Page 233 of Red Scale Daddy
Dux lands beside me. Dad follows a half second later, cursing so creatively over the comm that I file two phrases away for later analysis.
“Move,” I say.
We run across the hull.
Running in magnetic boots is not graceful. Each step catches, releases, catches again, dragging at the muscles and breaking the rhythm the body expects. Reaper fire erupts behind us, the blasts striking close enough that the hull beneath my feet bucks and ripples. Shards of plating peel away into space, spinning past my visor with lazy, deadly elegance.
Dux catches Dad by the harness when one impact throws him sideways. Dad’s boots scrape loose for a terrifying instant, his body lifting from the hull before Dux hauls him back down.
“I had it,” Dad snaps.
“You were airborne,” Dux says.
“I was experimenting.”
“With dying?”
“With alternative locomotion.”
“Run,” I order.
We reach the first hull ridge and drop behind it as the next volley rips overhead. Heat flashes across the ridge, bright enough that my visor darkens automatically. My ship sits thirty meters ahead, beautiful and battered, clamped to the external docking cradle by emergency maglocks. Her dorsal hatch is still sealed. Her shield lattice flickers like a pulse losing strength.
Throgg’s voice returns through the comm, distorted by exterior interference. “You are crawling across my hull like vermin.”
Dad answers. “Technically, we’re running.”
Dux adds, “Badly, but with spirit.”
I hiss, “Stop encouraging him.”
“I am not encouraged,” Throgg says, his tone sharpening. “I am disappointed. You were made for cleaner work than this, Roma.”
I peer over the ridge, tracking the nearest Reaper. It is adjusting angle, bracing to fire at the dorsal hatch. “Dux, left flank. Dad, when I move, you move straight for the ship and do not stop.”
Dad’s helmet turns toward me. “You’re using your serious daughter voice.”
“Good. Obey it.”
“I hate when that works.”
Dux checks his weapon charge. “What are you doing?”
“Creating an opening.”
His body goes still in a way I recognize now. “Define creating.”
“I will draw their aim off the hatch.”
“Roma.”
“I am not sacrificing myself.”
“You say that like a woman who has found a loophole.”
I look at him through the visor reflection, his face faint and strained behind glass. “No loopholes. I draw fire. You cover. Dad reaches the hatch and gets it open. Then we board together.”
He studies me through the glare of burning hull metal. “Together means you come in before the door shuts.”
