10. Dux
DUX
The Lamplight does not scream when the next wave hits.
That would be too easy. Screaming belongs to living throats, wounded animals, frightened soldiers, and engines built by people who think volume can substitute for warning.
Roma’s ship does something worse. She groans low through the frame, a deep and intimate sound like metal remembering it used to be ore, while every panel in the cockpit blooms red at once.
The force catches us from below.
My stomach climbs into my chest. The harness slams hard across my ribs.
The secondary chair snaps sideways on its track before the lock catches with a vicious clank, and for a moment the whole cockpit becomes angle, alarm, and blue emergency light.
Somewhere aft, something tears loose and bangs through a storage compartment with enough enthusiasm to become expensive.
Roma’s hands fly over the controls.
“Ventral shield decay,” she says, voice fast but clear. “Ballast lag worsening. Port vane response compromised. Drive alignment still intact.”
The ship drops again.
Not down, because down is a polite fiction in space.
My body believes in down anyway, and right now down is wherever pain wants us to go.
The canopy fills with spinning stars, then black, then a wash of pale debris dragged in the anomaly’s wake.
The inertial dampers cough a second too late, and the pressure across my chest turns sharp enough to pull a grunt from me.
“Roma,” I say, bracing one hand against the console without touching the active controls. “You’re chasing three failures.”
“I am prioritizing four.”
“That’s worse.”
“Not helpful.”
“Port vane is lying to you.”
Her fingers do not stop. “Port vane is overheating.”
“No, it’s reporting recovery, but the hull map says the whole side is flexing like a drunk trying to dance.”
Her eyes snap toward the structural overlay on my station. “Transfer that.”
“You locked transfer.”
“Then read.”
A violent tremor cuts through the ship before I can answer.
Roma corrects, but the correction is late by the width of a heartbeat, and that heartbeat is enough for the anomaly to hook us again.
Warning tones stack on top of one another until they become a mechanical shriek.
She silences one. Two more replace it. Her face stays composed, but the bruise on her cheek stands stark under the blue light, and there is a bright, furious fear in her eyes that she is trying to murder before anyone notices.
I notice.
“Starboard frame is taking the load,” I say. “Port vane isn’t giving you lift. It’s giving you drag.”
“It should not be.”
“It is.”
“I know what my ship should do.”
“Your ship knows what it’s doing right now.”
She cuts a look at me sharp enough to draw blood. “Do not start.”
“We are already started.”
The Lamplight rolls hard to port. Roma fights it, both hands on the controls, shoulders rigid under the harness.
The ship answers, but sluggishly, as if something enormous has a hand around her belly.
The anomaly we escaped is not behind us anymore.
It is unfolding, stretching along our route like a wound torn open under pressure.
The aft cameras show darkness bending wrong through a field of charged dust, and ahead, the mapped corridor buckles into useless geometry.
Roma tries to correct with thrust.
The Lamplight bucks.
“Stop fighting the roll,” I say.
“I am stabilizing.”
“You’re feeding it.”
“I am not.”
“Roma, listen to me.”
“I am listening to the ship.”
“The ship is telling you to let go.”
Her mouth opens, and whatever answer she has prepared dies when the port vane warning leaps from amber to red.
The left side of the hull screams through the structural map, a web of stress lines racing toward the central spine.
The Lamplight’s nose dips, then slews right as a gravity wave catches the damaged vane and twists us half off-axis.
I do not think.
Thinking wastes time.
I unclip the upper portion of my harness, lunge across the narrow space, and catch the emergency manual attitude bar beneath her console before she can slap my hand away.
The bar is not meant for me. It is meant for her hands, her reach, her precise little body in a crisis designed by engineers who never expected a Vakutan to decide permission was decorative. The mechanism resists. I force it down.
Roma’s voice turns lethal. “Dux!”
“Cut port vane authority.”
“No.”
“Cut it.”
“That leaves us without lateral compensation.”
“That vane is no longer compensation. It is a hook.”
She reaches toward my hand. I put my shoulder between her and the control because I am apparently committed to dying in the most irritating way possible.
“Dux, release that control.”
“Say please.”
“I will eject you.”
“Later.”
The ship jerks, and the attitude bar kicks against my palm hard enough to numb two fingers. I bare my teeth and hold it. Roma sees the structural map leap again. Sees the port side trying to tear the rest of the ship into obedience. Sees, damn her brilliant eyes, exactly what I saw.
Her hand snaps to the control array. “Port vane authority reduced to twelve percent.”
“Zero.”
“Twelve keeps roll reference.”
“Zero keeps us in one piece.”
She swears under her breath, sharp and human and wonderfully filthy, then kills the vane.
The Lamplight drops like a thrown blade.
For half a second, everything goes light and loose.
My stomach floats. A diagnostic stylus lifts from the console and spins between us.
Roma’s braid rises off her shoulder. The alarms stutter as the ship loses the force that had been dragging her sideways, and suddenly we are not being torn apart, only falling through an unstable corridor with a damaged hull, failing ballast, and insufficient time.
Much better.
Roma grabs the primary controls again. “Manual thrust redistribution.”
“Good.”
“I do not require encouragement.”
“You’re getting it anyway.”
“Be useful.”
“I am large and inspirational.”
“Be differently useful.”
The forward display flashes terrain.
Not ship debris. Not wake distortion. Terrain.
A field of dark bodies floats ahead, irregular asteroid fragments caught in a slow, ugly orbit around some invisible gravitational compromise.
Most are small enough to pulverize us if we hit them wrong.
One is large enough to land on if the universe briefly develops a sense of humor.
Its surface is black-gray rock veined with pale mineral lines, spinning lazily beneath a ribbon of charged dust. Thin atmosphere clings to it according to the scan, which is impossible enough to be insulting.
Roma stares at the reading. “That should not have atmosphere.”
“File a complaint after we use it.”
“We are not landing there.”
“We are not flying much longer.”
She pulls up engine status. The drive alignment finally slips from green to amber, then flutters near red. The cockpit lights flicker. A burnt smell threads through the filtered air, acrid and hot, and this time it is not nerves inventing taste. Something in the aft power routing is cooking.
Roma’s voice stays tight and controlled. “We can clear the field if I regain thrust balance.”
“You have twelve seconds before the starboard ballast overheats.”
“I can bypass.”
“Can you bypass before we become art?”
She does not answer.
That is answer enough.
I point toward the large asteroid. “There.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Roma.”
She angles the ship, not toward the asteroid, but toward the gap beyond it.
The Lamplight shudders like a living thing in pain.
A fragment strikes the forward shields and bursts into silver fire across the canopy.
Another clips the weakened port side. The whole ship yaws, and the attitude bar rips against my grip.
The asteroid fills more of the display.
Its surface is rough, cratered, and broken by ridges that look like frozen waves. Patches of mineral crystal catch the starlight and throw it back in dull blue glints. The scan flickers again: breathable atmosphere, low pressure, unstable magnetic pockets, gravity marginal but usable.
“Landing profile,” I say.
“I know.”
“You have one?”
“I am building one.”
“That sounds like no with tools.”
She snarls, actually snarls, and the sound does something strange to the back of my neck. “If you want a perfect landing, find a perfect pilot in a perfect ship under perfect conditions.”
“I want an ugly landing we survive.”
“Then stop talking.”
I stop.
Not because she told me to, though that is what she will claim later.
I stop because her hands change. The panic she refuses to admit burns out of her movements, leaving something colder and faster.
She kills nonessential systems without looking.
Reroutes emergency power to ventral shields.
Forces the starboard ballast into manual compensation.
Uses the dead port vane not as lift but as drag, turning its failure into a crude brake.
There she is.
Not the planner. Not the girl with the nine-year mission and the righteous fury. The pilot.
The Lamplight dives toward the asteroid.
Atmospheric friction kisses the hull in a faint orange flare.
The sound changes instantly, from interior groan to a rushing vibration that fills every seam.
Air, thin as it is, screams across damaged plating.
The ship rattles hard enough that my teeth click together.
Roma leans into the controls as if she can will the vessel lighter by force of contempt.
“Ventral heat rising,” I say.
“Acceptable.”
“Depends on your fondness for fire.”
“Minimal.”
“Same.”
The ground rushes up.