His eyes narrow. “You were with her.”
“Yes.”
“Protecting her?”
“I was trying.”
The pistol doesn’t lower.
“Trying,” he repeats, and the word comes out flat enough to cut. “My daughter crosses the core, finds me after nine years, and the man standing in front of me says he was trying.”
My temper comes back faster than my strength.
I push to my feet despite the way my legs threaten to quit. The ceiling is low for me, forcing my shoulders to hunch, and pain crawls through my side with every breath. I still manage to look down at him.
“You want to shoot me because I didn’t stop a Reaper boarding squad while half-paralyzed and bleeding, get on with it,” I say. “But don’t stand there acting like blame is a rescue plan.”
His eyes flash. “You lost her.”
“They took her.”
“You were there.”
“Yeah,” I snarl. “I was there when she nearly burned herself alive chasing your signal. I was there when she kept flying a damaged ship because she thought getting to you mattered more than breathing. I was there when they shocked her, dragged her back, and she still tried to fight through them to get to me.”
His jaw works.
I step closer, and the pistol presses level with my chest.
“Careful,” he says.
“Careful got thrown out the hatch.”
“You think you can come aboard my ship, tell me my daughter has been captured, and then growl at me like I am the problem?”
“I think your daughter is alive on a Reaper vessel, and every second we spend measuring guilt with our pants down gives them more time to put a leash on her.”
That lands.
His eyes change again, anger still there but forced into the shape of usefulness.
“What Reaper?” he asks.
“Big ship. Black armor. Modified military configuration. Voice over comm sounded like he’d never raised it in his life and never needed to. Called her skill forgivable.”
Pally goes very still.
“You heard him speak?”
“Yeah.”
“What did he call himself?”
“He didn’t. Roma asked. He gave her nothing.”
Pally lowers the pistol by a fraction, his gaze drifting toward the wall as if some old memory is crawling out from behind it. “Throgg.”
“You know him.”
