32. Dux
DUX
The lower corridor looks like the ship swallowed a war and couldn’t keep it down.
Everything is wrong down here. The lights sputter in sickly red pulses. The deck pitches just enough to make my knees hate me. Somewhere behind the bulkheads, something keeps scraping, long and patient, like claws dragging across the inside of my skull.
Roma moves ahead of us with that lethal grace of hers, one hand braced against the wall, the other keeping her weapon angled low.
Even half-lit by emergency strips and sparks, she looks like she was carved for disasters.
Calm jaw. Sharp eyes. Shoulders squared like she can argue physics into behaving.
Which would be real damn impressive if she wasn’t also the most stubborn woman in the known universe.
Pally stumbles out of the shaft behind me, coughing. “Okay. Great. Fantastic. We’re alive. Love that. Now can we please stop doing whatever the hell this heroic hallway nonsense is and leave?”
Roma doesn’t look back. “That is the objective.”
“Is it?” Pally snaps, voice ragged. “Because from where I’m standing, the objective keeps changing every time one of you two decides to have an emotionally constipated death wish in the middle of a corridor.”
I shoot him a look. “Not helping.”
“No, I’m helping plenty. I’m the only one here saying the obvious thing out loud.” He jabs a finger toward Roma’s back. “She needs to stop trying to die efficiently, and you need to stop looking at her like you’re about to tackle her into personal growth.”
Roma’s pace falters by half a step.
I catch it.
Of course I catch it.
“You heard him,” I say.
She keeps moving. “I heard noise.”
Pally throws both hands up. “Oh, she’s hilarious now. Wonderful. We’re all growing.”
A metallic shriek rips through the corridor behind us. Not close enough to see, but close enough to feel it in the soles of my boots. The hatch we came through shudders once, then again, and the manual lock gives a tortured groan.
Roma turns sharply. “Move faster.”
We do.
The corridor narrows, forcing us into a rough line. Pally takes point for three steps, realizes he has no idea where he’s going, and immediately slows.
“Left or right?” he asks.
Roma slips past him. “Left.”
“Great. Love left. Big fan of left.”
We cut left into a service artery lined with pressure pipes and ruptured conduits.
Steam hisses from a cracked valve, damp and hot against my face.
The sudden humidity clings to my skin, mixing with sweat under my collar.
My palms sting where the ladder tore at them, and my ribs ache every time the ship kicks under us.
Roma stops at an inset panel beside a sealed hatch and rips the cover off.
Pally looks over her shoulder. “Please tell me that opens.”
“It opens,” she says, fingers flying over exposed wires.
I hear what she doesn’t say.
I step closer. “Roma.”
“Not now.”
“Yeah, now.”
She twists two wires together. Sparks snap blue-white, bright enough to make her flinch, but she doesn’t pull away. “We have Reapers in the infrastructure, environmental failure spreading from mid-deck, and an unknown external entity making contact with the hull. Pick a better time.”
“There isn’t a better time.”
Pally groans. “I swear on every god that has ever ignored me, if you two start making eyes and speeches right now?—”
“I’m not making a speech,” I say.
Roma yanks another wire loose. “Then be quiet.”
“No.”
Her head turns just enough for one furious eye to catch mine. “Dux.”
There it is again, my name in her mouth like a warning shot. It should work. It usually does. She says my name that way, and smarter men would shut up.
I have never been accused of being smarter men.
“You said we finish this together,” I say. “I need to know you meant it.”
The hatch control spits sparks. Roma’s fingers still.
Pally’s mouth opens, then closes. For once, the man recognizes a cliff edge before tap-dancing on it.
Roma’s voice drops low. “This is not the place.”
“This is exactly the place. Because every time the floor catches fire, you start looking for a way to turn yourself into a solution.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Bull.”
She faces me fully then, eyes bright in the emergency gloom. “Do you want comfort or survival?”
“I want both.”
“That is childish.”
“Maybe.” I step closer, close enough to see the fine tremor in her hands before she curls them into fists. “Still want it.”
Her nostrils flare. “We don’t always get what we want.”
“No, we don’t. Sometimes we get a Reaper death ship, collapsing gravity, and a woman who thinks she has to earn the right to breathe.”
Her expression changes so fast I almost miss it. Pain, naked and sharp, flashes through before she locks it down.
But I saw it.
Good.
Let it hurt. Let it be real. Let it crack something open before the universe gets another shot at burying us alive.
Pally clears his throat, softer now. “Roma, he’s being a pain in the ass, but he’s not wrong.”
She looks at him like betrayal has suddenly grown a face. “You too?”
“Yeah. Me too.” He swallows, throat bobbing. “Because I would really like to not die today, and my chances of not dying go way down if our best tactical brain decides she’s optional.”
The hatch behind us gives a faint click, then groans open three inches.
Roma turns back to it immediately, shoving her shoulder against the metal. “Help me.”
I plant my hands beside hers and push. Pally joins on my other side. The hatch resists like the ship itself has an opinion, then slides open with a grinding scream that makes my teeth hurt.
Cold air pours through from the passage beyond. It smells cleaner, but not safe. Metal. Ozone. A faint chemical sweetness that raises the hair on my arms.
Roma ducks through first.
Of course she does.
I grab her wrist before she clears the threshold.
She looks back, furious. “What now?”
“Say it.”
“Dux, I swear?—”
“Say you’re coming with us. Not sending us ahead. Not buying time. Not finding some clever little loophole where technically you didn’t lie.”
Pally squeezes through beside us and glances down the new passage. “I hate to rush the couple’s counseling, but whatever’s behind us just opened the maintenance hatch.”
A heavy clang rolls through the corridor we left behind.
Roma’s eyes flick past me.
I don’t let go.
“Say it,” I repeat.
Her wrist is warm under my fingers. Her pulse hammers hard, fast, alive. I don’t know why that nearly undoes me, but it does. Maybe because so much of her tries to pretend she’s made of steel and strategy, but right here, under my thumb, she’s blood and fear and stubborn breath.
“I already said no one gets left,” she says.
“That’s policy. I want choice.”
Her brows draw together.
I lean in, voice rougher than I mean it to be. “Choose it. Choose living. Choose walking out with us even if it’s messy and inefficient and scares the hell out of you.”
Her lips part.
The ship bucks again, harder, throwing Pally into the opposite wall. He curses as a pipe bursts overhead, spraying a hot mist across the passage. Roma jerks instinctively toward him, and I release her so she can move.
She catches Pally by the front of his jacket before he slides, hauling him upright with a strength that makes him wheeze.
“You okay?” she asks.
“No,” he says. “But I’m upright, which is my current standard for thriving.”
Another clang.
Closer.
Roma looks between us. Her face is pale under the red light, but her eyes are clear. Too clear. Like she’s standing at the edge of a bridge and deciding whether the drop deserves her.
I hate that look.
I hate knowing it.
Finally, she says, “I choose survival.”
The words come out clipped. Angry. Almost resentful.
I’ll take them.
“Again,” I say.
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t push your luck.”
“Roma.”
Pally points down the corridor. “Maybe she can affirm her enthusiasm while moving?”
Roma exhales through her nose, sharp enough to cut. “I choose survival. I choose leaving this ship with both of you. I choose not sacrificing myself unless there is absolutely no other option.”
I start to object.
She lifts a finger. “Do not be greedy.”
Pally nods fast. “Honestly, that’s pretty good for her.”
The sound that leaves me is almost a laugh, except it gets caught on everything lodged in my chest. Relief. Terror. Want. The nasty realization that I can win this argument and still lose her ten minutes from now.
“Good,” I say.
Roma holds my gaze. “Good.”
Something slams into the hatch behind us hard enough to dent the metal inward.
Pally yelps. “Good! Great! Beautiful emotional milestone! Run now!”
We run.
The new passage angles downward, narrower than the last and slick with condensation. My boots skid every few steps, and I slam my shoulder into the wall to keep my balance. The gravity keeps twitching sideways, tugging at my stomach, turning each movement into a negotiation with a drunk planet.
Roma leads, but she keeps glancing back.
Not just tactically.
Checking.
The first time I notice, I almost trip.
The second time, I grin despite the burning in my lungs.
“What?” she snaps without turning.
“Nothing.”
“You are smiling.”
“Am I?”
“This is a terrible time to smile.”
“Yeah, well, you chose survival. I’m celebrating.”
“Quietly.”
“I’m very quiet.”
Pally coughs behind us. “You are aggressively not quiet.”
We hit another junction. The ceiling here has partially collapsed, wires hanging down like vines in a metal jungle. Sparks drip from them in bright little bursts, sizzling when they hit the wet deck. Roma stops short, scanning.
“Final escape point is through auxiliary launch access,” she says. “Two hundred meters.”
Pally bends over, hands on knees, dragging in thin breaths. “Only two hundred? Lovely. Practically a vacation stroll through murder plumbing.”
“Can you make it?” I ask.
He looks up, offended. “I am fueled by terror and spite. I can make anything.”
Roma’s mouth twitches.
It is tiny. Barely there.
But it’s something.
Then the lights go out.