Page 38 of Red Scale Daddy
The walk to Docking Bay Twelve feels longer with the duffel on my shoulder and the access token gone from my pocket. The station has dimmed into night cycle, all blue guide lights and low machinery murmur. Cleaning mechanials creep along wall seams, whispering over spilled grime. Somewhere behind a closed hatch, lovers argue in a language I do not know, their voices rising and falling with the intimate rhythm of people trying not to lose each other. The recycled air tastes faintly of copper near the docking levels.
The Lamplight waits beneath bright maintenance lamps, hull dark as a folded shadow.
Roma stands under the ship with a compad in one hand and fury arranged into perfect posture. A fueling tech twice her width stands across from her, visibly reconsidering every decision that led him into customer service.
“I ordered deuterium mix three,” Roma says, each word clipped clean. “This is mix two with stabilizer additives.”
The tech glances at his own tablet. “Manifest says compatible.”
Roma steps closer. Her voice lowers, which somehow makes it worse. “My patience is compatible with violence. That does not make violence advisable.”
The tech looks at me with desperate hope. “You her muscle?”
Roma turns her head slowly. “I am my muscle.”
I stop beside them and adjust the duffel on my shoulder. “I’m decorative.”
Roma’s eyes drop to the bag, then return to my face. “You’re late.”
“You gave me no time.”
“I gave you an operational expectation.”
“That is not a time.”
“It implied immediacy.”
“That is still not a time. That is a mood with authority issues.”
The fueling tech swallows. “Should I get mix three?”
Roma looks back at him. “Yes.”
He departs at a speed that suggests he has found religion.
I look up along the Lamplight’s belly. Up close, she is stranger than she looked on the display. The hull is layered in tight graphite plating, its seams almost invisible until the light catches them. Folded vanes hug the sides, sleek and dark, while the drive assembly sits tucked beneath overlapping shield bands in a placement that makes my instincts itch.
“Your center of mass is wrong,” I say.
Roma starts up the ramp. “No, it is unusual.”
“That is what people call wrong after spending money.”
“It is compensated through adaptive ballast and distributed thrust.”
“You put the drive forward.”
“I am aware of where I put my drive.”
“Most people put the dangerous humming heart of the ship somewhere less eager to become everyone’s business during impact.”
She pauses halfway up the ramp and looks down at me. “Most people are not attempting controlled transit through gravitational distortion severe enough to turn conventional architecture into debris confetti.”
“That sounded almost like an explanation.”
“It was the simplified version.”
“For me?”
