Page 115 of Red Scale Daddy
He studies me for a moment longer, his golden eyes tracking something beneath the surface of what I have said. I can feel the weight of that attention, the way it presses against the edges of my control, testing for weakness.
I do not give him one.
“We do not have time to reframe events based on emotional interpretation,” I continue, stepping past him toward the main corridor. “The breach is sealed to an acceptable temporary standard, and we are still on trajectory toward the signal.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” he says, falling into step beside me.
“It is the correct way to look at it.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “You keep telling yourself that.”
I do not respond.
The cockpit greets us with the same warped starlight bleeding across the forward display, the visual distortion more pronounced now that we have pushed deeper into the core’s influence. The signal overlay pulses faintly against the backdrop, its frequency pattern sharper, more defined than it was before.
Stronger.
I move to the pilot’s chair and drop into it, my hands already moving across the controls as I pull up the updated triangulationmodel. The previous route is no longer optimal. The drones’ presence in that corridor suggests a higher concentration of Zenos activity than my initial projections accounted for.
I adjust.
Data streams across the interface as I map a new path, one that threads between known hotspots based on movement patterns, gravitational distortion, and residual signal interference. It is not a clean route. Nothing here is clean. But it reduces the probability of another direct encounter to a level I can accept.
“Course correction?” Dux asks, leaning one arm against the side of the console as he watches the display.
“Yes.”
“Want to tell me what changed?”
“The density of hostile presence in our previous vector exceeded acceptable parameters,” I reply, highlighting the new path across the display. “This route reduces exposure while maintaining proximity to the signal source.”
He studies the projection, his gaze moving over the shifting lines of the corridor mapping.
“That section looks tight,” he says, pointing to a narrowing band where the gravitational distortion compresses the available space.
“It is.”
“And we’re going through it anyway.”
“Yes.”
He glances at me. “You sure that’s the best option?”
I hesitate.
Not because I lack an answer.
Because the question itself has shifted.
Before, I would have dismissed it.
Now, I consider it.
“The margin for error is reduced,” I admit, adjusting the trajectory slightly to compensate for drift variance. “However, the alternative route increases exposure time within a known Zenos cluster by approximately thirty-two percent.”
“Which means more chances for them to latch on again,” he says.
“Yes.”
