Page 205 of Red Scale Daddy
ROMA
The ship lurches like something alive just got punched in the ribs.
Not a clean impact—no neat collision you can categorize and move past—but a grinding, shuddering violence that crawls through the hull and into my bones. The deck bucks under my boots, metal screaming somewhere deep in the walls, and for half a second the artificial gravity stutters hard enough that my stomach tries to float out of me.
“—that’s not good,” Pally blurts behind me, voice pitching higher than I’ve ever heard it.
“No,” I snap, already moving. “It’s not.”
Emergency lights slam on in jagged pulses—red, then black, then red again—turning the corridor into a stuttering nightmare of shadows and sharp angles. The air smells wrong now. Burnt circuitry, hot insulation, something acrid that coats the back of my throat.
“Roma—” Dux’s hand catches my wrist, firm, grounding, too warm. “What was that?”
“External contact,” I say, wrenching free but not fast enough to pretend I didn’t feel the steadiness in him. “Force vector was lateral—port side, mid-deck. Not debris.”
“Yeah,” he mutters, glancing up at the ceiling like he can see through it. “Felt intentional.”
Another tremor ripples through the ship, less violent but more… wrong. Like something’s dragging against the hull.
Pally sucks in a breath. “You don’t think?—”
“I do,” I cut him off. “Move.”
I take the lead again, boots slamming against the deck as I push us forward toward junction seven. The corridor ahead flickers in and out, lighting failing in uneven bursts. Somewhere distant, an alarm tries to sound and dies halfway through, replaced by a warped electronic whine.
“Systems are dropping,” I say, more to keep my own thoughts in order than to inform them. “Power grid’s fragmenting. Environmental controls are going next.”
“Meaning?” Pally asks, breath coming faster now as he keeps pace.
“Meaning we don’t have long before this place starts killing us without help from the Reapers.”
As if summoned, a distant metallic clang echoes behind us—heavy, deliberate.
Dux glances over his shoulder. “They’re still coming.”
“Of course they are.”
I turn a sharp corner, nearly skidding on a slick patch of something that smells like coolant. The corridor beyond is narrower, lined with access panels that hang open like broken teeth. Sparks spit intermittently from exposed conduits, casting harsh white flashes that burn afterimages into my vision.
“Junction seven’s two levels down,” I say. “Maintenance shafts should still be accessible if?—”
The deck drops.
Not metaphorically. Not a stumble or a shift.
It drops.
Gravity cuts out completely for a breathless instant, and the world turns into chaos—loose panels lifting, debris drifting, my own body jerking upward before I slam shoulder-first into the wall as gravity snaps back on at an angle.
“—shit!” Pally yells, crashing into me, then bouncing off.
I catch myself against a handhold, teeth clacking together hard enough to sting. The gravity stabilizes, but it’s wrong—pulling slightly sideways now, enough to throw off balance, enough to make every step a fight.
“Core alignment’s failing,” I say through clenched teeth. “We’re on borrowed time.”
Dux steadies himself, then looks at me, eyes sharp even in the stuttering light. “Then stop calculating and start improvising.”
“I am improvising.”
