Page 198 of Red Scale Daddy
Not at the airlock this time.
At my console, hand over mine, telling me wider path first. Bleeding, infuriating, alive with a future I had not known how to want until someone tried to take it from me.
Survival alone is suddenly obscene.
I look at the route between engineering and the access doors where they are fighting toward me. I look at the armed Reaper still moving through the fog. I look at the override that would let me vent a service corridor and slip through a maintenance conduit toward my ship, alone, fast, likely enough to escape before Throgg can fully lock down my path.
The old choice appears again.
My father.
My mission.
My survival.
The path I built myself to take.
I close it.
My fingers move over the console and route every remaining scrap of access toward the engineering doors.
“Roma,” Throgg says over the intercom. “Answer.”
I speak while I work. “You keep assuming survival is my highest priority.”
A guard rushes me through the fog.
I trigger a pressure surge in the floor vent beneath him, knocking him off balance long enough for me to grab the fallen weapon from the first guard. It is too heavy, Reaper-designed, awkward in my human hands. I brace it against the console edge and fire into the ceiling conduit above the main door.
The blast tears through the access shielding.
The door lock sparks.
Somewhere on the other side, something heavy hits metal.
Dux.
I know it before I hear him.
“Roma!” His voice comes through the damaged door, muffled and furious and real.
My knees nearly fail.
I grip the weapon harder.
Pally’s voice follows, strained and incredulous. “Move back from the door!”
I laugh once, and it comes out dangerously close to a sob. “Absolutely not.”
Dux snarls from the other side. “That sounds like her.”
The door shudders under another impact.
The remaining Reaper guard lifts his weapon toward the sound.
I fire first.
The recoil nearly tears my shoulder out of its socket, but the shot catches his armor at the side and drives him into the console bank. He does not fall, but he staggers, and that is enough.
