Page 199 of Red Scale Daddy
Throgg’s voice returns, colder now. “You have chosen poorly.”
I look toward the door as the lock begins to fail under Pally’s tools and Dux’s violence. My heart beats so hard it feels like the ship has moved inside my chest.
Rescue, or death. Which will come first?
The door gives with a shriek of tearing metal.
CHAPTER 30
DUX
The engineering door tears open with a scream of metal, and Roma stands on the other side with a Reaper rifle braced against a ruined console, smoke in her hair, blood on her cheek, and murder in her eyes.
For half a second, the whole damn warship narrows to her face.
She is alive. She is upright. She is furious enough to frighten the dead, and I have never seen anything prettier in my life.
Then she fires past my shoulder.
The shot punches into the Reaper coming up behind me and drives him backward into the corridor wall. Pally curses somewhere at my side and ducks as sparks rain from the damaged doorframe. I lunge through the opening before the next guard can recover, catch Roma around the waist, and haul her behind the nearest console bank as incoming fire burns bright lines through the steam and smoke filling the deck.
“You are alive,” she says, and the words sound like accusation, prayer, and insult all dressed in the same torn clothes.
“Yeah,” I say, grinning like an idiot behind a cracked mask. “Turns out I’m hard to kill.”
Her palm slams into my chest plate.
Pain bursts across the bruise where a turret shot hit me earlier, and I grunt, more surprised than hurt. “Ow.”
She hits me again, lower this time, right over the pressure rig seal. “You absolute ass.”
“Little busy here.”
“You made me watch you die.”
“I almost died,” I correct, grabbing her wrist before she can land another emotionally justified attack. “There’s a meaningful distinction.”
Her eyes flash bright, wet, and furious. “I watched you go out an airlock.”
“I remember. Terrible hospitality.”
“You were smiling.”
“I was trying to be comforting.”
“You were being a jerk.”
“Those overlap more than people admit.”
A Reaper round slams into the console above us, showering us with fragments of hot casing. Roma flinches against me, and my body moves around hers before thought gets a vote, one arm braced across her shoulders as I pull her lower. Her breath catches, and for one sharp, impossible moment, her forehead presses against my chest.
Then she shoves me back with both hands.
“Do not smother me while rescuing me.”
“Good to see you too, sweetheart.”
“Do not sweetheart me after faking your death.”
