11. Roma #2
Six arms. Insectoid plating. Heavy torso.
Curved limbs ending in claws that bite into rock.
Its head is narrow and armored, with multiple dark eyes reflecting the mineral glow.
It is larger than the scan suggested, almost as tall as a grown human even crouched low, and its body holds the coiled strength of something built not for elegance but for tearing.
Zenos.
The word arrives from reference files I read years ago and never expected to need in a practical context. Territorial hive entities. Coordinated drones. Reactive to disturbances.
We are a disturbance.
Dux laughs softly.
I turn my head just enough to glare. “Do not.”
“That was not joy,” he says, raising the weapon. “That was recognition.”
“Of what?”
“Ugly odds.”
The drone opens its mandibles and shrieks.
The sound tears across the asteroid plain, high and serrated, vibrating through my helmet and down my teeth. Three more drones break from cover. Then six. Then more movement behind the ridge.
Dux fires.
The ship-safe round cracks across the rocks and strikes the first drone in the chest. Its plating chips, but the creature does not fall. It recoils, shrieks again, and launches itself from the spire.
“Inside,” Dux says.
“No.”
“Roma.”
“If they board through damaged aft plating, we lose the ship.”
“If they eat us outside, the ship gets lonely.”
I scan the terrain in a rush: crash gouge, stone spires, mineral veins, low gravity, dust, ship position, exposed ramp, damaged port side. The drones are coordinated, fanning out rather than charging blindly. The first is coming high. Two flank along the gouge. Three more move toward the ramp.
Dux is right. Moving inside would shelter us but invite them to target the wounded hull. Staying here is bad. Staying here stupidly is worse.
I grab the repair kit and throw it toward the base of the nearest mineral vein.
Dux glances at it. “If that was your plan, I have questions.”
“The vein is conductive.”
His grin turns sharp. “Better.”
“Fall back to the ridge shadow,” I say. “Not the ramp. Draw them across the gouge.”
“Look at you, moving without rails.”
“Talk less. Shoot left.”
He shoots left.
I run.
Low gravity changes every step. My body wants standard pull and gets a third of it, turning urgency into a series of controlled bounds.
Dust sprays under my boots. The repair kit bounces once near the glowing mineral vein and skids into place.
A drone lunges across the gouge, too fast, claws gouging stone as it redirects toward me.
I trigger the kit remotely.
The emergency hull sealant canister ruptures, spraying expanding conductive foam across the mineral vein.
The foam catches the vein’s natural charge and spreads it in a glittering web over the rock.
The first drone hits the patch at full speed.
Electricity snaps up through its limbs. Its body locks, mandibles wide, shriek breaking into a metallic rasp.
Dux fires into its exposed throat.
This time it falls.
“Good trick,” he calls.
“I prefer competent.”
“Fine. Competent trick.”
Two drones rush him from the right. He does not retreat.
He steps into the first, catches one of its upper limbs with his free hand, and twists with enough force to tear the joint halfway out of alignment.
The creature slashes at his chest with another arm.
His armor takes the edge, but sparks jump.
He fires point-blank into its side, then kicks the body into the second drone hard enough to send both sliding through dust.
A third drone comes for me.
I do not have Dux’s strength. I have terrain.
I leap backward toward a cluster of stone spires, letting low gravity carry me higher than instinct expects.
The drone overshoots beneath me, claws slicing through the space where my legs were.
I catch the edge of a spire with one hand, pain flashing through my shoulder, and swing around it hard enough to slam my boots into the creature’s side.
The impact will not injure it, but it changes its vector.
It skids into the electrified foam.
Its limbs seize.
“Dux!”
He turns and fires without asking. The round punches through the creature’s eye cluster. It collapses.
More clicking rises from the ridge.
Too many.
My scanner paints movement in clusters now, but the interference makes count unreliable. Eight at least. Possibly twelve. The drones are avoiding the charged patch, adapting already.
Hive coordination.
“We need elevation,” I say.
Dux backs toward me, weapon raised. “There is a ridge.”
“You wanted the ridge.”
“I wanted it before the welcoming committee.”
“Now I also want it.”
“I enjoy your growth.”
“Move.”
We move together, not smoothly, not yet, but effectively.
I throw another sealant canister at a narrow choke between two stone shelves and rupture it across the mineral line.
Dux drives drones toward it with controlled fire and the occasional alarming use of his own body as bait.
One drone launches over the electrified strip.
I compensate by firing a microflare from my tool launcher into the dust above it.
The dust ignites in a brief, bright burst, not flame exactly but charged particulate blooming white.
The drone flinches midair, limbs spreading, and Dux catches it with two rounds before it lands.
“Tell me you packed more of those,” he says.
“I packed for repairs.”
“You repair aggressively.”
“I am adapting.”
He looks at me, just for a fraction of a second, and there it is again: respect, unwanted and inconvenient.
The ridge shadow opens ahead, a shallow overhang beneath black rock threaded with glowing blue veins. Defensible. Narrow approach. Visibility across the crash gouge and ship ramp. Not my original plan. Not even close.
Better than dying beside the hull with a scanner in my hand.
We reach the overhang as three drones regroup below.
I press my back to cold stone. The chill bites through my suit. My breath fogs the lower edge of my face shield before the filter clears it. Dux stands slightly ahead of me, bleeding from a shallow cut across his side where one claw found a gap in his armor. He does not seem to care.
“You are injured,” I say.
He keeps his weapon trained on the drones. “I’ve had worse from furniture.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“You should meet my furniture.”
“I would rather not.”
Below us, the drones pause.
They do not retreat. They listen, or receive, or think with whatever portion of the hive mind is currently aimed at us. Their dark eyes catch the mineral glow, reflecting cold points of light.
Dux speaks without looking away from them. “Still think repairing in the open was the play?”
I swallow the first answer because it is pride and therefore useless.
“No,” I say.
He does look at me then.
I hate that he heard the cost of the word.
I lift the scanner and force my hands steady. “We hold this position, map their movement, and find a route back to the ship that does not expose the damaged plating. Then we repair under guard.”
Dux smiles, but it is not mocking. “That sounds like a new plan.”
“It is an adjusted plan.”
“An adapted plan.”
“Do not push your luck.”
He turns back toward the drones. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Commander.”
A fresh shriek rises from beyond the ridge, deeper than the drones’ calls, resonant enough to vibrate through the stone against my spine.
The scanner fills with motion, first in scattered points, then in a spreading wave that crawls across the display faster than my mind wants to accept.
There are far more than eight drones beyond the ridge, far more than twelve, and the returns keep multiplying until the screen becomes a living map of coordinated hunger.
I look toward the Lamplight, wounded and waiting beneath the thin, hostile sky.
The mission is still intact.
It is simply no longer civilized enough to pretend it cares what I planned.