35. Roma #2
“Less talking,” I say, diving behind the sensor strut as another shot tears through the metal.
“I talk when stressed.”
“You are always stressed.”
“Then I am consistent.”
Dux’s voice cuts through, tight. “Roma, two are shifting toward you.”
“I see them.”
I do not see the third until it is already moving along the hull beneath the line of sight, crawling with disturbing speed toward Dad.
“Dad, down!” I shout.
He drops flat. A Reaper blade slices through the space above him, sparks bursting where it strikes the ship’s outer hatch. Dux launches himself forward, tether stretching, boots skidding as he fires into the creature’s side. It twists, hit but not stopped, and lunges toward him instead.
The old version of me would calculate distance, trajectory, and ship access priority. The old version would know Dad is at the hatch, Dux is exposed, and the escape clock is collapsing. The old version would choose the faster escape path because the mission cannot survive sentiment.
My body moves before the old version finishes speaking.
I push off the strut and cross open hull toward Dux.
The Reaper is on him by the time I reach them, claws tearing at his shoulder plating, weapon arm lifting for a killing strike.
Dux has one hand locked around its wrist, the other trying to bring his gun up in a space too tight to aim.
His breath is harsh over the comm, not panicked, never that, but strained with effort.
“Little help would be real nice,” he grits out.
“I’m here.”
“I noticed.”
I slam into the Reaper from the side, driving my knife into the seam beneath its jaw.
The blade catches, slips, then sinks. The creature thrashes, nearly ripping me loose from the hull.
My boots scream against the magnetic lock, traction failing for one horrible second before Dux hooks an arm around my waist and anchors me against him.
I twist the knife.
The Reaper spasms and goes limp.
For an instant we are tangled together against the hull, my visor inches from his, both of us breathing too fast.
“You chose the slower route again,” he says.
“I chose the route where you keep your head.”
“Big fan of that route.”
“Stop needing rescue.”
“Stop being so good at it.”
Dad interrupts, voice breathless but triumphant. “Hatch is open, and I am inside your terrifyingly judgmental ship.”
My chest loosens.
Then Throgg’s final trap springs.
The docking cradle clamps lock down around my ship.
The external release indicators flash red across my visor feed, and my stomach drops with a clean, cold precision. Throgg still has partial control of the cradle. He cannot stop us from boarding, so he will stop the ship from leaving.
Dux sees my face. “What?”
“Cradle locks.”
“Can you override?”
“From inside, if Dad integrates his bypass fast enough.”
Dad’s voice comes through surrounded by alarms. “I heard that, and I love the confidence you’re pretending to have in me.”
“You modified the auxiliary release architecture,” I say, already dragging Dux toward the open hatch. “Now you have to make it talk to my original launch protocols.”
“I made it better.”
“You made it stubborn.”
“Again, personality.”
We reach the dorsal hatch as another volley strikes the hull around us.
Dux shoves me through first despite my objection, then drops in after me, yanking the hatch closed just as a blast scorches the outer rim.
The ship’s interior wraps around me with familiar scents filtered through emergency systems—cold metal, recycled air, burnt insulation, and the faint citrus-clean tang of the cockpit sealant I selected years ago because sterile ships make people careless.
Home, damaged and furious, comes alive around me.
Alarms scream from every panel. The deck tilts under us as the ship fights the cradle locks.
Dad is already half-buried in the secondary engineering bay, gloves moving through exposed conduits with the frantic confidence of a man who has broken and fixed too many things to fear consequences properly.
“Status,” I demand, sliding into the pilot’s seat.
“Rude greeting,” Dad says.
“Status.”
“Your primary core is sulking, the port stabilizer is throwing a fit, the shield lattice is seconds from becoming decorative, and my modifications are the only reason this ship is not currently a very stylish coffin.”
Dux drops into the copilot position, scanning the tactical display. “Reapers are repositioning. Three on the hull, two coming around the stern. Something bigger is moving off Throgg’s ship.”
“Define bigger,” Dad says.
Dux’s jaw tightens. “Interception drone. Maybe a boarding spike.”
Throgg’s voice cuts through the ship comm, clearer now, piped in through the cradle interface. “You cannot launch while I hold you.”
I pull up the flight architecture, fingers flying over controls. “Dad, bridge your release bypass into the starboard ignition bus.”
“That will overload the bus.”
“Yes.”
“I like that bus.”
“I like leaving.”
“Fine, but if she flies crooked, I’m blaming you.”
“She already flies crooked because of you.”
“She flies with character.”
Dux leans toward the forward display, voice hardening. “Roma, that drone is lining up.”
“I know.”
The variables stack so fast they blur. Cradle locks, degraded shields, unstable stabilizer, Dad’s improvised bypass, Reaper fire, Throgg’s command interference, drone trajectory, Zenos impacts against the larger hull, oxygen reserves, engine heat, Dux’s blood on the copilot console where his sleeve has torn open again.
There are too many uncertainties. Too many moving pieces. No clean solution exists.
My hands pause over the controls.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
I have spent my life trying to force chaos into obedience.
I have cut choices down to their cleanest bones, stripped feeling from decisions, punished uncertainty as weakness because uncertainty was where people died.
Now uncertainty fills the cockpit like smoke, inescapable and alive, and for once, I do not try to suffocate it.
I breathe it in.
Dux looks at me. “Roma?”
“We are not going to get perfect timing.”
Dad snorts from engineering. “Sweetheart, we weren’t getting adequate timing.”
I smile, a bit ruefully. “Then we use imperfect timing.”
Dux’s eyes sharpen. “Meaning?”
“Meaning Dad releases the locks half a second before the ignition bus overloads, you fire aft thrusters manually when I tell you, and I use the Reaper impact pattern to shove us into the escape vector instead of avoiding it.”
Dad goes quiet.
Dux says, “That sounds insane.”
“It is.”
“And brilliant.”
“It is also that.”
Dad mutters, “I hate when both are true.”
Throgg snarls through the comm. “You will burn in the cradle.”
“No,” I say, setting my hands on the controls. “We are leaving.”
Dad’s voice steadies, all the jokes burned away. “Ready on bypass.”
Dux wraps his hand around the manual thruster control. “Ready.”
The drone accelerates toward us on the display.
Reaper fire charges outside.
The ship groans around me, wounded systems begging for certainty I cannot give them.
I give them command instead.
“Dad, release.”
“Releasing!”
The cradle locks blow open with a violent jolt that throws me against the harness. At the same instant, the ignition bus spikes, alarms screaming red across every screen.
“Dux, aft thrusters!”
He fires them.
The ship kicks sideways, hard and ugly. Reaper fire slams into the hull where we were supposed to be, the impact wave shoving our stern around exactly enough to clear the drone’s first intercept angle. Dad whoops from engineering as something explodes behind him.
“That better not have been important,” I shout.
“It was emotionally important!”
The drone adjusts.
I roll the ship under it, using half-dead stabilizers and pure stubborn math, then punch the main drive before the trajectory is clean. The engines catch with a roar I feel through the deck, through my ribs, through every burned nerve in my hand.
For half a second, we are going to tear apart.
Then the ship remembers she was built by me and ruined by Dad, which apparently makes her too difficult to kill.
We launch.
Throgg’s ship drops away beneath us, vast and burning, Reapers clinging to its hull like parasites, Zenos swarming its wounds in a storm of black wings and silver debris.
The interception drone streaks past our port side close enough to rattle the cockpit, missing by less than a meter as Dux curses with genuine admiration.
Dad laughs over the comm, wild and relieved. “That was not flying. That was a felony.”
“It worked,” I say, voice shaking despite my best efforts.
Dux looks at me, soot-streaked and bleeding and grinning like survival is something he intends to make a habit of. “You embraced uncertainty.”
“I tolerated it.”
“You hugged it.”
“I did not.”
“You took it to dinner.”
“Dux.”
He lifts both hands. “Fine. You professionally acknowledged uncertainty.”
Dad groans from engineering. “I am begging both of you to flirt after we are outside murder range.”
I push the throttle harder, aligning with the escape trajectory as the damaged ship shudders around us but holds. Stars stretch ahead, cold and clean, and for the first time since Throgg’s vessel swallowed us, the path forward opens instead of closing.
Behind us, Throgg’s voice tears through the comm one last time, distorted by distance and rage. “Roma!”
I cut the channel.
The silence that follows is not empty.
It is ours.