6. Dux #2
My room contains very little worth naming.
A duffel waits on the bed where I left it after returning from Roma’s ship.
Clothes. Compact armor panels. A ship-safe sidearm.
Two blades. Medpack. Old tags from the war that I do not wear and do not throw away.
A data chip with music from men and women who are bones now, if anything was left of them at all.
Loklo stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“That is depressing.”
“I am portable.”
“That is also depressing.”
I sling the duffel over my shoulder and scan the room once.
Not because I expect to miss it, but because leaving without looking would be cowardice dressed as efficiency.
The blanket is rumpled. The wall screen is cracked.
One boot print stains the far wall from a night I came home drunk and decided gravity had insulted me. Nothing here asks me to stay.
Loklo says, “You could choose something else.”
I turn off the room light. “I know.”
“That makes it worse.”
“I know that too.”
We walk back down together. At the side exit, the bar lies behind us in half-darkness, waiting for morning or trouble, whichever has poorer timing. Loklo holds the token like he still wants to throw it at my head.
“Come back,” he says.
The words are blunt. No decoration. No joke hiding inside.
“I’ll try,” I tell him.
His eyes search mine, and whatever he finds does not satisfy him. “That answer is garbage.”
“It is the best one I own.”
“Acquire better things.”
“I’ll put it on the list.”
He steps aside and opens the door. Cold station air spills in, carrying fuel vapor, metal dust, and the distant salt-sour breath of too many species living under recycled atmosphere. “For the record, if she gets you killed, I am haunting her ship.”
“You are not dead.”
“I will become dead out of spite. Do not test my commitment.”
“I’ll warn her.”
Loklo gives me a narrow look. “No, you won’t. You’ll make it sound charming and then she’ll threaten my tax compliance again.”
“She threatened your tax compliance?”
“She has the soul of a government audit.”
I laugh as I step into the corridor. “You like her.”
“I like dangerous women from a safe distance. You should try it.”
“I’ve never been much for safe distance.”
“That,” Loklo says, letting the door begin to close, “is the whole damn problem.”
The door seals between us before I can answer.
The walk to Docking Bay Twelve feels longer with the duffel on my shoulder and the access token gone from my pocket.
The station has dimmed into night cycle, all blue guide lights and low machinery murmur.
Cleaning mechanials creep along wall seams, whispering over spilled grime.
Somewhere behind a closed hatch, lovers argue in a language I do not know, their voices rising and falling with the intimate rhythm of people trying not to lose each other.
The recycled air tastes faintly of copper near the docking levels.
The Lamplight waits beneath bright maintenance lamps, hull dark as a folded shadow.
Roma stands under the ship with a compad in one hand and fury arranged into perfect posture. A fueling tech twice her width stands across from her, visibly reconsidering every decision that led him into customer service.
“I ordered deuterium mix three,” Roma says, each word clipped clean. “This is mix two with stabilizer additives.”
The tech glances at his own tablet. “Manifest says compatible.”
Roma steps closer. Her voice lowers, which somehow makes it worse. “My patience is compatible with violence. That does not make violence advisable.”
The tech looks at me with desperate hope. “You her muscle?”
Roma turns her head slowly. “I am my muscle.”
I stop beside them and adjust the duffel on my shoulder. “I’m decorative.”
Roma’s eyes drop to the bag, then return to my face. “You’re late.”
“You gave me no time.”
“I gave you an operational expectation.”
“That is not a time.”
“It implied immediacy.”
“That is still not a time. That is a mood with authority issues.”
The fueling tech swallows. “Should I get mix three?”
Roma looks back at him. “Yes.”
He departs at a speed that suggests he has found religion.
I look up along the Lamplight’s belly. Up close, she is stranger than she looked on the display.
The hull is layered in tight graphite plating, its seams almost invisible until the light catches them.
Folded vanes hug the sides, sleek and dark, while the drive assembly sits tucked beneath overlapping shield bands in a placement that makes my instincts itch.
“Your center of mass is wrong,” I say.
Roma starts up the ramp. “No, it is unusual.”
“That is what people call wrong after spending money.”
“It is compensated through adaptive ballast and distributed thrust.”
“You put the drive forward.”
“I am aware of where I put my drive.”
“Most people put the dangerous humming heart of the ship somewhere less eager to become everyone’s business during impact.”
She pauses halfway up the ramp and looks down at me. “Most people are not attempting controlled transit through gravitational distortion severe enough to turn conventional architecture into debris confetti.”
“That sounded almost like an explanation.”
“It was the simplified version.”
“For me?”
“For my blood pressure.”
I follow her up the ramp, ducking under the hatch.
The inside of the Lamplight smells like filtered air, warmed polymer, solder, and machine oil.
It is clean enough to make me feel accused.
The corridor lights brighten as Roma passes, responding to her like well-trained soldiers.
For me, they brighten a fraction late, as if the ship is deciding whether I count.
I angle my shoulders through the corridor and immediately knock one horn ridge against a low structural lip. The chime that answers is delicate and judgmental.
Roma turns. “Did you just hit my ship?”
“With my head.”
“Do not do that.”
“I will try to become shorter.”
“Try harder.”
She leads me past a compact galley, a sealed equipment locker, and a narrow access shaft that no being my size should ever be asked to enter by anyone who values peace.
“Your quarters are aft, starboard side. Storage is limited. Weapons go in the locker unless I authorize them. Do not alter environmental settings. Do not access maintenance crawlspaces. Do not improvise repairs.”
“I sleep with weapons,” I say.
“Not on my ship.”
“I sleep badly without them.”
“That is unfortunate for you.”
“Could become unfortunate for everyone.”
She stops at the cockpit hatch and faces me. The bruise along her cheek has darkened since the fight, purple blooming beneath pale skin. It makes my fingers curl around the duffel strap before I tell them to behave.
“If your sense of safety depends on violating my rules before launch,” Roma says, “then you may leave.”
“I did not say I would violate them before launch.”
Her eyes narrow. “That qualifier is doing suspicious work.”
“I like precise language. You should appreciate that.”
“I appreciate obedience.”
“Then you are destined for disappointment.”
She enters the cockpit without dignifying that. I follow and take in the layout properly this time.
The cockpit is built like her mind: efficient, compressed, and hostile to waste.
The pilot’s station curves around the command chair in a crescent of screens and tactile controls.
The secondary station sits slightly behind and to the right, its interface trimmed down so aggressively it looks punitive.
No weapons array. No thrust authority. No free navigation access.
Environmental alerts, hull status, emergency foam, medical systems, limited comms. She has given me a toolbox with half the handles removed.
I sit in the secondary chair.
The chair creaks.
Roma glances over her shoulder. “It is rated for your weight.”
“It disagrees.”
“The chair does not have opinions.”
“Everything has opinions if you mistreat it enough.”
“You have known it for three seconds.”
“And already we have tension.”
She turns back to her screens. “Do not bond with my furniture.”
I run my fingers over the edge of the locked weapons panel. The interface rejects me with a polite red flash. “Why are weapons routed only through your station?”
“Because I control weapons.”
“What if you are unconscious?”
“I do not intend to become unconscious.”
I look at the back of her head. “Reality loves that kind of confidence. It keeps a special hammer for it.”
“My station has independent backups. If I am incapacitated, the ship prioritizes evasion and life support until I recover.”
“And if you don’t recover?”
Her hands pause over the controls for the smallest possible fraction of time. “Then the mission has likely failed.”
“That is a terrible design philosophy.”
“No, it is an accurate hierarchy of function.”
“It makes you the single point of failure.”
“It makes me the only person qualified to prevent failure.”
“Those can be the same thing.”
She turns in her chair then, face controlled, eyes bright with irritation.
“I am aware you come from a professional tradition where shouting and charging may have been considered sufficient tactical planning, but on this vessel systems exist for reasons. You do not get authority because you are large, loud, and difficult to kill.”
“I am also charming.”
“You are also temporary.”
“That hurts, Commander.”
“It was meant to clarify.”
I lean back as much as the chair allows and scan the panel again. “What does this toggle do?”
Roma’s gaze snaps to my hand. “Do not touch that.”
“I have not touched it.”
“You were approaching it with intent.”
“I approach many things with intent.”
“Approach fewer.”
I let my finger hover a breath longer, then tap the toggle.
A small schematic appears on my screen, showing a sealed crawlspace along the port side. Roma rises from her chair with remarkable speed and slaps my hand away before I can tap it again.