Page 10 of Red Scale Daddy
But this is not recklessness.
This is devotion sharpened until it has forgotten how to be anything else.
I tap the edge of the projection, letting my claw pass through a pale blue line of hull plating. “You understand that even if this ship does everything you claim, the core will still invent new ways to kill you.”
“Yes.”
“You understand charts rot out there. Gravity lies. Signals bend. Wreckage moves. Predators nest in places sane navigation systems flag as empty.”
“Yes.”
“You understand the first thing to go wrong will make all your perfect models look like children’s drawings on a tavern wall.”
Her eyes harden. “Then I will adapt.”
I laugh once, low in my chest. “You?”
“Yes,” she says. “Me.”
“You look like you schedule your breathing.”
“I do. It keeps me from wasting oxygen on people who confuse volume with insight.”
Loklo murmurs, “She has you there.”
I point at him without looking. “You are very close to becoming assistant manager of the alley.”
“I already manage the alley. Poorly, but with flair.”
Roma’s mouth twitches. It is so fast I almost miss it. Almost. The expression is not warmth, exactly, but it proves she has one buried somewhere beneath the knives.
I feel the room watching us, hungry for the next turn. Let them. I am past caring.
“What are you paying?” the human in the harness asks, voice thinner now that Varkun is outside becoming philosophical.
Roma gives a figure.
The room inhales.
Even I blink.
Loklo says, “I rescind my earlier jokes and would like to announce my lifelong passion for certain death.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I say.
“I said passion, not competence.”
The scarred woman eyes Roma. “That is real money.”
“It is,” Roma says.
“Why come here?”
Roma sweeps her gaze over the room. “Because official channels refused. Because reputable contractors declined. Because the people qualified enough to understand the risk are too comfortable to take it, and the people desperate enough to take it are usually too incompetent to survive launch.”
The human snorts. “That your sales pitch?”
“No,” she says. “That is my filtering process.”
