32. Dux #2
Total black swallows us so completely my body forgets where the walls are. The sound changes immediately. Without sight, everything grows teeth—the hiss of leaking steam, the distant groan of the ship, Pally’s harsh breathing, Roma’s inhale somewhere to my left.
My hand finds her arm before thought catches up.
She doesn’t pull away.
“Emergency strips should reboot,” she says, voice controlled but closer than I expect. “Three seconds.”
They don’t.
Five seconds.
Still black.
Pally whispers, “Anybody else not enjoying this?”
A sound answers him from the corridor behind us.
Wet metal. Dragging weight. A click-click-click like knives tapping bone.
Roma’s fingers close around my wrist.
Not for comfort. Not exactly.
But she holds on.
“Dux,” she breathes.
“I know.”
“Thermal?”
“On it.”
I blink my implant overlay awake, fighting the static crawling across my vision. The display stutters, then resolves into a grainy heat map. Pally glows ahead of me in anxious orange. Roma beside me, bright at the core, edges flickering with interference.
Behind us, three shapes move low along the corridor walls.
Fast.
“Three,” I say. “Coming in ugly.”
Pally makes a strangled noise. “Define ugly.”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answered.”
Roma releases my wrist and lifts her weapon. “Pally, move forward ten paces and get low.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you better alive.”
“Copy that.”
He scrambles forward in the dark. The emergency lights flicker once, weak and red, then die again.
The Reapers hit the junction like thrown shadows.
Roma fires first. The muzzle flash cuts the dark into brutal snapshots—one twisted limb, one open mouth, one slick armored body skittering over the wall. The smell of plasma discharge burns through the corridor, sharp and electric.
I fire beside her, aiming for the hottest center mass. The first Reaper folds but doesn’t drop, crashing into a bundle of hanging wires and tearing them down in a shower of sparks. The second lunges low.
Roma steps into it.
Of course she does.
“Roma!” I bark.
She pivots, slamming her elbow into the thing’s skull as it closes. It shrieks, a sound like metal peeling, and she drives her weapon under its jaw and fires. The recoil snaps her shoulder back, but she stays on her feet.
The third comes over the ceiling.
I catch it too late.
It drops between us and Pally, cutting him off.
Pally freezes. “Oh, come on.”
“Down!” I shout.
He drops flat with impressive obedience, and I fire over him. The shot clips the Reaper’s side, spinning it into the wall but not stopping it. Roma is already moving, but the first creature drags itself back up behind her.
Two problems. One Roma.
My blood goes cold.
She sees the calculation hit my face.
“Don’t,” she snaps.
I bare my teeth. “Then don’t make me.”
We move at the same time.
I slam into the first Reaper before it reaches her, shoulder first, the impact rattling my spine. It smells like rot under metal, a rancid oily stink that floods my mouth with bile. Its claws rake across my sleeve, catching armor, skidding close enough to kiss skin.
Roma shoots the one near Pally twice, driving it back.
Pally, bless his terrified heart, grabs a fallen conduit and swings it with both hands. “Get away from me, you nightmare crab!”
The conduit cracks across the Reaper’s head. It does not do much damage.
It does surprise the hell out of it.
Roma finishes it with a shot through the eye.
I wrestle mine against the wall, boots slipping, arms shaking. The thing snaps at my face, too many teeth flashing in the red flicker of dying light.
Then Roma is there.
Not in front of me.
Beside me.
She jams her weapon into the creature’s ribs and fires until it stops moving.
The corridor rings with the aftermath.
My breathing scrapes in my throat. Pally sits on the floor, clutching the conduit like it’s a holy relic. Roma stands beside me, shoulder pressed against mine, weapon smoking.
I look at her.
She looks at me.
“You stayed beside me,” I say.
Her expression hardens automatically, but not fast enough to hide what’s underneath. “It was tactically sound.”
“Sure.”
“It was.”
“Absolutely.”
Pally groans from the floor. “Please flirt after we escape the murder plumbing.”
Roma steps over a twitching Reaper limb and offers him a hand. “Up.”
He takes it. “For the record, I was extremely brave.”
“You hit it with a pipe,” I say.
“With conviction.”
Roma pulls him upright. “Conviction counts.”
Pally points at her. “Thank you. See? Leadership.”
The ship takes another hit, and this time the sound from above is different. A deep structural roar rolls through the passage, followed by a pressure wave that pops my ears and sends dust gusting from the seams.
Roma’s face goes still.
“What?” I ask.
“Outer hull breach is spreading.”
Pally’s grin vanishes. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the final escape point may not remain attached to the ship much longer.”
I wipe sweat and grime from my jaw, my hand shaking more than I want it to. “Then we move.”
Roma nods, and for once she doesn’t sprint ahead alone. She moves with us, close enough that her sleeve brushes mine when the corridor narrows, close enough that when the gravity tilts again, we catch each other without discussion.
Pally falls in on her other side, breathing hard but steady.
The three of us push forward through the dark, past sparking wires and ruptured pipes, past dead things that should have stayed nightmares, toward the auxiliary launch access and whatever slim chance waits there.
Roma’s hand brushes mine once.
Then, deliberately, she hooks two fingers around my wrist and tugs me onward.
Not because she needs balance.
Because she chose.
And damn me, in the middle of a dying ship with monsters crawling through the walls, that almost feels like hope.