Page 51 of Red Scale Daddy
Good.
I angle us into the shadow of a legitimate freight carrier and cut our active signature by forty percent. “That was not a creditor collection weapon.”
“No,” Dux says, voice calm now in a way his humor never is. “That was military surplus.”
“Pell did not have military surplus.”
“Pell had friends or owners.”
I reroute shield harmonics and bring our engine output down to background traffic levels. My pulse is fast, but my hands remain steady. The route to the gate is compromised. The safest maneuver is to delay, slide behind freight traffic, and recalculate from below the corridor. The launch window to the core remains distant enough to absorb the delay if I do not lose more than sixteen minutes.
Dux watches the external feed. “Second hauler is turning.”
“I see it.”
“It thinks you’ll run for the gate.”
“I won’t.”
“What will you do?”
“Use its assumption.”
I cut beneath the carrier shadow, rotate the Lamplight on a shallow axial roll, and feed false drift telemetry toward the gate. The second hauler angles after the ghost signal. I hold still, engines quiet, every system pared down to the smallest survivable profile. The cockpit lights dim automatically as power reroutes. In the half-dark, Dux’s golden eyes reflect the displays.
The hauler passes above us.
Too close.
Its underbelly fills the canopy, scarred plating and illegal weapon mounts visible for four long seconds. A low vibration passes through the Lamplight as its mass wake rolls over us. I taste metal at the back of my throat, though that is nerves, not atmosphere.
Dux whispers, “Nicely done.”
I should ignore that.
“Thank you,” I say, and the words come out clipped, but real.
He hears that too. Of course he does.
The hauler continues toward our false trail. I wait until its aft sensors angle away, then bring the Lamplight up through a gap between two freight wakes and burn hard toward the alternate gate approach. The engines answer with clean force. The ship surges forward, alive and obedient beneath my hands.
Dux exhales softly. “You can handle ugly.”
“I told you I could adapt.”
“You told me your plan would work.”
“It is working.”
“Because you changed it.”
I do not answer immediately.
He does not press.
That may be the most surprising thing he has done all flight.
I transmit a revised gate request under low-profile clearance, piggybacking behind a medical supply convoy whose authorization code is old but still honored. The gate accepts us. Space ahead folds into pale geometry, subspace light gathering in the buoy ring like frost on invisible glass.
