Page 11 of Red Scale Daddy
Gods help me, I like that.
I should not. It is inconvenient. It is the kind of liking that leads to doors opening where they ought to stay welded shut. I have spent years keeping my life simple: drink, fight, sleep when my body gives up arguing, wake, repeat. Purpose is a dangerous infection. It starts with one impossible woman in a bad coat and ends with a man caring whether tomorrow comes.
Roma begins shutting down the projection, perhaps deciding she has said enough or revealed too much. The ghost-ship collapses inward layer by layer, vanishing back into the compad until only spilled liquor and scratches remain on the bar.
I catch myself wanting to see it again.
Not the ship.
Her.
That is a worse sign than any schematic.
“You’re going to die out there,” I say.
She tucks the torn edge of her hood back with a controlled, almost contemptuous motion. “Everyone dies somewhere.”
“Pretty line. Doesn’t make it a plan.”
“No,” she says, stepping close enough that I can see tiny flecks of gold around the green of her eyes. “The plan is in the data. The line is for men who mistake cynicism for wisdom.”
Loklo whispers, “I am definitely in love.”
This time I ignore him.
Roma holds my gaze like she has never learned to look away from danger and has paid dearly for the education. I expect to see pleading there, some crack where the daughter shows through the engineer. Instead, I see challenge. Worse, I see loneliness so disciplined it refuses to ask for comfort even while standing in the middle of a room full of knives.
The mission is madness.
The ship is probably a coffin.
The woman is trouble with red hair and a mouth sharp enough to open arteries.
And for the first time in longer than I care to admit, I am interested in something that is not already breaking in my hands.
“Roma Larson,” I say, tasting the name properly now.
Her brows draw together. “What?”
I smile, slow enough to annoy her.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just deciding whether your death wish is better built than mine.”
She stares at me as if I have answered a question in a language she does not respect.
“Mine is not a death wish,” she says.
I look at the place where her impossible ship had burned in the air.
“No,” I say. “I suppose yours has blueprints.”
The room laughs, but she does not. She studies me with fresh caution, as though I have changed shape in front of her and she does not yet know whether that makes me useful or lethal.
Fair enough.
I am wondering the same thing about her.
CHAPTER 3
