Page 237 of Red Scale Daddy
Throgg snarls through the comm. “You will burn in the cradle.”
“No,” I say, setting my hands on the controls. “We are leaving.”
Dad’s voice steadies, all the jokes burned away. “Ready on bypass.”
Dux wraps his hand around the manual thruster control. “Ready.”
The drone accelerates toward us on the display.
Reaper fire charges outside.
The ship groans around me, wounded systems begging for certainty I cannot give them.
I give them command instead.
“Dad, release.”
“Releasing!”
The cradle locks blow open with a violent jolt that throws me against the harness. At the same instant, the ignition bus spikes, alarms screaming red across every screen.
“Dux, aft thrusters!”
He fires them.
The ship kicks sideways, hard and ugly. Reaper fire slams into the hull where we were supposed to be, the impact wave shoving our stern around exactly enough to clear the drone’s first intercept angle. Dad whoops from engineering as something explodes behind him.
“That better not have been important,” I shout.
“It was emotionally important!”
The drone adjusts.
I roll the ship under it, using half-dead stabilizers and pure stubborn math, then punch the main drive before the trajectory is clean. The engines catch with a roar I feel through the deck, through my ribs, through every burned nerve in my hand.
For half a second, we are going to tear apart.
Then the ship remembers she was built by me and ruined by Dad, which apparently makes her too difficult to kill.
We launch.
Throgg’s ship drops away beneath us, vast and burning, Reapers clinging to its hull like parasites, Zenos swarming its wounds in a storm of black wings and silver debris. The interception drone streaks past our port side close enough to rattle the cockpit, missing by less than a meter as Dux curses with genuine admiration.
Dad laughs over the comm, wild and relieved. “That was not flying. That was a felony.”
“It worked,” I say, voice shaking despite my best efforts.
Dux looks at me, soot-streaked and bleeding and grinning like survival is something he intends to make a habit of. “You embraced uncertainty.”
“I tolerated it.”
“You hugged it.”
“I did not.”
“You took it to dinner.”
“Dux.”
