28. Dux #2
We strip the guards fast. Pally takes an access wafer and a command tag from the least damaged one while I drag the bodies into the conduit mouth and wedge the hatch mostly closed. He shoots me a look when I remove one guard’s shock blade and clip it to my belt.
“What?” I ask.
“You have hands.”
“I like options.”
“You like trouble.”
“Trouble likes me first.”
He leads us down the corridor at a brisk pace, one eye on a palm display tracking internal movement.
The ship’s interior is colder than his vessel, built in long angular lines that make every passage feel like it was designed to control where the body wants to go.
Reaper architecture loves discipline. Straight sightlines.
Reinforced junctions. Doors that seal with authority.
Places to trap enemies, places to observe prisoners, places to remind everyone that mercy was never part of the blueprint.
“Roma’s signal?” I ask.
Pally lifts the little transmitter he gave me earlier. Its display flickers with static, then a tiny pulse crawls across the lower band.
“There,” he says.
I stop moving.
He nearly runs into me. “What are you doing?”
“That’s her?”
“It is likely her system signature.”
“Likely?”
“It uses Larson-pattern recursion, but it has been buried under damaged telemetry and false diagnostic noise.”
I stare at him.
His mouth tightens. “Yes. It is her.”
A grin pulls at my mouth in spite of it all. “Good girl.”
Pally gives me a look that could sterilize instruments. “Do not say that where I can hear you.”
“Focus, old man. Where is she?”
He adjusts the transmitter, matching it against the internal schematic he stole from the wall panel. “Engineering deck. Moving between central drive control and a restricted command buffer. She embedded more than one layer.”
“Of course she did.”
“She is setting something up.”
“Also of course.”
Pally’s face tightens with worry. “If Throgg has given her access to live systems, he is depending on her.”
“That means she has leverage.”
“It means he will kill her the moment he thinks her usefulness has turned against him.”
The grin dies.
“Then we get there before he figures it out.”
Pally points toward a side passage. “Service route. It avoids main patrol arteries, but it crosses a perimeter defense node.”
“Define defense.”
“Automated turret grid, biometric sweep, and pressure seal.”
“Any good news?”
“The turret grid may be old.”
“Comforting.”
“It may be very old.”
“Less comforting.”
We move.
The service route drops us down two levels through a maintenance shaft that smells of coolant and hot circuitry.
My shoulders scrape both sides, and the pressure rig catches twice on bracket mounts that were clearly designed by people with no appreciation for healthy body size.
Pally moves ahead with maddening ease, pausing only to cut sensor wires or place bypass pins with the calm irritation of a man repairing a sink while infiltrating a warship.
At the bottom, he holds up a hand.
I stop behind him, listening.
Beyond the grate ahead, something rotates with a faint mechanical whir.
Turrets.
Pally opens a tiny optical probe and threads it through the grate. The display on his wrist shows a corridor junction with four ceiling-mounted defense units, each one folded inward, dormant but ready. A biometric scanner washes the corridor in faint blue pulses.
Pally whispers, “We cannot trip that grid.”
“Then turn it off.”
“I am working on it.”
“How long?”
“Long enough for you to become impatient.”
“That’s already happened.”
“Quietly impatient.”
I lean closer to the grate. The pulse pattern sweeps the corridor in intervals, crossing over a service panel on the far wall. “Can you spoof the scanner?”
“With proper access.”
“Is that panel proper access?”
“It is access.”
“That sounded like yes wearing bad shoes.”
“It is across the turret field.”
I study the corridor, the sweep timing, the turret housings, the distance. “I can reach it.”
“No.”
“You didn’t even pretend to consider it.”
“You cannot outrun automated fire.”
“Don’t need to outrun it. Need to confuse it long enough.”
Pally turns toward me in the cramped shaft. “I am beginning to understand why my daughter sounds exhausted when she argues.”
“She misses me.”
“She believes you are dead.”
The words hit like a fist I let him throw.
My jaw tightens. “Then let’s go ruin that assumption.”
I pull the stolen shock blade from my belt and wedge it into the grate seam.
Pally grabs my wrist. “Dux.”
I look at his hand, then at his face. “Trust me.”
“I do not.”
“Trust that I want to live.”
That reaches him.
His grip loosens.
“Three seconds,” he says. “If I can reach the panel through your distraction, I need three seconds.”
“Take four. I’m generous.”
“You are concussed.”
“Also generous.”
I rip the grate open and launch into the corridor.
The scanner hits me immediately.
The turrets unfold.
I throw the shock blade at the nearest unit as the first shot burns past my shoulder, close enough to heat the side of my mask. The blade strikes the turret housing and discharges in a violent crackle of electricity, forcing it to seize mid-rotation. The other three swivel toward me.
I run at them.
The corridor erupts with fire.
Shots hammer the walls and floor around me, white-hot lines carving through the plating as I zigzag hard enough to make my ribs scream.
One blast clips my upper arm, spinning me halfway around, but I use the turn to slam my shoulder into the wall beneath the second turret.
My hand closes around its mounting strut, and I rip downward with everything I have.
The turret tears free in a shower of sparks.
Pally moves.
I see him low and fast in the corner of my eye, sliding beneath the scanner sweep toward the far panel while the remaining turrets track the larger idiot making himself obvious.
A shot hits the floor near his boot, and I throw the broken turret housing into the firing path.
It explodes under the next blast, spraying fragments across the corridor.
“Anytime,” I growl.
“At the panel,” Pally snaps.
“Lovely place to die?”
“Working.”
A turret locks onto him.
I cross the distance in two strides and put myself between the barrel and Pally. The shot hits my chest plate dead center, knocking the air out of me despite the armor. I slam into the wall beside him and taste blood behind the mask.
Pally’s fingers fly.
The turret fires again.
I catch the barrel with both hands and force it upward as the shot discharges into the ceiling. Heat pours through my gloves. The metal burns, and I snarl through clenched teeth as the turret motor fights me.
“Pally!”
“Done.”
The grid shuts down.
The sudden silence is beautiful.
I release the turret and flex my smoking fingers. “See? Elegant.”
Pally looks at the scorch mark across my chest rig, then at the destroyed corridor. “That was the ugliest thing I have ever seen survive.”
“Thank you.”
“That was not praise.”
“Felt like praise.”
He moves to the panel, pulls a live internal map, and his face changes. “We triggered a perimeter alert.”
“How bad?”
“Fast.”
Sirens start somewhere above us, low at first, then rising through the ship in measured pulses.
I grin. “There we go.”
Pally’s expression turns grim. “Engineering access is two junctions ahead and one level down. Patrol teams are converging from command and aft security.”
“Roma?”
He lifts the transmitter. The tiny buried pulse flashes stronger now, brighter and cleaner through the static.
“Close,” he says.
The hull shudders under our feet.
Another alarm joins the first, this one deeper, more urgent.
Pally glances up. “That is not us.”
“Roma?”
“Likely.”
“Good.”
“Good?” he demands.
“If she’s making alarms, she’s still fighting.”
We run.
The corridor bends left, then drops into a narrow stairwell lit by red emergency strips.
I take the lead without asking, because the first Reaper patrol comes around the lower junction with rifles raised.
I hit them before they settle their aim.
The first goes into the wall under my shoulder.
The second gets the broken remains of the turret mount across the faceplate.
The third fires at Pally, and I catch him by the collar, yanking him behind me as the shot burns past his head.
Pally stumbles, then recovers by slamming a charge clamp onto the wall panel beside us.
“Down!” he shouts.
I drive both of us against the opposite wall as the clamp detonates in a contained burst. The junction door slams shut behind the patrol, cutting off reinforcements and venting a cloud of smoke through the seam.
“Systems,” I say, coughing through the mask. “That was systems.”
“That was controlled demolition.”
“You do violence like an engineer.”
“You do engineering like a falling building.”
“Fair.”
The transmitter pulses again.
Pally lifts it, and the map overlays a path through the next corridor.
“There,” he says. “Engineering deck access. Roma’s signal is inside.”
The doors ahead are sealed, marked with Reaper command glyphs and guarded by two armored figures who turn as we approach.
I roll my shoulders.
Pally raises a bypass tool.
We glance at each other.
He says, “I need ten seconds.”
I bare my teeth. “Take nine.”
Then I move toward the guards, toward the sealed doors, toward the woman who thinks I am dead and the future I have decided to survive long enough to claim.