Page 186 of Red Scale Daddy
The ship drifts closer. The Reaper hull slides beneath us, black plating passing close enough that the surface details sharpen: heat scoring, welded repairs, sensor nodes folded into seams, and the faint shimmer of shield residue bleeding off during recalibration. The maintenance spine waits ahead like a dark rib, half-exposed while the external plates vent heat. Pally’s hands move in small corrections, each one careful enough to look like nothing.
The whole cabin holds its breath.
A timer glows on the console.
Thirty-one seconds.
Pally’s voice drops. “Magnetic clamps on my mark.”
I brace one hand against the bulkhead and grip the manual clamp trigger with the other. “I know.”
“You trigger early, they detect the impact.”
“I know.”
“You trigger late, we bounce off and spin into the vent wash.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that while looking far too pleased.”
“I enjoy being trusted with important buttons.”
“You are not trusted. You are being supervised by necessity.”
“Story of my life.”
The timer hits twelve seconds.
Pally angles us down, drifting into the shadow of a shield emitter housing. The Reaper hull looms close enough now that I can see tiny flakes of frost burning away along the vent seams. My pulse slows, not from calm, but from focus. The ache in my ribs settles into the background. The bruised muscles in my neck stop mattering. Roma is somewhere inside that monster’s ship, likely surrounded by armed Reapers, probably insulting their engineering while planting knives into the software.
She is alive.
She has to be.
The timer hits three.
Pally’s jaw tightens.
“Mark.”
I hit the clamp trigger.
The little ship lurches as magnetic anchors slam into the Reaper maintenance spine. Metal groans through the frame, deep and dangerous, then holds. Pally kills every nonessential system in a fast, practiced sweep, dropping the cabin into dim standby light. For a few seconds, nothing moves except the timer counting past zero.
No alarms.
No weapons fire.
No vaporization.
I exhale through the mask. “Well, look at that. We’re only mostly dead.”
Pally unclips his harness. “Move.”
The access lock is barely wide enough for my shoulders, which Pally seems to consider a personal failing on my part. He opens the hatch into the crawl interface, and cold air slips in, carrying the sterile-metal bite of the Reaper hull beyond. I duck low and squeeze into the transfer tube, the pressure rig scraping along both sides as I push forward. Every movement pulls at thewound in my ribs, but the pain has become useful now, a bright line keeping me sharp.
Pally follows with a compact tool rig strapped across his chest. He moves quicker than I expect, fingers already working at the first external access panel before I fully clear the tube.
