Page 185 of Red Scale Daddy
I am not that girl anymore.
Dux broke that equation by existing inside it.
My father made it matter by answering from the dark.
The screen updates.
Throgg’s vessel enters the outer Thorn Shelf.
The collision begins to take shape.
I finish the first sabotage trigger and arm it beneath a routine coolant subroutine.
Then I begin the second.
My hands are steady.
My heart is not.
For once, I do not punish it for that.
I lean closer to the console, watching the route, the predator band, the false trail, and the hidden recursion pulse beneath the noise. Somewhere ahead, my father is alive. Somewhere behind or beside or impossibly near, Dux may be fighting his way back to me with all the subtlety of a reactor breach.
I am done choosing only one impossible thing.
I am going to save them both.
CHAPTER 28
DUX
Pally brings us in under Throgg’s belly with the kind of flying that makes a man rethink every unkind thing he has ever said about engineers.
His little ship slides through the outer turbulence of the Thorn Shelf with every system whining under pressure, hull plates shivering as debris dust skates across the shields in a constant, glittering hiss. The Reaper vessel fills the forward viewport in pieces at first: a black curve of armored plating, a row of recessed shield emitters, a maintenance spine lit by cold blue service lights. Then it becomes the whole sky ahead of us, massive and predatory, moving through the field with the calm arrogance of something used to smaller things getting out of its way.
Pally kills the main thrust.
The sudden drop in vibration makes my teeth ache.
“We drift from here,” he says, both hands resting lightly over the controls. “Any engine flare inside their recalibration window gives us away.”
I tighten the seal at my wrist and watch the distance marker shrink. “You always this cheerful before suicide?”
“This is not suicide.”
“Bold claim.”
“This is infiltration.”
“Same road, nicer sign.”
He cuts me a look over his shoulder. “If you treat my plan like a tavern brawl, we die before you get to hit anyone.”
“If your plan depends on me not hitting anyone, it needs revision.”
“It depends on you hitting the right people at the right time.”
I grin inside the breathing mask. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
