a death wish attempting to hitch himself to my mission because it flatters his appetite for catastrophe.”
“That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week.”
“It was not nice.”
“I have flexible standards.”
Loklo’s gaze slides toward the main room. “Dux.”
I hear it too.
A bad change in the noise.
Bars speak. Mine is a filthy, temperamental old bastard, but I know its language.
Laughter fades at the edges. Chairs shift without the rhythm of ordinary movement.
Someone near the door says something under their breath.
Metal clicks, not loudly, but with the intimate little confidence of a weapon being readied by someone who thinks no one important has noticed.
Roma notices half a breath after I do. Her pupils tighten. Her shoulders square.
Three men stand near the entrance. I recognize one from the docks, a narrow-faced human named Pell who runs errands for creditors too cowardly to collect in person.
The other two are League-space gutter work: one Kiphian with mottled gray scales and a shock baton tucked along his forearm, one squat Fratvoyan with a smile too cheerful for his eyes.
Not regulars. Not welcome. They must have followed Roma in or caught the name when I spilled it across the room like an idiot.
Pell looks at Roma and smiles. “Larson.”
Roma’s face goes blank. “I don’t know you.”
“No, but some people know you.”
Dux, you dumb bastard, I think. Out loud, I say, “Pell, this is not a collection office.”
He gives me a nervous glance, then tries to puff himself back up. “Not here for you.”
“You are standing on my floor.”
“Then charge rent.”
Loklo mutters, “Oh, he chose death with garnish.”
Roma’s hand is already inside her coat. Not panicked. Not fumbling. She is mapping distance, weapons, civilians, exits. Good.
Pell points at her. “You owe serious money, Larson.”
“I owe contracted funds to vendors upon delivery completion,” she says. “If one of them sold the debt prematurely, that is their clerical failure.”
The Fratvoyan giggles. “She talks fancy.”
“She pays fancy too,” Pell says. “Or she pays in parts. Ship parts. Body parts. We’re open-minded.”
I sigh. “You really should have stayed outside.”
The Kiphian snaps the shock baton open.
That is enough.
I move before Pell finishes drawing his pistol.
My left hand catches his wrist and drives it upward, the shot blasting into the ceiling instead of Roma’s chest. Hot ozone and pulverized plaster spill into the air.
Someone screams. Someone else cheers because my clientele has the collective survival instinct of decorative moss.
I break Pell’s wrist against the bar edge and kick his knee backward. He drops with a wet howl.
The Kiphian lunges for Roma.
She does not retreat the way I expect.
She pivots toward him, which is insane until I see why. The baton arcs where her head was, spitting blue charge. She ducks under his arm, slams her compad into the inside of his elbow, and the projection unit flares hard enough to blind him for a heartbeat. Clever. Risky. Mean.
I like mean.
The Fratvoyan launches himself at me with a knife in each hand, chattering something about bonuses.
I catch him by the front of his vest and use him to block the Kiphian’s second swing.
The shock baton discharges into the Fratvoyan’s backside.
He squeals so loudly three bottles crack behind the bar.
Loklo shouts, “That is coming out of somebody’s deposit!”
Roma grabs the Kiphian’s wrist with both hands.
She cannot overpower him. She knows that.
Instead, she steps on his forward foot, twists his thumb against the baton grip, and drives her knee into the joint of his leg.
He grunts, more surprised than hurt, but surprise is currency if you spend it fast.
“Left!” I bark.
She does not ask why. She drops.
Pell’s second shot passes through the space above her shoulder. I throw the Fratvoyan at him. They collide in a heap of limbs, curses, and financial disappointment.
The Kiphian recovers and backhands Roma across the face.
That, for some reason, irritates me more than the gun.
Her head snaps to the side, but she rolls with the force and uses the turn to fling something small from her sleeve. It strikes the floor at the Kiphian’s feet and bursts into a cloud of glittering conductive dust. He looks down.
“Bad choice,” she says.
The baton discharges again.
The dust catches the arc and throws it back through his boots, up his legs, and into every regrettable decision he has made tonight. He locks rigid, teeth bared, eyes wide. Then he tips sideways and crashes into a table, scattering cards and drinks.
Roma breathes hard, one hand braced on the bar. A red mark is blooming along her cheek. Her eyes are bright, furious, alive.
I stare at her.
She glares back. “What?”
“You carry conductive dust in your sleeve?”
“You don’t?”
Loklo points at me. “To be fair, he mostly carries poor judgment in bulk.”
Pell groans on the floor and tries to crawl toward his fallen pistol. I step on his hand. Bones shift under my boot. He stops crawling.
“Who sent you?” I ask.
He spits a curse.
I press harder.
“A creditor broker,” he gasps. “Harl Venn. Dockside.”
Roma wipes blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her glove. “Venn sold the debt illegally.”
Pell laughs weakly. “Take it up with him.”
“I intend to.”
I crouch, grab Pell by the collar, and haul him high enough to meet my eyes. “No, you don’t. You intend to crawl out of here, tell Venn that Shot in the Dark is not a hunting ground, and reconsider every ambition that brought you into my evening.”
Pell swallows. “Fine.”
“Fine is what people say when they have learned nothing.”
Loklo appears with a fusion-block crate, empty thankfully, and nudges the Fratvoyan with his boot. “Should I pack them to go?”
“Alley,” I say.
“The alley is becoming crowded.”
“Stack them.”
He sighs. “Hospitality is dead.”
Roma pushes away from the bar and straightens her coat as if she has not just turned a sleeve full of dust into a weaponized physics lesson. Her hand trembles once before she curls it into a fist. She thinks I do not see.
I see.
She adapts. Not smoothly at first. Not naturally. But when forced, she burns through surprise fast and turns whatever is in reach into leverage. Compad flash. Foot placement. Conductive dust. Listening when I call left instead of arguing herself into a bullet.
That last part matters.
More than I want it to.
I release Pell and let him drop. “Loklo.”
“Already on it, beloved tyrant.”
As Loklo and two suddenly cooperative patrons drag the intruders toward the side exit, the bar exhales. The music sputters, catches, and resumes as if even the speakers need a drink. The ceiling leaks plaster dust in a soft gray drift. I turn to her.
She is already looking at me, suspicion fully restored.
“You are still not coming,” she says.
I glance at the Kiphian twitching on the floor as Loklo drags him by one ankle.
“You sure? We make a pretty good argument for it.”
“We survived a bar fight.”
“We won a bar fight.”
“That distinction is emotionally important to you, I’m sure.”
“It is professionally important.”
She touches the swelling on her cheek and winces before she can hide it. I do not comment. If I do, she will turn the tenderness into a weapon and stab us both with it.
Instead, I say, “You listened.”
Her eyes narrow. “To what?”
“When I yelled left.”
“You had a better angle.”
“You trusted that I did.”
“No,” she says. “I made a rapid assessment that your warning aligned with available threat vectors.”
I smile.
She scowls.
I say, “Sure.”
“It was not trust.”
“Never said it was.”
“You implied it.”
“I breathed in your direction. You did the rest.”
Loklo returns from the side exit, brushing dust off his hands. “Good news. The alley has accepted three new applicants and remains our most reliable employee.”
Roma gathers her compad. “I need to leave before more of Venn’s incompetence arrives.”
“You need an escort,” I say.
“No.”
“You need someone who knows Dockside predators.”
“No.”
“You need someone who can keep breathing after being shot, stabbed, spaced, poisoned, insulted, or forced to listen to Loklo explain his business philosophy.”
Loklo says, “My business philosophy is sound.”
“You once tried to market hangover soup as a contraceptive.”
“It prevented romance by smell alone.”
Roma looks between us, and there it is again: the tiny almost-smile she kills before it can live. Then her face settles back into command.
“I do not need you,” she says.
“Maybe not.”
That answer catches her wrong. She expected pressure. Argument. Another shove against the locked door of her certainty.
I give her truth instead, because I am apparently making poor choices tonight with unusual efficiency.
“But you might,” I continue. “And if you do, there won’t be time to come back and ask.”
The bar’s damaged ceiling light flickers above us.
In the uneven glow, her red hair looks brighter against the torn hood, and the bruise rising along her cheek makes my hands want to close around something breakable.
That is inconvenient. I barely know her.
She is arrogant, impossible, and pointed at the galactic core like a knife thrown at a black hole.
I should let her go.
I do not want to.
Roma takes one step toward the door, then stops just long enough to look back at me.
“You are unpredictable,” she says.
“Yes.”
“You disregard authority.”
“Often for excellent reasons.”
“You are reckless.”
“Usually.”
“You have no investment in surviving the mission.”
I hold her gaze. “Not yet.”
Her expression changes, not enough for anyone else to read, but enough for me. Interest, reluctant and unwelcome, threads through the anger. She hates it. Good. That makes two of us.
“You are crazy, Dux.”
“Sure,” I say. “But I’m still the best at what I do.”
She says nothing to that, which is the first sensible thing either of us has done in several minutes.
Then she turns and walks toward the door, and the room parts for her this time not because she is safe, but because she has become more trouble than most of them can afford.
I watch her go with the taste of ozone still on my tongue and the strange, fierce certainty that the night has just handed me something dangerous enough to matter.