Page 143 of Red Scale Daddy
The airlock swallows me.
The hatch seals.
Pressure returns like a beating.
Air slams into the chamber in a rough, blessed rush, and my body betrays all dignity. I hit the deck on my hands and knees, dragging in a breath that feels like swallowing broken glass. My lungs seize, release, seize again. Heat rushes back under my scales in painful waves, and sensation returns to my fingers as sharp needles under the claws.
The inner door opens before I am ready.
Boots step into view.
Human boots.
Worn, patched, practical, with scorch marks along one side and grease embedded in the seams.
A voice follows them, rough and wary. “Well, that is not what I was trying to catch.”
I lift my head.
The man standing over me is broad-shouldered under layers of patched survival gear, his curly blond hair streaked with gray and flattened on one side like he has been sleeping under machinery for a decade. His beard is uneven, his face thinner than old holos made it look, and his eyes are bright in a way that belongs to people who have survived too long by refusing to be surprised.
Palindrome Larson looks down at me with a plasma cutter in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Hell.
Of course.
I cough hard enough to taste blood. “You Pally?”
The pistol lifts a fraction. “Who the hell are you?”
“Dux.”
“That answers less than you think it does.”
I push myself up to one knee, and the room tilts in a slow, ugly roll. The airlock smells of hot metal, recycled air, machine oil, and human sweat. I could kiss the floor for having an atmosphere, but the man with Roma’s eyes and none of herpatience is pointing a gun at me, so I keep my romantic impulses to myself.
“Roma came for you,” I say.
His face changes.
Not much.
Enough.
“My daughter is here?”
“Yeah.”
His pistol steadies. “Where?”
I drag another breath in, rough and uneven. “Reaper ship took her.”
The words hit him hard. His shoulders lock, and for half a second the years fall off his face, leaving only a father hearing the worst possible sentence in a voice he does not trust.
“Explain,” he says.
“Your signal drew us in. She followed it through hell, because apparently that’s a family habit. Reaper vessel intercepted us near the convergence zone. Military-grade bastard. Disabled her ship clean, boarded us, stunned her, and threw me out an airlock.”
