7. Roma
ROMA
The Lamplight leaves Docking Bay Twelve with less drama than Dux entering my cockpit, which is both mathematically unsurprising and personally aggravating.
The station drops behind us in measured increments, a vast wheel of plated metal, cold lights, service spines, docking arms, and habitation rings turning against the starfield like something too old to care who comes and goes.
Its departure lanes glitter with disciplined traffic: cargo haulers crawling under heavy mass, private couriers darting along narrow vectors, maintenance skiffs blinking amber beneath the authority of bored traffic controllers.
Beyond them waits the civilized dark, wide and hungry, its silence pressing against the canopy with a grandeur that would be poetic if poetry had any measurable impact on navigation.
Inside the cockpit, the air is filtered, cool, and faintly sweet with new polymer warmed by active circuitry.
The engines deepen beneath the floor, not loud, but present in my bones, a restrained vibration that climbs through the soles of my boots and settles behind my ribs.
My hands rest on the primary controls. My displays layer the world into useful obedience: velocity, drift, traffic hazard, shield harmonics, drive coil temperature, ballast micro-adjustment, Dux’s unauthorized heart rate spike when Loklo accessed our private comms.
I did not ask the system to track Dux’s heart rate.
I also do not disable it.
“Stop touching the atmospheric balance,” I say.
Dux, who has been seated for less than seven minutes and has already tested three locked panels, two camera selectors, and one emergency foam diagnostic, pauses with his finger hovering above the secondary environmental screen.
“I’m not touching,” he says.
“You are preparing to touch.”
“That is a different crime.”
“On my ship, conspiracy is actionable.”
He leans back in the undersized secondary chair, which complains softly beneath him despite being rated for his mass. “You know, for a woman who claims to value precision, you use a broad definition of misconduct.”
“For a man who claims usefulness, you generate an extravagant amount of supervision.”
He smiles, teeth showing just enough to remind the room that amusement and threat are cousins in Vakutan anatomy. “I like to know where the walls are.”
“The walls are where I put them.”
“Yes,” Dux says, glancing toward the panels, “and I like to know which ones move.”
I bring us through the outer traffic band and accept the station controller’s final vector correction. “Lamplight clearing local authority. Transitioning to independent navigation.”
Dock control answers with professional relief. “Confirmed, Lamplight. You are clear beyond marker seven. Safe?—”
“Choose your next word carefully,” I say.
The controller pauses long enough for static to fill the line. “Confirmed, Lamplight. Departing traffic corridor.”
I close the channel.
Dux laughs quietly. “You bullied traffic control.”
“I trained them.”
“You threatened them with vocabulary.”
“I spared them tax compliance.”
“Loklo would call that restraint.”
“Loklo should not have been able to access my private channel.”
Dux rests one large hand over the harness across his chest. His claws tap once against the reinforced strap, a small sound almost swallowed by the engines. “He worries.”
“That does not improve his legality.”
“No, but it improves him.”
I glance at him despite myself. His eyes are on the forward canopy now, watching the station shrink behind us.
The reflection of telemetry paints pale lines over his red-scaled face, softening nothing, merely adding data to danger.
For all his jokes, he has gone quiet in the way people do when a door closes behind them and the next one has not opened yet.
I return my attention to navigation. “First checkpoint in twelve minutes. We follow the Lydian Spur to the outer subspace gate, then cut across the freight shadow beyond Pelagos. No transmissions beyond necessary clearance. No personal calls. No open-channel commentary. No unauthorized adjustments to environmental, navigational, propulsion, shielding, weapons, communications, waste management, lighting, or galley systems.”
Dux turns his head slowly. “Waste management made the command lecture?”
“You have been aboard less than ten minutes, and I have no confidence in your restraint.”
“That is hurtful.”
“It is evidence-based.”
“Am I allowed to breathe?”
“At current consumption, yes. Excessive dramatics may require rationing.”
“There she is.”
I keep my eyes on the display. “Who?”
“The woman from the bar. I was worried you’d left all the insults dockside.”
“I ration them too.”
“Cruel and efficient.”
“Quiet and useful would be a refreshing alternative.”
He considers this with a sincerity that is almost certainly fraudulent. “I can manage one of those.”
“Choose useful.”
“Too late. I chose quiet.”
He falls silent for exactly nine seconds.
Then he taps the secondary console.
The cockpit lights brighten by three percent.
I close my eyes briefly and open them again because piloting through departure traffic while committing murder would complicate the launch profile. “Dux.”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Why did the cockpit illumination change?”
“Did it?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
I adjust the lighting back to standard. “You accessed ambient control.”
“I was curious.”
“I warned you about curiosity.”
“You warned me about touching systems for entertainment. This was educational.”
“It will be posthumous if repeated.”
“That is a strong training model.”
I bring up the command permissions and lock ambient controls from the secondary station. “New protocol. Any unauthorized system input outside your approved panel generates a warning chime.”
“That seems excessive.”
The ship chimes as he touches the camera selector again.
I look at him.
Dux looks at the panel, then at me. “Effective, though.”
The second chime sounds when he attempts to mute the first.
“Do you understand the purpose of command structure?” I ask.
He folds his hands together in his lap with exaggerated innocence. “I understand several purposes. Which one are you currently defending?”
“The one that prevents us from dying because you have impulse control comparable to a fireworks accident.”
“Fireworks accidents are often memorable.”
“Mostly to emergency personnel.”
He nods toward the forward display. “You’re drifting point-zero-two degrees starboard.”
“I am allowing traffic wake to pass before correcting.”
“Sure.”
The word lands wrong.
Not because he says it loudly. He does not. He says it easily, lazily, as if he has set a hook and is waiting for me to notice. I check the wake pattern, the drift compensation, the cargo hauler crossing four thousand kilometers out, and the faint ripple from its shield wash.
The correction is not necessary yet.
Technically.
“You believe I should correct now,” I say.
“I believe the hauler’s wash is spreading wider than your model says.”
“My model uses live telemetry.”
“Your model uses what that hauler admits to emitting.”
I look more closely at the vessel in question. Old hull. League registry. Freight class with aftermarket shield modifications and a heat bloom around the port aft array suggesting either poor maintenance or deliberate underreporting. I adjust scan resolution.
The wake is broader than declared.
Damn him.
I correct three seconds earlier than planned.
The Lamplight responds smoothly, sliding beneath the outer ripple with only a faint shiver through the deck.
A weaker ship would not have noticed. A less prepared pilot would not have bothered.
The correction is minor, irritatingly valid, and observed by a man who immediately looks far too pleased with himself.
“Do not smile,” I say.
Dux smiles. “I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“I was experiencing private professional satisfaction.”
“Experience it privately.”
“I am. This is my private face.”
“Your private face takes up half the cockpit.”
He laughs, and the sound rolls through the confined space with warmth I do not want there.
It disturbs the crisp rhythm of the instruments.
It makes the cockpit feel less like a controlled environment and more like a room occupied by another person.
That should not be notable, but it is. I have flown simulations alone for years.
I built this chair, these panels, these protocols around the assumption that solitude was not merely likely, but optimal.
Dux’s presence is not optimal.
It is, however, data-rich.
I pass marker seven and engage the first plotted acceleration curve.
Stars stretch imperceptibly across the canopy as the Lamplight leaves station-regulated speed and enters the long dark between systems. The engines settle into a deeper harmonic, a clean vibration that makes the ship feel awake from nose to drive core.
My hands move through launch sequence confirmation, primary navigation lock, drift corridor alignment, and pre-gate drive warmup.
Dux watches.
It would be easier if he did not watch so well.
“Your right-hand panel is redundant,” he says.
“It is not.”
“It has navigation, propulsion, and shield summaries. All of those are already primary on your center display.”
“The right-hand panel is dedicated to emergency cross-reference if central projection fails.”
“Then why is it angled toward you instead of shared?”
“Because I am the pilot.”
“What am I?”
“Temporary.”
He lets out a low chuckle. “You have a gift.”
“I have many. Your approval was not requested.”
“If I’m supposed to help keep us alive, I need visibility.”
“You have hull status, environment, medical, limited external feed, and emergency comms.”
“I have the children’s menu.”
“You have what you require.”