12. Dux #2
Roma drives a loose actuator rod straight through the gap between two plates on its side and twists with both hands. The drone spasms, limbs flaring. I slam it down onto the rod, and the creature goes still.
I stare at her.
She stares back. “You moved it three degrees.”
“I was distracted by the murder.”
“Acceptable variance.”
“High praise.”
She reaches back into the housing and yanks the damaged link free. “I need the replacement coupling from the red case.”
I grab it from the repair kit and toss it. “Incoming.”
She catches it cleanly.
Another drone shrieks from the ridge. The sound is answered by several more beyond the crash gouge. More are coming, drawn by noise, heat, vibration, or the hive’s collective irritation that dinner has started arguing.
Roma works the replacement coupling into place. “Give me thirty seconds.”
“I can give you twenty.”
“I need thirty.”
“Then I’ll steal ten.”
I move toward the open ground before she can object.
The next cluster comes in a rush: four drones low, two high, one circling toward the ramp. I fire at the circling one first because ships matter, then holster the weapon before the nearest drone reaches me. Rounds are precious. Hands are reusable, usually.
The first drone slashes. I step inside the arc, catch one limb, break it backward, and drive my knee into its chest. The second hits my side wound. Pain bursts white behind my eyes. I roar, not because roaring fixes anything, but because sometimes the body needs to tell the universe it objects.
Roma shouts from the housing. “Dux!”
“Busy.”
“You are bleeding more.”
“I noticed.”
“You are supposed to avoid that.”
“Write it in the protocols.”
A flare from her launcher streaks past my shoulder and blinds the third drone. I use the opening to smash the second into the first, then kick both toward a charged foam patch. Electricity snaps over their plating. The smell rises immediately, bitter and cooked, and I am grateful for the filter.
Roma finishes the coupling.
I hear it before she says it: the actuator housing whirs, catches, and locks into partial alignment. A low mechanical tremor runs through the port vane assembly. The damaged section moves a few centimeters, then stops, but the motion is controlled.
“Partial response restored,” she calls.
“Good. We leaving?”
“Not yet. I can patch the routing.”
“No.”
“It will take ninety seconds.”
“No.”
“Dux—”
A drone drops from the ridge and lands on top of the Lamplight.
Its claws bite into the upper hull with a screech that makes Roma’s face go white with fury. Two more follow, skittering across the ship toward the damaged port plating.
Something inside me goes cold.
“They’re going for the wound,” I say.
Roma sees them, and the repair plan dies in her eyes before she can defend it.
“We retreat,” she says.
“Now you’re speaking my language.”
“Do not enjoy being right.”
“I enjoy survival.”
“Debatable.”
We run for the ramp.
The low gravity turns the dash into bounding chaos.
Roma moves ahead of me, carrying the repair kit against her side, boots striking stone and pushing off in long, controlled arcs.
I stay behind her, firing upward at the drones on the hull.
One round sparks off plating. Another finds a joint and knocks a drone sideways, but it clings with three limbs and keeps crawling.
Roma reaches the ramp and slaps the control.
Nothing happens.
She swears.
I like her swearing too much.
“Manual release jammed,” she says.
“Move.”
“I can?—”
“Roma, move.”
She moves half a step, and I drive my shoulder into the ramp housing. Pain flares through my side. The housing dents, complains, and pops free enough for the mechanism to catch. The ramp drops with a grinding shudder.
Roma looks at the dent.
“Later,” I say.
“Oh, absolutely later.”
We scramble aboard as the first drone leaps from the hull toward the ramp. I turn and meet it at the threshold. It hits me hard, driving one claw through the outer armor along my thigh. I grab its head and hold it back from Roma, who is already inside, one hand on the inner controls.
“Dux,” she says, voice tight.
“Close it when I say.”
“That will crush your arm.”
“Then say something nice about the arm.”
“I am not in the habit of praising limbs under pressure.”
“Work on that.”
The drone pushes closer, mandibles snapping inches from my helmet. Its breath fogs the faceplate with chemical rot. I plant one boot against the ramp frame, haul its head down, and shove my sidearm under its throat.
“Now,” I say.
Roma hits the control.
The ramp rises.
I fire as the metal catches the drone’s torso. The round blows through its throat, and the ramp finishes the argument, crushing the body between closing plates. My arm comes free at the last second, scraped but attached.
The hatch seals.
The cockpit alarms are distant through the corridor, but the ship’s interior feels blessedly enclosed.
The air inside smells of smoke, polymer, blood, and the harsh sterile bite of automatic filtration fighting contamination from our suits.
Roma slams the inner decontamination cycle with the side of her fist.
She looks at me.
I look at her.
Both of us are breathing hard.
“You dented my ramp housing,” she says.
I glance down at the blood spreading along my side and thigh. “I also improved access.”
“You are bleeding on my deck.”
“I am adding character.”
“My deck does not need character.”
“It’s a little sterile.”
Her eyes flash, but the anger is different now. Less brittle. More alive. She reaches for the emergency medkit mounted beside the hatch, tears it open, and throws a compression patch at my chest.
“Apply that before you become inefficient,” Roma says.
I catch it. “That your way of saying you care?”
“That is my way of saying blood loss reduces combat performance.”
“Warm as sunlight.”
“Patch.”
I press the patch against my side and hiss when the sealant bites. Roma watches long enough to confirm I am doing it correctly, then turns toward the cockpit.
“We completed partial vane response,” she says. “Not the routing.”
“Partial is better than eaten.”
“I know.”
“Say it again.”
She stops in the corridor.
The ship hums around us, damaged but alive.
Outside, claws scrape along the hull in distant, searching lines.
The drones are still there, but for the moment, the Lamplight holds them out.
Roma stands with one hand against the wall, dust streaked across her suit, red hair escaping her braid, eyes bright from adrenaline and fury and something that is not quite fear.
“Partial is better than eaten,” she says.
I smile. “That should go in your manual.”
“It will not.”
“It has a ring.”
“It has idiocy.”
“Most good sayings do.”
She turns, but she does not walk away yet. Her gaze drops to the patch on my side, then to the torn armor at my shoulder, then back to my face.
“You protected the hull,” she says.
“I protected you.”
Her expression changes.
Not much. With Roma, not much is a country.
“The hull is mission critical,” she says.
“So are you.”
She looks away first, and I let her because I am not entirely a bastard. The corridor lights flicker once, then settle into emergency blue. Somewhere outside, a drone shrieks against the closed ship, frustrated and hungry.
Roma’s voice returns to command, but it carries a new thread beneath it. “We need to reassess. The drones are coordinated, adaptive, and numerous. Exterior repairs require a tactical plan, not merely a technical one.”
“Look at that,” I say. “You said tactical.”
“I have always understood tactics.”
“You have understood them in theory.”
She turns back with a look sharp enough to cut plating. “Choose your next sentence wisely.”
I grin despite the ache in my ribs. “Under pressure, you adjust fast.”
That stops her again.
I keep going before she decides the compliment is a trap. “You wanted to stay in the open and repair. Bad call. Then the drones hit, and you used the terrain, the mineral veins, the foam, the ridge, the low gravity, and my charming willingness to be bitten. That was not theory.”
Her eyes search my face. “You are making a point.”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“You can adapt better than you think. You just hate needing to.”
Her mouth opens, then closes as the ship creaks softly around us.
Outside, claws scrape along the hull again.
She turns toward the sound, and I see the war inside her: anger at the damage, fear for the mission, refusal to yield, and the first reluctant acknowledgment that control alone is not enough fuel for the road ahead.
“I do not hate adapting,” she says.
“Roma.”
“I dislike preventable deviation.”
“That is a fancy way to say you hate adapting.”
“It is a precise way to say I hate avoidable chaos.”
“The core is chaos with gravity.”
“And yet I intend to navigate it.”
“With me.”
She looks at me again.
There is no trust in her face. Not yet. Trust takes time, and Roma probably requires documentation in triplicate.
But there is respect now, hard-won and inconvenient.
I can feel it in how she holds my gaze, in how she no longer looks at me like an uncontained hazard that wandered aboard by clerical error.
I am still a hazard.
But I am hers, for the moment.
“Do not make me regret that,” she says.
“I will absolutely make you regret parts of it.”
“Dux.”
“But not the important parts.”
The vessel shakes as something heavy lands on the hull above us.
Roma squares her shoulders and reaches for the cockpit hatch. “Then help me keep them off my ship.”
I follow her, blood warming under the patch and laughter still sitting somewhere under my ribs, because she says my ship like a challenge now, not a prayer.
And for the first time since leaving the bar, I understand that Roma Larson is not fragile, not naive, and not merely a brilliant girl dragging grief through space.
She is dangerous.
She just prefers her danger organized.