35. Roma
ROMA
The void waits outside the service lock with its mouth open.
There is no sound beyond the hatch, not truly, but the ship translates violence through pressure, vibration, and light.
Reaper fire strikes the hull in hard white flashes that crawl across my visor, each impact blooming against the glass like a star dying too close to my face.
Beneath my boots, the service lock trembles with the aftershocks, and the magnetic soles of my skinsuit hum as they fight to keep me attached to a ship that is actively coming apart.
Dux stands at my left, tether clipped, breathing controlled and too loud over the comm channel.
Dad is at my right, one hand braced against the hatch frame, the other gripping his tether so tightly his glove creaks.
Behind them, through the reinforced viewport, my ship shudders beneath another burst of Reaper fire, its shields flickering pale blue, then violet, then a dangerous thin white that means the defensive lattice is near collapse.
“Roma,” Dux says, voice low over the comm. “Tell me you’re not hesitating because you think staying here is an option.”
“I am hesitating because if we step out during the next firing cycle, we get cut in half.”
Dad leans forward, peering through the open hatch at the hull between us and the ship. “You could’ve led with that. I was starting to think we were having a meaningful emotional moment, and frankly, I’m not dressed for it.”
Dux huffs a breath that fogs the edge of his visor for an instant before the suit clears it. “You’re in a vacuum skinsuit.”
“Exactly. Terrible outfit for feelings.”
I ignore both of them and watch the Reapers clinging to the hull.
There are four visible from this angle, maybe five if the shape half-hidden behind the buckled sensor mast is alive and not debris.
Their claws dig into Throgg’s ship as if they are part of it, bodies flattened against the outer plating, weapons braced into the surface.
They fire in patterns now, no longer random suppression.
They have identified my ship as the exit vector.
That means Throgg has, too.
The comm crackles, and his voice comes through the service lock speakers as a broken thread of static and venom. “Roma. You are making this painfully theatrical.”
Dad groans. “Oh good. He’s back. I was worried the day might improve.”
Dux angles his weapon toward the nearest exterior speaker, as if shooting it would do anything useful. “You ever shut up, big guy?”
Throgg’s chuckle crawls through the channel. “And there is the pet. Loyal. Loud. Do you fetch as well?”
Dux smiles without warmth. “Come find out.”
“Dux,” I say, eyes never leaving the firing pattern.
“I know. Useful anger. I remember.”
“Then be useful quietly.”
He shifts closer to me, shoulder almost brushing mine inside the cramped lock. “Hard sell, but I’ll try.”
The next barrage hits my ship. Its shields flare brighter this time, then gutter.
I feel the answer in my spine, though there is no physical connection between me and the vessel except memory and design.
I know how the power will be distributing itself.
I know which banks will be starving first. I know the port stabilizer hates emergency cold starts because I built it too sensitive and Dad later modified it too aggressively, which means the ship will either fly like a blade through silk or cough up its own guts before we clear the hull.
“Dad,” I say.
“Yeah, kid?”
The word kid cuts through the pressure in my chest with infuriating precision. I keep my face still and my tone icy because if I let warmth in, it will take up space I need for calculation.
“When we board, you go straight to secondary engineering. Do not touch primary flight integration until I tell you.”
He turns his helmet toward me. “You say that because you love me, or because you think I’ll make it worse?”
“Yes.”
“Fair enough.”
Dux looks between us. “What exactly did he do to your ship?”
Dad lifts one gloved hand. “Improved it.”
I say, “Complicated it.”
“Enhanced it,” Dad corrects.
“Destabilized it.”
“Gave it personality.”
“It already had personality. You gave it opinions.”
Dux’s mouth pulls into a grin. “Of course your ship has family trauma.”
“Everything has family trauma if Dad has been in the engine compartment.”
“Rude,” Dad says, but his voice softens at the edges.
Another blast strikes close to the ship’s cockpit.
The shield bloom stutters, and this time a thin trail of vapor jets from somewhere near the starboard side.
I map the damage automatically, overlaying memory against sight, watching probabilities fracture and reform.
We need to cross the hull, enter through the dorsal service hatch, force a cold launch while under fire, integrate Dad’s bypass modifications with my original flight architecture, and execute an escape burn timed between Reaper volleys and Throgg’s final intercept attempts.
Perfect timing would be required.
Perfect timing is a lie people tell when they do not want to admit they are gambling.
The next Reaper volley begins to charge. I see it in the posture of their weapons and the faint pre-ignition flare along the barrels. The pattern staggers left to right. There is a gap after the second shot, less than three seconds, maybe enough to clear the first hull ridge.
“On my mark,” I say.
Dux lowers his center of gravity. “With you.”
Dad mutters, “This is a stupid plan.”
“It is the only plan.”
“That’s what makes it stupid.”
The first Reaper fires. Light washes over us. The second fires, slightly high, scorching the hull above the ship. The third weapon begins to glow.
“Now.”
I push out of the service lock and onto the exterior hull.
The sudden silence is enormous.
My boots clamp to the outer plating with a magnetic thud I feel through my legs rather than hear.
The hull is bitterly cold even through the suit insulation, and the vast black around us presses in from every direction, endless and indifferent.
Throgg’s ship curves beneath us like a wounded beast, its surface blistered with fire, ice, and ruptured seams. Beyond my ship, the Zenos swarm tears at the Reaper vessel in dark, shifting clouds, their bodies catching starlight in oily flashes as debris spins through them.
Dux lands beside me. Dad follows a half second later, cursing so creatively over the comm that I file two phrases away for later analysis.
“Move,” I say.
We run across the hull.
Running in magnetic boots is not graceful.
Each step catches, releases, catches again, dragging at the muscles and breaking the rhythm the body expects.
Reaper fire erupts behind us, the blasts striking close enough that the hull beneath my feet bucks and ripples.
Shards of plating peel away into space, spinning past my visor with lazy, deadly elegance.
Dux catches Dad by the harness when one impact throws him sideways. Dad’s boots scrape loose for a terrifying instant, his body lifting from the hull before Dux hauls him back down.
“I had it,” Dad snaps.
“You were airborne,” Dux says.
“I was experimenting.”
“With dying?”
“With alternative locomotion.”
“Run,” I order.
We reach the first hull ridge and drop behind it as the next volley rips overhead.
Heat flashes across the ridge, bright enough that my visor darkens automatically.
My ship sits thirty meters ahead, beautiful and battered, clamped to the external docking cradle by emergency maglocks.
Her dorsal hatch is still sealed. Her shield lattice flickers like a pulse losing strength.
Throgg’s voice returns through the comm, distorted by exterior interference. “You are crawling across my hull like vermin.”
Dad answers. “Technically, we’re running.”
Dux adds, “Badly, but with spirit.”
I hiss, “Stop encouraging him.”
“I am not encouraged,” Throgg says, his tone sharpening. “I am disappointed. You were made for cleaner work than this, Roma.”
I peer over the ridge, tracking the nearest Reaper. It is adjusting angle, bracing to fire at the dorsal hatch. “Dux, left flank. Dad, when I move, you move straight for the ship and do not stop.”
Dad’s helmet turns toward me. “You’re using your serious daughter voice.”
“Good. Obey it.”
“I hate when that works.”
Dux checks his weapon charge. “What are you doing?”
“Creating an opening.”
His body goes still in a way I recognize now. “Define creating.”
“I will draw their aim off the hatch.”
“Roma.”
“I am not sacrificing myself.”
“You say that like a woman who has found a loophole.”
I look at him through the visor reflection, his face faint and strained behind glass. “No loopholes. I draw fire. You cover. Dad reaches the hatch and gets it open. Then we board together.”
He studies me through the glare of burning hull metal. “Together means you come in before the door shuts.”
“Yes.”
“Alive.”
“That is implied.”
“Say it.”
Another barrage charges. We are out of time, but his stubbornness anchors me more than it delays me. I resent that almost as much as I need it.
“I come in alive,” I say.
Dad clears his throat. “For the record, I also prefer that version.”
The Reaper nearest the mast pivots toward us.
I move.
I break right from the ridge, firing twice to draw attention, then slam my boots down hard and sprint across open hull toward a collapsed sensor strut.
Reaper fire follows me immediately, bright bolts cutting past close enough that the suit temperature alarm shrieks in my ear.
Heat kisses my left side, sharp and intimate, and the outer layer of the skinsuit blisters but holds.
Dux fires from the ridge, clean shots forcing one Reaper to recoil. Dad runs for the ship with surprising speed, low and awkward in the magnetic boots, muttering nonstop into the comm.
“Too old for this. Too handsome for this. Too emotionally underprepared for space jogging.”