14. Dux #2
Her posture shifts. “About what?”
“I was trying to provoke you.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to see how much of you was still in there under the mission.”
“That is not an apology.”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
I rub one hand over the back of my neck, feeling dried dust grind under my palm. “A course correction.”
Roma’s brows draw together, not in the forbidden jaw kind of way, but in open suspicion. “You do course corrections?”
“Rarely. They startle everyone.”
“They should.”
I glance at her again. “I do not want to break you.”
For the first time since the drones found us, Roma has no immediate answer.
The silence that follows is not empty; it is crowded with alarms, claws, engine hum, and the uncomfortable intimacy of two people standing too close in a damaged ship.
Her expression alters by degrees, suspicion giving way to something more guarded and far less simple.
The change makes me want to step closer and step back at the same time.
So I step back.
Only one pace.
It feels larger.
Roma watches the movement as if it is a tactical event. “Why did you move?”
“Because I was too close.”
“You chose that proximity.”
“I make poor choices quickly. I can still identify them afterward.”
“That is new information.”
“Put it in your file.”
“I will.”
Her lips move as if she nearly says something else, but the ship saves her from it by slamming a warning across the central display. Exterior movement concentrates along the dorsal port side. Drones are clustering over the weakened plating, exactly where they should not be.
Roma turns back to the console, command returning like armor fastening piece by piece. “They are targeting the damaged quadrant again.”
I move beside her, keeping a more respectful distance this time. “They learned.”
“They are testing structural vulnerability.”
“That is one way to say they found the soft spot.”
“I dislike that phrase.”
“They probably like it.”
She opens the hull map and overlays the drone positions with the repaired vane control.
Her hands no longer shake. Her eyes are still too bright, but the panic from the signal has been folded into action.
That is good. That is her gift. Hurt her, surprise her, frighten her, and after the first jolt she becomes motion.
I find myself watching not because I expect failure, but because I want to see how she solves it.
That is new.
Roma says, “If I pulse the repaired vane, I can create a localized resonance along the port side.”
“Will it shake them loose?”
“It may also worsen the hinge damage.”
“Of course it may.”
“I can limit amplitude.”
“Can you make it hurt?”
She glances at me. “The drones?”
“Yes.”
“Possibly.”
“I like possibly when it involves enemies.”
“I require external verification. Your display has the better dorsal camera angle.”
I sit back down, hissing a little as the wound along my side reminds me that enthusiasm has a price. “Routing camera.”
“Do not touch anything else.”
“Back to romance already.”
“We were never at romance.”
“No, but we waved at it from a distance.”
Her fingers pause for the smallest instant, then continue. “Dux.”
“Yes?”
“Be useful.”
I smile, but softer this time. “Always.”
The dorsal feed comes up. Six drones cling to the port side, claws wedged into seams and gouges. Their armored bodies flex in unsettling rhythm, as if listening through the hull. One has found the edge of a microfracture and is picking at it with delicate, awful patience.
“Six visible,” I say. “One working the fracture line.”
Roma’s voice tightens with controlled anger. “I see it.”
“I thought you needed external verification.”
“I also have imagination.”
“The bad kind?”
“The precise kind.”
She initiates the vane pulse.
The first vibration runs through the ship like a plucked cable. The drones freeze. A second pulse follows, deeper, tuned lower. I watch the fracture line drone shudder, limbs spreading. Roma adjusts frequency, her face intent, her anger focused into mathematics.
“Higher,” I say.
“If I go higher, the hinge stress increases.”
“Lower is annoying them. Higher might persuade.”
She cuts me a look. “Persuade.”
“With pain.”
Roma shifts the frequency upward.
The hull sings.
Not metaphorically. The metal gives off a resonant moan that fills the cockpit and prickles along my teeth. On the feed, two drones lose their grip immediately, sliding down the hull and vanishing off-camera. The others dig in harder, but their movements become erratic.
“Working,” I say.
“Hinge stress?”
“Amber.”
“Drone at fracture?”
“Still attached.”
Roma’s fingers move faster. “Then I add a lateral flutter.”
“That sounds terrible for the hinge.”
“It is terrible for everything attached to the hinge.”
“Wonderful.”
The next pulse hits sideways.
The drone at the fracture tears free so violently one of its limbs remains wedged in the plating after the body flies off. It tumbles across the canopy in a blur of limbs and shrieking mandibles before disappearing over the ridge.
I laugh. “That was beautiful.”
Roma’s mouth almost curves. “It was adequate.”
“It was mean.”
“That is sometimes adequate.”
The remaining drones abandon the dorsal hull, skittering away from the vibration zone toward the ground. For the first time in several minutes, the Lamplight stops being actively clawed.
Roma shuts down the pulse before the hinge crosses into red. “Dorsal pressure clear.”
“Temporary?”
“Yes.”
“Useful temporary?”
“Yes.”
I lean back, pain throbbing in my side, and look at her properly.
She is flushed from exertion, dust-streaked, bruised, exhausted, and still standing in the center of her damaged ship making impossible choices faster than most soldiers can curse.
I thought she was fragile when she walked into my bar.
Not weak, never that, but brittle. A brilliant thing too tightly wound, likely to shatter the first time the universe refused to obey.
I was wrong.
She bends badly. She hates bending. But she does it.
That is not fragility.
That is survival with teeth.
“What?” she asks, not looking at me.
“Nothing.”
“You are staring again.”
“Monitoring assets.”
She exhales in irritation, but it lacks its earlier edge. “Say what you mean.”
I consider making a joke. I consider saying something about her ship, her temper, or the impressive way she weaponizes engineering disappointment. All of that would be easier than the truth.
“You’re not naive,” I say.
Her hands slow over the console.
“I never claimed to be,” she replies.
“I know. I decided it anyway.”
“That was arrogant.”
“Yes.”
“And inaccurate.”
“Also yes.”
She turns slightly, not fully, but enough to show she is listening.
I continue, because the words have started and apparently I am committed to making myself uncomfortable. “You are too rigid. You trust plans longer than you should. You think needing anyone is evidence of design failure. All of that may get us killed if you do not keep improving.”
“Is this your version of praise?”
“Unfortunately.”
Her gaze stays on me, sharp but not hostile. “Continue carefully.”
“You adjust fast once you accept the plan is dead.”
“The plan is not dead.”
“Parts of it are scattered across that asteroid wearing drone scratches.”
She looks toward the display, and the signal marker glows faintly beside the damage map. “The objective remains.”
“Yes,” I say. “And you are starting to understand that the road to it is going to keep changing.”
Roma looks back at me. “Starting?”
“Fine. You are violently resisting understanding.”
“That is more accurate.”
“And still moving.”
For a long moment, she says nothing. Outside, the distant drones shriek, but the sound is farther away now. The cockpit’s emergency lights continue their cold pulse. Somewhere in the wall, the repaired routing hums unevenly, alive for now.
Roma’s voice softens by one degree. “You backed off.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
I look at my hands. There is dried blood at the edge of one glove, black in the blue light. “Because I realized I was pushing to see what would break.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t like wanting to know.”
Her face changes in a way I cannot read quickly enough. With Roma, that means it matters.
“I am not breakable,” she says.
“No,” I agree. “But you are woundable.”
“So are you.”
I glance at the patch on my side. “Apparently.”
“That is not what I meant.”
I smile faintly, though my chest feels strange. “I know.”
The next hull impact lands softer, farther aft.
Roma checks the display and dismisses it as noncritical, but I see her eyes flick to the signal again.
Her father’s mark still waits there, fragile and real, pulling her deeper into danger.
Earlier, I cared about the mission because it was a good place to die.
Then because it mattered to her. Now, sitting in this damaged cockpit with blood under my armor and her future hanging on a faint line of data, I realize the mission is no longer the center of the thing for me.
Her survival is.
That thought should scare me.
It does.
I stand, slower this time. “Tell me where you need me.”
Roma studies me, perhaps hearing the shift under the words. “Dorsal exterior camera. Watch for another cluster. If they gather at the fracture line again, tell me before they settle.”
“Done.”
“And Dux?”
“Yes?”
She hesitates, then lifts her chin slightly. “Do not bleed on the console.”
I grin. “There she is.”
“Useful liability remains conditional.”
“I’ll try to stay valuable.”
“Try hard.”
I take the secondary station and bring up the dorsal feed. Outside, the asteroid lies in cold, hostile dark, crawling with movement beyond the reach of our light. Inside, Roma bends over the controls, stubborn and brilliant and very much alive.
For the first time in years, staying alive feels less like habit and more like a decision.
I do not know what to do with that yet.
So I watch the fracture line, keep my weapon close, and decide that anything trying to reach her will have to come through me first.