Page 108 of Red Scale Daddy
“You planning on pretending that didn’t happen,” I say, my voice low in the confined space, “or are we going to deal with it before it starts affecting your decisions?”
Her fingers continue moving, tapping, sliding, recalibrating the ship’s course through the shifting gravitational corridor ahead.
“We are maintaining operational focus,” she replies, her tone even and deliberate. “Any deviation from that priority would be inefficient.”
I push off the bulkhead and step closer, bracing one hand against the back of her chair as I study the tight line of her shoulders. “You’re pushing it down so hard it’s going to come back up at the worst possible moment.”
“My decisions are not compromised,” she says.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Her jaw tightens, and for a moment her fingers pause above the console before resuming their controlled motion. The interruption lasts less than a second, but it’s enough to tell me exactly how close the pressure is sitting under the surface.
“You are introducing unnecessary variables into a situation that already contains more than enough,” she says. “If you intend to be useful, I suggest you redirect your attention accordingly.”
A faint grin pulls at the corner of my mouth despite the tension sitting heavy in the air. “You always talk like that when you’re trying not to feel something, or is that just for special occasions?”
Her head turns just enough for her to look at me, her green eyes sharp and bright under the console light.
“Focus,” she says.
I hold her gaze for a second longer, then ease back, letting my hand drop from the chair.
“We’ll come back to it,” I tell her.
Her shoulders shift by a fraction, the smallest release of tension, before she locks everything back down and returns her full attention to the navigation display.
The ship lists hard to starboard.
The motion runs through the hull like something dragging across the exterior, not an impact that strikes and passes but a sustained disturbance that presses along the surface. My body reacts before my mind finishes processing it, muscles tightening as I turn toward the forward display.
Roma stills.
Her head tilts slightly, her attention shifting inward as she listens past the noise of the ship’s systems.
Another vibration follows, sharper this time, localized along one section of the hull. The sound reaches us a heartbeat later, a high, metallic scrape that cuts through the ambient hum and sets every nerve on edge.
Roma’s types quickly on the console, pulling up external diagnostics and routing visual feeds to the main display.
The image resolves in a flicker of warped light.
Movement crawls across the hull.
Zenos drones cling to the outer plating, their six-limbed bodies anchored by hooked extremities that dig into the metal with deliberate force. Their segmented armor shifts as they move, overlapping plates sliding over one another with a mechanical precision that suggests coordination rather than instinct. Several cluster along a seam near one of the external access points, their limbs striking the same location in repeated, measured impacts.
“They have identified a structural weakness,” Roma says, her voice tightening slightly as she tracks their movement.
“They’re working together,” I reply, watching the pattern of their strikes.
One of the drones slams its forelimb into the seam again. The metal dents inward, a shallow deformation that deepens with each successive blow. Another joins the first, their strikes falling into rhythm, each impact landing just after the last.
Roma’s fingers fly across the controls, rerouting internal pressure, reinforcing the surrounding structure, and shifting system loads to compensate for the stress.
“They are adapting to resistance,” she says.
“They’re learning,” I correct.
The seam fractures.
