Page 236 of Red Scale Daddy
Dux’s jaw tightens. “Interception drone. Maybe a boarding spike.”
Throgg’s voice cuts through the ship comm, clearer now, piped in through the cradle interface. “You cannot launch while I hold you.”
I pull up the flight architecture, fingers flying over controls. “Dad, bridge your release bypass into the starboard ignition bus.”
“That will overload the bus.”
“Yes.”
“I like that bus.”
“I like leaving.”
“Fine, but if she flies crooked, I’m blaming you.”
“She already flies crooked because of you.”
“She flies with character.”
Dux leans toward the forward display, voice hardening. “Roma, that drone is lining up.”
“I know.”
The variables stack so fast they blur. Cradle locks, degraded shields, unstable stabilizer, Dad’s improvised bypass, Reaper fire, Throgg’s command interference, drone trajectory, Zenos impacts against the larger hull, oxygen reserves, engine heat, Dux’s blood on the copilot console where his sleeve has torn open again. There are too many uncertainties. Too many moving pieces. No clean solution exists.
My hands pause over the controls.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
I have spent my life trying to force chaos into obedience. I have cut choices down to their cleanest bones, stripped feeling from decisions, punished uncertainty as weakness because uncertainty was where people died. Now uncertainty fills the cockpit like smoke, inescapable and alive, and for once, I do not try to suffocate it.
I breathe it in.
Dux looks at me. “Roma?”
“We are not going to get perfect timing.”
Dad snorts from engineering. “Sweetheart, we weren’t getting adequate timing.”
I smile, a bit ruefully. “Then we use imperfect timing.”
Dux’s eyes sharpen. “Meaning?”
“Meaning Dad releases the locks half a second before the ignition bus overloads, you fire aft thrusters manually when I tell you, and I use the Reaper impact pattern to shove us into the escape vector instead of avoiding it.”
Dad goes quiet.
Dux says, “That sounds insane.”
“It is.”
“And brilliant.”
“It is also that.”
Dad mutters, “I hate when both are true.”
