23. Roma
ROMA
Throgg’s engineering deck breathes like a machine that has forgotten it was built by living hands.
The walls pulse with low amber light, each panel shifting through diagnostic patterns that crawl along the seams like contained fire.
Heat radiates from the main conduit spine running beneath the grated floor, warming the soles of my boots until every step reminds me that this vessel is burning energy at a rate no sane system would sustain without desperation behind it.
I stand beneath the central drive assembly with a Reaper guard three meters behind me and Throgg watching from the upper platform.
He thinks I am looking for flaws.
I am.
He thinks I am looking for ways to improve his ship.
I am doing that too.
He does not yet understand that every useful answer I give him will be measured against the question that matters: how do I get out?
“Your stabilizer architecture is elegant,” I say, turning slowly beneath the suspended power column. “Expensive, overbuilt, and wasteful, but elegant.”
One of the Reaper engineers makes a faint clicking sound from the far console.
Throgg’s voice carries down from above, calm and cool. “Your appreciation is buried under insult.”
“My insults are usually more obvious.”
“Then I should be grateful for restraint.”
“You should be grateful I am too busy to catalog every design sin in this room.”
That earns silence from the engineers.
Throgg descends the platform stairs with deliberate patience, his long coat shifting around him. “You were placed here to evaluate my propulsion instability.”
“I am evaluating it.”
“You are walking in circles.”
“I am thinking.”
“You require motion to think?”
“I require perspective,” I reply, stopping near a secondary regulator bank. “Your engineers keep analyzing the failure at the drive core, which is understandable and incorrect. The instability begins upstream, here, where the power feed narrows before entering the adaptive distributor.”
The nearest engineer turns toward the regulator.
Throgg’s gaze sharpens. “Explain.”
I crouch beside the casing and point to the recessed line along the edge.
“Your system is compensating for gravitational variance after the distributor detects stress. That delay is small under ordinary conditions, but inside the core, a small delay becomes cumulative damage. Each correction arrives late enough to create another imbalance, and the system begins chasing itself.”
The engineer leans closer to the display. “We have compensated with increased feed tolerance.”
“Yes,” I say. “Which is why it has not killed you yet.”
The Reaper looks at me.
I look back.
“It remains a stupid solution.”
“You speak freely for a prisoner.”
“I speak accurately for someone you need.”
His expression remains controlled, but his eyes brighten with interest. He likes defiance when it has utility attached. That matters. Pride, properly handled, becomes an access point.
I rise and tap the regulator casing. “Your drive can escape the outer layers of the core under limited conditions, but it cannot sustain the transition through the gravitational threshold. You can enter dangerous space, hunt in it, and retreat within a bounded region. You cannot leave.”
The engineering deck quiets.
Throgg steps closer. “You are confident.”
“I am observant.”
“And can you correct it?”
There it is.
The hook.
I keep my face still, though my pulse climbs.
“Partially,” I say.
His eyes narrow. “Partially.”
“A complete correction requires redesign of your predictive compensation system, integration of live shear mapping, and modification of the drive-response timing. Your current hardware can support some of that. It cannot support all of it without fabrication I do not currently have.”
“You had such systems aboard your vessel.”
“Yes.”
“Then you can reproduce them.”
“Some components, yes. Others require materials, calibration data, and tools your engineers may or may not possess.”
Throgg studies me for several long seconds.
Behind him, the drive assembly hums with a deep, uneven rhythm, like a giant heart with a damaged valve.
I listen to it carefully. The third pulse always arrives late.
The distributor stutters before the heat exchangers compensate.
If I can reach that control chain again, I can teach it to fail when I choose.
“You will provide the first correction,” Throgg says.
“I will provide a stabilizing modification.”
“That sounds smaller.”
“It is smaller.”
“Why?”
“Because if I attempt a full redesign without understanding every one of your ship’s undocumented modifications, I risk cascade failure.”
“And if you are lying?”
“Then your engineers can install my first correction under supervision and verify the improvement before giving me access to anything more sensitive.”
His gaze lingers on my face.
“You offer me caution.”
“I offer you survivable progress.”
He steps closer, close enough that I can see the fine scoring across his armor near the collar, thin lines where heat or blades once tested him and failed to matter. “You want time.”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“To keep being alive.”
His expression suggests amusement, though he does not smile fully. “That is only part of the truth.”
“It is the part currently relevant to you.”
“Careful, Roma Larson.”
The sound of my name in his mouth makes my skin tighten.
I hold my ground.
“I am careful,” I say. “That is why your ship will still function after I touch it.”
He considers this, then gestures toward the nearest engineer. “Give her access to the secondary diagnostic panel. Nothing beyond that.”
The engineer hesitates.
Throgg’s gaze shifts.
The engineer obeys.
Good.
I move to the panel with deliberate calm, though every nerve in my body strains toward action.
The interface is Reaper military architecture, built around layered authorizations, pressure-based inputs, and command hierarchies embedded directly into the operating logic.
Crude in philosophy. Effective in execution.
It does not ask the user what they want to accomplish; it asks what rank permits them to attempt.
I hate it immediately.
I also understand enough to begin.
The symbols are unfamiliar, but the system behavior is not. Power always has grammar. Pressure always has syntax. A ship always tells the truth somewhere, even when its builders lie.
My fingers move across the panel, slower than I would like, fast enough to imply competence. I pull only shallow data at first: heat distribution, stabilization lag, pulse timing, field variance. I avoid anything that would reveal how quickly I am mapping their architecture beneath the surface.
“Your response chain is over-centralized,” I say.
“My engineers disagree,” Throgg replies.
“They are welcome to continue being wrong.”
The Reaper engineer behind me stiffens.
Throgg’s voice turns almost pleasant. “You enjoy provoking them.”
“I enjoy accuracy.”
“You enjoy both.”
I do not answer because he is correct and because acknowledging that gives him a shape of me I would prefer he not hold.
The diagnostic readout resolves, and I see the opening immediately.
A bypass channel exists between the secondary distributor and the emergency coolant routing.
It is narrow, locked under command authorization, and almost certainly used to preserve power during combat maneuvers.
If modified, it could also overload a localized section of the drive response system.
Not enough to destroy the ship. Enough to interrupt pursuit. Enough to open a door.
I file it away.
Later.
Everything is later now.
Later I will grieve.
Later I will scream.
Later I will think about Dux’s hand against the glass and the impossible cold outside the airlock and the way his mouth shaped words meant to comfort me while he was being thrown into death.
For now, I breathe.
For now, I work.
For now, I refuse the conclusion they expect from me.
Dux is not dead.
The thought is irrational by any humane standard and statistically indefensible by most biological ones.
Vakutan physiology offers survival advantages under vacuum exposure, but the core is full of radiation, debris, gravitational shear, and hostile distance.
He had no suit. He had injuries. He had minutes at most.
I know all of that.
I decline it.
“Your hands stopped,” Throgg says.
My fingers resume movement immediately. “I was calculating.”
“You were remembering.”
I look at the panel. “Those can occur simultaneously.”
“Your companion’s death troubles you.”
The panel edge presses into my palm as my hand tightens.
“He was useful,” I say.
Throgg steps closer behind me, his presence a cold pressure at my back. “That is all?”
I enter a command string and watch the system accept a shallow diagnostic overlay. “Usefulness is a high compliment.”
“He fought for you.”
“Yes.”
“He died for you.”
My throat closes.
The screen blurs for half a breath before I force it clear.
“No,” I say.
Throgg’s voice lowers. “No?”
“I did not see a body.”
“You saw him ejected into open space.”
“I saw an event. I did not confirm an outcome.”
Behind me, one of the Reapers makes a low sound that might be contempt.
Throgg remains quiet.
I continue entering commands because stopping would reveal too much. “If you intend to manipulate me through grief, you should improve your methods. Precision matters.”
“You deny what you saw because accepting it would compromise you.”
“I deny premature conclusions because they are poor science.”
A faint laugh leaves him. The sound contains admiration without warmth. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The structure you hide inside.”
I turn then, because there is value in showing him the edge of anger without giving him the wound beneath it. “You brought me here to repair your ship. If you prefer philosophical commentary, find someone else to threaten.”
His gaze holds mine.
Then he smiles.
“I see why he fought.”