25. Roma
ROMA
Throgg’s ship makes obedience audible.
Every corridor carries the same low mechanical cadence, a disciplined vibration that moves through the soles of my boots and up into my knees as Reaper systems shift power between weapons, engines, and life support with ruthless efficiency.
The lighting never brightens enough to be generous.
It remains fixed in a cold amber wash that sharpens every edge and turns every armored figure into something carved from shadow and intent.
By the time two guards escort me back to the engineering deck, I have counted six access panels with manual release seams, three blind angles in the observation lattice, and one maintenance conduit just wide enough for a human body willing to lose skin getting through it.
I keep my hands still at my sides.
The guards think restraint means compliance.
Throgg waits beside the central drive assembly with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the regulator housing I modified earlier as if it has personally disappointed him.
“The improvement degraded after thirty-seven minutes,” he says.
I look toward the diagnostic display. “It held for thirty-seven minutes longer than your original configuration.”
One of the Reaper engineers turns sharply.
Throgg lifts two fingers, and the engineer goes still.
“You were asked for correction,” Throgg says. “You provided postponement.”
“I provided stabilization within the access limits you gave me,” I reply. “If you want miracles, you should give prisoners better tools.”
His eyes settle on me, calm and depthless. “Failure carries consequences here.”
“I assumed.”
“You should do more than assume.”
At his gesture, a side display activates. The image resolves into my ship, docked against the Reaper vessel under external clamps. Damage scars run along her hull, and the airlock patch I made after the Zenos attack is warped from the boarding assault.
My throat tightens.
Throgg watches my face while the camera angle changes, zooming in on her exposed drive housing.
“A ship can be disassembled in stages,” he says. “One component at a time. One system after another. Its designer can watch and explain the value of each part before it is removed.”
I let my gaze move over the image with visible irritation rather than panic. “Threatening my ship is poor strategy.”
“Because it lacks value to you?”
“Because it has more value intact.”
I step closer to the display and point toward the external rings.
“Those systems are integrated with my adaptive navigation model. Strip them, and you get expensive scrap. Preserve them, and you get the only architecture in this region that has successfully crossed corridors your vessel cannot survive.”
Throgg descends one step from the platform. “You would give me that architecture?”
“I would give you enough to stop wasting time damaging things you need.”
“Enough.”
“Yes.”
“You choose that word often.”
“I choose accurate words.”
He studies me in silence, and the engineering deck seems to hold its breath around us. I can feel every eye on my back, every weapon angle, every sensor watching for the twitch that would turn negotiation into punishment.
Throgg finally says, “Show me what you require.”
I walk to the main projection table and pull up the distorted map of the core they have compiled.
Their version is better than I expected and worse than it needs to be.
It contains predator zones, wreckage corridors, Zenos clusters, Reaper patrol paths, and several marked anomalies where ships disappeared or instruments died.
It does not contain my father.
At least, it does not label him.
I trace one finger near a region of overlapping debris and shear. “Your escape failure begins here. Your vessel cannot predict the transition load quickly enough because your map treats shear like weather instead of anatomy.”
“Anatomy,” Throgg repeats.
“Structure with behavior. Patterned, adaptive, responsive to mass. My father understood that better than anyone alive.”
The sentence almost breaks me.
I keep going.
“If he is in the region, he has already solved pieces of the problem you keep failing to brute-force. You need him.”
Throgg’s gaze sharpens. “And you can locate him.”
“I can increase probability.”
“That sounds modest.”
“It sounds honest.”
He steps closer. “And what do you want in exchange?”
“Access to my ship’s navigation core. Limited communication privileges for signal triangulation. Fabrication authority for adaptive sensor probes.”
“And freedom?”
I look at him. “Freedom is not a realistic opening demand.”
“Practical.”
“I prefer effective.”
He leans over the projection, his shadow falling across the map. “If this is an attempt to lead me into a trap, the consequences will reach beyond you.”
There it is.
I meet his gaze. “You have made that clear.”
“No,” he says softly. “I have implied it. Clarity would be allowing you to watch your ship cut apart while my crew tests how many useful answers pain can extract from a human engineer.”
My stomach turns, but my hands remain steady on the table.
“You would lose the answers that require precision,” I say.
“Perhaps.”
“You would gain fear and reduce accuracy. Bad trade.”
His eyes gleam. “You argue under threat with admirable composure.”
“I dislike inefficient intimidation.”
“Do you dislike it enough to obey?”
I let my eyes drop to the projection, calculating what he wants to see. A frightened prisoner lies. A defiant prisoner resists. A useful prisoner bargains.
“I will cooperate,” I say. “Within functional limits.”
“Functional limits?”
“I will not destroy the tools required to complete the work.”
That makes him smile.
“Chutzpah,” he says again.
“My father called it being difficult.”
“And the Vakutan?”
The word slides under my ribs.
I keep my face angled toward the map. “He called it worse things.”
“You continue speaking of him as if he survives.”
“I continue speaking accurately.”
“You saw him ejected.”
“I saw him leave the ship.”
Throgg’s voice lowers. “You cling to uncertainty.”
“I use uncertainty.”
He circles the table slowly. “Then use this. If you attempt escape alone, you may succeed for several corridors. Your ship is damaged, but clever. You are damaged, but clever. Yet you will not reach your father without fuel, without repairs, and without the coordinates I possess.”
I look up.
He knows.
Or he knows enough.
“You have coordinates,” I say.
“I have years of accumulated proximity data. Your father is a persistent ghost. He moves, hides, repairs, broadcasts, and vanishes before capture. I have chased him longer than you have flown this mission.”
My pulse climbs despite myself. “Show me.”
“Earn it.”
Anger flares sharp enough to taste. “If you already knew where he might be, then intercepting me was not coincidence.”
“No.”
“You used his signal as bait.”
“I used opportunity.”
“Those are not different enough for comfort.”
“I do not value your comfort.”
I lean closer over the projection, and for once I allow him to see the edge of what I feel.
“Then value this. If my father knows you are coming, he will run. If he knows I am with you, he may answer. If he thinks I am under duress, he will still answer, because he is sentimental and reckless in ways I am furious to have inherited.”
Throgg watches me with unnerving stillness.
I press harder. “You need me to bring him into the equation. You need him to complete the escape architecture. You need my ship to test it. That means threatening any one of us reduces your odds.”
“Us,” he says.
The word catches.
I recover too late.
His eyes narrow with satisfaction. “Your father. Your ship. The Vakutan.”
I straighten slowly. “You are reading significance into grammar.”
“I read priorities.”
“Then read the practical one. A living Dux would be useful.”
“Would he?”
“He is combat-capable, physically resilient, tactically adaptive, and extremely irritating to kill.”
“How touching.”
“How practical.”
Throgg’s expression remains controlled, but his attention has sharpened into a blade. “You believe he lives because you need him to live.”
“I believe he may live because his physiology allows a nonzero survival window in vacuum and because this region contains salvage fields dense enough to permit recovery or impact shielding.”
“And if he is dead?”
I hold his gaze. “Then you wasted a potentially valuable asset by ejecting him.”
A faint laugh moves through him. “You grieve like an engineer.”
“I grieve privately.”
“You grieve productively.”
“I am standing on your engineering deck under armed supervision, discussing how to improve your odds of survival. I would call that restrained.”
His smile fades, leaving something colder behind. “Then restrain yourself further. You will prepare a signal architecture designed to draw Palindrome Larson into communication range. You will provide stabilizer improvements sufficient to follow when he moves. You will not warn him.”
“I will need authentic signature fragments to make the signal credible.”
“You have them.”
“I have partials.”
“You have enough.”
“I need access to my ship.”
He considers me for several seconds. “Granted under escort.”
My heart strikes once, hard.
There it is.
The door.
Not freedom. Not enough for escape and not enough to reach my father alone, but enough to touch my systems, enough to leave a mark, enough to create a path someone else could find if someone else is still alive to look.
Dux would look.
The thought arrives with such certainty that I almost sway.
He would be furious and half-dead and making terrible jokes in some impossible corner of the core, but he would look.
Pally would too, if he found him.
The possibility opens inside me with dangerous force. My father alive. Dux alive. Two impossible men moving somewhere through the same murderous dark, both too stubborn to do the decent thing and stay dead or hidden.
I can escape alone.
The realization forms as Throgg turns away to issue commands.
With access to my ship, even under escort, I could trigger emergency separation, vent the docking clamps, route power through the auxiliary drive, and burn hard toward the last known signal cone.
The odds are miserable. The ship is damaged. Throgg would pursue within minutes.
But I could try.
The old version of me would have already chosen it.
My father’s signal would have been enough.
My mission would have narrowed to one line, one objective, one acceptable cost. I would have told myself Dux was dead because the alternative complicated the calculation.
I would have told myself rescue required sacrifice, and I would have made the ugliest possible choice sound clean.
My hands curl against the edge of the projection table.
I see Dux’s face through the airlock glass.
I hear his voice in memory, rough and impossible. I’m hard to kill.
I see my father’s hands in an old workshop, grease under his nails as he steadied a soldering iron in mine.
Two points of gravity.
The past.
The future I did not mean to want.
Throgg looks back. “You are quiet.”
“I am calculating.”
“What conclusion have you reached?”
I release the edge of the table and straighten. “An escape attempt now would fail.”
His eyes brighten.
He thinks I mean mine.
Good.
“Explain,” he says.
“If I access my ship under guard, you will expect sabotage. You will monitor propulsion, communications, and docking controls. The obvious escape paths are compromised because you have already anticipated them.”
“And less obvious paths?”
“Require preparation.”
His smile returns. “You admit you are planning.”
“You would respect me less if I were not.”
“I would kill you faster.”
“Then we both benefit from my honesty.”
He gestures toward the guards. “Take her to her vessel. She will retrieve what she needs and install no unauthorized function.”
“That is impossible,” I say.
His gaze hardens.
I continue before the guards can move. “My ship’s systems are interdependent. Any diagnostic access triggers background functions. If your engineers interpret every automatic process as sabotage, we will waste hours arguing with software.”
Throgg looks to one of his engineers.
The engineer’s reluctance gives me the answer before he speaks. “Adaptive vessels do produce layered background activity.”
“Fine,” Throgg says. “Unauthorized intentional function.”
“Define intentional in a way your engineers can measure.”
“Do not test the limits too obviously.”
“I prefer subtlety.”
“Do you?”
“When properly motivated.”
He steps closer, and his voice lowers. “Your motivation is survival.”
I meet his gaze. “No.”
The word leaves before caution can soften it.
His eyes narrow.
I should correct.
I do not.
“My motivation is outcome,” I say. “Survival is only useful if it preserves the possibility of achieving one.”
Throgg studies me for a long, dangerous moment. “That distinction may keep you alive.”
“It usually does.”
He turns away. “Proceed.”
The guards flank me as I leave the engineering deck, and the corridor swallows us in amber light and metallic rhythm. My body moves with steady discipline, but inside, every calculation rearranges itself around a new truth.
I am not escaping alone.
The thought should feel like failure. Instead, it feels like the first accurate calculation I have made since Dux vanished into the dark.
I need my father.
I need Dux.
I need Throgg to believe he is using me while I pull all three trajectories into collision.
The guards lead me toward the docking spine, toward my damaged ship and the systems only I understand well enough to corrupt invisibly.
My fingertips ache with the need to touch her controls, to wake hidden pathways, to leave a signal beneath a signal, a trail narrow enough for the right minds to follow.
When the docking hatch opens and I see my ship waiting under Reaper clamps, battered and beautiful and still alive, my throat tightens so hard I have to swallow twice before I can breathe properly.
One guard nudges me forward.
“Move,” it says.
I step onto my ship’s threshold, and the familiar deck accepts my weight with a faint vibration that feels almost like recognition.
For a moment, I could run.
I know exactly how.
I know the sequence, the overrides, the emergency burn that would tear us free and give me a handful of minutes before Throgg’s guns reacquired me.
I stand still instead.
The guard behind me shifts impatiently. “Proceed.”
I place my palm against the inner wall, feeling the ship’s damaged pulse beneath my hand, and begin writing the first hidden instruction in my head.
Not an escape.
A summons.