Page 195 of Red Scale Daddy
Deep in the deck, the engines stumble, losing the smooth predatory rhythm they have maintained since Throgg took the bait. My third trigger slips into place through the hidden latency variation in the heat vent cycle, delaying power redistribution by fractions of a second. The effect is small at first, a hesitation between drive pulse and stabilizer response, but inside the Thorn Shelf’s turbulence, hesitation becomes teeth.
A warning tone rolls across engineering.
The guards turn toward the central drive.
I enter the next command.
The engine does not fail. Failure would be obvious, and obvious things get corrected. Instead, the drive begins to argue with itself, producing inconsistent pressure loads that force automatic systems to compensate in competing directions. Throgg’s ship slows by necessity, bleeding speed to preserve structural integrity.
The Reaper engineer lunges toward my station. “Step away.”
I lift one hand from the controls and leave the other resting near the hidden trigger chain. “If I step away, your drive lag becomes a cascade.”
“You created this.”
“I warned you about over-centralized response architecture.”
“You created this.”
“Then arrest me after you survive it.”
The deck tilts as the ship banks through a gravitational ripple with less grace than before. A tool tray slides from one workbench and crashes across the floor, scattering metal instruments that ring against the grating. The sound cuts through the rising alarms, sharp and bright, and I use the distraction to finish disabling the last cluster of cameras along the maintenance route.
A feed flickers across my lower display before dying.
I see him.
Only for a fraction of a second.
Dux fills the corridor like violence given purpose, pressure rig scorched across the chest, one arm swinging hard enough to drive a Reaper guard backward into a wall. His face is partly obscured by the mask, but I know the line of his shoulders, the brutal economy of his movement, the impossible refusal in him that made death seem like something he would argue with until it grew bored.
My hand slips.
The console flashes an error.
I correct it before anyone sees.
My breath hurts.
He is alive.
The thought goes through me with such force that the engineering deck blurs, the lights streaking amber across my vision. I grip the console edge and force my body to remain upright, force my face into irritation, force the scream trying to become joy into the clean narrow shape of action.
Dux is alive.
Dux is aboard.
Dux is coming.
The shipwide intercom activates with a low tone that silences every voice in engineering.
Throgg’s voice fills the deck, calm and terrible. “Roma Larson.”
The guards raise their weapons.
I keep my hand on the console.
Throgg continues, each word controlled enough to be intimate. “You have locked down my personnel, corrupted my security feeds, and introduced deliberate instability into my engine systems while under supervision. I admitdisappointment only because I hoped your intelligence would incline you toward longer survival.”
