24. Dux #2
He can think fast when he stops drowning in old failure.
“She will not give him full solutions,” he says.
“No.”
“She will give him enough to earn access.”
“Yes.”
“She will plant dependencies.”
“Sounds like her.”
“She will look for my signal again if she can reach a console.”
“Then make damn sure there’s something for her to find.”
He turns back to the map, his hands moving now with new urgency.
Layers slide across the projection: Throgg’s likely route, old Reaper patrol pockets, signal shadows, gravitational bottlenecks.
He expands one section near a dense debris field marked with hazard symbols and a name half-erased by years of edits.
“The Thorn Shelf,” he says. “Throgg uses this region when towing disabled ships. The debris density interferes with external scans, and the shear patterns make pursuit difficult for anyone without mapped corridors.”
“You have mapped corridors.”
“I have partial routes.”
“Good enough.”
“No,” he says sharply. “That phrase kills people here.”
“Fine. Bad enough to make him work for it.”
Pally glances at me, and something like reluctant appreciation flickers behind the irritation. “That phrasing is less suicidal.”
“I’m growing.”
“Do it quieter.”
He zooms in on a narrow path threading the edge of the shelf. “There is a maintenance blind spot along this vector where Throgg’s outer sensor arrays lose resolution for approximately forty seconds during shield recalibration. I have used it twice to avoid detection.”
“Can we use it to get aboard?”
“Getting close is possible. Boarding is another matter.”
“Possible is enough for step one.”
He studies the map, then me. “You are still thinking like a soldier.”
“You say that like it’s an insult.”
“It is a limitation. A soldier sees the breach point. An engineer sees the systems that decide whether the breach point matters.”
“Great. Be the engineer. I’ll be the breach.”
“You are injured.”
“You mentioned.”
“You have vacuum damage, shock trauma, blood loss, and the kind of stubbornness that makes medical triage personally offensive.”
“Put it on my tombstone later.”
“I am trying to avoid tombstones.”
“You’ve been avoiding them for nine years,” I say. “How’s that working out?”
His hands still.
The words come out rougher than I intend, but I do not take them back. He needs the hit. Maybe I do too.
Pally stares at the console, shoulders bowed with more than age. “Every failed escape killed something,” he says. “A system. A route. A piece of confidence. Eventually you learn that hope is expensive.”
“Yeah,” I say, quieter now. “And she paid your bill.”
He closes his eyes.
When he opens them, they look more like Roma’s than ever.
“She did, didn’t she?”
“She paid it with everything.”
He turns toward the far wall, where a small shelf holds a few objects tied down with wire: a cracked mug, an old tool handle, a child’s painted scrap of metal sealed behind cloudy plastic.
I notice it properly for the first time.
The painted stars are uneven, bright little dots connected by lines that make no astronomical sense.
Pally follows my gaze.
“She made that when she was six,” he says. “Told me it was a map to find me if I got lost.”
My throat tightens in a way I refuse to dignify with attention. “Well.”
He lets out a breath that shakes once. “Well, what?”
“Looks like it worked.”
For the first time, the old man almost smiles. It hurts him. I can tell.
Then the smile dies, replaced by something harder and cleaner.
He reaches up, takes the little painted panel from its bracket, and sets it beside the console where he can see it while he works.
“All right,” he says. “We do this properly.”
I step closer to the map. “Now you’re talking.”
“We do not rush Throgg head-on.”
“Wasn’t my first choice.”
“It was absolutely your first choice.”
“Maybe top three.”
“We track his route toward the Thorn Shelf, enter through the blind corridor, and attach to his outer maintenance spine during sensor recalibration. Once aboard, we do not search blindly. We create a system fault that requires engineering response. If Roma has access, she will see it.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then Throgg sees it, sends engineers, and we take one alive.”
I grin. “There he is.”
Pally gives me a severe look. “Do not enjoy this too much.”
“I enjoy having a plan that involves violence.”
“It involves stealth first.”
“I’ll be stealthy violence.”
“That is not a thing.”
“It is when done confidently.”
His expression suggests he suddenly understands several things about why Roma argues with me.
He turns to a side compartment and pulls out a battered case. Inside are tools, compact weapons, seal patches, a coil of cable, and two breathing masks.
“I have one pressure rig that may fit you badly,” he says. “It was designed for an Alzhon salvage captain with delusions of height.”
“Flattering.”
“It will keep you breathing if we lose atmosphere for under twelve minutes.”
“After today, I’m collecting terrible ways to breathe.”
“You were in vacuum for approximately two minutes and seventeen seconds based on retrieval distance.”
“Felt longer.”
“It always does.”
The quiet understanding in his voice makes me look at him differently for half a second. He has done it too, then. Drifted between life and nothing, counting the body’s betrayals one by one.
I take the pressure rig from him and begin checking the seals.
Pally watches my hands. “What are you to her?”
The question comes without warning and lands worse than a punch.
I keep my eyes on the rig. “Annoying.”
“That is obvious.”
“Useful.”
“That is disputed.”
I glance up. “Alive, despite recent attempts.”
His mouth tightens. “Dux.”
There is a father’s warning in the way he says my name, and it would be funny if the situation were not standing on my throat.
“I don’t know what I am to her,” I say. “I know what she is to me.”
He waits.
I pull one strap through a buckle, slower than necessary. “She’s the reason I’m not done.”
Pally’s expression shifts, unreadable at first, then painfully human.
“That is a dangerous thing to put on another person,” he says.
“I know.”
“Does she?”
“Probably. She notices everything inconvenient.”
He nods once, accepting more than approving. “Then do not make yourself another burden she thinks she has to carry.”
“I’m planning on carrying her for a while, actually.”
“She will hate that.”
“Yeah,” I say. “She’ll live.”
Pally looks back at the painted scrap beside the console, then at the route threading through the deadly field ahead. His hands settle over the controls with renewed certainty.
The ship’s engines deepen, rough and uneven, but the whole vessel shifts forward with purpose. Around us, the core bends light into long, impossible curves, and Throgg’s projected path glows on the map like a vein leading into darkness.
Pally does not look at me when he speaks again.
“If you get my daughter killed, I will take you apart slowly enough to make the lesson educational.”
I secure the last strap on the pressure rig and bare my teeth. “Fair.”
“And if you save her, I will still dislike you.”
“Also fair.”
He gives the smallest nod. “Then we understand each other.”
“Not even close,” I say, moving beside him as the little ship turns toward the Thorn Shelf. “But we’ve got somewhere to start.”