Page 102 of Red Scale Daddy
The dorsal feed comes up. Six drones cling to the port side, claws wedged into seams and gouges. Their armored bodies flex in unsettling rhythm, as if listening through the hull. One has found the edge of a microfracture and is picking at it with delicate, awful patience.
“Six visible,” I say. “One working the fracture line.”
Roma’s voice tightens with controlled anger. “I see it.”
“I thought you needed external verification.”
“I also have imagination.”
“The bad kind?”
“The precise kind.”
She initiates the vane pulse.
The first vibration runs through the ship like a plucked cable. The drones freeze. A second pulse follows, deeper, tuned lower. I watch the fracture line drone shudder, limbs spreading. Roma adjusts frequency, her face intent, her anger focused into mathematics.
“Higher,” I say.
“If I go higher, the hinge stress increases.”
“Lower is annoying them. Higher might persuade.”
She cuts me a look. “Persuade.”
“With pain.”
Roma shifts the frequency upward.
The hull sings.
Not metaphorically. The metal gives off a resonant moan that fills the cockpit and prickles along my teeth. On the feed, two drones lose their grip immediately, sliding down the hull and vanishing off-camera. The others dig in harder, but their movements become erratic.
“Working,” I say.
“Hinge stress?”
“Amber.”
“Drone at fracture?”
“Still attached.”
Roma’s fingers move faster. “Then I add a lateral flutter.”
“That sounds terrible for the hinge.”
“It is terrible for everything attached to the hinge.”
“Wonderful.”
The next pulse hits sideways.
The drone at the fracture tears free so violently one of its limbs remains wedged in the plating after the body flies off. It tumbles across the canopy in a blur of limbs and shrieking mandibles before disappearing over the ridge.
I laugh. “That was beautiful.”
Roma’s mouth almost curves. “It was adequate.”
