12. Dux
DUX
The asteroid comes alive around us in claws, shrieks, and the cold scrape of too many limbs crossing stone.
The sound is wrong for open ground. It belongs in tunnels, under floors, inside walls where a man has nowhere to swing and every echo might be teeth.
Here, beneath the thin metallic sky, it spreads across the ridge and down into the crash gouge until the whole place seems to be clicking, chittering, and breathing through armor plates.
Dust drifts in the low gravity, shining faintly where the blue mineral veins glow beneath black rock.
Roma stands behind me under the overhang, scanner in one hand, tool launcher in the other, her face pale inside the helmet seal and her eyes furious with calculation.
Good.
Fury keeps the blood moving.
The scanner display throws green light across her cheek, catching the bruise there and making it look like a storm under glass. She has stopped pretending the plan is intact. I can see that much. She hates it, but she has stopped. The difference matters.
“Count?” I ask.
Roma’s fingers move across the scanner. “Unreliable. The mineral interference is splitting returns, but there are too many for direct engagement in the open.”
“That was the long version of ‘bad.’”
“It was the accurate version of bad.”
A drone climbs over the ridge ahead of us, six arms digging into stone, plated body low and fast. Another follows to the left, then a third skitters along the crash scar below, angling for the Lamplight’s ramp.
The ship sits wounded in the dust, tilted on her collapsed strut, hull scored and still faintly smoking from the landing.
Roma sees the same thing I do: they are not only coming for us.
They are learning the ship matters.
“Ramp,” I say.
“I know.”
“Damaged port plating too.”
“I know.”
“Say the plan.”
She glances at me, irritated even now. “You require reassurance?”
“I require knowing whether I am about to be brave or stupid.”
“Those are often the same in your case.”
“Fair.”
Roma shoves the scanner against my chest. “We push down the ridge, cross the charged sealant field at the narrow point, reach the port-side actuator assembly, and I replace the damaged control link. That gives me partial vane response. Then we retreat through the ramp before they adapt around the traps.”
I look at the drones spreading below. “And the part where they try to turn us into lunch?”
“You handle that.”
I grin. “See? You do understand my skill set.”
“Do not enjoy this.”
“Too late.”
The first drone springs.
I step forward and meet it before it reaches her.
Low gravity makes strength strange. Every movement wants to carry too far, every strike wants to overcommit, but I have fought on ships with failing dampers, in breached corridors, on moons where a man can jump himself into orbit if he panics.
I let the drone come high, catch its upper limb, and turn with its momentum.
Its claws screech across my forearm guard.
My boots skid against loose stone. I drive my shoulder into its armored chest and fire twice into the joint under its head.
It drops hard enough to bounce.
Roma is already moving past me.
Not fleeing. Working.
She slides down the slope in controlled steps, using her scanner to pick a path through the mineral veins and loose rock.
A drone darts in from her left. Before I can shout, she fires the tool launcher at a glowing vein beside its feet.
The microflare bursts against the mineral line, throwing a white flash and a spray of charged dust into its face.
It reels, claws scrabbling, and Roma changes direction without wasting half a breath.
That is what I saw in the bar.
Forced out of the plan, she does not freeze long. She hates the shove, but once the universe kicks her, she moves.
I like that more than is wise.
“Right side!” I call.
“I see it,” Roma snaps.
She does see it. A drone skitters over a stone shelf and launches toward her shoulders.
Roma drops low instead of back, letting the creature sail over her in the low gravity.
She plants one boot against a rock spur, twists, and fires a sealant burst into its underside as it passes.
The foam expands across two of its limbs, hardening fast and throwing off glittering sparks where it touches mineral dust. The drone lands badly, tangled in itself.
I shoot it before it gets clever.
Roma looks over her shoulder. “I had that.”
“I know.”
“Then why shoot?”
“Because dead is a more reliable status than temporarily inconvenienced.”
She opens her mouth, probably to argue, then shuts it and keeps moving.
Progress again.
We reach the bottom of the slope, and the asteroid floor levels into a field of shattered stone.
The Lamplight is thirty meters away. Thirty meters of open ground, crawling shadows, dust, and drones that now understand the shining patches on the rock hurt them.
They split around the charged sealant and begin climbing the stone spires instead.
“High,” I warn.
Roma kneels by the port actuator housing without looking up. “Then keep them high.”
“I love a simple order.”
“It suits you.”
I plant myself between her and the nearest spire cluster. “That almost sounded like praise.”
“It was task assignment.”
“Everything nice you say wears a uniform.”
“Everything reckless you say wears a grin.”
The first drone launches from above.
I fire, miss the kill shot, and hit the plating along its side.
It still crashes into me with enough force to drive my boots deep through loose dust. Claws rake my shoulder guard.
Another limb punches toward my helmet. I catch it, feel the joint strain under my hand, and slam the creature sideways into a stone spur.
The impact cracks its plating. It shrieks in my face, mandibles opening wide enough for me to smell its breath through the filter: sour, wet, and chemical, like rotten meat dipped in battery acid.
“Gods, you need a mint,” I tell it.
I drive my knife up under its throat.
The blade sticks.
The drone thrashes.
Roma’s voice cuts from behind me. “Duck.”
I duck.
A flare streaks over my head and bursts against the drone’s face. Its eyes rupture in a spray of dark fluid and sparks from the charged dust clinging to its plating. I wrench the knife free and shove the body away.
“Nice shot,” I say.
“Do not sound surprised.”
“I am delighted, not surprised.”
“Be delighted quieter.”
A second drone hits me from the side before I can answer.
We roll across the rock, my shoulder slamming into the ground hard enough to send pain down my ribs.
The low gravity makes the tumble strange and slow, but the claws are fast. One slices across my side where the armor gap never sits right. Heat opens there, sharp and wet.
Roma sees blood.
Her eyes change.
That should not matter. It does.
She rises from the actuator housing with a tool in one hand and the launcher in the other. “Move your arm.”
“I’m using it.”
“Move it.”
I twist just enough.
She fires into the ground beside the drone’s lower limbs.
Expanding foam blasts over the rock and catches two of its claws in a hardened grip.
I use the half second she buys me to grab its head with both hands and twist. Something inside gives with a brittle crack. The drone collapses across my chest.
I shove it off and sit up. “You are getting bossier.”
“I was already bossy. You were insufficiently attentive.”
“Wound hurts. Insults help.”
“Then you should feel wonderful.”
I laugh and push to my feet. Pain pulls along my side, but it is shallow. Messy, not dangerous. Roma looks at it once, evaluates, and returns to the actuator.
“Bleeding?” she asks.
“A little.”
“How little?”
“Emotionally modest.”
“Dux.”
“It won’t slow me.”
“That was not the question.”
“It was the answer you need.”
Her gloved hands move inside the actuator housing, quick despite the cold.
The wind slides over the asteroid plain, carrying dust against my armor in a soft hiss.
Above us, the strange haze shifts, and the light beyond it bends in slow ribbons.
The whole world feels like a held breath before a larger predator arrives.
The drones regroup.
They do not rush this time. That is worse. They spread between the spires, keeping distance from the charged patches, clicking to one another in layered rhythms that crawl along my nerves.
“They’re adapting,” I say.
“I am aware.”
“How long?”
“Four minutes.”
“No.”
“Three.”
“Try one.”
Roma looks up at me, eyes bright with offense. “Would you like to realign a warped actuator hinge under hostile pressure with inadequate tools and mineral interference?”
“I would like to avoid becoming a fond memory.”
“Then give me two minutes and stop negotiating with physics.”
A drone starts toward the ramp.
I fire twice, driving it back, but the others move when I do. One crawls along the underside of a stone shelf toward Roma’s blind side. She does not see it. Her focus is inside the housing, where the damaged control link refuses to seat.
“Left and low,” I say.
“I cannot disengage.”
“I know.”
I move.
The drone drops as I reach it. I catch it midair, more by stubbornness than grace, and its weight drives us both down beside the port hull.
A claw punches through the outer layer of my shoulder armor and scrapes scale.
I snarl, hook one hand under its jaw plates, and slam it into the Lamplight’s hull.
Roma’s head snaps up. “Do not dent my ship.”
“I am being killed next to it.”
“Be killed farther away.”
“Cruel woman.”
“Move it two degrees right.”
I blink through dust and pain. “What?”
“The drone. Move it two degrees right.”
“That is very specific.”
“Do it.”
I shove the creature right.