Page 132 of Red Scale Daddy
The first breach comes at the forward access corridor.
The door doesn’t explode. It peels open with surgical force, cut along the seams by a tool that burns through Roma’s locks in a clean white line. Three figures step through the smoke in armored suits that look grown around them rather than worn. Reapers. Tall, gaunt, built with a hard economy of motion. Their weapons come up in disciplined formation.
“Evening,” I say.
They fire.
The first stun round hits the wall as I move. The second clips my shoulder and sends a brutal numbness down my arm, but I keep coming. I slam into the lead Reaper before it can adjust, driving it back into the two behind it. Armor cracks under my fist when I bring it down across the side of its helm.
One of them drives a shock baton into my ribs.
Pain detonates through my body, white and electric, but I trap the weapon against me and yank the bastard closer. My forehead slams into its faceplate hard enough to spiderweb the visor. I rip the baton free and swing it into the next Reaper’s knee, dropping it with a sharp, satisfying crunch.
“Dux!” Roma calls from the cockpit.
“Busy!”
A fourth Reaper enters behind the others. Then a fifth.
That is when the odds start getting rude.
They move with military patience, spacing themselves so I cannot take them all at once. One fires low. Another feints high. A third circles toward the cockpit door. I throw the baton at that one and catch it in the throat, then drive my shoulder into the nearest Reaper hard enough to send both of us into the wall.
A stun round hits my back.
My legs buckle for half a second.
I force them straight again.
“Come on,” I growl. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
They do.
Two rounds hit me together, one in the chest and one in the thigh. My muscles seize so hard my jaw clamps shut. I hit the deck on one knee, vision flashing white at the edges, and one of them slams the butt of a weapon across my face.
The corridor tilts.
I taste blood.
Hands grab me.
I break one wrist. I feel it snap in my grip, and the Reaper makes a clipped sound that might be pain if these things allow themselves that indulgence. Another shock baton drives into my spine, and this time my body refuses the command to rise.
Roma appears in the cockpit doorway.
Her hair has come loose around her face, and there is blood on her temple from somewhere, a thin line dark against her skin. She holds a compact cutting tool in one hand and a plasma torch in the other, looking like a furious little engineer ready to take apart an army one screw at a time.
“Get away from him,” she says.
The Reaper nearest me turns its weapon toward her.
I move on instinct.
My body is half-numb, my muscles firing wrong, but I throw myself sideways and catch the Reaper’s leg, dragging its aim off line as it fires. The shot burns into the wall beside Roma instead of her chest.
“Run!” I snarl.
She does the exact opposite.
